Over at the American Conservative Magazine, William S. Lind makes a powerful conservative case for renewed investment in public transit: “For cities, conservatives’ banner should be read, ‘Bring Back the Streetcars!’”
A couple of points are worth highlighting:
1) The current car-dependent culture we have now is not a free market outcome. Lind notes that: “it is the produce of almost a century of government intervention in the transportation market.” Highways, according to Lind, only “cover 58 percent of their costs from user fees, including the gasoline tax.”
2) Public transit is a real driver of economic development or redevelopment. (Lind cites Portland, OR and Kenosha, WI as cities that got a real boost from putting in a streetcar line)
3) Public transit helps advance energy independence.
4) And if the first conservative political virtue is prudence, as Russell Kirk advised, “there is nothing prudent about leaving most people immobile should events beyond the pale cut off our oil supply, as happened in 1973 and 1979)
Lind’s piece is one of several in a symposium on transit over at the American Conservative. And in fact, “The American Conservative’s nonprofit parent, The American Ideas Institute, will launch a new center on transportation made possible by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. The center will work to showcase conservative arguments for a balanced transportation system in which rail and roads complement one another.”
Lind has also written a book with conservative stalwart Paul Weyrich on this subject: Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation.
This suggests real promise on a left-right consensus on the need for meaningful investments in public transit. Progressives ought to pay attention.
Photo credit: Oran Virincy’s photostream
