The best place to start is with the development of the railroad industry, where misguided progressivism, corruption and statist mentalities almost totally destroyed what should be considered a crown jewel of the American free enterprise system. Two books by Albro Martin provide a good overview of the rise, decline and revitalization of American railroad industry: Enterprise denied; origins of the decline of American railroads, 1897-1917 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971) and Railroads Triumphant: The Growth, Rejection, and Rebirth of a Vital American Force (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992). While the federal government assisted the construction of private railroads with land grants, this was not without a price as railroads had to carry government cargoes (mails and military supplies) and personnel at reduced cost. Railroads also paid income taxes and property taxes, perhaps making them the only form of transportation to be profitable to federal and state governments.

Corrupt politicians such as Frank Hague in New Jersey used railroads running through their states as personal piggybanks, robbing them as they saw fit. The Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) emerged as a draconian regulatory agency that long blocked the railroads from developing coordinated transportation, in other words, integrated rail, road, air and water passenger transport and intermodal freight shipping.

American railroads were quite amazing. They maintained their own infrastructure including major urban passenger terminals, provided for their own security with their own police forces, provided health care for their own employees with their own hospitals and surgeons, cleaned up their own accidents, and even maintained a cadre of transportation specialists at their own expense to stand ready for military mobilization during national emergencies. The Staggers Rail Act of 1980 finally abolished the ICC. Correspondingly, railroads recovered magnificently after the 1980s as efficient freight carriers. Privately operated passenger rail service may see its emergence in the state of Florida, although in a limited way, in the next two years.

Conservatives should recall that federal road building has long been part of the left wing/progressive agenda, always in part directed against the private ownership of transportation infrastructure. The rise to primacy of the petroleum powered motor vehicle in America was in part due to the destruction of privately owned and operated electric interurban and street railways. The CEO of General Motors (GM), Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., came to the conclusion in 1923 that the American automobile market was saturated – those who wanted cars already owned them. As a result, from the 1920s to the 1950s GM used its sizeable financial muscle through a Byzantine network of subsidiaries and holding companies to buy privately owned electric railway systems throughout the United States and systematically dismantle them, forcing former users no other alternative but to purchase automobiles. While GM and their co-conspirators, Standard Oil, Mack Trucks and Firestone Tire Company, were caught red-handed at this, they received only token fines. Stephen Goddard’s Getting There: The Epic Struggle between Rail and Rail in the American Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996) provides a good overview of the rise of the federal highway system as well as the destruction of privately owned electric rail transit in America. Helen Leavitt’s Superhighway – Superhoax (Garden City, NY: Doubleday Press, 1970) also deals with the rise of the federal highway system, but her book addresses actual national defense needs and federal interstate highways in a stronger way than Goddard’s Getting There.

While ’robber baron’ has been an oft-misused moniker, it does well describe many of the powerful and corrupt government bureaucrats and politicians associated with highway construction. Robert A. Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1975) gives a good insight into the character of such men through his study of the notorious Robert Moses.

The federal interstate highway system was perhaps the greatest American defense fraud of the twentieth century. According to Leavitt, labeling the interstate highway system as vital to national defense “was simply a ‘sweetening’ device to gain support for the program back in 1956.” From reading General James A. Van Fleet’s monograph Rail Transport and the Winning of War (Washington, DC: Association of American Railroads, 1956), one sees that highway transportation was actually more vulnerable in an atomic attack and interstate highway construction for defense purposes was counter to the transportation lessons learned in the Korean War where Van Fleet was commander of the Eighth Army. Both sides in the Korean conflict were heavily reliant on rail transport. Despite strategic bombing, the North Koreans and Chinese were able to keep their railroads running, supplying new offensives against the United Nations forces. Reading Robert Goralski’s and Russell W. Freeburg’s Oil & War: How the Deadly Struggle for Fuel in WWII Meant Victory or Defeat (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1978) clearly shows the overall strategic stupidity of developing a national transportation system increasingly dependent on the consumption of petroleum. By the 1950s, the United States was an importer rather than an exporter of petroleum, increasingly dependent on distant sea lanes that could be disrupted as shown by the Suez Crisis of 1956. The virtue of rail transport from a strategic perspective has been (and still is) that it is about three times more energy efficient than motor transportation. Railroads could also be powered electrically from alternative sources such as coal, hydro, or nuclear power.

