Help improve federal mass transit policy
A policy competition from the Institute for Progress
I’ve written many articles over the years about how mass transit projects in the United States go awry — from overbuilt stations to misguided priorities, too much focus on projects with little transportation value, outdated operational paradigms, and a reluctance to just say no, all of which show that there is a lot we’re getting wrong in this country about transit.
But most of these are ideas for how transit agencies could make better decisions.
A step-back question that policymakers who’ve read these takes often have is: what could be different, policy-wise, at the federal level that would generate better outcomes? What rules are making it hard for good ideas to be implemented or creating bad incentives? How could Congress and/or the Department of Transportation change things to make this all work better?
The Institute for Progress, one of my favorite think tanks, wants to help policymakers answer those questions, and they want your help in coming up with the answers.
They want to develop a Transit Policy Playbook (modeled on the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook they already published) full of memos providing specific, actionable policy ideas that can be implemented by congressional or executive branch action. What they want from you or someone you know is a very brief submission — a problem statement and a description of your proposed solution, with each component coming in at less than 400 words. If they pick your idea, you’ll get $2,000 and they’ll work with you to flesh it out into a 2,000-word memo. This is a great opportunity for people with deep knowledge of the transit space to work with people who have deep knowledge of the policymaking process to transform a compelling abstract concept into something that elected officials and political appointees can actually put into practice.
The deadline for submissions is August 24th and the application link is here.
As a related project, IFP has a bunch of transit-related episodes of their Statecraft podcast lately, including an interview with Slow Boring fave Alon Levy, a conversation with WMATA General Manager Randy Clarke on how DC Metro was stabilized and turned around, and a fascinating episode with Stephanie Pollack about the near-death and ultimate salvation of the Green Line Extension project in Boston.
But again, the hope here is to move beyond case studies to big policy ideas that will drive change nationally.
I would like to be able to ride a free bus from my rent controlled apartment to the government owned grocery store.
I'm going to be annoying and annoyingly point out the obvious:
You cannot have a good public transit system unless you have sufficiently high population density, which means, at minimum, some combination of single-family and multi-family dwellings. A neighborhood made up entire of single-family housing ain't gonna cut it.
Ultimately it's a geometry problem: you need a high enough population density to provide enough transit riders within easy walking distance of each transit stop. Otherwise you're either wastefully running empty buses, or you're trying to match supply to demand and end up with a sad, lonesome bus that comes by once an hour at best.
I live in Orange County, aka Sprawl Central. Just for kicks and giggles, I sometimes use Google Maps to look up how long it would take to travel to a given destination by car vs. public transit. It typically looks something like 20 min by car vs. 1 h 30 min by transit (because you have to walk to the nearest transit stop, ride the bus 45 min, get off and wait 15 min for the next bus, then ride that bus for 25 min). And then a single tear runs down my cheek as I remember the wonderfully walkable and public transit-friendly Boston where I used to live, and then I get in my car, because I care about the environment, but I'm not a masochist.