the future of Transportation in the USA

[jsanchez]

When it comes to issues of transportation, especially concerning matters related to rail systems, many conservatives and libertarians appear to have completely abandoned their basic ideals. I say this because of the transportation policies adopted by many Republican politicians and so-called "conservative intellectuals."

The policies that look like a betrayal of basic conservative - at least in the modern American sense of the word - and libertarian values are the almost mindless support for the massive government highway system and a nearly pathological hatred of passenger rail and mass transit. American conservatives are supposed to be against big government, socialism, the centralized planned economy, high taxes, welfare and government control of our lives. Yet, the present-day American highway system is the embodiment of all of these things.

The highway system is certainly big government and it borders on socialism. Only government has the money, resources and power to build highways. Our highway system is socialist because it is the perfect example of a planned, centralized economy, where government bureaucrats and politicians appropriate wealth and resources from citizens and use it arbitrarily for a perceived public good. The highway system is popular welfare because it is paid for with taxes and given away free for use by the public. The highway system is corporate welfare because it provides free services to a wide variety of business enterprises, bus companies, trucking companies, cab companies, etc. that compete unfairly with private enterprise. The highway system is the anthesis of private enterprise because it is a taxpayer subsidized monopoly that takes business from private enterprises like railroads, pipelines and airlines.

The highway system stifles competition because all but the biggest private enterprises can't compete with it. Worse, the highway system underwrites and subsidizes all manner of inefficient and unprofitable private businesses, bus companies and trucking lines, that probably wouldn't exist without the taxpayer subsidized highways. If all this wasn't bad enough the highway system represents a massive violation of property rights, vast amounts of property has been taken, often illegally, from citizens and placed under government control in the name of "public good."

The highway system suffers from virtually all of the problems that conservatives are quick to attack in other bureaucracies. It is centralized, ineffective, slow moving and incapable of meeting the transportation needs of a modern America. The highway system represents an attempt to impose central economic planning on America and an attempt that has largely failed. The railroads are now moving as much or more intercity freight than the highways at a lower cost than highways, and the airlines have basically taken over long-distance and even regional passenger travel.

To make matters worse, virtually none of the upper class individuals who demand that the American highway system be preserved at all costs actually use it. Like public school teachers and liberal intellectuals who hypocritically defend public education at all costs but send their own kids to public schools, virtually none of America's elite who gave us the highways, actually use America's highway system. The rich, the politicians, the movie stars, the businessmen, the oil and car company executives fly almost everywhere and increasingly fly in private or chartered jets. Around many of our cities these people get around by helicopter rather than cars.

An upgraded privately owned network of modern railroads would do a far better job of providing passenger and freight transportation to America's far flung communities than the highway system. Such a system built using modern technology would be of far greater benefit to average Americans and American business than our highways. The automobile then could be restored to the role for which it is best suited local and rural transportation.

Conservatives and libertarians then should be completely opposed to the highway system. They should be demanding the abolition of the taxes that subsidize the highway system, the shut down of the massive bureaucracy that runs the highways and the end to the inefficient centrally planned government subsidized transportation system. Yet, they aren't. In many cases conservatives, some of them rabid libertarians are mindlessly championing the highway system, demanding its expansion and opposing any effort to create any other sort of ground transportation in America.

The first reason for this is obvious: there is big money to be made in highways, contractors, asphalt makers, cement companies, make huge profits building, expanding and maintaining highways. The automobile makers make big money making and selling cars, so do car dealers. Oil companies make big money selling gasoline to the average American. These special interests have a big stake in preserving the highway status quo and are willing to spend big money to preserve it.

A great deal of the funding for so called conservative think tanks, including the Cato Institute, comes from these special interests. If these think tanks were to start promoting true libertarianism and apply the same standard to the highways as they do to almost any sort of government projects the funds would dry up and many if not most of the conservative intellectuals would be on the street.

Part of the reason, the conservatives attack any sort of rail scheme is they know they'll get paid for doing it. Much as so-called environmentalists undermined America's effort to harness nuclear power with hysterical propaganda on behalf of the coal industry. The so-called conservatives are now trying to sabotage America's attempts to create a modern rail network and mass transit on behalf of highway special interests.

Now, I'm not saying that conservatives should endorse or support every rail scheme here. Many government run rail schemes including some of the so called mass transit in our cities are ridiculous wastes of money and examples of centralized, ineffective bureaucratic control. I'm saying we should set up sensible public private partnerships to provide rail transportation, the airline industry provides an excellent model of such partnerships. The government could finance the infrastructure industry can't just as it finances air ports and private enterprise would provide the trains and operate them.

