Transportation Improvements: Convincing Conservatives
Decatur Metro | June 7, 2011I saw this mentioned on Fresh Loaf yesterday, but Brian reminded me of it this morning.
The SaportaReport relays a talk given by William Lind, director of the American Conservative Center for Public Transportation in Arlington VA, to the Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable back on June 3rd, which points out that while liberals are most well-known for their near-sexual attraction to public transportation, it’s actually an issue that transcends party affiliation. Some really juicy quotes in this one…
“You can’t get conservative votes with liberal arguments,” Lind said. For example, they should not utter the word — environment. Instead, they should talk about conservation and stewardship. “Vocabulary is important.”
Lind is a big proponent of rail transit rather than traditional city buses. “Very few conservatives will ride buses,” Lind said. “Rail can provide a quality of service to compete with cars.”
Also…
Lind said conservatives also will embrace the national security argument for transit.
“One third of our defense budget can be traced back to our dependence on foreign oil,” Lind said. But that dependence can be reduced by bringing back rail transit. “Let’s rebuild the network we had back in the 1950s. All we want to do is get back to what we had.”
Now since this was a political tactics talk, it sorta comes off as putting one over on conservatives wary of public transit. But looking beneath the “here’s how we get it passed!” rhetoric, there are quite a few facts that are often overlooked in conversations about transit in favor of clinging to old misconceptions. Examples? There just happens to be a concise list in the article!
The first misconception: the current automobile dominance is a free market outcome. Wrong, Lind said. The dominance of automobiles is a result of nearly a century of government subsidies in highways while taxing privately-owned electric railways and railroad-owned passenger trains.
Second misconception: trains and transit are subsidized while highways pay for themselves. Instead, highway user fees, including the gas tax, only pay for 52 percent of all highway costs. By comparison, Amtrak covers 67 percent of its operating expenses from ticket sales and other revenues.
Also, on average, rail transit covers about 53 percent of its costs from the farebox, but fares only cover 28 percent of the costs of urban bus systems.
The third misconception: where public transit is necessary, buses are always better than trains. Actually, buses primarily serve the transit dependent; but rail transit will serve choice riders — people who could drive but choose to use transit. Plus, rail has other advantages.
“If you give people buses, they’ll drive,” Lind said. “And buses are no always cheaper. Rail has higher upfront investment costs but lower operating costs.”
For example, Lind said the average operating cost per passenger mile for rail is 50 cents versus 90 cents for bus.
He doesn’t want the rail network we had in 1950. That’s just ridiculous. No one is going to ride a 1950’s era train across the country or even 200 miles. If there were a market for that kind of passenger rail, Norfolk Southern, Burlington Northern, CSX, etc., would be providing it on their existing rail lines. He’s advocating for the massively expensive high-speed rail projects Obama has proposed, or some variant of it. It can’t be anything else.
The argument that there are “misconceptions” about roads does not make the case for high speed rail. These rail projects either make sense or they don’t on their own terms. There, this blurb offers nothing but straw men. Especially specious is the notion that conservatives are too selfish/stupid to be convinced by an appeal to environmental preservation, but will fall for a vocabulary switch to “conservation.” It’s always tempting to think of one’s political arguments are total rubes, but it is usually wrong. Also, “very few conservatives will ride buses.” Oh really — he has checked the politcal leanings of bus riders? How on earth did he manage that? “Hello sir, thank you for riding Greyhound, and how do you feel about federal taxes and gay marriage?” I’d agree that the poor tend to ride buses, but not because they’re liberal. It’s because they’re poorand can afford the bus. But even that is a gross generalization. How many wealthy liberals are there riding MARTA buses all over town?
I’d be a lot more convinced by a “conservative” case for a specific rail project that made sense. Maybe someone can tell me why the now ill-fated Orlando to Tampa rail made sense: $2.7 billion to build high speed rail along a 84 mile stretch already connected by highways. I’ve never seen a sensible case for it. Ditto California’s LA to SF project, which is to begin with the now-infamous $5 billion train to nowhere out in some cow pasture. That project needs $9 billion from dead-flat-broke California just for construction. Dead-flat-broke Uncle Sam is to chip in most of the rest. In the end, there there will be a train that, even under the most optimistic (read: impossible) scenario, will take 3 hours to make the same SF/LA trip which an airline will complete in about 1.5 hours. (Of course, add in the time for the 24 proposed stops along the way and the 3 hour estimate is probably not even close.) All that for $50 billion or more, what a bargain. They’ve already spent over $250 million on the thing, and haven’t laid a single track! At least it will creat (or save) lots of jobs. Take it away, Lyle Lanley:
Is high-speed rail even mentioned in the article? He’s talking to ATL leaders about local options for the one-cent transportation tax. So what exactly are you referencing?
I’m talkingout the Lind quotes. He’s talkintg about a rail network.
“The argument that there are “misconceptions” about roads does not make the case for high speed rail.”
Well, apparently no case has to be made for roads, only for anything other than other roads.
“I’d agree that the poor tend to ride buses, but not because they’re liberal. It’s because they’re poorand can afford the bus. But even that is a gross generalization. How many wealthy liberals are there riding MARTA buses all over town?”
The above makes no sense. Is it a “gross generalization” that the poor can afford the bus?
At any rate, what Lind, a self-proclaimed conservative, actually said and wasn’t reported, was that whites will not ride a bus because there are mostly non-whites on buses.
No, they can afford the bus and ride it because they can afford that but not their own car. That’s a more likely explanation than Lind’s, which seems to be that political affiliation, as opposed to income, explains ridership. If what he meant is that whites won’t ride because they’re essentially racists, that’s another smear altogether.
“I’d be a lot more convinced by a “conservative” case for a specific rail project that made sense”
How about one funded totally by tax dollars, which most roads are?
If a train can move a ton of freight over 400 miles on a gallon of fuel, then a train can move 10 people weighing 200 pounds each over 400 miles on a gallon of fuel. The days of cheap gas ( and I’m referring to any gas under $5/gallon), will be coming to an end in this country in the near future. Oil is getting harder to extract, and China and India will pay top dollar for it. We REALLY need to start building the infrastructure for that day….
Privatize it! allow rail lines to be privatly run (as they all used to be)…Get the heavy hand of the government out of it.
Shoot, if the busiest border crossing in the US can be private (Ambassador bridge – Detroit to Windsor), a silly little train line from Decatur to Emory (or train line of your choosing) can be to…
Weren’t the same arguments against spending government money made by conservatives when the federal interstate highway system was proposed and built? Or how about the trillions of government dollars spent to complete our air transportation system? These are both examples of government basically subsidizing private transportation. Shouldn’t the conservative argument have been that these should all just have been private efforts?
The only reason conservatives can point out that people do not prefer travel by high speed train in this country is because for 50 years the government has been spending trillions of dollars subsidizing roads and air travel instead of high speed rail.
The other side is simply arguing that because the era of cheap oil is over we are going to have to change that and start builing a high speed rail network in this country. The other choice is continue subsidizing oil producing regimes in the middle east that hate us. Surely conservatives don’t want us to continue doing that?
Conservatives won’t ride buses? Sounds like a “gotcha question” by the liberal media. Even Sarah Palin rides a bus these days!
Theyhave buses in Alaska? I didn’t see many when I was there. Lots of SUVs and pick-up trucks and ATVs but not buses.