The debate over the benefits of mass transit falls along a pretty clear “Mars and Venus” partisan line: Democrats cherish every ounce of mass transit, while Republicans love love love their cars. A few months back, we did a Q&A with Bill Lind, the conservative author of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation, which evaluates mass transit policies from a conservative perspective. Now that the debate over rail, both high speed and passenger, has lit up following the distribution of Obama’s stimulus funds, we thought we’d check back in with Bill to see if his views had changed, or held steady.
Infrastructurist: Given all the heated partisan debate that has crippled Congress in other topics like healthcare, can infrastructure really be bipartisan?
Lind: Yes. There should be a nonpartisan non-ideological consensus in favor of adequate infrastructure. From the conservative perspective, the federal government has two and only two legitimate functions: national security and infrastructure. The first bill passed by the first Congress was an infrastructure bill. With government involvement in canals and railroads and highways, the federal government has been involved in infrastructure from the beginning. This is consistent with a free market economy, because the markets only work if there is adequate infrastructure.
More specifically to the current time, conservatives do not enjoy being stuck in traffic any more than liberals. We may be in a Mercedes or Jaguar instead of a Neon, but [traffic] still isn’t fun. So when high quality transportation is offered — meaning rail, not bus — conservatives are using it. If you look at the demographics of rail transit riders. what you see is that a lot of the people on board are conservatives. if you look at the ridership on Metra around Chicago, in some counties the average income of people on trains is higher than people driving alone to work. You are turning waste time into time when you could be productive. So the fact is that where high quality transportation is provided, conservatives use it. But there isn’t much rail transit in this country for us to use.
I: It sounds like your definition of “conservative” basically means “wealthy people.” What about conservatives who aren’t necessarily Jaguar-drivers?
L: The fact is that most conservatives own cars. They have sufficient money that they own cars. which means that if they ride transit they ride from choice, not necessity. Which means they want high quality transit, not just something to get around. So the transit that is relative to conservatives is that which is relevant to people with cars — I would rather take transit than drive to work.
I: Does your support for trains extend to high speed rail?
L: High speed rail is an entirely different question. We’re talking commuter trains, light rail, and streetcar. We are very much in favor of inner city rail. But high speed is a chimera. High speed means 250 miles an hour. All the other countries that have created true high speed rail have a dense network of passenger trains. We have nothing. We have Amtrak, which is almost useless — one train passing through, usually in the middle of the night and running late.
What we want to see is building up a network of higher-speed regular trains that becomes dense enough that you can actually use it, and then adding bus service that would connect the largest part of the county to the nearest train — so, like at one time in the U.S., you could get from any point in the country to any other point in the country without driving or getting on a plane. Seventy, eighty years ago a number of steam railroads were running at over 100 miles an hour. But after World War II the government slapped speed limits on passenger trains. We want to make trains that are time competitive with the automobile - we’re not interested in competing with air travel. Our fuel dependence is seated on cars, not planes. So we want trains running at speeds of up to 110 miles an hour — all of which we had with steam trains in the 1930s.
I: So what you’re advocating is more, and faster Amtrak.
L: More passenger trains, more Amtrak trains, on more routes, more trains on existing routes, running at speeds that make the time competitive with the automobile.
I: Do you think this plan should have greater bipartisan support at the expense of the high speed rail proposals?
L: We think there should definitely be bipartisan support for bringing back streetcars. Every city in the U.S. with over 5,000 people once had a streetcar line. We would like to see most cities have commuter trains — the infrastructure is already there. And we would like to see an expansion of light rail. We think all of these should be electrified and this is an important part of energy security. We would like to see a national consensus going across left and right. It’s simply a matter of bringing back what we had. We threw it away – we subsidized national highways and taxed electric railways, and we think that was an unwise move, and we need to bring it back. Not put enormous amounts of money into a few lines that would serve geographically only a small portion of the country.
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:45 pm
“from the conservative perspective, the federal government has 2 and only 2 legitimate functions: national security and infrastructure”
I think he means “from a radical libertarian perspective”.
