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 (Dan Schned). Constructing high speed rail would shorten trip times and create more coveted 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.
Political Observations
As a planner well-versed in politics and policy, Dan Schned shared with us some of the largest political obstacles to planning projects, particularly large infrastructure programs. The major issues he discussed were the politics of long-term projects, jurisdictional cooperation, and the environmental review process.
As evidenced by the name “America 2050”, most major infrastructure projects take a long time to complete. Public infrastructure projects take a lot of money (tax-payer money more importantly), have intense safety and environmental regulations, require large amounts of planning and engineering to be successful, and cater to pages of stakeholders interested in project outcomes. All of these factors make such projects lengthy endeavors, and most often, the larger and more important the project, the longer it takes. These long-term project schedules predictably clash with the rapid turnover of American politics. Put simply, infrastructure projects outlast the politicians that back them. Politicians do not often want to support a project if the public will not be able to see the results within their term. A 20 year investment in a new rail line does little to benefit the reelection of candidates whose terms last 2, 4, and 6 years. In backing infrastructure programs, politicians run the risk of taking large amounts of money in their term and having nothing to show for it. As a result, advocacy groups like RPA must work very hard to convince politicians of the long-term social benefits of proposed programs, and help guide them through the political ropes of supporting such programs.
In the realm of regional planning, there is the issue of proposing projects that involve multiple jurisdictions. For ultimate success, many projects require the negotiation and cooperation of multiple cities, communities, and agencies. Pork barrel politics often get in the way of easy cooperation. When many different politicians work together on a project, they can undermine the overall project goal by trying to get the most benefit for their own constituents. As politicians haggle over the specifics of a project, each vying for the greatest share of the benefits, projects can fall apart or become significantly watered down or delayed.
In today’s environmentally-conscious political atmosphere, the environmental elements of project planning become a major obstacle. The Environmental Review process, while well-intentioned and often necessary, can also be used as a political tool to shut down projects. The current process is administrative and highly legalized, providing a legal avenue for politicians to stop projects for purely political reasons under the façade of environmental concern. If a politician can find any small potential environmental problem, s/he can use it to halt project progress early on. This is not to say that many legitimate concerns are not brought up in in Environmental Review, the process is just so legally swollen that it is easy to misuse. As a result, many promising, mostly environmentally friendly projects have not made it through review. RPA has proposed a few alterations to the review process that may help simplify its practice in the future.
bibendum fermentum.Curabitur sed nulla at magna venenatis cursus vitae nec tortor.
Regional Plan Association (RPA)
The Regional Plan Association (RPA) is a urban research, regional planning, and civil advocacy group for the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut metropolitan area. 90 years running, it is the oldest organization of its type in the country. Since the 1920s, RPA has been producing long-range plans for the development of the tristate region, with three such reports produced so far and a fourth under production ("Who We Are"). Self described, half of RPA’s work is research and the other half is advocacy backed by that research (Dan Schned). RPA tries to come up with creative plans and solutions, constantly pushing the envelope of the times and working to persuade politicians, cities, states, businesses, and the public to look at new ideas. Today RPA focuses on community planning, economic development, energy solutions, transit-oriented development, environmentalism, and transportat)ion planning ("What We Do").