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sabotabbyTransit, speaking from a purely utilitarian perspective, has to be the strangest possible public service to politicize. In Toronto, we've had massive debates about transit for years; the system was designed and mostly built in the 60s and 70s and has been underfunded since. At the moment, the municipal race being in full swing, the debate is between building an expensive subway with a few stops that is impossible to finish in most of our working lifetimes, and an LRT, which is cheaper and can serve a larger geographic area. Even people in wards already served by the existing subway, like the one in which I've been canvassing, frame candidates' positions as "subway or LRT?" with "subway" being code for Ford's far-right lunatics and "LRT" code for Chow's centre-left.*
Some friends of mine who aren't from Toronto expressed disbelief that subways are even a political issue, and they are absolutely right to find it bizarre. But it speaks to a theory I've developed about the Canadian right.
Other countries have a right wing that is unified by something. In the UK, it's class; in America, it's racial hatred and the legacy of slavery plus religious zealotry and a fear of communism. In Canada, it's not like we don't have class stratification or racism or religion or anti-communism (we have considerable and comparable amounts of the former two and some of the latter two) but for various historical reasons, none can function as a unifying current. Instead, we must resort to the basest, most rudimentary form of conservatism: I don't wanna pay for stuff. It is the politics of a cranky toddler, so it's not surprising that in Toronto, we're currently at least nominally governed by one.
The thing is, one can argue with, say, health care (something else that ought not to be politicized), that there is someone who benefits by keeping their money out of the system. In America, the insurance companies are the biggest winners, but conceivably rich people get something out of it too. From their perspective, it's fine if poor people die, and they can afford private health care. It's an inefficient system, which is why rich people ought to also support universal health care (after all, it's not like they overall get better care than rich people in the civilized world), but the upper class benefits from lower taxes and is able to mitigate the crueller implications of privatization. Same with schools; it's inefficient as all hell, but the rich can elect to have their children privately educated.
There is no such escape valve with transit, though. I was in Seattle last week, after not having visited for a few years, and was shocked at the traffic. It took at least twice as long to get anywhere. Otherwise, the city was thriving in a way that I haven't seen in any North American city since the economy tanked; everywhere was booming, everyone was high on legal weed, it was great. But apparently the booming economy led to a massive influx of people, and it was unexpected, and the transit infrastructure can't support it. Of civic problems to have, it's not the worst one, and certainly the gridlock was better than Toronto's. But it was still quite dramatic.
The North American conservative's alternative to the public welfare is private everything. The mass of humanity gets sub-par hospitals and schools; the elite get nice clean ones. So it makes sense, by conservative logic, to not pay for mass transit.
Except! What happens when there's no transit infrastructure? The roads get jammed up, and rich people use those roads and get stuck in traffic like the plebes. So it benefits the rich, even Rob Ford, who does not live in drunken-stumbling distance from his place of work, to invest in transit. Building more roads isn't even an option, because that's expensive, and people amazingly enough do not love privatized roads. Transit is a question for which the conservative has no answer, for which there is no answer beyond the collectivist one. You can, in theory, argue about whether a subway or an LRT is better**, but one is necessary no matter how much you loathe the smelly sheeple who commute to work without their own cars, and neither can fit easily within the austerity logic of the North American right.
* It's important to note that the Honourable Wife-Beater is not in any way in favour of building an actual subway. His famous refrain of "subways, subways, subways," is an attempt to stall so that nothing at all ever gets built. It is easier to stall on a subway than on an LRT.
** The LRT. Everyone knows this.
Some friends of mine who aren't from Toronto expressed disbelief that subways are even a political issue, and they are absolutely right to find it bizarre. But it speaks to a theory I've developed about the Canadian right.
Other countries have a right wing that is unified by something. In the UK, it's class; in America, it's racial hatred and the legacy of slavery plus religious zealotry and a fear of communism. In Canada, it's not like we don't have class stratification or racism or religion or anti-communism (we have considerable and comparable amounts of the former two and some of the latter two) but for various historical reasons, none can function as a unifying current. Instead, we must resort to the basest, most rudimentary form of conservatism: I don't wanna pay for stuff. It is the politics of a cranky toddler, so it's not surprising that in Toronto, we're currently at least nominally governed by one.
The thing is, one can argue with, say, health care (something else that ought not to be politicized), that there is someone who benefits by keeping their money out of the system. In America, the insurance companies are the biggest winners, but conceivably rich people get something out of it too. From their perspective, it's fine if poor people die, and they can afford private health care. It's an inefficient system, which is why rich people ought to also support universal health care (after all, it's not like they overall get better care than rich people in the civilized world), but the upper class benefits from lower taxes and is able to mitigate the crueller implications of privatization. Same with schools; it's inefficient as all hell, but the rich can elect to have their children privately educated.
There is no such escape valve with transit, though. I was in Seattle last week, after not having visited for a few years, and was shocked at the traffic. It took at least twice as long to get anywhere. Otherwise, the city was thriving in a way that I haven't seen in any North American city since the economy tanked; everywhere was booming, everyone was high on legal weed, it was great. But apparently the booming economy led to a massive influx of people, and it was unexpected, and the transit infrastructure can't support it. Of civic problems to have, it's not the worst one, and certainly the gridlock was better than Toronto's. But it was still quite dramatic.
