George Will’s Irritable Mental Gestures
It’s probably not fair to say that conservatives have no idea, but this entire George Will column is basically the same as the column he wrote about how he hates jeans, except this time it’s about how he hates Portland. But now he wants national policy to be driven by his hatred for Portland:
LaHood, however, has been transformed. Indeed, about three bites into lunch, the T word lands with a thump: He says he has joined a “transformational” administration: “I think we can change people’s behavior.” Government “promoted driving” by building the Interstate Highway System—”you talk about changing behavior.” He says, “People are getting out of their cars, they are biking to work.” High-speed intercity rail, such as the proposed bullet train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, is “the wave of the future.” And then, predictably, comes the P word: Look, he says, at Portland, Ore. [...]
Where to start? Does LaHood really think Americans were not avid drivers before a government highway program “promoted” driving? Does he think 0.01 percent of Americans will ever regularly bike to work? Intercity high-speed rail probably always will be the wave of the future, for cities more than 300 miles apart.
Where to start? LaHood didn’t say that Americans didn’t drive before we built the interstate system. He said that building the interstate system promoted driving. I don’t see how you could possibly deny this. Had we spent less money on highway construction and more on mass transit or intercity rail, then there would be less driving. That seems obvious. In a different context, completing WMATA’s Green Line promoted use of Metro. And this is true even though Washingtonians were avid Metro riders even before the Green Line was complete. A seven year-old ought to be able to master this.
Will claims to find it unbelievable that as many as 0.01 percent of Americans would ever bike to work regularly. But rather than tossing off ridicule, he might have looked up the Census Bureau’s statistics on commuting patterns and seen that right now 0.4 percent of commuters normally get to work on bicycles. Now that’s a small percentage. But it’s forty times larger than a percentage that Will deems unrealistically utopian. This would be like saying Dwight Howard is 2 feet tall.
As for high-speed rail, San Francisco and Los Angeles aren’t that much more than 300 miles apart. Indeed, they’re about as far apart as Barcelona and Madrid, which are currently served by a very successful high speed rail link. What’s more, while metropolitan San Francisco is about the same size as metro Barcelona (4.2 million people, give or take), metropolitan Los Angeles’s 12.8 million residents is a much larger city than Madrid with its 5.3 million.
But even if you accept Will’s idea that LA-SF HSR can’t succeed because it’s over the magic 300 miles line, the United States has plenty of city-pairs closer than that. For example, there’s Seattle and the dread Portland, Oregon. And Vancouver’s less than 300 miles from Seattle. Milwaukee to Chicago, Chicago to Indianapolis, Chicago to Saint Louis, Miami to Orlando and Orlando to Tampa, and Houston to Dallas—all fitting under the Will line.
Why does Newsweek want to offer its audience a columnist who wants to write about transportation polic but can’t be bothered to bring any facts or logic to the table?
177 Responses to “George Will’s Irritable Mental Gestures”
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May 18th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
not 2 feet, 2 inches!
May 18th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
I’m so glad we have a federal government so keenly interested in changing my behavior. And they’re willing to spend billions and billions to do it!
May 18th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Shut up that’s why!
May 18th, 2009 at 5:42 pm
I hope to God that Brian Schweitzer runs in 2016. Think about it: 1. plaid shirt 2. jeans with blazer 3. bolo tie. George Will’s head would explode.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Ah, Portland, another one of Matt’s blue-eyed utopias!
Portland, OR has the whitest urban core of any city in America. It’s so white that white people are gentrifying homes even on Portland’s Martin Luther King Blvd., making it too expensive for blacks to live in Portland anymore.
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2009/01/unbearable-whiteness-of-portland_25.html
May 18th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
not 2 feet, 2 inches!
No, Dwight Howard is 80 feet tall. That’s why dunking is really bad for his back.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I’ll go out on a limb and speak for my fellow Portlanders and say we are quite thrilled to be hated by Geroge Will. In fact we’d be pretty upset if Will liked us.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Charles Stross, one of the shining stars of the science fiction world and an well-traveled high-speed rail consumer, gives his take on the Amtrak Portland-Seattle line (not positive) on his blog:
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2009/05/retrograde.html
May 18th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
The idiot Will is actually right about bicycling.
Talking about biking is a big distraction from mass transit. Biking will never, ever ever be anything but a tiny solution for a small niche. Except perhaps in small towns.
We need to focus on transit and TOD. Biking is a fantasy and makes us look nonserious.
I love Portland, btw. It’s what SF used to be, a real boho magnet. Plenty of posers, yes, but it’s also real.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I’m willing to give GW (why, I don’t know) the benefit of the doubt and guess that that 0.01% was written redundantly, as 0.01 = 1%. Like grocers/verizon selling “.49 cent apples” or “.07 cent/kb” data rates.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
“But it’s forty times larger than a percentage that Will deems unrealistically utopian. This would be like saying Dwight Howard is 2 feet tall.”
It’s actually like saying that Dwight Howard is just over 2 INCHES tall, given that he’s approximately 6 foot 11, and 83 inches divided by 40 is 2.075
May 18th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I’ve taken Amtrak from Seattle to Vancouver, BC and it was awesome. Easier than waiting in my car at the border and a damn nice route along the water for a big chunk of the trip. As is, it takes about as long as driving, so HSR would make it perfect.
May 18th, 2009 at 5:58 pm
I now know three people who hate jeans. Suffice it to say they each like to suck monkey turds.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
That TinyDwight(TM) has a mighty impressive vertical leap!
I hope George takes up smoking real soon.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:00 pm
The jeans column really said it all. George Will is not paid for journalism; he’s not paid for analysis; he’s paid because America still feels it needs a crusty, bow-tie wearing great-uncle.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
not 2 feet, 2 inches!
No, I think it means that Dwight has the power to grow to 80 feet in size. Probably if he drinks the core of a nuclear reactor.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
How senile does a writer have to be to lose a slot on the WAPost editorial board?
May 18th, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Amtrak needs subsidies of 64% of operating costs, which does not include the Asset Index Return used for Yglesias’s discussion of highways. Note the differing account standards.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:13 pm
America still feels it needs a crusty, bow-tie wearing great-uncle
Apparently what American feels it needs is a fact-free supercilious dipshit.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Why does Newsweek want to offer its audience a columnist who wants to write about transportation polic but can’t be bothered to bring any facts or logic to the table?
Affirmative action for conservatives. The Post thinks it’s unfair to hold them to the same standards we use for normal people.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
I like blue jeans in general, but I’m not a fan of designer jeans. It seems crazy to me that people spend $100+ on jeans that are pre-stained and ripped in the factory.
A friend overseas tells me they can recognize American tourists not by their jeans but by their running shoes.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Will is a prime gansta in the new Steele gopsta posse. A stream of intimidating trash talk and stone cold ‘tude will bring in the youngstas. You watch. Liberals, squishes like SLC Supertrain Huntsman, and their ‘facts’ are hellawack and sit in the back, with out-of-it liberal dinosaurs like Chuck D, who might as well be Santa Claus.
Sorry, that is the best pastiche I can do. Will soon will bust out some rhymes soon to go with his skits. He’s working on it, I’m sure.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Charlie is wrong. I’ve shown up for that train 10 minutes before departure without a ticket and had no trouble.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
@Steve Sailer
Clearly, cities should be designed more like Houston and less like Portland, right?
The world you want for us all completely sucks dick. Troll elsewhere.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:25 pm
Amtrak needs subsidies of 64% of operating costs, which does not include the Asset Index Return used for Yglesias’s discussion of highways.
‘
If something fails to turn a profit it can’t possibly be any good. That’s in both The Wealth of Nations and the New Testament. Look it up, lib-tards.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I think I heard Charles Barkley say the other night that Dwight Howard is 2 feet tall.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Portland, OR has the whitest urban core of any city in America.
Which, of course, has nothing to do with the fact that Oregon is 2% black. No, it must be because progressive urban policies drove all the blacks from Portland to…Oakland or something, I guess.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Let’s see: fly between LA and SFO, no environmental impact forms to fill out. Works today. Ditto driving.
