You may find it perverse, but the conclusion I draw is that transit projects should be insulated from judicial and citizen review in the same way highway projects are
Capitalism for transit and socialism for cars is the American way. It is as old as transit. The history text that best explains the origins of this story is Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Formation of Public Policy in Chicago, 1900-1930. I need to read this again, but there is this book review that summarizes the book perfectly:
"The book demonstrates this powerfully by showing that there never was that head-to-head battle: rather than a struggle among different approaches to something that could be called urban transportation policy, we encounter two parallel and perhaps tragically separated histories: the regulated streetcar system collapsing of the weight of its own contradictions, while in the very different arena of street and traffic policy the groundwork was being laid for the accommodation of the automobile and all that it implied."
We could appropriate this characterization and apply it to the Surface Transportation Program.
Probably every highway that has been built since 2008 then can rightly be called a deficit crushing boondoggle. Transit advocates should ask Gov Abbot why he is willing to bust the deficit with a boondoggle that doesnt work, without a vote or the normal transportation process
The double standard is glaring and infuriating. Austin voters approved project Connect in a referendum, yet it gets endless scrutiny, lawsuits, and political sabotage, while TxDOT just seizes homes and businesses via eminent domain to widen I-35 into a 22-lane trench with almost no real accountability.. Same story nationwide: highways get blank-check federal subsidies, and zero performance audits, even as they fail to reduce congestion long-term and devastate neighborhoods.
You may find it perverse, but the conclusion I draw is that transit projects should be insulated from judicial and citizen review in the same way highway projects are
Equal treatment before the law!
Capitalism for transit and socialism for cars is the American way. It is as old as transit. The history text that best explains the origins of this story is Paul Barrett, The Automobile and Urban Transit: The Formation of Public Policy in Chicago, 1900-1930. I need to read this again, but there is this book review that summarizes the book perfectly:
https://www.erudit.org/en/journals/uhr/1984-v13-n2-uhr0791/1018130ar.pdf
"The book demonstrates this powerfully by showing that there never was that head-to-head battle: rather than a struggle among different approaches to something that could be called urban transportation policy, we encounter two parallel and perhaps tragically separated histories: the regulated streetcar system collapsing of the weight of its own contradictions, while in the very different arena of street and traffic policy the groundwork was being laid for the accommodation of the automobile and all that it implied."
We could appropriate this characterization and apply it to the Surface Transportation Program.
Probably every highway that has been built since 2008 then can rightly be called a deficit crushing boondoggle. Transit advocates should ask Gov Abbot why he is willing to bust the deficit with a boondoggle that doesnt work, without a vote or the normal transportation process
The double standard is glaring and infuriating. Austin voters approved project Connect in a referendum, yet it gets endless scrutiny, lawsuits, and political sabotage, while TxDOT just seizes homes and businesses via eminent domain to widen I-35 into a 22-lane trench with almost no real accountability.. Same story nationwide: highways get blank-check federal subsidies, and zero performance audits, even as they fail to reduce congestion long-term and devastate neighborhoods.