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In Cairo: A Mega City Confronts its Challenges

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With the Middle East’s martial concerns filling the news, it was a change of pace this month to visit the region’s biggest city, Cairo, and examine more quotidian concerns, namely its urban planning policies and problems.

With approximately 18 million people (estimates vary), Cairo can be seen as both a problem and a solution to the challenges of a developing country. Cairo is, in one analyst’s term, a “Mega-city” – a huge, expanding cloud of population, much of it poor, that by some estimates is adding 1.25 million people a year. Where all these people live, how to give them water, dispose of their waste, and allow them to travel, are the central questions. The challenges of Cairo are, in a word, infrastructure.

In that, it is perhaps similar to New York, a metropolitan area it will soon surpass in size. But as our region struggles to add trains to the airport and another Hudson River rail tunnel, Cairo is more akin to New York of the 19th century. It is struggling to add a sewer system, subway service and parks.

All these needs have meant enormous investments in infrastructure. They are funding it in part due to help from their past (and some might say present) Colonial masters, France, Britain and the United States. The French helped finance and build the new subway, while Britain and the United States have helped finance and build a new sewer system as well as various other infrastructure projects seen around town. (The peace settlement with Israel has provided enormous financial benefits for Egypt. Since the Camp David accords in 1979, Egypt has received about $25 billion in aid from the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID.) On the streets, Cairo is a bustling, lively place at all hours. Even at midnight, streets are full, with people sitting drinking tea and playing backgammon. About a third of the women wear the Hijab, the Islamic scarf or veil that wraps around the head, while a tiny percentage also wear the niqab, the veil that covers the face completely.

Long-time Cairo residents notice that the percentage of women wearing traditional Islamic dress has increased tremendously in the last decade. It is a statement now not only of religious faith, but of national identity.

Not only were the sidewalks crowded, but the streets themselves were jammed with cars, mostly tiny, box-like black and white Fiats that were usually decades old. Traveling a mile or two by car, often the only option, could take an hour.

The Metro: Tunnels Through Sand All this street congestion is one reason why the city’s new Metro has caught on so quickly. Line 1, which connected two existing suburban railways through a four-stop, center-city subway, opened in 1987. It has 27 stations. Line 2 opened in 1999 and has 18 stops, 13 of which are underground. Line 1 cost $585 million, much of it from France. Egypt financed the $3 billion for Line 2 mostly by itself.

The two lines cut across the city in a rough Xpattern, with Line 2 running beneath the Nile River to Giza, where the Great Pyramids await. Despite its newness, already 1.8 million “Cairenes” use the Metro daily. By comparison, this is almost three times the 625,000 riders daily on the Washington, D.C. metro system. People use the Cairo Metro even though its price, 50 pilasters (about 10 cents), is considered high.

In its design, the Metro is clean and neat, with wide passageways and platforms. Designing the individual stations involved factors that were more common a century ago in New York. In Cairo, much of the population is illiterate (one estimate was only a third of the population could read and write), which is why the subway designers have given individual stations strong visual identities.

At the Opera station on Line Two, for example, images of Pharonic women in ancient Egyptian dress, inlaid in tile on the station walls, greet those who pull into the stations.

“This helps people figure out where they are,” said Ezz Eldin Fahmy, a principal and architect with EHAF Consulting Engineers in Cairo, the firm that designed the stations. “When they see the triangles look like boats, they know they are in Rod El Farago station. We had the theme of boats because this used to be the only port on the River Nile.” Under design is a third line, which will cut across the city to from east to west, and extend eventually out to the city’s airport.

Waste In and, Hopefully, Out Until recently, the city’s overburdened sewer system backed up more than 100 days a year, flooding the streets with raw waste. The city’s only formal sewer system was one built by the British just before World War I for a city of about one million people. It was grossly inadequate.

Using US-AID and British money, the city over the last two decades has built an entirely new sewer system, including an enormous treatment plant north of the city. Because the old system was so overburdened, this did not mean simply expanding a new system, but building a new one from scratch.

“They had to rethink the whole network,” said Mona Serageldin, professor of urban planning at Harvard Design School and a Cairo native who teaches a course on the city. “It was a major challenge in design.” The core of the new system was a “trunk line” – the central line to which others attach. This trunk line is 5 meters in diameter, and extends in a sloping, gravity-fed descent from south to north through the city until it ends up by the new treatment plant at a depth of 25 meters. Now completed in its core phases, it is one of the largest sewer projects in the world.

But the city is still struggling to connect everyone to it. Millions of the city’s residents live in illegally built concrete and brick apartments that scatter out across the desert in endless waves. One analyst estimated that 25 percent of the households in Cairo lack water and sewer connections.

As this mega-city struggles with sewers and subways, it’s also fighting to direct overall growth patterns. To keep sprawl from gobbling up agricultural land up and down the Nile, the government is redirecting growth to the east and west, into the desert. This has meant the establishment of several “new cities.” One of them, New Cairo, has a growth area of 43,000 acres – the equivalent of nine Manhattans in land area – and 2 to 3 million people are expected to live there.

It’s difficult to love this new “city” blooming in the desert. One section of “New Cairo” looked like a Middle-eastern version of outer Houston, with mega-supermarkets, concrete apartment buildings and even a golf course blooming from the desert.

Still, directing growth there seemed better than by the Nile, and plans are to eventually have transit.

The city is also building parks. The biggest is the new 87-acre Al-Azhar park, planned as Cairo’s “Central Park,” built just outside the Medieval city walls on a 1000-year-old garbage dump. (City inhabitants essentially pitched their garbage over a wall, and the pile eventually grew higher than the city itself.) Now under construction, this park will include promenades, restaurants, orchards and ponds. Buried underneath this calm environment are more serious functions – three enormous water tanks, each 80 meters in diameter, the size of small stadiums.

“We have 16 million people and we have almost no open space – nothing,” said Dr. Maher Stino, one of the park designers, as he led a visitor around the park site. Nearby, workers chiseled away at slabs of limestone for a park restaurant.

“We want to help the public understand what a park is and how to appreciate plants and nature.

We also want something unique to Cairo. We don’t want a copy of Regent Park [in London].” As the New York region struggles with its own challenges, it can perhaps gain a bit of perspective in seeing a similar sized region struggle with far greater ones.

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First Published Feb. 20, 2003, in Spotlight on the Region, the newsletter of Regional Plan Association in New York City.

A Glimpse of Cuba in 1988

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It was lunch hour inside the Ministry of Commerce in old Havana. In a small cafeteria, in a building that dated back to the 1800s, workers ate baked fish, rice and beans, soup, salad and cake, off white dishes on tin trays. They washed down the food and cut the sweltering heat with cold water from sweating metal pitchers placed on each of the 20 tables. Like many of the basics in contemporary Cuba, the meal was subsidized and cost each employee only a few cents.

A clerk there, a 58-year-old man with crooked teeth and thinning hair, spoke about why life was better, now that a Communist government ruled his country.

“Before the triumph of the revolution,” he said in a gravelly voice, “it was a dictatorship here. Only a small group of people”–and he held up one hand with the fingers bunched together–“had money, jobs, power and opportunity in life.”

“Now there’s liberty,” he said, and he grinned. “People have jobs and money. Hospitals are free. I have two sons–one is studying economics at the University and the other electronics at technical school.” He patted his pants pocket. “I didn’t have to pay a cent for their education,”
“I come from a poor family of farmers. We had no chance before. Things are much better now.”

This is one of the faces of Cuba.

A mile or so away from the Ministry of Commerce, a middle-aged woman sat on her bed in a small room with soaring, 20-foot ceilings where she lived with her two small children.

