Jimmy

I’ve been mentioning for a few days that I was planning/outlining/proofreading this series of posts on Transportation in America. Basically I’ve been a transit policy wonk for several years and recently started mentally knitting all my different ideas for how to improve transit in America together into one coherent whole, and I thought “why not post it on my blog?” since it seemed like I was ignoring this poor blog and its readers. So here’s post #1: Introduction/The Problem. Comments are welcome as this is nowhere near the final version and I’d love feedback from other transit policy wonks about things I might be missing, etc.

I love transportation. Both the policy of it and the actual modes of transport; from the personal automobile to the Podcar, from freight trains to Maglev trains to private jets to 500-passenger jumbo jets, from electric cars to electric bikes to non-motorized human-powered bikes, I love all forms of transit! From global air traffic guidelines to local placement of bike paths, from bike rental programs to interstate highway construction, I love transit policy!

I know I know, I’m a huge geek and policy wonk, but that’s why I’m writing this!

You see, I’ve been educating myself on transit policy in America for several years now and I’ve come to a conclusion (a conclusion that you’ll find many other people coming to, as well): our national, regional and local transit systems are fundamentally broken in the USA. Walk with me through a simple through experiment:
You wake up one morning with the blues concerning your current location. You roll out of bed and check your savings account and find you have enough money for a little cross-country trip (I know, not likely in these economic times, but bare with me here) you have quite a few vacation days built up at work and you decide to head to the opposite coast (if you’re in Kansas it could be either coast!) for a little vacation. Now the beauty of living in America is that you have several options for how you can make this trip.

• The first thing that probably pops into most people’s minds is that you could fly. This option involves getting yourself to the nearest city with a commercial airport at least 60-150 minutes before your flight, most likely flying to a bigger airport, waiting for a few hours, then flying to your destination airport, unless your destination is a tiny airport, in which case you’ll need one more transfer. From there you need to either use some form of public transit, rent a car or have someone pick you up to get to your final destination. Depending on how many flights you have, how far you’re traveling and if the time change is in your favor or not, this could take anywhere from less than half a day to a very long day.
• Another option that people don’t think of very often, but more and more are thinking of if current ridership numbers are any indication, is to take the train. You don’t need to be in a city to catch a train like with airplanes, but train stations are just as (if not more) hard to find as commercial airports. If you choose to take the train on your trip you have the same issue of how to get yourself to the nearest station as you had with the airport. And since a lot of train stations are just a glass box by the tracks with no long-term parking like airports have you have the added issue of needing someone else to drive you and drop you off at the train station, where chances are good you’ll be left waiting for a train that’s late. On a lot of trips you’ll have a layover in Chicago where a majority of train lines start/end. If you’re traveling cross-country this approach will also take about 2-3 days as the average speed of passenger trains in the US is somewhere around 40-50mph.
• A third option is driving. We’re the country that invented the personal automobile and we’ve built a state-of-the-art 50,000-mile highway system to prove our love for cars. Road tripping, for many people, is really fun. What you lose in time (driving takes roughly 4x-8x the amount of time flying does when you factor in security lines and flight transfers) you gain in the trill of seeing this amazing country from the inside out. I think most people would agree that the 46+ hours it takes to drive from coast-to-coast is the only downside worth mentioning, but I’ll mention the cost of gas and lodging (or the cost on your back of not lodging/sleeping in your car!) as downsides to this, as well. In our fast-paced world, it seems the only reason to actually take a “flyable trip” by car instead is if you really enjoy taking road trips and want to make it part of the trip to spend a little more time getting there.
• Another option is to take the bus. Bus stations are less sparse than train stations, but I think we all know the downsides of this mode of transport? Journey times are comparable to driving or training, and it’s less personal than driving and less…”romantic” than training.
• I’m sure there are more possible ways to get from point A to point B (hey, walking and biking are good ways, but kinda not so much when you’re traveling cross-country), but I’ll leave it at that for now. My point is this: flying has become a huge hassle with over-crowded airports, harried security personnel, airlines cutting costs to the point of seriously cutting passenger comforts and over-crowded skies making flights late in parts of the country. Our national passenger rail system is a national disgrace and is stuck in the early 1900s. Our interstate system was once great but is falling into disrepair and is also getting over-crowded nationwide not to mention growing concerns about CO2 emissions from driving plus our country is so large that driving is not very feasible for most trips anyway.

That’s the central theory that I’m basing the rest of this series of posts on. America’s transit systems are broken, but we can repair them. To that end, I’ve created what I see as the idle system for transporting people, light cargo and heavy freight in the United States. My plan upgrades current systems where needed and proposes new systems in places that I see a void. It’s called the Three Part Network for transport of people and goods and it consists of 3 parts (no kidding?): National, Regional and Local/Urban transit systems.

Next post: Part 2: Overview of the Three Part Network.

P.S. I have class in 37 minutes so I’m not going to dig up sources for all the info/statements/assertions contained above, but if you have any questions about anything PLEASE comment and I’ll find a source for the information I presented. Who know, you might even catch me in a mistake. Thanks.

Posted in: Transit by jimmy2 / Tags: policy wonkery