Mental Investment
Post by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
I like trains. I’ve been a fan of riding the rails ever since I was in second grade and my mom took me and some friends on a train ride. It was the coolest thing ever for an eight year old (well at that time anyway). Now you bus guys don’t go off on the “oh, see he’s a rail fan†bit. Buses are every bit as essential to a transit system as rail, and in some cases even more so.
So the recent story about a spark of life in the high-speed rail line connecting most of SoCal got me to perk my ears up a bit. High-speed rail? A SoCal rail network? Hrm?! Now before we get all excited, realize that the estimated cost on the project is about $40 billion give or take a few billion I am sure and the people looking into it right now see it funded through tax dollars and private investments. Of course, with the current governor continually slashing transit funding, those tax dollars probably aren’t going to manifest.
Now here’s where I get a bit rankled on the whole topic. The story cited Norm King, director of the Leonard Transportation Center at Cal State San Bernardino, as saying that money would be better spent on road projects since those would create more congestion relief than the rail line.
This is what keeps me banging my head against my cubicle wall every time I read something like this. It’s a vicious circle really, the roads are congested, so we build more roads to allow cars to move freely, giving room for more cars, inciting more congestion, so we build more roads to allow cars to move freely….
You see? We can’t just keep laying down concrete and asphalt, hoping that this new lane or interchange or bypass or whatever will magically make all the road congestion disappear. We’re not alleviating congestion, we’re just moving it to a different place, spreading it around a bit so it doesn’t look so bad. My eight-year-old does this with his room when it gets messy. Instead of cleaning up, he just shuffles things around a bit so the room looks clean. But wouldn’t you know, give it a week or so and that room is messy again. And if you give those roads a little while, they will be congested again.
For transit to succeed and for congestion to truly be alleviated people need to make a mental investment to fixing the problem, not just hiding it from whoever is telling us to clean it up. We need to make a mental investment in transit. These sort of things aren’t easy to do. Making a mental investment almost always also translates into making a monetary investment. We’re putting the money into a plan that we think will work, but we need to wait until it’s done before we can bitch about it. That’s making a monetary and mental investment. That’s what is needed to alleviate congestion.
Not just hiding the problem under the bed so mom doesn’t see it when she comes looking.
Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.
April 12th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Every time one of these “experts” is cited, it means that the next time the same issue arises, they will be called up for another quote. Why is it that none of these journalists ever calls MT or some other reputable organization which supports rail to get the other side of the story. Another “expert” is Michael Luberoff, of Harvard’s Rappaport Institute, who continually pens op-ed pieces for the Boston Globe, calling into question expansion of the MBTA. His articles have even included the old canard that it’d be cheaper to buy all the potential passengers a VW than to build the line. What about the fact that a transit line lasts virtually forever, vs the car lasting maybe six or seven years?
April 12th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
When will goverment officials finally get it through their thick skulls that we need to fund mass transit,buses,rail systems,and alternative fuels,not more highways and making oil companies richer??? Voters need to vote this way !!!
April 14th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Hopefully someone is making a list for Santa, of officials and leadership wannabes that don’t really get the deeper meaning of 911DAY. Mouths washed out with coal, not soap, seems too light a punishment for the writers that have no inkling of how they help promote disastrous foreign policy every time they promote highway investment at the expense of public transportation capacity.
Lacking the simple wisdom to simply address proper maintenance and repair of existing highways, roads and bridges, these proponents of profligate paving call for more dead-end roadgang spending even as we are one attack or one big storm or refinery disaster from car-pooling ang 5 gallons per week gas rationing. In a perfect world with perfect justice these transit detractors would present themselves to the various communities they deceive, begging for forgiveness when the crisis comes. They shall have to explain themselves to their loved ones, the children from whom they can’t hide, perhaps that will be enough.
A local example here in Sacramento (not the Governator) is the Sacramento BEE, ever so careful to damn transit with faint praise. This is understandable when you see how fat the car advertising, and new homes sections are. A scary thing, to rock the highway economy and the lucrative ads that come with.
One can see the depth of this self-deception with the recent stories about a billion-dollar parking structure at the airport, further delaying the light-rail connector. The BEE stifles discussion of an alternative and maybe less expensive route to the airport using the old Sacramento Northern route over the Tower Bridge, then getting to the Airport from the west, preferring instead to extol expensive flood-plain Natomas neighborhood LRT plans. Further hundreds of millions for parking structures at the City College (on light rail); and Sacramento State Campus, instead of a streetcar or BRT connector to the LRT station about a mile away.
The MASS TRANSIT page might consider some Peaking Oil links, such as the Association For The Study Of Peak OIl & Gas (peakoil.net) site. Maybe the Sacramento BEE, and the Boston GLOBE will take warning from the preponderence of evidence of a transportation emergency looming if they had easier access to information. It seems their respective editorial boards prefer to stay ignorant of Peaking Oil information that will adversly impact the automobile advertising section! Once this veil is removed, the mighty power of the free press can dutifully educate the TMA’s and MTBA’s and SACOGS of the land about the lunacy of throwing money at parking structures and more roads and highways. Unfortunately, embarassment is in order…
April 30th, 2007 at 3:03 am
I have traveled extensively examining various modes of transit. I have traveled to Europe 6 times, Canada over 15 times, Japan 5 times, (which includes APTA’s sponsored study tours to Europe, Asia and South America), and in addition trips to People’s Republic of China twice and Mexico 3 times.
Overall I like rail, but when many speak in good terms of rail travel, most all these operate on separate passenger rail tracks than freight whereas most of the intercity rail in the US operates jointly with freight and passenger service is usually secondary to freight. We need to build intercity passenger rail that has tracks separate from freight.
As to people saying that money would be better spent on road projects since it would create more congestion relief than building rail. I would reply that reliving congestion has never in the last 50 years successfully relieved congestion, for it has returned in a few years because we do not consider how we allow development. California especially has continually had the highest congestion as a State with LA areas rated the highest region followed by SF Area and both were higher than Wash DC area, according to US DOT latest report.
Another important consideration is our problem of Global Warming of which Transportation is the primary contributor to GW because of its large Greenhouse Gas emission. Transportation county wide produces 40% of the total. Our country is the greatest generator of GHG and if we do not reduce it, GW will increase and create dire effects to our environment not just locally but worldwide. We have already experienced conditions such as; serious weather changes, sea level rise, droughts, extinction of various flora and fauna and we are increasing GHG emissions.
Since auto use is the major generator of GHG we need to reduce it use by considering developments where transit will be the major mode of travel. This includes the development more dense city centers and transit corridors. Curitiba, Brazil integrated development with dense corridors along with the world renowned Busway and now 70% of the total trip are by transit. We should provide intercity High Speed Rail because air travel produces several fold more GHG emission.