Transportation bills of the last decade have enjoyed a terrific amount of bipartisan support, thanks perhaps to a flood of earmarks and a lack of any strong federal mandates therein. But this year (or next year? or 2011?) we’re getting down to brass tacks. We’re turning the ship of state. We’re charting a new course, our leaders tell us. Which means it’s time to find out what kind of bipartisan support there may be for large-scale reforms, including perhaps a stronger focus on rail and transit, or an increase in the gas tax.
Many Democrats have been championing such reforms for years, but there have been a few prominent conservative voices in favor of more and better transit and intercity passenger rail as well. One of them is William Lind, director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation and the co-author, with the late Paul Weyrich, of the recent book Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.
Lind was aboard the California Zephyr earlier this month. He was wise in the ways of train passengership, a fan of pipe smoke and brandy, and scornful of computers. He also had some very clear and strong ideas about America’s transportation infrastructure, and what it needs.
MATT DELLINGER: Your book is very interesting. It’s a conservative argument for public transportation, but it’s also a guidebook for classic supporters of public transportation, on how to talk to conservatives.
WILLIAM LIND: That is essentially at the heart of all of our transit work.
So a Men Are From Mars; Women Are From Venus model. So what does a transit-loving liberal need to know when approaching an auto-loving conservative? What should they be prepared for, and what are the various points of leverage?
The most important thing that a liberal needs to know in talking to conservatives about public transportation is not to use liberal arguments. You can’t argue for transit on the basis that the poor need it. Conservatives aren’t particularly interested in that. On the other hand, when you start talking about things like promoting and shaping economic development and redevelopment, that’s a big interest to conservatives. When you talk about offering transit that is of a quality that conservatives would actually want to use–which usually means rail transportation–they’re interested, because conservatives are just as tired as everybody else of sitting stuck in traffic.
And another argument you cover in the book is the idea that rail transportation is vital to national security?
National Security is always a big interest to conservatives and any time you can talk in those terms, you’re going to have their attention. Virtually every American knows that our greatest single national security vulnerability at the moment, the one that has enmeshed us in the middle east, is our dependence on foreign oil, most of it coming from unstable parts of the world. And this can drag us into unwanted wars, as it has it can result not only in high gas prices, like we had last summer, but in complete cutoffs like we had in ‘73 and ‘79, where events halfway around the world suddenly leave our gas stations without any gas to sell. And at present, if that happens, most Americans have no backup. Approximately half of Americans have no public transportation.
Only 25 percent have public transportation they even rate as satisfactory. We’re immediately in very serious trouble.
What should we do?
One of the chapters in the new book calls for a National Defense Public Transportation Act modeled on Eisenhower’s national defense interstate highway act that would recreate what we had up until the 1950s, which was the ability to go from anywhere in America to anywhere else in America without driving and without flying, through a network of buses and trains. An intelligent national transportation strategy would do more for enhancing America’s national security than more trillions for the pentagon could ever do.
But can’t one ignore that argument by saying that within five years we’ll all be driving electric cars?
Well, any expert on the automobile scene in America, first of all, knows that’s not true. Even if completely feasible electric cars are available in five years, it takes far longer than that to replace even half of the entire automobile fleet. So most Americans are going to be driving gas-fueled cars for a long time to come. And there’s no guarantee to say that those electric cars will have the performance to replace gas cars, and there’s no guarantee that they’ll be sold at affordable prices.
Conservatives don’t like betting on some Candyland promise of being saved by some new technology. The nice thing about electric railways is that all the technology was in place a century ago. We can electrify mainline railroads, build new streetcar and interurban lines, all with technology that was quite adequate to the task in 1909.
Is there a priority between intercity passenger rail and local streetcars?
The two are inherently complimentary. The reason you used to be able to get around so well in this country without a car is you took the train between cities, but then when you got to the strange city, you had the streetcar system to get around on. A major problem now is if you take the train to another city, how do you get around locally? Buses are very difficult for outsiders to understand where they go and when. With streetcars, you see the tracks. So people who have never ridden a system before feel a great deal more comfortable on streetcars than they do on a bus.
You’ve pointed out other virtues that rail holds over bus.
Yes, rail transit of all types provides a much more pleasant ride experience than does a bus. In general, no one will take a bus who doesn’t have to. Buses largely provide transportation for the poor—for the transit-dependent. When under the Bush Administration, the Department of Transportation said “We’ll give you buses instead of rail,” they’re making a fundamental and too often deliberate mistake. Because the two are not fungible.
But buses over rail saves money, isn’t that the argument?
Sure, they’re trying to save money. But they’re also trying to get people to continue to drive. If you give people buses, they buy cars and drive them. That’s why General Motors and other corporations starting in the 20s began to buy up streetcar systems and convert them to buses. It was not to sell buses. It was to sell cars. They knew if you give people buses, they will say “I’ve got to get a car. I’m not going to ride this thing.”
