N.Y. Journal: Take the A train

I was not aware that conservatives didn't like public transportation until someone told me that they believe in a God-given right to an SUV. God may have given a right to an SUV---I won't dispute it---but a new organization and book are working to convince conservatives that public transportation is pretty good, too.

The newly formed Center for Public Transportation (CPT) has impeccable conservative cred---established by the Free Congress Foundation, which was chaired by the late Paul Weyrich, who founded The Heritage Foundation and was a passionate advocate for public transportation. Weyrich, along with William Lind, who has been named CPT's director, authored Moving Minds: Conservatives and Public Transportation. They argue that Americans should be able to travel from any point in the country to any other point without using a car---something we were able to do as late as the 1950s---which would reduce our dependence on foreign oil and foster growth.

Perhaps their most initially strange argument is that public transportation fosters community. "The automobile reinforces isolation and inhibits interaction between people," said CPT executive director Glen Bottoms. When he goes to the grocery store in his suburban town, he has to crank up his car and drive there: "I don't walk much, don't see much of my neighbors either."

I assigned my freshman class at The King's College, all new New Yorkers, an essay in which they took a subway ride and wrote about their observations. All of them came back complaining about the profound isolation---how no one talks to each other or interacts, but sits in their own isolated world plugging their ears with headphones and shutting their neighbors out.

But maybe Bottoms is right, and a closer look reveals that public transportation at least makes community possible to build, for those who want to build it. You are, after all, pressed up against a stranger's leg for an hour at a time. You're being thrown into each other's arms every time the subway jolts. You sit side by side with conversation starters---books and music---everywhere. The New Yorker has a choice of interaction that the suburbanite, chugging along in his car, does not.

Speaking of books, perhaps the conservative could also argue that public transportation fosters literacy. My friends and I are tackling the goal of reading 52 books next year, one each week, and the subway will make it possible. As someone who (as a child) read in the back seat to the point of carsickness and who (as an adult) really must double-task to fit it all in but is not good at double-tasking, I love that I can read and travel at the same time. In fact, public transportation doesn't just make reading and traveling possible; it almost commands it, once you realize that it cuts the tedium of the travel by half. My reading increased five-fold when I moved to an outer borough.

I'm just enamored with the beautiful efficiency of it all. New York subways took exactly 1,623,881,369 people through 468 stations last year. Not, of course, without hassle and anger and the stations you need "closed for maintenance" and not without "delays because of train traffic ahead of us." But still, I'm awed at the massive efficiency of this system that unclogs our streets and carries 5,225,675 people underground every day. Just imagining all of us in our own cars, seething in stalled traffic every Monday or drunk driving every Friday night, would make me want to move out of New York.

Does this have any relevance for non-urban people? Of course. This community, literacy, and efficiency can be yours, no matter where you live. The CPT advocates building up public transportation in more rural areas, since in many cases that's the only way rural people can get to the doctor or go where they need to go.

I'm all for it.