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Tag: rail

Transit advocates in Oregon and Montana take to the op-ed pages

A pair of op-ed pieces published in the past week illustrate a clamoring for action on a transportation bill that invests in the future and expands travel options for all Americans – and a resistance to the deep cuts some are championing in Washington.

The head of a development firm specializing in green building and a key Northwest labor leader took to the op-ed pages of the Oregonian. In “Getting the best bang for our transportation buck,” Gerding Edlen Development Inc. CEO Mark Edlen and Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain made the case for robust transit investment, and pointed to Portland as an example. “Not only does transit create jobs directly for workers such as bus drivers, but it also creates manufacturing jobs,” they wrote, adding:

Oregon Iron Works manufactures streetcars in Clackamas. Businesses like that are poised to grow, add jobs and better support the region’s economy if the country chooses to make more substantial investments in 21st-century transportation.

Edlen and Chamberlain also pointed out that planning and building more wisely through reformed and forward-looking transportation policy creates jobs today and a lays the foundation for a stronger economy in the decades to come.

Smart land-use planning and investments in affordable options like streetcar, light rail and bike networks make it easier to drive less here, and we do, about 20 percent less than Americans in other large cities. These household savings mean an extra $800 million circulating in our economy because spending less on imported cars and fuel means more money in local pockets to spend on local business.

In another part of the west, Missoula City Coucilmember Dave Strohmaier penned an op-ed on restoring Amtrak service in southern Montana. The piece was published in several of state’s newspapers, including the Billings Gazette.

Strohmaier said passenger rail will be an essential component of a 21st century transportation system and urged Montana to lead.

For too long, Montanans have underestimated our ability to change national transportation policy. Sure, there have been those unflagging passenger rail advocates who have continued doing the good work of keeping this issue alive for the past three decades, but until now we’ve lacked both the political will at all levels of government and a coordinated effort to make passenger rail through southern Montana a reality.

Strohmaier has no quibble with high-speed rail, but he does insist that decision-makers in both Helena and Washington remember the diverse and dispersed benefits that all forms of passenger rail provide. Montana currently receives service from Amtrak’s Empire Builder, but many residents live at great distance from the line and would benefit from additional service. “High speed rail certainly has its place in our national rail infrastructure network,” he wrote, but these projects “should not overshadow the importance of knitting together the rest of the nation — particularly rural America and the American West.”

With funding for public transportation in jeopardy, voices like these from outside of Washington are a needed boost for transit and an important reminder of the options the American say they want.

Vice President Biden makes the case for rail, cites T4 America co-chair’s hometown as an example

Vice President Joe Biden made an emphatic case for high-speed rail in Philadelphia today as the Obama administration kicks off a series of events this week to highlight the need for infrastructure investment.

Biden, who was joined by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other officials, is a fitting messenger for rail’s benefits. Dubbed “Amtrak Joe,” he was a regular commuter on the Acela line during his 36 years as a U.S. Senator from Delaware. While campaigning in 2008, he told the New York Times, “If we get elected, it will be the most train-friendly administration ever.”

The Vice President announced a six-year, $53 billion investment in national high-speed and intercity passenger rail during remarks at Philadelphia’s historic 30th Street Station. Passengers traveling on Amtrak’s Keystone Corridor from Pittsburgh and Harrisburg use the station to connect to the popular and speedy Acela line, which runs through New York City, Boston and Washington, DC.

While the Obama administration has made clear that responsible deficit reduction is a priority, Biden emphasized there are some areas where it would be irresponsible to scale back.

“As President Obama said in his State of the Union, there are key places where we cannot afford to sacrifice as a nation – one of which is infrastructure,” the Vice President said, adding: “If you shut down Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, you’d have to add seven new lanes to I-95 to accommodate the traffic.”

The Vice President singled out Meridian, Mississippi mayor and T4 America co-chair John Robert Smith, who served his hometown for four terms. Biden hailed Mayor Smith for using passenger rail to revitalize the economy, bring jobs to the region and improve quality of life. Meridian’s restored Union Station serves 300,000 passengers, hosts over 250 events every year and has leveraged millions in downtown investment.

The need for increased travel options to accommodate expected population growth was also a theme in the Vice President’s address, along with the fact that simply widening highways and building new ones will not suffice.

“In the next 40 years, the United States is expected to increase in population by 100 million people,” he said. “Seventy percent of all people in America now live within 50 miles of the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific Ocean. You know how congested we are now. What happens with 100 million more?

