|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM: The TerryReport
|
|
News, commentary, opinion on politics, government, books, social trends, American life, travel, cycling, books, other stuff
|
|
|
In general, The TerryReport does not engage in personal attacks, nor do we specialize in calling people out, putting them down, etc. Some events are too big to ignore, however.
George Will was once one of America’s most respected, right wing newspaper opinion mongers. He appeared on ABC’s This Week program, his newspaper column was widely circulated, read and quoted (filled with quotes, too, as if he were spilling a Barlett’s Familiar Quotations on every column). The possessor of a Ph.D, he was presumed to be well educated, thoughtful and willing, at times, to criticize the party to which he obviously adhered, the Republicans. He was a kind of sucessor to William Buckley on the right, but with more credibility as a popular, widely read columnist.
That was then. Now? It seems like Will has lost control of something as he tries, late in life and career, to keep up with the tea party crowd and the ever more ridiculous charges they devise. He’s also trying to appeal to his new audience on Fox News. So, get this: Will believes that public transportation is a plot by Democrats to take away American’s love of cars and sense of independence. Holy Rice Crispies, this is truly goof ball stuff, especially coming from a person once seen as careful, responsible and more or less in the mainstream.
The origin of the charge that liberals are trying to force people to give up cars comes from a U.N. report on population growth, a report that speculated about what the world’s future would hold if the population were to double or triple over the next hundred years. It imagined a world more densely packed, with most people living in high rise apartment buildings and using public transportation much more intensely. From this thin thread, the charge has been put forth that restricting the freedoms of people to live in suburban style housing and drive everywhere is some kind of liberal plot. In the minds of anyone else, this kind of free association might be called paranoia.
|
|
|
|
Will praises Republican governor for turning down federal funds for high speed rail projects in their states
|
|
|
|
The idea of Republican governors, in opposing high speed rail, has appeal to older voters. Anyone over 55 and certainly over 65 will not live long enough to see the benefits of big new rail systems. Why pay for them? Why pay for something for future generations?
Most Americans have little experience with trains. Most have never taken more than one or two trips in their entire lives, if that. If you don’t know how something works and how it can be beneficial, how can you understand and support it?
Note, however, that the rise of airline transportation in America was not met with similar sort objections in the ‘30s. 40s and 50s. In those days, our nation tended to embrace new developments much more easily. Plus, those decades were times when decisions were made in Washington and announced to the nation, not nibbled to death by complaints before they could even get started.
There are a lot of problems with trains, most of which are not noted in the Will column. For one thing, you need a strong “city pair” (like Washington/New York) with lots of traffic to justify the investment. For another, people have invested 20, 30, 40 thousand and more in their cars and they want to use them. The car is king. Once that has been established for decades, it is not just a matter of putting in a great rail line and waiting for the hordes to use it.
There are lots of places in America where high speed trains won’t work or, if they could be successful, that success would only come because they were stops on trains linking other cities. The vast western plains of our country are not ideal for high speed trains because of low population density and major costs to create and operate. Houston/Austin: yes. El Paso/Phoenix? Maybe not. Denver/Salt Lake city? Who knows? Phoenix/Los Angles? Probably. The only way to prove the viability of something that hasn’t been tried before is to do it. We know passenger trains work and can be successful, but slow trains and poor service (the rule now) will never be popular.
Public sponsored transportation is a great service, however, for people who don’t have a lot of money. The benefits of travel are spread around by not having to invest in a 30 thousand dollar car and if you don’t believe that, just go to the airport these days, which are crowded, in part, because those who earn less than 100 thousand a year have taken to the air, too.
Railroads, when working properly, have other benefits. Older people who might not want to drive the crowded streets of New York or Chicago can visit those places without the hassles of parking, toll roads, parking tickets and jammed traffic coming and going. It also provides a way to get more done while in transit, like working via laptop or sleeping. (It is possible to do both in cars now, but not as convenient.) It is also safer to travel by train and get work done in the process, but does that count for anything?
|
|
|
|
STUCK IN YOUR CAR ANYWAY? The NY Times has suggestions to help make things a little better. (free content)
|
|
|
|
From entertainment that breaks up those boring stretches to protection against sun and noise, these suggestions could make your next road trip more enjoyable.
|
|
|
|
|
|
From Newsweek
|
|
|
|
|
Will: Why Liberals Love Trains
By George F. Will
Filed Under: U.S.
Generations hence, when the river of time has worn this presidency’s importance to a small, smooth pebble in the stream of history, people will still marvel that its defining trait was a mania for high-speed rail projects. This disorder illuminates the progressive mind.
