Bureaucrats are often characterized as faceless. But the modern
bureaucrat is a political creature. He spends his time seeking to
control the lives of those who pay his salary in ways his funders
would find alternatively risible or riotable. Thus today’s civil
servant must be tight-lipped about his work and adept at evading
questions.
That’s why Ray LaHood, President Obama’s retiring transportation
secretary, was so refreshing. LaHood, a former Republican
congressman, never seemed comfortable with the requisite
taciturnity of the bureaucrat. Asked in 2009 about his livability
initiatives, LaHood responded, “It is a way to coerce people out of
their cars.” Talk about transparency in government! If only all of
Obama’s lieutenants were this forthright about their bullying.
LaHood came to power amidst much inside-the-Beltway
flower-showering. He was a Republican in President Obama’s
supposedly bipartisan cabinet. He was a moderate, one of only three
Class of ’94 freshmen who never signed the Contract for America.
And he was taking the helm of the Department of Transportation, for
which the president had big plans. Joe Biden called LaHood, “the
star of the Cabinet.”
LaHood himself summed up the administration’s transportation
policy with more trademark frankness: “Today, I want to announce a
sea change,” he wrote. “People across America who value bicycling
should have a voice when it comes to transportation planning. This
is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of
non-motorized.”
Republicans wondered if
LaHood was on drugs. But he was serious, and under his
stewardship the Department of Transportation became a case study
for bureaucrats looking to pick winners and losers based on their
own enlightened preferences.
The most blatant manifestation of this was LaHood’s pet project,
the DOT’s TIGER grant program. Started in 2010, the government
awarded hundreds of millions of dollars every year to
infrastructure projects that it considered innovative and
cutting-edge – like bike paths and walkways.
The DOT was particularly keen on “multimodal” initiatives,
meaning those that combined different modes of transportation, be
it car, train, or bike. One 2012 TIGER grant went to a multimodal
facility in Pittsburgh that linked bus service with road
improvements and a “bike and pedestrian access bridge.” Another
grant was awarded to a multimodal project in Birmingham, Ala.,
which “is considered highly dangerous for bicyclists and
pedestrians.”
Other grants were more explicit. Washington, DC got $10 million
for bike paths around the Anacostia River. (Anyone familiar with
Southeast DC knows the lack of cycling is the least of that area’s
problems.) Another $5 million was assigned to build a commuter
center in rural Jefferson County, W.Va., accommodating bus and
rail, and surrounded by walking paths.
It’s not that none of the TIGER projects have merit. One of this
year’s grants was to help restore the beleaguered I-95 Viaduct
bridge in Providence, R.I. (although even there the DOT found a way
to brag about benefitting cyclists). But TIGER is a quintessential
example of the feds dictating policy, and inflicting people with
products and services they don’t want.
This federalization of our transportation system started well
before LaHood. The federal government spearheaded the construction
of the interstate highway system in 1956. After its completion, the
feds clung to their new powers, carrot-and-sticking the states with
funding and the law to set a national transportation policy.
Eventually highways fell out of vogue, and “intermodal” became the
new buzzword.
Today states must set aside 10% of their federal highway funds
for “enhancement” projects, which, as one DOT bureaucrat
told the Huffington Post, means “almost exclusively
bicycle and pedestrian projects.”
Into this bubbling federal laboratory stepped Ray LaHood. Armed
with more than $48 billion in stimulus funds and billions more in
TIGER grants, LaHood furthered the government’s obsession with
antiquated forms of transportation, coercing — or at least nudging
— people out of their cars by trying to flood them with other
options.
But Americans, in all their wonderful stubbornness, just aren’t
cooperating. According to the government’s own Census
data, 86% of Americans drive to work, and 76% do so alone. Less
than 3% walk to work, while only 0.6% ride a bicycle. The cities
where Americans bike tend to be
either wealthy or dominated by college life. Biking isn’t a
godsend for a weary commuter. It’s a fitness ritual for the trendy
and comfortable; a bit like yoga, except the government isn’t
hurling money at meditation studios.
If Washington is going to dangle transportation dollars over the
states’ heads like a leering cat lady, it should do it in a way
that serves the 86% of motorists, rather than the 0.6% of cyclists.
It’d be a nice gesture, especially since life for We the Drivers is
growing more aggravating. By 2020, the
Texas A&M Transportation Institute estimates that the
average carbureting commuter will spend seven more hours stuck in
traffic every year, and waste an additional six gallons of gas. If
the federal government must control our transportation policy,
shouldn’t its first priority be to meet the demand of today’s
drivers?
All together now, gentlemen: We! Are! The Eighty-Six Percent!
Not to start a riot in Oakland, but I don’t see myself trading my
muffler for a bike chain any time soon. The car, perhaps more than
any other invention, enables individual freedom, allowing us to go
where we want when we please. That’s a fine thing and doesn’t
require any enforced evolution by bureaucrats (though it does
require funding).
Back to Secretary LaHood, to whom we must be fair and
acknowledge that coercively constructing bike paths isn’t his only
legacy. He also tried to coercively construct high-speed railways,
for example, and coercively stop people from talking on their cell
phones in cars. Having allowed our roads to become choked with
traffic, the DOT now wants to forbid stranded commuters from making
contact with their fellow man.
Unfortunately the bureaucratic fun may be coming to an end. Not
only is LaHood retiring, but last year’s transportation bill
slashed funding for bike paths, and increased the federal share for
highway and road projects to 95%. And the construction of
California’s ballyhooed high-speed rail line has been plagued by
delays and cost overruns.
Soon the bureaucrats may have to throw up their hands and
concede that their scheme to change how we travel has failed. But
that’s not to say their busybodying has to come to a halt. I hear
there are still a few smokers out there in need of reeducation.
Get cracking, boys.
Photo
courtesy Thierry Draus.