February 3rd, 2010 at 4:55 pm
“Conservatives do not enjoy being stuck in traffic any more than liberals. We may be in a Mercedes or Jaguar instead of a Neon, but traffic still isn’t fun.”
Sheesh. Has Bill Lind spent time in the most conservative parts of the country? There are much nicer cars in San Fransisco, New York and Chicago than there are in Mississippi, North Dakota and Alabama.
I don’t know Bill, but it sounds like he thinks he can still vote a Whig ticket somewhere. If you’re a plutocrat who favors education and transit for the masses, then your only choice in the U.S. is the Democrats. It’s fine if he’s a Whig or a Tory, but lets not pretend that anti-federalism from the past has anything to do with the modern Conservative movement. I don’t see many Palin bumper stickers on BMWs.
Just because you’re Greek doesn’t mean you can design the Parthenon; just because William Jennings Brian was a conservative doesn’t make Glenn Beck wise.
February 3rd, 2010 at 5:09 pm
“But high speed is a chimera. ” This hits the nail on the head, Im not opposed to infrastructure, just not glitzy, gold plated ego trips that will cost way more than we have to spend. Spend our infrastructure $$ wisely, rather then out of jealousy of some European system.
February 3rd, 2010 at 6:09 pm
How about spending it because it will result in a functional, effective system which will last for decades, reduce our dependence on oil, stimulate cities in the central valley, etc.? Maybe coast-to-coast hsr is a chimera, but the California version seems like a no-brainer.
February 3rd, 2010 at 8:08 pm
We need as much rail as we can get.
This is how they should bill it to conservatives because most conservatives dont care about the true benefits of a true high speed rail system.
HSR is not about replacing cars, its about replacing short flights. Why fly somewhere when a High speed train can get you there just as fast, with almost no chance of delays, at a fraction of the cost of a plane ticket and you cant lose your bag. Plus its more scenic and there is a bar and restaurant car if you choose. Oh yeah and your fat ass will be sitting in a bigger seat and you wont have to ask for two seats like you do on an airplane.
Anyway conservative who has ever spent the night in an airport because of weather delays or a airplane repairs should agree.
Big Oil and Big Auto own the GOP and that is why they are fighting Rail.
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:39 pm
I guess my only problem with this line of argument is I don’t see streetcars as inherently superior to busses. I recognize that they are looked at in higher regard by the public, but what’s the functional difference? Streetcars aren’t grade separated and don’t have the ability to run any faster than a bus can. While I wish we didn’t dismantle the incredibly streetcar network we once had in this country, I don’t see a ton of value in reconstructing it, except as a tie in to grade separated light rail in areas where it doesn’t make sense or is cost prohibitive to make light rail grade separated.
One of the principle benefits I see in streetcars is that they offer a very defined right of way to encourage transit oriented development, while buses don’t.
I work for a small urban transit agency (which, for the record, is completely bus based) and as much as I’d love to take a streetcar to work everyday, it just doesn’t make any sense to pour money into that kind of project when we could be increasing frequency of service and expanding our coverage area.
I think it’s been shown that we can make transit work in our major metro areas, but what I’m interested in is how do we make it work in smaller urban environments that don’t have the funding to take only major capital projects like rolling out an entire streetcar network? Would Lind suggest that these are areas where transit just will never gain support of conservatives?
We’ve had great success selling transit to traditional opponents (or disinterested parties) with a series of longer distance commuter busses with upholstered seats, luggage racks and other amenities. We also have much higher farebox recovery with these routes. I think Lind’s basic argument holds, but I think that it needs to be adapted somewhat to a small urban context.
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:46 pm
“High speed means 250 miles an hour”.
That’s new, I never heard of HST reaching such a high commercial speed. Bill Lind might want to check is numbers, he is off today’s limit by 30mph.
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:49 pm
The proper thing for conservatives to do is sell off all the interstates to private toll road operators, so its the way it was 150 years ago. Fiscal responsibility. Small government.
February 3rd, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Eric, Lind doesn’t want to vote Whig. The Whigs were generally opposed to slavery. Lind’s gone on record saying that the South’s racial problems came out of reconstruction and not slavery and would not have existed if the South had won. He wants to be able to vote for antebellum Democrats, not Whigs.