The long term effects of the destruction of privately owned rail mass transit systems and the federal interstate highway gosplan is well covered in James Howard Kunstler’s The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994). The effects can hardly make conservatives happy as it has meant the destruction of the traditional sense of community on a large scale. It also shows that a national economic policy based on continuously encouraging construction of patches of McMansions connected to the interstate highway system is not sustainable or fiscally sound. What can be done? Some ideas are provided in Paul M. Weyrich’s and William S. Lind’s Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation (Washington, DC: Reconnecting America, 2009).

There is a lack of critical books on the development of American air transportation in the post-World War II era. In the weeks after September 11, 2001, critics of George W. Bush’s plan to bail out the airlines affected by the attack, pointed out that with the federal financing of airport construction, operation of the air traffic control system and numerous bailouts of bankrupt airlines (justified for national defense purposes), the aviation industry has been a money loser for the federal government since 1945. If such a book is written, it will be a sorry tale of greedy airline executives, corrupt politicians and unscrupulous lobbyists – all with a winner take all mentality towards their favored mode of transport, none of it boding well for the development of an integrated national transportation system or balanced federal budgets. The result is a lack of choice and convenience in intercity travel, jack-booted federal security at airports and, overall, to the traveling public, domestic air travel akin to how hogs for many years traveled to the Union Stockyards in Chicago.

Dr. Eric Sibul is a professor at the Baltic Defense College in Tartu, Estonia

In early January, I journeyed up the West Coast, from LA to Seattle, by train and other public transportation.  Here are a few observations from that trip.

With a friend and his nine-year old son, I took the Coast Starlight from LA to San Francisco.  Bad dispatching made us run about an hour late – – as the conductor said over the train’s PA system, “You can’t spell stupid without UP” – – but it was a scenic run and faster than if we had driven, since snow closed Interstate 5 for eighteen hours.  When everything else shuts down, the trains usually still run.

Both my friend and his son loved the train.  Accustomed to flying, they could not get over how much more comfortable the train was, yet also cheaper (we were in coach).  It was the boy’s first real train trip, and he cannot wait for more.  He was astonished and delighted by the freedom of the train.  Instead of having to sit in a small seat, belted in, he was allowed to go everywhere on board; the only rule we laid down for him was “Don’t get off.”  He made new friends, enjoyed the lounge car, saw wonderful views out the big windows and dinner (with us) in the dining car.  From the age of eight, I took all-day journeys by myself on the train, and there were few things I enjoyed more.  Boys still love trains and always will.

We spent a weekend in San Francisco, a city my friend had often visited by car.   We got transit passes and saw the city by cable car and streetcar.   At the end of the day Saturday, he said to me, “I never really saw the city before at all.  It was just traffic and the hunt for parking.  I noticed far more today than in all my previous trips.”  Add another convert to the merits of rail transit.

Together, San Francisco’s cable cars and streetcars (the F Line on Market Street) make an important point too many transit professionals overlook:  equipment need not be modern to provide good service.  The cable cars were almost always crowded (the nine-year old was ecstatic when he found you can ride on the running board; it made a better ride than any amusement park, despite the $6 fare).  The streetcars, Peter Witts and PCCs, were also often full.  The F line carries over 20,000 people per day.  As conservatives know, what worked then will work now, and not just in transportation.  The older is often also cheaper, better looking and more fun.  San Francisco’s PCCs painted in the colors of other cities that had them add real beauty to the streets, which modern LRVs are not likely to match.

Sunday night I did something that, 80 years ago, thousands of Americans did every evening.  That night, I was probably the only one.  What was it?  I took the streetcar to the night train.  The last conservative left on earth will still be doing things like that, lest old traditions fail.

Waking in my comfortable roomette on the Coast Starlight just after we entered Oregon, running early, I enjoyed the west from a car window at its best.  The day was clear and crisp, temperature above zero, with fresh snow clinging to the pine trees.  Snow muffles the sounds of the train, so you seem to be riding on a magic carpet.  And magical it was:  I had views of the mountains normally vouchsafed only to intrepid outdoorsmen, as I lay warm and comfortable in my bed.  Now that’s civilization!

