Necessity is the mother of intervention. Every knot was once straight rope. The slotted spoon still catches the potato.
Why all these worn out sayings? The point is: right now, amidst this, very scary, economic crisis, we have an opportunity to make real change happen that can have a positive and lasting impact. With proper investment in our future that adequately encourages innovation, we can address frustrating traffic congestion, job loss, crumbling infrastructure and, while we’re at it, global climate change.
The Chicago Transit Authority has at least four “shovel ready” projects that will expand the service area and improve movement within it. Getting people out of their cars and into mass transit provides relief to our area expressways, reduces our carbon footprint, and encourages countless engineers, planners and scientists to research newer and better ways to move people around. Improving and increasing intercity high speed rail will only further support these positive behaviors.
All versions of the stimulus bill, including the one that the President will sign Tuesday, have been criticized. Fair enough. I agree that simply throwing money at a problem doesn’t make the problem go away. I am disappointed to see that highways, once again, receive a bigger share of the pie than transit. But, in a time when ever increasing auto emissions can spell the end of clean air as we know it and, frankly, no one can afford to buy a car anyway, maybe this will provide the needed incentive for scientists to develop cleaner, more fuel-efficient vehicles- at least the highways those clean cars will traverse will be smooth and well maintained!
It’s all about aligning incentives: encourage good behavior and discourage bad behavior. In a political world, that guiding philosophy may be difficult to translate into effective policy that really does stimulate the economy. I remain steadfast in my belief, though, that these trying times enable us to meet in the middle and prioritize our immediate needs: Jobs and spending on projects that will make us more productive in the long run.
The message I’m trying to convey here is: let’s pass this thing. Let’s double check that its provisions meet our “guiding philosophy” of encouraging good behavior and discouraging bad.