Change Your World Week Fall 2021 (Archived)

The US is facing a massive blight on its working population: poorly planned and poorly funded public infrastructure. 

An estimated 83% of the American population lives in urban area, and by 2050 that population is expected to rise to 89%. In 2018, U.S. metro economies account for 91.1% of GDP, 91.8% of wage income, and 88.1% of jobs. Only 9 countries (including the U.S.) had a higher GDP than the New York City area. With all these people, and most of the economy, you would expect them to have a large and well-funded transit and bus system. However, despite the concentration of population and production, only 5% of Americans use public transit. This is due to a lack of government interest in the institution. In 1971, the US government consolidated many of the failing passenger rail businesses into a nationalized corporation called Amtrak. Amtrak was made as a partially government owned public service but was still run as a for-profit business. While it was made with the expectation of failing, it managed to survive off of the small Federal and State funding it was given, while still being expected to make a profit.  

An example of bad public infrastructure would be Detroit, Michigan. The city spent the 20th century specializing in the automotive industry, as Detroit was seen as the hometown of auto manufacturing. This led the city to have a distinctive lack of an effective transit system. This was later realized to have been a massive mistake when the vehicle manufacturing had been rapidly moving out of Detroit. The high cost of maintaining the roads in the city, along with the expensive costs of a growing suburban population proved to be too much strain on the once richest American city, and possibly richest city in the world. Detroit had filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Far from being the only American city to file bankruptcy, Detroit was a shock, as it was the largest city to do so. American cities regularly must face extreme debt to uphold their infrastructure as a result of suburbanization. When it was reinforced that residents should live in spread-out urban neighborhoods through zoning regulations, the costs of maintaining public utilities like roads, sewage systems, and water lines gets significantly more expensive then providing the same services to people that live in higher density areas. These services need to be subsidized by the people who don’t live near them because the taxes from the suburbs will rarely ever cover the costs of the people living in them.

When it comes to driving your own car or to riding on a train many people are going to probably pick driving their own car. When in your own car you can go and do anything you would like to do but when it comes to riding on a train you will have to stop to pick more people up or will have to stop to let people off. So, the big question is would you rather drive in our own car, or would you rather want to wait for a train to get there to pick you up and take you to the places you need to go. Many people will say that they would rather ride a train to go the places they want to go because it is cheaper in gas and then you are just going to have to pay to get on the train or to get back on after your stop. When with your own car you can leave at any time you would like to or could go to any place you would like to go without having to stop many times. Many will think it is a good idea to rip the highways out and just have trains as the big Mobil transportation and then others also think this is not the best idea. There are many goods and bad things about trains and a car sometimes you will have to think what is better for the environment and the people.

In the case of public transit, workers and small business owners share a common goal in the increase of public transit. For the worker, not having to own a car would save quite a bit of money each year. And for business owner, foot traffic sees more people walking into stores over vehicles driving passed.

As for those who would oppose these efforts, we need to look at the automotive industry. They spend $39 million last year alone and peaked at $57 million in 2007. However, money is not the end all be all of political lobbying. Rallying the voter bases of political leaders has a much larger impact on the politician’s voting patterns than giving them money, if they want to hold their seat that is.

On average, people spend $3,534 on maintenance for their vehicle each year. Imagine what you could do if you had an extra $290 each month to spend on what you wanted or needed. For the business owner, with the possible exception of specialty stores, it could be expected that pedestrians walking in front of your store are far more likely to walk in over someone passing by in a vehicle who would likely not even notice the storefront.

Small business owners and workers share a common goal of increasing foot traffic, maybe for different reasons, but the reasons behind the motives don’t matter, the shared goal does.

Obviously more public transit is needed for larger use of the network, but how would its use be incentivized?

One quick and simple way to get people more willing to try public transit would be to offer subsidies for free or reduced cost passes. Another way to get transit passes out to people who may otherwise not be interested would be through employers offering reimbursements, partial payments, or pre-tax payroll reductions.

Another, larger scale initiative would be the creation of superblocks. These are segments of a city or town, in which, vehicles have limited access. Larger superblocks can be about 16 city blocks in area and have spaces for living, playing, and shopping. Superblocks reduce the need for parents to constantly drive their children from place to place and give children a greater degree of freedom. If you want an example of a city that took the idea of superblocks the extreme, take a look at Barcelona.

There are more solutions, such as “tolls” for the general use of roads. However, it seems that if this is rolled out before beefing up public transit, it will put a disproportionate burden on the lowest income earners. If this is pushed out after steps are taken to improve the availability and performance of public transit, then it may be a good incentive for people to make the transition.

It is important to realize that national level solutions don’t come about spontaneously. Especially here in America, we like to means test policies in many locations around the US before anything is done on the national level. Even if there are examples from other countries, we need working models within the nation to take the proposal seriously.

With that in mind, it is best to start at the local level and to voice your wishes to our state and, more importantly, city representatives. It is important to keep in mind who would be more likely to be interested in these solutions. Supporting small businesses is something all politicians like to boast about, so use that when you reach out to your representatives.

While it is far from their only goal the DSA advocate for a much heartier public transit system. They have local chapters around the US and advocate for the working class wherever possible. They have a statement on public transit that you could send to your representatives to let them know you are interested in seeing this issue addressed.

“If we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.”

- Rob Hopkins

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“NatGeo Surveys Countries' Transit Use: Guess Who Comes in Last.” Smart Cities Dive, https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/natgeo-surveys-countries’-transit-use-guess-who-comes-last/9081/.

Love, Patrick, Mark Stevenson. “Superblocks Are Transforming Barcelona. They Might Work in Australian Cities Too.” The Conversation, 24 Aug. 2021, https://theconversation.com/superblocks-are-transforming-barcelona-they-might-work-in-australian-cities-too-123354.

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“Who Pays for Roads?” Frontier Group, 17 Aug. 2020, https://frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/who-pays-roads.

"The State of U.S. Infrastructure."  Council on Foreign Relations, Nov 8, 2021, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure

"U.S. Cities Factsheet." Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan, 2021, https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/us-cities-factsheet

Robert Puentes "Why Infrastructure Matters: Rotten Roads, Bum Economy" Brookings.edu Jan 20, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/why-infrastructure-matters-rotten-roads-bum-economy/

"Solutions Briefs: Sustaining Capitalism." CED The Public Policy Center of the Conference Board, March 2020, https://www.ced.org/solutions-briefs/todays-infrastructure-improvements-will-drive-tomorrows-economy

Amy Padnai, "Anatomy of Detroit's Decline." New York Times Archive, 2012, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/08/17/us/detroit-decline.html

Nathan Bomey and John Gallagher, Detroit Free Press, "How Detroit went broke: The answers may surprise you-and don't blame Coleman Young" Sept 15, 2013, updated July 18, 2018, https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2013/09/15/how-detroit-went-broke-the-answers-may-surprise-you-and/77152028/

Daniel Herriges, "When Apartment Dwellers Subsidize Suburban Homeowners." strongtowns.org Apr 16, 2020, https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment-dwellers-subsidize-suburban-homeowners

Devon Marisa Zuegel, "How we Subsidize Suburbia." oct 20, 2017, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/urbs/we-have-always-subsidized-suburbia/