More freeways and gas guzzling cars won't shorten commute times. Nationwide mass transit is the answer.

Not so long ago I recall then Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown talking about the need to drill another tunnel through the hills here on the east side of the San Francisco Bay to accommodate the increased suburban commuter traffic.

I thought it was a little odd really as the same freeway would be carrying traffic to the tunnel and from it so how would it help at all? Traffic would be less congested for half a mile inside the tunnel? It seemed obvious to me that public mass transit is what need to be improved. The problem is the lack of public transportation. In fact, public transportation is terrible in most of California. This is the state of the freeway and the car. And we are all familiar with GM’s purchasing of many of the electric tram systems in the 40.s and 50’s in order to shut them down. GM was in the bus and auto business and ridding the nation of an electric, environmentally sound and efficient transit system was part of doing business.

GM was eventually found guilty of criminal negligence and fined $5000 for its efforts. But the auto industry is still a powerful influence in Washington and plans to increase efficiency in the way people get to work still revolves around the car.

The automobile is not just an environmentally wasteful way of getting workers to our workplaces; it is highly inefficient. According to a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, the average commuter in the US lost 34 hours stranded in congested traffic in 2009. In Chicago and Washington DC, tied for worst cities in the US, commuters spend 70 hours a year stuck in traffic. The cost nationally in terms of time is 4.8 billion delayed hours wasting 3.9 billion gallons of fuel as we sit there idling. This adds up to $115 billion in fuel costs and lost productivity time, the report claims.

Government spending on mass transit, including roads lags far behind population growth the report points out. As I read these facts I think, as we all should, of the billions of dollars of our tax money that are handed over to dictators like Mubarak in Egypt, the Zionist regime in Israel or on the predatory wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Then there's the trillions we just spent, or borrowed to bail out the banks and other financial institutions.

Rather than mass transit, the ideas they are coming up with involve charging us more to use specially designated lanes like the HOV, (high occupancy vehicle lanes.) The politicians of big business have no problem with high occupancy vehicles as long as they’re gas-guzzling autos. A tram or train or electric bus is a genuine high occupancy vehicle. People are so frustrated and desperate to get out of traffic one Virginia commuter tells the Journal that he’d pay $4000 for the right to use a special fast lane.

Building new roads is no problem in a rural area, but in urban communities, where the congestion is, it is not so simple given the shortage of land and the construction involved. Naturally, how to solve a social issue, the issue of how we move around in society, is being discussed primarily with profit in mind. More toll roads are planned, as are toll lanes and more increased privatization. “Speed as a for-profit service” as the WSJ calls it. So called “Hot Lanes” will be built within existing road systems, high occupancy toll-lanes. These lanes will, and already are, privately owned and a for fee service.

I remember during a French public sector strike during the mid 1990’s when an American reporter asked a French subway train operator why he was doing what he was doing. “The system is not making a profit” he told the train operator, stunned that the worker would consider going on strike and putting his own family’s welfare ahead of profit. “Who cares”, the train operator responded, “this is a public service.”

The building of more roads and more cars should not even be on the agenda in a discussion about how society gets its workers to work and moves masses of people. The only genuine solution is mass transit. During the early stages of the economic crash the government (the US taxpayer) bailed out the auto industry and took a majority stake in that industry but left the same crooks in charge.

The only solution to the congestion on our roads and all the problems associated with it, human stress, environmental degradation and pollution is a mass transit system. The auto industry is in reality a transportation industry and that industry has to be transformed from the production of cars to the production of mass transit. Even if this is done in a nationalized industry in a capitalist economy it would be a step forward. But the only lasting solution is for social production of this nature to be under democratic workers ownership, control and management. Those who work in, use and rely on public transit should develop it, profit is not an issue for us.