Respect Whose Authority?

Two good posts (one, two) from Ryan Avent on rail funding and planning issues. I would add that making everything more difficult here is that the lines of political authority in the Northeast of the United States were drawn a very long time ago — often literally hundreds of years ago — and don't match up especially well with the way patterns of residence and commerce actually exist. Manhattan is governed by institutions located in Albany that also run far-off Buffalo but have no authority in Hoboken right across the river.

Neither the government in Richmond nor the government in Annapolis takes the problems of the DC metro area to be its primary concern, because most residents of Virginia don't live in the area and neither do most residents of Maryland. But it doesn't have to be this way. The Washington-Arlington-Alexandria MSA contains over five million people, making it bigger than most states. And if it were a state, that state would probably engage in more more sensible regional transportation planning. But it's not so we don't get it.

Comments

From time to time I've wondered if political metrolocalism - to coin a clumsy phrase - is perhaps a decent answer to various problems, but like you point out, that's not how it is, so it doesn't happen.

Posted by Dan S. | November 1, 2007 1:38 PM

The NYC-north Jersey-western Connecticut area is split between a different governments, too, and yet I'd rather travel around there.

Posted by Dave Weigel | November 1, 2007 2:04 PM

See the Portland metro area's elected regional government - called Metro - as an example:

http://www.metro-region.org/

While far from perfect, Metro is trying to help the various jurisdictions plan for the influx of an additional 1 million people over the next 25 years. This includes Metro's regional train system - Max.

Posted by Tiparillo | November 1, 2007 2:05 PM

I've always kind of thought that we missed a real opportunity after the Civil War to junk the whole state governemnt concept and redo things ina more rational way. Once we had established that we were one country with a federal government and not a collection of independant states we shoudl have gone all the way.

I'm not saying we'd totally eliminate local governmetn and decsicion making, just that it would be organized more logically and with a heriarchical structure. It is insane that we have 50 sets of business regulations and rules. Think how much time and money is spent by companies doing business in all 50 states just keeign track of the various rules for employees for example.

We ceased to be anything remotely like the Jeffersonian ideal style of country with a bunch of local yeoman well over 100 years ago (if we ever really were in the first place).

And Tiparillo, I live in Portland too, Metro does work liek you say except for one glaring issue, it stops at the river and Vancouver isn't included, so we don't get light rail extending there to make a rational regional network. They are seemingly run by right wing yahoos in the developers pockets so they have bizarre networks of unconnected sprawling subdivisions and so on.

Posted by Eric K | November 1, 2007 2:21 PM

Adding to the problem is that Virginia is just plain bad at planning. As you drive from DC to Richmond and watch the sprawl continue from Northern Virginia you see the same poorly thought out traffic patterns. 8 lane roads, no frontage roads. Poorly conceived intersections. Its a mess.

Posted by Rob | November 1, 2007 2:32 PM

It's not just the Northeast that has this problem. Here in Southern California, the goals of the various counties' transportation authorities are conflicting; Orange County, for instance, being a hotbed of conservativism, just wants to build freeways wide as the ocean and doesn't care about rail. LA County doesn't care about widening freeways (because that just encourages driving) and wants more rail. So at the county line, I-5 narrows from 5 lanes each direction to 3, and the only trains that run between LA and Orange County are expensive Metrolink and Amtrak trains that are too pricey for many commuters.

Posted by Dilan Esper | November 1, 2007 2:33 PM

States are a really bad idea, but some people are abnormally attached to them. We need a reorganization a la what European countries did at the end of the feudal era.

Break ourselves down to counties, then band them together in contiguous districts of roughly equal population, with rational demographic and geographic borders. Make 13 of these districts, just for patriotic purposes, and sell it as a return to the ideals of the founding fathers. Do as much of it as possible by mutual agreement, then shove any leftover counties onto an adjacent district by judicial fiat at the federal level.

Obviously, nothing like this can happen, but it would be nice.

Posted by Njorl | November 1, 2007 2:38 PM

I think you are missing the point Matt. The problem is that passenger rail transit is looked at as a private sector or municipal problem. But what about highways? Roads and highways are funded and coordinated between federal, state, and municipal governments. If the Federal government took over the rail lines the same as they do the highways, then Amtrak could be privatized and spun off. Profitable commuter rail corridors could thrive between metro hubs like NY to Boston, NY to DC, Chicago to St. Louis, LA to Las Vegas, etc. In the end, it is the federal government's 19th century view of rails that has lead it to languish in the 20th and 21st century.

Posted by freddiemac | November 1, 2007 2:52 PM

I should also point out that successful transit systems like NYC developed while the city was EXPANDING. When was the last time NYC, Chicago, or DC expanded their borders? Part of the problem here is that cities are no longer able to annex the surrounding suburbs. Cities on the other side of the state line aren't really the problem, as there are often large geographic boundaries defining them (Hudson river) that are often gapped with other transit (Trains run from Jersey to NYC). Chicago is of course the glaring exception, riding the Indiana and Wisconsin borders.

