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 May 19, 2008 | Vol 7, No. 10 |
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In This Issue: – A National Plan for Meeting America’s Infrastructure Needs – Calendar These questions guided discussion at last week’s America 2050 forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.: “Rebuilding and Renewing America: Toward a 21st Century Infrastructure Investment Plan,” sponsored by Regional Plan Association, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and our foundation partners: the Rockefeller Foundation and the Surdna Foundation at the Division of U.S. Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. The forum, which was marked by strong bi-partisan participation, was timed to coincide with the introduction of legislation in the House of Representatives to create a U.S. Commission on Rebuilding America for the 21st Century (H.R. 5976). This commission aims to articulate a national vision for infrastructure investment and issue specific recommendations for policies in transportation, greenhouse gas emissions, community health, social equity, water, the electric grid and public lands. The bill was introduced on May 6th by a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by a forum participant, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), and would create a commission appointed by Congress and the next president that would begin work in 2009. This type of nation-scale planning, although it may seem unprecedented, actually has a long and distinguished history in this country. May 2008 marks the centennial of Theodore Roosevelt’s White House Conference of Governors in 1908, which launched a series of environmental restoration and hydro-electric damn projects in the South and West. That plan drew on Gifford Pinchot’s report of the Inland Waterways Commission and essentially fueled the modern growth of the Sunbelt. This year also marks another anniversary in national planning: the bicentennial of the 1808 Gallatin Plan, drafted by Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin at the request of Thomas Jefferson. Gallatin created a national plan of ports, roads, and inland waterways to encourage settlement of the nation and facilitate trade among independent farmers. This plan helped lead to the creation of the Eerie Canal and was further realized, during Abe Lincoln’s presidency, with the passage of the Homestead Act, which adopted many of the Gallatin Plan routes for railways. The third and latest chapter in national planning was the Interstate Highway System, early versions of which were first drafted by the New Deal-era National Resources Planning Board and the Bureau of Public Roads. Implemented during Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, the effect on America’s growth was transformative – spawning patterns of suburban growth that define the nation’s character today. Although criticized even at the time as being overly highway-focused, it undeniably connected the country in new ways and led to new patterns of commerce and growth. The challenges of the 21st century, however, demand a different approach. At last week’s forum, roundtable discussions on transportation, energy and water helped shed light on what form this different approach might take. The forum was distinguished by congressional participation from both sides of the aisle, and the presence of both labor and business leaders. The morning plenary panel featured Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Tom Petri (R-WI), and Chris Shays (R-CT). Terence O’Sullivan, President of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, and Tom Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, both addressed the assembled participants. Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, both ardent supporters of tackling the nation’s infrastructure and transportation challenges, provided keynote addresses. In transportation, the analogy to the Interstate System still holds. Major, capital-intensive investments in transportation infrastructure are needed in the 21st century – particularly to give Americans increased transportation choices in an era of rapidly rising gas prices and greenhouse gases. Investments that will promote America’s participation in the global economy are also necessary – modernization of our seaports and airports, creation of high-speed rail corridors in the nation’s megaregions, and investments in the nation’s metropolitan areas are all key elements of a national transportation plan. These big investments should be complemented at the local level by small solutions that promote walking and biking as viable means to move around communities. In the area of water and energy, however, the “big infrastructure” approach is less applicable now and for the future. Water infrastructure improvements will need to be complemented not only by heavy engineering, but also by investments that improve management efficiencies, allow “full cost pricing,” provide a watershed perspective, and recognize the value of ecosystem services. These innovative approaches are critical to meet the dynamic challenges that an aging infrastructure and changing climate will impose on water systems. Energy infrastructure investments should also make a shift toward greater efficiency and distributed generation that can take advantage of renewable