All posts by Martin H. Duke

Apparently the United Arab Emirates plans to build a “carbon-neutral city“, with all the kind of stuff you imagine would be involved.

Interestingly, residents are supposed to be no more than 200m away from a Personalized Rapid Transport station, which is the system where people get into their own little pods and whiz around the track to their destination.

I hesitated to post this because PRT is a refuge for many light rail opponents, who are nominally pro-transit but oppose any plan that actually emerges from the political sausage-making process because it uses the wrong technology, or goes to the wrong neighborhood, or is paid for by the wrong tax, or is coupled with the wrong roads, etc. ….

Still, overall the city is a project that I hope is successful, for obvious reasons.

Confronted with a choice for governor between an incumbent that wavers between doing nothing for transit and actively working to inhibit it, and a challenger that consistently works to inhibit it, I’m wondering if there’s a better way.

I’ve been doing some thinking about how to build a coalition for transit in this state. Rather than engage 5% of the electorate that is theoretically pro-transit but finds a reason to oppose any actual plan, why not work on capturing some segment of the ~45% of the electorate that is historically opposed to transit?

Transit advocates tend to emphasize two key arguments, neither of which is appealing to conservatives. First, they talk about global warming. A large number of conservatives simply refuse to believe that the Earth is warming at all, that humans are responsible for it, and/or that the costs of doing something about it outweigh the benefits. The arguments are intensely technical, so anyone emotionally invested in debunking global warming is going to be pretty difficult to dissuade. Other environmental arguments, such as encouragement of dense development, are also unpersuasive to people who might idealize living in a place like North Bend.

The other key argument is quality of life for people who use transit. Obviously, riding a train is much better than riding a bus. Rail critics often prefer BRT because of its “cost-effectiveness,” which has its own distortions, but they essentially don’t care about the quality of the ride because they don’t plan to use transit. They’re certainly not particularly energized about BRT proposals like Transit Now, except when attacking light rail. Selfish arguments are common to all parts of the political spectrum on many issues, and are difficult to defuse with persuasion.

I think that transit advocates, in their efforts to dissuade car use, have soft-pedaled a national security argument that naturally appeals to conservatives. Specifically, every gallon of gasoline consumed, on a bus or in a SUV, ultimately puts money in the pockets of people who are either strongly anti-American (Hugo Chavez), or are actually trying to kill us (various Saudis). Of course riding a bus is much less damaging than driving an SUV, but neither compares to riding a hydroelectric-powered train.

The two things preventing recognition of this by right-wingers are (1) a failure of rail advocates to properly exploit this (frequently due to a distaste for raw appeals to patriotism), and (2) economic illiteracy, something that is much easier to counteract than unwillingness to pore through the details of climate simulations.

There’s a general perception that we can avoid dependence on “foreign oil” by reducing our consumption by a bit, or drilling for more oil in Alaska; both Democratic and Republican politicians have pandered to this belief. There’s a related argument that because the gasoline that we buy here in Washington generally comes from Alaska, that we aren’t putting money in the pockets of those that wish to do us harm. Some simple logic, involving basic economics, debunks both of these notions. Stay with me:

Oil in North America is generally expensive to produce. The oil sands of Alberta cost around $9 to $14 dollars per barrel to extract. Offshore production in the Gulf of Mexico is obviously an expensive proposition. In contrast, the Saudis pump oil out of the ground for less than $1 a barrel. So, a little thought experiment: if demand for oil suddenly collapsed, sending the price dramatically downward, who would still be producing profitably? That’s right, the Saudis, while all the other producers went out of business. So we’ll never be “independent” of foreign oil.

Secondly, even if we get all of our oil from domestic sources, that still lines the pockets of oil producers that we don’t purchase directly from. Since oil is a fungible commodity, whatever demand we do generate raises the price of oil, which benefits all the producers. If our consumption were lower than our production, excess American oil would be exported to the world market, lowering the price.

Therefore, anything that reduces American demand for oil, regardless of the origin of that oil, reduces the revenues of oil producers, some of which is diverted to organizations hostile to the United States.

I think Bill Maher coined the slogan “When you ride alone you ride with Bin Laden.” I might also suggest “Support the troops: Take Public Transit.” If I were a better graphic artist I might make the posters myself. At any rate, I think it’s a more productive proposition than quibbling over small differences with the Sierra Club. You’ll never get the dedicated anti-tax zealots, but there are others willing to pay for congestion improvements and enhanced national security.

Has anyone out there tried this line of argument? Any transit skeptics out there moved by it?

I know we talk about the waterfront streetcar way too much, but the process is pretty opaque, so we have to expend a lot of effort to find out what’s going on.

Anyway, I emailed WSDOT about the mysterious paving over of the streetcar tracks. Here’s what I got back:

Yes, we’re using it as a temporary detour for bikes and pedestrians while we repair several viaduct columns between Columbia Street and Yesler Way. Construction on that project should be done by the end of April, and the streetcar tracks will be restored.

In case you hadn’t noticed, we put up an RSS feed a few days ago. You can get it by clicking at right.

Thanks to Daimajin for getting this done.

At about the same time that the Washington Transportation Blog posted these, I went and took some photos along the Rainier Valley Light Rail segment. I also have a few comments about the line’s design.

Down around Rainier Beach station, the track seems completely done, with the station apparently complete and the overhead wires installed. As you go north, things get progressively less developed till you reach Mount Baker station and the Beacon Hill segment.

Here’s Othello Station, which as you can see is surrounded by retail development.

Immediately north of Othello, the pylons are in with the pointy tips that my friend remarked made them look like “weapons for giant fighting robots.”

And the station itself is coming along nicely.

One thing that could be a problem is a lack of crossing gates at major intersections. Here at MLK & Alaska, I can certainly envision some idiot trying to turn left and blocking the train.

And lastly, a pedestrian crossing near the Rainier Vista development. There’s a boys and girls’ club going in near here, and I’m really concerned kids are going to run across the tracks wherever they like. It’s a matter of time until the first accident. That’s not only a tragedy in its own right, but will almost certainly result in reduced speeds afterwards, which makes LINK a less attractive option.

I would propose a tasteful, 2 or 3 foot black iron fence along the length of the right-of-way to channel people into the signalized crossing, as well as crossing gates at intersections. How much more investment could it be on a multi-billion dollar project?

By the way, you can see that drainage on the tracks already sucks.