Transit Fratricide

If anyone wants to know why, even as younger people move to more transit-friendly towns and are shunning noplaces that don't offer buses, light rail or commuter trains, little new transit infrastructure is actually getting built, by all means, read this New York Times article from Hiroko Tabuchi about how the Koch brothers, Chuck and Dave (sister Vera remains at large), are making sure it doesn't happen!

Numerous transit projects have been proposed all across the nation, with the backing of local politicians and local businesses, but in cities and towns where the people get to vote on transit referendums, the Kochs' group Americans For Prosperity is working to get voters to defeat them via grass-roots organizing - with considerable success.  The reason for this hostility to public transportation is clear when you remember that Chuck and Dave refine oil for a living - more transit means fewer cars (especially gas-guzzling SUVs), which means less of a demand for gasoline, which means less profit for petroleum refineries. Also, there's their hatred for big government.  The need to increase revenues to fund buses, light rail, and commuter trains means higher taxes and more government-created jobs - which means more growth for unions representing public-sector workers.

Tabuchi's article notes how the Kochs are fighting mass transit in growing populations centers in the South and the West, but so-called liberal areas are also targeted - they've fought transit proposals in places like the metropolitan Detroit area, and they ran ads against a gas tax increase in New Jersey, where Governor Phil Murphy is making a herculean effort to rebuild a statewide transit authority whose service has deteriorated over the years.  Chuck and Dave offer the usual simple, simpleminded arguments against mass transit.  Americans For Prosperity argues that it forces you to follow a timetable, whereas automobiles allow you to go where you want, when you want (again - most people use their cars to go where they have to, when they have to, like their workplaces!)  Also,  Uber and Lyft are much more flexible than mass transit (not to mention much more expensive).  And of course, mass transit is expensive and has to be subsidized by the taxpayers (like highways, which move fewer people for more money than mass transit).

Having gotten all of those sentences with parenthesized clauses at the end out of the way, I need only point out that the Kochs obviously don't just go after specific transit projects. They've been very good at helping anti-transit politicians elected to public office to ensure that transit projects never see the light of day or don't even get proposed.  Perhaps the greatest victim of their anti-transit activism is Wisconsin, where, in 2010, they got Scott Walker elected governor, prompting outgoing Democratic governor James Doyle to cancel the state's high-speed rail project before Walker - already infamous then for decimating bus service in Milwaukee County as that county's executive - could have the sadistic pleasure of doing it himself.  As governor, Walker has starved mass transit, widened Interstate 94 between Madison and Milwaukee despite declining usage of the highway, and waged war on . . . bicycle paths.  And although Walker is pretty much a "road warrior," it turns out he isn't good at delivering on even that; Wisconsin's roads are the second-worst in the nation.

Oh yeah, dig this.  As he prepared to leave office as governor of Maryland, Martin O'Malley pushed for two light-rail lines to be built in the Baltimore area; Larry Hogan, his Republican successor - and a builder of car-friendly suburban development - canceled one of them. Chuck and Dave are now working to get Hogan re-elected governor of Maryland.

One of the reasons I supported O'Malley for President in 2016 and hope to do so again in 2020 is because he supports building more mass transit as well as high-speed rail, and an O'Malley administration could certainly provide a shot in the arm for public transportation projects nationwide.  But not without a sympathetic Congress or sympathetic state governors and legislatures. President Obama learned too late that support among elected officials for his ambitious high-speed rail proposal was practically non-existent, and so it fell by the wayside.  Obama never built consensus for his goals, and, of course, Democrats  - who would have been more sympathetic to funding all forms of public transportation - dropped the ball in getting more of their own elected to state and local office during his two terms.  (Though, to be fair, some Republicans do support public transportation - just not that many.)  Advocates of public transportation have to get involved now by seeking out pro-transit candidates for office on the state and local level, back them, and get them elected in and in advance of 2020 - in congressional elections, in state legislative elections this year and next (the 2019 Assembly midterms in New Jersey, for example) and in state gubernatorial elections this year and next.  We have to win back our states so we can win back our transit.

