Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 16, 1994 TAG: 9403180001
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It was not always so. Born a city-franchised private enterprise in the late 1800s, the subway in its early decades rewarded its owners, led by financier August Belmont, with lucrative profits. It was regarded as a deluxe, even romantic, mode of travel.
After World War I, however, the profits vanished. In the 1930s, the city - rather reluctantly - took over the system. Though continuing for a time to offer inexpensive, dependable and safe transport, the system had begun its steady decline, a decline perhaps slowed but apparently not stopped by a major capital-improvement program in the '80s.
In a 1993 book, "722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York" (Simon & Schuster, $25), historian Clifton Hood analyzes what happened to New York's subways, and why. Though explicitly focusing only on mass transit in New York City, his analysis echoes wider issues affecting much of America.
As with mass transit in other places, the rise of the automobile played a role in the subways' decline. But in New York and elsewhere, a light-rail transit system wasn't (and isn't) inherently inferior to costly automobile-highway systems. There is, says Hood, more to the subway story:
Impossibly contradictory demands made on the subway system.
Accustomed to thinking of subways as natural profit-makers, politicians and the public resisted the idea of idea of government subsidies even after the system fell under municipal ownership. Yet for years the public also demanded retention of the 5-cent fare, despite inflation that sent the real value of subway revenues plunging. The inevitable consequence: ill-maintained stations, deteriorating equipment, worsening service.
The absence of those same contradictory demands on the highway system and on the development of suburbia beyond the reach of the subways.
Unlike the subway system, government was not expected to make money on hIghway construction and maintenance. Suburban growth was subsidized by home-mortgage benefits of the post-World War II GI Bill.
Lack of comprehensive regional and national transportation policies.
In their earlier years, the subways ably served planners' goal of spreading the population more evenly throughout the city, to the outer boroughs that had become part of the city in 1898. But when people moved beyond those borders in later years, such a vision was absent, and little effort was made to enlarge the system into a regional one.
Nationally, especially after World War II, all the attention was given to highways. Moreover, New York is not a national capital. The prestige factor that sustained public subsidies for subway systems in cities like London, Paris, Moscow, Seoul and Washington is missing in the Big Apple.
The picture Hood paints is of the decline of only one kind of rapid mass transit, underground rail, in only one U.S. city, albeit America's biggest. But the picture of a decaying public service, race- and class-related isolation of city from suburb, welfare for middle-class suburbia via hidden public subsidies and lack of a comprehensive national transportation policy - seems in general outline a representation of broader and familiar American shortcomings.
like nativist Pat Buchanan, differences within the GOP never took on the air of holy war. Free-trade principles and political realities made it easy for most congressional Republicans to support NAFTA.
For GOP Congressman Bob Goodlatte of Roanoke, for example, voting for NAFTA was not only right but also smart politics. The economy of his 6th District is the most export-oriented in the state, and the conservative Republican didn't win with union support anyway.
The Republicans' NAFTA, provided the issue ever moves from the periphery to center stage, could be drug legalization. Like Republicans on NAFTA, Democrats can and do disagree on drug policy. But for the Republicans (and conservatives generally), the fissure could go much deeper.
That's largely because one strain of contemporary conservatism believes firmly in the libertarian view that government should do less of almost everything. Another strain, however, holds to the authoritarian view that punishing crime and protecting "traditional values" are what government is, or at least should be, all about.
Among conservative proponents of drug legalization are the Cato Institute, economist Milton Friedman and writer William F. Buckley Jr. True, Buckley says he's not among those who say government has no business regulating dangerous (if only to oneself) behavior; his opposition is based on the simple fact that the war on drugs hasn't worked. But Buckley's ready willingness to sound retreat betrays a pessimism about government's efficacy that borders on libertarianism. He seems to dismiss, before it's even tried, a change in focus to drug-treatment and -rehab programs that could reduce the demand for illicit drugs.
The libertarians seem to underestimate the social danger of drugs even if legalized and to overestimate the completeness with which government has fought drugs. But the authoritarians - among whom can be counted the conservative politicos who awhile back took Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders to task for daring to suggest so much as a study of legalization - seem to favor the current failed course, only more so. More arrests, more trials, more prisoners, more prisons.
President Clinton quickly divorced himself from his own surgeon general's suggestion. But he defined the difference in pragmatic terms, saying he didn't think legalization would work well. That's a small difference compared to the great gulf in conservative world views - between libertarians who think drugs should be legalized on principle and authoritarian conservatives who think drug crimes should be prosecuted ever more vigorously and penalized ever more heavily.
THE CROWDED island geography of New York City makes its subway system, largest in the world, indispensable. Yet the New York subways are also unattractive, inhospitable and, all too often, crime-infested.
It was not always so. Born a city-franchised private enterprise in the late 1800s, the subway in its early decades rewarded its owners, led by financier August Belmont, with lucrative profits. It was regarded as a deluxe, even romantic, mode of travel.
After World War I, however, the profits vanished. In the 1930s, the city - rather reluctantly - took over the system. Though continuing for a time to offer inexpensive, dependable and safe transport, the system had begun its steady decline, a decline perhaps slowed but apparently not stopped by a major capital-improvement program in the '80s.
In a 1993 book, "722 Miles: The Building of the Subways and How They Transformed New York" (Simon & Schuster, $25), historian Clifton Hood analyzes what happened to New York's subways, and why. Though explicitly focusing only on mass transit in New York City, his analysis echoes wider issues affecting much of America.
As with mass transit in other places, the rise of the automobile played a role in the subways' decline. But in New York and elsewhere, a light-rail transit system wasn't (and isn't) inherently inferior to costly automobile-highway systems. There is, says Hood, more to the subway story:
nImpossibly contradictory demands made on the subway system.
Accustomed to thinking of subways as natural profit-makers, politicians and the public resisted the idea of idea of government subsidies even after the system fell under municipal ownership. Yet for years the public also demanded retention of the 5-cent fare, despite inflation that sent the real value of subway revenues plunging. The inevitable consequence: ill-maintained stations, deteriorating equipment, worsening service.
nThe absence of those same contradictory demands on the highway system and on the development of suburbia beyond the reach of the subways.
Unlike the subway system, government was not expected to make money on hIghway construction and maintenance. Suburban growth was subsidized by home-mortgage benefits of the post-World War II GI Bill.
nLack of comprehensive regional and national transportation policies.
In their earlier years, the subways ably served planners' goal of spreading the population more evenly throughout the city, to the outer boroughs that had become part of the city in 1898. But when people moved beyond those borders in later years, such a vision was absent, and little effort was made to enlarge the system into a regional one.
Nationally, especially after World War II, all the attention was given to highways. Moreover, New York is not a national capital. The prestige factor that sustained public subsidies for subway systems in cities like London, Paris, Moscow, Seoul and Washington is missing in the Big Apple.
The picture Hood paints is of the decline of only one kind of rapid mass transit, underground rail, in only one U.S. city, albeit America's biggest. But the picture of a decaying public service, race- and class-related isolation of city from suburb, welfare for middle-class suburbia via hidden public subsidies and lack of a comprehensive national transportation policy - seems in general outline a representation of broader and familiar American shortcomings.
by CNB