A World Class Transportation System: Transportation Finance for a New Economy

My vision for transit is not a reinterpretation of the automobile highway – corridors for commuters – but a return to traditional transit systems: investments in financially productive places. A successful transit trip begins in a financially-productive place and ends in a financially-productive place, connecting the two in a way that is scaled to

Someone emailed me and said, “Chuck, I just want a train.” I get that. We live in a country where, through a complex set of financial circumstances, we created an illusion of wealth that has conditioned us to think big. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. America needs big thinkers with big ideas. And if your big idea is a train, you’ve been in the

In the automobile era, the risk taking is reversed. For all but the most local of transportation improvements, governments front the investment capital and take the risk. Governments gamble that the growth will happen and that, if it does, it will hold its value over time – it will generate enough wealth long term – so as to enable the system to be

Our economy is incredibly fragile. Our approach to transportation funding is incredibly fragile. The coalition proposals being put forth around the country will make the system more fragile, not less. Fragile systems eventually break.

With auto-based infrastructure needing dramatically more money than is currently available just to maintain what we’ve already built, urban transportation advocates are forced to support lots of additional revenue for roads to get tepid support for walking, biking and transit funding.

Another important factor here is that our scarce resources will be applied where there is the greatest demand, not the greatest political connections. While the former might sometimes benefit wealthy drivers, this proposal is going to be a lot more egalitarian than the current patronage system. And right now our system is pretty fair in that, when

Transportation coalitions and their patrons – a long list of professional whiners dedicated to perpetuating and exploiting the centralized, paternalistic relationship between state and local governments – will not have much to do in a depoliticized transportation system, one dedicated primarily to maintaining what we have already built.

The construction of America’s system of railroads is a complex and nuanced story full of crimes against Native Americans, the exploitation of Asian labor and the general pillaging of the countryside.

We need the private sector to take the bulk of the risks in today’s economy.