“When you talk about the investments we’re making in rail, they pale in comparison to investment you’d have to make in runways or highways,” he added. “And that’s before you factor in the environmental benefit of taking cars off the road.”

With this long-term commitment, cities and states now have the certainty to pursue longer-term plans for rail, and businesses can move forward putting more Americans to work making this vision possible. The administration has also made strides on streamlining existing programs in USDOT. Now, for the first time, all high-speed and passenger rail programs are consolidated into just two new accounts.

As Streetsblog already noted, the politics of transportation spending remain muddled, but today’s announcement was a key step toward laying the foundation for a 21st century system.

Photo: CNN

California needs smart station planning to maximize high-speed rail’s benefits

This is a projected image of the area around the Sacramento station, courtesy of the California High-Speed Rail Authority.

High-speed rail investment has the potential to yield great economic and environmental rewards for California, but only if communities make smart decisions about land-use and growth at and around new stations.

A new report prepared by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association offers prescriptions for how communities can prepare for rail investments.

“The new statewide rail system presents a once-in-a-century opportunity to reshape their local economies and set the course for more compact, less automobile-dependent growth,” according to the report.

The first leg of California’s high-speed rail is the backbone of the system through the state’s Central Valley, including population-rich Bakersfield and Fresno. Once all 26 stations have been completed, the system will reach northward to Sacramento and include service from San Francisco to Los Angeles and further southward to San Diego.

The benefits are plentiful. For starters, by shortening travel time between successful metro areas, high-speed rail brings geographically distant focal points closer, connecting more people to opportunities and jobs. The new stations and ease of travel can also revitalize downtowns, bring economic opportunity to low-income communities and reduce suburban sprawl.

By providing a viable alternative to the car — and, in the case of longer journeys, to energy-intensive air travel — high-speed rail is also a terrific means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and assisting California in meeting the targets of its groundbreaking climate change law, AB 32.

But each of these potential benefits comes with a cautionary tale. The BART system in the San Francisco Bay Area, for instance, was intended to fuel compact and transit-oriented development, but many of the more suburban stations were surrounded by parking lots and built away from town centers, missing the opportunity to add ridership by building up those areas or spurring new walkable centers. Similarly, most of California’s airports are surrounded by parking lots and access roads, making nearby development less desirable. Policymakers must make a concerted effort to avoid a similar fate near high-speed rail stations and be willing to prioritize growth in strategic areas.

The station sites face myriad challenges and opportunities. Some, like San Francisco and Sacramento already have traditional downtowns, while San Jose and Anaheim have emerging downtowns with the potential for growth. Stockton, Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield have downtowns as well, but struggle with high unemployment and a lack of private sector investment. Reconciling rail with more traditional suburbs and major airports will be the focus at other stations.

SPUR offers ten recommendations for planning preparation, which include:

  • Developing station area plans for each high-speed rail station area
  • Drafting statewide station area planning and development guidelines to inform local decision-makers
  • Drafting a statewide implementation plan
  • Providing financial support for local planning as needed
  • And, establishing local development corporations to facilitate local area development

To see the rest of SPUR’s recommendations and the entire report, you can visit their website here.

Speeding up, cleaning up freight movement in the U.S.

Container trucks on an American highway Originally uploaded by futureatlas.com

Since Chairman Oberstar introduced the Surface Transportation Authorization Act (STAA) last summer, we’ve increasingly heard that addressing freight congestion is going to be a major component of any national transportation policy.

Projections of the increase in freight movement in the next few years are huge — total freight movements are projected to increase by 92% in the next 30 years, according to a comprehensive congressional study. Congestion on the railroad network is also forecast to spread — by 2035, thirty percent of the rail network, or 16,000 miles, will experience unstable flows and service break-down conditions.[i] Considering the strong efficiency advantage of freight rail, that’s very bad news.

We face a choice in how the nation will step up to meet the coming demand for moving goods — and how clean those solutions will be. The upcoming reauthorization of the federal transportation bill is a great opportunity to help achieve a smarter, greener freight system. The innovative freight projects highlighted in this week’s “Good Haul” report by the Environmental Defense Fund demonstrates the practical solutions that are economically smart, protect us from harmful air pollution, and provide jobs for American workers. We have a golden opportunity to focus investments on projects that use the existing freight system more efficiently and grow the economy, while improving air quality and meeting big-picture national goals.

