In terms of marketing, he told a group of journalists today, Obama goofed in comparing a new national high-speed rail initiative to the intercontinental railroad in the 19th century. That infrastructure initiative, Babbitt noted, is inextricably linked in history books with a huge corruption scandal, the Credit Mobilier. A much better comparison, Babbitt said, would have been the interstate highway system.
Today many people look back on the interstate highway-building project as if it was a unanimous hug-fest. In fact, Babbitt said, many governors opposed it when it was first proposed. They rejected the idea of a federal tax. Major businesses such as the concrete and steel industries didn’t like the federalization. Eventually, though, after “protracted discussion,” agreement was forged to raise the gas tax and create a trust fund – the product of “a lot of good, solid brokering.”
Why not, he proposes, bring something of that process to a high-speed rail venture in the only region that, today, has a sound network of passenger rail – the Northeast? What about a regional compact for a regional gas (or other) tax, for regional high-speed rail? It might be a model for other regions. (Or not, as he pointed out.)
But he was also a bit pessimistic that seven regional governors could get together even on this kind of project. Someone asked why. “I was a governor,” he replied.
The conference sponsors are the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, the Nieman Foundation, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.