In America’s stilted and stunted public policy discourse, there are two acceptable narratives on mass transit projects. The first is pro-transit, with public transit being considered an essential service, particularly for the poor and disadvantaged. The other is anti-transit, with public investments in transit seen as wasteful boondoggles, often more expensive per rider than simply buying people a car. Those are the covers of the marketing brochures, but each of those narratives expand internally to affirm all the talking points of each exclusive worldview.

For the thoughtful person, these binary narratives are bewildering oversimplifications of reality. They are, as so many things are these days, merely avatars for a broader set of beliefs that identify one as Team Red or Team Blue. The constraints these narratives impose are an obstacle to making good public policy. They keep us from exploring nuance, thinking critically, and, in the case of Minnesota’s Southwest Light Rail Project, learning from our mistakes.

The cliff notes version of the Southwest Light Rail Project goes like this: A commuter rail line to the southwest suburbs of the Minneapolis–St. Paul metro area is proposed as the fourth major transit investment in an ongoing series of investments to build out a regional rail network. The project is controversial for all the usual reasons, but supporters dig in and see it through to construction. Now, irreversibly into building the project, credible rumors of overruns and delays have turned into reality with the announcement that the $2 billion project will now cost at least $2.7 billion (35% over budget) and the opening date of 2023 will be pushed back until at 2027, or later.

How should your place be using its infrastructure funds?

There is an answer that rejects the popular paradigm, and you can learn it in our Local-Motive session, “Infrastructure Avalanche: How to Make the Best Use of Federal and State Funding.”

As easily anticipated, the anti-transit chorus is calling for investigations, hearings, and accountability, as if such delays and cost overruns are particularly pernicious when they come from transit projects. A recent highway boondoggle project—the St. Croix River Bridge—came in over budget and behind schedule with barely a whimper from those now outraged.

Similarly, the pro-transit chorus is singing all the usual hymns of lament for unforeseen (and truly unforeseeable) problems. “Every dire prediction came true, the ones about cost overruns, the ones about the tunnel, the millions given away to railroads in negotiations,” said state Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-Minneapolis), who chairs the state House Transportation Committee. Nobody could have seen this coming, say the people who have a history of shepherding similar projects through similar rough circumstances.

The reactions of these two camps—to trash the project mercilessly or unconditionally back it to the end—obscure the real issues we should be discussing. In fact, it is projects like SWLR (and the St. Croix Bridge, for that matter) that are distractions in and of themselves: shiny objects we need to move beyond on our path to become a nation of Strong Towns.

The model for transportation projects coming out of World War II was simple. Not only did we need to grow our economy by connecting cities with interstates, but we needed to use centralized authority and top-down investments (public and private) to build middle-class enclaves on the outskirts of our metro areas. The very building of these places was the mechanism to create that middle class, boosting our economy in the process. Cities would lose population, sure, but they would retain economic vitality by configuring themselves to accommodate commuting culture. (Last week, I wrote about the negative impact of commuter culture on my small town.)

Grafted onto that commuter model evolved an approach to mass transit based on the same underlying goal: to bring distant commuters into the city center for employment. In Confessions of a Recovering Engineer, I described such transit systems as a “charitable overlay” of our dysfunctional, auto-based approach. They are promoted as a “green alternative”—an environmentally benign way to transport to and from an environmentally destructive development pattern—and sold to drivers as a way to theoretically convince the driver in front of them to take the bus or train.

It’s the commuter model that I reject. I reject it in all its forms, both auto and transit. That puts me outside of the dominant binary dialogue on transportation projects, which has consensus on very few things when it comes to transportation, but they do agree on this: America needs to spend a lot of money, ridiculous sums of money, moving people from the expanding edge of cities to and from their center. Again, I reject that consensus.

My opposition to this consensus mindset is foundational to why I opposed the president’s infrastructure bill and the bipartisan compromise that came out of it. Again, you can read the marketing brochures from Team Blue and see that the infrastructure bill was about things like complete streets, sidewalks, transit, and green infrastructure. And you can read the marketing brochure from Team Red and see that the infrastructure bill was about highways, bridges, and good rural roads.

The reality is that almost all of our transportation investments go to support commuters and, by extension, the proliferation of the development pattern that accompanies the commuting lifestyle.

By funding transportation the way that we do (large projects funneled through top-down, centralized systems), we crowd out the many modest, but far more productive projects, that local governments should be doing.

And because large projects statistically have greater overruns and delays, the crowding-out happens not only on the front end, but even more so on the back end, when desperate local governments are forced to cut corners and lower costs in other areas to make good on their commitment to the One Big Project. For the Southwest Light Rail Project, this means “all the partners will come together in search of a grand bargain,” a compromise where every local government is stretched to contribute from funds that could be better used elsewhere.

Residents will be given a chance to complain, but they are given no real choice in the matter. This is the funding approach on the table, the only game in town, so to speak. Might as well resign yourself to being part of Team Red or Team Blue.

Or Team Strong Towns, because there is a third option to the consensus dysfunction of supporting the commuter lifestyle and everything that goes with it. There is growing recognition that the answer to our problems is not going to be found in the next transportation appropriation but in a bottom-up effort to improve our neighborhoods, one block at a time.

Just in the past week, two thought leaders, from two very different places, made statements projecting that new consensus. I am so grateful for their leadership.

I don’t want to fight with Team Red to convince them that transit is a worthy investment. Great transit is essential to building a productive place. It’s key to a Strong Towns approach. If you identify with Team Red, don’t let the dysfunction around projects like the Southwest Light Rail blind you to the necessity of transit in building productive and prosperous places.

I also don’t want to fight with Team Blue to convince them that the megaprojects supporting commuter transit are crowding out investments that better align with their values. Just because it’s a transit project doesn’t mean it’s a good project, and just because government institutions are under withering assault doesn’t mean they should be defended from justified, even harsh, critiques. If you identify with Team Blue, don’t be seduced by the promise of transformational investments but instead struggle to appreciate the value of cumulative, humble action. You are key to that action, and can be—need to be—way more than a mere observer.

The real tragedy of Southwest Light Rail and other megaprojects, both transit and auto-oriented, is the dysfunctional pattern of development they reinforce. Reject that paradigm and you open up an entirely new way of looking at transportation spending.

The Real Reason We Keep Getting Distracted by Transit Boondoggles

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