GOVERNMENT TRANSIT AGENCIES FEARFUL OF INNOVATION.

The politics of urban decision-making is a continual story that is most difficult to comprehend. The combination of governmental staff and their hamstrung consultants, hardly ever give their support to “their decision makers.” for anything really innovative in transportation.

Innovation is a scary word to all intimately involved in government. It is a very tough situation to change for the better. One cannot compare the civil transportation realm on earth to the human need to explore outer space. Urban transportation innovation has to compete in like manner as does NASA for monies covering costs of people, facilities and missions.

It seems that governmental transit agencies have no real incentive to push the envelope. It is somewhat understandable. What is not acceptable is that they do not. This is not justifiable. At this time the best scenario one can envision is that newly invented American systems will be tried overseas and once proven, then be tried in United States cities in low risk scenarios like airport feeders and amusement parks.

One may forecast that the people serving in our governments may have enough credibility; intellectual capacity and the stomach to take as much risk as does commercial enterprise to be considered for actual future urban transit applications. This will only happen in a huge crisis. The probable collapse of any one-movement system will seriously affect the others. One might secretly hope that we are on the verge of this happening. In order to push these circumstances forward into a better quality of movement we need “smart” people. Surely such people should lead citizens into an opportunity that would afford a better “movement quality of life” on our planet earth.

In short one wants to more clearly understand urban transportation needs. Let’s for the moment forget about technology or planning discipline. Instead let’s focus on politics, bureaucratic behavior, and the contention that transportation-engineering consultants are almost never going to recommend any approach that has not been successfully demonstrated in another location.

Even after almost twenty years of maglev observation internationally, transportation consultants still hedge their bets by not recommending Maglev because it lacks commercial/revenue operation experience, while at the same time they're more than willing to recommend unproven, still in development non-electrified 150-mph Acela variants because we have little commercial experience with the fully electrified Acela in the Northeast Corridor. This is a sad ineptness to reveal. Sometimes it seems like new technology can't even take a place itself in line for serious evaluation.

Almost two billion dollars has been authorized by Congress to be spent on demonstrating Maglev technology, but not a penny has been requested by the administration/FRA in the past ten years for this purpose.

It will take a lot of hard work to develop any Maglev systems in the United States, given the reluctant sponsors we have to press high-speed ground transportation agenda.

BY Graham Kaye-Eddie – Master Urban Designer.

Makabusi Inc. – Bakersfield – California

Email – makabusi@pacbell.net