BREAKING: ARC Tunnel Stopped In Its Tracks
News of THE the ARC Tunnel being halted this morning is concerning as an engineer and burgeoning transportation planner, but more importantly as a citizen of the United States! I’ve lamented the lack of transportation options and funding that saddles too
many American cities and suburbs with precarious transportation predicaments: crumbling roads and bridges; expensive, uncomfortable, inefficient transit systems, etc. Actions taken by NJ’s governor, Chris Christie, strike me less about his political leanings (although his Republican stance on fiscal conservatism surely played a role) and more on the state of modern transportation funding. I almost don’t want to fault a man who’s job is to look out for the NJ constituency. As far as he is concerned, with NJ being responsible for any cost overruns of this major — I do stress major — civil project, his assertion that the state couldn’t risk having to pay upwards of $4 billion on the tunnel when NJ’s finances are ostensibly mirroring CA levels of fiscal hysteria, is borderline admirable. Do I think the decision hurts the economic viability and mobility of the NY region, and in the end its residents? Yes. However, it paints the picture of politicians having to make such drastic decisions for a sect of the government that ought to be able to be more willing to adapt to changing travel and economic demands.
Another example of why transportation funding is rife with seemingly perenn
ial financial challenges is embodied by the NY region’s other whipping boy agency, the MTA. They receive a portion of their funding from real estate taxes! If we wantsustainable transportationoptions, surely we can’t expect to fund them with unsustainable and fluctuating revenue sources. I think there is/was a perfectly reasonable connection for MTA and legislators to make real estate taxes incorporated into the funding scheme (as real estate benefits from proximity to transit, yadda yadda yadda), however, in order to move into a new era of responsibility for American infrastructure, systematic changes need to be made. It is a daunting prospect, much like healthcare reform, but it can be accomplished. And given that the built environment is a trust from the government to its citizens to be able to live and prosper, it’s role is nearly as crucial as that of banks — and we all saw what happened when we didn’t address the problem with the banks…
Further reading: The Transport Politic, NYTimes Op-Ed