And I know this is not all academic for you. You love riding trains, and grew up riding trains in Cleveland?
I ride trains wherever I can, both in this country and in Europe. I’m old enough, being now 62, that I remember the streetcars in Cleveland. As a small boy I used to take them from Lakewood downtown with my mother and my grandmother and I always loved riding them. In contrast, within half an hour of getting on a bus, I invariably threw up. Never on a train.
I was riding intercity trains from the time I was carried aboard them in my bassinet at that age of three months, because I had family up in western Pennsylvania and western Maryland along the B&O, which had wonderful passenger trains. By the time I was eight, I was making those trips by myself. This was America in the fifties. An eight-year-old could travel alone by train perfectly safely. And I loved the trips.
There is something nerve-racking and hollow about making long trips in a car.
Driving those distances, particularly if you’re the driver, is no fun at all. You’ve got to watch the road in front of you and too often, in congested traffic, keep your eyes fixed on the bumper of the car in front of you. With a train you don’t have any of that. You sit back, you relax, somebody else takes care of getting the train where it needs to go. And trains are social. You meet people in the dining car.
With the car, you ‘re just stuck sitting in your little seat on an interstate with very little to see. You’ve got to worry about the car breaking down, you worry about the weather, you worry about accidents. Driving is quite simply no fun, unless you’re shunpiking—
Sorry. Shunpiking?
Shunpiking is shunning the Interstates. Where you’re on the old roads and you stop in the little towns and you see the farms and so forth. You’re driving to enjoy the countryside. And in pretty country that can be fun, but it’s not fast. It is much slower than the train.
You and Paul Weyrich made an argument in some of your papers that once people experience rail, their thoughts about it change. But isn’t there a real divide, culturally? Red vs. blue, Cowboy vs. Urban Elite, Pickup Truck vs. Light Rail?
That division is somewhat rural/urban, which of course a very old division. But what lies behind most of it is simply that most of the people who oppose rail transportation have never ridden a train. We have to remember that most streetcars have been gone from America cities for more than half a century. Most people have never been on a train. And if they have, it’s been Amtrak, which is not shall we say always the most pleasant of experiences. So they don’t know what you’re talking about when you talk about riding light rail.
So the different lifestyles are self-perpetuating. If you’ve never ridden a train, why would you think you might ever want to?
Right. There is nothing inherently liberal about trains or conservative about automobiles. It’s simply the way it’s broken out in this country. Because most conservatives tend to be rural or suburban, they have had less reason to ride a train of any sort than liberals, who tend to be more urban and concentrated on the two coasts, where you have a lot more rail service.
If you look at my hometown of Cleveland, both of our daily Amtrak trains come through in the middle of the night. And worse, they moved them out of the very convenient downtown station to an Amshack on the waterfront. There’s no public transportation at those hours. So how many people are going to use that service, as opposed to when they came into Cleveland Union Terminal and we had dozens of trains a day?
In the book you bring up the common anti-rail argument that says trains only serve city centers and won’t help now that most homes and jobs are now in the suburbs. If we revive some of the older rail infrastructure, will we have to alter our development patterns to match?
I think the development patterns are already changing. I think we’ve essentially hit the peak of suburbanization. Because so many people are finding that they’re so far out that they have to spend an enormous amount of time in the car. They’re not enjoying it. And as fuel prices rise, which long term they inevitably will, you’re going to see a re-concentration.
Another idea that’s pervasive is that public transportation is subsidized but the gas tax fully pays for highways.
That’s a powerful argument the libertarians make to conservatives, and it’s bunk. The current dominance of roads is due to massive subsidization by government which through most of the twentieth century competed with privately owned, privately operated railways including streetcar systems that had to pay taxes. Every conservative understands very quickly what happens when you tax one mode and subsidize the other. The taxed mode disappears and the subsidized mode becomes dominant. Nothing about our current imbalance in transportation is a free market outcome. Not in the slightest.
The notion that the gas tax covers all highway expenses is a notion that will send any state Governor into fits of laughter. The highways require enormous support, local state and federal, that goes well beyond what gas taxes bring in. So it’s not a question of a subsidized mode versus an unsubsidized mode.
So would the conservative argument for transportation allow user fees from driving to be spent on public transportation, to try to undo the imbalance?
Well what my co-author Paul Weyrich recommended when he was a member of the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure Policy and Revenue Study Commission was an increase in the gas tax. We have some problems with the Vehicle Miles Traveled business where they put some kind of device in your car. We don’t think the government should be tracking where people go. But clearly a substantial increase in the gas tax is warranted.
