Mass Transit?

I thought Adam's post on the socioeconomic impact of toll motorways was an interesting bit. It's good to see that he'll at least take the time to look at and discuss another point of view. BTW, I hope that cheque's in the mail, Adam, brown-nosing of this quality don't come cheap!

I read Julie McCormick's editorial, and was particularly struck by this bit:

[The North Carolina Legislature] will decide in this year's short session whether to adopt the Turnpike Authority's request for $24 million a year "gap funding" that these toll roads won't cover. That is $24 million a year for 40 years that could be better spent on public transit improvements, such as light rail, recommended by the Special Transportation Advisory Committee. Legislators should do the right thing and put public transit ahead of toll roads.

Now I'm not as nice as Adam in any event. I think this is a particularly clueless statement on Ms. McCormick's part; I'm with her on the funding bit. A tollway should be self-supporting and not subsidised by tax dollars. If the Turnpike authority builds a product that the people want, then funding shouldn't be a problem. But simply put, Ms. McCormick suggests shifting the cash from one dodgy enterprise to another. Mass Transit is hugely capital intensive, and the profit return is low if there is any at all. Most public transport systems in this country are heavily subsidised. If you live in Bangor, ME, you're paying for Denver's tramway system, which you will in all likelihood never use. Like a tollway, Mass Transit should be able to support itself, If it's not, well, then, they're doing it wrong.

Now folks like this tend to suffer from an idealistic vision. They pine for the days when the trams ruled the roads, and there were no cars cloggin up the jenrt and causing air pollution and global warmin'; if they could only rebuild the tramways of yore, we'd all be happy. The problem with this line of thought is we, the 'Oi Polloi are not given a choice, here. These folks get all excited about trams, sink some srs cash into a tramway, and tell us what a wonderful thing it is, and how we should all use it, as it benefits us. The tram is novel for a bit, but then we find it goes to point 'x' when we need to go to point 'y'. If we want to go to the shops and Consume Mass Quantities of China's finest goods, it's rather difficult to jam a lot of goods onto a tram.

Nobody recalls that the trams of yore were dismantled for good reason-they were haemorrhaging cash. Now in the late 1940's there was some CalBoggery with National City Lines(a holding company owned by GM) buying out of street railways and replacing the trams with busses; but the simple fact was, with the pattern of urban growth at the time, the decentralisation of the city and the rise of the automobile, the tram was not adaptable. Now there is some merit to the concept these folks embrace: We were sold a bill of goods with the auto and it's 'promise of freedom': Namely, a huge expensive infrastructure that is becoming increasingly difficult to find the funds to just maintain, never mind improve or build new. No, we're really not more free at all, we now have this huge yoke around our necks, and as she stands just now, we don't know how the hell to deal with it.

Now that's not a nice scenario to visualise, but as far as I see it, it's the reality of it. Starting on the solution is something that will entail pain and sacrifice, and people just aren't up to that. So some folks maintain the happy illusion that if we dump a buttload of cash into something that worked back in the day, then everything will be all fixed. No. One thing the automobile gave us was a way to go where we wanted, when we wanted, without having to endure an all day ride with a buncha strangers. Fed right into our selfishness. Dislodging that concept is going to take some doing, and people are going to have to come up with some smart new ideas to effect that.

What will likely do that is a good healthy dose of adversity. The thing is, though, $4/gal gas isn't that adversity, nor are tollways, really, if people think they can deal with these things, they'll suck it up and roll on. When the situation starts to get very dire, that's when people will start actually coming up with ideas to deal with the problem. Consider the Montgomery Bus Boycott. The blacks in Montgomery were tired of having to sit in the back of the bus, and so on. It was a great deal more complicated than that, but the upshot was that it was a voluntary collaborative effort to deal with a problem and to change the status quo. It was adaptive to conditions. It served the interests of those involved, and it was ultimately successful. It did not come from government, but from those affected by the Montgomery City Bus lines discriminatory practises. There's a lesson in that, pretty much forgotten these days.

There will be limited response to huge transit projects, and they may help ameliorate some traffic problems, but they are someone else's idea of how a problem should be addressed, and in the main, that just fails. If things start getting dire, petrol is viciously expensive, or people are priced off the interstate by tolls, some people are gonna start getting together and working out ways to address the situation in a way that best suits them, without asking the government for pointers on how to do this. That's how the problem will be solved, and the only way it can be solved-from below.

You may think this is all optimistic claptrap on my part. You're wrong. I've already participated in such an exercise. Not in a transport context, but my favourite club in New Jersey was shut at New Years. Fire code violations. It's open again. We raised the cash to bring it up to code. The Town of Montclair enacted strict new penalties for serving minors alcohol. The club went alcohol free. It's still in business, because we'd all rather have a music venue. We can always drink elsewhere. The scene generates it's own economy, and supports bands far and wide. There are no corporations, arts grants, or public funding of any sort. We do what we need to to keep things going. There's a lesson in that, and it bears thinking about beyond just that context.