Roads and Bridges

Occasionally, I get asked why I don’t write much about national goings-on, and why I rarely ever say anything about politics (either online or in the real world) beyond the city scale. Basically, it’s because I have little faith in anything the Federal government says or does or in its ability to actually do the right thing. Even as nearly everybody I know, including friends, colleagues, and fellow news writers, hopped on board the “Yes we can” train to Obamaville, proclaiming “change” and grand things ahead, I turned my attention uberlocal and kept all my attention focused on Fort Worth happenings. (On election day, the biggest discussion topic here was a new restaurant on Magnolia.)

It’s not because I have anything against Mr. Obama. Far from it. He seems like a good guy and he accomplished something great. I never had much against Mr. McCain, either, beyond the ridiculously simple-minded “drill baby drill” nonsense and his…interesting choice of running mate. As you might expect, I did not agree with McCain’s stance on energy, transportation, or similar topics, but I still figure he’s a decent sort. You ought to be able to disagree with somebody without hating them. (One reason why I always found the whole Bush hating thing rather distasteful.)

No, I stay away from national events because I long ago lost faith in the Feds to do anything other than recklessly prop up the status quo, no matter how harmful or negative the status quo really is at its core. With news of Mr. Obama’s infrastructure plan coming out now, my opinion hasn’t really been shifted – this “change” appears to be barely any change at all. The endless talk of “roads and bridges” leaves me cold, but not surprised. I’ll leave that to fellow bloggers who’ve got more invested at the national level:

Yes, it’s a good idea to reduce unemployment by providing public sector jobs. And as these not-unemployed people earn paychecks and spend them, they pay taxes and create (or maintain) jobs for others. I’d even say that there are essential roads and bridges that are in danger of falling apart and killing people, so we should put some of these people to work fixing or rebuilding them.

However, what we should not spend money on is anything that increases highway or parking capacity. Obama says that his plan would be the biggest infrastructure spending plan since the Interstate Highway System; well, the Interstate Highway system is a big part of what got us into this mess.

If we hadn’t spent so much on highways, it wouldn’t have been so cheap for people to live fifty or a hundred miles from their jobs with no rapid transit to get them there. If we hadn’t spent so much on roads and bridges, we wouldn’t have neighborhoods where hundreds of people can’t walk to get a quart of milk. If we hadn’t spent so much on roads and bridges, we might have had more for trains and buses. Housing wouldn’t have gotten overvalued to the point where $4/gallon gas popped the bubble.

The time to turn this battleship is now. Obama should not continue the mistakes of the past. We’ve built enough roads and bridges, thank you.

Now obviously, I do think transit (to use the most prominent example) is in a better place under Obama than it was under Bush and would have been under McCain. But I don’t think it’s nearly as big a shift towards the path of smart growth as the “change” conga lines were forecasting. Obviously, there’s a lot of political minefields out there when it comes to talking about shaking things up, even when it should be obvious that a shake up is what’s needed. There are a lot of people with massive investments in our status quo who don’t want it to change. Everybody from the carmakers nuzzling up to the government teat for life-sustaining monies to the big-box retailers who would be unable to function under their current business models without ridiculously cheap fuel and massive roadways to the home builders and developers cranking out isolated subdivisions eighty miles away from work centers and hooked to the umbilical cord of the Interstate to the people who bought more house than they can realistically afford in those subdivisions in the (misguided, in my opinion) mindset that such places were the “American dream” and good for the kids, even though Daddy spends four hours a day commuting alone in his car away from the family.

A lot of people I know and respect thought that Mr. Obama would shake things up. While I’m sure he’ll make changes here and there, I fear a real shake up won’t happen without some very painful and, unfortunately, often avoidable troubles in the future to come. The politicos won’t really change until the bitter end. Even now, as gas prices fall once more under $2.00 a gallon, the old bad habits that put us into a world of hurt when it was $4.00 a gallon have returned – despite all the evidence that the drop won’t last forever. The summer’s prices ought to have been a warning of things to come, but the people invested in the status quo prefer to think of it as just a temporary inconvenience that will never happen again. It’ll get us in the end, of course, but that won’t be acknowledged until the very last. (And unfortunately, the price of gas has become the only point of discussion on this topic, even though there are plenty of other reasons to perhaps rethink the way we’ve been doing things since World War II ended.)

That’s why I think it’s more important to make your strongest pushes at the local level. Real change can be affected at the local level. Real progress can be made at the local level. When the Near Southside form-based code went into effect, urging development in the district into a people-focused and cohesive urban pattern, it’s because we (the general we) did it. When you take your first ride on the modern streetcar system, it’ll be because we did it. When you ride your bike down a bike route or lane, it’ll be because we did it.

I’m not saying that if you’re into national level stuff that you should just give up. Obviously, you can affect some change nationally. The real shifts in thinking and placemaking, though, are at the local level. The city. The district. The neighborhood. Lay the groundwork there to make the big changes work, at the state and national level. Make the city the beacon of right and reason to show the way for those further up the food chain.