Long Range Planning
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
It’s usually around this time every year that Mass Transit sits down and looks forward to what it is going to do in the next year. We look at the conferences on the horizon, we look at what agencies are making waves in the industry and what topics are button-pushers for our readers.
Looking ahead like that, for me as the editor, gives me a chance to step back and look at everything from a different point of view. Usually, we’re so knee deep in getting the magazine out that we hardly have a chance to stop and look at the big picture.
I wonder how many agencies are like that? When I talked to George Warrington last year for our Dec/Jan cover story, he said you couldn’t let yourself get consumed by the day-to-day clutter of running an agency. And with all of the agencies I travel to, there is a lot of things that can clutter up your day.
Heck, how many times have you sat there at the end of the day with that feeling that you were busy all day, but seemed to get nothing that you planned done? Between meetings and phone calls and discussions with staff members, the day gets eaten up pretty quickly.
How often do we get the chance to really step back and look around at where we are as a company/agency/magazine/industry and where we may go in the next year or so? We all have long range plans. For transit these plans come part and parcel with the job. You can’t run an agency without some sort of plan for the future. But those long term goals can’t be so far out that we lose track of the immediacy of what’s coming around the bend while we balance the future versus the present.
Thinking ahead seems to be anathema in today’s day and age of instant gratification. I want it now has no longer become the tantrum cry of a five-year-old, rather the booming tone of the masses. Everyone is on a limited time span, and they want their new service here and now.
It’s no wonder the fight for transit is so hard — we’ve forgotten what waiting is like.
Thanks for reading the MT Position, updated every Thursday.
May 31st, 2007 at 4:12 pm
Amen on the days being cluttered with all sorts of meetings, calls, emails, etc., etc., etc.! But planning is esential if we are to survive. It’s hard to take that step back and view the big picture, but it’s absolutely necessary.
June 1st, 2007 at 5:46 am
Long range planning can also be in scope; looking past your town line. Big picture transit planning did not exist here on Cape Cod - the towns would figure out what they wanted and tell the RTA to run it. The result was, as a region, things were not well thought out.
5 years ago a “Task Force” of people not usually in the same room together developed a 5 year plan which has started to make a difference. It has helped establish a regional route on the Outer Cape http://www.theflex.org that is starting it’s second year and has become an example for other areas of the Cape. The planning also unlocked funding through unconventional sources and continues to provide opportunities that would have been missed.
Definitely worthwhile.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Tahoe Valley Lines too, has tried to look at the big picture. Local circulation in the Lake Tahe Basin, engineered to accomodate not-too distant rail access from outside the Lake environs. “A Clean Transportation System Capable of Hauling Passengers & Freight”… So said an academy award winning, popularly elected President- in July 1997at the Lake Tahoe environmental Summit. Later, at the UNR Workshop sessions, Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater repeated that very rail- sounding phrase. They both seemed to believe “Parallel Bar Therapy” is needed.
Tahoe Valley Lines is thinking ahead to an Electric Interurban System, modernized to use renewable source energy, and linking two capital cities, Sacramento CA, & Carson City NV. via the US 50 Corridor. Handy hydropower enroute; lots of solar & windy too! Readers can investigate a boilerplate mission statement in The Association For The Study Of Peak Oil & Gas, Newsletter 42, article 374. (http/www.peakoil.net) Discuss this approach in your respective locales!
EVERY transit/transport official needs to include Peaking Oil & Global Warming ramifications in the planning, and their respective staffs so directed. All Americans need to be included in a robust information outreach that will, in no uncertain terms, make it clear that “Something Extraordinary Is Afoot”.