The other reason why conservatives are so wedded to the highway system is that it is popular. Americans love the illusion of freedom and independence that the car provides, they love the ability to drive out to the fishing hole or the cabin in the woods or live in a far flung suburb just as Frenchmen and Germans are wedded to their welfare state benefits. Getting rid of the auto welfare state would be rough and it wouldn't be popular and would cost Republicans and conservatives a lot of votes. Yet it must be done and the sooner the better if we are to have a modern transportation network in America.

We have seen the result of the coal-financed anti-nuclear hysteria in the increasing danger of global warming, much of which is caused by coal burning, and the energy crises sweeping through California and threatening other parts of our nation. If we had built adequate numbers of nuclear power plants in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. America would have adequate supplies of electricity to meet its needs and would be able to comply with treaties on BTUs and the greenhouse effect. Of course, we would have burned a lot less coal and the coal industry's profits would have fallen considerably.

The conservative opposition to rail will have similar effects, because of conservative anti-rail efforts. America will lack a modern transportation system and will not be able to cope if we face a massive oil shortage, or the massive increases in population and commerce coming in the next few decades. Without transportation our economy won't function and we could be reduced to third world status. Our highway system can't provide the transportation our nation needs now and the highway bureaucracy has proven completely incapable of expanding the system to meet our increasing transportation demands. New highway projects now take decades and by the time they're finished they're usually too small to meet the demands placed on them.

Conservatives and libertarians then had better rethink their transportation agenda and start putting their values ahead of greed and political expediency. Yes, they would loose some votes and money now but they'd come out ahead in the long run.

American conservatives and libertarians in transportation matters should follow the example of British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher. Maggie saved Britain by making massive cutbacks in the welfare state infrastructure and privatizing wasteful government run enterprises that were sapping the nation's economic vitality and threatening it's future. Even though these cutbacks caused great pain they saved Britain's economy and paved the way for an economic revival in Britain. Today, even Maggie's arch enemies, the Labor Party, are following most of her policies because they correct and effective ones.

In America, we need somebody with the guts, brains and iron will of Maggie Thatcher to go after the highway system. To start cutting or redirecting fuel taxes, slashing highway budgets, ending new highway construction, cutting back the highway bureaucracy and organizing the removal of many highways. Such policies won't be popular and they'll be very painful but they will be necessary and America will be better off for them.

If American conservatives don't start applying their basic values to the highway system and privatize transportation. America will be saddled with an ineffective, expensive, oversized, centrally planned and bureaucratic transportation system that won't be able to meet our needs and will collapse sooner or later. When that collapse comes, the conservatives who mindlessly defended the highway system will pay for it at the ballot box. To make matters worse, Democrats and the rest of the big government crowd will then be able to force a massive, expensive, inefficient and ineffective taxpayer subsidized government run rail system on America and place America's transportation system back under government control for another century. We've seen the damage done by the government run highway system, do we want to repeat that fiasco with new technology or let private enterprise do the job?

Its time for conservatives to take a long hard look at their transportation policy and adopt a new transportation policy that really reflects their ideals. If they don't then they won't have a future.


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[thirdrail1]

I should have guessed before reading the credits that it is Paul Weyrick, the archconservative trolley car buff, that's speaking here. The basic question is, in a democracy, if the majority are stupid jerks, don't they have the right to be stupid jerks?

[thirdrail1]

That's Paul Weyrich, sorry.

[Anonymous]