What should be done and what should have been done in the seventies is that the gas tax should be so design that the price of gas goes up a predictable amount every year.
How do you feel about High Speed Rail?
I am skeptical about any immediate future for high speed rail in this country. If you look at the European countries and Japan that have high speed rail, it’s icing on a cake. And the cake is the preexisting network of passenger rail services. What high speed rail here amounts to is icing without a cake. You would put enormous amounts of money into a few lines that would serve geographically only a small portion of the country. Our priority is a lot more trains running at speeds that are competitive with the automobile, which is somewhere between 79-90 miles an hour, which are two gradations on the FRA speed limit scale.
To talk about running at a couple hundred miles an hour, you’re talking about an enormous amount of money to build a dedicated line, and you leave the rest of the country with this Amtrak network that is so skeletal that, as in Cleveland, it’s essentially unusable.
So it’s putting the cart before the horse, so to speak.
A basic conservative motto is: what worked then can work now. We don’t need a lot of fancy, high-tech convoluted approaches to today’s transportation problem. The revolution in personal mobility did not begin with the automobile. It began several decades earlier with the advent of the safety bicycle and the electric railway. And those two together still offer America mobility that is independent of foreign oil, using nothing new. As I said to Congressman Blumenauer at one point, all we want to do is get back what we had.
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Matt Dellinger writes about transportation and urban planning. He has contributed articles to The New Yorker, the Atlantic, the New York Times, Oxford American and Smithsonian and is a regular guest on WNYC’s The Takeaway. He is currently at work on a book about Interstate 69. It will be published by Scribner in summer 2010.
June 29th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
wow i couldnt agree more. these are all excellent solid points that he makes about transit. i am so sick of hearing that the sole role for transit is for the poor who cant afford cars or for the environment. and lind goes well beyond this tired line.
there is a new book very much like these points called ‘my kind of transit’ that argues in favor of quality transit that people want to ride, looks at the touristy transit, and why are they so popular? why do people go out of their way to ride these lines? this book essentially takes jan gehl’s argument regarding public space and argues it for public transit. gehl says people use public space in 3 ways… out of necessity, those for optimal conditions and those for social conditions. essentially if a park is good, it attracts the people who choose to be there not just the people who have no choice but to use it (ie the homeless). once you have lots of people using it then people go to the park for social interaction to be with other people. this is in many ways how transit works. if you provide a quality transit line that is attractive people will use it and then it attracts even more people.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Wow! A conservative train buff. He’s just like everyone else. He wants the government to pay for his entertainment. There is nothing conservative about that.
June 29th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
“He wants the government to pay for his entertainment.”
A highly questionable summary, Tom.
June 29th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I’m a strong conservative, and I love trains. There is nothing wrong with that. Hell, Randall O’ Toole loves trains. There is nothing partisan about trains, high speed or not.
However, liberals have chosen to make trains partisan…not because trains are inherently partisan, but by dictating to conservatives how trains are to be funded, operated, and sold to the American taxpayer.
I can give you a few contributions of my own with regards to this topic, and I will even separate the arguments where I may differ from most conservatives:
1) Stop trying to sell anything that costs tons of money based on rhetoric backed claims with shoddy scientific support. The California High Speed Rail proposal is the perfect example…no scientific rigor in their research, but lots of claims such as: Creates new jobs, pays for itself in xxx years, saves energy, blather blother blob… Conservatives can see through that mess, and they are perfectly capable of creating their own rhetoric to match.
When proposals can actually convey truth or even attempt at getting close to it, then the rhetoric of the train haters is much less effective. Here’s an idea: When doing research to sell the proposal, do the research so well that any third party due diligence report has to conclude that they did a pretty damn good job. The CHSR proposal is an absolute joke.
2) Conservatives generally feel like they pay for government while liberals leech from government. Whether or not this is true has absolutely no bearing on how to sell them an idea. Infrastructure projects should pay for themselves by the people who use them. Nobody likes to pay for a service they don’t receive nor use, no matter how real the positive externalities may be.
I am a young conservative, I’m only 26. One of my biggest fears in life is paying for social security all my life, only to have a bankrupt system that will never pay me back. Most conservatives already feel this way about Amtrak…a money hole which will never give anybody the return it has promised. If they never use it, their feelings are even worse.
So here is an idea: Why not work hard to create a profitable train system, and then slowly transform it into your dream system? Sure, it may be backwards from your priorities, but its a lot easier to sell an investment than a perpetual debt.
3) This one is a burned bridge that will take a long time to rebuild: Stop the damn cost overruns on public infrastructure projects! We can’t help but cringe every time we are told a project will cost $x million, and it turns out to cost $8x million.