Build high speed rail between the two: spend (many) years dealing with NIMBY lawsuits, Environmental protests, lawyers fees, etc – the cost of building that rail link will never, ever, ever be recovered.
You want to talk high speed rail? Get back to me when you’re ready to slap down the trial lawyers and the environmentalists. Until then, it’s all just useless talk.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
So, scythia, the fact that Amtrak runs much, much less expensive trains that are proposed by Matt, runs them on the popular and potentially revenue generating routes, charges rates that even people making more than 150k a year think are outrageous and still requires absolutely massive subsidies doesn’t bother you at all?
Trains are very expensive and they require huge subsidies everywhere to make them inexpensive enough for even the upper middle class to find them attractive. That’s a problem, especially if you have the broad tax base Matt prefers (and that Europe has, via the VAT, etc.), because it means that the middle classes are subsidizing the idealized transportation preferences of the upper middle and rich.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I know almost nothing about this issue in depth, but I’m inclined to agree with Robertson. Environmental impact studies are a major drag on rail construction in California.
You can see this first-hand by looking at a BART map. The Fremont-San Jose line has been “under consideration” for years. I don’t know if there are other (funding) obstacles in play, but that’s ridiculous.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
A friend overseas tells me they can recognize American tourists not by their jeans but by their running shoes.
Ironically, real runners usually don’t wear their trainers to walk around in. You’re either wearing shoes that have useful mileage left in them — in which case, you’re wasting that mileage — or you’re wearing old, beat up shoes that hurt your feet.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Brad,
No one is interested in changing your behavior. In fact, increased transit (and bicycle-friendly infrastructure) would likely reduce automobile congestion.
Sounds like a win-win, if you ask me.
As a nation, we haven’t given much thought to transportation. I’m glad we’re going forward with our eyes open…
We don’t own a car, but can get one if need be, so I guess we’re hybrids. It’s gotten quite rare, as I’ve just about had it with trying to find or pay for parking.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
If Dwight is 80 feet tall, maybe the magic have a chance in this series after all!
May 18th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
It’s a glorious Spring Day here in Portland. I rode my bike into work today on my bike along car-traffic controlled bike boulevards without incident. It’s gonna be a great ride home, too. I’ll probably take the bus in on Wednesday, cause its gonna rain, but it’s only a 10 minute walk to the bus stop (not including the quick trip into the coffee shop for some killer Stumptown coffee) and the bus comes every 5 minutes, so that will be quite pleasant, too. This weekend, I’ll probably hang out in the neighborhood (see the recent feature in the NYTimes travel section about Portland neighborhoods), maybe see some music, hang out in the yard-all without getting in a car. While taking a walk in one of our many urban parks, my wife and I will probably talk about what a great place Portland is and what a tool George Will is. But, I hope he keeps talking so people of his ilk stay away from Portland.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
Between the NY Times’ biannual gush over Portland in their travel pages, and Will’s new screed, I guess I can’t say I’ve got any complaints about how the rest of the world reports on Oregon. It all seems to serve former governor Tom McCall’s famous words: “Come visit us again and again…But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.”
And yeah I don’t think anyone here is going to miss Will.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
While I don’t know what goes on in George Will’s head, I guess what he is trying to say that the American car culture developed naturally as opposed to some kind of top down planning by bureaucrats and politicians. The car and the road, allegedly, sprung up inherently from the unique character of America (or whatever). Mass transit will not work here for the same reasons that universal healthcare won’t – America is not Europe. Thus George Will rejects the idea that people will ride/drive whatever the government builds for them.
He is probably wrong in that there were were many top down decisions involved in building the existing infrastructure. But I think his larger point in understandable.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Also, I don’t bike to work, I get to walk. I know Matt has this luxury too, but you really don’t appreciate this perk until you get to do it.
May 18th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
scythia and robertson: Delay in the BART extension to San Jose is ALL about lack of funding, so far, and not anything at all about environmental impact reports.
If you want to avoid environmental impact reports, then you must stay with exactly the road and airport infrastructure we have. Do you think there will be no environmental impact problems with a new airport or a new freeway?
May 18th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
Amtrak needs subsidies of 64% of operating costs
So, how much did I-95 bring in last year?
May 18th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
It’s so white that white people are gentrifying homes even on Portland’s Martin Luther King Blvd., making it too expensive for blacks to live in Portland anymore.
If that’s true, it ruins one of the great Chris Rock jokes.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Steve,
Perhaps you will write a similar report about DC or Birmingham or some other majority-black city: how intolerable it is for the white minority and ought not the all-black city council be ashamed of itself?
God Almighty–I don’t “celebrate” being white; I just am, yet if anybody dared even suggest a “White Celebration”, there’d be shrieks about the KKK and a general shitstorm visible from space. I’m unemployed, closing in on 50, and now I have to be ashamed of my skin color, just like Portland? Give me a break.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
Oops, forgot: George Will is a prick.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
“So, how much did I-95 bring in last year?”
I think you are talking about the Miami toll road I-95 system? Well, the following is what they are saying:
“MDX expressways are self-funded. That means that people who use the expressways pay to use them. MDX gets no funds from gasoline taxes or from any other national, state or local tax sources. Also, the tolls collected on MDX toll roads stay right in Miami-Dade County and are used to fund road operations, capital improvements, roadway maintenance and road services on the MDX expressway system.”
Are they liars? Dunno, let me check…well they are the Miami-Dade County Commission. That means they are a local government agency and are likely big fat liars. But taking them at face value, this 100% operational revenue uses the same accounting standard as the 64% shortfall claimed by Amtrak.
I will, in my spare time, do a little more research.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:32 pm
Wasn’t it Steve Sailer who went on a rant a while ago on this very blog about how the excess green space in Portland was driving up real estate prices and ruining the city?
May 18th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Re #5
I would be willing to bet a considerable sum that Salt Lake City is considerably whiter then Portland, Oregon.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
Newsweek and the rest of his buyers are doing us all a favor. What else can he do? Would you rather have him exposing himself at liberal think tank pressers and muttering craziness?
May 18th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Any thoughts on how and when to undo Markey-Waxman giving 85% of the emission permits away to industry, including 35% going to coal burning utilities? (see this AP story)
Note that if these restrictions start to bite this is giving a lot of money to business and the wealthy, while raising costs for the working class and poor.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Actually, I think the line “how much did I-95 bring in last year” is intended to take in the entire length of the highway, of which only parts of the roadway are tolled. A more precise analogy might be, “So, how much did the Washington Beltway bring in last year?” Or any significant length of real live interstate that is not supported by tolls, like maybe I-80 across Pennsylvania. (PA wants to change that status, though.) The point being that there are hundreds of thousands of miles of roads that do not pay for themselves.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:44 pm
the United States has plenty of city-pairs closer than that… Vancouver’s less than 300 miles from Seattle.
Fun fact: Vancouver, British Columbia, is not in the United States. Vancouver, Washington, is, but it would be silly to build such a connection without crossing the river into Portland.
they can recognize American tourists not by their jeans but by their running shoes
And I can recognize German tourists by their sockless moccasins.
I think you are talking about the Miami toll road I-95 system?
No, he’s talking about the whole thing.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Funny that intellectually dishonest conservatives like James Robertson don’t think that a new highway is “useless talk” even though they face the same NIMBY hurdles…and yet we seem to build them every year. How miraculous!
May 18th, 2009 at 7:48 pm
Spoken like a true conservative. Know nothing about an opinion, yet loudly proclaim a public policy directive based on ignorance. Wait, you aren’t George Will are you?
May 18th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
[...] Yglesias sums it up, and rebutts, better than I ever [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
Matt,
Beyond the unassailable logic of your post, you slipped in an even more important point at the end..”Why does Newsweek want to offer its audience a columnist who wants to write about transportation policy but can’t be bothered to bring any facts or logic to the table?”
This could be asked of most of the Washington Post op-ed stable (see Cohen, Richard, et al). The laziness of the Washington elite journalism class is astounding.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
I think you are talking about the Miami toll road I-95 system?
You may be surprised to learn that in a discussion about connecting city pairs ~300 miles apart, nobody was discussing the minuscule section of a 2000 mile long interstate that is wholly within Dade County.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Spoken like a true conservative. Know nothing about an opinion, yet loudly proclaim a public policy directive based on ignorance. Wait, you aren’t George Will are you?