We need to recognize the connections between goods movement systems and public health and fast track the innovative solutions that tie transportation investments that improve efficiency with those that also improve air quality. The Good Haul report demonstrates that there have been innovative projects to address both these concerns and that some regions around the country are leading the way — but none of the practices in the case studies reflect current accepted standards or federal policy.

It’s time for the nation as a whole to refocus on options to invest in clean green freight.

Here’s a glance at a few of the 28 case studies highlighted in the report:

  • In Chicago, the CREATE program aims to reduce congestion and improve air quality by streamlining four major rail lines. Chicago handles 30% of rail freight revenue and expects to see an 89% increase in rail traffic over the next 30 years. The program will result in $1.12 billion in health care savings from improved air quality and will generate economic activity valued at more than $525 million. The program expects to create 2,700 annual jobs.
  • In Southern California, the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach launched the Clean Air Action Plan in 2006, which cleans up all areas of port activity: ships, trucks, cargo handling equipment, locomotives — even tug boats. The plan has already taken 2,000 dirty diesel trucks off the road and has created more than 3,000 jobs at the Port of LA, alone.
  • In Seattle, BNSF Railway installed four electric wide-span, rail-mounted gantry cranes at the Seattle International Gateway (SIG) intermodal facility. The cranes’ wide footprints allow them to span three tracks, stack containers and load and unload both trucks and railcars. The cranes produce zero onsite emissions and have increased throughput by 30% at the facility.
  • In the East, the Port of Virginia’s Green Goat hybrid yard switcher, a rail locomotive that moves short distances within a rail yard, provides fuel savings between 40-60% and is predicted to reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions between 80-90% annually.
  • Along the Gulf, SeaBridge freight, a coastal shipping service between Port Manatee, Florida and Brownsville, Texas avoids an average of 1,386 miles of congested highways. Compared to trucking, one SeaBridge barge has the capacity to remove 400,000 truck highway miles on a single one-way voyage.

[i] Association of American Railroads, National Rail Infrastructure Capacity and Investment Study prepared by Cambridge Systematics, Inc. (Washington, DC: September 2007), figure 4.4, page 4-10.

Debate panelists split over buses, broader impact of transit investments

Albuquerque1 Originally uploaded by Transportation for America
The new Rail Runner commuter rail service in New Mexico has been hugely popular, drawing new riders and luring former drivers to the service.

Monday’s online debate on conservatives and public transportation was billed as a back-and-forth on why the ideological right should embrace public transportation. While differences persisted between our conservative and libertarian panelists about the impact of transit investments, another schism developed over how big a role buses should play.

Monday’s debate hosted by Transportation for America centered around the book Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation, written by conservatives William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich.

Lind used his opening remarks to summarize the book and refute the oft-repeated right-wing argument that public transportation requires government subsidies while automobiles and the roads required to support them are somehow a free-market outcome.

“In fact, the dominance of the automobile is a product of massive government intervention in the marketplace,” Lind said, citing decades of federal support for the interstate highway system as streetcars remained privately operated — resulting in crushingly unfair competition. “Conservatives above all people should know what happens when you subsidize one competitor and tax the other.”

“You’re either investing in (both highways and transit) or subsidizing both,” agreed panelist John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi. “You can’t have it both ways.”

Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the libertarian Reason Foundation, was the designated mass transit critic of the debate, which he conceded was “probably accurate” but in need of further clarification. Staley is skeptical about the ability of transit to drive economic development or result in major lifestyle changes.

“I definitely think that transit has an important role to play,” Staley said, “but I think we need to be paying a lot more attention to the conditions under which transit works and when it doesn’t.”

Staley cited the Washington D.C. Metro’s Orange Line, saying transit has succeeded in dense, developed areas like Ballston in Northern Virginia but is less effective when those conditions are missing in places like New Carrollton, on the Maryland side of the District. (Didn’t the changes along the Orange line in Virginia come about largely due to that transit investment?)

Despite his misgivings about mass transit in general, Staley found himself in the unlikely position of defending buses from Lind’s attacks. Lind argued most Americans “don’t like riding buses” and that only trolleys or streetcars would persuade choice-riders to give up their cars, to which Staley responded: “If we discount buses, we’re really doing a disservice to transit generally.”

The final panelist, American Public Transportation Association (APTA) president Bill Millar, also defended buses, saying the industry is rapidly adopting new technologies like bus rapid transit and dedicated lanes, which will appeal to drivers.

