Northstar Line moving forward

Lots of good mass transit news will be arriving in Minnesota in time for the holidays, all of it having to do with the soon-to-be passed transportation bill.

The three big items contained in it:

1. $195 million to help rebuild the collapsed I-35W bridge.

2. $55 million for the Northstar commuter rail line, part of about $162 million in federal money that will eventually come our way to help pay for the $320 million project. It's on track to break ground in 2008, with a scheduled opening in 2009. And once the new Twins stadium is built, Northstar riders will be able to use the stadium station to switch to the Hiawatha light-rail line, giving them carless access to downtown Minneapolis, south Minneapolis, the Mall of America and the airport.

3. Speaking of light-rail, the bill also contains about $10 million for the planned Central Corridor extension of the system, which will connect downtown Minneapolis with downtown St. Paul.

By the way, the Northstar line, besides easing the need for additional highway lanes in the northern suburbs, is expected to produce about $1 billion in economic development along its route.

light rail, mass transit, politics, midtopia

Bridge update

Some interesting political reactions to the 35W bridge collapse.

In Washington, the House quickly approved $250 million to rebuild it. That's rational, and unsurprising.

Here in Minnesota, Gov. Tim Pawlenty is suddenly willing to sign the gas-tax increase he vetoed in two previous sessions. He is expected to call a special session devoted exclusively to addressing years of deferred maintenance on highway infrastructure.

And state DFLers (Democrats to you out-of-state readers), to their credit, have been avoiding the blame game, focusing instead on what the policy reaction should be.

Of course, some things don't change. Lt. Gov. (and MNDOT Commissioner) Carol Molnau, whose political priorities have been opposing transit projects and the gas tax, crabbed about the change.

On a gas tax, she said, "we do need to look for resources we can count on long term." But in order to solve the problem, she said, "we would have to raise gas taxes 34 or 35 cents a gallon. I don't think the motoring public can sustain that."

First, let's just note that Molnau is scaremongering a bit: the gas tax is not the sole source of revenue for transportation spending.

But let's take her at face value. The gas tax is currently 20 cents a gallon, and has not been raised since 1988. You'd have to raise it 15 cents a gallon simply to account for inflation. Another 15 cents a gallon on top of that to deal with the backlog simply isn't that onerous -- and it's called being responsible.

Especially because, as I've argued before, the real problem is that gas isn't expensive enough. Not to mention the other benefits of forcing people make rational choices about energy use.

Important as it is to address the backlog of maintenance work, however, we should try to avoid overreacting to the problem. We're not going to suddenly have a rash of bridge collapses, and we shouldn't overspend on a frenzy of needless, emergency repair work. A crash maintenance program would:

1. Drive up the cost of the projects in the short term, thanks to scarcity of materials and labor;

2. Play havoc with travel times;

3. Lead to a repeat of #1 a few decades down the road, as all those freshly repaired bridges and roads start to wear out at the same time.

4. Make the whole thing less doable politically.

So it will be good if this disaster leads us to confront the consequences of deferred maintenance. But the response should take a medium view. Increase spending and move up repair timetables, but do it in such a way that the work (and cost) is spread out over a reasonable length of time, say 10 or 20 years.

Further, the cost of maintenance should be incorporated into our long-term planning, to ensure we're only building as much infrastructure as we're willing and able to maintain. Other considerations aside, there may be times when a light rail line or bus rapid transit will be the way to go because doing so saves on maintenance costs compared to a freeway of similar capacity.

I'm not at all confident that the response will be so measured. Instead, I expect to see a combination of two extremes: "spend a lot of money now" and "talk about it, but after the dust dies down continue doing little or nothing." With luck I will be pleasantly surprised, especially here in Minnesota.

35W bridge, politics, midtopia

Corzine's public service ad

Maybe it's the only thing a politician in his situation could do, but kudos to New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine for doing a TV and radio ad that is frank, efficient and essentially says "I was an idiot."

He doesn't try to evade or lay blame, or defend the indefensible. He acknowledged his mistake and urged others not to do so. And the final scene of him walking off on his double crutches said more than any moralistic tagline could have.

This is how adults behave when they make mistakes.