In the fading light of the afternoon, she spoke of feeling oppressed in a country where people were jailed for saying the wrong things, where neighbors watched each other for “counter-revolutionary” activity and sentiments, where private enterprise was forbidden and foreign travel restricted.

She spoke of tiring of the interminable meetings of the Committee in Defense of the Revolution–one of the thousands of local block committees which monitored the actions and the ideology of their members.

She spoke of Cuba’s president, the former “guerrillero” who almost 30 years ago, gained international fame by ousting a dictator and successfully standing up to the United States–then the strongest nation on earth.

“Fidel Castro is a great leader,” she said softly. “But he is only a leader.

Lowering her head, she said,

“I feel like a pigeon in a cage here.”

This is another face of Cuba.

Through Castro’s leadership and Soviet subsidies, Cuba now has universal education and literacy; it has a widespread system of modern hospitals and rural clinics staffed by Cuban doctors using Cuban manufactured medicine; it has full employment; it has eliminated hunger and malnutrition. Anyone who has travelled through other Latin American capitals and seen the filth, the beggars that gather like flies, and the miles of cardboard shacks on the outskirts of town, knows this is a remarkable achievement of which other Third-World nations can only dream.

A price has been paid for this transformation, although Cuba is still a Caribbean-Latin nation of surpising charm and sensuality. Its denizens still dance the Rumba, the Conga and the Cha-Cha-Cha. They spend a surprising percentage of their income in restaurants and state-owned cabarets, where high-kicking dancers in sequined bikinis and two-foot high feather headdresses grind alongside throaty-voiced singers.
Havana, despite the halt of roulette wheels and the extinguishing of the neon trim that once laced its skyline, remains an intensely beautiful city. One of terraces flung out over streets filled with aging American automobiles of the 1940s and 1950s, of columns with vines slithering up over wrought-iron railings. A city of fading pastel colors, of chipped mustard-yellow plaster around salmon-pink doors with eggshell-blue trim.

The real loss has been the elimination of what Marxists contemptuously label “Bourgeois freedoms.” It is a country where word, deed and even thought are controlled to an astonishing degree. Cuba is not an El Salvador or a Chile, where citizens are tortured, shot and “disappeared.” But Cuba is one gigantic company town. To get along, one goes along.

In the past few years, the tight rein held on dissent has slackened a bit. Several hundred long-time political prisoners have been released and this August, a delegation from the United Nations Commission on Human Rights will visit Cuban jails to check conditions.

As for the press, Castro has urged journalists to be more critical and “less boring.”

Still, there is nothing approaching the glasnost of the Soviet Union. And instead of perestroika, Castro has begun a campaign of “rectification,” in which capitalist tendencies that have sprouted up–such as the private farmer’s market in Havana which was shut down in 1986–are weeded out. Castro, contrary to most other socialist-bloc countries, has chosen to continue along the path to “pure” communism. Castro can take such a route because most Cubans support him and his decisions.

The stoutest “Fidelistas” are the formerly poor and disenfranchised of the rural countryside. Prior to “the triumph of the revolution,”–the phrase heard over and over here–Cuba was a country of some wealth compared to the rest of Latin America, but with vast inequities in its distribution. Much of the rural population lived in huts of palm and wood, worked three months out of the year during cane-cutting season and seldom saw a school or a doctor.

Today, the closest thing Havana has to a slum is a “barrio” of wooden shacks on dirt streets by the Almendares River on the edge of Havana. Cubans call the neighborhood, “El Fangito,”–the muddy place–because the river periodically rises and floods the homes. From a distance, these plywood shacks look distressingly poor. Up close, one discovers electricity, running water, televisions and refrigerators. Still, some vestiges remain. Outside one house, an old woman washed clothes in an iron cauldron over a wood fire.
Most residents say they will soon move to new apartments they are building themselves as part of “Microbrigades.” In this program begun a year ago, workers leave their regular jobs in order to build housing, daycare centers and clinics. In return, they receive salaries but also the right to an apartment when finished.

The level of “Fidelismo” among the youth is a topic of concern to party elders. They fear youngsters who have no memory of the fall of Batista in 1959, or the victory over the United States at the Bay of Pigs in 1961, may lack fervor. The youth are, perhaps, beguiled by the Madonna songs played even on government radio stations, the Hollywood movies, such as Rocky, shown at government movie houses, and the fashionable clothes seen on the many tourists who come to Cuba.

Much of the youth remains committed to communism and the ideal of a new society. At Che Guevara high school, for example, the young women were as giddy in their adoration of Fidel and Che as American teenagers are of rock stars Sting and Bono.

But other young people are quite apolitically tired of the ever-present lines where one waits to purchace anything from a new bathing suit from a meagerly stocked store, to a shot of the thick, sweet black coffee drunk here. They would willingly trade their egalitarian society for a pair of Nike sneakers and Levi blue jeans.

On one of the beaches outside Havana, two young men, ages 18 and 20, approached me and asked if I would buy them several coveted Aditas T-shirts from the nearby tourist shop. At such shops, only foreigners are permitted entry and all prices are in U.S. dollars. It is the government’s way of gaining hard currency. What the young men were doing was quite common and quite illegal.

The 20-year-old had scraggly blond hair and scruffy stubble on a sun-tanned face. He was quite cynical.

“I’ll tell you what’s good about my country,” he said. “The sun”–aiming a finger at the burning sky–“the sea”–pointing toward the aqua-green water before him–“the girls”–motioning at the supine, bikini-clad bodies around him, and “the tobacco”–holding up his stubby unfiltered cigarette which he was smoking.

“That’s it,” he said.

I asked him what would happen if he talked like that to a neighbor.

“If they’re finks,” he said, “then”–and one hand quickly clasped the wrist of the other hand in the familiar gesture meaning police arrest and imprisonment.

Fidel’s position on dissent and expression are defined in a famous speech, later named the “Word to Intellectuals,” which he gave in June, 1961 before a group of writers, scholars and artists at the National Library. In one much quoted sentence, Castro declared that “within the revolution, everything. Against the revolution, nothing.”

Twenty-seven years later, it is still the guiding principle on civil liberties. Protection of the revolution is foremost. Interviews with top government leaders reveal a different conception of what human rights are.
“I believe that our people are freer than the poor people in your country,” said Jorge Enrique Mendoza, a close adviser to Castro who fought with him in the Sierra Maestra mountains in 1958. For 20 years, he was editor-in-chief of Granma, the nation’s top daily newspaper, which is published by the communist party.

“I don’t believe that an unemployed person can be free,” he said, “or a sick person, or someone who cannot go to school.

“I am not going to debate with you about party (communist) control of the press. It is certain. But we believe we represent the interests of the people. One can criticize specifics, but to make propaganda about capitalist ownership is not permitted. I would like to see a capitalist newspaper that attacked the basis of the capitalist system.”

In the area of religious freedom, a slightly wider circle is being drawn around what is “within the revolution.” The publication in 1987 of “Fidel and Religion,” has radically altered the status of religious faith here. In the 300-page book, which is a transcription of conversations between Fidel and Frei Betto, a Brazilian Dominican friar, Fidel talked favorably of his Jesuit upbringing and says, “I think one can be a Marxist without ceasing to be a Christian.”
“The fact that this book exists,” said Monsignor Manuel deCespedes, the archbishop of Havana. “is a very positive fact. Before the book was published, it was taboo to talk about religion.”

