Why Mass Transit Needs a Daniel Burnham--and Now!
Today's entry was going to be a screed against the regrettable state of public transit funding in the Chicago area. I was going to take to task the legislative leaders who have been unable (unwilling?) to give the CTA, RTA, Metra and Pace, the true fix that's been needed for a generation. I mean, could the stage for transit funding reform be any better set? We're paying nearly $4 a gallon for gas and spending billions more building and repairing highways that will be decaying and traffic-jammed within the next decade anyway. A good transit system can alleviate this madness for a lot of people, particularly the poor and working class. And good transit breeds better urban planning by fostering development around transit nodes instead of suburban highway off-ramps. And speaking of the suburbs: it's easy to cluck one's tongue and pretend the transit funding crisis is a Chicago problem, as does this suburban newspaper columnist. Those inexpensive houses for sale in some remote ex-cornfield actually come with a considerable personal tax: the expense of purchasing, insuring and owning at least two cars in order to able to get around without public transportation. The cost is so substantial, mortgage lenders have created programs for the less car-dependent.
This is what I was going to say, then it hit me. It ain't just Illinois. Neither Congress nor the president has the resolve to allocate the vast amounts of cash needed to finally fix the nation's public transit. And not just this congress, or this president---none of them. Not even the batch currently running. They'll complain about gas prices and oil company profits in one session, then pours billions into highway construction and maintenance in the next. Amtrak gets no love and little money from Washington. The agency is currently asking for $1.5 billion in FY 2008. The president wants Amtrak to make due with $800 million. That's progress, I guess. In 2005 he offered the rail agency zero. I expect to see Amtrak joining the street beggars at 95th and Wentworth any day now.
Mass transit needs a Daniel Burnham. It needs someone is not only from the money-making, private sector, ruling class of Chicago who can design and articulate a plan for an entirely new regional public transportation network. The kind of person, like Burnham, who could turn fallow lakeside land into the fairgrounds of the 1893 Columbian Exposition; someone who can look at the tattered produce markets along the Chicago River and envision the Beaux Art masterpiece that would become Wacker Drive.
....a person who can look at the current transportation situtation and lead us to a new one, where rail and bus service is expanded, fast, clean and efficient; with well-designed stations that are hubs of retail and residential activity. Mass transit needs a Daniel Burnham to show what this new system could look like and what it would do for the region. He could explain how Chicago can't live up to its "world-class city" boasts as long as commuters are creeping through slow-zones on a century-old train system or growing moss on their pants legs waiting for buses to come. Civic and political backing would coalesce around these ideas because the new Daniel (or Daniela) Burnham would also have the backing of the powerful...because the powerful would understand a region with a shoddily funded transportation system is not in their best interest.
The new Burnham could visit Washington and show lawmakers there how a new and properly funded national passanger rail system could efficiently link major cities, help decongest airports, and write new chapters for scores of small towns that would then be hardwired by fast rail to big urban areas.
"It'll cost trillions," Washington tell him. "We'll spend it anyway over the next two decades in an attempt to maintain the roads and systems we have now," he'll say. "And yet even that won't be enough." (photo by Lee Bey)
