Harry Moroz

21st-Century Transportation Investments

A practical Michael Lind offers some sober advice to the American center-left about the types of infrastructure investment they are so supportive of:

[T]he public investment must pass the reality test…Most Americans are not going to sell their cars and move back from the suburbs to the cities in order to live in tiny apartments or condos and ride the rails to work.

Lind laments liberal fixation on high-speed rail and calls instead for more highways lanes, new highways in some cases, port expansion, freight rail modernization, and upgrading the inland waterway system. “Asphalt destined for highway and airport expansion lacks the gee-whiz factor of high-speed bullet trains,” Lind writes, “but it is much more important to the future of our economy.”

Yet, the choice between constructing another lane of highway and another line of rail is most certainly not a choice between expanding the economy on one hand and giving in to the will of the urbanist-green alliance on the other. In many cases, in fact, building rail is more effective at easing congestion and expanding the economy, along with its ample environmental and health benefits.

To state that most Americans will not move back to the cities any time soon misses the point. The political project of building transportation alternatives – in fact the liberal part of that political project – aims to distribute the economic benefits of transportation investments more equitably. Transportation policy favored the automobile in the 20th century and created the suburban development type Lind says Americans now prefer. This is the real reality liberals must confront.

Harry Moroz: Author Bio | Other Posts
Posted at 1:46 PM, Jun 09, 2010 in
Permalink | Email to Friend