I understand that overruns are common, but they are almost never as bad in the private sector as they are in government. The reason why is linked to #1 above. To sell a project, they have to claim certain costs and benefits, even if that claim is not the truth. Then, after approval has happened, they can let the truth out, because now nobody wants to deal with a half completed and useless infrastructure project.
4) Tax reform for existing railroads. Our railroads are incredibly efficient at what they do. And for the capacity that they currently have, they are a key asset to our nation for the reduction of CO2. Remember, 38% of our nations freight moves on efficient rails, where only 8% moves by rail in Europe.
Would they love to find a way to make more money? Absolutely!!! You bet your asses that the major railroads in our country have been studying the possibility of returning to passenger service. But here is where we run into a problem:
Railroads are one of the most heavily taxed industries in America. Not corporate taxes…property taxes. They are unfairly targeted by municipalities and counties for property taxes because they are profitable and very unlikely to move.
As soon as you include the possibility of high speed rail operations, the picture becomes much starker. Railroads currently have tracks that are assessed at values of $1-4 million per mile on average. If you convert or add rail for high speed operations, that assessment will rise to anywhere from $20m-$100m per mile. There is no way that a railroad can afford that kind of taxation.
Since Congress has authority to regulate interstate commerce (And how many railroads don’t operate interstate these days?), they have the authority to exempt railroads from property taxation.
Can you imagine how amazing it would be to have efficient, cost effective, and fast high speed rail at absolutely no cost to the taxpayer? That is a conservative dream!
Now where I differ from most conservatives:
Raise the damn gas tax. This idea has bipartisan hatred…cause nobody likes to pay higher taxes (although they may like other people paying taxes for them).
The gas tax needs to cover the costs of the infrastructure that it uses. It doesn’t. There are two major benefits to raising the gas tax, which have a huge appeal to conservatives, although most are too blind to see it currently. One is that we will have better roads. Two, we will have trains and other public transportation options that are much more likely to be profitable.
June 29th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
[...] How To Convince A Conservative To Support Public Transportation (William Lind Explains) » INFRASTRU…. [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 8:23 am
I am a conservative living in Western PA. Last night, I attended a public hearing on a proposed commuter line from Pittsburgh to the east up to the edge of the mountains along the Norfolk Southern tracks. Three types of funding were proposed. The first was begging money from the Fed. (Not recommended as it would take 10 years and cost millions.) The second was getting it from the state. The final was creating a coalition of cities and counties along the lines to raise the money ourselves. ((Checks notes) $85 million.)
The final option is the most palatable to conservatives (Quasilibertarians, especially.). We do not want to force others to pay for the rail that we will use and we do not want to some day be forced to return the favor. Furthermore, we do not want the strings that will inevitably be attached to it. Groups of local people coming together to solve their own problems and better their own lot sells much better than any sort of national plan.
Thanks for the word “Shunpiking”. Driving from Akron to Greensburg on secondary roads may add an hour and a half to the trip, but it is more than worth it!
June 30th, 2009 at 8:43 am
[...] How to convince conservatives to support public transportation (Infrastructurist) [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 11:01 am
The marketplace can provide “Public Transit” It will be done far cheaper and costs will decrease over time. Why do you folks want to rely on government to provide services? Government has no wealth it simply extracts money by force from individuals. If you want “Public Transit” why don’t you put your money where your mouth is, pool your money with a group of investors and start your own transit company, Instead of supporting inefficient government bureaucracies?
June 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am
In the face of peak oil the 72 day reserve in National Strategic Petroleum Reserve is an anachronism. Lever this asset before it loses power. Provide immediate stimulus by manipulating oil prices lower. Payback is a beech.
Cash out for $30 Billion Dollars.
When Simon Bolivar burned the ships the crew knew there was no turning back. We have the option to start the fire or watch as our way of life goes up in smoke. World markets realizing the enormity of the US decision will sell oil like it has no tomorrow. Therefore we can have our cake and eat it to.
Grant upgrades to maximize a hub (rail) and spoke (trucks). With bottlenecks eliminated increased capacities can flow faster than trucks between hubs. The Japanese and Europeans electrification of rail eliminates the threat of oil to the transportation network. HSR can piggyback on the electric infrastructure, thus killing two birds with one strategic oil reserve
June 30th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
exactly…. why does transit have to be publicly funded? Remember–all of our interurban train systems and passenger rail, even the NYC subway were all built with private money costing taxpayers nothing. It was only when the government imposed price controls, ridiculous labor requirements (like train operators would only travel 100 miles at a time), and municipalities taxed the hell out of them did train systems stop being profitable.
