• What's ticked?
• Accolades
• Contact us

c o l u m n s

• Cheap Charlie
• ChrisCrossings
• Err Travel
• Leocha
• Travel Notes
• Archives

Suburban Spat
The Occidental Tourist · May 1, 2001

Last month, the Tourist allowed a rational, opposing conservative voice into his column when it came to debating the virtues of public rail. Equal time is always welcome at Ticked.com. After all, we don't care about the politics. We just want people to be angry about something.

OK, seriously, feel free to read his remarks. Offer your own thoughts at tourist@ticked.com. But first, consider The Tourist's take:

For starters, the obsessively sanitized suburbs - Eiick! A leaf just fell from a tree! Let's hire an entire ARMY of leaf blowers ... - are not built for rail, as Chip argues. And that's the result of poor planning and classic NIMBY paranoia. As stated before, build the rail first, then the community, and you eliminate that problem. At least it's worked fairly well in Portland. (And, yes, the Tourist knows Portland and its smart transportation/growth limitation policies aren't perfect. But the city - while not as big as New York or L.A., but a major metro region nevertheless - works a helluva lot better than most in the nation. That's why it constantly ends up on those ubiquitous 'Best U.S. Cities to ..." lists.)

Is mass transit heavily subsidized? Absolutely. And the Tourist can't envision a more effective use of his tax dollars. Every dime put in for mass transit relieves the cost of highway building/maintenance, traffic flow/safety and environmental health, for starters. Every person parking their seat in a train is one less car clogging up space. Why should status-driven suburbanites complain? Public rail makes more room for their road-hogging, lane-bullying, environmentally poisoning SUVs.

Ironic, isn't it, that the same segment of society that screams bloody murder over the relative dimes allotted to public rail are the same people who fought for years to kill welfare? You can't have it both ways. If you support welfare reform - as the Tourist wholeheartedly does - then poor people need mass transit to get to work. (Another irony: The late Robert Kennedy, an alleged patron saint of idealistic liberals, often spoke in support of smart welfare reform more than three decades ago. And it took a pragmatic and - as history will judge him - flat-out brilliant, Democratic president like Clinton to actually make it work. The lesson? Occasionally, good politicians can work beyond 'liberal' and 'conservative' labels and actually commit acts that make this country better.)

Oh, and regarding the whole 'public transportation breeds crime' myth? Dunno where Chip resides, but the Tourist lives a short walk from a metro station and has never owned a gun or felt compelled to install a security system. He doesn't know anyone in his neighborhood who has experienced a break-in. His property values have increased at least $80,000 and perhaps $100,000 in the last three years. Why? Because a good community with good, active neighbors and solid zoning isn't going to go down the toilet simply because a rail can get people to and from the city there.

While Chip clearly isn't a racist, there is no question that flat-out bigotry fuels anti-rail rhetoric for far too many others. The Tourist has heard it. You, the reader, have heard it: "Vote 'no' on rail. You don't want those (insert racial-slur noun here) coming here, do you?"

Has public rail brought - gasp! - blacks and Hispanics into the suburbs? For certain. That's where many of them work. They're helping you buy $300 suits and serving your expense-account meals. They're learning computer code and sharing in the wealth of the Digital Economy. What's the alternative? Holding these young people hostage to their urban project hellholes. By all means, let's respond with an apathetic shrug as they struggle to dodge the nightmare of drugs, early parenthood, environmental racism and otherwise utter bleakness all around them. But, hey, at least YOUR suburban utopia is still as pure, sanitized (and white) as Tony Robbins' teeth.

OK, here's the Tourist's last word: With all the hand-wringing over urban decay creeping into the suburbs, seems like a clear remedy is too often ignored by both sides - getting more poor and lower middle class people to own their own homes via proven state/federal programs. It's common sense that should appeal to both liberals and conservatives. People who own a piece of something tend not to treat it like a sewer. Equity sparks pride and ownership in a community. Equity jumpstarts economy with more lasting, substantive power than a Dot Com IPO ever could.

What's this have to do with travel? By now, very little. Sometimes, the Tourist feels like writing about something other than which airline is sticking it to customers this week.

But don't worry. Next week, the Tourist will be back, spewing about the usual suspects.

The Occidental Tourist is a magazine writer in Washington, DC. He writes for Maxim, POV, Capital Style and ABCNews.com. His column appears on Tuesdays. E-mail him at tourist@ticked.com.