February 3rd, 2010 at 11:40 pm
As an ideological progressive, I would be inclined to reject Lind’s ideas. Yet, they ring true. While high-speed rail would have limited applications in the United States (California, for sure; perhaps the Megalopolis corridor), it would be far inferior to air travel for much of the nation. Cities simply aren’t close enough together to make it feasible, and while rail travel is far more pleasurable, the convenience of a 90-minute flight, versus a four-hour train ride, should (and would) prevail for consumers. Lind’s ideas of expanding current rail options make far more sense. Amtrak, after all, truly is Godawful: its service is crappy, and its prices are, too. With stronger investment in improving service, government could ensure a viable basic option. Lind is again correct in his demand for further inner-city rail: providing transit options beyond the bus to commuters is greatly desirable. However, I find flaws in his berating of HSR’s cost. Building inner-city rail is often just as expensive, and often more - for far less population served. Look, for example, at Toronto’s admirable Transit City plans: eight or nine light rail lines and a pair of subway extensions. While the plans will help expand ridership significantly, their cost is shocking: $5 or $6 billion, before inevitable cost overruns. And that’s just in one city. Unless the American government wants to pay through the nose for new inner-city rail (and they really should), they should focus on cheaper, more easily attainable modes of transit. HSR is an excellent candidate, especially with the funding divisions it has already received.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:57 am
Eric,
William Jennings Bryan was thrice candidate for President as a Democrat. He was Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State. He was a virulent opponent of sound money (does “Cross of Gold Speech ring any bells, especially silver bells). He was in many ways the epitome of prairie populism. He was a Fundamentalist. But he was not by the standards of his day, this day or even Doris Day a Conservative.
As for the rest of your blather, it is almost as uninformed as your comment about WJB. A bit of real reading and less time watching Olbermann while eating cheetos would do you some good.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:38 am
I would consider myself more on the left side of the aisle but I think conservative arguments in favor of transit like this are much stronger pro-transit arguments than those typically given on the left which are almost entirely that we need to use transit because its good for the environment and global warming and its the right thing to do. Transit has many more advantages than environmental reasons and thankfully Lind has made them his main arguments in favor of transit.
I am also greatly pleased to see a prominent Republican take a position that doesnt align with the traditional Republican position/ideology on an issue. And I’m glad that he sees that there is a role for the government, spending and taxes, normally from Republicans I see blind universal opposition to any and all government, spending and taxes. Govt, spending and taxes arent always bad and wasteful.
February 4th, 2010 at 9:52 am
A good number of conservatives live in rural areas, and they have no conception at all of what it means to be in a city. And for that matter, many Democrats are in urban areas and have no conception of what it means to live in a rural area.
For me I think it is ultimately peak oil that causes me to advocate for more transit and a reduced emphasis on cars. A light rail system mainly needs electricity to run - that can come from anything. It could be coal, nuclear or hydro, or it could be wind or solar.
February 4th, 2010 at 11:07 am
I think Lind’s basic conception of what it means to be conservative in America today is pretty off-base - it’s true that conservatives are, on average, wealthier than liberals, but the gap has been closing for decades. I’m also not a conservative by any means, and I favor HSR. Still, I think he had a somewhat valid point in that we should prioritize urban and metropolitan transit over HSR. HSR is great, and can make a difference, but the fact that so many of our major metros do not have functional mass transit systems is a national disgrace.
February 4th, 2010 at 12:46 pm
“The fact is that most conservatives own cars. They have sufficient money that they own cars”
This is true of many people. They have sufficient money to own cars, and the government subsidizes driving so that even those who can’t, can.
Bill is trying to position the (neo) conservative brand, while attempting to show some kind of pro-transit candor. It’s a bizarre article because the Lind’s common sense, which I regard as true conservatism - is blighted by his ideological support for consumer products, which is pseudo-conservative.
The original definition of conservative, and the American perversion of the word, are fighting for legitimacy on the same page.