Corzine, politics, midtopia

Fast train to irrelevancy

The state legislative session has ended, and the big news (as far as I'm concerned) is that the Central Corridor extension of the light rail system is on the front burner, and drawing strong public support.

Those who testified were asked to comment on a recently completed draft environmental impact study, and to say which transit option they want. Should light rail or bus rapid transit be the mode of transportation along University Ave.? Or do citizens want the status quo and keep the avenue the way it is, with car and bus traffic?

Overwhelmingly, those who testified said they wanted something different, and that light rail is their preferred mode.

Even more pleasant, from my point of view, is how marginalized the Taxpayers League has become on this and other issues.

The League, apparently undeterred by the unqualified success of the Hiawatha line, opposes the Central Corridor extension.

(They also oppose the Northstar Commuter Rail. Their analysis is flawed to start with -- subjecting rail lines to cost-benefit analyses that they don't direct at roads -- and their "build more roads" solution fails the history test.)

Why do they oppose the Central Corridor? They cite the cost, a negligable impact on traffic congestion and opposition by many business owners along the proposed route.

But the cost will be amortized over many years and many, many riders. And the point of light rail is to provide transportation options and slow the growth of traffic congestion; the Met Council, for instance, has never claimed that it would greatly reduce congestion.

And most business owners are concerned about business disruption during construction of the line; they're not opposed to the existence of the line itself. The loss of 660 parking spaces is a minor concern, since the line would carry far more people than that each day. It should be a boon for business, not a liability.

That might be why the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce supports the line. Apparently the Taxpayers League doesn't speak for most business owners.

But then, they never did. They've always represented a small and secretive cadre of backers. Their political influence peaked during the last gubernatorial election (with their "no new taxes" pledge). But then politicians got burned by that pledge, and the public support for mass transit projects became apparent. More directly, their credibility collapsed as their "solutions" became increasingly nonserious. Remember the transit strike, and the League's suggestion that it would be cheaper to buy every poor person a used car?

If we want the Twin Cities to grow in a sensible fashion, it needs to grow with mass transit in mind. And that means having the mass transit systems in place. It would be far more expensive and disruptive to wait another 10 or 20 years and try to graft a mass transit system on to a metro area that grew without regard for such a system. Focusing on the short-term costs is shortsighted. We're building for the future, and doing it with narrow, high-capacity rail lines instead of four-lane highways. It's smart, it's forward-looking and it exposes the pennywise nature of the Taxpayer's League.

mass transit, Central Corridor, Minnesota, taxpayers league, light rail, politics, midtopia

Air traffic controllers retiring en masse

By the end of next year a quarter of the nation's air-traffic controllers will retire. Besides the loss of that much experience, there is concern that their replacements will not be ready.

Those in the present generation of controllers -- hired after President Reagan fired about 11,000 striking workers in 1981 -- are approaching their 50s. Ironically, the FAA counts almost 500 of the controllers fired in 1981 as possible replacements for the retiring controllers.

Controllers are eligible to retire at 50 or after serving 25 years. They face mandatory retirement at 56.

By the end of 2007, 3,769 of the country's 14,736 air traffic controllers will be eligible for retirement.

The FAA estimates that 7,540 controllers could retire by 2011. That's more than half the current work force. And the number could reach 8,549 by 2012. Additional controllers could be lost through death, illness, resignation and promotion.

I was only 14 in 1981, so I barely remember the effect of firing 11,000 controllers. But I seem to recall that the planes kept flying. If we can handle the loss of 11,000 controllers all at once, I would think we could handle this more gradual attrition. On the other hand, the skies are a lot busier these days, so there's less slack in the system.

The FAA says it's on top of things:

Jay Aul, the FAA's human resources manager for controller operations support, said the agency will have all the replacements it needs even considering the required three to five years of training.

"We have a pool of applicants we can draw on," Aul said. "There are 1,300 military controllers who want to come over, 800 to 900 people in our college training programs, 300 people we reached through our job fairs, and about 500 former PATCO controllers."

I would hope so, since anyone can see this one coming. Though it's pretty funny that they're considering hiring back some of the fired controllers.

In the end this may just be a tactic by the controller's union to stir up interest ahead of contract negotiations. But given that it takes up to five years to train a new controller, a miscalculation could cause problems for an extended time.