Wearing a black gown, and with a bald head and a quiet manner, deCespedes was the very image of a fatherly priest at an interview in his office in old Havana. He has established a close working relationship with Castro in recent years and deCespedes handles the complexities of being a Christian in a Marxist state with finesse. One the one hand, he says, “I am not a communist,” but on the other, he says, “a good Christian is not anti-anything.” This diplomacy has meshed with the government’s increasingly tolerant attitude.

deCespedes ticked off the figures that show how church participation has grown in the last few years. Church attendance up. Baptisms in Havana have tripled, from 7,000 in 1979 to 21,000 in 1987. Whereas formerly only the elderly attended Mass, now 10 to 20 young people are seen at each service. Last year, the church was permitted to import 30,000 copies of the bible for the first time.

On a recent Sunday in a beautiful old cathedral in Havana, a priest gave mass to about 75 people of all ages. Before the service, a group of teenage boys said “repression” against religious practice did not exist, but a certain amount of discrimination did.

“We don’t tell our friends at school about our faith,” said one 17 year old, “because they would stay apart from us if they knew.” He noted that because of his religious faith, he could not be a member of the Union of Young Communists.

Despite their loss of status, they supported their government and country. “Some people think Catholics are counter-revolutionaries,” said an 18 year old. “But that’s not true. We will pick up a rifle and defend our country when necessary.

“We are with the revolution.”

Until recently, Castro has never allowed an organized opposition group to exist. The exception, since spring of 1987, is the Cuban Human Rights Committee. The group is officially illegal, but operates in a limited fashion. It is allowed to contact groups such as Amnesty International and America’s Watch and to speak with foreign journalists.

“This small handful of people have had a tremendous impact,” said one high-placed western diplomat. “For the first time, Cubans have a source outside the government to publicize abuses by security forces and police.”

It’s leader is one Ricardo Bofill, 45 years old, who has spent 13 of the last 20 years in jail for such crimes as “enemy propoganda.”

Thanks to a massive campaign against him in the Cuban media, including a three-hour television documentary and full-page spreads in Granma, most Cubans are familiar with Bofill’s beady black eyes and scrub-brush mustache–and with some of his accusations.

The article in Granma on Bofill was a good example of current Cuban journalism, managing to pack every paragraph with a few pejoratives, lest the reader hesitate in forming an opinion. “Faker,” “swindler,” “liar,” “crook” and “bastard,” were some of the most oft repeated.

Bofill insists such tactics have helped his cause by giving it publicity. He operates from a small apartment in Guanabacoa, a ragged suburb of Havana of light-industry and plain, one-story housing, and has few recourses. He cannot leave his home, he says, because he is attacked by stone-throwing government police dressed as civilians when he tries to walk to the bus-stop.
Significantly, Bofill, once a professor of Marxism, looks towards the Soviet Union under Gorbachev as the best example of change for Cuba.

“These are the materials one has to read,” Bofill said, holding up copies of Moscow News and New Times, both Russian magazines translated into Spanish, “to find a path for Cuba to follow.”

Bofill does not deny the social advances made in his country. But, he said “you can’t separate public health and public liberty.”

“To judge the achievements of this country,” Bofill said, “you have to measure them in an integral form. For example, in South Korea and Taiwan, tremendous advances were made economically.

“But they were still dictatorships.”

So in Cuba, the debate between the right to eat, and the right to speak and think as one pleases, continues.

That Bofill is not in jail proves the government’s tight grip on dissent has opened slightly. But the sledgehammer attacks against him in the official press prove the parameters set on dissent are still in place: Direct criticism of government policies is not permitted.

In a recent article in The Nation, Professor Rene David of San Carlos Seminary in Havana was quoted as saying that Cuba has not “achieved the difficult balance between equality and liberty necessary for a more authentic fraternity.”

Fidel, because of his overthrow of Batista, the following social advances and his personal charisma, has built up an enormous reservoir of goodwill that has yet to be exhausted. For the time being, most citizens will continue to follow where he leads them.
–30–
Versions of this article were published in The Virginian-Pilot and The San Francisco Chronicle.

by Alex Marshall

The Stock Transfer Tax: An Idea Whose Time Has Come Back?

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By Alex Marshall

May 2003

It sounds too good to be true. At a time when New York City and state are billions of dollars in the red, they could raise that and possibly more by reinstating a tax that is mostly paid by people living outside the state and country.

It’s called the Stock Transfer Tax. Until 1981, the state had one, and the city got the revenue.

Until it was phased out, it was raising $300 million a year for the city. Technically, it is still in place, only the proceeds are instantly rebated to the buyer of a stock. Now some people, including an Albany legislator, are considering bringing it back in a new form.

A lot has happened since 1981. The number of purchases on the stock market has grown exponentially. If the same tax were in place now, it would raise an amazing $11 billion in 2004, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office, which recently studied the issue.

Just how does this lucrative tax work? It’s a bit hard to understand, in this age of supposedly landless and nationless capital. But, even though shares of IBM or Apple may be bought by someone in Peru or Peoria, transactions still go through the New York or American stock exchanges, which are located in New York City, if the stock is listed through those houses. The buyer pays the relatively tiny tax, not the brokerage house. The old tax was set on a sliding scale, rising up to 5 cents per share, to a maximum of $350 per transaction. No one has suggested re-instating it at the old level, in part because the various fees that are associated with stock trading have all declined.

New York State Assemblyman Ronald Tocci of Westchester County has suggested reinstating it on a sliding scale, up to a penny per share. The Fiscal Policy Institute ran a scenario study of a half penny per share, with a $35 cap. The IBO, in its studies, put it at half the old rate, or approximately 2.5 cents per share on a sliding scale.

“I see it as a possible, viable alternative to a lot of other unpopular taxes,” Tocci said in an interview from Albany.

New York State first implemented the tax in 1907. In 1965, according to Frank Mauro of the Fiscal Policy Institute, which has studied the issue, the State agreed to give all the revenues to the City in exchange for the City giving up the revenue from a penny of its sales tax. In 1975, during the City’s budget crisis, the securities industry agreed to a 25 percent surcharge. And in 1979, in part because of lobbying by the industry, Gov. Carey agreed to phase it out.

“A good tax is one where the base is very broad, and the rates are very low,” Mauro said.

“Economists agree that all taxes have economic consequences. So to have the least interference, you should have the base very broad and the rates very low.” “It’s intriguing,” said Ed Cupoli, chief economist of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee in Albany. “But the legislature would be reluctant to do anything negative to the securities industry.” In theory, the tax raises enormous sums of money at a miniscule rate of taxation, which, not incidentally, is paid by people mostly living elsewhere.

For example, if a trader in South Dakota bought 100 shares of IBM for $80 a share, the current cost would be $8,000. A penny per share stock transfer tax, depending on the sliding scale, would add at most $1 to this transaction, or 1/8000 of the total cost. For a lower-priced stock, the fee would be lower because the tax would be lower. If someone bought 1000 shares, or $80,000 worth, the fee would be capped, perhaps at $35.

Such a tax would not be burdensome on any one individual. But because millions of shares of stocks are sold daily, it would generate enormous sums of money very quickly.

If this tax can generate so much money so easily, why aren’t our competitors doing it?

They are. In fact, most other stock exchanges have a transfer tax in place, and often at considerably higher rates. Hong Kong, Singapore, France, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and others have such a tax, all at higher rates than what is being proposed here, according to J.W. Mason, a doctoral student in economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in an article in City Limits Magazine in October 2002 (“Big Idea: Tax the Street”, www.citylimits.org.).

London, often said to be one of New York’s principal competitors, taxes stock sales at 0.5 percent of the price of a stock. This rate is many times higher than the New York tax. In the case of the 100 shares of IBM above, this would be $40, instead of $1.

If Tocci’s plan of a penny per share were put in place, it would probably raise more than $2 billion a year. If split between the city and state, this would be a significant source of new revenue for both.