The next day, a friend and I took the Talgo from Portland, mostly because I wanted to see the Cascade Corridor in operation and get first-handed impressions of the Talgos.  These Spanish-designed trains did not do well when tried in this country in the 1950s, mainly because ride quality was poor.  That has changed.  Our ride to Seattle was smooth and comfortable, much more so than Amfleet.  Also, unlike Amfleet, the windows are large.

Our train was the first of the day from Portland north, and it was well patronized.  Because the Talgos are slow, it felt like we were going faster than we were.  Top speed is 79 m.p.h, because the Cascade Corridor has rightly focused on average speed and trip time, not top speed.  Within a minute of leaving the station in Portland, we were running at a good speed, something common in Europe but rare in America, where passenger trains crawl endlessly through cities.   That is how higher speed rail works, and it makes much more sense, outside of the Northeast Corridor, than does high speed rail with its enormous costs.  The Cascades Corridor and its Talgos are exactly what my region, the Midwest, needs on corridors such as Cleveland-Columbus-Cincinnati.  Thanks to one-term Governor Kasich, we won’t get it anytime soon.

In Seattle, we rode both the light rail line and the new streetcar line.  Seattle’s light rail is fast and comfortable; the Kinkisharyo cars are remarkably smooth and quiet.  The line runs mostly south of downtown mostly through what appears a downscale area, and because the stations are widely spaced. I am skeptical about how much effect it will have on re-development.  Time will tell.

Seattle’s new streetcar line, in contrast, is clearly designed to bring development, and I expect it to do so.  The areas is runs through are largely parking lots, and I would bet the libertarian transit critics that in ten years those will be gone, replaced by much more valuable high-density buildings.  The streetcar line will pay for itself many times over.

We rode the streetcar at about 5 PM, and saw the new line already performing a classic streetcar function, local collection and distribution.  At that hour, almost all ridership was inbound, toward the city center, not outbound.  I would wager that most of those passengers – – the single car was quickly full – – were transferring to other modes – – trolleybus, ferryboat, commuter train or light rail – – to continue their homeward journeys.  By offering convenient, pleasant collection and distribution, the streetcar makes all those other modes more attractive to more people.  That is how a good transit system works.

We retuned to Portland the next day, again on the Talgo, but found that this trainset did not ride as well as that of the day before.   A train crewman told me different sets ride differently.  I suspect the reason may be maintenance:  the Cascades Corridor has no protect sets, so it must be difficult to maintain trains to an adequate level.  We were also an hour late, reminding us of the curse of American passenger rail travel, uneven quality of service.

Mt final day out west began with a gracious tour of Oregon Ironworks’ new streetcar subsidiary, United Streetcar, which is building the first new streetcars constructed in this country since the last PCCs were built in 1952 (for San Francisco).  We quickly saw that this is no mere assembly operation.  United Streetcar begins by cutting and bending the basic metal that forms the car frame.  It is really building streetcars, not just putting kits together.  With fourteen streetcars in various stages of construction, we had visions of the happy days at places like the Kuhlmann car works in my home town of Cleveland (the factory complex still stands, missing the “K” in the sign on the main building’s roof).  The build quality of the cars we saw under construction appeared to be excellent.  United Streetcar deserves to succeed in its bold venture to build streetcars for our small if growing market, and I very much hope it does.

After United Streetcar, Julie Gustafson took me on and a friend on a tour of Portland’s new extension across the river to Portland’s Eastside Industrial District.  Portland’s eastside has a bit of the “wrong side of the tracks” feel to it, and the streetcar is clearly a development tool.  I suspect it will be successful, as the original loop through downtown Portland was.  Like its predecessor, the new line was built at a reasonable price of about $13 million a mile.  It will eventually connect with the old line at its southern end as well as its northern end, which will make it much more useful to riders.

That new connection will be via a new bridge over the Willamette River which is being constructed mainly for light rail, at a horrendous cost of about three-quarters of a billion dollars.  I’m sorry, but as a conservative, that price sticks in my throat.  I have no doubt that if the bridge were for highway traffic, it would cost a similar amount.  But can’t we find less expensive ways to build bridges?  Do other countries pay that much for a light rail/streetcar bridge?  Although the bridge is designed to accommodate light rail, streetcars, pedestrians and bicyclists (and various permits were required by a variety of agencies with waterway jurisdiction, no doubt adding to the cost), I wonder if cheaper alternatives were considered?  And while we are on the subject of saving money, must we ‘beautify’ new streetcar lines with “public art” that mostly resembles abandoned, rusting Soviet radar antennae?  Yes, I know its Portland, where up is down and black is white.  But ugly is still ugly.

