When I talk about transportation, I keep coming back to one overarching theme. People will ask me what I think of biofuels, or a new bus route, or I’ll end up talking to someone about density or the design of a building, and they all fit together. What will keep working – what will still be here – in fifty years? In two hundred? In a thousand? Where can we make decisions now that will save the next generations from some of the disasters we’ve wrought? How can we build cities that will be adaptable – but not too adaptable, as we don’t want them reconfigured on a whim?
Sure, oil is a little cheaper this month. There’s still a finite amount of it, and it’s still more trouble than it’s worth in the long run. We need a future in which the vast majority of our trips by number are on foot, and by mile are on transit. That means a very dense core – not necessarily 40 stories, maybe just 6 or 8, but completely full of storefronts, restaurants, bars, clubs, kiosks, schools, everything that people do. I’m here on this blog because cars simply aren’t a part of that core equation, and transit is. Density caps out way too low with cars – wide streets and parking garages dampen livability dramatically, the more dense you get the more car infrastructure you need, pushing density down again. The train just needs a tube through the middle, even your platforms can be filled with people doing more than just going from A to B.
Regardless of what seems most cost effective this year or next, or what people seem to ‘want’ or what kind of houses people are buying right now – what matters is not now. Sure, more buses are great. Spending a lot on a short term fix when you don’t have a long term plan isn’t. What matters is what our infrastructure and urban layout looks like in twenty or fifty years when fuel simply isn’t available for working class Americans. You can’t build those solutions in a single regional transit package – but you can take a step, and you can start calling in the state government and federal government to help once you have something they can help fund.
I guess I’m just trying to remind you that this isn’t all we get. Proposition 1 is fantastic – it’s a good blend of today and tomorrow – but there will be more, and soon. The city wants more streetcar lines soon. The state wants to improve Cascades service between a lot of our major cities and towns – they want to buy trains and keep upgrading the track. The FTA and Amtrak stand to benefit greatly from Obama and Biden. We can work to strengthen our urban growth boundary. There are all these things that are worth fighting for, and I see a lot of fighting about piddly little things that work themselves out or are an annoyance at worst.
Want to solve something? Get newsstands and food vendors in the transit tunnel after Link opens. Build mixed use next to a train station. Help convince the city to refuse permits for concrete walls abutting sidewalks. Those things will matter in fifty years.
