USA Today Talks to Ray LaHood
Ray LaHood (official photo)
Plenty of good stuff in this interview:
You’ve spoken about drawing on the Portland, Ore., model of transportation as a “livable community” that emphasizes public transit and walking and biking paths. But is it exportable to all kinds of cities, even the largest?
I think it can be replicated in some cities. I also think you can replicate parts of it in neighborhoods in cities. Chicago is so spread out and so big, but you could connect neighborhoods, perhaps with light rail. And they’ve been connected by “rails to trails.”
So much of why we haven’t done these things yet seems to stem from a culture of driving in America. Is that really changeable?
We’ve spent three decades building an interstate system. We’ve put almost all of our resources into the interstate system. This is a transformational president, and the department is following the president’s lead. People haven’t really been thinking about these things. They have been thinking about how to build roads, how to build interstates, how to build bridges. People now are thinking differently about where they want to live, how they want to live, and how they want to be able to get around their communities.
I would only add that the idea that “the largest” cities can’t support walkable urbanism would seem to quickly founder on the fact that New York City is (by far) the nation’s largest. And it’s not a coincidence that both NYC and the Greater New York metropolitan area are unusually transit-oriented (again, not just in terms of the city, but also LIRR, NJ Transit, MetroNorth, etc.) and unusually large. It’s precisely the density-facilitating properties of transit that have allowed the region to support so many people.
The point of bringing up Portland is more to show that different models of land use and planning can work even in relatively small cities. Portland’s not close to being the largest or densest city in America, but with sound planning it still encourages a lot of different transportation modes.
21 Responses to “USA Today Talks to Ray LaHood”
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June 12th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Wow. I never thought I’d see the day.
These guys are serious about planning and development issues.
June 12th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Obama also a put a planning geek in at HUD.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
I do think park-and-ride commuter rail has a lot more potential, and in any case is a lot more applicable to federal policy, than urban transit.
Urban transit, after all, is a strictly local endeavour, whereas commuter rail is regional and can cross state boundaries. I simply don’t believe that the federal government ought to involve itself in urban transit initiatives, but rather get involved in initiatives of the sort of scope more appropriate for its purpose.
Plus, I think commuter rail is a lot more urgent need, and would help to alleviate gas usage a lot more, as you can instantaneously remove a great majority of the necessary daily driving.
June 12th, 2009 at 6:26 pm
@3 – also, not so many minorities on park-and-ride commuter rail as urban transit, right?
June 12th, 2009 at 6:51 pm
One thing that amazes me is how much rail there was in many cities before there were cars. Portland used to have a number of commuter trains, and all of that infrastructure and operational knowledge was ripped out in favor of more roads. And that was at a time when Portland was much much smaller than it is now.
I think that a part of transportation planning should go into how to undo the attitude that we *must* drive from place to place. Also that, while it’s part of an employee’s job to get themselves from home to work, businesses don’t need to pay any part of the cost of that transportation. The second idea, especially, would have a strong effect on getting people to carpool and get us away from the urban planning model of ‘business park here, giant mall over here, and all the houses over there‘…
June 12th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
“Chicago is so spread out and so big” refers to its geographic size. The Chicago suburbs are far more sprawling than NYC.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
I recall trying to walk around downtown Chicago (plus the lake area near the Aquarium and Field Museum) on the day after a snowstorm. I had to resort to cabs for 2 or 3 block jaunts because the sidewalks were buried under all the snow plowed onto them so that the roadways would be clear.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
The LaHood interview has some puzzling aspects. It mentions the Highway Trust Fund is in trouble due to an over year long period of less driving, i.e. a lower volume of gas sales:
The Highway Trust Fund, we think by August, is going to probably be in some serious need of plussing up. People have lots of ideas about all of the things that they want to do, and we have lots of ideas, and we know that the Highway Trust Fund is just not going to be adequate enough to do all the things that everybody wants to do. So we’re thinking about an infrastructure bank that could fund some projects of national prominence.
The Trust Fund has a specific revenue source, the Infrastructure Bank does not.
We’re not talking about raising the gas tax. With hard economic times, with so many people out of work, the last thing we really want to be proposing is raising the gas tax.
So what will fund the Infrastructure Bank? Congestion pricing, taxes on miles driven, some other unmentioned idea?
Why didn’t Ray LaHood talk about the plethora of private equity infrastructure funds, itching to ink long term deals with governments for roads, bridges and water systems?
Ray came from Illinois, which has a track record of public-private infrastructure deals.
The plans sound more like George W. Bush than a progressive President.
