Alex Marshall / Aug 05 2011
For Release Friday, August 5, 2011
Citiwire.net
There is really no denying that transportation makes money. Just consider the huge shopping malls perched around interstate off-ramps, the office parks positioned close to airports, the skyscrapers next to subway stations.
But transportation itself is usually a money loser. We pour billions of public dollars into highways, airports and transit systems, while others, the home builders, the department store mavens, make the money that comes slows from those public investments.
Hong Kong’s metro system, MTR, has changed this equation, and that is why it’s worth looking at.
If you are ever lucky enough to visit Hong Kong, which is Manhattan-like with its narrow streets lined with high rises, you will see that the MTR’s services are excellent. You may ride the gleaming new high-speed rail line from the new airport that takes you into the new central rail station. Or one of the nine rail and subway lines, including the special train that goes to Disneyland Hong Kong.
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Alex Marshall / Dec 29 2010
For Release Sunday, January 2, 2011
Citiwire.net
As snow and cold weather swept over so much of the nation for the holidays, many families huddled around the television were likely watching an old but still popular television series set in an often icy and windswept place: The Mary Tyler Moore show.
Quick, tell me where was this show set? Minneapolis/St. Paul, I bet most people remember. When the series debuted in 1970, the Minnesota cities represented an unusual and risky choice. Would viewers connect with a region so far from both coasts and the bulk of the country’s population?
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Alex Marshall / Nov 25 2010
For Release Sunday, November 28, 2010
Citiwire.net
About ten years ago, I was looking for a new bike equipped with something you would think would not be that difficult to find: a chain guard. That is, that sheath of metal that wraps at least partially around the greasy links that help power the bike.
No luck.
“American bicycle manufacturers are overly influenced by the sports market,” said the bicycle shop worker in the Cambridge bike shop I was in, in one of the most succinct analysis of the bike market I had ever heard, as we surveyed the rows of lean and mean machines. It seemed I would have to wait.
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Alex Marshall / Sep 16 2010
For Release Sunday, September 19, 2010
Citiwire.net
Writers write best about what they know, and what I know best about Roberta Gratz, longtime urban journalist and author of the new book — The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs (Nation Books, 2010) — is my own relationship with her, which began about 20 years ago now.
At the time I was a reporter for The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, stirring up trouble with my stories on urban planning and development. Gratz had once done the same thing at the New York Post. I would call up Gratz, whose first book, The Living City, had just come out and which I loved. She would respond to my questions with great long quotes about the importance of remaking cities and their neighborhoods from the ground up, protecting the urban fabric, avoiding mega-projects, and nurturing real urban life.
Gradually over time, I made the same leap Gratz did: from being a reporter on urban planning to a thinker and writer on the subject in my own right. As happens when mentees grow up, I gradually started to disagree with Roberta some of the time, but we were and are still friends.
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Alex Marshall / Apr 08 2010
For Release Sunday, April 11, 2010
Citiwire.net
It’s become popular sport to deride the first decade of this century, the 2000-2009 years, as a downhill ride of terrorism, war and economic depression.
But there’s one multi-syllabic word that enjoyed a big comeback, after decades of neglect. That word: infrastructure. We at least began to think about the physical systems that support us, nurture us, and make much of life possible.
I posit that the “aughts,” as they have been called, were in fact a decade of infrastructure breakthroughs. Sure, we didn’t spend enough on it, or even more than in previous decades (I know of no official list of infrastructure projects, so it’s hard to tell). But I would argue that infrastructure did crystalize as a subject in the hearts and minds of the country’s citizens and opinion leaders as a subject worthy of attention and focus. A decade ago, even the word “infrastructure” was hardly known outside the specialized worlds of public works departments. Now editorial writers bandy it about without explanation and debate how much we should spend on it.
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Alex Marshall / Jan 16 2010
For Release Saturday, January 16, 2009
Citiwire.net
Well if you ever plan to motor west,
Just take my way, that’s the highway that’s the best.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six.
Well it winds from Chicago to LA
More than two-thousand miles all the way.
Get your kicks on Route sixty-six….
Well it goes through St. Louie down to Missouri
Oklahoma City looks oh so pretty.
You’ll see Amarillo, Gallup, New Mexico
Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Winona,
Kingsman, Barstow, San Bernardino.
Won’t you get hip to this timely tip
And think you’ll take that California trip.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.
Get your kicks on route sixty-six.
– (Get Your Kicks On) Route 66, By Bobby Troup, 1946. Read More »
Alex Marshall / Dec 12 2009
For Release Saturday, December 12, 2009
Citiwire.net
As America gets ready for debate on federal transportation legislation next year, we’ll surely be told again to place our confidence in the familiar yardsticks of miles traveled per hour, average commuting times, cost per passenger.
But couldn’t we have license to think more fully and imaginatively about this sector that is not only essential economically but occupies so much of our lives?
When I was a teacher in Virginia 25 years ago, I used to drive 35 minutes each day from Virginia Beach to my job at a high school in Norfolk. I drove at 60 mph almost the entire way. Not a bad commute, though I noted even then that high speed freeway driving is tiring. Pay attention or you may kill someone, yourself included. Read More »
Alex Marshall / May 07 2009
For Release Sunday, May 10, 2009
Citiwire.net
If you’re one of my graduate students–or, I suspect, any American under 40–you’re unlikely to recognize the name of Michael Dukakis.
But Dukakis was the 1988 Democratic nominee for the presidency. And a lot more. He was twice elected governor of Massachusetts. Most governors had usually “presided,” letting their cabinet officers go their separate ways; Dukakis by contrast was the first governor ever to form a development cabinet focused on specific goals, led by revival of historic Lowell and all the Bay State’s declining older industrial cities.
Many political observers scoff at Dukakis, noting only how he frittered away a strong early lead against George H.W. Bush in his presidential bid. Read More »
Alex Marshall / Dec 26 2008
For Release December 28, 2008
Citiwire.net
While Congress gets ready for a rancorous debate over guidelines for spending billions in infrastructure stimulus funds, some states and cities are already getting deadly serious–not so much about bigger and fancier infrastructure projects, but smarter infrastructure systems.
Just this month, for example, New York City joined a group of far-sighted managers of waterworks nationwide by recommending a “sustainable stormwater management plan” to expand water and sewer capacity. The idea is not to build more plants or pipes but rather by invest in decentralized conservation systems and better maintenance.
Also this year, Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s transportation commissioner, made headlines when she put tables and chairs and bike lanes in the middle of downtown streets and said that the highest and best use of a thoroughfare was not necessarily more cars.
And James Rogers, president if Duke Energy, has been shocking utility commissions by insisting his company be paid for getting its customers to use less, not more power. Read More »
Alex Marshall / Aug 15 2008
For Release August 17, 2008
Citiwire.net
As a recent professor of U.S. Constitutional law, presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama doubtless knows that the founding rule book of these United States provides that “The Congress should have Power To . . . establish Post Offices and post Roads.”
Maybe that’s why Obama, in contrast to his opponent Sen. John McCain, is advocating the feds play a larger role in the creation and improvement of our national transportation network.
Obama laid out his themes clearly in a June 21 speech in Miami to the U.S. Conference of Mayors entitled “Strategy for America’s Future.”
“We’ll unlock the potential of all our regions by connecting them with a 21st century infrastructure,” said Obama. “You know why this is so important. You see the traffic along I-95 in Miami. You see the crumbling roads and bridges, the aging water and sewer pipes, the faltering electrical grids that cost us billions in blackouts, repairs, and travel delays.” Read More »
