Yes They Can
James Fallows writes about the rapidly expanding Beijing Metro — which has added several lines and extended others just during Fallows time living in China. This seems like an incredibly smart decision on the part of the Beijing government. Contemplating new heavy rail transit projects tends to become dizzyingly expensive and difficult. And yet when you look back at a Washington or a Boston or a Chicago — or even more so a New York or a Paris or a London — it’s clear that investments made in such projects long ago continue to pay enormous dividends, allowing for the creation of pockets of human and economic activity that simply could never be contemplated absent the existence of some high-capacity transit nodes.
By investing in this sort of thing at a moment that’s still pretty early in the game relative to China’s economic development, the PRC is helping to provide its capital with a set of advantages that will likely far outlast the current regime.
94 Responses to “Yes They Can”
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December 12th, 2008 at 11:57 am
I can’t speak about Beijing but I can speak about New York and Tokyo. I think Tokyo, a first world city, has more in common with US cities than Beijing.
Tokyo has built 4 complete subway lines in 6 years.
New York City has been trying to build a single subway line for 6 decades. New York MIGHT get half the subway line opened in 6 decades but it doesn’t look promising.
You can’t get people out of cars and you can’t get people to change their habits unless there is a reasonable alternative.
Waiting 60 years to find that nothing has changed is not the way to proceed.
December 12th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Bejing is a forward-looking municipality today the same way that New York, Chicago and Boston were a century ago. Today, America has become mostly backward-thinking on these types of investments; focused on preserving the past 50 years rather than preparing for the next 50. Transit development in America is highly scrutinized by people who seem unable to look more than a few years into the future; who are hung up on absolute costs (rather than amortized costs) and the terms of transit projects themselves are often dictated by the special interests with the most to lose. Or, in other words, just politics as usual.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Sigh.
What part of “The United States is bankrupt” does Matthew not understand?
See http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0812/gallery.market_gurus.fortune/index.html?cnn=yes
December 12th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It’s much easier to build mass-transit lines when you can just order people out of their homes that happen to be inconveniently located and those citizens have no political or legal recourse.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
It’s much easier to build mass-transit lines when you can just order people out of their homes that happen to be inconveniently located and those citizens have no political or legal recourse.
Sorta like what Robert Moses did….
December 12th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
See also http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4BA5CO20081211
IRS to America:
What’s in YOUR Wallet?
December 12th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
I second “right” about ordering people out of homes… it also helps when you can do construction with relatively low-paid workers and non-existent (or where existent, unenforced) worker safety / heath standards, cheap (and in some cases, at best bonded and at worst prisoner) labor for production of steel and other materials, etc.
Of course, those conditions existed in New York City during the construction of the amazing subway and El system there too… and lack of those conditions is why the DC system was so overbudget and limited.
It’s not all about money.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Matthew is not only whistling past the financial graveyard, he’s proposing we build a subway to it.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Don’t forget years tied up doing Environmental Impact Statements and/or lawsuits.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Tokyo built subways within the last two decades with “relatively low-paid workers and non-existent (or where existent, unenforced) worker safety / heath standards, cheap (and in some cases, at best bonded and at worst prisoner) labor for production of steel and other materials, etc.”?
December 12th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Right on about Chicago. I live here now and still often use the public transit system built a while ago. The thing though is that Chicago hasn’t upgraded its L or Metra system in some time to facilitate population changes and ridership changes (recently the ridership hit a high of 500 million riders). What would be even better is if the transit system in cities is improved or changed every twenty years or so as the city changes with it.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The 2nd Ave subway will have very little impact in reducing the number of people driving into Manhattan every day. The 4/5/6 will be a bit less crowded and development may increase in Yorkville but the line would need to extend into the Bronx or Queens for it to reduce automobile congestion. With the only two subway expansions being undertaken in Manhattan (the extension of the 7 down to 34th and 10th being the other) it’s apparent that reducing automobile congestion is only going to happen through toll increases and then forcing people into already crowded subway lines crossing the East river without increasing any outer borough service.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
It would be interesting to compare the city masterplans of Tokyo, Beijing, and major American cities. I know that several rust belt cities haven’t had a new masterplan in over 40 years. A century ago city planners would look at the demographics, pour over maps, and plan the expansion of the city. Do they do this anymore? I think that makes a big difference, and I think it is equally important for cities to plan for their contraction as well as their expansion (I’m looking at you Detroit).