There is a downside though. The worry is that if such a tax were reinstated, then the New York Stock Exchange and the American Stock Exchange, the principal entities affected, would leave town to avoid it. If the traders traded in New Jersey, their customers would pay no tax.

Tocci and others argue that the stock exchanges would be unlikely to leave town to avoid a tiny tax that they themselves don’t even pay. Some of the other remedies being considered, such as a surcharge on the income tax of wealthy taxpayers, would hit their personal pocketbooks much more directly, Tocci said.

But others in the banking and budgeting business have been more critical.

“I think it’s dead on arrival in Albany,” said Rae Rosen, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank. “An industry-specific tax might on balance do more harm than good, particularly for an industry that has the ability to move operations out of the city.” The tone of the limited IBO analysis is pessimistic. The IBO examined the issue as part of a larger report, “Budget Options for New York City,” (www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/). The section on the Stock Transfer Tax says: “The proposed STT half-restoration could reduce overall private sector employment in the city by as much as 80,000 and lower receipts from other city taxes by close to $650 million.” David Belkin, Senior Economist at IBO, says that there has been a general trend against such taxes.

“The industry people say the exchange will collapse,” Belkin said. “But even just assuming some decline, that in and of itself has an impact.

London and Hong Kong have one. But there is more competitive pressure. There is a big fight going on in London over their tax. The tax is worth considering. For one thing, other more onerous taxes raise relatively small amounts of money. In the IBO’s study, “Budget Options for New York City,” (http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/), controversial measures, such as a Luxury Apartment Rental Tax, would raise only an estimated $27 million a year. Other taxes, such as restoring the commuter tax, would raise only about $500 million, or far less than most versions of the stock transfer tax.

One indication that the tax could work is that there already is one in place. It’s what funds the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although Congress recently scheduled the tax to decrease in rate over the next few years, it now raises more than $2 billion a year. About $350 million of that goes to fund the SEC. The rest goes into the US Treasury.

Tocci and Mauro suggest one way to make the tax palatable to The Street is to give them some direct benefit. Some of the money could pay for a new stock exchange building, or for industry promotion. It should be remembered that in the 1970s, the industry agreed to a surcharge to help solve the city’s budget problems.

“It has to be part of a community effort, it has to be part of saving New York,” Mauro said.

“Doing this at a very low rate and raising money from all over the world would be better than raising taxes that would come directly from the New York economy.”

–First published in Spotlight on the Region, the bi-weekly newsletter of Regional Plan Association in New York City.

Guns Don’t Kill People; Cars Do. Or At Least Not As Many

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On Foot Or On Wheels, Facing The Threat

Whether you walk, drive or bicycle on your daily rounds, are you more in danger of getting killed from a bumper of a car or a bullet from a gun? It depends on where you live, although the stats suggest that overall, the mean metal of a car is more dangerous than that from a gun, simply because speeding cars are so much more prevalent than speeding bullets.

The New York Daily News started out this somewhat morbid train of thought of mine with its news series this month examining pedestrians killed by vehicles. The series noted that from 2000 to 2002, 580 pedestrians were killed. The news campaign, entitled Save a Life, Change the Law, is an excellent example of advocacy journalism. It informs the reader of a fact — a lot of people on foot are killed by cars — and then forcefully presents a possible remedy, in this case, making it easier to charge drivers with criminal penalties if they kill a pedestrian. If more drivers were charged with criminal penalties for reckless behavior, drivers might think twice before speeding through an intersection.

The good news is that both the murder rate and the killing of pedestrians by vehicles have been steadily dropping over the last decade. In 1990, 365 pedestrians were killed and an amazing 2,606 people were murdered. In 2002, only 195 pedestrians were killed and only 575 people were murdered. If the murder rate keeps up its swift descent, walking across a dangerous intersection will be riskier than walking through a bad neighborhood.

Eric Monkkonen, an urban historian at the University of California at Los Angeles, studies both crime and urban planning. He is the author of Murder in New York City (UCLA press 2001), and America Becomes Urban, (UCLA 1988). Both are excellent. He said New York City’s murder rate has always gone up and down over the centuries, but was unusually high in the last generation.

“New York has always been safer than other American cities, so the crime rate could go even lower.” Monkkonen said from his office in California. “The question is how to get it there. I wouldn’t trust anyone who has a simple answer.” Moving back to pedestrian deaths, Transportation Alternatives, in several excellent recent reports available at its web site www.transalt.org, reported that the number of pedestrians has continued to drop in 2003, with only 102 pedestrians killed in the first nine months of the year. It appears we are heading for a record breaking year in safety. T.A. credits the transportation department with a series of traffic calming measures that have significantly made things safer for pedestrians.

But only if you are satisfied with not dying.

Transportation Alternatives also reports that in 2002, 15,000 pedestrians and 4000 cyclists were injured, about the same as in past years. Also in 2002, 16 cyclists were killed, a rate that has been pretty consistent for the past decade.

How do we fare if we move from the urban streets of New York City to the more suburban ones of New Jersey? Not so well, at least if we are walking or driving.

Drivers in the Garden State killed 184 pedestrians last year, an alarming 37 percent increase, it was reported recently. Pedestrian deaths in New Jersey had been dropping, and the increase is so large that it begs some specific explanation. New York has 8 million people; New Jersey has about 8.4 million.

Given the similar populations and the similar pedestrian death rates — 184 in New Jersey versus 198 in New York City — seems evidence that it’s more dangerous to walk in New Jersey, simply because so many more people walk regularly in New York City.

It’s not only more dangerous to walk, it’s more dangerous to drive. In 2001, New Jersey had 747 traffic fatalities, at least double the number of those in New York City.

This statistic matches with the work of William Lucy, a professor of urban planning at the University of Virginia, who made headlines consistently in the 1990s with his studies showing one was more at risk living in a traffic ridden suburb than a crime ridden inner city. Several of his studies showed that a prosperous Northern Virginian or Richmond suburb was less safe to live in than Washington DC or Richmond, which then vied for the highest murder rates in the land. The reason was surprising but obvious from the data.

Speeding cars killed a lot more people in the suburbs than they did in the inner city, where the cars tended to travel more slowly and accidents tended not to be fatal.

Here in the Tri State Region, it would be nice to have the best of all worlds. If we make it safe and most of all pleasant to walk and bicycle in the city or suburb, we will have safer and more pleasant communities all around.

–Alex Marshall, an Independent Journalist, is a Senior Fellow at RPA

DC Metro: A Record of Reinvigorating a City

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(Taken from the February 2004 issue of Planning Magazine.)

Love (and Hate) That Metro

It’s a mess say some commuters — it’s too expensive and the stations are too far apart. But they ride it all the same.

By Alex Marshall

While he sips an imported beer at Aroma, the elegant bar on Connecticut Avenue near the National Zoo, Jamison Adcock is happy to offer his opinions on “Metro,” the popular name for the D.C. region’s 103-mile transit system, whose pinwheel map is as familiar to residents as the tall spire of the Washington Monument or other local landmarks.

“It’s a horrible mess,” says Adcock, a 33-year-old software engineer. “It’s the lamest metro system I’ve ever seen.” Exhibiting the enthusiasm of someone finally getting a load off his mind, Adcock details Metro’s shortcomings: With its long arms stretching into Maryland and Virginia, and fewer stops within the city proper, “it’s basically built for commuters,” he says.

There’s more: The point-to-point ticketing system, which charges riders according to distance traveled, makes it “incredibly expensive compared to, say, Boston or Philadelphia.” The deep stations mean “you have some of the longest escalators in the free world.” And the open-air escalators lack canopies, making rainy days bad news for riders.