Oh yeah, Chuck and Dave are so disgusted with Trump's break from orthodox conservatism, they've intimated that they could support Democrats this year if they feel that any Democratic candidates support the Koch agenda.  Which makes sense, considering the Republican-lite faction in the Democratic Party.

And, sadly, they'll find many Democrats who agree with them on refusing to increase the gas tax.  Like Nancy Pelosi. 

Drilling For Ignorance

Maybe it's time for Republicans to lighten up on the energy debate.

With gasoline prices rising again, Republican presidential candidates are accusing President Obama of not doing enough to get prices in the opposite direction, suich as drilling for more oil. Obama shot back today in Miami, pointing out that his administration has drilled, baby, drilled - all over the place, with drilling increasing fourfold since he took office in January 2009. But with demand for oil in countries like China and India rising, Obama points out, gasoline prices are bound to go up based on global market demand. And generous subsidies still keep gasoline half as expensive as it is in European countries. If gasoline were sold in the United States at prices genuinely based on the free market that Republicans worship, we'd be paying as much as the French and the Germans.

Republicans, of course, are going to ignore these stubborn facts. They will also ignore the huge profits oil companies are raking in, as well as the fact that the U.S. now exports more oil than it imports - qualifying us for OPEC membership. They'll continue to insist on two-dollar-per-gallon gas. Of course, if we hadn't gotten addicted to big cars, if we had more mass transit, if Republican governors didn't keep canceling high-speed rail projects (as has happened twice in Florida in the past fifteen years), if more people could walk to work, and if more people could bike to work, as the mayor of Montclair, New Jersey does, how likely would Republicans even be starting conversations based on such asinine talking points? As I type, the House is pushing for dedicated spending for highways only, and mass transit projects like the Second Avenue Subway in New York City are aberrations rather than norm in this country.

Texas populist Jim Hightower once said that if ignorance were as valuable as oil, he'd want drilling rights on George Bush's head. He was referring to the elder George Bush. But if ignorance were as valuable as oil, the combined heads of both George Bushes wouldn't even pay half as many dividends as those of the four remaining candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

By the way, I have a message for those who bitch about high gas prices but won't ride a bus: Get a subcompact. You'll find a subcompact more nimble and fun than your SUV. Get a Chevrolet Sonic, and help an American autoworker keep his job.

Transportation Orientation

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced on Thursday that the Car Allowance Rebate System. popularly known as the "cash for clunkers" program, will end tomorrow at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time, in recognition of the $3 billion allotted for it about to run out. This will give dealers time to finalize the paperwork on deals handled so far, and announcing the end of the program four days in advance has allowed those interested in getting a $4500 government rebate for a more fuel-efficient vehicle to get in on it before the program ends.

The program has proven to be wildly successful, getting several old gas guzzlers off the road, resulting in a 60% increase in the fuel efficiency of the American private vehicle fleet, and it gave a big boost to automakers hurt by the recession. However, all has not been perfect - the bureaucratic red tape means that some dealers will have to wait awhile to get their money from the government.

And although it's gotten more people into a Ford Focus and out of a Ford Explorer, it's not enough. The next thing the Obama administration has to do is work toward more public transportation - not just modernized intercity rail (which is slowly getting traction; witness my blog entry on Bobby Jindal from late last week), but on commuter rail, streetcars, light rail with exclusive rights of way, and city buses, not to mention more transit-oriented development and retrofitting as much urban sprawl as possible to a transit-based transportation network. It won't be easy, but it could provide more jobs and boost the economy.

We can start with public buildings. Government rules dictate that post offices, for example, have to be built to accommodate cars without any meaningful requirements, if any, for pedestrian access. This is how the post office in my hometown was built; dedicated in 1975, the West Caldwell, New Jersey post office sits on the outskirts of town, off a county highway, with no sidewalk access and plenty of parking. (By contrast, the post office in neighboring Caldwell, built in 1934, is in walking distance of my house - ironic, you'll agree, since I don't live in Caldwell - and there's only parking for three vehicles on the street, with a fifteen-minute restriction.) Oregon House member Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat representing transit-friendly Portland, has sought to get these federal rules repealed, without success so far.

Nevertheless, I wouldn't mind seeing the cash-for-clunkers program continue a bit longer, and I say this as someone who's not in the market for a new car at this time.