Stranded in Toledo

There’s been a lot of talk about the death of the exurb, brought about by increasing fuel prices and transportation costs (combined with a slowing economy). What you hear less about (well, what I hear less about) is the new isloation being faced by semi-isolated medium sized towns. These places are too far away from large cities to effectively benefit from their infrastructure, but are also too close (and too small) to support effective infrastructure of their own. Toledo is a good example of this, being 2 hours from Detroit and Cleveland, and it’s about to get hit pretty hard by the cuts in flying amongst the major airlines.

Expensive oil is a double-whammy for places like Toledo. Their air links will continue to be severed as airlines are forced to cut back. Meanwhile, driving 90-120 minutes to DTW or CLE becomes a lot harder when gas prices are over 4 dollars a gallon. We have started talking a lot about investing in transit infrastructure in our metropolitan areas, and we should. But we should also remember that after decades of neglect in favour of cars and planes, our intercity rail infrastructure is a joke, and places like Toledo and Bakersfield and Harrisburg — places that are close to being in the middle of nowhere, but not quite — are probably about to be cut off as a result. Something to keep in mind as we (hopefully) have more success in getting politicians to address the problems of cities.

The cost of bad policy

Shocking good sense from our new Minister of Trade:

Trade and Industry Minister Dr Keith Rowley says the annual subsidy on automobile fuel prices is now costing the State $2 billion a year.

And he says the time has now come for the Government to consider whether it should be spending this much money subsidising the price of gasoline and diesel.

Rowley, who is my new favourite politician, even makes the argument explicit:

“And, in so far as we have been buying at that price and subsidising local transport to the tune of $2 billion a year, the time has come in this country to ask ourselves if that is the best way to spend $2 billion.

“Subsiding[sic] transportation to the extent that nobody considers fuel cost when you plan a trip to go anywhere in this country,” Rowley said.

And people wonder why we have so much traffic? Here’s a big part of your answer. I can only hope that Rowley’s cabinet colleagues are paying attention.

I should note that we shouldn’t get rid of the subsidy in a vacuum, of course. It is just one part of moving toward a sensible transportation policy. Bear in mind that $2bn (that’s 300MM USD) can really get you a good deal of transit, and that’s where I think the money should go. We’d all be better off, I think. So of course that means that Rowley’s likely to be ignored…

In which I talk about traffic policy again

As discussed here and elsewhere, Trinidad is currently suffering from a serious traffic problem, which is the focus of an article in the Express today. Somewhat surprisingly, one of the traffic officers interviewed hits the nail on the head:

The main cause of traffic: Too many cars. ASP Jackson stated that there were more than 400,000 cars on the nation’s road according to the Licensing Division. He said he would not be surprised if there were significantly more.

“What is the need for all these cars? Families that used to have one car, now have two and three,” said ASP Jackson.

Pretty much. Among the trappings of economic development: greater access to private vehicular transportation. Naturally, respondents in the article mention things like “more roads” as being the solution, but any transportation engineer worth her slat will tell you that that’s a short term solution. Besides, it’s also a solution that comes at great expense, what with having to tear down homes, businesses, and farmland to accomodate the new cars. In reality, the solutions that are likely to be effective aren’t likely to be popular:

• Eliminate the massive gasoline subsidies
• Introduce congestion pricing in downtown POS
• Toll the major highways
• Reform parking policy — no more free parking in POS, and stop building parking garage after garage!
• Improve public transportation: build the promised train lines, keep going with the ferries, and make the PBR into a BRT corridor (and please please don’t allow private cars onto it as some people suggested! That is insanity!)
• Improve bike and pedestrian friendliness of downtown POS and environs

These are the quicker solutions. Of course, there’s also the important long-term solution of focusing on transit-oriented development, which gets no attention that I can see in Trinidad (just look at all the weak attempts we make to emulate the worst of American suburban sprawl; Trincity is particularly horrifying).

You’ll  be shocked to hear that the government isn’t talking about any of this, even as it drives construction in POS to a fever pitch. After all, solutions are hard, and buildings are shiny! Instead we depend on traffic management serendiptity to save us. After all, God is a Trini.