Remarkably widespread derision has greeted the Obama administration’s damn-the-arithmetic-full-speed-ahead proposal to spend $53 billion more (after the $8 billion in stimulus money and $2.4 billion in enticements to 23 states) in the next six years pursuant to the president’s loopy goal of giving “80Â percent of Americans access to high-speed rail”, “access” and “high-speed” to be defined later.
Criticism of this optional and irrational spending, meaning: borrowing during a deficit crisis has been withering. Only an administration blinkered by ideology would persist.
Florida’s new Republican governor, Rick Scott, has joined Ohio’s (John Kasich) and Wisconsin’s (Scott Walker) in rejecting federal incentives, more than $2 billion in Florida’s case, to begin a high-speed rail project. Florida’s 84-mile line, which would have run parallel to Interstate 4, would have connected Tampa and Orlando. One preposterous projection was that it would attract 3 million passengers a year, almost as many as ride Amtrak’s Acela in the densely populated Boston-New York-Washington corridor.
The three governors want to spare their states from paying the much larger sums likely to be required for construction-cost overruns and operating subsidies when ridership projections prove to be delusional. Kasich and Walker, who were elected promising to stop the nonsense, asked Washington for permission to use the high-speed-rail money for more pressing transportation needs than a train running along Interstate 71 between Cleveland and Cincinnati, or a train parallel to Interstate 94 between Milwaukee and Madison. Washington, disdaining the decisions of Ohio and Wisconsin voters (note: did the “voters” make those decisions or was it the governors?), replied that it will find states that will waste the money.
California will. Although prostrate from its own profligacy, it will sink tens of billions of its own taxpayers money in the 616-mile San Francisco to San Diego line. Supposedly 39 million people will eagerly pay much more than an airfare in order to travel slower. Between 2008 and 2009, the projected cost increased from $33 billion to $42.6 billion.
Randal O’Toole of the Cato Institute notes that high-speed rail connects big-city downtowns, where only 7 percent of Americans work and 1 percent live. “The average intercity auto trip today uses less energy per passenger mile than the average Amtrak train.” And high speed will not displace enough cars to measurably reduce congestion. The Washington Post says China’s fast trains are priced beyond ordinary workers’ budgets, and that France, like Japan, has only one profitable line.
So why is America’s “win the future” administration so fixated on railroads, a technology that was the future two centuries ago? Because progressivism’s aim is the modification of (other people’s) behavior.
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.**
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Time was, the progressive cry was “Workers of the world unite!”or “Power to the people!” Now it is less resonant: “All aboard!”
|
|
|
The last paragraph contains two distortions which slop over into lies. First, workers of the world unite was a communist slogan, not that of progressives. Power to the people was a saying in the anti-war, counter cultural movement of the 1960s and ‘70s, again, not progressives. Of course, it doesn’t matter if you want to have your brain programmed by a clever propagandist. By saying that “progressives” use these slogans, Will is associating them with communism and the excesses, as seen by many, of the movements of the 1960s and 70s. This is a sly trick, a dirty trick at that.
**This sentence exemplifies where Will really slips off the tracks and delves into the realm of wild fantasy. Trains are modes of transportation, not ideological causes. There might be some lingering nostalgia for things people do together instead of separately, but how would Will know? Further, those who report good experiences from traveling by train and meeting others along the way are hardly limited to left wingers. The scenic trains that go through Colorado’s Rockies and through the mountain ranges in Canada are enjoyed by families and many others without consideration of whether they are committing a political act. Must everything be tied to someone’s ideology? Apparently, if you are a Republican these days, the answer is yes.
|
|
|
|
|
Washington, DC, has an extensive subway system known as Metro. It is still under construction 45 years after it was begun in 1969. Was this some kind of “progressive plot” to take away freedom of choice and limit what people can do?
Where would DC be today without it? More than 700,000 rides are taken each day, more than 200 million each year. Without the Metro, much in the nation’s capital would be vastly different. The “Capital area”, as defined by the government, would probably have had to expand all the way to Baltimore, Richmond and even West Virginia. The central core of DC, which sees more cars entering and leaving than Manhattan on a typical day, would likely be in permanent gridlock during weekdays. Various government workers and officials would have to travel hours to meet with each other, since government offices would be dispersed over hundreds of square miles. DC would, in short, be unworkable. Someone had the foresight to start the Metro system, which was a very expensive proposition because of the difficulties of building in an existing urban area. I am willing to bet that George Will has taken quite a few rides himself.
Doug Terry, 5.14.14
|
|
|
|
|
|
to go to recent posts, nearly 300 pages of news and comments filed during the first nine months of 2013 and during the critical election year of 2012.
|
|
|
|
|
|
to go back to prior years (500+ pages) of The TerryReport
|
|
|