My variety of car windows provided a week’s worth of enjoyable views of the west, far more than I could have gotten through an automobile’s windshield.  We sometimes forget that is what rail offers that little else can:  pleasurable travel.  Here’s hoping our country’s future includes more of it, in place of the miserable “efficiency” offered by equally miserable utilitarians.

William S. Lind serves as Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation

Take France for example. Since 1985, twenty-six new urban tramway systems have been opened in French cities. Many of these have expanded their systems and two new systems have already opened this year. The French tram systems also have many characteristics of light rail systems, including the general requirement to provide exclusive rights-of-way for trams except at intersections. The French took the lessons of the oil shortages of 1973 and 1979 to heart and adopted a long term strategy to improve mobility choices for French urbanites and provide a high quality, viable alternative to the automobile. Their ultimate objective was to create healthy, pleasant, attractive urban environments where short trips could access jobs, education, recreation, retail activity and health facilities without relying on the automobile. These systems were also designed with connectivity to other modes in mind. Each system (except Brest) has easy access to the local train station and expanding travel options (including high speed rail).

Now shift to the United States. It may be surprising to some but American cities have built 20 new light rail systems since 1981. Click below on our website for the details:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/cpt/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/New-Light-Rail-Systems-in-the-US-Since-1981.xls

Now enters the streetcar. To date, a total of nine (9) new streetcar systems are under construction (and one extension to an existing streetcar system) and firm plans for a further ten (10) streetcar projects are progressing across the country. This has sparked the usual hue and cry from the naysayers. They blare that streetcars are obsolete and they get in the way of automobiles (and slow down traffic), and are expensive. But, maybe, just maybe, streetcars reflect and address the trends that many have detected across the country. The outward migration of people and their cars into the suburbs appears to have been slowed and actually reversed in some cases. Young people and young families are moving back into the city, drawn by the attraction of being in close proximity to their jobs, being able to walk to shopping, entertainment and recreation, and (in some cities like Portland, OR) take a short streetcar ride to these destinations. Survey after survey has revealed that many people are making the calculation that rather than spending two hours in their cars commuting, they want to move closer to jobs, recreation, shopping and the like in urban centers and have more time to spend with their families and enjoy other pursuits. To our delight, we conservatives (along with a large contingent of other different political persuasions) are finding that streetcars bring economic development, reinforce walkable environments, and encourage and cement cohesive neighborhoods. Streetcars also end up helping reduce our over-dependence on foreign oil by reducing the need to hop in the car for trivial journeys.

It is interesting to note the emerging trends that a number of studies have validated. These studies find that Americans are driving less (down 9% since 2008) and that many young Americans are not getting drivers licenses (In 2010, 26% of young Americans do not have a drivers licenses versus 21% some 10 years earlier). This latter trend says that many young people are forgoing owning an automobile, an increasingly expensive proposition (it now costs about $8,000 a year to own and maintain an automobile). Where streetcars are popular, so is biking and walking (and walkable environments).

Yale Professor Robert Spiller was recently quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying that “Young people don’t read newspapers, they don’t have landline phones and maybe they won’t buy suburban houses anymore.” The same article noted that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Benjamin Bernanke, who is feverishly trying to revive the American economy through overworked printing presses, has commented a number of times that there are some things even aggressive monetary policy can’t change. The age of social media (smart phones, i-pads, tablets, texting, twitter, Facebook and the like) has diminished young people’s need for an automobile, indeed to see the automobile as a rite of passage. Increasingly, it is a very changed (and changing) world out there. The desire for streetcars in urban areas is but one reflection of that change.

It is also interesting to note that in a US News and World Report list of ‘The Ten Best Cities for Public Transportation’ in the U.S., nine of those cities have rail transit service (and the 10th is building an automated rail system). And seven of these cities are either operating, constructing or planning streetcar systems. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Today’s opponents of streetcars clearly have an well-“oiled” ax to grind. Otherwise, why would they rely on obfuscating strategies rooted in misinformation? And why else do we get titles such as ‘The Streetcar Swindle’ and ‘The Great Streetcar Conspiracy,’ hyperbolic titles saturated with fear of a future that won’t benefit entrenched interests.