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/05/rnc-going-back-to-the-ussr.php#comment-1595336
EPIC FAIL.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
Portland, OR has the whitest urban core of any city in America.
Well, thanks to the handy chart that Steve links to, we see that that’s because the whole damn place is really, really white. In fact, the city core is almost EXACTLY as white as both the suburbs and the metro area as a whole. It’s just well integrated! Good job Portland, and good job Steve for pointing that out.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:00 pm
It appears I fail too. That was directed at Benny Lava@51. Here’s the comment with proper formatting:
Spoken like a true conservative. Know nothing about an opinion, yet loudly proclaim a public policy directive based on ignorance. Wait, you aren’t George Will are you?
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/05/rnc-going-back-to-the-ussr.php#comment-1595336
EPIC FAIL.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
can we just all agree to stop paying attention to sailer and will? they thrive on our attention, you know.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:24 pm
Well, that census statistic is pretty much out of date, since the last census was in 2000. I think it’s much higher, like closer to 1%. I ride my bike to work about 40% of the time, so I’m not sure what category I fall into, but I think there are quite a few people who use their bikes on an occasional basis.
Austin now has a program where people can transport their bikes by city bus and it’s been pretty successful. I don’t use it since I only live 5 miles from work, which is an easy bike ride, but I can see how that would be great for someone with a longer trip.
I specifically bought my house with the idea that it was close enough to work for me to bike in. If biking were a more viable option, a lot more people might make that choice. I don’t ever see more than something like 5% of Americans being bicycle commuters, but even that would save tons of energy and make the cities much more livable. I’m looking forward to it.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
MEANT TO SAY:
I don’t ever see more than something like 5% of Americans being bicycle commuters in my lifetime …
May 18th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
James Robertson– yet, somehow, we manage to build lots and lots of highways with those same trial lawyers and environmentalists.
A friend overseas tells me they can recognize American tourists not by their jeans but by their running shoes.
Actually, this is a relief. It is a relief to know that not everyone in the world walks around wearing running shoes all day as though they’re 11 year old children who don’t want to have to switch shoes for gym class.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
P.S. The Energy Secretary used to bike to work until his secret service detail made him stop. That would have been pretty cool if he had found a way to keep doing it.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
“MDX expressways are self-funded.”
Does this include construction costs or did the feds build it and then hand it over to a management firm?
Is this long term? What happens when the entire system needs a rebuld? Are he operating costs going to cover that?
What about the road that my dad lives on in Northern Wisconsin. Two maybe three cars a day. What mush would the toll be for him and his neighbors to maintain that road? Not much traffic, but freezing and thawing really take a toll.
What country in the world, or in history for that matter, is currently building and maintaining a private system of streets, roads and highways?
May 18th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
Interstate highways are very expensive and require huge subsidies. But somehow we think of that as “normal” so it’s not even questioned.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-095.html
NJ Turnpike I-95 revenues in 2008 were $206,056,280
George Washington Bridge (NYC) ?
Fort McHenry Tunnel (Baltimore) ?
Miami Dade Expressway ?
Items with ? are left to the users.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
We don’t so much build new highways every year as we widen and enhance the existing ones – roads (and airports) suffer from the same NIMBY problems, it just seems less severe because a lot of the infrastructure is in place already. Examples?
– the ICC (Inter County Connector) in Maryland. Over 30 years “in process” now
– the additional runway they finally added at OHare in Chicago. I forget how long that took, but it was eons.
For a new runway, you have a relatively short run of concrete. The plane is in the sky. For an existing road, it’s an additional edge on one side or the other – for a new high speed rail line, it’s like trying to build the ICC here in MD, only over a much longer distance.
Or the solar array some people want (and others have blocked) in the Mojave Desert. The reality is this: Fully greenfield development is very difficult in most of the US (especially in the blue states).
May 18th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
Anna Quindlen retired her Newsweek column.
The discredited, debunked Will should retire. Everything.
As Cap’n Kirk would say: We have had enough of you….
May 18th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
I would be willing to bet a considerable sum that Salt Lake City is considerably whiter then Portland, Oregon.
It depends on your definition. In the 2000 Census, Portland had a population of 529,121 and SLC had a population of 181,743 (this is just within the city limits, not the metro area). Portland’s single-race white population was 412,241, or 77.9%. SLC’s was 143,933, or 79.2%. That would make Salt Lake City slightly whiter than Portland.
A larger percentage of Salt Lake City’s population is Hispanic, however, and a sizable proportion of the Hispanic population is white. If we just look at non-Hispanic whites, Portland had 399,351, or 75.5%. Salt Lake City had 128,377, or 70.6%.
So if we follow the standard convention in which the “whiteness” of an area excludes Hispanic people, Salt Lake City is, in fact, less white than Portland.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Does the highway system cover 36% of its operating costs? Somehow I doubt it.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
NJ Turnpike I-95 revenues in 2008 were $206,056,280
And the Federal Highway Administration spends $750,000,000/yr in New Jersey.
http://www.nj.gov/transportation/publicat/Facts/njdot.shtm
May 18th, 2009 at 9:22 pm
I’m not a real runner, nor do I hang out with them, but is it at all possible that real runners have a second pair of “walking around” shoes?
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Matt Hill and Stephanie Tait of http://www.RunForOnePlanet.com. They are running 11,000 miles across North America– a marathon every day. When we met, Matt was wearing trainers and Stephanie was wearing flip flops.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Mattyoung, #43 – as far as I can tell, the MDX system doesn’t maintain I-95. I think you’ve got that wrong. MDX maintains 5 small state roads that service the airports in M-D county among other things. They’re tiny compared to I-95.
http://www.mdx-way.com/driving/statistics.htm
Sujal
May 18th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
It also looks like MDX didn’t build the highways, but was handed them by the state in order to keep tax revenues in the county:
http://www.mdx-way.com/faqs/index.htm
nothing wrong with that, just pointing out that there was state and likely federal money involved here…
May 18th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
I think MY almost plagiarized. Substitute Irritable Mental Gestures with
proto-cognitive itch
To wit.
“We are at this point very near the heart of what Frum styles his ‘conservative philosophy’. But at the heart of it is a sort of proto-cognitive itch; a sensibility, or feeling, or subconscious reflex. Orwell talks about this in chapter 12 of The Road to Wigan Pier, incidentally: the naturalness of hostility to the softening that results from modern machine civilization. That’s the feeling, he explains. But, of course, next comes the thought.”
From one of the top blog posts of all time.
Dead Right
http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/dead_right.html
May 18th, 2009 at 9:44 pm
James Robertson you are a liar. In just one minute of googling, we do in fact build new highways. Your NIMBY argument is a tired old lie.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:15 pm
James Robertson Says:
May 18th, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Let’s see: fly between LA and SFO, no environmental impact forms to fill out. Works today. Ditto driving.
Build high speed rail between the two: spend (many) years dealing with NIMBY lawsuits, Environmental protests, lawyers fees, etc – the cost of building that rail link will never, ever, ever be recovered.
I can’t believe people are seriously arguing with this. He’s comparing traveling by plane or car with, not traveling by train, but building a railroad track. This is unspoofable.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:29 pm
So. I’m in Portland. My daughter and I have just ridden our bikes to the store to buy some stuff for dinner. Standing in line at the grocery store, I pass the time reading blogs on my phone, and see George Will unloading on Portland.
George has clearly passed over from libertarian to cultural conservative. I, and something like 7% of our city’s population regularly rides their bikes to work (and shopping, and on dates, or to school). And you know what: Nobody made us do it. We chose to cycle.
If libertarians and conservatives don’t support citizens making choices, what the hell is it they stand for?
Oh, and by the way–I own cars–four of them in fact. And I drive them for many trips. Living in a city where I can walk, bike, take the bus or drive–as the mood suits me–shouldn’t strike anyone as anything other than exercising liberty.