electricity. These investments will include innovations like the “smart grid,” which will foster distributed generation and allow us to take greater advantage of renewable technologies. These new technologies, however, will require the federal government send strong market signals to private investors, or else the transition to renewables will never take place. While the concept of a national “plan” may scare some, the need for strong federal leadership and a vision that can guide the nation’s development is clearly needed. The vision can help set strong policy directives and principles, helping ensure that federal investments that stem from diverse legislation and are implemented from agencies are coordinated. It is clear that national leadership is needed in this area to allow America to grow and prosper in the 21st century in a way that meets our current needs and allows future generations to meet theirs as well. – Petra Todorovich, Director, America 2050, RPA Bridgeport Is Cool, Believe It Or Not You can imagine then how pleasantly surprised I was to see how highly Bridgeport ranked in all categories of Richard Florida’s new book, Who’s Your City? It is what he refers to in his book as one of the very few ‘generalist places.’ (Florida, for introductory purposes, is a described “urban studies theorist” and the originator of the concept of the “creative class,” which refers to his theory that it is a creative and skilled workforce that drives economies.) In the tables on his website for the book, Bridgeport ranks third for young singles, first for young professionals, first for families with children, first for empty nesters, first for retirees, and first for gays and lesbians. These rankings are out of 46 similarly-sized places and no other location even shows up in the top five as many times as Bridgeport. Not surprisingly, the website didn’t answer all my questions so I had to buy the book to find out more about this analysis. With book in hand, I went straight for the charts. Sure enough, the same rankings were there on the printed page – only in every instance Bridgeport, CT was replaced by Stamford, CT. This made clear that Florida was talking about not just one city but the Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk region – Connecticut’s Gold Coast. The title of Florida’s book really should have been, Who’s Your Region? Once I understood this, I was less surprised that someplace so diverse can rise high on rankings that examine such a broad range of characteristics. Ranging from Bridgeport’s downtown to Greenwich’s coast and the suburban communities in between, there is something for everyone. The region also ranked highly on an additional set of rankings that identifies the best buy for each group. Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk is in the top five for every group except for retirees. Given the region’s recent distinction as having the highest rents in the nation, I’d be particularly interested in seeing the factors that informed that decision, something not available in the book. At the end of the day, I’m a little disappointed that Florida’s analysis did not provide the statistically based acknowledgement that Bridgeport is as great as I’ve been preaching. What the analysis does do though, is point to the importance of thinking regionally. No one single municipality in the Stamford-Norwalk-Bridgeport region could currently meet the demands of such diverse groups looking for a place to call home. While strategic planning will hopefully result in some of these towns and cities someday meeting the life-cycle demands of their communities, the reality today is that they only do so through the agglomeration of their assets. If only for that reason, working collaboratively will be integral to maintain a high quality of life in the coming years. Funding Roads, Subsidizing Transit This chilling refrain vividly sums up an obvious fact: Building a road is a manifestation of power, particularly state power. Carving a road across multiple jurisdictions and property lines — not to mention varying terrain — can be done only by an institution that can override the wishes of any one individual. This was true in the days of the Roman Empire, whose mighty roads still exist and even carry traffic in some parts of Europe. And it's true today. In the exercise of that authority, local, state and federal governments spent more than $150 billion on roads in 2005, according to the most recent federal Highway Statistics report. That's comparable to what we spend annually on waging war in Iraq. Much of that road money is spent here in the Northeast and the Tri-state region. But as gas prices climb both here and nationally, people are increasingly turning to something Tri-staters have always used more than anyone else: transit. In fact, a May 10th New York Times article by Clifford Krauss about surging transit use talked of commuters “abandoning their cars and taking the train or bus instead.” But even as this trend occurs, transit users and personal automobile users continue to operate within very different policy frameworks, not to mention bureaucracies. When we talk about transit, we usually talk about “subsidizing” it. When we talk about roads, we talk about “funding” them. The S word doesn't come up, even though it's tax dollars that are used for both. Even if you exclude the gas tax (which some