Trains, Trains, Trains!

We all have Republican Florida governor Rick Scott to thank for the Obama Administration’s announcement today that it was repurposing a whopping $10 billion that was going to be spent in Florida on a $10 billion high speed rail initiative.

Scott told the Obama administration “Thanks but no thanks” to this free money because he didn’t want Florida’s taxpayers to be “on the hook for future operation costs.”

Oh, and this might bring more jobs to Florida. More jobs, more taxpayers. More joy.

Certainly can’t let Obama bring joy to Floridians. That’s Rick Scott’s job.

So the Obama administration is spreading the wealth around a bit - and the joy. A new list of projects to be funded for future high-speed rail starts with $800 million toward a Boston-Washington corridor project, then a Chicago-Detroit project and a Chicago-St. Louis project to the tune of $400 million, and $300 million for a Los Angeles-San Francisco project.

These were smart choices as they all link metropolitan areas with currently operating light rail systems (Detroit is just in the process of getting one going).

They are also smart choices because they are all in Democratic or leaning Democratic regions. Teabaggers don’t want federal dollars? Fine. They spend just as well in blue states.

High speed rail is long overdue in America. Our rail system has literally not been upgraded in decades. And the cost saving in terms of fuel burned per passenger makes this a much more efficient transportation system than regional airline routes.

Oh, and speaking of regional airlines. If you have any stock in them, time to move it to gold.

“Shovel-Ready” is Not “Shovel-Right”

Part and parcel, and some would say “central to” the president’s economic stimulus plan is the funding of “shovel ready” public works projects. Projects involving the rebuilding of our country’s crumbling infrastructure. Projects that bring jobs to people and bacon to the breakfast table.

But now, we are starting to see how and where the federal stimulus funds are being spent. We are starting to see public works projects being queued for commencement. And in seeing these projects unfold one after the other, one has to ask “is shovel-ready, shovel-right?”

In part, one must ask this question because of near term vs. long term goals of the Obama Administration. In the near term, we need to repair or replace the things that have served us in the past. No one needs to be reminded of the lives and property lost when the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota failed and took rush hour commuters to their deaths a year and a half ago. That bridge became a poster child for the aging of America’s infrastructure even though it was later revealed that the failure ultimately stemmed from an undetected design flaw in the bridge.

But in the long term, we need to address energy and environmental issues that have only now begun to plague our society. Our infrastructure has been built without taking into account the energy that will be consumed as those projects start serving society. Without taking into account whether that project will increase or decrease greenhouse gas output. President Obama said it best earlier during his town hall meeting in Florida:

“‘The days where we’re just building sprawl forever, those days are over,’ he said, urging officials to employ ‘innovative thinking’ when deciding how to spend their transportation money”

This is the vision as expounded by White House spokesman Nick Shapiro in speaking to the New York Times:

“A White House spokesman, Nick Shapiro, said that the stimulus bill would promote ‘long-term sustainable development’ by spending billions of dollars on renewable energy, mass transit, rail service and urban development, and he added that the choice of most transportation projects was left to states.”

And therein lies the rub. While there is nothing wrong with the vision, a view from the White House “bubble” (as our president calls it), there is something wrong with letting the states decide which project will benefit from this federal stimulus.

State have shovel-ready projects. Projects that have been formulated, plans that have surveys and schedules. Plans for projects that are ready to go, but just don’t have any funds to launch them.

The trouble is, the states have plans that are all ready to go, but these plans are from a vision that looks backward to a time when energy was something you just bought, and greenhouse gases were things that made your tomatoes grow.

Projects that are ready to go are yesterday’s projects, for yesterday’s needs.

Witness the plans to use these stimulus funds in New Hampshire where they will widen I-93, a corridor that delivers New Hampshire residents to Boston, where they work.

Witness the plans to use these stimulus funds in North Carolina to extend I-295 to Fayetteville, a move to benefit its big cash cow, Fort Bragg, but will be built at the expense of projects in already established cities.

Or far more closer to home, witness what Texas Department of Transportation wants to do with $181 million of the funds sent to them from the stimulus plan: extend an established roadway, The Grand Parkway, through an undeveloped area west of Houston, and build it as a toll road (that’s right, tax dollars to build a toll road) so that developers can build on land even further away from the Houston metropolitan area.

A plan that would warm the hearts of the Saud family.

The point is, “shovel-ready” is not “shovel-right.” The long-term vision is correct, but the reality is that shovel-ready projects are projects developed in the past. Projects envisioned by the myopic.

And for those who are ready to consider what kinds of infrastructure transportation projects in and around cities fit the bill here, I have just two words:

Light rail.

Mass Transit: A Concept That Has Finally Come of Age

I remember the first Earth Day back in 1970. Back in 1970 gasoline was selling for around 33 cents a gallon but you could get it for 28 cents at the cheap discount stations. Back in 1970 people were worried about air pollution, and gasoline engine emissions were the principal contributors.

No one was concerned with global warming. No one was concerned with depletion of an abundant and cheap natural resource.

No one.

Still, arguments were made even way back then about the need for mass transit systems in the future. Expensive mass transit systems. Very few metropolitan areas bought into building them, fewer actually went and did it. Some cities, like Houston came in late and bail-wired a light rail system that is limited in extent, and used by very few commuters. San Francisco already had a surface electric car system that was augmented by an underground system they labeled BART. Los Angeles came on later with its largely surface and freeway-following Metro system, an extensive system that links one side of the greater Los Angeles area with another. Even Singapore, that tiny island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula has an extensive and well-used underground system called the MRT.

[The MRT, by the way, is why it is illegal to buy or possess chewing gum in Singapore. Patrons of the MRT would stick their used gum wads in the railcar doors fouling the sensors that sensed whether the doors were closed]

What is my point? My point is with the exception of a few of the newly established underground systems, mass transit has been poorly used, and, if you will, used only by the poor. The LA Metro system is famous locally for being an exclusive haunt of the poor, the young and carless, and people who hear voices and talk to themselves. Commuters have, by and large, stuck to their automobiles, the freeway system, and dependence on gasoline.

Times seem to be changing, however. Gasoline prices have started to become an actual factor in the everyday lives, and budgets, of middle class Americans. A factor that now causes them to rethink their lifestyles and maybe adopt alternative transportation. I spotted this Chon article today that makes a good read.

Middle class Americans are discovering the viability, usefulness, and economy of mass transit. It took $4 gasoline to do it, but I guess with every dark cloud there is a silver lining. If more Americans keep their cars parked in their driveways, or at commuter parking lots, everyone benefits.

Now that this trend is reality, now maybe it’s time for metropolitan areas to adopt mass transit plans, or expand the ones they already have.

The writing is on the wall. It has taken 38 years from the first Earth Day, when mass transit was lauded as a clean alternative to air polluting auto transit systems, to finally being seen as viable and useful by people who already own and operate cars. How long is it going to take for cities, counties, and metropolitan areas to read this writing and put some plans in place that link the suburbs to each other and to the city centers?