The MT Position

Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit magazine

This week celebrates the third annual Dump the Pump Day, which looks to be bigger than either of the previous years as gas prices across the nation soar above $4 a gallon. Transit is already posting increases in all modes and as the summer ramps up there looks to be even greater jumps in ridership.

This week also brought the announcement of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) “short list” of host cities for the 2016 Summer Olympics. The list of applicants has been whittled down to just four: Tokyo, Madrid, Chicago and Rio de Janeiro. Now comes the arduous process of providing detailed files on their Olympics plans and hosting a visit by the IOC’s Evaluation Commission. The host city will be selected via a secret ballot in October 2009.

Of the potential host cities, Chicago ranked third in terms of a technical evaluation, listing among other things infrastructure, transportation, venues, finances and security. Tokyo ranked first and Madrid came in second.

According the IOC report, it questioned Chicago’s $27 billion planned investment in highway and transit projects and said the city provided a “lack of detail” in terms of transportation plans between venues.

Chicago is banking on this Olympic bid to bring in billions of dollars in revenue for the city and its environs. Even up here in the Milwaukee area, there is talk of this bid helping to bring in revenue to local businesses and help bolster funding for highway and transit projects.

But Chicago has a long way to go before the October 2, 2009 vote deadline rolls around. Both Madrid and Tokyo boast excellent transportation systems. Tokyo’s transit system is touted as among the best in the world and having travelled on Madrid’s in the last year, I can attest to how well its system works.

And what does Chicago have in comparison? How about a series of rolling Doomsday Deadlines in the last year? A state legislature that can’t agree on how to fund one of the three largest transit systems in the United States?

If Chicago gets the bid for the 2016 Olympics it will be the first United States city to host the Summer Olympics in 20 years, since Atlanta hosted them in 1996. Planning for this bid has been ongoing for years, but how much a part of that has included transit?

I hear more along the lines of “wait until we get the Olympic bid, we’re really going to beef up the transit system then” rather than, “let’s beef up the transit system to help us get the Olympic bid.”

Transit shouldn’t be an afterthought for an Olympic bid. It shouldn’t even be integral to the bid itself. Transit should be built up regardless of the bid. It’s kind of like cleaning your house when you’re planning for guests to come over. Don’t just clean up when guests come over. You should clean all the time, because even if the guests cancel, you still have a clean house.

Chicago should have been investing in transit all along. That way if they don’t get the 2016 bid, they still would have an excellent transit system.

Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,

Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm and is filed under MT Position. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.