Going Nowhere Fast

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



Going Nowhere Fast
What happened to public transportation? It seems obvious that we should invest in high-speed rail and mass transit, but we don't.

Thomas Geoghegan | March 14, 2008



To get America back on the right road, I wish Henry Clay's Whig Party might come back and fix the roads again. Today, we need the "internal improvements" that the Whigs promoted every bit as much as we did in the 1830s and 1840s, when Whig-controlled governments built roadways and canals.

In The History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, Henry Adams makes a fuss about the roads and the rails. For Adams, America only truly became "united" as it became easier to get from place to place, from Boston to New York.

Now it's getting harder. Every week, it seems, it's taking another minute or so to get from point A to point B. Each year it's harder to get from Chicago to St. Louis or Detroit. There's no high-speed rail. It takes longer to get to the airport. In Chicago, it can now take me an hour and a half to get out to O'Hare. It's 35 minutes by bus on Addison Street, and then it's an hour on the El. The Blue Line is broken down for lack of funds and moves 10 mph in the "slow" zones. A fifth of the track is now made up of "slow" zones.

It's not just city to city but home to store. As I write at home this Saturday, it's semi-gridlock for two miles in all directions. For five minutes at a time, no one's moving. The cars pile up for blocks. Every Saturday, even in July, I might as well be snowbound. I can't get out.

I live roughly four miles from my office. If I'm lucky, it only takes me 50 minutes by mass transit to get to work.

The point is we're trapped. We can't move.

America is disuniting. Compare the U.S. to the European Union. Over there, thanks to Eurostar (the high-speed rail system), easy transit to the airports, and Ryanair, Europeans have more geographic mobility than we do. Eurostar is more important to European unity than adopting a new EU constitution. Europeans are voting in a new constitution with their feet. It's getting easier to get from Dublin to Madrid, where Irish kids commute to do start ups. Over there, from Paris up to Brussels, I puff along on air. Over here, on our dilapidated rails, I have to jolt along, in effect, by stage coach. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=going_nowhere_fast

[nxylas]

1. Isn't the American Prospect a conservative mag?

This seems to be an issue that transcends the left-right divide. I think there's a definite need for a campaigning organization like Britain's Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000) in this country.

http://www.bettertransport.org.uk/home

APTA would be the nearest equivalent, but they are nowhere near as crusading in their outlook.

[marmar]

2. Nope. It's a good lefty mag.....The American Spectator is the rightie rag.

n/t

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Take a look at what Japan is doing

This map is in Japanese, but basically, the lines currently in operation are black, the ones under construction are red or blue (I'm not sure of the difference between them), the ones that are pink have been approved, and the ones that are green are under consideration.

They expect to finish all but the green ones by 2015. And that map doesn't even cover their network of conventional rail lines that take you almost everywhere in the country or their superb public transit systems.

http://comet.endless.ne.jp/users/kusama/sinkansen01.htm

[Vogon_Glory]

4. Fixing Our Transportation Infrastructure Will Require

I am increasingly convinced that the only way the US is going to move ahead with either fixing our current infrastructure or upgrading our ground trasnportation grid is going to require the electorate to vote out almost every elected Republican they can get at. I don't say this for partisan reasons; I say it because today's "conservative" dominated GOP seems to be implacibly opposed to maintaining government-owned infrastructure, and is equally hostile to government-subsidized infrastructure unless there's a way for private corporations to make huge profits while Phillips-heading American citizen-taxpayers for the bill.

[nxylas]

5. Not to mention a significant change in public attitudes

People need to realize thet the government is us, not some evil entity designed to cripple individual liberty.