Panelists answered a number of interesting questions from listeners on topics such as public-private partnerships, rural transit needs and winning over anti-tax conservatives. Overall, despite differences over the role of buses and transit’s ability to influence broader change, panelists agreed on the general importance of public transportation and the need to make practical decisions not rooted in partisanship.

Smith put it well: “As mayor, I never found a pothole or a railroad crossing that identified as a Democrat or a Republican.”

If you missed the webinar or want to listen again, you can do that with any of the links below, or on the webinars page:

Still time to register for today’s discussion on conservatives and public transportation

What is the conservative rationale for providing efficient public transportation? Some conservatives would likely suggest that the entire concept is an oxymoron. Conservatives William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich believe otherwise.

This is the final post in a three-part series on Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation, the subject of an online debate later today (at 3 p.m. Eastern, register now!) Panelists include co-author Lind, mass transit critic Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the Reason Foundation; John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi; and Bill Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

The authors identify four elements to their conservative vision for good public transport: coverage, frequency, ease of connection and a preference for rail over buses.

In a previous post, we noted the community-building element of public transportation and how that exemplified a conservative value few would fault. There is also the element of preserving — or, in some cases, reviving — what has worked in the past. Many of America’s greatest cities not only have a tradition of robust transportation infrastructure, but they also contain a historic built environment with untapped potential.

“As conservatives, we want to revive America’s older, industrial cities,” the authors note. “Older cities have lots of infrastructure that can be built on. Conservatives prefer building on what exists to creating vast systems from nothing (at vast cost).”

While lining up with many traditional conservative principles, the notions of preserving resources, building on existing traditions and making good use of what we have are goals most can support.

As conservatives, Weyrich and Lind do not speak the language of visionary social programs and even say they “desire no new technology.” Yet they reach the same conclusion as others in increasing public transportation investment as a means to achieve both economic and social ends.

We hope you’ll join us at 3 p.m. today.

Conservatives and public transportation — join us on Monday the 14th

Conservatives and Public Transportation book cover
Sign up to listen to the free online debate next Monday, 12/14

UPDATED: This session has been rescheduled for 12/14. If you already signed up with the link below, you won’t need to do a thing, and should get an email from us.

“As conservatives, our first principle is the reality principle,” wrote William Lind and the late Paul Weyrich in Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. “Public policy must be based on reality, not on the fairy-tale wishes so beloved by liberals.”

Left-leaning transit advocates need not be insulted.

The authors are simply trying to talk about public transportation in ways that appeal to right-of-center allies. If your interest is piqued, you’ll definitely want to join us for an online debate next Monday, December 7, December 14th in which a handful of experts, including co-author Lind, will discuss — and debate — the ideas contained in the book. Register for the debate here.

Reality-based planning can find appeal across political persuasions because everybody relies on America’s transportation system in one form or another. Even people who don’t use public transportation on a regular basis receive numerous benefits from its expansion, the authors point out. The reason? More rail passengers means less traffic congestion and faster commute times, a win-win.

In Salt Lake County, Utah, for instance, supporters of a referendum on light rail developed a campaign aimed at non-transit riders with the simple message: “even if you don’t ride it, you use it.” One ad focused on an automobile wheel moving along faster because of less crowded roads, while another emphasized the advantages of less traffic congestion, the authors noted.

They offer three concrete reasons in the book for why transit is good for non-riders. The first is the reduction in road gridlock. The second is “the big football game” or the car being in the shop or some other circumstance that creates the need for an alternative. The third reason is that lower congestion and better transit access actually raises property values and improves quality of life.

The authors make several peripheral points as well, such as the influence of heavy subsidies and market distortions on the prevalence of auto-oriented, low-density growth — a concept getting some notoriety in the last week.

“Every urban and suburban area should offer two alternate building codes, one the current ‘sprawl’ code and the other a code that allows traditional neighborhood design, where living, working and shopping are all close by each other,” the authors argue. “Which code will prevail? Let the market decide!”

Weyrich and Lind also reject the oft-prevailing wisdom that the “obvious” solution to traffic congestion is building more roads or lanes. When more lanes are made available, people who would not have driven otherwise make additional trips, inducing demand and resulting in yet more gridlock — the exact problem that the lanes were supposed to solve.

There is no unanimity about public transport among conservatives. One right-leaning mass transit critic is Sam Staley, director of urban and land use policy at the Reason Foundation. He will appear alongside Lind in Monday’s debate, along with John Robert Smith, president and CEO of Reconnecting America and former mayor of Meridian, Mississippi; and Bill Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA).

We hope you’ll join us too. Register today.