December 12th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
It may have been proposed in 1929, but NYC’s 2nd Avenue subway is actually under construction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Avenue_Subway)! I was up in the 90s a couple of days ago and found that work for the underground tunnel was ongoing, with completion estimated in a dozen years.
The project may have taken awhile to get to this point but it’s necessary to consider the downside of a strong government pushing such public works projects. One needs only to look at Robert Moses legacy to show how nearly unlimited power in New York led to some monumental disasters (e.g., the Cross-Bronx Expressway causing the death of the South Bronx, the razing of the old Penn Station) even while generating significant public good (e.g, the Verrazano Narrows Bridge). There’s a necessity for public input to stave off the worst of governmental planning, even at the cost of delays and higher costs.
December 12th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Confidential To Don Williams: You don’t have to make the same damn point over and over again in every single thread you post in. We’re pretty smart here. We get it.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
What part of “The United States is bankrupt” does Matthew not understand?
I’d imagine the part about how the United States is bankrupt, since, you know, the United States is not bankrupt. In fact, the United States has pretty much unlimited access to credit, which it can borrow at incredibly low rates. In what sense is the United States bankrupt?
New York City has been trying to build a single subway line for 6 decades. New York MIGHT get half the subway line opened in 6 decades but it doesn’t look promising.
You can’t get people out of cars and you can’t get people to change their habits unless there is a reasonable alternative.
Who drives a car in Manhattan, anyway? Is the failure of New York to build a subway line down 2nd Avenue really indicative of the failure of mass transit in America? I’d think the failure of almost any other city in the country to have a tolerable mass transit system would be a bigger worry.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Matthew is not only whistling past the financial graveyard, he’s proposing we build a subway to it.
It’s one thing to repeat the same thing over and over, but particularly obnoxious when you insist on missing the main point, which is that construction of such mass transit lines are investments in infrastructure that continue paying dividends long after the money has been spent.
Spending money in this way can also do a very great deal towards stimulating economic recovery.
OTOH, you do provide an excellent example of the kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
“Who drives a car in Manhattan, anyway?”
These people, among, many, many others.
http://nyctmc.org/Xview_still_cdpd.asp?cam_id=92&server=RS2&type=cdpd
PS, the Berra-ism “Nobody goes to the ballpark anymore because it’s so crowded” is funny because it is illogical.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Subways for poor non-whites and criminals.
Everyone knows that.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I’d think the failure of almost any other city in the country to have a tolerable mass transit system would be a bigger worry.
See, for example, Baltimore. We have exactly one half of a subway line, built in the ’70s. The other half wasn’t built because of the fear it would bring “crime” to the suburbs. We also have rail line that does not connect with the subway, and which was closed down this fall because of too many leaves on the tracks.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Around Boston the MBTA extended the Red Line to Alewife Station in Cambridge in 1985. The Silver Line, which runs busses, partly through tunnels, reached Logan Airport in 2005. Plans are underway to extend the Green Line northwest to Medford, and there’s more going on. The Silver Line has plenty of critics and the MBTA is seldom accused of being a paragon of efficiency, but the fact is that new public transit lines can be, and are being built.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
in 19, “rail line” = “light rail line”
December 12th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
er, 20… how is it the numbers on these comments keep changing?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:34 pm
I don’t usually read the comments sections here, but what’s with all the Grinches who oppose subway building? Good lord, it’s not much more expensive than building roads and bridges, environmental impact statements can be expedited to take only a few years, the real hindrance is just getting the money allocated.
There always seems to be money for roads and bridges, but almost nothing for subways and light rail. Yet it is so much more efficient and provides many more cost savings in the long run. It would not “force people to give up cars”, but would instead make driving much more convenient by lowering the number of people who have to drive. Here in LA the traffic is just a nightmare during rush hour, why continue to block new construction that would dramatically lighten that traffic?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Re Fairfax’s comment “It’s one thing to repeat the same thing over and over, but particularly obnoxious when you insist on missing the main point, which is that construction of such mass transit lines are investments in infrastructure that continue paying dividends long after the money has been spent. ”
—————-
You mean like Boston’s Big Dig? How badly did that leaking pile of shit –aka Tip O’Neill’s Revenge — fuck the taxpayer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_(Boston,_Massachusetts)#Problems
How did a $6 Billion project end up costing us $22 Billion?
ha ha ha ha ha
You guys crack me up.