interesting rant, however some points are incorrect, for example, toll highways are not necessarily done by the big central government, albeit it is generally the state govt. that is involved, and they are not for profit. perhaps you would rather have general motors build and own the highways? who would you have build your local streets? GE? unfortunately even in the old days, towns needed roads within the town and connections to other towns and cities, and these were not just rail connections, there were road connections along which many of the older US highways followed the same paths. how would you propose to achieve the same connections? without right of way laws how would a private company that was planning on building a road/highway obtain the necessary land? also, where do you suppose the railroads got their land, they didn't buy it, it was granted to them by your favorite central government in the form of land easements, vast, huge easements wich the railroads turned into extremely profitable ventures, such as coal fields, gas/oil rights, downtown office buildings, etc, etc, etc. as for your example of the private/public partnership in airlines, sorry, that too is a taxpayer subsidized infrastructure built and maintained by us with some (although definately not sufficient to cover expenses) user fees paid by the air carriers. the entire air traffic control system as well as most of the airports are central government at work. I'm sorry but in general I would have to say that your opinions, although thoughfully presented and complety entitled to, are way off base as far as the reality of todays situation. about the only thing that I could see changing (although not likely) is that trucks/airlines/barges be charged a sufficient user fee that the true costs they impose on their respective infrastructure be fully recovered, i.e. no taxpayer subsidy for air traffic control/airports, barge lines completely cover the costs of dredging/locks/canals etc, trucks and truck lines pay, in highway user fees, the true cost of the damage they do to highways, local roads, etc. Of course, these would be extremely painful courses of action, as the companies would have to pass these higher fees on to the customer, resulting in huge price increases on virtually everything, and a large number of small to mid-size companies would simply not be able to compete as their cost per unit would be higher than the larger corporations resulting in a vast number of companies going belly up with the resulting layoffs. End result from all this chaos would be a recession/depression and further consolidation of most industries into large multi-national/multi-layer corporations, which would actually be the antithesis of what your goals are, namely limited central control (whether it is government or large corporate control it is still the same) and a reduction in taxes (if they reduce the tax on bread, but the price doubles due to increased costs to the manufacturer/monopoly control, do you actually gain anything????). While this is an interesting topic to discuss, it is clearly not as black and white as you seem to think. Privatization of everything more than likely does not live up to the "promote the general welfare" portion of our government, nor does it save us from being a quasi socialist government either, as we still have to have some central planning and control from somewhere, unless you are promoting anarchy, in which case i would suggest visiting some of the third world countries you mentioned, where the central control is being divided by wars.
in any event, an interesting discussion on a very difficult subject.
respectfully...

[Anonymous]

This article is first off, spam. You can see they posted this propaganda everywhere. And most of it is completely inaccurate. I myself am a Libertarian and can tell you we do not support a huge, federally funded highway system. This is a carefully worded politial tool which has no place in our railroading forums. This guy is trying to blame libertarians and conservatives for the railroads problems. I hope everyone sees right through it.

[thirdrail1]

Mr. Weyrich is a libertarian who lets his love of trolley cars interfere with his economic beliefs. But, that said, I too am a member of the Libertarian Party, and I do agree that many in the party do not see the huge subsidies for highway construction and aircraft navigation as the socialistic subsidies that they are. The fundamental question is, if the majority of the population wants to subsidize a certain form of transportation in preference to another, is it not their right?

[DenWoz]

I'm referring to both Harry Bruce's and John Kneiling's articles in TRAINS, June 1988 issue. Although I'm not a business admin degree recipient nor am I in RR mgmt, I have thoughts for the railroad future.

High speed segment studies and proposals have finally gotten off the ground. RR officials and business school graduates can learn from the technologies, potentials, and strength of the Shinkansen and TGV passenger service. Also they can focus on the successes, strategies, and innovations of the large lines' branch spinoffs to Vermont Ry., Wisconsin Central, Indiana Rail Road, and so on for freight shipping. Whether with any means of movement, we may transform advanced technologies to freight and passenger trains. While Japanese specialists acquire control over some of American businesses, they haven't ever looked into operating any of our railroads. Such specialists from the Oriental country can help us run the railroads in logistic and improved ways.

Both the Shinkansen and TGV trains run on standard gauge. To the cab computer of the electrically-powered trains, signals are transmitted over catenary wires. Shinkansen trains operate at an average top speed of 130 mph. TGV's runs at a 185-mph average speed. TGV trains run on welded rails on concrete sleepers. While cast concrete is said to be highly difficult to maintain, consideration may be given to steel ties and roadbed infrastructures.

Magnetic levitation is under study, although technology, economics, energy consumption, and environmental impact currently don't warrant such rail operations. If it is proved successful, the Dept. of Transportation may project such high speed service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas by maglev.

The European Community is operating a unified-network railway system over various member countries. These countries (EC states) are ensuring the establishment by mutual recognition and harmonization. The latter includes regulations of rail service. Whatever the tecnnologies, economies, marketability, and physical state the EC avails itself to rail operation, we can learn from this trend. As the US is seeking a free economic trade with Canada, it can establish a new passenger service route from Albuquerque, or as far south as El Paso, to Edmonton. Such trains can run over Albuquerque, Trinidad and Denver CO, Cheyenne and Casper WY, Great Falls MT, Lethbridge, Calgary, and Edmonton AB. They may make connections with various east-west trains in both countries. The US can also initiate another America-Canada service in and out of the country at Slt. Ste. Marie MI.

