Will the Triangle Transit Authority go away after the latest defeat in its decades-long effort to impose its version of rail transit on the Triangle?
I doubt it. There's just too much loose money jangling around in Washington earmarked for public transit. The feds, lobbied hard by environmental activists to de-emphasize road building and encourage mass transit, have increased the pot for transit off the top of the federal highway fund from 2 percent to 18.5 percent over the past 30 years.
The resulting pool of money for transit from the 2005 federal highway bill allocation from Congress is around $40 billion, with a tidy share available to North Carolina. No wonder our unelected, quasi-legitimate and unaccountable Triangle Transit Authority has been spending like there is no tomorrow, condemning private property and generally swaggering around drugged with money and power. And no wonder they will never give up, despite the humiliations and setbacks incurred by their incompetence.
Worse, TTA has advocated a flawed concept. And our area elected leaders and governmental managers are guilty of gross incompetence by falling for it as a panacea for future traffic planning. While TTA lied about what it could accomplish, roads and road repair in Raleigh have been neglected, driving a spear in the heart of our vaunted quality of life.
FOR THE RECORD
Rail mass transit was born under various names in the early 1980s, evolving into TTA in 1992. The founders of the idea of rail transit for the Triangle were delusional but dedicated: Since the population density never justified rail transit, it is obvious their intent was based on environmental politics with anti-capitalist overtures.
Then, in 1992 they trumpeted a plan that would only cost $100 million and headed to Washington to seek approval. Problem was, they forgot to ask the railroad companies that owned the track and the rights-of-way. Worse, the existing tracks did not go where people wanted to go. TTA's answer: "We'll make people go where we say by altering the pattern of development of Raleigh with high density development around the stations. We must force people to stop living on quarter-acre lots," they cried, oblivious to the reality that Raleigh is one of the most desirable places to live in the US due to its neighborhoods-what TTA, with a sneer, calls "sprawl."
THE FATAL FLAW
In the end, the fixed guideway system was going to cost over $800 million after the railroad companies put a cost on the use of their lines. And it didn't qualify anyway since it's a flawed plan, for many reasons. But one flaw stands out: The reality that the population needed to justify rail requires five counties, most notably Durham and DurhamCounty. But Durham has been retreating from Triangle unity for 10 years. BullCity leaders, making it clear they don't like associating with big sister Raleigh, have lobbied the US Department of Commerce to reconfigure the Metropolitan Statistical Area for the region.
The result is Durham now stands alone, connected to Chapel Hill and Roxboro. The capital city is now called the Raleigh-Cary MSA. The result reduces the population count from around 1.6 million (making the former MSA larger than Charlotte) to 797,000 for Raleigh-Cary. Durham does not make the list. TTA's plan has been derailed by their Durham friends. A train link to Durham is not urban rail transit: It's inter-city rail.
THE SOLUTION
It is time now for vigorous action by area elected officials and government leaders to disestablish TTA and form the Raleigh/Wake County Transit Authority to begin work immediately to create a Raleigh-outward monorail system.
The monorail can depart from existing buildings and go to destinations people desire: the RBCCenter; the airport; RTP; eastward to WakeMedicalCenter to pick up commuters; even on to Durham and Chapel Hill if the demand is there. The important point is that this is a Raleigh system that moves outward from a dense urban center. And monorails create a sense of occasion in a city with no natural features. And a monorail suits our needs by its episodic availability. Monorails are not designed to force use, but to make transit available in an unthreatening and dramatic manner.
The important point here is that the people will have a part in future transit decisions.
NOTES FROM LA-LALAND
Nearly 12,000 WakeCounty school children start off the New Year knowing how it must have felt to live under the Soviet regime. Their adult oppressors from the school assignment Politburo are applying the theories of social engineering by announcing another mass movement of students to new schools in the name of overcrowding. But the real reason for the new assignments is the refusal of school leaders to accept that busing has been ruled unconstitutional. In WakeCounty, the practice continues, reassigning students by economic status. Had the system designed new schools where people were, or planning to move, reassigning and uprooting kids would not be necessary.
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Now for my Man of the Year choice for 2005. It's not a man and it's not just one person. It's the women who bravely and expertly carry the message of the Bush White House to the nation and the world: First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Both women have flown into the teeth of the war on terror across the globe, and both communicate with dignity and strength the mission to protect freedom and the will to fight for liberty. Hats off to these courageous and steadfast Americans.