You should upgrade infrastructure only when you think the local economy is vibrant and is going to grow. What benefit would there be to upgrading Detroit’s transport system at this moment, for example?
All you wannabe commissars are going to do is build the equivalent of public housing — the stairwells of which will be reeking of piss and shit before the damm substandard concrete dries.
If no one can afford to buy gasoline, the highways will unclog in no time. Buy some fucking buses, for christ’s sake. The issue is not whether to spend — it’s to gain value added/profits from the investment in a time of tight resources.
Maybe people who couldn’t run a fucking lemonade stand are not the best advisers on investment of public dollars.
December 12th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Speaking of transit:
Bicycle-led Chaos in Oaska! Too many bikes!
December 12th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
There always seems to be money for roads and bridges
Think so? Come to Northern Virginia.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
It may have been proposed in 1929, but NYC’s 2nd Avenue subway is actually under construction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_Avenue_Subway)! I was up in the 90s a couple of days ago and found that work for the underground tunnel was ongoing, with completion estimated in a dozen years.
If they’re lucky enough to live to very old ages, your great-great-grandchildren might get to ride on the Second Avenue Subway.
But don’t count on it.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
whats idiotic about the 2nd avenue subway plan is that there is no proposed stop between 86th & 72nd street. I use the 77th street station on the 6 train to go to work, and it is only a local stop. The congestion can be unbelievable. At the same time, there is a big dropoff with ridership when the train gets to 68th street. So this really makes no sense
December 12th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
“right” says it’s easier to build mass transit in a dictatorship where people can be ordered out of their homes. “Bahrad” concurs, and adds that it helps to use low-wage or forced labor, and “Brad” mentions all those pesky environmental laws.
Yet oddly enough, lots of cities in Europe are expanding (or planning expansions of) their subway systems … in spite of the presence of democracy, high wages, and environmental laws.
An article in Business Week last year claimed 20 cities in Europe are building new lines or expanding existing ones:
http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2007/gb2007125_600001.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_global+business
December 12th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
1) The biggest argument against the massive public works projects that Matthew advocates is that the Democratic Party is too corrupt and incompetent to carry them off.
2) We will end up doing what we’ve been doing: building bridges in the Alaskan wilderness while the some of our brightest minds waste a hour per day in the Silicon Valley traffic jams. All because of Senatorial seniority rules.
3) With incremental approachs –like buying buses — you can switch to a different source if your buses start leaking oil, misfiring and blowing steam from the radiators.
But once Chairman Matthew starts his Great Leap forward, we are on the hook for $Billions of cost overruns — as our political hyenas show up to chow down once we’ve let the contracts.
4) Who would Matthew appoint over these public works? How about Rod Blagojevich?? — I hear he will be looking for a job shortly
December 12th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
We spend all of our money on “defense.” That’s why we can’t have nice things.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Chicago never got the Circulator:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Central_Area_Transit_Plan
December 12th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
And as proof of that, I give you the last 8 years of Democratic hegemony…
December 12th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Subways for poor non-whites and criminals.
Actually, the New York City Subway is fairly egalitarian, at least during commuting hours. I speak as a former resident of Manhattan.
(The problems with the Second Ave. line are more about NIMBYism than who rides. Also, it became more and more expensive the longer it was delayed, thus a victim of the cyclical fiscal crises of the system and the city generally.)
December 12th, 2008 at 2:49 pm
you’re not a very good troll, Don Williams. Didn’t they teach you in Trolling 101 to call it the “Democrat” party?
December 12th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
With Don Williams in charge of our infrastructure development, we would still be using horses and buggies. How do you think the freeway system was developed, Don? Apparently we have endless money for every damn pet project the Pentagon ever wanted to develop, but when we’re talking about something so basic and important as transportation, we don’t have the money because it isn’t the kind of transportation Don likes.
So lets all curl up in a fetal ball and weep softly, because Don says we can’t do anything.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Underground mass transit like light rail in the US is lobbied against heavily by the same auto/gas/tire alliance that pulled up our streetcar systems after WW2. I know this for a fact having just ended 2 years working in a position of some influence for San Diego’s Metro Transit System. The push remains for “bus rapid transit” over rail systems of any type. The preference is related to funding since most of the biggest grants are for highway construction. It’s a big mess and I’m glad not to be part of it now.