In lots of places, citizens don’t get to make those choices, because the real social engineers–the highway engineers at the Departments of Transportation–have simply foreclosed all of the other alternatives. Allocating a slightly larger part of our public investment to giving people a wider set of choices for how to travel and to live ought to make a true conservative beam.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:38 pm
I rode my bike 17 miles to work and then back today. I was far from alone out there. George Will can suck my derailleur.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:43 pm
My grandpa used to say something similar to whatMr. Robertson argues. “They want to fly these goddamned noisy planes over my head all the time. Why the hell would I get on one of those things to get from Minneapolis to Batone Rouge when I can just hop on a steam boat! Don’t have to build these over priced ugly ass airports either!”
May 18th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
You say they build new roads all the time, and – maybe in low regulation states (like, say, Texas) – they actually do. Places like Maryland? The ICC has been stalled for decades. I guarantee you, in states like Maryland – and NY – and California – new railbeds will be equally held up. Maybe Texas can manage to build high speed rail between its cities, but I seriously doubt that California can.
In a state with the strictest emissions standards, multiple attempts to force changes in national environmental laws – you can’t manage to build a solar array in a desert. And yet you think a railbed between heavily populated areas will sail through. Right….
May 18th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
No, I-95. The east coast north-south corridor in the Interstate Highway System. Great, big, expensive thing. Getting a ton of money in the stimulus bill. You know, the thing that makes the Miami toll road system a viable initiative.
How much did that bring in?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:15 pm
That’s funny. Would you put NJ in the category of low regulation states? Cause I’ve witnessed 4 years of massive highway expansion outside my window at Rutgers University during. The expansion even went through an 18th century archeological dig site. That didn’t even slow them down more than a month.
You’re out of your element Robertson. You are clearly making this up as you go along
May 18th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
The ICC has been stalled for decades.
Actually, the ICC was merely procrastinated until Montgomery County became so populated that its necessity could no longer be denied. And once that tipping point occurred, the Republican Governor was able to push it through. It’s being built as we speak.
Heck, I the 287-87 link in NJ and NY sprout up in the 80s and 90s. Don’t forget the Big Dig (in eee-vil massachusetts!), too. That was its own debacle, but it was conceived of, built, and completed in the amount of time I would allow for some significant HSR lines to get finished.
May 18th, 2009 at 11:33 pm
Will and others who reflexively denigrate mass transit overlook a) the fact that many people already rely on it, and others can’t get work because they don’t have a car to get to it; and b) that we may all have to use it when oil becomes really scarce for one reason or another.
P.S. Dwight Howard is 80 feet tall?
May 18th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Tyro – the ICC was blocked again when O’Malley got into office. Most of the blockage was a series of – wait for it – environmental lawsuits. Like the kind that will hold up intercity high speed rail.
I don’t dislike rail – I just don’t see much future in new rail. You want to reinvigorate existing railbeds that could work the way the northeast corridor does, fine – go for it. I just have very little faith in getting new ones built.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Tyro – the ICC was blocked again when O’Malley got into office
Ahem:
May 19th, 2009 at 12:07 am
My grandpa used to say something similar to whatMr. Robertson argues.
Nah: James Robertson is very much a creature of modern suburbia. He wants a nice quiet road leading from his house that joins an eight-lane highway that gets him to the Wal-Mart with minimal mental friction.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:12 am
I’ll say again, I work out of my house, my car has no A/C (and is 20 years old), and I drive less than 5000 miles per year. Sorry to burst your bubble.
On the ICC, I stand corrected on its current progress. It remains the case that there was a 3 decade delay, largely due to environmental activists inside and outside govt here.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:00 am
Sorry to burst your bubble.
Uh, no. You have a compound mentality. Because you don’t interact with public space on a regular basis, you have developed your sphincter-tight sense that government has no role to play whatsoever.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:29 am
# 2 is the classic reason of why SMART government uses taxes and regulation to change societal behavior…..he is OBLIVIOUS…..now, on to SMART government ending our ridiculous “WAR ON DRUGS” and systematic bigoted policies……”D.A.D.T.”, “D.O.M.A.”, and other senseless,non-humanistic,life-destroying, dead conservative and ” great-moderate-goodness ETC……….
May 19th, 2009 at 1:29 am
Regarding the whiteness of Portland (or Salt Lake City), how does this affect the willingness of parents to send their children to inner-city schools? This issue after all one of the main drivers of suburbanization in the US, not all parents can afford to send their children to the Dalton school (or its equivalent).
(I find it interesting that Curitiba, Brazil, which like Portland is held as a paragon of urban planning, is also the whitest city in its country. This of course might be a coincidence).
Regarding LA-SF vs. Madrid-Barcelona: A huge advantage that the the latter are around 3 times more dense than the former. American cities lack an easy way to even get to the train station using public transport, while both Madrid and Barcelona which both have excellent subways. Lack of density is a problem for all American cities in this regard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_population. Also, the Spanish line stops midway in Zaragoza, a large city of 700K, for which the line is very attractive – there’s nothing equivalent in California.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:50 am
Regarding LA-SF vs. Madrid-Barcelona: A huge advantage that the the latter are around 3 times more dense than the former. American cities lack an easy way to even get to the train station using public transport, while both Madrid and Barcelona which both have excellent subways. Lack of density is a problem for all American cities in this regard: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_urban_areas_by_population. Also, the Spanish line stops midway in Zaragoza, a large city of 700K, for which the line is very attractive – there’s nothing equivalent in California.
While I agree generally with your point on city density being a problem regarding the public transit in the US (although SF is the 2nd densest city in the US and the station is planning on being close to Muni/Bart), you’re incorrect on your point regarding midway cities. The CA high speed line is planning to run through Bakersfield (city 320k, metro 780k), Fresno (city 500k, metro 1 million), and San Jose (city 940k, metro 1.8 million) on the main spur. Later side spurs are planning on running to Sacramento (city 500k, metro 2 million) and San Diego (city 1.3 million, metro 3 million). One problem the CA project does not have is enough population centers to run through.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:44 am
And Vancouver’s less than 300 miles from Seattle.
And Vancouver’s also less than 300 miles from Portland (261 according to WolframAlpha).
May 19th, 2009 at 3:46 am
One problem the CA project does not have is enough population centers to run through.
I stand corrected.
although SF is the 2nd densest city in the US
Less than 15% of the population of the Bay area live in SF. This is the major problem, high-speed intercity trains are cool, but they have to be built on a solid mass urban transit infrastructure.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:06 am
Better question piss ant:
Why does ThinkBackwards want to offer its audience a ChickenShit Keyboard Warrior who helped lie America into its illegal wars of aggression and gave support to the criminal regime of BushitCheney?
Seriously Matty, who the fuck do you think you are?
After all you failed on the biggest issue in an American generation.
No, not your ObaFuhrer, he’s only your second worst mistake.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:49 am
pseudonymous – you make a lot of assumptions. I’m in a public space – the local gym – nearly every day (often more than once a day). I live in a suburb for a simple reason: the nearest cities are DC and Baltimore. Both offer:
– higher taxes
– worse services
– higher crime
– horrible school systems
When my wife and I moved here, we selected the area based on the local schools – living in either local city was a non-option on that basis alone. This is why I often say that Matt’s transit hobby horse is so meaningless: you won’t see families moving into urban areas in any kind of numbers so long as the urban schools suck so much, and in many, many cities, they do suck compared to the surrounding suburbs. This is also why you see so many married couples moving out of cities as soon as they have kids. The city is a great place for a single person or young couple; less so when you take a look at the local school situation.
I rather suspect that the suburbs have a decent number of people who would prefer to live in a city, but feel they can’t, due to the state of the schools there. I’m not one of those, but I understand the allure for people whose tastes differ from mine.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:36 am
Note to Steve Sailer: Salt Lake City and Provo Utah both have “whiter” city centers than Portland.
I guess Portland Oregon should apologize to Steve Sailer for not having been founded closer to the slave states so they could have had a more diverse city center or to the patterns of migration northward of the black american diaspora.
Don’t be a dope.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:47 am
…and when the ICC is done, it will look like every other major road in the greater DC/Baltimore area: just like a parking lot.
And then they’ll expand it a couple of lanes over and over again as more ‘development’ goes in along the corridor.