As a conservative, I have been a proponent of train travel for years. I understand that if there was no public funding at all for any type of transit, we would have a far more efficient, faster, and comprehensive train system. Free markets are a recipe for lower cost and better service. Government involvement is a recipe for the opposite.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Steve: Actually, the free-market train system, while it obviously initiated a revolution in mobility, was crazily inefficient. Lines competed with each other and overlapped all over the place, while other corridors went unserved. Railroads constantly tried to undercut the competition by slashing prices too far, OR, they colluded and made prices so high that they screwed over the public and other businesses. They were notoriously corrupt, frequently poorly run, and went bankrupt all the time. The system only became more rational when Carnegie bought everyone out - and then he had sole control over price. Personally, if we’re going to have a monopoly, I’d rather it be run by the government and answerable to the public.
I thought this interview brought up a lot of very good points - chief among them framing transit as an economic and national security issue. I can understand the conservative view in those areas. But one problem that I constantly have with conservatives/libertarians is the endless faith in the free market. The free market is great, but it’s not great at everything.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Also: “remember–all of our interurban train systems and passenger rail, even the NYC subway were all built with private money costing taxpayers nothing.”
Actually, much of the NYC subway, including the system’s longest line, was built by the city-owned IND. Of the two private companies that remained at consolidation, one, the IRT, was losing loads of money, and the other, the BMT, was a successor to bunch of other companies that went bankrupt. Furthermore, nearly all private subway operators received some kind of subsidy or legal status from the city. The IRT, which constructed the first line, was private entity founded in accordance with a state law that mandated the construction of the line. Private enterprise did not just dream up the New York City Subway without lots of help from government.
There may be a role for private enterprise in transit development. But “getting the government out” is not a solution, and would probably make things worse.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
@Yoyo,
I couldn’t agree with you more. Before the 1950’s public trans was mostly private and very profitable. That is until government started subsidizing the automobile industry. Not only did the government give money to GM, Ford, etc. but they also built up their highway and roadway system for them.
To truly give rail a change in the public sector, government would stop building roads and highways for the auto industry and sell off what we have already built up. Then Government would tax the buyers of the roads high property taxes like they do the rail. THEN the Government should stop enforcing highway and traffic laws and make the buyer of the roads pay for their own security.
When that happens, I will be one of the first to start looking for investors for rail, because it would be very competitive. Today it’s not competitive because one is taxed by the government, the other is subsidized by the government.
June 30th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Vin, getting government out wouldn’t make things worse, but I agree with you in so far as government must be involved. The government currently holds all the levers to prevent or allow private investors to run rail service-impossible environmental regulations, burdensome tax regimes, labyrinthine civil regulations and codes, etc.
What was possible for private enterprise to build and operate a century ago would be impossible today for these reasons and more. If, however, government were willing to partner with private industry to smooth-out these many barriers and assist with basic infrastructure costs we could have a truly viable passenger rail system in the making.
Substantial public-private partnership is, in fact, a necessity, not an option. And I’m not talking about paying a private contractor to operate the system, I’m talkin about a substantial role where private investors stand to gain hugely if rail is run well.
Naturally, this argument rests on one clear assumption, government by itself could never pay for all the rail projects that should likely be built. No matter how high income taxes are hiked, no matter how high corporate taxes are hiked, no matter how high property taxes are hiked– our governments could never buy a suitable system from money taken from taxpayers.
If you believe government could pay for even some of the rail projects mentioned here in the Infrastructurist, you’re either foolish or a Marxist ideologue.
Libertarians be warned, there is not a 100% private solution for a successful American rail service future. Our governments are too far gone at this moment in time.
One example from highway construction is the Virginia HOT lanes project. Regardless if you believe the Beltway in Virginia needed more lanes or not, one thing is true, the thirty-year old overpasses, underpasses and exits needed to be replaced. In this case, no combination of government monies would have been able to pay for such an expensive undertaking. By partnering with private investors, the state of Virginia was able strike deal where the state got new overpasses, underpasses, exits and HOV lanes while the private investors got a financial stake in potential toll revenue from those same HOV lanes. That’s a win-win.
America’s future rail system could benefit from a public-private partnership that seeks to achieve a win-win. In fact, it’s a necessity.
June 30th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
[...] Along the lines of conservative stances on transportation, Infrastructurist has a nice interview up making the conservative case for public transportation. [...]
June 30th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
[...] shared How To Convince A Conservative To Support Public Transportation (William Lind Explains) — 11:18am via Google [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 11:32 am
In the 19th Century, the railroads did not exactly pay their way, except in early projects rail corridors that are still served by trains. Intercity rail companies were given land in exchange for development that significantly helped offset capital costs. Similarly, most streetcar lines were owned or financed by companies that had real estate investments that offset operating costs as lots were sold to families. When they stopped expanding, they stopped being profitable. The clear case here is the Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles.