As for China, not only is Beijing very forward thinking, there are at least 15 cities building subways in China including Xi’An, Wuhan, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Dalian, and existing subways in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Tianjin under expansion right now. Chongqing is building an elaborate monorail system, something we’re often told is impossibly expensive for an American city. These subways will ensure China’s urbanization for generations. We are slipping terribly behind.
December 12th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
@Ed: not true. We spend *most* of our money on defense. The rest goes to building roads and bridges in Iraq and Afghanistan on no-bid contracts. Where we have to pay four or eight or ten times what those projects should cost because we have to guard them, heavily and around the clock, during construction. And we use American contractors for the construction instead of using the opportunity to build goodwill with local companies. And then we have to repair the roads when they are bombed (Iraq) or watch as they become supply lines for the people shooting at us (Afghanistan).
Or maybe that’s what you meant when you put the quote marks around defense. “Defense” is such a broad category…
December 12th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Don Williams: What part of “priming the pump” do you not get?
December 12th, 2008 at 3:17 pm
Yet oddly enough, lots of cities in Europe are expanding (or planning expansions of) their subway systems … in spite of the presence of democracy, high wages, and environmental laws.
America, too, is seeing renewed interest and investment in transit — it’s not just Europe. NYC’s turbo-charged nimbyism and massively high cost structure shouldn’t be confused with the US as a whole. We’ve seen LA, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta and DC undertake significant transit expansions in recent years, and there are plenty of projects on the drawing board nationwide. The several hundred billion or so that Washington is going to have to spend on infrastructure in the next few years to keep people fed and housed is likely to only energize US transit expansion.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
@25 Don Williams
But the Big Dig had very little to do with rail. It was all about tunnels for the interstates. As I understand it, the only mass transit part was the Silver Line tunnel from Southie to the airport. So, is your argument that governments shouldn’t spend money because they might not spend it well? If so, that’s pretty weak.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:25 pm
But once Chairman Matthew starts his Great Leap forward, we are on the hook for $Billions of cost overruns…
And if we don’t spend billions (more likely several trillion) on stimulus, we’ll be “on the hook” for a massive increase in hunger, homelessness and general deprivation. Yes, some infrastructure spending will likely be wasted or stolen. That’s what prisons are for.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
China never had an automobile culture, and neither did the great American cities when their transit systems were built. In new American cities, everything was built to accommodate, and be accessed by, the automobile. You can build all the spokes and hubs you want, but there is nothing there when you arrive, other than a parking lot. What’s the point in taking transit when, eventually, you have to have to ride in an automobile to get to your destination.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
But the Big Dig had very little to do with rail. It was all about tunnels for the interstates.
It’s still been a huge net benefit to the city, as far as I’m concerned. Those twenty-odd billion will be amortized over, what, thirty or forty years? During that period of time Massachusetts will generate $20/$30 trillion in economic activity to pay for it. The average Bay Stater won’t feel the cost, because even all those billions is a tiny fraction of the state’s multi-decade gross state product.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Off hand, I can think of several completed light rail projects completed in the US in the last decade, including San Diego, LA, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Salt Lake City and Dallas, as well as airport links at JFK, DFW and SFO airports. Many of these cities have extensions either planned or underway, as well as new line soon to begin in Honolulu and DC. There is significant investment in this, if you look at the whole country. It just must be recognized that planning, permitting, design and construction are all quite complicated, and take several years. It is, of course, even harder to do in denser areas, which is why NY and Chicago are easy to single out. See this site for a good list of recent projects, plus a lot of cheerleading.
December 12th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
Those hubs will themselves attract new development, housing and business. That is, if you don’t stupidly require them to be surrounded by parking lots instead of high-density buildings.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:17 pm
Yeah, but apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order … what HAS the government ever done for US?
December 12th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Re amos’s comment “So, is your argument that governments shouldn’t spend money because they might not spend it well? If so, that’s pretty weak.”
—————-
Sigh.
Ok, I’ll sign Amos up personally for another $11.3 TRILLION in federal debt. Will that be cash or charge? (Sorry –no personal checks allowed, since we’re not sure how long the banks will be open.)
Who do you people think will be paying this off — baby Jesus?
And does anyone want to argue that there is one micron of difference between Senator Ted Steven’s views on pork and the views of our Democratic leadership?
December 12th, 2008 at 4:25 pm
Re Amos at 42: “But the Big Dig had very little to do with rail. It was all about tunnels for the interstates.”
