Policy
& Politics
If we learned anything in our meetings, it was that politics play an enormous role in any planning process, most especially the sort of high-cost major infrastructure projects that high speed rail entails. Our meeting with Regional Plan Association helped educate us about the great complexities of the politics that surround discussions on rail development.
As its name suggests, RPA works in regional planning, a very different sort of planning than the individual station development plans highlighted by our case studies. Like NEC Future, RPA plans at the regional level, looking at big picture items and big picture problems, often making plans that cross multiple jurisdictions. RPA can make plans across jurisdictions because it is not tied to any specific governmental agency. The lack of affiliation can both help and harm RPA’s initiative, allowing them freedom, autonomy and creativity, but making funding a constant and major concern. Dan Schned, one of the planners employed at RPA, comments that about-one third of his work is fundraising, finding financial support for RPA’s projects. Additionally, as a non-governmental organization, all of the recommendations given by RPA are non-binding. While the age of the organization has given it a strong reputation, all of its research, plans, and projects are can only serve as recommendations to the organizations and agencies who hold the purse strings and decision-making power. Despite the enormous effort that goes into each of RPAs long term plans and their other reports, there is absolutely no guarantee that anything RPA recommends will actually come to fruition. Strong research and an intensive understanding of the political and economic structures that interact with proposed projects help RPA guide some of its plans to success.
America 2050
One of RPA’s projects looks beyond the tristate region, to a more national initiative. RPA is collaborating with other organizations in the America 2050 project, which advocates and conducts research in support of the development of high speed rail in the United States. In a compelling economic argument, RPA asks policymakers to consider the NEC in terms of economic megaregions. The NEC is such a dense , urbanized area, that the boundaries between urbanized centers have more or less run together creating a connected megapolis. People—human capital—regularly commute across political boundaries to work on a daily basis, creating an economically interconnected region. New York City may be an economic powerhouse, but the city itself draws on resources from all surrounding areas, most especially New Jersey and Connecticut, but also from Boston and D.C. in a world of rapid transportation, megaregions have become a global phenomenon. The NEC competes economically not with individual cities, but with other megaregions, such as the greater London area and the Yangzi River region. Constructing high speed rail would shorten trip times and create more coveting one-seat-rides, further connecting the NEC and bringing its major metropolitan areas relatively close together. Economic efficiency can be increased as economies of scale are strengthened in the region, made possible by easy, rapid transit and face-to-face collaboration. RPA makes many other political, economic, and environmental arguments for high speed rail in its America 2050 reports.
37 RPA
An Interview with Dan Schned, RPA