Nebraskans board and detrain from Amtrak's ZEPHYR between Denver and Chicago during the night. If it is marketable, Amtrak can place a pair of trains between Denver and Omaha and another pair between McCook and Chicago on daytime schedule. Passengers bound for and leaving Nebraska can take the pleasure of day service. A direct daytime train between Denver and Chicago could be started if the tracks warrant a 12- or 13-hour schedule.

Once a Washington administration is hinting to impose another gas tax hike for highways. We seem to expand on highways while the Europeans are expanding on high-speed tracks. We have too much of interstate highways.

Airline routes have gotten crowded; air fares have occasional been at war; and safety is a subject of concerns. Airports are located away from cities' business centers. High speed trains would move people from one business center to another. This system would provide a safer transport.

I've referred to Aaron Klein's SUPERTRAINS (Exeter Books, NY City 1985) for information about the French and Japanese high-speed trains. Mary Ellen Botter of the DENVER POST has also spoken of the TGV's. I've also obtained various other info mentioned in this message from TV news and other newspapers. Respectfully, Denny, Colorado

[citidude]

This has some merit up to a point. However, many of the points are overstated. For example, intercity bus ridership (especially on Greyhound) has been stagnant or declining. The massive amounts spent on highways do not have a signiciant influence on people's decision to ride intercity buses. For many people, intercity buses are invisible at best and to be avoided at worst (based on negative perceptions of the people who ride buses). I long for the late 1970's when Greyhound buses had stickers on the back reading "Thanks for taking the bus and saving energy - Jimmy Carter". Unfortunely, energy conservation went out the with Reagan's election. Bush 1.0, Clinton and Bush 2.0 all have avoided serious talk about energy conservation.

To those who have unhappy memories of the Amtrak trains elimated during the Carter Administration - I would reply that the Pioneer, Desert Wind, Boston section of the Lake Shore Limited, Pennsylvanian, Hoosier State and Prairie Marksman all began operating during the Carter Administration. The deregulation of railroads, probably the best thing that ever happened to freight railroads in modern times, also was accomplished by President Carter.

However, the nationally known politician who is the strongest advocate of much greater federal investment in intercity passenger rail is Michael Dukakis. The September 1, 2001 issue of the New York Times (www.nytimes.com) has a very nice essay written by him on the need to invest more in high-speed trains.

It will take higher gasoline prices, a shift of culutral attitudes towards public transit investment and usage, leadership at the national level and a media which fairly reports on federal transportaion funding (most articles on Amtrak that I read always quote total spending on Amtrak since it was formed in 1971, whereas aviation and highway spending is typically stated on an annual basis.)

[jamesedwbradley]

I think you all have overlooked one factor (the last poster touched on it): Conservatives stress PRIVATE activities, and autos, private/chartered jets/helicopters are PRIVATE - their passengers don't have to mix with the great unwashed, as do bus, train, (AND, incidentally, airline) patrons. When we board a PUBLIC conveyance, we give up a measure of our PRIVACY, along with some of our CONTROL of our lives. This partly accounts for the great mass popularity of highways, together with their obvious flexibility esp. for the short trips. Real progress for passenger rail will have to address these feelings as well as the more practical side. Agree?

[citidude]

James, I agree. That's very much in part why I said there must be a cultural change in American attitudes towards using public transportation as one of the factors leading towards a climate where significant investments in intercity rail transportation can occur.

[jsanchez]

First all this article was written by a Libertarian, 2nd it came from a conservative think tank, 3rd I am a conservative Republican myself.
If you have been involved in promoting rail transit and passenger rail you know how intense the battle between the highway lobby/ Libertarians has become, with many Libertarians receiving funding from the highway lobby and willing to scare the public by any means neccesary into voting against rail transit projects. If you don't believe me check out this website
http://www.railroadingamerica.com/

What is funny is the first modern lightrail system in the U.S. in San Diego was the brainchild of Conservative Republican State Senator Mills as a low cost alternative to building more Freeways. It has has proven to be a huge success, with daily ridership around 100,000, but if you read many Libertarian transportation studies you would think it was a complete boondoggle and flop. Personnaly I found this article to be very interesting and thought it might create some interesting thoughts and comments. Isn't that what forums are for???

James