In my next installment, we’ll look more in depth at the streetcar in the U.S. and its pace of development in numerous cities across our great land.

Glen Bottoms serves as Executive Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation, based in Arlington, VA

The most recent evidence that train and bus riders are different comes from a Los Angeles Metro survey. LA Metro released the results of their annual survey of riders. The survey shows that:

• 45% of train riders, but only 25% of bus riders, had a car available to make their trip ((ten year averages).
• The average income of train riders is $26,250; for bus riders, the figure is $14,423.
• 16% of bus riders are white or Asian, compared to 28% of train riders.

LA is not demographically a city favorable to making the case that train and bus riders are different. It is heavily Hispanic and poor. Similar surveys taken by other transit systems around the country show significantly higher percentages of train riders are white or Asian, upper-income and riders from choice, i.e., have a car available for the trip but choose to take transit instead. Nonetheless, the pattern still holds: LA’s bus riders are poorer, more often black or Hispanic and more transit dependent than train riders.

The scam of substituting buses for trains as a way to force people to drive is an old one. It goes back to a meeting called by General Motors in 1923, which eventually led to National City Lines (NCL). But it was a scam then and it remains a scam now. Trains and buses carry different people and serve different purposes. They also have different operating costs, with rail making more efficient use of labor. When a group of people keeps running a scam that was exposed long ago, what should we think of them?

William S. Lind is Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation based in Arlington, VA

Despite a typical Unreason title, The Streetcar Swindle, Samuel L. Scheib’s recent paper on reason.com is an intelligent and informative look at streetcars. Usually, anything from the Reason Foundation simply dismisses all rail transit. Scheib’s paper does not. It acknowledges the historic importance of streetcars, writing that “You would have to go all the way back to the invention of the wheel . . . to find a transport technology that made a more significant impact on the lives of regular folks.” It praises Germany’s Stadtbahnen, which we know as Light Rail. It notes that some recently-built streetcar lines, both in this country and in Europe, have been successful. It even discusses one way to make streetcar lines work, in a paragraph worthy of quoting in full:

The highest and best use for a streetcar system is to connect dense student housing, a university, a functioning downtown, and regional shopping venue, hospital, or other large attractor in a community of about 100,000. Athens, Gainesville, Norman, and Bloomington are ideal for this type of alignment (as is Lansing, which opted to build a bus rapid transit system). We already have models for how to do this kind of service: Le Mans, Orleans, and Reims [France] carry between 35,000 and 48,000 tips daily on systems that have between 6.9 and 11.2 miles of track. These streetcars – - called tramways there – - not only serve universities and downtowns but also take advantage of the tram’s small footprint by wending between buildings, using rights of way that are useless to larger mass transit vehicles or automobiles.

Of course, in the end Mr. Scheib’s paper comes out against streetcars. I doubt the Reason Foundation would have published it otherwise. Specifically, it opposes using streetcar lines for urban development or re-development. Scheib writes, “Nostalgia is the main power source of the streetcar craze. How else do we explain the use of historic reproductions and expensive old Birney and PCC streetcars (WSL: which cost a lot less than modern streetcars) in so many systems? Still, these projects roll on a pair of rails called ‘downtown development’ and ‘tourism’.”

Oddly, Mr. Scheib’s first example of such misuse of historic streetcars is San Francisco, where it has been wildly successful. The city’s F-line, which uses Peter Witts from Milan and vintage American PCCs (among others), now carries in excess of 20,000 riders daily. Most are local residents, not tourists.

Mr. Scheib also acknowledges the success of the Portland Streetcar. In doing so, he reveals his fundamental error: he does not understand streetcars’ transportation purpose. He writes of Portland, “The urban street cred of Portland notwithstanding, even there the streetcar is not really mass transit. The Portland Streetcar’s raison d’etre is, like the Tampa TECO line’s, downtown development and tourism, not transportation.”

Mr. Scheib in effect argues that unless a transit system moves people from the suburbs to the central city and back, it is not transportation. Quoting Florida State University professor and TRB Light Rail Committee chairman Gregory Thompson, Mr. Scheib writes, “ ‘an effective light rail or streetcar has to be operated like a subway, but most modern streetcars are not.’ “

This confuses two transportation functions and two transit modes. The functions are line-haul, suburb-to-city movement and local transportation within the central city. Each is served by a different mode: light rail for line-haul and streetcar within the CBD. Both functions are necessary for a city to succeed.