FAA, air traffic controllers, air travel, politics, midtopia

Making policy on the fly

Didn't get to this yesterday:

One might wonder why Senate Republicans haven't yet formally killed their gas tax proposal, given the near-unanimous condemnation it's receiving.

Besieged with complaints about political pandering, GOP lawmakers now say the rebate idea is a non-starter. As Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) explained yesterday, "When my own daughter harasses me, you know you're in trouble."

So declare it dead already, and let's move on.

The reason they haven't might be that lawmakers haven't come up with something equally pandering to replace it. But the real problem, which is the linked article's main point, is that legislators were making this stuff up on the fly.

The response so far has been profiles in panic. Some conservatives dropped their philosophical opposition to tax hikes and business regulations and began complaining loudly about oil companies and the auto industry. ... A few days earlier, Bush backed diverting crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an idea he dismissed less than two years earlier as a political stunt. ... Republican lawmakers likewise have responded with a mishmash of solutions -- some barely vetted, others with little chance of becoming law.

The Democrats get points for at least being consistent, even though their ideas are no more effective or on point than the GOP's.

Memo to all of our elected leaders: Calm down.

The thing about high gas prices is that it is not a crisis. It is (hopefully) a new chronic condition. So hasty, temporary measures to deal with it are ill-conceived at best.

Forget the attempt at short-term, short-sighted fixes. You can't do much anyway. Instead, take a deep breath and do the things that need to be done to assure our long-term energy security -- which means taking steps to reduce our oil dependence.

Do a good job at that -- show that you are sober, smart and willing to take risks to do what must be done -- and maybe your prospects in November will improve.

gas tax, gas prices, oil, energy, politics, midtopia

New taxes dead, pander still on life support

Senate Republicans can act quickly when necessary -- such as when their business allies object to proposed new taxes.

Senate Republicans on Monday hurriedly abandoned a broad tax proposal opposed by the oil industry and business leaders, another sign of their struggle to come up with an acceptable political and legislative answer to high gasoline prices.

Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, said he had decided to jettison the provision, which would have generated billions of dollars by changing the way businesses treat inventories for tax purposes. Instead, he said the Senate Finance Committee would hold hearings on the plan "later this year, so the pluses and minuses of the provision can become well known."

I actually think the proposal should never have been made in the first place: oil company profits are the least of my worries. But it shows once again how clueless Frist is.

Meanwhile, the $100 rebate plan has not yet had its plug pulled. But sweet merciful death can't be far away, especially because income from the tax provision is supposed to pay for the rebate.

The centerpiece of the leadership proposal, a $100 rebate check to compensate taxpayers for higher gasoline prices, continued to receive a rough reception. Members of the public have telephoned and written to ridicule the idea, and even Republican lawmakers are finding fault.

"Political anxiety in an election year is to blame for a lot of the bad bills Congress passes," said Representative Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who on Monday called the rebate a "knee-jerk populist idea" that voters would see through.

The rest of the bill has some other elements:

The measure includes new protections against price gouging, incentives to expand domestic oil refinery capacity, support for new energy initiatives and tax incentives for buying hybrid vehicles.

Ditch the price-gouging protections, because I have yet to see evidence of it being a widespread problem and anyway I want gas to be more expensive. Expanding refining capacity is fine, because refining is the main bottleneck in our energy supply line. But tax incentives are less important than overcoming political and environmental opposition to their construction.

Support for new energy initiatives is fine as long as it's different sources of energy, not just drilling in ANWR and other such measures that will have no short-term effect and in the long-term will just provide an excuse to continue our oil dependence -- all while incurring lasting environmental damage.

Tax incentives for hybrids is nice, but misses the point. Target the tax incentive at fuel efficiency, not one particular type of motor. I don't care if the car is a hybrid design or not; all I care about is that it gets 50 miles to the gallon.

I'll also note, yet again, that all of these tax incentives and funding options and so on and so forth would be totally unnecessary if we do one thing: keep the price of gas high. Do that, and people will pursue the other options on their own, out of naked self-interest.

oil, Frist, energy, gas prices, politics, midtopia

Gas prices start to pinch

The Star Tribune today had a big A1 centerpiece on how higher gas prices are affecting homeowners and commuters.

