For The Rich

For The Rich - The city's class warriors are in full warble over Governor Pawlenty's proposal to create toll lanes - not toll roads, mind you - amid some of the metro's worst traffic. "It's preferential traffic for the rich", the Lori Sturdevants and Doug Grows of the metro bleat (although I'm willing to bet an imported beer that both of them will be using the lanes when and if they're built).

But let's address the whole notion that these roads are "for the rich" in the first place.

Many of the nation's higher-density areas - the New York/New Jersey/Connecticut/Pennsylvania metroplex, Chicago and LA, among others - use toll roads. Comparisons with Chicago - which is crisscrossed with toll expressways as well as freeways - are interesting. Chicago politics aren't the overweening, dissipate neo-Berkeley exercise in PC power you find in Minneapolis, of course - but there are similarities between Chicago and Saint Paul. Entrenched union power, powerful special interests pulling tightly-wound strings, ancient loyalties and alliances playing out in the wards based on the neighborhoods that are the currency of power in the city, an unsavory history - all are found, to various degrees, in both cities.

I used to work with people from Chicago - so while I'm far from an expert at Chicago politics, I'm not completely green, either (and if you are from Chicago and have a perspective on this, please comment or email!). I do not recall a single Chicagoan ever referring to their tollways as being "for the rich". They're a price you - whoever "you" are, whether a busy executive or a delivery courier who needs to get someplace fast - pay to traverse a huge, busy city more efficiently.

Stop me if I'm wrong!

By the way - yesterday on Blogomodleft, Fecke said I favor toll lanes. As with most things, it's a lot more complicated than that. For those of you who care, I favor:

• Commuter Rail - heavy-gauge commuter rail using existing freight-passenger lines, as in the Northstar and Red Rocks proposals. These would move people from where they are (the St. Cloud corridor and Washington/Dakota counties, the fastest growing areas of the state) to where they want to go - their jobs in the Cities, they can be built with nearly no new right of way, and they can pay for themselves in the foreseeable future.
• Toll roads, lanes, ramps, whatever it takes turn the construction of new roads and lanes into a user-fee based system. Given the emnity of so many of the warbling classes toward the eeeevul SUV-driving suburban commuter, you'd THINK this would be seen as a Good Thing. That'd imply thought, of course, as opposed to jerking knees.
• Yes, even Light Rail. Light Rail doesn't have to be a stupid boondoggle doomed to failure. If it goes from where people are to where they want to be, and is built along existing rights of way (which don't have to be purchased from scratch at hideous prices) and if it's construction - here's the hard part - is not treated as the construction of a monument to the wisdom and munificence of the currently-sitting government, then it can actually make some sense.

What do these proposals have in common? They make market sense. They let the market drive the transit decisions in a way that, with a little planning, they don't have to be an eternal money drain on the taxpayer...

...which is what our current system is.

Posted by Mitch at January 6, 2004 06:02 AM