July 1st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
to the charge that cost overruns are the gov’t’s fault: 90%+ of public infrastructure projects are done by the private sector contracting and construction industry, and generally are their fault.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:32 pm
The DC Metro rail system has desperately needed a line from Dulles International Airport to the city center. It’s been in the works for decades. They already have the R.O.W. Every time it comes to funding the thing, they ask local communities and businesses to pay for it, and it gets voted down. While it’s nice to think that local businesses and communities will all gladly pony up in the name of progress, in practice, it seems very hard to organize funds that way.
July 1st, 2009 at 5:40 pm
One of the challenges with privatizing public transit is that transit doesn’t collect all of the economic returns it creates. Remember that a lot of the streetcars were financed as real estate enterprises, so the owner of the real estate reaped the benefits of the transit investment and operation. In a modern city, the transit still creates the economic benefit, but the agency itself just doesn’t collect the revenue. Remember that the “business model” needs to reflect all of the benefits, but all the benefits won’t necessarily be reflected in a transit agency’s bottom line.
Simple analogy: an elevator in an apartment building recovers no funds — it operates at a loss. But the apartment building would have no value without the elevator. The market does provide elevators; I’m not sure it would provide public transit without really large landowners dominating the landscape.
That all said: it would be really nice if property owners who would all jointly benefit from a transit investment along a corridor might band together in an association to fund an infrastructure investment from which all would benefit. The Brookings Institution is actually working with the DC government and downtown business groups to explore the potential of this approach with landowners in transit-servable corridors in the district. It’s a good model that hopefully could be supported by parties of all political stripes.
July 2nd, 2009 at 12:05 am
It is a complete fallacy that Government has to run public transit. Its hilarious how statists advocate for monopolies without even realizing it. What makes people think that monopolies work? It doesn’t work in the provision of food and it doesn’t work in public transit. The key evidence is that prices in transit systems are skyrocketing. Those companies that failed in the past century were often given special privilege in land grants etc… It turns out the most reason why transit fails is because companies colluded with government, has anyone heard of the success of the Great Northern Railroad? It was created free of government help and was the last railroad standing. check this http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods117.html article for a better description.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
[...] Conservatives and Support Public Transportation “The most important thing that a liberal needs to know in talking to conservatives about public transportation is not to use liberal arguments. You can’t argue for transit on the basis that the poor need it.” Published: July 2, 2009 Filed Under: What I’m Reading Tags: Congress : delicious : Economics : health_care : Spending : transit : transporation : travel : urbanism Leave a Comment Name: Required [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:48 pm
YOYO
The roads you drive on are highly subsidized by the government. Why is your preferred mode of polluting (cars travel) more qualified for public funding? And don’t think the gas tax covers the bill.
July 2nd, 2009 at 7:13 pm
[...] Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation, was recently intereviewed in the Infrastructurist. And though he was talking about public transit, one could easily substitute biking into this same [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 11:38 pm
@THeDUdeAbides
Where do you assume this from what I say? I do not prefer public funding (extortion) for any form of transportation, I don’t think the gas tax covers the bill. Again, road conditions continue to get worse, maintenance is deffered, while taxes rise, If a company were running like a transport authority they would go out of business in a day. I advocate private ownership of transportation of any form, no where do I chose public funding. In order to end the increase in road costs and increase quality, the govts should secede ownership to private entreprenuers.
July 3rd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
There is no form of transit, including walking, that is not subsidized, directly, or indirectly, with tax dollars. If you walk, it will likely be on a sidewalk or path, both of which are probably built and maintained with tax money. It is already established that highways are heavily subsidized. If you fly, tax dollars are paying for the air traffic controllers and facilities as well as for the construction and maintenance of the airports.
I have to laugh at any comparison of rails to buses. The only legitimate comparison is if one includes the cost of the highway used by the bus. Contrary to what some will tell us, the bus company does not fully pay for it’s highway use when it purchases the fuel. A fairer comparison would be if the train was operating on tracks owned and maintained by the government. Maybe that is the model we need…..consider rail tracks and rights of way as property of the government, then charge freight and passenger companies to use them. I think we already know (from the experiences of other countries) that such a system is not perfect, but it might be better than what exists now, at least for the movement of people. I doubt the freight railroads would like it.
Personally, I would much rather see pressure put on the railroad companies to allow the construction of dedicated passenger rails on existing rail rights of way. Along with that, I would like to see a move toward grade separation at all automobile crossings, which would improve both speed and safety. Additionally, some dedicated rail could be built on existing interstate highway rights of way.
There are ways to build a decent passenger rail system, using rights of way that currently exist. The real problem is mustering the political will to make it happen.