It is useful here to furnish an updated chart based on the study Paul Weyrich and I wrote (which is a chapter in our book Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation), “Bring Back the Streetcars!” The chart was originally titled “Differences between Light Rail and Streetcars,” and the updated version shows why Mr. Scheib and Professor Thompson are wrong.

Based on chart in “Bring Back the Streetcars!” in Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.

In effect, streetcars are pedestrian facilitators. Mr. Scheib acknowledges the central role pedestrians play in the life of cities, writing that “Proprietors need pedestrians to access their businesses; for them the money for urban circulators would be better spent on bringing people to the urban core or improving the streetscape.” But these elements are all necessary to encourage pedestrian traffic; they are not alternatives to each other. Streetcars’ role is to make it easy for pedestrians to get around downtown by carrying them for distances too long for Americans to walk. Ideally, the streetcar is either fare-free or with a ticket validity of several hours in the CBD, so pedestrians have no hesitation about getting on and off frequently.

Of course, since this is a Reason Foundation publication, it has to repeat the old canard that streetcars and buses are interchangeable. Mr. Scheib quotes Professor Thompson as saying, “The (contemporary) streetcar is like a bus on rails, but it has no advantage over a bus.” From the standpoint of urban development, it has an absolutely critical advantage over a bus: middle class people with disposable income like riding streetcars but most will not ride a bus. To thrive, cities need more than just “pedestrians.” If those pedestrians have little or no disposable income, their presence may blight a city rather than help it. Cities need pedestrians who buy in shops, eat in restaurants, and go to shows. Those people want streetcars, not buses.

Mr. Scheib writes,

There is nothing inherently wrong with streetcars as transit. The problem is how they are deployed. The original streetcar systems were largely straight-line routes serving the central business district. The point was to get people to the CBD, where they would move around on foot.

That statement is correct. But that was then, and this is now. Today, that function of moving people from where they live to the CBD is performed best by light rail or commuter rail. Streetcars are now primarily a mobility facilitator within the CBD, which is a transportation as well as a development function. We still want people to walk in the CBD, but today’s Americans are less willing to walk than were their forefathers. Streetcars fill the resulting gap. That is why 60-plus cities now are constructing or planning streetcar projects, and why they are smart to bring back the streetcars.

William S. Lind serves as Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation

But we have gone past that position to promote a particular kind of gas tax, one that would vary according to the market price of gasoline. The goal would be to create a stable, predictable gas price that would rise slowly over time. Adjustments in the tax could not always cover market fluctuations, but they could do so much of the time. If consumers could know what future gas prices would be, they could take that into account when buying a car.

Now, it appears we found an ally in an unlikely place: car dealers! A piece in the NationalJournal.com (“$1 Gas Tax? One Auto Dealer Says, ‘Yes, Please,’ “) dated August 9, 2012, quotes the owner of an automobile dealership in LA, Mr. Peter Hoffman, as saying, “A lot of our industry has been saying, ‘Put a progressively increasing price on gasoline.’ “

Mr. Hoffman’s reasoning is the same as ours, with the difference that he is looking at it from the standpoint of a car salesman and our perspective is that of car buyers. Both need the same thing: predictability. The National Journal says, “What Hoffman wants most . . . is market certainty – – the ability to plan.”

Car dealers are caught in a whipsaw of fluctuating gas prices. When prices rise, people want small cars that get good gas mileage. So car dealers order lots of them. But then the price of fuel drops and the small cars sit unsold as customers demand SUVs. The dealer orders SUVs but then the price of gas soars again and they don’t sell. He can’t win.

The National Journal says Hoffman and this Center are not alone:

Hoffman is one of a growing number of car dealers who advocate the same solution to the problem: raise the gas tax, enough to create consistent, predictable demand for fuel-efficient cars . . . One way to do this, says automakers, would be to create a new gasoline price floor – – a point below which prices won’t fall.
“it allows the population to plan. It allows automakers to plan. It allows us to plan, “ Hoffman says.

Now all we need are some politicians with the guts to go forward with the idea. How about you, Rep. Ryan?

