The Anti-Mobility Playbook

We know that more trains, buses, bikes, and feet make for a more sustainable system for everyone to get around (or do we?) So why don’t we invest $1 trillion in these modes (or should we?)

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about a Medium blog post built from a Twitter thread written by Ethan Grey, since June 2022. This comes on the heels of another truism: modern content is fleeting—one outrage Xweet or thinkpiece overwrites the next, we ingest information at the speed of word bile, and we move on.

But this one stuck with me and I think its core argument applies to transportation and transport theory in general. Grey’s point is this:

Here is the Republican message on everything of importance:

1. They can tell people what to do.

2. You cannot tell them what to do.

His point centers on modern Republican Party “theory.” He posits, and I think he’s right, that any and all right-wing policy is read through this myopic idea shredder. It’s simple enough to meta-message and dog whistle, too. There are “right” people and “wrong” people, Grey refines. And the “right” people get to tell the “wrong” people what to do and the “wrong” people do not get to tell the “right” people what to do. This is a core facet of our broken system—it’s easy to sell this to people who also consider themselves the “right” people and hide it from the “wrong” ones.

The whole point of the Republican Party in 2023 is to preserve hegemonic power and control anything that stands in its way is an evil that must be excised. Feed this through every single political issue and see just how true it is. Let’s compound how complicated this is through yet another lens: conflict and mistake theory.

Conflict vs. Mistake vs. Control

A quick detour to one of Scott Alexander’s most influential pieces (at least to me) will help set up my point going forward. It’s called “Conflict vs. Mistake” and to overgeneralize Scott’s oversimplification: there are two buckets of first-principles-level government theory, conflict and mistake, and they’re generally divided across process over outcome. What I mean is that these theories don’t always line up neatly left vs. right or Democrat vs. Republican. Sometimes they do, but often, they don’t.

The data are old, but the point remains the same. Not only do we overfund roads, but also we rely way too much on local dollars to fund state/regional/national transit objectives.

So here’s what they say. Conflict theorists treat politics as war. Mistake theorists treat politics as science, engineering, or medicine. There’s a panacea and a fix and it’s our job to get the mix of medicine correct. We just need to keep trying. Conflict theories would sooner destroy the state. I urge you to read on. There are a ton of examples that beat this point to actual death, but they’re useful if not exhausting and exhaustive.

We are compelled to shorthand this to Left = Democrats = Mistake Theorists vs. Right = Republicans = Conflict Theorists, and while this generally holds true in the middle part of the political bell curve, it breaks down at the frayed edges, where the true reactionaries sit and wait. But what used to be the unpredictability of the far left and far right—what issue would flame today?—is now relatively commonplace. The Far Left wants to, for better or worse, dismantle the Corporatist Capital Oligarchy and the Right also wants to dismantle any semblance of a Welfare State Made Up Of Others And Pronouns. They’re both at war with the spectre of a state that doesn’t exist. I digress.

I got to thinking about how mobility—the right to move freely— would intersect Conflict vs. Mistake Theory and Grey’s essay on control. It’s the oh-so-obvious Anti-Mobility playbook.

The Obvious Playbook That We Refuse To See

I keep asking myself why we see hourly lamentations about the sad state of transportation planning, infrastructure building, etc., and still, our system gets incrementally worse. Traffic deaths are up; transit funding is going to fall off the cliff; we don’t build enough housing! USDOT and its partner agencies at all levels of government are, to the best of my judgment, engaging with the problem¹, and pouring literal billions of dollars into meaningful projects that will, hopefully, one day, fix our cultural, environmental, and socioeconomic problems all at once. Soon.

We’ve made almost no progress and the think-pieces pour in: we need congestion pricing²; we must build new housing and transit to support it; community engagement is bad actually, but we have to do it so it’s a necessary evil; one more lane won’t fix it, actually. Why can’t we just have high-speed rail like they do in civilized countries? Let’s just bike everywhere! Boo, cars! Our climate is dying; we’re all going to die!

These are all correct takes. They’re written over and over and over and over again. To very little avail. Why haven’t we made meaningful progress? I ask myself. The liberal media is too disorganized and flat-broke to organize a “suppression of progress” in order to have something to write about ad infinitum.³ The conservative media has wised up to the Grey playbook: scaremongering and stoking fear of the “wrong” type of person while simultaneously praising the “right” type of person for “seeing the truth through unbiased eyes.”⁴ In an effort to appear unbiased, our center-left and center-right hides under the Fairness Doctrine, even though there’s nothing fair about intolerance or white supremacy.

The obvious anti-mobility playbook is a mix of the conflict theory they like, the mistake theory they like, and the gall to colonize a moral high ground of both. This is why Republicans are not only obsessed with driving but also against transit, bike lanes, sidewalks, and anything that could realistically help the “wrong” people have access to the same opportunities they do. You cannot tell a Republican that they can’t or shouldn’t drive—even if fewer VMT is extremely pro-life, and you also can’t tell a Republican that transit—a mainstay in cities they claim are failing—is worth investing in at all, especially at the expense of a single dollar of road money. Republicans can, will, and do force housing, climate, transportation, and social policies⁵ that make it infinitely harder to live near jobs so the “wrong” people are forced to own or lease a car as the price of admission into society.⁶

This is the Anti-Mobility Playbook. We hardly know it’s there and we are relatively powerless to do anything to counter it because most of our politicians don’t even see mobility as a problem at all. If we could just get everyone a car…

It’s not for lack of trying. But well-meaning⁷ Some (too few) Democrats truly think that if we just argue for the right bundle of funding and incentives we’ll be able to make meaningful, equitable progress toward a just infrastructure system, where mode choice and climate consciousness rule. How could anyone not like when our societal pie grows, so everyone gets more? We delude ourselves. Poor people get poorer and that’s the way they want it.