The main revelation to me is that some people spend $500 a month on gas alone, not to mention the hour or two spent in traffic each day. That doesn't count the cost of buying, maintaining and insuring a car or two.

Are they insane?

It also cites a couple of studies that try to measure the transportation cost of living in various parts of the Twin Cities. One is by the Center for Neighborhood Technology; the other is by the Brookings Institution.

A lot of people decided to buy in the far-flung exurbs because the houses were a lot cheaper there. But there's a reason they're cheap, and many homeowners are now figuring out why.

If gas prices remain high, home prices will rise in the central cities and decline further in the sticks. But they're not going to fall enough to totally offset the ongoing cost of commuting, year after year.

The long-term implications could be interesting.

For starters, the "sweet spot" -- where combined housing and commuting costs are the most affordable -- will move inward somewhat. If mass transit gets a renewed lease on life, it will move in even closer, as those "expensive" homes in the city turn out to be cheaper in the long run. Even far-flung development will be affected, as it follows bus and rail lines rather than highways. That's one reason communities along the proposed Northstar commuter line strongly support its creation.

Meanwhile, businesses may seek to reduce transportation costs by locating near a rail line in the exurbs. That will allow residents to stop commuting into the city and instead drive to a local workplace. The small-town downtown may flourish again, creating a ring of minicities around the large central ones.

High gas prices may, in the end, achieve what government could or would not: curbing sprawl and the inefficient use of resources that goes with it. Yet another example of how dealing with the true cost of gasoline helps society as a whole make more rational choices.

Separately, MPR's Midmorning show had an interview with Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who's in town to take part in the Great Conversations series at the University of Minnesota. Blumenauer helped develop the Portland, Ore., transit system and is something of an expert on urban management and growth. They discussed several things, but Blumenauer made two points that resonated with me:

Zoning laws need to change. As long as we require people to drive to the mall or strip mall to shop, car usage remains necessary. A better idea is to have local stores within neighborhoods for small needs, and transit-linked shopping destinations for more regional draws. Right now, though, that's almost impossible because many zoning laws -- most of them drawn up decades ago and altered little since then -- still require sharp separations between commercial and residential districts.

Commuters deserve options. Blumenauer noted that the Twin Cities are less densely populated than Portland and have far more miles of highway. Yet we have more traffic congestion. That should be a flashing red sign that more highways are not a solution.

He expressed surprise that the Twin Cities is so far behind the rest of the country in the adoption of light rail, when even once-adamant opponents such as Phoenix, Denver and Houston now have systems. He said the goal should not be to force people to use mass transit; it should be to give them options, so they can decide what to use. Over time it leads to fewer roads, less traffic and less sprawl.

We have high gas prices to thank for the re-emergence of this sort of conversation. And it's yet one more reason why we should not be trying to lower those prices.

light rail, mass transit, Blumenauer, energy, oil, transportation, gas prices, sprawl, politics, midtopia

Off the road

My wife and I like trains. So whenever we travel, we try to take the train. Part of it is that my wife doesn't like to fly. Part if it is that I'd rather gnaw my own leg off than spend eight hours driving on the freeway. But when we need to take a trip, our first thought is, "can we take the train?"

The answer is not as easy as it should be, because often it is "no." And therein lies a tale.

But first, let me tell you how it should be. Because it happened to us on this trip.

The trip we're on is business for my wife: a gigantic interior-design convention in Chicago. I'm along because I'm a design groupie, and having remodeled three houses I have more than a passing interest in sinks and ovens and other home furnishings. Plus it's close to our anniversary, and this was a chance to spend three nights in a four-star hotel on the Chicago River without any rugrats underfoot.

Step One was to dump the munchkins with my parents, who live near Madison, Wis. So bright and early on Wednesday morning we bundled everyone into the car and made the five-hour pilgrimage to Grandma's house.

The kids were well-behaved, traffic was light, the weather was good. So we arrived five hours later hungry, tired and stiff, and the kids fairly exploded out of the car and began finding randomly destructive ways of working off their pent-up energy.

We spent the night, and the next morning said goodbye to parents and offspring. Then my wife and I drove about 30 miles to Columbus, Wis., to catch the train to Chicago.

