Going Nowhere Fast

[marmar]

from The American Prospect:



Going Nowhere Fast
What happened to public transportation? It seems obvious that we should invest in high-speed rail and mass transit, but we don't.

Thomas Geoghegan | March 14, 2008



To get America back on the right road, I wish Henry Clay's Whig Party might come back and fix the roads again. Today, we need the "internal improvements" that the Whigs promoted every bit as much as we did in the 1830s and 1840s, when Whig-controlled governments built roadways and canals.

In The History of the United States During the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, Henry Adams makes a fuss about the roads and the rails. For Adams, America only truly became "united" as it became easier to get from place to place, from Boston to New York.

Now it's getting harder. Every week, it seems, it's taking another minute or so to get from point A to point B. Each year it's harder to get from Chicago to St. Louis or Detroit. There's no high-speed rail. It takes longer to get to the airport. In Chicago, it can now take me an hour and a half to get out to O'Hare. It's 35 minutes by bus on Addison Street, and then it's an hour on the El. The Blue Line is broken down for lack of funds and moves 10 mph in the "slow" zones. A fifth of the track is now made up of "slow" zones.

It's not just city to city but home to store. As I write at home this Saturday, it's semi-gridlock for two miles in all directions. For five minutes at a time, no one's moving. The cars pile up for blocks. Every Saturday, even in July, I might as well be snowbound. I can't get out.

I live roughly four miles from my office. If I'm lucky, it only takes me 50 minutes by mass transit to get to work.

The point is we're trapped. We can't move.

America is disuniting. Compare the U.S. to the European Union. Over there, thanks to Eurostar (the high-speed rail system), easy transit to the airports, and Ryanair, Europeans have more geographic mobility than we do. Eurostar is more important to European unity than adopting a new EU constitution. Europeans are voting in a new constitution with their feet. It's getting easier to get from Dublin to Madrid, where Irish kids commute to do start ups. Over there, from Paris up to Brussels, I puff along on air. Over here, on our dilapidated rails, I have to jolt along, in effect, by stage coach. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=going_nowhere_fast

[PATRICK]

1. Anything that

swiftly becomes privatized is run all the more swiftly into the ground. Public service is in it for the long term forever. When the government fails to maintain a service it too can be tracked back to private corporation pressures. When the government steps in like with Amtrak, the private parts continue to milk the dead golden goose wherever the public funds leak out and the initial commitment to making a new vast public network is again opposed by the private interests that have thrived in the vacuum.

And of course we can't tax the rich whose fortunes have come from public services so any ventures into public sanity cannot be funded. Only war. Then they might even build some trains and highways.

[phantom power]

2. one problem we now face is that fed and state govts are broke.

Which was exactly the goal of neocons like Grover Norquist and friends. Prevent public works by bankrupting the govt. Unfortunately, they succeeded.

[enid602]

3. rail

700 miles of public rail built in LA metro area over the last 20 years, encompassing LA, Orange, San Berdoo, Riverside, Ventura and SD Counties. A new line called 'the Sprinter' opens this week between Oceanside and Escondido. An extension of the Metro subway to East LA is almost finished. Under construction are the light rail between Downtown LA and Sta Monica, and the Perris Valley and Palm Springs spurs on the Riverside County Metrolink. Other areas in California (SJ, SF and Sacto) have also been busy building rail as well. The public has to be behind it.