Dear Editor,
Crumbling infrastructure, spiraling debt, weakening dollar. Are
we reaping the fruit of our dysfunctional, unsustainable transport
policy? Where do we go from here? Where are we now?
Dear Editor,
Crumbling infrastructure, spiraling debt, weakening dollar. Are we reaping the fruit of our dysfunctional, unsustainable transport policy? Where do we go from here? Where are we now? I think we are about half slave to public-sector transport, and half free enterprise. We cannot be both. We will become all one, or all the other.
The failure by Congress in 2004 to reauthorize the six-year transport funding legislation for the nation’s transport infrastructure reveals just how hopeless it is to feed a black hole. Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta’s high hopes for HR 3550, the administration’s replacement for Safe, Affordable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act of 2003, could not overcome its inherent flaws. The Senate bill also failed to correct the fundamental flaw. Unrestrained spending, like addiction to heroin or cocaine, is no cure for bad policy. You cannot serve two masters and survive.
In past years, our leaders fed the addicts’ unmet needs, leaving the malignancy to grow: $405 billion since 1992 (not including five “temporary extensions” to keep transit agencies moving). Federal, state and local governments now face a tsunami of debt accumulating to an extent to spoil the lives of future generations – like parents and grandparents bequeathing their credit card debts to their children. A truly Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist inheritance from our generation to theirs. As I said in 1997 in the Transportation Law Journal, we are a house divided when it comes to our transport policy. Do we choose bedrock of capitalism, or the quicksand of socialism? Is Emperor Transit First richly attired, or stark naked? Watch what answer we see next year from our Congressman and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as our leaders guide us down the slippery slope.
Caveat viator!
Joe Thompson, Gilroy