For all his bad-mouthing, it turns out that Adcock actually uses Metro. In fact, that’s how he got to this bar to meet his friends at 7 p.m. on a Friday night. “I can come down here and not worry about parking,” he admits. “And I can drink three or four beers and not worry about driving home.” This prompts Adcock at last to mention a positive about Metro: The management has extended its hours to 3 a.m. on weekends. “They finally did something right,” he says.

Everyone’s a critic

Such criticism from a regular rider illustrates an undeniable fact about Metro. Twenty-seven years after the first line opened in 1976, the system has worked its way into the very fiber of the city and region, transforming both in the process. It’s almost impossible to overstate Metro’s impact. It has revitalized downtown and the closer suburbs, led to population growth within the city proper, priced out less affluent newcomers from once-sleepy suburbs and once-dying urban neighborhoods, and changed the skyline in both suburb and city.

Few people are indifferent to Metro because few people are unaffected by it. Whereas the chief complaint about many transit systems is that they’re inefficient or too costly to taxpayers, the rap against Metro is that it does not go far enough, run long enough hours, or match some other rider expectation of tiptop service. Polls on expanding the system routinely reach support levels in the 70 percent range.

Even critics begin their remarks with praise. “The overall image of the system locally and nationally and worldwide is that it’s a spectacular system,” says Robert J. Smith, a Metro board member who was appointed by Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich. Smith has attacked the system’s budget as lavish and wants to see more money put into highways rather than transit. But he is also a regular patron. “I ride it every day,” he says.

Still, coping with success has its own challenges. With the original system now almost complete, the region is faced with deciding whether to embark on a new era of Metro expansion, to put that money into more roads, or to do neither.

Even without expansion, just keeping up with the capital and maintenance costs associated with a steadily growing ridership is a daunting task. It’s a challenge few predicted Metro would have when the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the subway’s builder and administrator, was created in 1967.

Corrugated cocoon

If you blindfold a group of Metro riders and lead them into one of the original stations, even after years away, it’s likely to take only seconds before they recognize where they are. The cocoon of corrugated barrel vaulting is absolutely distinctive.

Familiar to every user as well are the round lights at the platform edge, which flash as a train approaches, and the rechargeable paper tickets, which are inserted into the turnstiles. The cars themselves are distinctive. Wider than subway cars in older systems, many still feature the orange seat cushions and carpets that give the trains a vaguely disco feeling, reminiscent of the era in which the system opened. Construction began in 1969, and the first line began operation in 1976, coinciding with the nation’s bicentennial celebration.

Politically, Metro traces back to the Joint Transportation Commission, created by Congress in 1954 to study the problems of getting around in the Washington area. Conceptually, you could say the system harks back to the tiny subway created in 1906 between the U.S. Capitol and the Senate Office Building. A Washington Post headline at the time asked, “Why Not A Real Subway System for Washington?”

Although construction of the system beneath a roughly two-centuries-old city was a tough engineering job, the political hurdles were even higher. Constructing and operating the system required bringing together the District of Columbia and the states of Maryland and Virginia, entities that historically have been in conflict. Throw in the local governments, and the cooperation problems multiply.

The reason these hurdles were cleared is twofold: the leadership of many individuals and the promise of federal dollars. As with the interstate highway system that began in the 1950s, the lure of the federal money got competing states and localities to sit down and talk.

Ultimately, the federal government paid $6.4 billion and local governments $3 billion of the system’s $9.4 billion cost, according to Metro officials. In present-day dollars, $9.4 billion works out to about $22 billion. Although a big number, in context it can seem cheap. For example, New York City’s planned Second Avenue subway line, which will run just 10 miles up the East Side of Manhattan, currently bears a price tag of $16 billion.

Chutzpah at work

The chutzpah of early leaders like Reps. Carlton Sickles (D-Md.), Basil Whitener (D-N.C.), and Joel Broyhill (R-Va.), who managed to build political support for Metro and fund it, can be appreciated clearly in retrospect. The federal government and its partners were proposing a comprehensive heavy rail system at a time when transit use was dropping all over the country and highway construction was seen as the more obvious government investment.

“I tried to understand why Washington built a subway, when every other American city was building highways,” says Zachary Schrag, an historian at Columbia University, who wrote his dissertation on the city’s subway system. “The answer is to see Metro as the embodiment of Great Society liberalism. It was about using the power of the federal government to take American wealth and put it into grand public projects, not designed to serve the poor or the rich, but to serve everyone. Only if we understand it in those terms do we get a sense of what it’s worth.”

And if at times Metro’s station design, by Chicago architect Harry Weese, seems overly grand, it’s because it was meant to be. “Metro was not designed to be the cheapest solution to the problem; it was designed to be the best solution,” says Schrag.”It was designed to do public works right.”

Whatever the expense, the founders’ vision of the system’s overall design was quite sound. The path of the lines and the placement of the stations generally follows the original plan. The system’s five lines — red, orange, blue, yellow, and green — have arms stretching into the surrounding regions and states. The original 100-mile system was completed in 2001. A few heavy construction projects remain. WMATA is at work at the first infill station, New York Avenue, on the Red Line, and is extending the blue line by two stations; the line will terminate at the multi-million-dollar Largo Town Center.

The rail component works with a surface system of buses. Although Metro is what people call the subway, WMATA is also in charge of bus service for the city and much of the region. MetroBus runs almost 1,500 buses, which make about 500,000 trips daily, less than MetroRail’s 650,000 trips. Metro is seamlessly integrated with the city’s main airport, Reagan National Airport, one of the few systems in the country to be so. Tourists use Metro regularly and return home asking why their communities don’t have a transit system like it.

Quirks

The system has its quirks. No eating is allowed on the trains or platforms, a rule the transit police enforce with regular $10 tickets. It is also relatively expensive. A journey of more than a few stations quickly adds up to $3 or more, particularly at rush hour. Metro’s fare box pays about 70 percent of MetroRail’s operating costs, one of the highest percentages in the country.

Adcock, the critic at the bar, is essentially correct in his gripes about the system’s limitations. MetroRail is a hybrid of a traditional subway, which serves people within the city, and a commuter line, which brings people into the city from outlying areas. Even within the city, stations are relatively far apart, as is the custom with commuter rail lines. Some stations within the District are more than a mile apart.

Having fewer stations made Metro less expensive to construct and ensures that trips downtown are faster for commuters. But it makes the train harder to use for everyday travel because you have to walk further to and from the station. By comparison in Manhattan, most stations are five to seven blocks apart. Metro is remedying this some. The New York Avenue station, now under construction, adds a stop between Union Station and the Rhode Island Avenue station, which are 1.7 miles apart on the Red Line.

Another limitation is that the Metro lines have only two tracks. That means a breakdown in one place can back up other trains many stations distant. Unexpected delays are frequent. During a Friday afternoon rush hour recently, passengers waited fruitlessly for a Red Line train to arrive at Metro Center. At one point, the crowd grew so large that it overflowed into the wide hallway that led to the platform. A breakdown had delayed the trains.

“I’m still at Metro Center at 5:30; I’m not going to make the train at Union Station,” said one chagrined rider into her cell phone. “You’re going to have to reschedule my meeting.”

Metro planners look wistfully at New York’s subway, whose lines generally have four tracks, with both express and local service. Despite the advantages of more tracks, it is actually quite rare globally, probably because it increases construction costs enormously. With Metro, there is some talk of adding an express track to the Orange line to limit backups and improve service.

Whatever its shortcomings, many residents regard Metro fondly, probably more than is common with something as utilitarian as a subway. “I think it’s terrific,” said regular rider Joan Wise as she briskly made her way to her morning train at the Cleveland Park station. “It’s half an hour from inside my house to inside my office, and someone else is in charge. I’ve just been to Barcelona and Madrid, and Metro is better.”