February 4th, 2010 at 1:02 pm
The most conservative way to travel is via self sufficiency… it’s called cycling. All other forms inevitably create the need for more government in varying degrees. Some like highways increase government geometrically. Train+ Bike = maximum independence, minimal impact, better health and lower public infrastructure expenses.
February 4th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
John: Using your definition, wouldn’t the most “conservative” (i.e., self-sufficient) way to travel be walking?
February 4th, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Bill Lind makes some very good arguments in favor of building up the whole system of transportation, at the urban as well as the inter city level. The need is for a network of transportation, not just a stand alone approach toward busses, airplanes, trains all competing with each other and not coordinated into a useful matrix.
February 5th, 2010 at 2:24 am
Moving folks to detached houses in the suburbs or the country turns them into Republicans. It just does.
There is a lot of economic illiteracy out there, and I’m sorry, but the Republicans are very adept at exploiting it. The benefits of that outweigh the benefits of the conservative case for transportation. That’s just practical politics. Its not going to change until people wise up.
We spend only 2% of the federal budget on transportation infrastructure. About 25% of our bridges are either dilapidated or obsolete. Manifestly, our problem isn’t “bridges to nowhere” it is “bridges falling down.”
HSR is easily affordable in this country with its GDP 4X the size of China. It preserves the value and convenience of our airports, by shifting short-haul air traffic to rail, and by letting our airports do what they do best–long haul high speed air travel. It adds redundancy and scalability to our transportation needs, and in inclement weather, reliability.
Still, its easier for Bobby Jindahl to make speeches deriding HSR as a kind of magic carpet pipe dream. John McCain practically built his career talking about “billions of dollars in subsidies” for Amtrak. The price was usually more in the completely trivial $650 million per year range, but if you add up all forty years of Amtrak, well, it is billions, and no one ever points out that your figures aren’t annual.
February 5th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
Of course walking (gee crawling fits the definition too) is pure self sufficiency but few have the time-energy to walk 20 miles/day. But to be efficient requires more than just two feet. HSR to urban environments is a valuable solution as long as these environments support safe places to cycle. It is a shame that most of our major metros lack functional mass transit and, even worse, not supportive of the most efficient form of travel- cycling.
February 5th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
Jim, the question of HSR affordability isn’t about GDP, but about cost per rider. Some areas, such as the NEC, Texas, and California, can generate high ridership. Their connecting transit either is pretty good if all you want is to go to the station, or will be if all the projects currently under construction are finished. None of them has the transit use of European or Asian cities, but that’s because their transit systems tend to be monocentric around downtown even though the jobs and retail destinations are spread out. Essentially, American cities have transit that works primarily as feeder for future HSR.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:10 pm
[...] and Public Transportation, says “no way” in a new interview with Melissa Lafsky over at Infrastructurist. Lind says that, “From the conservative perspective, the federal government has two and only [...]
February 7th, 2010 at 2:24 pm
High speed rail from a national infrastructure sense makes no sense at this point. After all, look at it’s competitors:
1) Cars operating on long distance trips, their most efficient operating mode.
2) Planes which average over 50 mpg per seat.
Whereas short commute trips represent an area where cars are operating in their most inefficient mode.
Seems like a no brainier that HSR is poor choice to dedicate our resources towards.
February 7th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
[...] and Public Transportation, says “no way” in a new interview with Melissa Lafsky over at Infrastructurist. Lind says that, “From the conservative perspective, the federal government has two and only [...]
February 9th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
[...] The Infrastructurist recently interviewed Bill Lind, author of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. As you might have guessed, Mr. Lind is a conservative. But he also believes that a strong public transportation system will help Americans become more productive. As Mr. Lind puts it in his interview, “…conservatives do not enjoy being stuck in traffic any more than liberals.” [...]
February 11th, 2010 at 7:04 am
[...] The Infrastructurist recently interviewed Bill Lind, author of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. As you might have guessed, Mr. Lind is a conservative. But he also believes that a strong public transportation system will help Americans become more productive. As Mr. Lind puts it in his interview, “…conservatives do not enjoy being stuck in traffic any more than liberals.” [...]