The share of 14-to 34-year olds without a driver’s license was 26% in 2010, up from 21% in 2000. . . The same age group walked to more destinations in ’09 than in ’01, and the distance it traveled by public transit increased 40 percent.

The interesting thing about this article is less the information than the tone. Motor Trend is a magazine for car enthusiasts. (Why do I subscribe to it, and to Car and Driver? I find cars interesting. I just don’t want to be forced to drive everywhere for lack of a comfortable, pleasant alternative). But the article does not wail and moan over young people’s move away from cars to other modes of transportation. Instead of concluding with a discussion of how to win Generation Y back to dependence on automobiles, it ends with the following paragraph:

We need a pretty frank and clear debate about what our transportation priorities are,” he (Dutzik) concludes. If Generation Y has its say, cars and new highways won’t be a big part of that priority.

Motor Trend appears to do what you might not expect a car mag to do, namely take a realistic approach. I am sure it knows that cars are not going to disappear. Car enthusiasts have no reason to panic. Rather, the question is whether we will have alternatives to cars, alternatives people actually want to use, including walking in neighborhoods built to traditional designs, cycling, streetcars and passenger trains. Generation Y is saying yes.

Isn’t it interesting that even a car magazine can be more balanced in its approach to transportation than the libertarian transit critics, who for all their talk of “freedom,” want to maintain a choiceless dependence on automobiles.

Mr. Lind serves as Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation

An article in the May issue of Trains magazine, “Crash Course in Passenger Safety,” by Steven M. Sweeney, indicates the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is about to perpetuate its mistakes through another generation of rail vehicles. The article quotes FRA’s acting Associate Administrator for Railroad Safety and Chief Safety Officer, Robert Lauby, as saying of forthcoming FRA requirements, call it “European Standards – – plus . . . we’re taking [European] work and trying to improve it.”

That is exactly what we cannot afford to do. As soon as we “improve” on European standards, we again make most European equipment illegal in the U.S. market. Once more, European manufacturers will have to re-design their products to sell them here, and manufacture very small batches for U.S. rail operations. The cost of each passenger car, light rail vehicle or streetcar will go through the roof. That means some otherwise viable projects won’t get built, or won’t have enough equipment to meet passenger loads and provide frequent service.

Here we run into a classic problem with government regulation: the FRA safety folks will pay no price for their bad decision. What is it to them if equipment prices go up unnecessarily? The price difference doesn’t come out of their budget. If some projects don’t get built, that doesn’t hurt them. Their answer is the answer of bureaucrats everywhere: “It’s not my job, sir.”

Because the American passenger rail equipment market is so small, we are beggars. Beggars can’t be choosers. If we want affordable prices, we have to buy standard designs that are built in large numbers for other, larger markets. This isn’t wheel-rail interface science. It could not be more obvious.

Let me suggest Mr. Lauby “correct the record” and say, “What I meant to say was that the FRA will adopt European standards. No plus, just straight. What is safe enough for Swedes and Germans and Brits is safe enough for Americans too. And we can afford to buy more, because avoiding unique requirements will keep the cost down.”

Mr. Lind serves as Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation

Yes, we have reduced our use of foreign oil. It still remains, however, that we import, by the latest available figures (2010), 49 percent of our oil needs from foreign sources. While Canada remains our biggest source (and a politically stable one) with a 24.4% share, the Middle East with 20.6% continues as a major source of the foreign oil that we import. As long as we consume 25% of the world’s production, and possess little more than 2% of the world’s proven oil reserves, we clearly remain at considerable risk.

Now back to those rising gasoline prices. Determining the price of a barrel of oil is a function of the world market, whether we like it or not. When we go to the world market to procure our oil, we are competing with a number of other countries around the world for this finite commodity. This includes China, India and other maturing, dynamic economies. Granted, there is a multi-tiered market pricing system for oil. Oil originating in the North Sea is traded as Brent Crude on the London market. Oil production from other parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East shipped west takes the Brent Crude benchmark into account. This is also true for OPEC countries which use the OPEC basket benchmark. About two-thirds of oil produced for world markets uses the Brent Crude benchmark.

