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Obama doesn’t deserve scorn for the stimulus

The urbanist blogosphere has been atwitter with disappointment about the number of road projects likely to be included in Obama’s infrastructure stimulus package. The exception has been the economist Avent, with whom BeyondDC agrees.

With the stimulus, it seems some are expecting not-yet-President Obama to take the first big step away from the roads-first mentality of the 20th Century. Unfortunately, that is probably not possible given the nature of what the stimulus is all about.

The stimulus package is not intended to change anything except the economy. To have an effect on the economy, it needs to provide immediate jobs. To provide immediate jobs, the stimulus package has to target projects that are already totally through the planning process and ready for construction. The federal planning process takes years. If we wait for new projects to go through it, it will be too late to make any difference to the current economic situation.

Given the nature of transportation planning over the past decade, there are a lot of road projects ready to go and not very many transit projects. This is unfortunate, but it’s not Obama’s fault, nor is there anything he can do about it. Obama may be the country’s first urbanist president, but he’s not a wizard. He can’t travel magically back in time and change planning that happened last year. Thus, the stimulus package is necessarily full of road projects.

If anyone disagrees with the need for an infrastructure stimulus package in the first place, that’s reasonable. But if we are to launch such a package, a lot of road projects will necessarily be included, because road projects are what’s ready to go right now.

Next year Congress will take up the issue of infrastructure spending over the next 6 years via its authorization of the next TEA bill. *That* bill is where Obama and the transit camp have room to move. *That’s* where we should focus our attention, as urbanists. Getting too upset about the stimulus package including roads is unrealistic, and needlessly costs Obama political capital he will need when it comes time to write a bill that actually can move in the right direction.

Now, on the subject of being disappointed with Obama, tapping a rural Republican for DOT boss might be a better reason. BeyondDC doesn’t know much about this LaHood character, except that he’s a moderate from rural Illinois and is supposedly a supporter of Amtrak. If it’s fair to say the pick is at least probably a big step up from Mary Peters, it’s also fair to say the pick isn’t as progressive as we’d hoped.

December 17th, 2008 | Permalink
Tags: economy, government, people, transportation



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