The North American conservative's alternative to the public welfare is private everything. The mass of humanity gets sub-par hospitals and schools; the elite get nice clean ones. So it makes sense, by conservative logic, to not pay for mass transit.
Except! What happens when there's no transit infrastructure? The roads get jammed up, and rich people use those roads and get stuck in traffic like the plebes. So it benefits the rich, even Rob Ford, who does not live in drunken-stumbling distance from his place of work, to invest in transit. Building more roads isn't even an option, because that's expensive, and people amazingly enough do not love privatized roads. Transit is a question for which the conservative has no answer, for which there is no answer beyond the collectivist one. You can, in theory, argue about whether a subway or an LRT is better**, but one is necessary no matter how much you loathe the smelly sheeple who commute to work without their own cars, and neither can fit easily within the austerity logic of the North American right.
* It's important to note that the Honourable Wife-Beater is not in any way in favour of building an actual subway. His famous refrain of "subways, subways, subways," is an attempt to stall so that nothing at all ever gets built. It is easier to stall on a subway than on an LRT.
** The LRT. Everyone knows this.
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no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 12:34 am (UTC)Having a really expensive option offers more profit for the company that wins the contract. If it is also big and complex, that narrows the field of companies that can plausibly bid. This not only increases their chance of winning, but increases the profits theu can squeeze out of it. You also get a project that is "too big to fail", which means that if things go wrong the company can't be allowed to crash, so the public purse has to pay more.
Even if there isn't formal corruption involved (I mean, someone like Rob Ford could never be involved in that sort of thing could he? I mean he may be a wife beater and a drunk driver and a crack smoker and possibly a murderer, but surely he'd never sink so low...) - sorry, as I was saying, even if there isn't formal corruption involved, it channels huge, safe profits to corporations and their top people who are very likely the sort of people the right-wing politicians are in bed with.
Such profligate public spending is of course a terrible thing if it's providing public services, but not if it's providing private profit. Gosh, I'm alliterating like an Anglo-Saxon.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 12:41 am (UTC)The super-rich have options, certainly, but Ford still drives to work and gets caught in gridlock.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 12:51 am (UTC)(Not that incriminating cellphone footage makes a dent in the Laughable Bumblefuck's popularity. That's why my cranky toddler theory is the only one that makes sense.)
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 05:02 am (UTC)I just spent four days in LA. Driving in LA, because that's pretty much a necessity there, especially if you've only got four days.
You know I've lived in Toronto, and I've even driven in Toronto. And these days I spend a fair amount of time every week on some of Montreal's decaying autoroutes. But I have never experienced the sort of traffic I did in Southern California. The sort of constant gridlock they've got there (not to mention the resulting smog).
Yeah, there are buses there, and there is even (so I'm told) a subway of some sort there, but so far as I could tell those are for really poor people.
Everyone else drives something because the whole city is so fucking spread you you have no choice. And the weird thing was, it was doable.
It took a long time to get anywhere, and it was really stressful because those people drive like absolute lunatics (and it took a long time to get anywhere), but ... it worked, kind of.
And I suppose if you're well-to-do, you'll have a really nice, comfortable car, and the tunes you want to listen to, and first-rate air-conditioning and, well, that's just how life is. You drive and it takes time, but you're in your own environment and transit would be even worse. (And if you're actually rich, well, someone can drive you, and you can really enjoy your own environment.
Point being, the well-to-do are just as good misidentifying their own best interests as the most lumpen member of Ford Nation.
[ETA for HTLM]
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 03:38 pm (UTC)Part of it is the frog/boiling water analogy that seems to be the theme of my last few posts; you get used to it, it becomes the new normal. There is no way that it's not better, and cheaper, for everyone to have the rich driving on clear highways and the poor taking public transit. That's not even a socialist position (which would have everyone taking well-funded, well-maintained mass transit). But gridlock creeps up on you and becomes an impossible-to-solve problem.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-23 05:47 am (UTC)I don't get that at all. Not at all.
I'm using this icon because it's the closest I've got to an anti-Conservative one and I don't get to use it nearly often enough, ha ha ha
no subject
Date: 2014-08-23 01:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 03:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 03:16 pm (UTC)Axel always argues that it boils down to "transit is publically funded and that means taxes and all taxes are bad, full stop". I wonder if there isn't also a helping of not wanting to be the one who spends the necessary money because you'll be remembered as the one who raised taxes to pay for it, while the actual benefits of the new transit won't be felt until you're out of office.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 03:42 pm (UTC)The political cycle is definitely a factor; everyone wants someone else to take the fall for raising taxes (and no one wants to cut spending on organized crime, I mean the police budget). It kills me.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 09:10 pm (UTC)I think Melbourne and Toronto may have a lot in common, because I'm amazed there are places where subways (and other transport issues) AREN'T political hot potatoes. In the last state election, the government fell because the trains were too inefficient; the trains having gotten worse (and the right-wing government having diverted money away from public transport into super-dodgy roads projects) the replacement government will no doubt go down as well.
no subject
Date: 2014-08-20 09:26 pm (UTC)I cannot imagine that happening here. Maybe if someone actually died as a result, but probably not even then. No one cares enough.