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

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

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

Most transit advocates I know – “Chuck, I just want a train” is one lament I’ve heard

(Note that there is a fairly large swath of people that think of themselves as “free market advocates” that will be shocked to find out how insolvent the current system is and how non-market oriented it is.

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.

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.

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

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.

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. Going back to the war analogy, this is like deciding to engage a