Daily Exasperation #9
We expect nothing and then we get what we expect. Pretty silly.
Short one today. Somehow I’m having a good, non-exasperated day, except for this: there are five daily Amtrak trips between Seattle and Portland (and vice versa). The trip takes about four hours. In Western Europe, two—no three—countries have figured out how to schedule five daily Amtrak trips between Paris and Amsterdam before 7:30 am. We can do better but we just don’t want to. If you’re about to respond, “Well there’s a much greater demand for Amsterdam to Paris than Portland to Seattle and those are much bigger cities,” you’re probably right, but that doesn’t mean that people who live in any of those cities—or any other cities for that matter—don’t deserve the same freedom to travel without being forced into a car. Just some food for thought.
Also, this article was really well reported today:
This street is a small street and it’s a small exchange—but it’s a big problem (and the street’s connected to a bigger street) if moneyed interests can wring the City Council and squeeze them out through the legislative process. We must have an independent legislature that represents all of its constituents separately and collectively, and we must ensure that people come first and that our businesses support the people’s best interests first. I am fine with people making a profit, and I am fine with New York City being a wealthy playground; this is not going to stop because I would be mad on the Internet or we have a few well-meaning power deflators who write some laws to hold the many few to the every one.
But unless we change our approach to what New York City means—in aggregate and at the individual level— by actually defining what we want from and for our city, we’re going to continue having small problems like the one reported above. They’re going to get bigger. They’re going to get thornier and harder to disentangle the interests from the interested.
The above Streetsblog story proves that we’re not even close to NYC’s potential all because we’re so afraid of what will happen if we let a good thing happen for once. I was having such a good day.
I am reminded of one of my favorite movie quotes, voiced by Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven:
"Deserve's got nothing to do with it."
Unfortunately, passing laws based on fairness isn't really our thing. Over enough time, it is, but on a shorter time horizon, animal spirits and concerns behind controlling power rule the day. That's where we are right now, I think.