What Can We Do About This?

Given that we’re so deep into week 400 of Infrastructure Week and transportation and infrastructure have become even more values-loaded culture war fodder, is there a way out of this mess that doesn’t end with Democrats just giving in? Here’s the thing: you can’t just accept my premise.

Democrats also treat infrastructure policy as a conflict. See, very obviously, New Jersey Governor, Phil Murphy, and US Representative, Bill Pascrell’s, Very Fun Lawsuit hoping to halt congestion pricing in New York City. They’re both Democrats, but Governor Murphy would rather spend billions to widen the Holland Tunnel approach highway to literally no avail than invest this cash in NJ TRANSIT, the United States’ third-largest transit system that serves millions of trips per year. The needed investment could help the agency run more trains to make it even easier for commuters to commute by train right into Midtown. We can’t have both congestion pricing and better rail and bus service because Governor Murphy doesn’t think that his opponents are mistaken; he wants to cut out the whole part of the state he doesn’t like for a few votes at the expense of regional connectivity and ultimately national economic security.

So if it’s car-obsessed, control-driven, conflict-laden Republicans and car-obsessed, concern-driven, conflict-laden Democrats against a few rogue politicians with no real power, dedicated, exhausted advocates, and laptop warriors who insist one more article will fix the problem.

But I refuse to just be ironically exasperated about this so I have some thoughts.

On thinkpieces, reports, etc.: it’s so unbelievably frustrating to see report after thinkpiece say the same thing in a slightly different, inoffensive tone over and over again. You’ll argue that a better-informed population is better equipped to fight for the things they didn’t even know they cared about. In theory, this is correct; more information and better stories make for more compelling policy positions. In practice, no one gives a sh*t because our opposition doesn’t acknowledge these problems as problems at all. Seven thousand pedestrian deaths a year? Too bad, huh?

This problem is thorny and requires someone smarter than me to figure it out. It’ll require some combination of a political miracle (people actually vote and vote for issues they care about) and an intentional starving of road funding while the system collapses all at once. Can’t drive? Too bad. But we can build sidewalks and trains to help make this easier.

Enough with the thinkpieces that say the same thing over and over and over. It’s not helping. Take the gloves off and fight, journalists and academics.⁸

---

On countering the anti-mobility playbook: I don’t think Inception is real so besides planting the idea that transit, biking, walking, and non-motor-vehicle travel is desired by the “right” people there’s a very real wall we’ll hit here. We will never, ever be able to tell a Republican majority or loud shadow majority (they always think they’re in power) that they shouldn’t drive for any reason, whatsoever. It will never work, not ever, because you don’t get to tell a Republican what to do. Remember that they tell you what to do. Compound the issue with the fact that there’s a both-sides bloc that doesn’t even engage with the idea that there’s a problem with too much driving at all (conflict theorists), and we’re nowhere.

There’s a double-thick wall between measurable fact and political action. But here’s the thing: those who use the anti-mobility playbook are so unbelievably predictable that if we can (mistakenly, maybe) find the right counter, we can turn it against them. Maybe we yes every project to death, load up our roadbuilding to its breaking point and watch projects stall or fail for a number of reasons, technical, fiscal, etc., and our drivers⁹ get so fed up that they beg for anything else. Let’s kill ‘em with kindness.

Maybe we get USDOT leadership that actually writes road-funding rules that are so complicated and then starves them to death anyway.¹⁰ Stall every project. Let’s kill ‘em with process.

Maybe we make the case for increased defense spending since a fully-employed, fully-mobile, mode-choiced population that’s not dependent on foreign oil is actually a national security issue. We did this twice before.¹¹ Let’s give DOD another $50 billion but mandate a partnership with DOT. Why not try?¹² Let’s, uh, not get killed.

But we also have to and we have to stop following the playbook ourselves. The first thing a politician is taught when engaging with the press is to never accept the premise of our opponents’ argument if it’s just going to make their point for them. It’s time we adopt the anti-anti-mobility playbook, but call it something different because wow is that bad.

1. Whether we’ve correctly identified our context-sensitive problems is a whole other story. I can say that some places are much further along than others. Generally, we can proxy hedonic principles like the number of bike commuters, number of pedestrian fatalities, and number of jobs accessible by mode, as markers of a successfully programmed community. The deeper challenge, and one I hope to help fix one day, is how can these principles and wins be effectively shared across and up-and-down governments. Federalism is very tricky.

2. We do.

3. This is a ridiculous scenario and goes against all journalistic principles. But a smart analyst seeks all angles before dismissing the dumb ones right away.

4. There is zero moral standing for claiming this but who watches the Watchmen anyway? If I claim the moral high ground and point out the hypocrisy, I’m dismissed as the wrong type of person and ignored, chastised, and feathered.

5. Exclusive zoning laws, including minimum lot sizes, parking minimums, a ban on multifamily or mixed-use buildings, and more.

6. Here’s what they don’t tell you: most car dealerships are banks masquerading as vehicle peddlers. The amount outstanding on car notes far exceeds both the fair market value or the scrap value of the total amount of cars on the roads. This quote is from my old boss, Beth Osborne, who is somehow more exasperated than I am.

7. This might be the worst quality a person can have above the obviously bad ones.

8. This is a funny thought.

9. As it were, no matter what the British PM says, “drivers” are not a class of people.

10. Oh, you mean, like transit.

11. Railoads then asphalt roads.

12. Except the “military is woke now” or something, so I could see this having a 360-effect and not work at all.