Category: conservatives

Why DO conservatives hate trains?

Found while looking up something else: An interesting piece in Slate.com, “Why do conservatives hate trains so much?”

Writer David Weigel dissects the opposition and notes it’s more libertarian than conservative (other than a delusional George Will line about trains – “…the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.” Whoa, George, you might wanna dial back the paranoia a tad.)

Libertarians, Weigel notes, don’t have a problem with transportation. What they and some Republicans have a problem with is federal spending on transportation. But then, the article goes on to note, “Amtrak passengers pay more of the cost of their transportation than do drivers on the interstate. About 62 percent of Amtrak’s operating expenses, according to the Department of Transportation, comes from fares. According to the Federal Highway Administration, the percentage of highway spending paid for by users—in the form of gas taxes and tolls—is headed below 50 percent.”

Weigel goes on to quote other reasons some conservatives don’t like rail transit, although little of what he reports as their reasons square with the reality that highways are just as expensive, just as prone to go over budget, just as heavily subsidized.

Ultimately, in my opinion (and Weigel gets at some of this) conservatives don’t like rail because liberals do. Some people will do anything in order not to be in the same camp with people whose beliefs they disdain. This is not limited to politics, of course, and seems to be a general part of human nature. Have you ever been around UNC and Duke basketball fans? They make liberal-conservative spats look tame.

Why conservatives should love streetcars

“‘For cities, conservatives’ banner should read, ‘Bring Back the Streetcars!’ ”

Read on. It’s from an article in The American Conservative, “What’s so conservative about federal highways?” by William S. Lind, director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation and coauthor of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. Reader Mason Hicks, who grew up in Lancaster County, S.C., but now lives in Paris (France) shared it with me recently.

Lind’s piece talks about the folly of a national transportation system that requires us to depend on foreign oil, and on only one transportation mode, and points out how it was government intervention in the marketplace (via billions spent on highways) that helped kill the passenger rail business.

And here’s another provocative excerpt: “The greatest threat to a revival of attractive public transportation is not the libertarian transit critics. It is an unnecessary escalation of construction costs, usually driven by consultants who know nothing of rail and traction history, are often in cahoots with the suppliers, and gold-plate everything.”

He writes of the importance of “avoiding the foxfire allure of high technology,” and says, “All the technology needed to run electric railways, and run them fast, was in place 100 years ago. It was simple, rugged, dependable, and relatively cheap. In the 1930s, many of America’s passenger trains, running behind steam locomotives, were faster than they are now. (After World War II, the federal government slapped speed limits on them.)”

It’s a provocative piece, especially in light of the Charlotte debate over whether the city should accept a $25 million Federal Transit Administration grant to help it start building a proposed streetcar line. Here’s what the Charlotte Observer’s editorial board said in today’s newspaper:
“Think streetcar vote was hard? Just wait.”

Why conservatives should love streetcars

“‘For cities, conservatives’ banner should read, ‘Bring Back the Streetcars!’ ”

Read on. It’s from an article in The American Conservative, “What’s so conservative about federal highways?” by William S. Lind, director of The American Conservative Center for Public Transportation and coauthor of Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. Reader Mason Hicks, who grew up in Lancaster County, S.C., but now lives in Paris (France) shared it with me recently.

Lind’s piece talks about the folly of a national transportation system that requires us to depend on foreign oil, and on only one transportation mode, and points out how it was government intervention in the marketplace (via billions spent on highways) that helped kill the passenger rail business.

And here’s another provocative excerpt: “The greatest threat to a revival of attractive public transportation is not the libertarian transit critics. It is an unnecessary escalation of construction costs, usually driven by consultants who know nothing of rail and traction history, are often in cahoots with the suppliers, and gold-plate everything.”

He writes of the importance of “avoiding the foxfire allure of high technology,” and says, “All the technology needed to run electric railways, and run them fast, was in place 100 years ago. It was simple, rugged, dependable, and relatively cheap. In the 1930s, many of America’s passenger trains, running behind steam locomotives, were faster than they are now. (After World War II, the federal government slapped speed limits on them.)”

It’s a provocative piece, especially in light of the Charlotte debate over whether the city should accept a $25 million Federal Transit Administration grant to help it start building a proposed streetcar line. Here’s what the Charlotte Observer’s editorial board said in today’s newspaper:
“Think streetcar vote was hard? Just wait.”