July 3rd, 2009 at 7:06 pm
streetcar systems - people who like street cars do not have to live with them. If they run on tracks and obstruction stops the whole system. They require overhead electrical cables which are an annoyance and eye sore. They are not flexible if you need to send the streetcar on an alternate path. The coal, electrical generation, and railroad industry was completely unable to fight the auto-oil cabal everywhere, how is that, please explain your conspiracy theory?
drag us into unwanted wars - Are there really unwanted wars?
In NYC immigrants have created their own semi legal van service. It is not clear why it is not legal to operate these vans, other then they might put the government bus service out of business. Intercity, immigrants created the Chinatown bus which regularly undercuts both Amtrak and Grey Hound.
See Hong Kong for more ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_light_bus
So why not try legalizing private transportation before coming up with a public boondoggle.
High Speed Rail? It works in Europe due to having collections of large cities close to each other. In the US it might work in a few locations, but the reality is if you are going from Cleveland to another city, air is the best way.
July 5th, 2009 at 2:07 am
[...] How To Convince A Conservative To Support Public Transportation …Conservatives don’t like betting on some Candyland promise of being saved by some new technology. The nice thing about electric railways is that all the technology was in place a century ago. We can electrify mainline railroads, … [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 10:01 am
[...] Conservative arguments for public transportation. [Infrastructurist] [...]
July 6th, 2009 at 11:32 am
YoYo says: “Why do you folks want to rely on government to provide services?”
The role of goverment is to provide services individuals cannot. Things like law enforcement, national security, regulation of companies, and yes, transportation infrasturcture.
July 6th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
All services can be provided by the marketplace far cheaper and at a far higher quality. It’s totally bogus that transportation infrastructure should be provided by government, look at the quality of the roads, rails, metros do you claim these are well run extortion rackets? Every year politicians talk about raising taxes and fees to pay for these services, this is only a phenomenon of gov’t run transportation. National security? Are you joking? The last time I checked leviathan could not even protect its own headquarters (the pentagon). The facts are that national security is an extraordinary failure, in fact “terrorists” have a 100% success rate in attacking this country pearl harbor, twin towers, pentagon, oklahoma city, many others. Law enforcement is simply a source of revenue generation for local governments speed traps, parking tickets, etc. Not to mention the weekly videos coming out of police brutality via tazering 70 year old grandmothers etc. Aside from this the supreme court ruled that police have no constitutional obligation to protect you from harm, if you can call any of this “service” you are sorely mistaken http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/28scotus.html . The only services I receive are from voluntary exchanges with individuals and companies, I don’t consider violent coercive force in provision of “services”. This is not about the left or the right, the problem here is the State as a whole.
July 8th, 2009 at 12:38 am
geo8rge - July 3, 2009 needs to look at the street cars in Copenhagen (third rail)…and last time I looked, most could negotiate a turning radius suitable for cars (Milan). When it comes to congestion because of obstruction, an interlinked system is able to have a nearby connection. Why the vitriol?
July 10th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
OMG, y’all have absolutely no clue as to how to talk to conservatives and especially libertarians. Repeating the mantra in a slightly different way and expecting a different reaction kind of meets the definition of crazy (repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results).
Basically what you’re saying is that two wrongs make a right. For the moment let’s assume, in arguendo, that you’re correct about the subsidization of roads, a libertarian will immediately tell you that the correct solution would be to end subsidies for the roads … not give another mode a subsidy.
Conservatives and libertarians would want to know how much of a subsidy and how much the gas tax would need be to be raised to cover.
You see, even if they don’t know the stats that rail (transit, commuter, and Amtrak) account for less than 1% of the transportation market (Bureau of Transportation Statistics, 2006), they intuitively know that rail is a minor player in transportation.
Now, as for whether the gas tax covers the highways, I checked one of the more liberal states in the Union … Massachusetts. Here is a quote from their website about the MA Highway Fund: The Fund pays all transportation-related expenses, including debt service on bonds issued for transportation purposes. The fund finances highway maintenance and safety services and the state’s share of federally sponsored highway projects as required. http://transportation.blog.state.ma.us/blog/2009/02/current-gas-tax-where-does-it-go.html
Hmmm, the Fund pays ALL transportation-related expenses … I don’t hear the governor of MA laughing that the gas tax doesn’t cover the highway projects.
I know that TN has raided the Road Fund to balance the state’s general budget. Earlier this year (’09), there were committee meetings to discuss how to spend the money in the Fund … nothing about a Fund shortage. Don’t hear the governor of TN laughing either.
Most of the studies that I’ve seen show that the gas tax does cover the highway expenses. Where the-roads-are-subsidized argument has some validity are local roads which are usually paid for by local taxes.
So what the pro-rail folks often do, incorrectly, is lump the local roads with the highways and cry, “See! Roads are subsidized too!”
