A Word from Eric Miller for July, 2003

The Train to the Plane

Unfortunately Pittsburgh is in the majority in this respect. Very few cities in the United States have fixed-transit connections to their airports. Among those that don't are the biggest and busiest cities: such as Los Angeles. San Francisco recently joined the minority of cities that do, which includes Baltimore, Cleveland, and Portland.

It wasn't easy to get to this point. The miniscule project consisting of less than seven miles took thirty years and cost $1.4 billion. For the thousands of travelers each week that will use the line, the end result is almost worth the wait. Today what was once a $40 plus cab fare is a $4.70 BART ride.

The wait was almost worth it, but not quite. Connections of this much importance not being in place in every city in the United States is simply shameful. The BART connection should have been in place before the airport was opened, especially in a city as transit-oriented as San Francisco. For Los Angeles not to have a similar system is a crime of monumental proportions. It's a crime, and the criminal is a political system that allows the interests of auto and airline industries to influence and dictate the planning and construction of public ground transportation. The inefficiency and criminality makes communism look attractive.

These connections are common in other parts of the world-- and enjoyed by thousands of airline passengers. The connections reduce the need for parking at airports, help reduce highway congestion, save on airport parking, and encourage residential construction along rail lines. But even when they are built in the U.S., efforts are often made to make them inconvenient, with limited hours of operation and bus connections at the end of the line. (This is the case in Los Angeles, where the sole rail line that goes near the airport requires one to change trains twice to get to or from downtown, and then misses the airport byt a mile or so, requiring yet another transfer to a free shuttle.) Rental car, shuttle, and cab companies, and even the airlines themselves, have no interest in helping air-rail links to become reality. Yet where it exists and where it's convenient, a sizable number of travelers travel by public transit. As many as fifteen percent of trips to the airport in San Francisco, New Orleans, Boston, and Washington DC are made by rail.

Fewer travelers in Cleveland, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, and St. Louis use the links. It is a learning process, and steps should be taken to promote the use of the rail links. One of the problems is inadequate secondary links to suburbs. As downtown living is encouraged, the numbers of those seeing use of the airport links as practical will increase. Building these links, and transit in general, sooner, rather than later, is essential. Census figures show a trend toward repopulation of center-cities. Construction of these links will accelerate this trend. The trend will also bring an increase in property values, providing more incentive to build the links sooner.

Had the Bay Area built a more extensive transit system, connecting San Jose, Santa Clara, and other locations sooner-- before the boom of the late 1990--the public savings would be substantial. Growing cities like Los Angeles, Nashville, Charlotte, and Las Vegas need to make great investments in public transit systems and airport rail links now.

I travel to Pittsburgh often, and, to be fair, the 28x bus to downtown does provide a tolerable way to get into town using public transit. The bus runs frequently, doesn't cost much, and travels part of the way on a busway that's separate from automobile traffic. It's a good system that came at a low cost. Still, it is far inferior to the light-rail system that could have been built. The bus may get you there, but it won't encourage dense residential construction of the kind that's springing up around new BART stations in South San Francisco.

The convenience the residents of these new complexes will enjoy-- travel almost at will to downtown San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose via a CalTrain connection, or many locations throughout the world via the airport line--should be available to a far greater number of people in the United States. Every effort should be made to build similar convenient and efficient lines in other cities.

Eric Miller is editor of The New Colonist.

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