Another Crisis
Posted by Fred Jandt
Editor, Mass Transit
This week’s news was dominated by the looming doom of the economic crisis the United States finds itself in — as well it should. With corporate giants falling like dominoes on Wall Street, it’s no wonder the recent Metrolink crash fell off the public consciousness. Of course, this begs the question, what will the media hounds chase next week as we spiral towards the presidential election?
If you listen to the doomsayers on the cable news networks, you’d be better off taking out your 401K and start stuffing it into your mattress — of course they could be wrong. That’s the problem with what I’ve been seeing this whole election cycle, it’s one crisis after another. There always seems to be something to point fingers at and tell people to worry about.
It could be argued that in essence is the root of politics in general — finding something people are scared of and assuring them you are the person who will save them from it. Taxes, “evil” foreign nations, high gas prices or an economic collapse all fit into this bill.
And despite what most politicians may believe, and what sometimes we as a society validate, people aren’t stupid. They can smell politics, but sometimes that smell is so permeable that valid statements get mixed up in it. Take transit for example.
The transit industry could scream from the mountaintops all the perils of congestion — and to a large part the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission did this with their findings — and people would say it’s just those crazy transit people trying to get more money for Amtrak.
That sound you hear is the collective sigh from the transit industry as they look at their findings and throw their hands up in the air. Transit, despite its tremendous increase in popularity, needs to keep hitting home all of its findings. Congestion isn’t a crisis. It’s a cancer that is eating away at our cities. We need to keep pushing for a cure, not a quick fix miracle infusion of money while attention has spun toward transit.
How many crises have you seen in your lifetime? How many have there been in the history of this country? And we’re still here. We’re still standing. Football games will be played on Sunday and the buses and trains will run on Monday. The problem with surviving crises is that we eventually start looking at anyone pointing out one as Chicken Little. We need to make sure people don’t see congestion as a crisis needing a solution, but the evolution of transit in our nation.
Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,
September 26th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
The issues are a lack of leasdership, from the local to national levels. Effective leadership from the ‘working’ government day-to-day staff, business leadership, and individual leadership through pro-active involvement. We have abdicated our collective majority voices to others, a smaller majority with individual paltforms. The abililty to change is be be involved, stay involved and encourage others. If we would invets our available time, we would know/undertsnad the issues like we know sports teams, standing, and the constant “bs” that comes from the entertainment industry …. television and the screen.
September 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
So true. In the scheme of things as they are today, many people do not view congestion as a crisis. There will always be a degree of congestion–we simply can’t (and shouldn’t) build enough lanes to handle peak travel times, and, there will always be those who travel by means of SOV.
The key is in educating the public that we cannot be limited to one travel mode option, and that infrastructure improvements to transit make economic sense. That is, our time is important to us and related to our productivity, and particularly the productivity of business. It’s hard for businesses that rely on surface transportation to remain competitive when they’re stuck in congestion.