Transportation Subsidies

Daniel Peterson has an excellent Crossroads piece that exposes the hypocrisy of those who oppose freight and passenger rail investments even as other more costly forms of transport feed at the public trough.

Peterson writes:

If it's the subsidy of rail transportation that you oppose, then philosophical integrity requires that you also oppose subsidies for the trucks, barges, buses and airlines that compete with rail. Something more to think about: Railroads are four to five times more fuel efficient for moving freight than are trucks. And just one freight train with two crew members moves the equivalent of 400 semis with 400 drivers (which drain public coffers because "...one 80,000-pound truck does the same road damage as 9,600 automobiles.").

Money follows efficiency unless artificially tampered with, and so my assertion is that if the competing non-rail modes of transportation had not been artificially supported via massive subsidies, the private railroads in the U.S. would still be operating tens of thousands of miles of now abandoned rail lines.

Privately operated intercity and intracity passenger rail service might still be viable, as it was prior to the "freeway" system. Most freight would be on the rails instead of clogging up the roads, so we would have needed far fewer roads and lanes on expressways. And, therefore, our taxes would be significantly less today.

Oh, and that estimated $18 billion to expand one airport? Less than half that amount would build a high-speed rail network connecting Chicago-Milwaukee-Minneapolis, Chicago-St. Louis, Chicago-Indianapolis and Chicago-Detroit.

The article is linked.

Milwaukee needs catalytic public infrastructure investment

UWM professor Marc Levine's Crossroad's article challenges the strategic timidity of Milwaukee's political and business elites. He writes:

The dismal failure of Milwaukee’s civic leaders to bring the region’s public transit infrastructure up to 21st-century standards is more than just another run-of-the-mill breakdown in leadership.

It is a public policy debacle that threatens the very economic viability of this city and region — and it comes at a time when we already are struggling with stagnant growth, spreading poverty and shockingly high rates of joblessness in the inner city.

Skyrocketing gas prices and awareness of climate change are reshaping the way Americans live, work and play. Mass transit ridership is surging in cities with rail transit systems, as commuters seek alternatives to $4.50-a-gallon gasoline. Suburban and exurban communities, whose growth was predicated on cars and cheap gas, are facing bursting housing bubbles and an uncertain future.

In this new era, the economic winners will be cities and regions that have invested in state-of-the-art mass transit. Unfortunately, few metropolitan areas are less prepared for these changes than Milwaukee.

This article should be required reading at the next M7 meeting!

It is linked.