It is high time that cities be allowed to grow rather than languish, and annex those suburbs.

Posted by freddiemac | November 1, 2007 2:58 PM

It's a problem in the Bay Area too, where transit decisions are split between: the SF board of supervisors, Alameda county, San Mateo county, Santa Clara county, Marin county, Sonoma county, Contra Costa county, the MTA, countless municipalities, the BART board, the Caltrain board, and so on ad infinitum.

And it's not just transit: school districts can hardly be made to diversify when district boundaries are drawn so narrowly, planning decisions can't be made in a sensible unified manner (e.g. Emeryville), and tax bases are thrown all out of whack by long-distance commuters.

California, at least, could go a long way toward fixing this by redrawing county borders. Since Northeastern states are about the size of California counties, though, that's a harder nut to crack.

Posted by haighterade | November 1, 2007 3:00 PM

I used to agree, until I moved to Seattle from New York. The NYC metro area encompasses 3 states and 17 counties, and they STILL have more coordinated and sane transportation planning than Seattle, which is entirely confined to a single county inside a single state.

The problem goes deeper than state boundaries. You can always slice a municipality (and hence, an electorate) into a million different pieces, no matter how you draw the state lines.

Posted by Frank | November 1, 2007 3:04 PM

Well, excuse me for living, but what makes everything more difficult is that the political jurisdictions were redrawn by the Rockefeller oil interests and General Motors fifty years ago. When freeway building linked hands with suburban property development, the people who make money in city offices during normal business hours stopped caring what happened to the city at any other time.

When regional organizations do not emerge to solve problems the reason is simple- suburbanites don't want to pay for what they think they are getting for free right now.

The patterns of residence and commerce we see today are overwhelmingly the result of massive government spending on roads, utilities, police, fire protection, schools, and, of course, the military spending that drives the economic machine.

All of this government spending passed at some point through "politics", and the example of ancient and ineffective political groupings is more like a chemise that simply can't hide the massive government spending. Those outmoded boroughs and counties have actually worked almost flawlessly as 'yes men' in this system.

Posted by serial catowner | November 1, 2007 3:06 PM

" Manhattan is governed by institutions located in Albany that also run far-off Buffalo but have no authority in Hoboken right across the river.

Now, what Manhattan should do is annex northern NJ (if not quite to the Delaware) down to about, oh, say 195, and Philly - well, we'll take the southern half - the shore, y'know - and the Delaware Valley itself. (There's actually some historical rationale for this, in terms of settlement patterns and cultural influence, beginning early on and developing through the East Jersey/West Jersey split.)

Of course, then NYC should logically keep going up along the Atlantic shore to the Connecticut River, and north to - say, about where the CT northern state line, if extended, would hit the Hudson, then jumping the river, looping around the Catskills (water supply) and heading down over to the Walkill . . .

- oh sorry, got distracted for a moment - what were we talking about again?

"It is high time that cities be allowed to grow rather than languish, and annex those suburbs."

Like haighterade mentions, this sorta gets us back to ed. policy issues . . .

Posted by Dan S. | November 1, 2007 3:42 PM

Of course, then NYC should logically keep going up along the Atlantic shore to the Connecticut River, and north to - say, about where the CT northern state line, if extended, would hit the Hudson, then jumping the river, looping around the Catskills (water supply) and heading down over to the Walkill . . .

And then the new greater New York will join with New England and secede to build a civilized, secular, Scandinavian-style social democracy with the prettiest fall colors on earth.

A fellow can dream, can't he?

Posted by lemuel pitkin | November 1, 2007 4:08 PM

Lemuel,

A lot of us in the NW would love to have Orgeon, WA and BC joined together to be Norway to your Sweden:-)

Posted by Eric K | November 1, 2007 4:35 PM

I suppose you've never heard of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. It operates and maintains the regional tunnels, bridges, bus terminals, the PATH transit system, airports and seaports.

Posted by Matt | November 1, 2007 4:38 PM

Like haighterade mentions, this sorta gets us back to ed. policy issues . . .

which would be solved by allowing cities to annex suburbs again. See, we kill two birds with one stone!

Posted by freddiemac | November 1, 2007 5:23 PM

political metrolocalism - to coin a clumsy phrase - is perhaps a decent answer to various problems

Well, a less clumsy phrase could-be "city-state." Which seems to have been one of the two dominant forms of political organization of civilizations prior to the rise of the nation-state.(the other being empire)

I believe it would not really 'solve' any problems, just replace them with an enitrely new set.

Posted by Kenny | November 1, 2007 5:28 PM

"a civilized, secular, Scandinavian-style social democracy with the prettiest fall colors on earth."

Oh, that's marvelous : )

(Hey, for a brief while in the 17th century there was the colony of New Sweden around the lower Delaware . . .)

Posted by Dan S. | November 1, 2007 11:03 PM