people incorrectly label a user fee, a subject for another day) highways and roads still get gobs of tax money, and much more of it, than transit. Part of the way toward a saner set of transportation policies would be to start changing our language. We should be clear that almost all forms of transportation get public money. As Petra Todorovich makes clear in the lead article in this issue, “A National Plan for Meeting America’s Infrastructure Needs," heavy government infrastructure investment over the centuries, ranging from canals to interstate highways, created this nation’s basic patterns for commerce and development. The question is not whether public money is used, but what utility the public gets out of it, and how does our funding shape the usage of the good. Part of the blame for our confused thinking goes to conservative and libertarian-oriented think tanks — groups that argue for less government. Yet they have embraced highways and roads, which receive so much government money, as a solution to traffic congestion and a general boon to living. In the same breath, they usually attack mass-transit spending, particularly on trains. They seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism. Among the most active of these groups is the Reason Foundation, a self-described libertarian nonprofit organization with a $7 million budget that has its own transportation wing. Some typical highway-oriented papers on Reason's Web site include "How to Build Our Way Out of Congestion" and "Private Tollways: How States Can Leverage Federal Highway Funds." Rail transit is taken on in papers with titles such as "Myths of Light Rail Transit," and "Rethinking Transit 'Dollars & Sense': Unearthing the True Cost of Public Transit." I didn't see any papers about unearthing the true cost of our public highway network. Many of the authors of these studies are a rotating cast of writers who pop up again and again, including Randal O'Toole and Wendell Cox. They "extol the autonomy made possible by automobiles" wrote fellow libertarian and New York Times columnist John Tierney in a 2004 article on the subject. Tierney calls them, including himself, "the autonomists." That is, libertarians who have embraced highway spending, although they focus more on the individually-bought car, not the government-built road it requires. Reason Foundation's founder and former president, Robert Poole, leads the group's Transportation Studies wing, and it's clear he has a special love of the subject. He has authored many studies himself, and he puts out the Surface Transportation Innovations newsletter. In an interview, I ask him to square Reason Foundation's support for roads with its general dislike of government involvement. "I'd never thought about it that way," he says. This led him to talk about how Reason didn't want to eliminate government from transportation. "We aren't going to have competing companies putting roads in where they like, and letting the chips fall where they may. We aren't anarchists." But if he didn’t want to eliminate government from transportation, then how does he square that with the group’s anti-government rhetoric? He seemed to be aiming for a future where the transportation investment with the least government investment was the best government investment. The organization has a general premise, Poole says, which "is that transportation infrastructure would work better if it were market-driven. Where it's possible, that infrastructure should be run in a business-like manner with users paying full cost." Such logic misses the foundational nature of transportation investments. Transportation is like education: It works best through heavy general funding that pays off down the road in a community's or nation's overall prosperity. Our national road system, for example, would never have been built if every street were required to pay for itself. Governments at every level have put in several trillion dollars' worth of roads over the past century. This system, open to all with a car, has created our automobile-based landscape of suburbs, single-family homes, office parks, mega churches and shopping malls. Love it or hate it, it is the product of massive government spending. As others have pointed out, the national road system is one of the most successful examples of pure socialism to be found: a comprehensive public system, well-used, almost entirely paid for with tax dollars. It is a quite moving story, one that includes the development of the now “secondary” road system in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly funded by states but with the management of the federal Bureau of Public Roads, and then moves up to the development of the Interstate Highway System with more federal funding and management. As transit becomes ever more popular with people, a way to make better decisions about it and all transportation is to start changing how we talk, and thus how we think.
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May 22 May 27 May 28 May 29 May 29 May 31 May 31 June 4 June 8 June 10 June 16 June 17 June 17 September 27 November 15 |
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Spotlight on The Region A publication of Regional Plan Association, Robert Yaro, President / Alex Marshall, Senior Editor 212-253-2727, x360 alex@rpa.org www.rpa.org |
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