It’s not Paris

When people do criticize Metro, they often compare it unfavorably to subways of older, larger cities like New York and Paris, whose systems were founded a century ago and which carry about 10 times the traffic of Washington’s. After all, the Paris subway carries 4.5 million riders daily and its new line, the Meteor, serves more people than Washington’s entire system. What’s amazing is that people are comparing these systems at all. In a sense, it shows how successful Metro is, and its users ambition for it.

About the only other recently built subway that is as vital to a region as Metro is to Washington is Mexico City’s. Its first line opened in 1969, the same year that construction began on Washington’s Metro. Mexico City’s system has 175 stations and 125 miles of track, versus Washington’s 83 stations and just over 100 miles of track, and carries 4.2 million riders a day versus Washington’s 675,000.

Although obviously eclipsed by Paris and Mexico, the D.C. MetroRail system is, by some criteria, the second largest in the U.S., after New York’s. Such inter-city comparisons are difficult, because separating out what is a commuter railroad and what is a subway is difficult.

Yet, whatever Metro’s rank, few foresaw that the Washington rail line would be in the upper tier nationally. Many critics predicted that it would be at best “an expensive toy,” used mostly by tourists, says James Hughes, director of planning and operations for Metro.

Transformation

Unlike the hypothetical blindfolded visitor who would recognize a Metro station or train at a glance once the blindfold was removed, a Washington-area resident who had been away since the 1970s would probably not recognize downtown Arlington, Virginia; Chevy Chase, Maryland; or even downtown D.C. In these places and others, Metro has transformed quiet suburban streets into hybrid urban centers, and once-decaying urban streets into thriving ones.

Friendship Heights along Wisconsin Avenue, which straddles the border between D.C. and Montgomery County, Maryland, is one of these new centers. A generation ago, a long-time resident remembers, a convenience store provided just about the only local shopping. Now, office buildings, department stores, and towering apartment buildings huddle around the subway station. The Mazza Galerie, an enclosed shopping mall linked to the station, includes a Neiman Marcus, Saks, and other exclusive stores.

In many ways, this area is a cross between urban and suburban. The department stores are accessible both from Wisconsin Avenue and from the surface parking lot behind the mall. Thus, the mall sucks customers from two main sources, the rail users and other pedestrians who tend to walk in from the avenue and the suburban drivers who enter from the rear. Office buildings have similar arrangements.

Tom, a blue-jeaned 38-year-old, has come on a Sunday afternoon to visit the Borders bookstore across the street from the mall on Wisconsin Avenue. “I’m going to get some coffee, do some reading,” he says as he emerges from one of the Metro’s typically long escalators. “I own a car, but it doesn’t make sense to use it much, not with the traffic and when you have the Metro,” he says.

At the Ballston Metro stop in Arlington, Virginia, 25-story residential towers and new stores and restaurants face the streets, but the streets are wide, suburban-style boulevards with sweeping curves and gigantic intersections. Crossing one of these intersections, with their multiple turn lanes, is a dangerous activity, despite the brick crosswalks and flashing walk signs.

Overall, though, there is little question that the five Metro stops in Arlington are a model of integration. In part, that’s because Arlington County planners had a hand in siting the Metro line and stations, and then encouraged and designed for development around the stops. The result is a series of dense, tax-paying business districts. Most Metro stations in Arlington have no parking at all. Passengers crowd trains throughout the day and evening, rather than simply at rush hours.

In contrast, elected officials, developers, and civic leaders in neighboring Fairfax County, Virginia, were unable to agree on plans for development around the Orange line. As a result, the stations are surrounded by parking lots and except during rush hours trains run half-empty. This pattern is difficult to reverse now because commuters would protest if their parking were removed and development encouraged.

At the station

In the District, station-area renovation and revitalization has been picking up since the mid-1990s, when the economy revived and the city left behind a series of political scandals and began lowering its crime rate. As much construction as anywhere is taking place near the WMATA headquarters at Fifth and F streets near the Judiciary Square Metro station.

“When I came here seven years ago, there were a whole lot of parking lots around here,” says planning director James Hughes from his office on Metro’s seventh floor. Now he can point to new construction all around, including the MCI sports center.

At 14th and U streets, a largely African-American neighborhood that 20 years ago was written off 20 years ago as hopelessly blighted, hip design stores and trendy Somali restaurants attract upscale shoppers. New apartment buildings are going up, such as the one almost directly across from the Lincoln Theater, which was meticulously restored a decade ago.

Without the subway

It’s quite probable that none of this would have happened without the subway. Certainly in part because of Metro, the District’s population increased in the last census for the first time in decades. The federal government has expanded within the city, rather than outside of it. Without a subway, the gargantuan new Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center on Pennsylvania Avenue could never have been constructed downtown, say Metro officials. The 3.1-million-square-foot complex houses government agencies and private businesses related to trade.

“If we didn’t have Metro, it would have been built in Gaithersburg or somewhere even further out,” says deputy Metro director Wayne Thompson.

Without question, Metro and the federal government depend on one another, which is one reason regional leaders feel justified in asking for heavy federal support for Metro. Forty-seven percent of federal workers and contractors use the trains and buses to get to work, say Metro officials. When Hurricane Isabel swept through Washington in 2003, the federal government had to shut down when Metro announced it was canceling all service.

What’s ahead

Drive out from the city, past Friendship Heights and the other close-in suburbs until you reach the eight-lane I-495 beltway and the sprawling land of edge city office parks and some of the worst traffic on earth. The Texas Transportation Institute regularly rates the Washington region as one of the top three traffic nightmares in the U.S. Despite Metro’s high ridership, this is the daily reality for most of the region’s residents.

All this awful traffic, centered around the D.C. beltway, paradoxically helps and hurts future prospects for the hub-and-spoke Metro system. The traffic is one reason Metro use is so high. It also creates a market for the small, expensive apartments around Metro stops.

The traffic even creates some political support for Metro. Many drivers believe that it keeps congestion in check, even though transit experts will quickly disabuse them of such a notion. Mass transit does not necessarily improve traffic flow, they say, because the density that transit promotes ultimately means less room for cars.

But the suburban-style growth so common in Maryland and Virginia also impedes Metro’s prospects for future growth. It is very difficult to integrate existing suburban areas such as Tysons Corner into a mass transit system.

Way out there

This uneasy balance between freeways and Metro, suburban and urban-style growth, sets the context for the next generation of growth in the D.C. region. The lines of the debate and political divisions are already becoming clear, and at least in recent years have not been favoring transit.

In Virginia, the tiny Herndon town council made headlines in December when it refused to create a special tax district to fund a portion of the proposed $3.5 billion Metro extension to Dulles Airport.

In Maryland, Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr., an advocate of increased highway spending, has replaced Democrat Parris Glendening, an outspoken mass transit proponent. Ehrlich and his transportation secretary, Robert Flanagan, are backing a $1.7 billion “intercounty connector.” The new road would be a link in an outer, outer beltway, running across the top of the region and connecting I-270 in Rockville in Montgomery County with I-95 near Laurel in Prince George’s County.

The rub is that the connector would run along roughly the same path as a proposed new Metro line — the Bi-County Transitway. The debate over the two nicely frames the region’s priorities and choices about growth: Invest in the transitway, and the region will probably get denser,transit-oriented development closer to the city. Invest in the intercounty connector, and the region will have more suburban, highway-oriented growth farther out.

The transitway, which would be about 20 miles closer in than the connector, would connect four lines in Maryland with an outer loop. It would run from Bethesda to New Carrollton, with stops along the way in Prince George’s County. The firmest proposal is for a light rail line rather than heavy rail. However, Gov. Ehrlich has also asked for a study of bus rapid transit.