Not only that, but money from the gas tax is siphoned off to subsidize transit. So one of the first reactions will be, “If the roads need a subsidy then let’s start by returning the money given to transit to the road fund.”
You could get more conservative and libertarian buy off on rail projects if you could convince them that they would at least cover the operating and maintence costs. The initial capital construction costs aren’t usually as much of a problem as the coninuing call for more money to keep them running.
August 8th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
[...] is all a roundabout way of introducing a not-especially-new Infrastructurist interview with pro-transit conservative William Lind. In the interview, Lind brings hundreds of words with serious intellectual [...]
August 8th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
Well, the comments here make it pretty plain how hard it will be to talk to a modern “conservative” about rail. It’s very hard to talk to people who are just misinformed.
Just a few examples of the many that could be listed- The Great Northern, of course, was built with land grants, just like almost every other railroad in the country.
And the California HSR is not some wild idea dreamed up by unemployed science fiction writers. After studying how best to meet the increased transportation needs of the next 30 years, the HSR emerged as one of the most cost-effective, that is to say, cheaper than building more roads and airports. The proposal has been studied at length by the California legislature, had hundreds of hearings, has the support of the California Department of Transportation and the Airport Managers Association, has had the enabling act passed by the legislature and signed by the governor, and the funding approved by the citizens.
Well, progress has always occurred before without the help of “conservatives”, so I guess we’ll just keep on going without them. Too bad they can’t get a clue from Paul Weyrich and William Lind.
August 9th, 2009 at 1:27 am
[...] but fine explanation of sorting out partisan bias when it comes to supporting rail. He references Infrastructurist’s interview with William Lind, a paleoconservative who co-authored Moving Minds: Conservatives and Transit with the late Paul [...]
August 9th, 2009 at 2:19 am
I realize I’m a month late, but another article taking a different approach is Why Conservatives Should Care About Transit by David Schaengold.
August 9th, 2009 at 8:09 pm
um, anyone want to tell danny that social security isn’t going bakrupt because it’s a badly run program, but because politicians felt obliged to ‘borrow’ money from it to pay for tax cuts, new programs, etc?
August 26th, 2009 at 7:06 am
[...] Lind began that conversation more than a decade ago with the late Paul Weyrich, and he still stresses the point today. If you want to see trains, buses or any other form of transportation improved, one thing we can [...]
October 14th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
[...] to heart the message of a recent book (we interviewed the author!), a conservative argues that his ideological brothers-in-arms are kinda stupid for not [...]
October 25th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Here is some facts Conservatives may not know and the government doesn’t want you to know,
unless you read about facts of railroad transportation or like a few Americans have an interest
in railroads (other then employees).
During WW 2 the government imposed a 10% tax on rail travel. Now remember at that time
the majority of travel and in most cases the only way to travel was by train. This tax on rail travel
was not rescinded until the formation of Amtrak in 1971.But I’d like to ask were did all that tax
money go? It didn’t go into a rail transit fund or the like did it? NO! So were did it go? To the
general fund that states used mostly to support local activities and build/maintain roads.
During Pres Clinton’s administration wanted a fuel tax on airline, trucking and railroads.But
thanks to the strong (let me repeat that-strong) lobbyist from the trucking and airline industry
they managed to avoid the tax, not so for the railroads, who are more fuel efficient in may ways
then the airlines and trucking industry.
As it was pointed out on this post that railroads do pay more taxes then most business in this
country.But when I hear of subsidies to Amtrak I laugh and remind that the railroads in many ways
subsidize YOU! The trucking and airlines get indirect subsidies that taxes pay from other funds.
The railroads have been trying to get the government, without much success, in giving them a 25%
tax credit to reinvest in needed infrastructure improvements for increased capacity for the next 10 years.
( Rail freight tonnage will rise 88% by 2035! )
Unless you want more trucks on the highways and the costs of maintaining them will
eventual bankrupt the highway trust fund. To late, this year (2009) the highway trust fund is bankrupt
due to less tax revenues and of the $40 million spent on highways they had to borrow $8 million form
other funds. Social Security is not the only fund that is insolvent, our government is not telling the whole truth-our country is BROKE!
I challenge Conservatives to do only three (3) things:
1-Lower railroad taxes
2-Set up a much needed Rail Transit Fund equal to the Highway and Airline Funds
3-Bring “logic” and “balance” to intermodal transportation
If not you will pay-do you now how much it will cost taxpayers if we had to privatize the railroads
that compete with already public funded highways or airlines that do not build their own airports?
We still need our railroads.
Suggest reading Railfan and Railroad, October 2009 issue pages 16-18.
December 19th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
[...] Along the lines of conservative stances on transportation, Infrastructurist has a nice interview up making the conservative case for public transportation. [...]