Vantage Point Europe
It is an interesting contrast from the American experience to travel in Europe.
They have this thing called “mass transit” which most of us in the US associate with behemoth SUV’s – very large mass transporting us from our sprawled suburban homes to the mall or school or the office park where we work. And every time we need a carton of milk, it’s back into that huge gas guzzler and back on the road to the convenience store down the road. Now, of course it is true that many eastern cities (NY, Washington, Boston, Philly) all have aging subway systems that are well used. But for most of us, transit is us sitting at the driver’s wheel, frustrated at the slow moving mass of cars ahead and behind us.
Night before last, I flew to London, cleared customs in 20 minutes, caught an express train to downtown (it left 6 minutes after I got to the platform), and 20 minutes later I was at Paddington Station. Then it was a 15 minute ride on the “tube” to 
, a 40 minute wait for the Eurostar Train – a highspeed, quiet, comfortable ride for less than 2 hours to Brussels via the Channel where I arrived in downtown maybe 10 minutes from my hotel. The thing that I couldn’t get over was that it was all so EASY.
As we stumble our way toward decisions on what to do with the stimulus investments we are about to make in the US, investing in transit seems like such a sensible thing to do. We are so unbelievably behind most parts of the world, but we also have the opportunity to design a system that can truly meet future needs.
California will soon begin work on a high-speed train network to connect the northern, southern, and central metropolitan areas. Let’s add in a really robust Bus Rapid Transit system (which can be shovel ready very quickly), create metropolitan planning and management districts, and all the other elements we need to create a robust, green, and smart road to the future.
Also of interest:
TreeHugger.org articles on High Speed Trains
As you well know investments are vehicles to produce profits. Using tax dollars (or Euros) to build railroads are enormously expensive. They are called investments by the same logic that refers to civic expenditures for baseball stadiums as investments. In other words they consume dollars, not produce more dollars.
Comment by Menlo Bob — June 30, 2009 @ 8:37 am