Transit Advocates, Highway Planners Share The Blame For Transportation Stagnation

United States | Transportation | Op-Ed

31 July, 2006 - 7:00am

Author: Patrick H. Hare

 

In the useless war of highways versus transit, both transit advocates and highway planners are guilty of ignoring the problems with their respective solutions, while the American public is left without any practical solutions for moving beyond auto dependence.

 

Why don't transit advocates or highway planners provide sound transportation options that the public can embrace, rather than simply calling for more transit or wider roads? Maybe because both sides think they don't have to.

 

"The public benefits of transit are obvious," the transit advocates say. "People should just get religion and ride transit." Environmental morality makes it unnecessary for transit advocates to consider that transit is incredibly slow compared to cars: 7 mph average for rail, 4 mph average for buses, door-to-door. And too often transit advocates ignore the ultimate marketing against transit: walking and waiting with parcels in the freezing rain or sweltering heat.

 

On the other side, highway planners think they don't have to re-consider their solution either. They have little incentive to support their conclusions, because the votes are almost always there for more highways. But highway planners ignore the fact that even if they wanted to, suburbanites can't vote for transit.

 

More at:

http://www.planetizen.com/node/20698

Uh, excuse me, but the "debate" has been rather one-sided for most of those 50 years. It takes two to tango and only in recent years have groups like AASHTO come out in support of anything other than more asphalt. Sorry, I don't buy this article.

"transit is incredibly slow compared to cars: 7 mph average for rail, 4 mph average for buses"

 

This is misleading. Modern light rail averages about 23 mph and buses about 12 mph. It's true that walking and waiting at stops lowers the average speed, but many people do useful errands to and from the bus and the train. If we're going to count "dead time" waiting for transit, then let's add-in the time spent buying and financing a car, fueling it, washing it, getting the dents pounded out of it, changing its oil, writing checks for it and all the other stuff you don't have to worry about it you're a transit user. Besides, walking a little every time isn't the worst thing in the world for most people.

 

Oh, and if 23 mph on light rail seems slow to you, keep a log for a week of the miles you drive and the hours you spend behind the wheel. Unless you're in sales covering a wide range of territory on freeways in the middle of the day, I can pretty much guarantee that you won't average 23 mph in the car. Try it, you'll see.

The inexorableness of this fact makes movement basic to civilization and thus subject to the same individual treatment as public health, water supply, sewage disposal, or fire protection...Though the great bulk of workaday travel is from home to home, to station, to work, to paly, and extends over comparatively short runs, the tendency to make longer runs is growing...This tenacity comes from no whim but from the very real economic and other advantages derived from the automobile...All of these advantages have accrued to the motorist through the freewheel characteristic of the automobile. Impressive demonstration of this tendency is the willingness of the motorist to spend money for speedier facilities.

 

Man, people knew how to talk back then.

 

What are we talking about here?

 

Oh, oh yes. Mass transit v. highways, and how the adherants of each inexorably sully the discourse, subjugating it to picayune superficialities and various cause celebres, resulting in variously odious and impious transgressions which culminate in a recalcitrant concantenation of dogmatic unpleasantries and regressive loquatiousness.

 

Translation: can't we all just get along?

 

In all seriousness, I don't think the highway camp, who has had the budget highground for decades, has been very receptive to competition. I've never heard of highway funding being drained out of the capital budget and diverted to the commuter rail constituency, but then I'm just an ignorant suburbanite at heart.

Anything that people are willing to pay for has economic value. Hence it is important that attention be directed toward time-saving and the process of conveying payments from the motorists for time-saving to those agencies which build the streets and highways.

 

Solution: devise more rapid mass transit. And if it takes diverting highway funds for improvements that will save a motorist five minutes on his commute, than I think it's money well spent. Faster trains have economic value, but only if they exist in the first place.