———–
Oh, so that’s where we went wrong. If we had just run subway trains through the Big Dig instead of cars, then the tunnels wouldn’t leak, the ceilings wouldn’t fall down and the cost overrun wouldn’t have been 300 percent.
Because..er.. God is on the side of the virtuous and mass-transit is virtuous.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
nice to know that Americans paid for those Beijing Subway’s by buying toys that were toxic to our children.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Well. In China (as in the US a century ago), the regulatory environment in place is minimal – once there’s interest and money, it gets done. In the US, you get an endless series of environmental protests over any large scale construction. You also get much larger costs, as any urban construction involves mandatory union labor. Then, if the job actually manages to get off the ground, it ends up like “The Big Dig” – a cesspool of backscratching and corruption.
You want big projects like this to happen in the US? Drop most of te regulations, make it harder to sue on environmental grounds, and drop the union requirements. Which is not to say that it would be all good to do all of those things; while I think we’ve gone way, way overboard on regulations, the Chinese (as we did a century ago) are way too lax and way too willing to just shove people aside.
What you want is something more involved than what China has, but not as sclerotic as what we have now. With liberals in charge, the liklihood of that happening is slim and none. Heck, it would be highly unlikely with conservatives in charge.
December 12th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
All this time Williams has posed as Socilist of some sort when in reality he is a neoHooverite?
December 12th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
One striking thing about the Chinese construction is that they will prevent the use of millions of automobiles and buses.
Apparently over the past 30 years the Chinese have built very little new rail, at least in comparison to the amount of highways they’ve built. Now they’re embarking on a program to almost double the amount of rail mileage they have. At the same time they are apparently planning to spend $650 billion in ‘pump-priming’ to avoid a recession and provide social benefits to their people.
We hear all the time about how the Chinese use so much coal, and so we can’t do anything about AGW because surely they won’t. Building a transportation system that runs on electricity, however, is doing something. It makes just as much sense, or maybe more, to build your end-user first and then change your generation method, as it does to change how you make electricity and then start to build ways to use it.
Considering the gravity of the situation, we should be telling Detroit that we have other jobs for their suppliers, building renewable energy sources, and that the failure of GM will not put a million people out of work. GM and the suppliers should be just as interested in building mass transit and renewable energy sources as they are in building electric cars that will run on power generated from Illinois coal.
After all, we wouldn’t want to be actually as short-sighted as we like to say the Chinese are.
As for the trolls, someone should make a video game where we can shoot them down as they attack in human-wave techniques screaming about “economics anyone with a kitchen table can understand”. Maybe comment threads are like the old text-based D&D for troll shooting.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
This is mostly about racism – wealthier white people being unwilling to spend money on transit for poorer, brown people.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Re eric k’s comment “All this time Williams has posed as Socilist of some sort when in reality he is a neoHooverite?”
—————
I’d like to think of it as the distinction between smart Socialists and the extremely dumbshit Socialists. Between “Cadre” and “reactionaries”.
The average American is weighing in at around 200 lbs. Takes a lot of energy to move that lardass and his iron horse 60 miles per day.
In contrast, it takes very little to move an image of his smiling mug that same 60 miles. Adjust the cam and the fucker can even stay in his pajamas.
Web Conferencing , my boy. with 100 Gigabit fiber backbones. Aka Internet 2.0. Didn’t you see that 3D hologram with Wolfy on election night?
Even if you don’t want to go 3D, go to Best Buy and look at that WALL of high def soon-to-be cheapass plasma displays.
Moving electrons makes a whole lot more sense than moving fat asses.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:32 pm
The price of bandwidth has fallen through the floor year after year. Within 20 years we’ve gone from 300 bps household connections to 10 Mbps with little price increase.
Anyone seeing cars, subways, trains, buses,gas pumps etc providing that price performance? If it had, you’d be able to buy a Mercedes for $20 by now.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Oh –and don’t give me Keynes stupid shit argument that it doesn’t matter what we spend the stimulus on.
Only a dumbfuck liberal arts major — who never ran a business or completed a major project on time/in budget — would have came up with that brainstorm.
If wasteful spending didn’t matter, we would all be speaking Russian, singing the “Internationale”, and addressing each other as “Comrade”.
