All my criticism of $250 B for road building got ignored -- so maybe you'll listen to an expert. [View All]

[Leopolds Ghost]

What am I kidding? The most liberal campaign staffers here in the DC area don't support Metrorail in their own neighborhoods. They don't even understand the distinctions.

They voted for a $1 B trolley and a $2 B 8-lane highway and yet continue to tell me (when I meet them on a daily basis) that we can't afford Metrorail because it would cost "twice as much" as $1 B.

"Light rail" is a side issue for suburban Democratic policymakers, and hence not worth spending more than the "already high expense" in order to fund subway construction. They drive everywhere. They include many DC-area DUers.

All Aboard: Public Transit Deserves a Big Chunk of Stimulus



By Roger K. Lewis
Saturday, January 31, 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/30/AR2009013001637.html?sub=AR

The share of President Obama's more than $800 billion economic stimulus package aimed at public transportation seems marginal, and that's a shortsighted approach to spending.

Most of the money in the transportation portion is to stimulate work on roads and bridges. Relatively little is aimed at enhancing existing transit or launching new transit projects.

Of course, billions must be spent quickly to create jobs associated with fixing deteriorating bridges and roads, thereby ensuring safety and mobility. We also must improve pedestrian-unfriendly streets to accommodate walking and biking.

But let's not widen highways or build new roads just because voters, and thus their Capitol Hill representatives, want easier commutes. Not every shovel-ready project should be funded, especially if it means not having money for worthy transit projects.

In fact, in light of energy constraints and environmental sustainability aspirations, sometimes we should decide not to spend to relieve roadway congestion or speed up traffic. Congestion is an incentive, a catalyst indispensable to constructively changing American behavior.

Congestion motivates people to think differently about how to travel and where to live. It induces carpooling, transit riding, walking and biking. And it can prompt people to live in transit-accessible, pedestrian-friendly locations.

If making America greener is indeed a high-priority goal of the new administration, then transportation spending should include generous amounts for municipal bus and tram systems, as well as for regional and interstate rail.

This seems especially timely as America's urban population, after decades of decrease, is on the rise. More than half of all American households are not traditional families with children, but rather retirees, empty nesters and singles, many of whom prefer urban environments served by public transit.

http://wamu.org/programs/kn/09/01/28.php

Leopolds Ghost notes:

Of course none of this will happen. The "shovel-ready" rapid transit proposals all got vetoed by supposedly liberal voters at the local level, afraid that the price tag was too high. They knew that neither Clinton nor Bush would spend more money on transit than what Reagan did, nor will they raise the restriction requiring every city to submit each line of its supposed transit "system" as a separate project to compete for funding on a corridor basis -- with the only measurable benefits being traffic relief in that corridor -- and no more than $1 billion in funding on any one corridor allowed.

To quote a local official in Maryland when the "Purple Line" got downgraded / approved for funding recently:

"It's about development around stations. It's not a question of getting people from point A to point B."

Because they don't want rapid transit, since that would cut into projected continually increasing automobile market share. So they justify it as a development tool only.