Commentary—

The Odds Are Still Stacked Against Transit

By William A. Collins

Automakers,

Raise a fuss;

If pols are friendly,

To the bus.

In the face of global warming, vanishing open spaces, and stratospheric gas prices, what sort of car ads do you suppose are run during football games? That’s right, SUVs and pick-up trucks. Pick-up trucks capable of towing away your house if you come up with a pressing reason.

Now the last thing that I-95, I-84 and I-91 need is more gas-guzzlers. We all know that. So why the ads? Well, that’s where the money is, silly. The profit margin on a Buick Battlewagon or a Mercury Monstrosity is so great that the companies can’t pass up the chance to peddle them, especially to football fans. But suppose what the country really needs is mass transit? Sorry, that’s somebody else’s department.

And Connecticut really does need mass transit, but unfortunately, that’s actually nobody else’s department. In America, it’s usually not. Yes, there are plenty of non-profit groups that promote it, and a bureau in the Transportation Department is in charge of it, but the only transit advocates with any real clout are those with the real money. (Read, New York commuters.) Consequently, buses and light rail get lots of pleasant reports, but very few appropriations outside of MetroNorth.

Interestingly, it has turned out to be the Far West, not the crowded Northeast, where public transportation has made its greatest gains. That is the land where men are men but, luckily, women are senators. Maybe that helps. Anyway, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco have become models of transit efficiency. Even LA, perhaps in a deathbed conversion, is gradually getting on board too. And in the heartland, whoever would have guessed that Dallas would become Trolley Capital of the Prairie?

But the central problem goes back to those SUV ads and the corporate powerhouses behind them. Both the auto and oil industries promote car travel as fun, convenient, macho, safe, and patriotic. Taking the bus or carpooling is for weirdos. You’re not a real man, woman, or family without a Hellfire 8. Don’t you care about your kids’ safety?

The problem is compounded, especially in Connecticut’s narrow confines, by the culture of traffic engineers. As allies of industry, these professionals are instructed in the beauty of the gradual incline, the sweeping curve, and the broad median. No one should ever have to drive below 75 mph on any highway designed by these grads. Bye-bye trees, streams, wildlife, outcrops and houses. Practitioners take guidance from Handel’s Messiah: “Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.”

With this theological basis for right-of-way acquisition, our highways have largely become models of desecration. That is perhaps a blessing in disguise, because it fosters opposition. This opposition is useful at a time when both national security and economic reality tell us that we really do have to cut back on that oil stuff. The recent completion of the interstate system is fortuitous timing as well.

But where will the muscle come from to force change upon Congress? Clearly, Washington needs a Department of Mass Transit. So does Connecticut, or else that New Britain-Hartford busway may never see the light of day. Unfortunately our nation probably needs a bureaucracy to host corrupt transit builders on the same scale that our current infrastructure hosts corrupt highway builders. That’s just the way that things get done.

We also need an influential train maker. We’re producing more buses for ourselves these days, but our rail cars all seem to come from Kawasaki and Bombardier. How about a shady manufacturer of our own? Otherwise, gridlock looms and global warming won’t abate. Besides, in Europe mass transit is fun. Are they so much smarter than we are?

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)