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It's about mobility, jokester
by Craig Westover
Reading a recent article in the online MinnPost, "Here's a transportation solution: Reduce the need to drive," I was reminded of the old joke:
Patient to doctor: "It hurts when I raise my arm."
Doctor to patient: "Don't raise your arm."
One possible solution to Minnesota's transportation "crisis," postulates the MinnPost article, is "redesigning people's lives" so they don't drive so much. The notion of curbing people's desire to drive is based on a new report out of the University of Maryland: "Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change." (You just knew global warming was in there someplace, didn't you?) The report notes that one big reason the transportation system is stressed is because people live far from work, shopping and schools.
"Experts" invariably see such inefficient living patterns as bad things. Individual choice, diversity of options and the ability to freely act on one's choices can really mess up a train schedule. I'm reminded of another old punch line:
Harried office worker hanging up the phone: "How can I get my work done if I have to keep dealing with customers?"
One of the great advantages of the American economy is individual mobility - the ability of people to take advantage of employment, shopping and educational options well beyond their immediate communities.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median length of time American workers have been with their current employer is four years. Is one expected to move within walking or biking distance of every new job or seek employment only near a bus line? That sure would cut down on driving, but also on opportunities to advance one's chosen career.
David Strom, president of the Minnesota Free Market Institute (for which I do contract work), noted in a presentation at a recent transportation conference sponsored by the St. Thomas Federalist Society, that transportation is not primarily about systems - roads, rail or buses. It is about "mobility," the ability of individuals "to get from where they are to where they want to go, when they want to go to do what they want to do."
Scientific-sounding metrics used by planners and bureaucrats to justify projects like the Central Corridor are measures of efficiency, not effectiveness. One can be very efficient providing a service only a select few people can use. "Effectiveness," however, is measured by how well a service meets real needs at an affordable price - how well the market responds at that price.
Unfortunately, policy-makers, and certainly the experts at the University of Maryland, aren't thinking of transportation in terms of "mobility." Greater mobility is the enemy of planning; people's lives must be "redesigned" to make for efficient systems.
The infrastructure of roads and bridges provides the most effective way to increase mobility, and not only for those who hop in the family car to get from where they are to where they want to go, when they want to go to do what they want to do. From soup to nuts, virtually everything we purchase, including the kitchen sink, has at one time or another been carried in a truck.
Fundamental services like police and fire can't function without roads; the thought of paramedics responding to a call at your home via light rail and bicycle just isn't very comforting.
That said, there are individuals who for reasons from low income to physical disability don't have access to automobiles. If, as I implied earlier, mobility is good for society, doesn't it follow that it is also good for society to provide mobility for those excluded from personal transportation? The answer is an unqualified "yes" - if the operative word is "mobility."
Transportation is first and foremost about enabling people to take care of fundamental transportation needs. Grocery shopping, getting to work where the work is, getting the kids to school - these are fundamental transportation requirements that point-to-point transportation is not very good at providing.
Instead of planning vast and static transportation networks "for the future" in a changing environment, why not focus on policies that enable people who lack mobility today to make the same transportation choices others make?
Rather than subsidize massive transportation systems, why not subsidize individuals who lack access to transportation? Why not remove barriers, as Minneapolis did by lifting the arbitrary lid on taxi licenses, to increase competition among more individualized travel options? Instead of curbing opportunity by limiting mobility, why not expand opportunity with a focus on getting people from where they are to where they need to go?
That makes more sense that treating transportation as a joke:
Policy-maker to expert: It hurts when people drive.
Expert to policy-maker: Don't let people drive.
Craig Westover is a contributing columnist to the Pioneer Press Opinion page and a senior policy fellow at the Minnesota Free Market Institute (www.mnfmi.org).
This Commentary appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press December 12, 2007 |