We got there about noon. The train was running about half an hour late, and wouldn't be there until 1 p.m. We sat on the platform and ate lunch. It wasn't particularly busy, so about 10 minutes later the stationmaster joined us, and we spent the next half an hour watching freight trains barrel through (hauling coal and what looked like Ford Ranger pickups from the soon-to-be-closed St. Paul plant), amiably discussing trains, the weather and local politics (Columbus' City Council tried to fire the mayor, it turns out, and in response the citizens voted out half of the Council. The legal and political fallout is still expanding. All this in a town of 4,400).

When the train arrived, we got on board and found a pair of empty seats. And what seats! Comfortable, able to lean way, way back, and gobs of leg room. Truly unbelievable amounts of leg room, in fact. I'm tall, and used to being folded up like a pretzel on airplane flights and even bus trips. Here there was so much space that I didn't have to use the foot rests on the seat in front of me. My wife, who is shorter, couldn't even reach her foot rest unless she slumped way down and stretched her legs all the way out. Did I mention the mindblowing amounts of leg room?

We had barely gotten underway when the conductor came through with a plate of strawberry cheesecake. "This cake," he said, "goes to the first person who can correctly answer a trivia question." He told us the question, the answer to which was "Stephen Ambrose." So within five minutes of boarding I was munching on a piece of very good cheesecake while watching the scenery go by.

And it was pretty decent scenery. Because trains don't travel on six-lane highways. They travel on tracks that take you along highways and byways you'll never see otherwise. The land comes right up to the tracks, and there are no gas stations or minimalls lining the roadway to get in your way. You don't look out your window and see one endless commercial strip; you look out your window and see America, up close and personal.

I had some work to do, though, so after a while I pulled out my laptop and got busy. I can't do that in a car or bus, because trying to read in a vehicle makes me motion sick (I get seasick easily, too, which makes for some pretty great stories when we go scuba diving in 7-foot seas....). But a train's motion is so gentle and rocking that it doesn't bother me. It's quiet, too.

Three hours later we pulled into Union Station in Chicago. We debarked and headed up to street level, intending to catch a cab to our hotel. But along the way we noticed a big map showing bus routes, and saw that an express bus ran from the station to the hotel -- for $2 a person. We decided to make this an entirely mass-transit trip, and hoofed it around the corner to the bus stop.

The bus was waiting; we got seated and the driver took off. The other riders were regulars, so they kept up a running patter with the bus driver as we went. For his part, the driver was apparently a taxi owner in a past life, because we went fast and changed lanes on rather short notice. I quickly learned to tune out the sound of angry car horns that seemed to follow us wherever we went.

Ten minutes later the bus screeched to a halt in front of our hotel. We climbed to our feet, thanked the driver for getting us there alive and descended to the pavement. 20 minutes after that we were unpacking our things in our hotel room, with a view of the Chicago River and the new Trump building going up on the far bank.

Total elapsed time from door to door: 5 hours, including the one-hour wait at the station in Columbus. Total one-way cost: $27 each. We arrived fresh, relaxed and unfrazzled, and with a couple of hours worth of work out of the way.

Had we driven or taken a bus it would have taken about 4 hours. But we would also have had to deal with driving and parking in downtown Chicago, and the trip time would have been a total waste, a black hole in the history of my life marked "time spent getting there." The bus would have cost about the same; the car would have been more expensive, the slightly lower per-mile cost offset by the high cost of parking downtown. And that ignores all the hidden costs of driving, such as oil dependency and the cost of building, maintaining and policing highways.

Flying would have been substantially more expensive and not all that much faster, the extremely short flight time being offset by long waits at either end.

I have a dream, a dream that such an experience might someday be the norm in this country, if we ever build (or rather, rebuild) a robust passenger rail system -- at least in regional networks. But alas, it is far from the norm now. And so we get to the meat of my tale.

Our passenger rail system is in tatters, for reasons that have very little to do with how hard or how well Amtrak works, or the public demand for rail travel.

It is not at all uncommon, for instance, for the Empire Builder (the train that runs from Chicago to the West Coast) to arrive two days late. This happens for two main reasons: limited routes (if an accident or landslide block the tracks, the trains stop), and the fact that Amtrak doesn't own the track. Passenger trains are often forced to pull over and wait so that freight trains can go past, and that plays havoc with the schedule.