June 12th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
The funny thing about Portland, OR is that they really don’t do that much special for cyclists. It’s no Holland or Copenhagen. It just has lots of bicyclists. But because it has lots of cyclists there’s the political energy to actually start building out a network of cycle tracks and bike boulevards, etc. In a few years it’ll be pretty cool and in 10 years it’ll be completely amazing. They’ve got some great bike blogs too. (I’d link to them, but the blog software here blocks posts with too many links)
As for snow, check out the bike lane snow plow.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Sooner or later, the SUBURBAN SPRAWL must end. We can’t afford the land, water, and energy resources. But that sounds too radical and crazy to many people today. Let’s see how crazy it sounds fifty or one hundred years from now.
June 12th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
chrismealy
Thanks for the link.
The bike lane snow plow. How cool is that! It needs a better name though, like, the Zamboni, or, the F-22 Raptor, otherwise Americans won’t embrace it.
June 12th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
It is odd to me that Portland is really noted as a good transportation city. It has a horribly expensive, inefficient train system, coupled to a poor bus sytem. Portland is very much a car+suburb city, with the reltively unique advantage of very close in suburbs. That makes it easy for the relatively rich to bicycle commute (and overrepresent on blogs), and does little else.
I am not wure what there is to like about it, barring the cycling, which the city doesn’t get much credit for. The bike lamne system is not that great, there just happen to be lots of cyclists, and that helps.
There really are good and important ways of doing better transportation….I don’t think PDX is a good example.
June 12th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
“Chicago is so spread out and so big” refers to its geographic size.
That’s a relief. I was thinking something else.
June 12th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
He appears to be confused about what “rails to trails” means, but that’s okay. It’s always fun to see a transportation secretary giving love to alternative modes of transportation,
June 12th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
It would help to tie the walkable city concept directly to everyone’s health. Walking is good for the waistline, heart, and brain.
Problem is most city suburbs build after the 1950s lack sidewalks. Why not say how great it would be to add sidewalks and improve our health, then it would give people the option of walking more often.
Personally for me, and I spend the 80s biking Manhattan, biking is now too dangerous, mainly due to SUVs, cell phones and multi-tasking drivers.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:31 pm
@3 – also, not so many minorities on park-and-ride commuter rail as urban transit, right?
Keep the snark down, and stay civilised, you piece of filth.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
The city of Chicago itself is quite walkable and very transit friendly, and increasingly bike friendly.
The inner suburbs (and the far edges of the city – the bungalow belt) are still transit friendly, but not too walkable given that the roads are starting to get bigger and more unfriendly.
The outer suburbs and exurbs are pure hell if you want to use transit, walk or bike.
Chicagoland is a weird combination of LA and New York. It has the sprawl and the drive times/distances of LA on its expressway system. But the city itself is second only to New York in terms of walkability and public transit.
June 12th, 2009 at 10:45 pm
I do think park-and-ride commuter rail has a lot more potential, and in any case is a lot more applicable to federal policy, than urban transit. Urban transit, after all, is a strictly local endeavour, whereas commuter rail is regional and can cross state boundaries.
While I agree that park-and-ride commuter rail is likely to grow in importance in the medium term, it is incorrect to say that urban transit is a strictly local issue. First, there are of course the national energy policy and environmental concerns involved in urban transportation, which are not tied closely to the specific urban locale, and increasingly the health and safety issues are being nationalized as well. Second, international and regional travellers eventually become local travellers as well, and thus the nature of urban transportation systems can have nontrivial implications for regional and international travel systems.
Accordingly, these days one really has to think in terms of integrated transportation systems. Which doesn’t mean the feds have to entirely take over from states and local authorities, but they certainly have a considerable stake in transportation policy at the urban level.
June 13th, 2009 at 11:18 am
When LoneWacko shows his filthy face again, bury him with this link.
Founder of the Minutemen. Scum.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
It is odd to me that Portland is really noted as a good transportation city. It has a horribly expensive, inefficient train system, coupled to a poor bus sytem. Portland is very much a car+suburb city, with the reltively unique advantage of very close in suburbs. That makes it easy for the relatively rich to bicycle commute (and overrepresent on blogs), and does little else.
I’ll give you that Portland could be overrated in transportation. But MAX is hardly expensive and inefficient, it covers 70% of its costs, and it serves a heavily traveled east-west corridor. I’ve ridden on transportation systems across the country in cities of all sizes and Portland’s bus and rail system is among the very best. What Portland has going for it is the political support and the land use that supports transit, bikes, pedestrians. And that is 90% of the battle.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
#12 Brennan – You are confused. PDX has a very efficient light rail system, a good bus system and it is all getting better. I think you read something from some years back or one of the local Libertarian groups that put together propaganda about hybrids. bikepaths and so forth.
My only issue is how well-known PDX is becoming. It seems like every couple months some NYtimes article brings up Portland, or some government official brings us up. Listen to bad boy Brennan – it is all false, we are just like LA or Seattle.