Growing up Honolulu, it’s understandable Barack Obama didn’t take the subway much. Even in Chicago’s South Side, at least a ten minute walk separated Mr. Obama’s home from the L, and besides he taught at University of Chicago less than a mile from his front door: he had no reason to take the subway. Then, by the time he found a job downtown, it required bodyguards.
Initially, it makes sense President-elect Obama wants to spend $60 billion repairing America’s roads and bridges; after all, he used them to get to work every day. But take a look at Mr. Obama’s energy and environmental promises: a 35% decrease in oil consumption by 2030 and an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. If he seriously endorses his own proposals, why does he want to make roads easier and more convenient to drive on?
Over the past fifty years, increased federal funding and government pleas for more Americans to commute via public transportation have been met with more Americans driving to work. So over those five decades city mayors and state governors have come to realize that public transit will never be quick, cheap, and widely accessible—at least never all at once—and that the only places where it may someday be widely used are in the most vast and gridlocked of metropolises, where navigating by car is reserved for European tourists and Mafiosi.
Over 55% of New York City workers use public transportation to get to work, not because it is fast or clean—indeed the city’s commute time of around 45 minutes is among the highest in the country. They travel on subways, buses, and commuter trains because it’s quicker, easier than the alternative.
Biking to a bus and riding it to a light rail is never going to make for a first-class commute; people aren’t going to do it unless they need to. Yet if Mr. Obama intends to make good on his pledges for energy independence and carbon dioxide reductions, he will need to force the hand. If petroleum is the American addiction and cars are the means by which it’s taken, then roads and bridges are the veins through which it is absorbed. Why make them smooth and efficient?
Perhaps Mr. Obama’s location of upbringing is to blame for his loyalty to the automobile—a loyalty to which his response to the recent crisis in Detroit hinted—but he ought not to impose his own closed-mindedness on the country that he’ll soon govern, particularly when he fails to recognize that it’s counterproductive. Last June, Mr. Obama criticized Senator McCain for supporting oil drilling near America’s shores, saying, “we can’t drill our way out of the problems we’re facing.” Does he really think we can drive away from them?
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We need to keep interstates running so people can get from place to place. Barack Obama should get people working on alternative energy which would fix unemployment and energy independence at once. The other roads can rot, that’s fine with me.
WTF?
Hmmmmm, living down here in West Texas, in a town with no subways and mostly rural areas, the roads need to be kept up and running smoothly.
And, not all of the farmlands where your food is grown is on an interstate and it certainly does not ride a “subway” or “bus” to your table, so I would think that would be another reason to keep the roadways passable.
It takes all kinds and this one takes the cake. America is not only New York City or Chicago. It’s a huge nation and not everything centers around those two cities.
JT,
The point is a little extreme but the point is that Obama wants to “overhaul” our infrastructure and the “overhaul” he wants isn’t investing in the right places. The point is that wanting to redo roads in certain areas may be necessary but it’s not going to get us any closer to energy independence and it’s not the “vision” a lot of people are expecting from someone people think is a “visionary”.
Not sarah palin again.
Like all politicians running for President, Obama has promised more than he (or anyone) could possibly deliver. I didn’t vote for him, but I wish him well as his supporters gradually come to grips with the fact that he can’t walk on water.
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