Even when it's running on time the trip is a long one. And if it's a long trip the train starts to lose its cost advantage over flying, as the need to feed and house passengers for days at a time starts to overwhelm the far cheaper per-mile cost of transportation. Unless you count the trip as part of your vacation, nobody will pay $1,000 and take three days to get to Seattle if you can pay the same amount to fly and arrive the same day you left.

Then there's the service interval. Most lines see one train going each way per day, period. And if your geographic luck is poor, that train may come through at 2 a.m.

Then there are the routes. Amtrak uses a hub-and-spoke system, just like the major airlines. So the Empire Builder, for instance, runs to Chicago. If we want to go to someplace in Iowa, we have to first take the train to Chicago, then change trains for the line that runs through Iowa.

But because of that one-train-per-day service interval, connections stink. We once tried to get to LIttle Rock, Ark., by train. That meant going to Chicago, changing trains, and going on to Little Rock, then reversing the procedure to come home. In both directions, our train would have arrived an hour after the connecting train left, requiring a 23-hour layover in Chicago both going and coming. Not wanting to spend four of our seven days traveling, we took the train to Memphis and then drove to Little Rock.

Finally, there are politics (check out this excellent CBO analysis of the issues). Ask yourself this question: Why is the train station in Columbus rather than in Madison, a city of 200,000? Because that's where the track goes. But, you might think, it surely makes economic sense to run a spur to a city the size of Madison. Well, yes it would. Except Amtrak doesn't own track (except in very small areas of the Northeast). And laying track is expensive. And Congress, many members of which are actively trying to kill Amtrak, won't pay to lay new track for Amtrak -- even if (or perhaps, especially if) that investment would pay off in the long run.

What about bullet trains? Those might make long-haul trips more competitive, right? Well, yes they would (though they're expensive to operate). But Amtrak doesn't own track, so it can't do the track upgrades that high-speed trains require.

Why not kill Amtrak and let a private company run passenger rail service, if the market exists? Because starting up a private service would be almost prohibitively expensive, assuming a new railroad even could acquire the necessary rights-of-way for its track. I think we could privatize the industry eventually, but first we have to remove the senseless barriers we've erected over the past 50 years.

Long-haul train service will always have a difficult time competing with air travel. And for trips of less than an hour it has difficulty competing with the convenience of driving. And there will always be routes that aren't particuarly economical because of low ridership.

But for intermediate trips -- say, 1 to 6 hours in length -- rail is cheaper, more convenient and far more pleasant than the alternatives. If Amtrak were allowed to improve reliability and frequency in a variety of medium-haul markets, the benefits might be huge, reducing car use and the need for ever-more highways.

Because one great thing about rail lines is that they're scalable. A rail line can be expensive to put in, but after that adding capacity is very, very cheap, since trains can run minutes apart without slowing the system down. So instead of constantly adding new highways to handle more and more cars, you just add more cars to an existing train or add more frequent train service on the existing track. And with more frequent service you provide even more incentive for travelers to leave the car at home.

If we want to start weaning ourselves off of oil, we need to find alternative ways for average citizens to get to where they need to go. Air travel is simply too expensive (and oil-hungry) to fill the gap. But picture this: establish regional networks of rail lines connecting population centers within a region, so that people have rail as a viable choice. A three-way connection between Madison, Milwaukee and Chicago, for instance. Or in Minnesota, regular service connecting Duluth, Rochester and the Twin Cities. All with intermediate stops to provide at least some service to the communities in between.

Tie that into a viable light-rail system in the Twin Cities, and suddenly someone from Duluth could take the train down to the Cities for the weekend instead of driving. Or Twin Citians could take the train to the North Shore. Or college students could travel by train. Or patients at the Mayo Clinic. And so on.

I don't blame people who refuse to ride Amtrak in its present state. But maybe we should demand that passenger rail be given a chance to show what it can do before we pull the plug, free of the conflicting demands that have hampered it ever since Amtrak was created in the 1960s.

And maybe millions of new riders would rediscover just how pleasant mass transit can be.

railroads, trains, transportation, Amtrak, politics, midtopia