MASS TRANSPORTATION

So says B. Bruce-Briggs, a policy analyst who is consultant to a wide range of clients (from the Hudson Institute to the Canadian Ministry of Science and Technology), and who is author of the forthcoming book Cities on the Way Out. His excellent article on mass transportation appears in the Summer 1975 issue of the quarterly The Public Interest. Examining the problem from many aspects (including energy and pollution), B. Bruce-Briggs finds collective transportation superior to the automobile only in strictly limited cases.

Only a tiny number of Americans use commuter railroads, which are practically limited to Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and New York; only because the last is the US media center has the image of the railroad commuter registered on the national consciousness. Anti-auto bias is an intellectual fashion, says the author, and going back to the 1920's, he traces the past history of hostility to the automobile - one of the great blessings of mankind, fulfilling the ancient dream of individual mobility for everybody, not just the rich.

"Several of America's leading social commentators," writes BBB, "have said that public sums expended on the automobile demonstrate the power of the 'highway lobby.' This is rather like saying that Social Security reflects the power of the 'geriatrics lobby.' In fact, expenditures on highways reflect the response of the polity to public demand... The huge government expenditures on highways are a monument to the responsiveness of government to the popular will."

9-75/2

In comparing the reliability of the automobile with collective transportation, the author considers the role of strikes: "The economic costs of the interplay of transit unions with vacillating political leadership, growing subventions, and a resigned public are apalling. . . No one has a coherent idea of what to do about this, save to pour in more money."

We believe Bruce-Briggs has incorrectly analyzed the initial (and continuing) difficulties of the new BART transit system in the San Francisco Bay area; but otherwise his 31-page article is well worth a visit to your local library. (Subscription to the quarterly is $7.50/year from Box 542, New York, NY 10011.)