Oil produced in North America uses the West Texas Intermediate (WTI) benchmark. The disparity between Brent and WTI prices reflect transportation and risk factors (i.e., Iran and U.S. ‘saber rattling’). Right now, Brent Crude is priced about $15 higher than WTI and, for the most part, this reflects the current state of affairs in the Middle East. Both Brent and WTI oil are priced on the world market; hence when Iran makes threatening noises to close the Gulf of Hormuz (through which 20% of global oil consumption flows), or Israel hints at attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities, gas prices climb in the U.S.

While we have made strides in extracting “hard oil” and gas deposits (through hydraulic fracturing, popularly known as “fracking”) in this country, the fact is no amount of domestic drilling (Alaska, off-shore, etc.) is going to make an appreciable dent in our dependence on foreign oil. While we have increased domestic oil production by 9% since 2008, only a combination of measures will dramatically reduce foreign oil imports. Expanding public transportation alternatives (especially rail) to the automobile, improving CAFÉ standards, instituting rational land use policies through dual codes (sprawl and Traditional Neighborhood Design (TND)), and, yes, greater domestic production are the main solutions. We at The Center think that we might have a win-win situation here as expanded use of rail based transit solutions reduces the need for foreign oil while fostering economic development and where dual codes are in place, more efficient market-driven land use patterns.

So the next time you think about the price of a gallon of gasoline, reflect on our over-reliance on oil-based conveyances. The automobile consumes 50% of daily oil usage in this country. Don’t blame the President (Bush or Obama) when prices edge up. It’s like howling at the moon; it might feel good but, frankly, there’s no effect. Democrats did it when Mr. Bush was President and Republicans are doing it now to our current President. Dramatic oil price increases reflect world conditions. Thus, our over-sensitivity to world events is a direct result of our addiction to oil.

Oil has us literally over the barrel. If this situation is to change, we will all need to recognize that our present course is not sustainable. All of our institutions are geared to an era that was designed for a different set of circumstances that mainly relied on cheap domestic oil. That day is over. We need to realize it and embrace a future that recognizes that fact. That future must include public transportation, especially rail. Delay simply pushes future prosperity and enhanced mobility that much further from our grasp.

Glen Bottoms serves as Executive Director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation

Mr. Cavanaugh’s column goes on to establish a false dichotomy: do we need more transit or better transit? Employing the vernacular, he writes:

The reality of transit use . . . is that you don’t need smarter hubs or better coordination more efficient transfers . . . you need more sh[*]t running more frequently to more destinations.

He’s right. Good transit service is characterized by the old line of many a street railway company, “Always a car in sight.” The more routes, the fewer transfers required (though Cavanaugh is flat wrong when he says that “For every transfer in your itinerary, you need to double the time allotted for the trip.“) and the more frequent the service, the more people will take transit.

Unfortunately, Cavanaugh then goes on to attack the idea that transit also picks up more customers when it offers an enjoyable travel experience. We are all, it seems, Jeremy Benthems, caring only for efficiency. Specifically, he attacks Darrin Nordahl, who wrote in his 2008 book, My Kind of Transit, of New Orleans’ wonderful trolley line.,

Consistent features of wonderment aboard the St. Charles streetcar – – history, connection to the urban context, stimulation of the senses, and sociability through architectural detail – – offer important lessons about providing a memorable transportation experience.

I have ridden the St. Charles Avenue line, and Nordahl is correct. Just being aboard the historic trolley cars, built in the 1920’s, with wooden seats and windows that open wide, is a joy.

Those who worship reason tend irrationally to discount non-rational factors. The things that draw people to the St. Charles Avenue line are in part non-rational (not irrational). But they are still real. Therefore, any reasoned appraisal of the line (and streetcars elsewhere) should take those non-rational factors into account.

Libertarians refuse to do so. Why? Because they always start with the answer – – buses, not rail – – and who likes riding a bus? Even the best bus trip is regarded by most people as a necessary evil. No non-rational factors lead people to board, looking forward to the experience for its own sake – – the way they do board the St. Charles Avenue streetcars.

Now, it so happens that the St. Charles Avenue line also provides frequent service. There really is (almost) always a car in sight. And that is the point: good transit service, service people want to ride, offers both quantity and quality. It appeals to both our rational and non-rational sides.

St. Charles Avenue does it with equipment that will soon be a century old. Perhaps some genius among consultants will find a way we can manage to do it with modern technology. If so, it will truly be back to the future.