I don’t know about you, but I have grown weary of all the funding discussion back and forth. It feels to me like a tennis match I know needs to be won, but for which I wish to see neither competitor claim the cup. Perhaps that’s a poor metaphor. Transportation infrastructure would, in this metaphor, be the ball, yes? And who wants a tennis ball that just sits there, that is not being persistently batted about? Yet, what better comparison than a match game propelled by both strategy and unending movement, that fuels itself on the persistence, the doggedness of its competitors, in which an incredibly important issue is being relentlessly slapped around?
At present, we are one lousy backhand away from very, very serious trouble. Mass/public-transit infrastructure is going to really take it in the teeth, either way. This is not conjecture. There are exponentially more single-driver vehicles on the roads than there are riders of various forms of public transportation. Much of the geography of our nation precludes the relatively easy application of public transit networks, and what’s more, such networks might well not see the success they were intended to provide. The product of such facts can easily be perverted into an argument against funding public-transportation development. I mean, cars win by volume, right?
And yet what more necessary investment must we make than in enabling and empowering our own country to be mobile, to be able to go to work or the grocery store or a civic event or to visit friends and relatives by a safe, dependable and economically viable means? If you ask me, more cars on the road means more headaches, less flexibility and stunted achievement by a national workforce that has ancillary tools at its disposal to circumvent the need to tough it out in heavy traffic.
I say comprehensive and verifiable investment in the public-transportation segment of our greater transportation picture is both crucial and noble. I guess what I mean to say is: Dear Leadership, get it the hell done already.