December 12th, 2008 at 5:49 pm
One of the features in Web Conferencing software — like Adobe’s Connect Pro — is a feature that lets members of the audience ask questions and vote on the presentation.
What we need to do is scrap the US Congress and replace it with a Survivor-Like Reality TV Show — called “Spend Your Money”. People like Matthew and Moi could present our projects, make our arguments, attack our opponents, answer challenging questions and — after the commercial — let the American people vote on who gets kicked off the island.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
PS WHen avian flu mutates into the pandemic form , web conferencing will be the only organizational form that survives. COrporations that haven’t adopted it will die off faster than Lehman Brothers.
All of you cubicle monkeys will drop like flies. Especially those of you taking mass transit and crammed cheek to jowl with some college kid with a runny nose and bad breath.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:00 pm
Oh –and don’t give me Keynes stupid shit argument that it doesn’t matter what we spend the stimulus on.
Of course it matters what we spend it on. The principle example from US history of Keynesian economics defeating a depression was the Second World War. In a few short years the government borrowed an amount of money equal to 70% of GDP — taking total public debt to something like 120% of GDP — and, voila, no more depression. Incidentally, total US public debt is similar right now– although somewhat smaller as a percentage of GDP, than it was in 1940. Long story short, if massive stimulus spent on things like tanks and warplanes banished the depression once and for all back in the 40s, just think of what similar amounts of money — spent on productivity enhancing goodies like an updated electrical grid and such — will do.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
Re Jasper’s comment “spent on productivity enhancing goodies like an updated electrical grid and such ”
————–
I very much agree. What we lack, however, is a meaningful debate re what’s “productivity enhancing”.
I myself propose that we plug the dumbfucks into something like the Matrix and let them watch Bill O’Reilly /Internet porn while generating electicity from their body heat.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Clarification: by “dumbfucks” I meant “Republicans”.
I still have hope that we can create enough meaningless menial tasks to keep the Hillary supporters employed.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
“Tokyo has built 4 complete subway lines in 6 years.”
Not true at all. What Tokyo has and recently has done is amazing, but no need to oversell its transit system.
The Mita/Namboku underground line from Meguro station east was made in the late 60’s. Only by 2000 did trains actually run through it. The opening of the line was delayed by years because of the changes necessary to connect later made parts of the line.
In my part of the Tokyo area there are plans for no less than four lines to be made, some of those plans will happen others may change (demographics, budgets, etc.), but this type of long term planning is what makes it happen.
China could have done itself a world of good if it started building its subways 10 years earlier instead of building so many roads. This is a major screw up the western press never publishes. Luckily they play catch up well.
December 12th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
I must have stopped by Don William’s blog by mistake.
And it was a big mistake.
December 12th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
mjshep needs to use our mass transit system and fly over to Finland so that Matthew can read the post at the top to him. That’s the “Harvard Option”
This, by contrast, is the “Montgomery County Community College” channel.
Or is it “University of Phoenix”?
December 13th, 2008 at 12:06 am
James Fallows is a total fraud. He wrote one of the most influential anti-Gore articles in the ATLANTIC.
Yes, Matt’s daddy mama.
You will never here a harsh word about JAMES FALLOWS unprofessional journalism on this ‘blog’.
December 13th, 2008 at 12:41 am
Why does a transit discussion always end up in recriminations ?
IMHO, wealthy western countries can afford an expensive public transport system, and wait for returns to come in, but what about countries that don’t have nearly as much wealth ?
December 13th, 2008 at 1:11 am
Not sure what the bashing of NYC is all about on this site, but this city – for all I and every other New Yorker bitches about it – has the best mass transit system in the county. I live in the E. 90s a half block away from the 2nd Ave. subway construction. Just hearing and seeing and stepping around the construction mishegoss every day, I can confirm it’s happening and it might not be everything we want when it’s finished, but how many other cities are even building one new subway line to connect to an already operating and pretty damn huge and efficient 24/7 subway/bus system?
December 13th, 2008 at 4:03 am
I guess Europe has no unions or environmental standards, which is why they are able to spend money on transit.
December 13th, 2008 at 10:13 am
“this city – for all I and every other New Yorker bitches about it”
That’s why it has the best mass transit system in the county, IMO
December 13th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Maybe people who couldn’t run a fucking lemonade stand are not the best advisers on investment of public dollars.
Maybe people who think that running the government of the United States is like running a lemonade stand are not the best advisers on investment of public dollars.
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