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.

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