If the new line is built, Washington will become one of the very few U.S. cities with true peripheral transit lines. Although convenient, these suburb-to-suburb lines tend to be more costly because they lack the heavy traffic that goes in and out of a core city. New York City has only one such line, the G line between Brooklyn and Queens. Despite its utility, it is constantly in danger of cutbacks in service by cost-cutting administrators.

Whatever the decision about the new line, Metro administrators and planners will have their hands full just keeping pace with growth on the existing system. Many trains are already overcrowded and if capacity is not expanded, officials say, customers will eventually have to be turned away.

The easiest solution is to simply add cars. The Metro stations were built to accommodate eight-car trains, but trains now are either six or four cars. This ability to increase capacity by 25 percent or more is fortuitous and shows the foresight of Metro planners. But adding cars is not cheap. At $2 million each, adding 120 cars would take about $250 million. In addition, money would be needed to upgrade electrical equipment to move the longer, heavier trains.

In coming years, Metro also needs to overhaul the system’s more than 550 escalators, some of them over 200 feet long. MetroBus needs to upgrade its fleet more regularly. The total price tag for long-term capital maintenance is more than $12 billion between now and 2025.

The three jurisdictions involved — Virginia, Maryland, and D.C. — are attempting to come up with the money. Although they have pledged billions on their own, they are looking to the federal government to supply about a third of the $12 billion total.

Obviously, given the region’s and the nation’s budget woes, Metro faces uncertainties. But it’s impossible to imagine a future for the Washington region without it. Hordes of commuters, tourists, and shoppers will continue to board its multicolored trains daily. The only question is at what rate Metro will continue to transform life in the nation’s capital.

Alex Marshall is a journalist in New York and the author of How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and The Roads Not Taken (2001; University of Texas Press). He is a member of citistates.com, an association of speakers on urban affairs.

Images: Top — The system’s deep stations mean long escalator rides. Bottom — In the heart of the city: the Gallery Place-Chinatown station. its three levels provide access to the red, Green and Yellow lines. Photos by WMATA.

Making Elections Matter

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During the six presidential races in my adult lifetime, I’ve lived in three states – Virginia, Massachusetts and New York – that collectively have 31 million people and 58 electoral votes.

But despite all this political muscle, I can’t recall ever seeing a campaign ad by Reagan, a local appearance by Carter or a policy spin by Dukakis. No, each presidential race has been like a distant battle, watched with interest but not something I was a part of.

Why is this the case, given the populous, wealthy states I have lived in? Because our nation has something called the Electoral College, an antiquated system designed in the 18th century for reasons immaterial to our goals now. During the last election, we heard the machinery of this system grind and spark for more than a month, before it crankily spat out a “winner.”

Just days ago, we saw this “winner” — George W. Bush — put his hand on a bible and take the oath of office even though he lost the national election by more than a half million votes. That’s a good reason to scrap the Electoral College and replace it with a direct election.

But it’s not the only reason. The other reason is that, even if the system produces a clear winner, it usually causes candidates of both parties to ignore most of the states in the country, and the concerns of their voters.

The Electoral College, in most states, awards the all-important electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Consequently, if a state is solidly in one column or another, neither candidate pays it any mind.

Virginia has always been one of those states – voting solidly Republican for most presidential elections since World War II. Consequently, candidates largely ignore it, because they have little chance of changing the outcome, and thus winning additional votes.

During the presidential campaign last summer and fall, I lived in Massachusetts and New York. These states were solidly for Al Gore – so both Gore and Bush ignored them too. Which meant they ignored me!

I’m tired of this. I’m tired, I realized, of presidential candidates not caring whether or not I vote for them. My situation, and I expect my sentiments, are shared by millions if not most voters in the country.

In this last campaign, Bush and Gore directed their money, time and ads at voters in a half dozen or so “swing” states, including Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida. Most importantly, they altered their positions on the issues to affect the vote in these key states

Because Pennsylvania has a lot of hunters, Gore softened his position on gun control, even though most Americans favor it. Gore won Pennsylvania, so he probably made the right choice – for himself. But the country lost.

It seems unlikely that we will get rid of the Electoral College completely. Like our system of allocating senators, the Electoral College gives disproportionate power to less populated rural states. Wyoming, which has about the same population as Virginia Beach, has two senators and a congressman, and three electoral votes. These rural states are unlikely to support switching to a system that decreases their power.

But we can change the system for the better, even if we keep the Electoral College itself. We can change it in such a way that would decrease the chance of producing a president that has lost the popular vote, while prompting candidates to pay attention to more areas of the country.

This change would be for every state to copy Maine and Nebraska, which right now allocate their electoral votes by congressional district, rather than on a winner-take all basis. In Maine and Nebraska, a presidential candidate gets one vote for each congressional district he wins, and two electoral votes for winning the state as a whole.

If every state did this, it would turn presidential races into a race of congressional districts, rather than state against state. This would produce a more finely grained campaign. Bush and Gore would not have ignored California, New York and Virginia, as they did in the last campaign, because there are too many congressional districts where the race is relatively close. Under such a system, you would have seen a big state like California break up into a patch-quilt of votes for either Bush or Gore.

Indeed, given the diversity of different regions around the country, you might start seeing true national campaigns, rather than the pseudo ones we have now.

One possible objection is that such a revised system might make it even more likely to have tie votes, because you could have as many close elections as there are congressional districts and states: 485. But we can still improve the machinery of voting. And if counting the votes takes a bit longer, well, we saw no real harm come to the nation, even though the last election was not over for a month.

A merit of this type of electoral reform is that you do not have to amend the U.S. Constitution Each state has the power to alter its own system. The federal government could provide some sort of incentive, as it does with so many programs from highways to health care.

Virginia should act now. I bet residents would enjoy being a part of presidential campaigns, rather than distant spectators

In Praise of TV by Someone without One

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The Powhatan Review, Norfolk, Va.
1998 issue
By Alex Marshall

Missing ‘Ally McBeal,’ ‘The Simpsons’ and HBO’s ‘RealSex,’ and how much one is missing, is the issue. Ten months ago my wife and I threw out our television, in a fit of highbrowism, and now we are without.

The question is time. It’s becoming clear to me, disturbingly so, that my time here on earth is limited. In what remains of that time, what do I want to do with it?

The problem with television is that it is always there. When we had a television, it would beckon to me from its perch on the third-floor of our townhouse, ‘Come watch awhile, why not, see what’s on?’ You’ve heard its voice, I’m sure. When I had a TV, the most dangerous time period was between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. Wandering the house, a bit wired, unsure of bed, my wife Andrea already asleep, I would find myself before the box, clicking from channel to channel, always saying, ‘I’m just going to be here for a few minutes to unwind.’ Two hours later, at say 2.30 a.m., I would stagger downstairs, my eyes burning and my brain with it, having digested God knows what. When I awoke the next morning, I would have a hangover as if I had stayed up drinking. Without a television, I am a changed man. Trim. Fit. Sounder of mind and body. I have cast the demon rum out of my house and am better for it. I think.

The problem is, I happen to like a lot of what’s on television. I approve of television in the specific. I’m not talking PBS. I’m talking ‘South Park,’ ‘The Larry Sanders Show’ and ‘Chris Rock.’ They are all cutting-edge stuff — funny, experimental and enlivening. Dramas like ‘NYPD Blue’ and ‘Homocide’ arguably have better writing, and are closer to the shifting shoreline and dangerous waves of emerging culture and society, than most movies, even independent, art house movies. ‘The Simpsons’ is better political satire than anything I have seen at the movies since ‘Bob Roberts.’ The ‘X-Files’ is a better work of science fiction than ‘Armageddon.’

