Highways vs. Transit
In my last post (which attracted a few great comments) I suggested that the automobile infrastructure might not be the optimal investment for the coming decade(s). Some might take this as an all-out attack on personal transportation–to be clear, it is not. (I wouldn’t even mind highways if we raised the gas tax enough to pay for them)
Here’s a great graph showing the comparison between what we spend on highways versus what we spend on transit. To anyone who bemoans building rail, bike trails, or mass transit projects, please keep this in perspective.
Today we have a pretty clear problem : we have a national transportation infrastructure built upon the assumption that gasoline can be produced and sold for a few dollars a gallon. Now that that assumption is no longer valid, there are two approaches we can take :
1) Start investing public tax dollars in non-automotive infrastructure (the highways still get all the gas tax they want).
2) Freak out, drill every inch of land (and ocean) in the U.S., and pour all available public funds into delaying the inevitable decline of the oil-based transportation.
You can guess which one I’m rooting for. Which do you prefer?
Filed under culture, economics, energy : Comments (3) : Jul 23rd, 2008 by tadfad
July 25th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Oh Tad, you miss the mark again with this post. You get the historical perspective correct. The highways were built to allow for a personal transportation system to develop, but you make the fallacious assumption that this infrastructure will, in the future, accommodate naught but petro-fueled transportation. You are completely wrong here. That assumption, and the assumption that there is a dichotomous relationship between highways and other modes of transport is artificial. The fact is, American culture, American sprawl and American size prohibit the real re-development of any kind of long-haul mass transit system. Face the fact that most Americans desire personal transportation and are willing to pay more than $4/gallon for petrochemicals. A counter proposal to your silly suggestion that we invest in mass transit systems that nobody will use is to use that money to invest in alternative personal transportation systems. Mass transit may work in high-density “Old Europe” but it is just a pipe dream to expect it to work in the wide open, low density America I know.
July 26th, 2008 at 12:08 am
Hope muttmutt I don’t agree…personal modes of transportation will only work for locall transportation. However, regional transporation could be much better served by public transit. Sure some will continue to use cars for trips 200-500 miles, but the option to have regional rail is more & more attractive for a variety of reasons. It will come back in strength, no matter what the perception might be right now. Regional rail transit is coming back, mark this.
July 28th, 2008 at 4:21 am
Regional transportation systems may evolve or they may not. That’s not entirely relevant to my argument. But they will only evolve in this country if there is demand for them. Frankly, I don’t see that happening. People in this country love their cars and motorcycles. They’re not going to give them up. My suggestion is what we should be focusing on is an alternative fuel vehicle for long-distance travel (non-corn based ethanol, hydrogen, electric, other…) based on the desire for a personal transportation vehicle. What you may see over the next 25 years is the emergence of more regional light-rail systems to help folks stuck in suburbia and exurbia reach their jobs in the urban core. But eventually, with the development of low-cost, renewable fueled vehicles, these systems will fall into disuse and eventually be abandoned.