And then more farmland will be displaced, so our food will have to travel further (along increasingly congested roads).
For what? So we can keep up with the Joneses by having a shiny car and a green lawn “for the dog.” You are not what you drive. Your dog can be happy in the city.
Get over it. You aren’t entitled to a life that is unsustainable
May 19th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Actually, the point of the ICC is to make transit between places like Howard County and Rockville not require a trip down to the beltway. Taking transit between the two is a non-option; you have to drive to Greenbelt, take the metro into DC, and then back out. Driving requires a series a 2 lane roads westwards that back up easily, or, more commonly, driving the already congested beltway.
While the ICC may not be your idea of ideal, it seems like the best answer to the “how to get between these two places” problem. And since neither Rockville nor Columbia (biggest center in Howard County) are even vaguely walkable, saying “build a rail link” is a laughable non-answer. GIven the built environment we have here, the ICC is the only reasonable answer.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Great post, Matt. I would also add that the Census numbers are for ALL Americans, an when you look at those who live in cities, the bike commuting climbs even higher. (And people who walk to work is already much higher than Will probably ever would imagine at 2.5%.) And we know that bike commuting is rising in U.S. cities. Also, if you look at the Rails to Trails Conservancy report on bike investment vs. bike mode share you can see that very small investments in bike infrastructure can result in substantial bike mode share increases.
I’m sure with some social engineering the federal government could even get Will to ride around with rolled up jeans and a bike messenger cap on a fixie in D.C.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Re Adam Villani
The problem with Hispanics is that many of them are, in fact, Caucasians by any definition. For instance, the late Luis Alvarez, Nobel Prize winning physicist, was Hispanic and most certainly Caucasian. How would Mr. Villani characterize our distinguished host, Mr Yglesias?
May 19th, 2009 at 9:23 am
Someone should tell GW that “herd[ing] Californians into higher-density living near mass-transit rail lines” might reduce their likelihood … of wearing jeans!
Doesn’t he know that the same Interstate Highway System that enabled ” ‘all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure’ ” is also enabling ” ‘our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings’ “?
Seriously.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:36 am
AC, I’m going to do something I don’t normally do which is take James Robertson’s side on this one with respect to the ICC: as the years have gone on, Montgomery County and Howard County have only gotten larger and more freight has gotten delivered to the port of Baltimore. At some point, you have to accomodate traffic through those thre areas without weighting down the beltway even more.
James, however, is being a bit disingenuous about his living choices. The choice isn’t DC, Baltimore, or a drive-everywhere isolated unwalkable suburb. In the DC metro area, places like Chevy Chase and Bethesda are options, providing density, excellent schools, and single family homes. However, since these places aren’t that common and are hard to come by, they have very expensive.
May 19th, 2009 at 9:54 am
Tyro – When we were looking at buying a house (late 90’s), there was simply no way we could have afforded Bethesda or Chevy Chase – both were very, very much more expensive than Howard County, and both would have been much longer drives to work for my wife (who works in a place that is not served by transit, and is unlikely to be served by transit anytime soon).
For us to live in Bethesda or Chevy Chase would have meant a tiny home or a huge mortgage (likely both), and a much longer commute for my wife, through fairly awful traffic. Instead, we live a short distance from here work, in what was then an affordable neighborhood with good schools.
These things are never as simple as people like to paint them.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:19 am
James Robertson’s anecdote does a good job undermining the oft-seen assertion that there is a revealed preference among Americans for sprawling suburbs.
James, your choices were artificially restricted by regulations that drove up the price of housing and limited your ability to choose a walkable, transit-oriented community.
Also, as a planner, let me second your upthread observation that people move to the suburbs because of concern about schools. Perceptions about schools are crime are far and away the most common motives for people choosing suburbs over cities, not big yards or automobile-dependency. In other words, the factors that make urban housing options less popular have nothing to do with urban design per se.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:26 am
A slightly modified variation of your final sentence captures the broader question at hand:
“Why does Newsweek want to offer its audience a columnist who can’t be bothered to bring any facts or logic to the table?”
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that the internet has less to do with the downfall of traditional media than traditional media’s abject failure to pursue its mission.
May 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am
joe, I mostly agree – but don’t underestimate the desire for quiet amongst second and third generation suburb dwellers. If you’ve lived your entire life in a suburb, then a city seems awfully loud.
But yes, the major problem is schools. We never looked at transit options as a thing to consider; we looked at what we could afford, and how good the schools were – period. We rejected Montgomery County on cost grounds (and also on the variability of schools – some are quite good, others quite awful). We rejected Anne Arundel on school variability (and cost pairing up with that variability).
We were left with Howard, or further out (meaning, a longer drive for my wife). Additionally, while I don’t drive much, we wanted to live within a reasonable distance of an airport, and that limited choices somewhat based on BWI’s location (I fly on business a fair amount).
That pretty much pushed us straight at Howard County. This is why transit is such a secondary concern, and why Matt’s cotinual harping on it is so pointless. Fix the urban schools, and a lot of other problems will fix themselves.
The problem with that is that you immediately get into a nasty melange of cultural issues (single parenthood, drug abuse, et. al.) that are very hard for government to deal with, but which correlate pretty closely with school quality. It’s hard to have good schools when the parent population is not engaged in their schools. Ending the war on drugs might be the simplest thing that could possibly work in that regard, but it seems that culture warriors (on the left and right) would rather argue over trivialities instead…
May 19th, 2009 at 10:46 am
[...] even 0.01 percent of the U.S. would ever ride bicycles to work. Here’s Think Progress blogger Matthew Yglesias spending a little time with stupid: Will claims to find it unbelievable that as many as 0.01 percent of Americans would ever bike to [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Um, not sure if you were trying to say that Amtrak “charges rates that even people making more than 150k a year think are outrageous” or if high speed rail would, but if it’s the former, you’d be wrong.
I can get from KC to St. Louis for a whopping $52 (round trip, and about the same as gasoline for my car), and from KC to Chicago for about $100 (again, round trip, but much less than gas).
The only way to get there cheaper is to take a bus or hitchhike.
If you mean that high speed rail may cost that much, your calculations are based on … what, exactly?
May 19th, 2009 at 11:26 am
[...] federal program of bicycle confiscation might do the trick? Because as Matt Yglesias hilariously points out, according to the Census Bureau, right now 0.4 percent of commuters get to work by bike, or 40 [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 11:44 am
Well, in the northeast corridor, taking the “Northeast Direct” (non Acela) costs either $65 or $92, depending on time of day (one way, BWI to NY Penn). The Acela is $170 or $212 (one way, again depending on time). So the slower train is affordable, the faster one – pretty much business traveler only when you compare it with either driving or flying.
The Acela is the closest thing to high speed rail we have in the US right now, so I think it’s entirely reasonable to use it as the basis for price comparisons. If a roundtrip to NYC from the Baltimore area is between $340 and $424 on a semi-fast line with a railbed that’s been in place for a long time, what do you think a TGV style train on a brand new line, over an equivalent distance would cost? At the very least, I think we can say “not less”.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:49 am
I just want to say that i think that it is interesting that a post about George Will has led to such a great debate about transportation.The exchange between Joe fron Lowell and James Robertson is one of the best and most informative debates i have read lately.
For what it is worth i thank you both for sharing your views with the rest of us.I will not add anything to the debate simply because you both seem to know a lot more about the subject than i do.
I did want to show my appreciation for this debate though.
Best regards to you both, and to all of those who also contributed to this debate
May 19th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Why does Newsweek want to offer its audience a columnist who wants to write about transportation polic but can’t be bothered to bring any facts or logic to the table
Will belongs to a venerable tradition in American opinionating, he can reflect and articulate all the irritability and prejudices of his readers. Comfortably confirming their prejudices and elevating their irritability into nobility is George Will’s one trick, and he’s been at it since I was a stripling.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
High Speed RR does not require new right of way. It requires new tracks and new trains. There is excess rail right of way in the populated corriders of the USA.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Dwight Howard is going to look two inches tall by the time LeBron and the Cavs are done with the Magic. And oh yeah, George Will is an annoying idiot.
