Category: rail

The ‘Next City’ – on fast tracks?

I’m listening to Michael Dukakis at conference on “The Next City” in Cambridge, MA. He’s a huge rail fan. Says Boston IS this country’s best version of “the next city.” That’s because it’s compact, walkable and has plenty of transportation options beyond highways.

He’s optimistic, because the president and the Congress are now interested in trying to build a better national rail transportation system. “My concern is what’s going on at the state and local level,” he just said. “That’s where we’ve got to spend some time.” He didn’t mention South Carolina specifically, but …

McCrory’s next project?

I hate to interrupt the great comment thread going on at “Developers bend city official’s ear” but here goes:

Hizzoner Pat McCrory stopped by the paper today to talk about what he plans to do with his remaining eight months in office. Headlines: Economic development [recruit more companies to bring more jobs], city spending [try to cut what needs to be cut in the city budget], public safety [he’s against crime and supports the police chief]. Motherhood and apple pie were probably on the list too.

But near the end of the conversation he talked about having recently gone to Atlanta for an event sponsored by Georgia Tech, to look at mega-regions. There’s a lot of theorizing going on among people who study city and metro region growth that county and state lines are all but irrelevant if you look at how economies work. It’s essentially the “Citistates” theory of folks such as Neal Peirce and Curtis Johnson. Now folks are talking about mega-regions. One mega-region, dubbed “CharLanta,” is the urbanized crescent running from Atlanta through Greenville-Spartanburg, S.C., Charlotte, the N.C. Triad and on to the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Triangle area.

McCrory said he and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin agreed to try to get a project going, possibly with Georgia Tech and UNC Charlotte, to look at “the bigger picture vision thing.”

Now I’ve not always agreed with McCrory, but in transportation, he’s usually on target or pretty darn close, in terms of what’s needed. And he’s right about the need to look long-term and big picture.

One major need in the CharLanta corridor: Better passenger rail service. A significant attribute that sets apart the DC-to-Boston corridor is its clearly superior rail service. The whole Southeast region ought to get together and make the world’s best pitch, to anyone in D.C. who will listen, that it’s our turn for some of those rail dollars. After all, North Carolina got shafted in the federal transit-stimulus-divvying formula.

I don’t know how McCrory plans to spend his time post-mayorship, but working to put a mega-region coalition together might well be a project in need of a champion.