But absent TV, I have time for other things. For one, I read more. In the last six months, I have read both The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1,500 pages), and The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (800 pages.) I may not have made it through either if I had something else to do after dinner. My life is richer for having read both books. I am starting to understand ‘Empire’ better, whether it be an attempted Nazi empire or the actual British ones; how our lives are determined by the political context in which we are born, and how in the past and still in the present, those political contexts are determined by the usually quite amoral struggles of groups of men and equipment to gain predominance over land and other people.

That’s a more important ‘get’ than the latest clever plot from the X-files.

But still, I ambivilate. To tell you the truth, I really don’t feel that much like reading at night, when I would otherwise be watching TV. I write for a living, and so I’ve usually spent much of the day staring at words, either my own or someone else’s. At night, I kind of feel like sitting back and being visually and aurally stimulated. I also dislike being cut off from the zeitgeist, to use a once trendy word, of popular culture and politics. I even miss the ads on television, being a big fan of the design and thought that goes into them.

The only time I really feel like reading at night is in bed, before I go to asleep. But I usually only last a few minutes, before sleep calls. When I read earlier in the evening, I feel vaguely anxious. But without a TV now, I soldier on more, at my perch on the couch, non-fiction book in hand.

Of course, it’s not as though my life is without visual stimulation. Absent a TV, I now walk the four blocks to the Naro movie theater at least once a week, and sometimes two or three. The Naro in July had the Warner Brothers Festival of Classic Movies. I managed to see 10 of the 33 shown. But movie watching is different than TV watching. With movies, you commit to it. You decide to leave the house, go to the theater, and see said film. Then you go home. One does not drift into watching a film in a theater. Then there is the technology. A friend convinced me that TV is harder on the head because it is beamed directly into your eyes. With a film, you watch reflected light. The movie projector isn’t aimed at you, like a TV. It’s aimed at a blank sheet on a wall, which one then views. It’s a less aggressive form of technology.

What bothers me is that it seems as I grow older, I have to increasingly plan my life. I read once that actors, as they grow older, have to do consciously what was once intuitive: a gesture, a portrayal of emotion, a reaction. I feel the same way about life. It seems that as I age, I have to plan things that once just happened. If I want to ‘hang around with friends,’ then I have to schedule ‘hanging around with friends time.’ It doesn’t just happen. I used to just pick up my guitar and play at odd moments, including learning new songs. Now, I contemplate scheduling a set period for the act. Reading was once something I just did. Now, I have a loose schedule: newspaper reading at breakfast; magazine reading at lunch; non-fiction before dinner and at night; fiction before bed.

I guess what I resent is having to be an adult. To have to be fully conscious and responsible for my own actions. I still want to be age 10, where life was a room I played in, without thought of where it came from.

Television fits into this, or doesn’t, because, despite my affection for the medium, I can’t quite work it into my schedule. If I start watching TV again at night, when will I read that new non-fiction book I wanted to get through? On the other hand, I dislike missing all those neat new shows on the tube. It seems unjust that I can’t do everything.

I leave where I came in. Undecided. I may go out next week, if Andrea will let me, and buy a big-screen TV and place it prominently again on the third floor. I would like to think that I could work out a plan to watch it more selectively, to limit the late-night forays. But I know that would take a plan and some discipline, both of which I often lack.

We’ll see. In the meantime, do you mind if I drop over your house tonight, say about 8:00 p.m.? ‘King of the Hill’ is coming on, and I just wanted to catch it this once. I promise not to stay long. Really.

Mergers Or No Mergers, It’s Time To Re-Regulate The Airlines

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I write this from the terminal of the Boston International Airport. I am about to board a small prop plane to Harrisburg, Pa, the state capitol. Given the plane’s small size, and my largish one, the ride will be uncomfortable. Not only will my 6’7′ frame be crammed into a tiny seat, but the propellers will sound like an electric shaver next to my ear for an hour and a half. Winds will bat the plane around as heavy seas do a rowboat.

For the privilege of this unpleasant ride, I am paying US Airways $851. Luckily for me, the taxpayers of Pennsylvania are reimbursing me, because their state legislature is flying me to Harrisburg to give my views on highways and suburban sprawl.

It has been more than 20 years since President Jimmy Carter and Alfred Kahn, chairman of the now defunct Civil Aeronautics Board, began deregulating the airlines. It is time to face facts about this experiment: It has failed. Every single aspect predicted by the advocates of deregulation has gone the opposite way. Competition, the theory went, would increase the number of airlines, increase the number of direct flights, make ticketing easier, and bring simpler, and lower fares.

At first, the theory seemed true. In the early 1980s, low-cost carriers like People Express offered short- to long-distance flights for pocket change. But in the ruthless consolidation that followed, these carriers were driven out of business. Now, a handful of oligarchic airlines reign over the skies like despots. Many smaller markets, like Harrisburg, have seen their air service, something vital to their economic health, ruthlessly extorted by one or two airlines. Flying has become unpleasant, uncomfortable, unpredictable and expensive. Passengers have no guarantee what they will pay, or under what conditions they will have to pay it.

The recent proposed merger between US Airways and United Airlines would do nothing to address these problems. It would probably make them worse. As it happens, these two airlines are already the only ones flying to Harrisburg from Boston. Their already vicious level of competition — I could have flown United and paid $856 — has not exactly produced affordable service. The problem with the airline industry is not mergers or no mergers, but the relative freedom airlines have now to engage in predatory capitalism with their customers.

A few weeks ago, I watched that classic movie from the early 1970s, The French Connection with Gene Hackman. At one point, the local New York villain suddenly decides to fly from New York to Washington to meet the mysterious Frenchman. The film shows the bad guy walk up to the Eastern counter at the airport, and say, ‘One ticket to Washington, please.’ The clerk says, ‘That will be $40, please.’

And that’s it.

Can you imagine something so simple nowadays? Forty dollars to fly from New York to Washington, at the last minute. Even with inflation, that’s pretty good. And consider what the villain did not do. He did not call seven, 14 or 21 days in advance to get this price. He didn’t have to stay over on a Saturday night. He wasn’t required to pay $75 if he changed his return date, or buy a whole new ticket at full-fare if he changed his departure date. He bought the ticket from ‘Eastern,’ one of many defunct airlines. That flight now to Washington from New York would cost $311. And that’s a bargain, considered what is being charged to smaller cities like Harrisburg.

Airlines executives frequently state that average ticket prices have declined in the last 20 years. But, as Robert Kuttner showed in his book Everything For Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets, prices declined even faster during the era of regulation. And average prices don’t take into consideration the economic costs of unnecessarily extending stays through a weekend to get a lower fare, or not being able to easily change one’s schedule. Nor do average prices consider that fares have increased enormously in some markets.

There is a way out of this mess: Reregulate the airlines. Reestablish the Civil Aeronautics Board, or some newer equivalent, which would set routes and fares. We would once again have a reasonable, stable system of air travel. Although Sen. John McCain and others have introduced passenger ‘Bill of Rights,’ few have contemplated complete re-regulation. They should.

People often forget that private airlines depend on a system of publicly financed, publicly-maintained airports. In giving these over to airlines to use as they will, it’s as if we had given over our public highways to a handful of taxicab fleets, who were allowed to charge whatever they wanted, and on whom we were completely dependent.

Americans have fallen in love with the idea that competition makes everything cheaper and better. This is not always true. With air travel, it’s time we returned to the days, like in those old movies, when the nation’s air travel system served its passengers, rather than only the profits of a dwindling number of airlines.

Alex Marshall, an independent journalist, is the author of How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken. He writes frequently on transportation.