May 19th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
May 19th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
BW Scott – yes and no. A lot of the rights of way have become linear parks, and getting agreement from communities to switch them back would not be a completely simple matter. There’s also the fact that significant work would have to be done to the old railbed to accommodate actual high speed rail (as opposed to Northeast Corridor style, which would be a whole lot easier)
May 19th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Heh, my father, who grew up in Springfield, complained that at our house in the suburbs, “At night you can hear the clocks tick.”
May 19th, 2009 at 1:07 pm
Also, James, a lot of cities have made their schools considerably better, and seen their residential neighborhoods take off as a result.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Brad@2 says: “I’m so glad we have a federal government so keenly interested in changing my behavior. And they’re willing to spend billions and billions to do it!”
Sorry, I’m way late to the game on this topic, but I wonder … why are people like Brad shocked (shocked!) about government policy designed to influence behavior? Government does it all the time; in fact, one could argue that it is one of the primary things government does. Government jacks up tobacco prices to get people to quit smoking. Government provides tax breaks for charitible giving to encourage people to give to charity. Government makes certain drugs illegal to limit their availability and discourage people from using them (under penality of loss of liberty). Our representatives have decided that there is a tangible societal good in encouraging (or discourging) certain behaviors. Even if you disagree with a particular program, this function of government really shouldn’t be surprising in the slightest.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
If you’ve lived your entire life in a suburb, then a city seems awfully loud.
Well, I, of course, have a selection bias, but all of those people who live in cities with me grew up in suburbs.
Even without the selection bias, I go home to see my friends I grew up with, and they’re not living in the suburbs grew up in– they moved to the neighboring city.
Then again, a lot of us were 1st generation born-suburbanites. Our families typically grew up in cities, back when the white working class lived there, and then finally moved out to the suburbs when they had kids and/or the cities collapsed into riots and crime. Now that the 70s- and 80s-era conditions in cities no longer exist, a lot of people are reverting to their traditional lifestyles. I think we occasionally overestimate the degree to which living in a suburb is considered “the norm.” It is, sort of, but the relevant selector for a place to live tends to be school quality and safety rather than 1/2 acre plots.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Joe,
a lot of cities have made their schools considerably better, and seen their residential neighborhoods take off as a result.
Which cities?
May 19th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
This comment doesn’t have anything to do with George Will. Rather, I’m curious as to what exactly “other means” consists of. Are we talking boat, waterskis, private jet? Maybe rocketship?
May 19th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
[...] what is it about George Will that he acts like such an ass in the face of [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
First, thanks for the info, and I stand corrected. (And while comparing business class to coach isn’t exactly apples-to-apples, the point stands — it can be pricey.)
Second is that Amtrak is, in fact, fairly affordable if you just take the regular train and ride coach. If you have a few days notice and ride coach, that trip to NY from Bmore isn’t that expensive, and right inline with the alternatives. So the comment that even folks who make $150K can’t afford to ride Amtrak isn’t quite true (not a claim you made, but speaks to the comment I quoted).
The problem with the “HSR is expensive right now” argument is that it’s an incredibly short-term view of it.
Much like full electric cars, solar powered homes, and even the Xbox, someone needs to be ready and willing to eat some of the costs to get it started and lay that foundation. If they don’t, then we get the whole “It’s too expensive!” argument that turns into a self-perpetuating cycle, thus ensuring it always remains just out of reach because no one is willing to make the hard choices and initial investment.
And right now, one of those choices is to continue paving our nation and squeezing more planes into the air, hoping beyond hope that a miracle occurs and an alternative mode of transportation comes to us from … well, no one ever says. They just bitch about it without actually offering up alternatives.
Or we look at the options we have, make some hard choices, and decide to make an investment now for the future. That tends to be a bit more long-term and less selfish, however, and some just aren’t wired that way.
Anyway, thanks again for the clarification … even if I think it’s only a valid point if one just looks ahead 1-5 years, instead of 20-50 years.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
A few other quick things:
1. Sorry for the thesis above.
2. Not taking a dig at you in the last graf, James. Sorry if it came across that way.
3. While I totally agree that transit is not a factor in buying a house, that’s probably because it’s not really an option in most areas. If it were, then it could be. I know if we had a choice of two houses, with all else being equal (price, schools, etc.), but one had transit options and one didn’t, I’d go with the former in a heartbeat. But I don’t have that option.
4. George Will is a clown who proves that a “meritocracy” doesn’t exist in political punditry.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Just as an FYI on the Acela, I believe Amtrak classifies all seats on Acela as “business class”. The more amusing part is that the Acela only runs about 25 minutes faster (BWI to NYC) than the Northeast Direct does, and charges so much more – and to be honest, the seats just aren’t that much better. Not to mention that the Cafe cars on the old NE Direct are way, way better, and are nearly always full of laptop users.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Yes, James, but does Alcea have a bar car? That’s another reason I like taking Amtrak to St. Louis when visiting — no driving headaches, same price, and I can get a nice buzz along the way.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
For anyone interested in a survey of how bike-rideable global cities are, written from an intelligent and culturally inquisitive perspective, go read David Byrne’s Journal.
He tours with bikes in the bus and makes a point of biking around every city. Apparently Hong Kong is the worstest.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Robertson, where the hell did you get the Acela numbers from?
I’ve taken the Acela many times. And I have to call some serious bullsh*t here.
You can go from New York to Baltimore for 110 dollars ROUND TRIP. You can go from New York to Boston for 120 dollars ROUND TRIP easily. I dont know where the hell you pulled those numbers from, but me thinks you’ve never actually taken the Acela. The only way your numbers could be accurate is if you were going first class (which comes with food and beverage service and a little more room).
But going from New York to Boston in 3 and a half hours (about an hour and a half faster than driving) for 120 bucks is a bargain. It’s faster than flying once you consider check in and taxi times, plus the inevitable delays that come with flying out of the NY metro area. New York to Baltimore usually takes a little under 2 and a half hours. Again, considerably faster and more comfortable than driving or flying (which I can’t imagine doing anyways).
Also, the Acela is often filled to capacity. So it seems pretty clear that whoever is taking the Acela, the price is right.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
NM–
I think he got them from Amtrak’s site. I went and checked his figures and that’s what they had listed there.
Of course, that was buying a ticket for today, rather than in advance, and I didn’t spend any time really digging deeper.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
But going from New York to Boston in 3 and a half hours (about an hour and a half faster than driving)
Unless you’re driving during rush hour, this is pretty much the same as driving. I used to do that drive all the time– I know.
On the other hand, if you want to leave Boston in the early afternoon and step off in downtown manhattan at 5-6 pm, then the train is your best bet.
Acela between DC and NY or Boston and NY is a perfectly acceptable substitute for flying. However, it’s nigh-useless compared to flying if you want to travel between DC and Boston. However, if we had true HSR between DC and Boston, then it would become worthwhile, particularly given that flying between DC and Boston is so fraught with delays.
Also, where’s Mixner?
May 19th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
[David Byrne] tours with bikes in the bus and makes a point of biking around every city. Apparently Hong Kong is the worst
Nobody can take away his musical accomplishments, but I’m gonna have to disagree. He slams Chinese Culture for its lack of public spiritedness (& philistinism in general…), but I haven’t seen any city with a better public transit system – subway, rail, tram, ferries, public escalator, you name it, they have it. And despite being the densest urban area outside the Indian subcontinent, it still has great hiking trails on the hills around the city – they don’t allow developers to run wild. Hong Kong is awesome, maybe not for bikes, but for everything else.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Passenger rail provides, at best, a factor of two improvement over cars for energy efficiency. Freight rail provides a factor of ten, possibly more, and removing trucks from the interstate makes them far safer and decreases maintenance costs considerably.
Getting trucks off of the interstates is considerably easier than getting cars off of them; capital is required, but the savings, even over a relatively short term, outweigh the costs.
I’m not saying that passenger rail isn’t a good idea, but moving freight off the interstates is a much easier proposition than moving passengers, and I wonder why it is that it’s not really on the radar.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Will is incapable of reporting based on facts, only political bigotry. Bicycling was the overwhelming vehicle of choice before the auto. It was cyclists who lobbied for and successfully achieved the first paved roads in the U.S. under “the Gospel of Good Roads” (look it up) in 1893. It was steadfast govt. intervention on behalf of the auto that got us where we are today – a nation full of inactive, obese, cheesedoodle eatin’, SUV drivin’ lazies which appears to be his main constituency.
