WHAT RAILS AND ROADS TELL US ABOUT CLASS & POWER

Sam Smith, Progressive Review - One of the least examined indicators of how power is distributed in our society is its transportation system. In America, transportation policy - like other things - is heavily weighted towards the elite and powerful. But we hardly ever discuss or debate it.

For one thing, travel habits vary by class and status. A federal study in 1995 found that people earning more than $50,000 a year traveled seven miles more a day than people earning less.

People over 65 traveled 23 miles less a day. Non-drivers traveled 26 miles less a day.

And transportation spending reflects such differences, most strikingly in the amounts spent to subsidize the travel of wealthier suburban commuters compared with inner city non drivers, such as a third of DC's population. Consider [Figure 8 above].

Or this one [Federal Transportation Subsidies since 1993].

And the trend is not changing. Obama's stimulus package included four times as much for high speed rail for first class passengers than for all other types of rail and bus travel was barely mentioned.

One of the reasons it's hard to understand this is because nobody talks about it. I learned this early in the planning for a subway in Washington as a lonely critic of the proposal. Some of my concerns had nothing to do with class or ethnicity such as the fact that subways didn't compete for space with cars (unlike light rail) and that only a small percentage of those working in new development inspired by Metro would actually ride the rails to get there, so street traffic - as has proved to be the case - would increase.

But a surprising number of factors involved class and power. For example, the subway was approved the same year as the 1968 riots and begun the year after. It would allow white DC residents to escape the troubled city yet still use - and travel safely to and from - it for work and entertainment. Interestingly, the first route went from the suburbs through an almost all white section of a two-thirds black town to the center of the city. I called it the Great White Way and dubbed the much later route to heavily black Anacostia the Underground Railroad. But you would hear not a word about this on the TV news or in the Washington Post.

The subway, while not competing with the automobile, did compete with bus lines replacing them with more expensive underground travel. In one or two cases these bus lines were actually making a profit. As time went on, and the Metro did not do as well as predicted, more and more bus routes were adjusted to force people onto the subway. And, as transit service for white commuters improved, that for inner city residents deteriorated.

Besides, it was clearly a one way system. If you lived the suburbs it would take you within walking distance of your downtown job. If you lived in the city and worked in the suburbs, you could take the new system out to the burbs and find yourself miles from work. I suggested a subsidized jitney service to help city workers reach suburban employment but nobody in power was interested in anything like that.

Now, more than 30 years after the Metro began, we finally have a study that confirms many of these concerns and it's not just about one system. It's about how we plan transportation policy all over America and how some get favored and some get screwed, and why we're about to have high speed rail for some and still have lousy bus and train service for many more.