Cautious Optimism
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine
November 4, 2008 will go down in history as one of, if not the most important Election Day in our country’s history. It was truly a watershed moment with the potential to reshape America’s landscape. Proposition 1 in Washington and Proposition 1A in California have the potential to remake how transit is viewed in the United States and they both passed this week. What did you think I was talking about, Obama?
Sure, our new president has the chance to affect change in our nation’s capital, the likes of which haven’t been seen in a generation or two, but let’s hope he really means it when he talks about our infrastructure. The president-elect has pointed to China and its efforts in investing in its infrastructure and the benefits that country has gained from said investment. Let’s stop and chew on that for a bit.
SAFETEA-LU authorized about $286 billion over six years. The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recently released its recommendation for next year’s reauthorization and is recommending it be at about $544 billion. That’s a pretty good-sized jump, but not when you compare it to the estimated $600 billion already spent in Iraq with an estimated $1 to $2 trillion total expected cost.
Think of that. $1 trillion. To have that for transit improvements across the board — ports, roads, transit systems. Now take a look at the two ballot initiatives that just passed. Proposition 1 in Seattle is asking for roughly $22 billion to expand Sound Transit’s bus and light rail systems. Proposition 1A is asking for about $10 billion to start the process to put in a high-speed rail line between Northern and Southern California.
This is where this all falls apart, though. The costs I understand. I get those, but when you start comparing this “investment†in our infrastructure with China, it all falls apart. Sound Transit is looking to add 34 miles of light rail … by 2023. Yep, 15 years.
In comparison, since 2000 China has put in about 60 miles of rail (above and below ground). Almost twice as much as Sound Transit has planned in nearly half the time.
If our government truly wants us to compete in a global market, we need to look at what other countries are doing in terms of scope and not be held back by what we think we can do. We put a man on the moon because we wouldn’t accept no as an answer. The same should go for our infrastructure. We simply cannot accept no when it comes to improving our country. This is the challenge laid at the feet of our new president.
The various transit ballot initiatives passed across the country have made me optimistic we have the public support to do it, but I still feel the need to temper that with some caution to see if our government can summon the will to really affect change in a time frame that will make people sit up and take notice.
Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,
November 7th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“In comparison, since 2000 China has put in about 60 miles of rail (above and below ground).”
Where does that figure come from? The new line to Lhasha alone is several *thousand* miles in length. That is far from the only line that has been built, and there are a large number of track capacity improvements happening as well.
November 9th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
The Chrysler/Ford/GM emergency is the opportunity to make serious tooling change in US manufacturing to address shift from private vehicle orientation, as described in James Howard Kunstler’s “Long Emergency”. As a companion read, see Christopher C. Swan’s “ELECTRIC WATER” for some ideas and off-the shelf methodology.
Ideological parry & thrust on whether we should provide life support to the carmakers is demonstrably off the point, when one understands the iceberg-like qualities of the car makers versus the actual US manufacturing component involved. Carmakers put together cars, but they do not make the parts! Take the parts factories and tooling shops into the picture and you see the size of this imminent collapse.
Better to save the manufacturing capacity, with the implicit caveat of shift to shared private vehicle & alternative transport vehicles & rolling stock production.
The APTA, AASHO, ASME, UAW and the political parties of the USA need to do cram course on the realities of energy supply. Low pump prices are a sucker trap for planners & promoters of highway expansion; low income for oil producers equate to shelved oilfield development, pure & simple. So, as we get recovery under way, expect price up and capacity down. Austan Goolsbee, are you following this? Actually TALKING to Simmons, Pickens, Woolsey?
New policymakers: please, PLEASE make your contacts with energy mavens like Richard Heinberg, Matthew Simmons & Boone Pickens, people who can look forward thru cause & effect on this energy/transport high stakes poker game. R. James Woolsey has his CIA contacts and can help, contact Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Bob Herbert, do your due diligence for Senator Reid, and get the November IEA info to your boss. All hands, get the Robert L. Hirsch report, the 2007 update, and TALK to Dr. Hirsch, and be clear on the near-term oilfield depletion ramifications to US recovery efforts.
Someone in Rep. Rahm Emmanuel’s purview, take the initiative and get Peaking Oil unabridged on the table. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, maybe you are the one to do that…
November 10th, 2008 at 11:20 am
I need to make a correction. When I stated China had put in about 60 miles of rail since 2000, I was actually looking at numbers for Beijing, not the whole of China.