The current division of market share between the automobile and alternate modes is in no way the product of a free market. On the contrary, it reflects massive and sustained government intervention on behalf of automobiles. The extent of poor civic planning, sprawl, and degradation of transit alternatives have gone beyond encouraging car ownership to nearly forcing it. Therefore, it’s the diametric opposite; using car-free modes flies in the face of expansive government.
He’s too stupid to understand that expansion of existing automobile infrastructure will not solve congestion problems, anymore than fighting obesity by loosening your belt or curing nasal congestion by widening your nose.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:28 pm
George Will is completely ignorant on this issue – neither his facts nor his arguments here are even worth a rebuttal. I used to have great respect for George; no longer.
You really shouldn’t have taken the time, Yglesias.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
In New Haven, according to the Census, about 14% of our residnets walk to work and another 2% bike to work. Even larger proportions take mass transit or carpool.
If you consider that not everyone is traveling to work every day, far more than half of New Haven’s residents do not commute to work via a private automobile every day.
I am not sure what George is talking about with his “0.01%” BS.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
I went to Amtrak’s site and priced. I haven’t found a $110 ticket on Amtrak from BWI to NYP since they went to the Acela trains. The last time I looked before yesterday, the lowest Acela fare was around $160.
Now, you can take the NE Direct train for $62 one way, and the “stops everywhere” (just over 4 hours, iirc) for less.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:05 pm
I think the problem here is that you’re either A)not looking at booking in advance enough. And B) you’re working mighty hard to find the highest priced tickets.
I took the Acela to boston for 80 bucks about 2 weeks ago.
The numbers i quoted above were prices I’ve taken the acela for. Now I obviously do my best to spend as little as possible since I’m paying out of pocket and not using an expense account, but I’ve never paid more than 90 dollars for a 1 way ticket on the Acela (though with only a couple of exceptions I’ve pretty much exclusively gone from NY to Boston).
In general though the Acela only costs about 20 bucks more than the regional trains that are significantly slower
May 19th, 2009 at 4:08 pm
George Will is a lazy, tiresome old fart. I can’t believe he still gets paid to turn out reactionary drivel like the above and the infamous jeans column. Apparently being wrong all the time and boring the sh*t out of people is not a firing offence at Newsweek or the WaPo.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Mark D I just saw your comment and you’re probably right. But of course looking at day-of tickets is ridiculous. If I were to try and buy a ticket today to fly from NY to Boston I’d probably have to pay 600 bucks. Acela (which in reality is more like medium speed rail than high speed)is ticketed like an airplane is. Which is ridiculous, but I think is due to the fact that in the U.S. even a train that only goes 90 mph on average is kind of a novelty.
A French friend of mine commutes over 150 miles into Paris several days a week, takes him about an hour and 20 minutes with stops. That’s what HSR advocates want. I want to be able to hop on a train to Chicago and be there in 5 hours relaxed and ready to work/play. Every other major industrialized country has managed to do this. It’s absurd to think we can’t.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
BWI to LGA tomorrow: $322 (check Expedia). Cheaper than the Acela with that short notice (although on this route, I’d prefer the NE Direct over either one – cheaper, and almost as fast).
On Southwest, it’s under $300 roundtrip (although that’s into Long Island – they start flying to LGA in June).
I’d still take rail on this route, but domestically, flying has become tons cheaper on any route served by an airline like Southwest or Airtran. You really only pay through the nose if you go in and out of a “Fortress Hub” (like DFW). Otherwise, it’s pretty cheap. Heck, even the Saturday stayover thing is gone, unless you start looking at long haul flights (intl or Hawaii).
May 19th, 2009 at 4:36 pm
[...] Noted blue jeans-hating, global warming denying (here, here, here, here, here, here), conservative “intellectual” George Will seems to be hellbent on ensuring everyone under the age of 65 ignores him completely (if they’re not already, that is). A. Seigel brought my attention to Will’s latest, and Matt Yglesias also weighed in. [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
James Robertson Says:
Let’s see: fly between LA and SFO, no environmental impact forms to fill out. Works today. Ditto driving.
Let’s see it’s taken about 20 years to add a third runway to SeaTac Intrnational Airport
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008204574_thirdrunway26m.html
And as for cheaper, The FAA and other federal agencies subsidies for aircraft are $16 to $1 billion for rail
http://www.geocities.com/dtmcbride/travel/train-plane-car.html
May 19th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
cynickal – you kind of make my point. It’s take 20 years to add one runway to a limited area of an existing airport. And the fight was likely over noise, possibly over some other environmental concern. If it takes 20 years to get a runway built, how long do you think it will take to get a new (suitable for high speed) railbed put in for, say, some 300-400 mile intercity route? Multiply the number of NIMBY fights out and get back to me.
We have made it incredibly difficult to build anything that is perceived to have (or actually has) an environmental impact that someone calls negative. Basically, we’ve ceded the rules on that sort of thing to “the least reasonable person in the room”.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
ok, one semi-serious proposal seems obvious in light of the last 50 posts: straightforward regularizing of the Amtrak fare system would lead to more use of Amtrak and significant time savings for potential customers….
May 19th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
YOU FRENCH SOCIALIST PANSY ASS SURRENDER MONKE–
Okay … I just can’t do Wingnut Americanus. Too much hate-filled energy required.
Seriously — There are lots of things we can’t do here because of special interest groups, and people who spend more time listing obstacles rather than finding solutions.
That’s not to say there aren’t issues — there are plenty, and all need to be known upfront. But unless someone has a better idea (flying cars?), we’re going to need to find solutions to those problems and get cracking.
As I posted early, there’s only so much we can pave and so many planes to stuff into already over-crowded skies. HSR just makes sense on a number of levels; the rest is just red tape.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Now, you can take the NE Direct train for $62 one way, and the “stops everywhere” (just over 4 hours, iirc) for less.
While certainly I’m willing to concede that there may well be “lies, damn lies, and train schedules,” Amtrak lists the Northeast Region trains between NYP and BWI as being between 2 hours, 45 minutes and 3 hours (slightly more if you take a very late night train). The Acela cuts that down to 2 hours, 24 minutes.
Because you’re already as far north as Baltimore, and you’re only going to NYC, the Acela isn’t going to be worth your while.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
tyro – I think the only time I’ve ever taken the “stops everywhere” train was late at night, in bad weather. So my memory of how long a trip it was is probably suspect.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
NIMBY’s are really only a problem if you are acquiring new right of way. Most HSR lines will exist on operate on current ROW. Improving passenger rail performance will improve freight rail performance with more grade separated crossings (which will also improve auto travel safety and efficiency). HSR is really a no-brainer, those opposed seem to be obstructionists who desperately want progressive policies to fail, even if policies would help said obstructionists.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Amtrak charges what the market will bear for Acela. Even at those extremely high rates they captured 50% of the air market between the cities. They pretty much have to as no other line makes Amtrak any money. It is kind of how the Northeast funds the rest of the country in everything else, getting back only fractions of each dollar that is sent to Washington. The NEC also is facing multiple billions in repair work, considering most of it was built ages ago and hasn’t seen much work since the 50’s. A brand new system will have plenty to pay off, but not like it is up here and should be able to charge reasonable amounts to get people around.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:33 pm
Why does George Will get to write columns about topics he is completely ignorant about? WaPo and Newsweek publish him without even checking his facts. The guy is scientifically and statistically illiterate. I mean, he seriously thinks it’s a good statistical argument to cherry-pick an outlier and use it as a baseline. He’s a complete pseudo-intellectual phony. I mean that. NOBODY with basic number skills would make that argument. A bow tie and wire-rim glasses doesn’t make him any less an imbecile for having done so.
