Transportation issues have always been a source of frustration for anyone who has experienced poverty. In a country dominated by the automobile for the past century, it is a large obstacle for anyone trying to make it to work on a weekly basis on top of accessing the support services that a low-income person needs to survive.
Cars are expensive - from their initial cost to purchase, to the high-priced gasoline they consume, to the burdening cost of repair. For someone making minimum wage who has a family, the cost can be crippling. For many in poverty, they simply cannot afford the cost associated with an automobile.
If you aren't driving around to get to where you need to be, then you have to rely on either friends or public transportation. Public transportation, while strong in some major cities in the country, is completely unreliable in Michigan. In our cities, at most what is available is a scattered system of buses which do not even serve all the relevant population areas.
Anyone who's ever ridden a bus to get someone knows how difficult their routes can be to traverse. If you don't live near a route, or if that route does not lie where you need to go, you can forget about an easy travel. It could take 3-4 hours a day to reach what a car would feasibly do in 30 minutes.
What we need to mend the struggles of public transportation is a system of both light rail and high speed trains. This would make it easier for any residents, regardless of income, to access the resources around them. It would also be environmentally friendly, reducing pollution and increasing mobility of the region.
In the Michigan Business Review, writer Nathan Bomey asks if a high speed train could be in Michigan's future.
In fact, the Windy City is the top thief of Michigan's top college graduates, according to Ann Arbor-based think tank Michigan Future.
Which is just part of the reason why he believes high-speed rail could provide a significant boost to the region. If young people could visit Chicago regularly, why not stay in Michigan after all? Not to mention the fact that high-speed rail could introduce a wave of new people to the Detroit region.
For now, though, high-speed rail is still largely a fantasy for most of the country. The sheer amount of investment needed - tens of billions of dollars for hundreds of miles of track and trains - is daunting.
But the Obama administration's commitment to enhancing the nation's transportation infrastructure and the inclusion of $8 billion in high-speed rail funding in the $787 billion economic stimulus package are promising steps.
Rick Harnish, executive director of the Chicago-based Midwest High-Speed Rail Association, argued that Michigan needs high-speed rail.
"I don't see how Michigan remains in the global marketplace if it doesn't link itself to fast trains with Chicago," he said.
Please add Kalamazoo to the list of High Speed stops in this senario. For a city who prides it self in being the transition from Chicago to Detroit, this would reap millions for the economy. So what's holding all this potential economic development back?
Ultimately, the barriers to high-speed rail present significant obstacles, though. Freight carriers own most existing tracks, for example, meaning Amtrak trains have to yield to freight trains during routine trips.
Harnish said high-speed rail investments would require the construction of new tracks to avoid freight trains as much as possible and renegotiation of deals with freight companies.
We need to make these forms of transportation a priority again. It simply isn't feasible to rely on hybrid car development to push the future - the roads are crowded and potential slower than a train anyway. The development of trains in Michigan would help both its poverty residents as well as those well-off.
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