Now he’s pulling statistics out of thin air about how many people do and would bike to work and getting it completely wrong. Tell the old fellow not to write on scientific topics and stick to overusing his thesaurus on rants about those dern kids and their bluejeans, or whatever.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:07 pm
It might be a big surprise to James Robertson, but things get built in California all the time – even with our CEQA requirements and budget crises. They’re builing the last leg of the second brand-new freeway in my hometown (Fresno) in the last 10 years. And they’re building solar plants in the desert west of here. CEQA sometimes delays projects a bit, but it rarely stops them.
May 19th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
Olbermann totally just cited this entire post, and didn’t whisper your name. That strikes me as slightly uncool.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:18 am
Not that it’s too important, but I’m pretty sure SF Metro has over 7 million people.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Last I checked, the whole point of TOD was to make communities look and function more like these “small towns” which you admit are so conducive to bikes. So if we’re expanding TOD, we’re necessarily expanding the attractiveness of biking.
I don’t think anyone thinks that biking will ever replace all other forms of commuting. But it is true that there are many, many people who would be willing and eager to bike to work but simply can’t because the (cheap compared to automobile) infrastructure isn’t there for them.
I’m sure you’re in favor of walkable cities. Well, biking is just like walking except it’s more time- and energy-efficient. You have to invest in a little bit of infrastructure to benefit from that efficiency, but for many people it’s worth it.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Back to reality based observations. We just completed a traffic study in the inner Southeast area of Portland. For the first time the traffic engineers recorded more bikes than cars at peak commute hours at multiple evaluated intersections. So it seems that .01 percent possibility of bike commuters is a tad shy of reality here.
May 20th, 2009 at 1:16 pm
Walkable cities are conducive to biking, but bikeable cities are not necessarily conducive to walking and therefore not particularly conducive to mass transit for people who don’t bike — something I have encountered more than I would like since moving to the Bay Area.
So while encouraging biking is great and infrastructure dedicated specifically to biking can be valuable, in general it seems important for the *focus* to be on mass transit (which also encourages biking). It is unlikely that all those elderly and handicapped folks on the bus are ever going to ride a bike to work — and I would bet that it’s just as unlikely that many, many other people who would use convenient mass transit would bike for lots of other reasons.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm
[...] Local congressman Blumenauer has offered Will a free trip out to Portland to see for himself. And Matt Yglesias challenges some of Will’s [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
bike + transit = done. Even in L.A.
My husband takes a bicycle on board Metrolink for his commute. He’s not alone.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Your prices for Acela seem extreme to me. I’ve never had to pay that much to take it from DC to NYC. I’ve been on the (cheap)unreserved train from DC to NYC where it’s been, literally, standing room only.
But the Acela charges what the market will bear, as conservatives claim they want.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Walkable cities are conducive to biking, but bikeable cities are not necessarily conducive to walking and therefore not particularly conducive to mass transit for people who don’t bike — something I have encountered more than I would like since moving to the Bay Area.
So while encouraging biking is great and infrastructure dedicated specifically to biking can be valuable, in general it seems important for the *focus* to be on mass transit (which also encourages biking). It is unlikely that all those elderly and handicapped folks on the bus are ever going to ride a bike to work — and I would bet that it’s just as unlikely that many, many other people who would use convenient mass transit would bike for lots of other reasons.
I agree with that so far as it goes: biking shouldn’t be the focus of the overall TOD push. But it’s definitely got to be a big component. Biking isn’t for everyone, but it’s surely workable for a heck of a lot more than 0.4%. (It’s even for some of your old people on the bus, look at the Netherlands. And presumably more active walking/riding lifestyles are eventually going to reduce the percentage of people incapable of cycling, at all ages.)
And the problem with biking isn’t so much infrastructure, it’s the attitudes and misconceptions, the culture. “Too dangerous”, “I need $5000 in equipment”, “it’s only for spandex-clad Tour-de-France wannabes and/or tattooed hipsters pedaling 40 mph”, etc., etc.
I don’t see how you get past that without a lot of public promotion. After all, we’ve got streets, so technically the infrastructure is already there. It’s just a matter of making it palatable, and slowly normalizing it for the herd.
The other more minor point is that you do need SOME infrastructure, and visible infrastructure improvement goes hand in hand with the promotion. So it’s important to think ahead and make allowances for biking as you build out transit-oriented infrastructure. Allow places for bike racks – BIG bike racks, incorporated into the architecture. Plentiful space on trains and trams and buses for bikes. That sort of thing.
May 20th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I think–just looking out the window here– that more than .4% of the residents of Will’s home town of Champaign, IL (so not Portland, sad to say) bike to work…
May 20th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Building roads in DC:
I don’t know how it’s going in your town, but here in DC (1.) The first dollar of stimulus package money went to resurfacing the East-West highway connecting Capitol Hill to Georgetown and Northern Virginia, and (2.) The city is about to break ground on a bridge rebuilding project that connects the east (Capitol Hill) end of that highway to the local I-95 connector (295). The bridge project is the single biggest public works project in the history of Washington, D.C.
Sure, there’s an “environmental” lawsuit against the bridge project, but those pressing the suit don’t really give a damn about the envionment in their heart of hearts. They just want to block the bridge project because they fear it will encourage more traffic on the surface streets on Capitol Hill.
That lawsuit will be brushed off like so much dirt on the shoulder.
So, yeah, at least from here it looks like you can build roads in the U.S. today.
May 20th, 2009 at 7:39 pm
[...] Matt Y: Will claims to find it unbelievable that as many as 0.01 percent of Americans would ever bike to work regularly. But rather than tossing off ridicule, he might have looked up the Census Bureau’s statistics on commuting patterns and seen that right now 0.4 percent of commuters normally get to work on bicycles. Now that’s a small percentage. But it’s forty times larger than a percentage that Will deems unrealistically utopian. This would be like saying Dwight Howard is 2 feet tall. [...]
May 20th, 2009 at 9:28 pm
REGARDING JACK LECOU’S COMMENT # 162
MR LECOU
Your comment on biking was the best one that I have read on this blog yet. Everyone seems to think that if only we had more bike lanes that everybody would suddenly ride their bike to work.
I do ride my bike to work [i have no car] . And i am all for bike lanes. But i think that you are right about the common misconceptions being the main problem.
I have been critised by some friends for riding my bike in the street.They do not claim that i was riding dangerously[because i wasn't]. They simply feel that a bike is a toy that should be used on a bike trail in a park. These same friends own bikes that are worth 5 times as my $180 bike.
Sometimes bikers worst enimies can be other bikers.
Crime and rough neighborhoods are another thing that keeps many people from riding their bikes ,or using public transit.For some reason people rarely mention this factor.
By the way. For the record Baltimore started to have bike racks on it’s buses less than a year ago. It is slowly catching on.
Thank you once again for your comment, MR LECOU . It hit the nail on the head with regards to bikes and public transit.
BEST REGARDS TO YOU MR LECOU.
May 20th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
Intersting. The error that MattY jumps all over is about as egregious as saying Dwight Howard is 2 feet tall.
May 21st, 2009 at 12:39 am
The opening paragraph is perfect.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:25 am
[...] Will tries to talk transportation in his latest Newsweek column. George Will is an idiot. (Matt [...]
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:45 pm
[...] Consider the case of Portland, Oregon. Conservatives really, really hate on Portland; examples here and here. Aside from the tendency to engage in factual errors, the hate seems disproportionate to [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
[...] Consider the case of Portland, Oregon. Conservatives really, really hate on Portland; examples here and here. Aside from the tendency to engage in factual errors, the hate seems disproportionate to [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
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May 23rd, 2009 at 3:06 pm
[...] I found the top link while reading this (actually the link is in a comment below), from [...]
May 23rd, 2009 at 4:47 pm
[...] And, perhaps most eloquently, associate editor of The Atlantic Monthly Matthew Yglesias tries diligently to set Will straight… [...]
May 24th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Mr Will should get out more -he is being slowly poisoned by all the Diesel Fumes inside his bunker.
May 24th, 2009 at 9:10 am
Admittedly old data, but a DoT study of th 1990-2002 period determined that highway subsidies (taxes paid less financiang offered) were negative $7bn per year over the period. That is, highway users were subsidizing all other forms of transporation. (Yes, trains too).
Amtrak subsidy was 20 cents/mile; public transporation in that period was 10 cents/mile; air and highway was zero.
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