Conservatives should embrace transit (and bicycling), but don’t

Public transit enables the close-knit neighborhoods that social conservatives desire, argues David Schaengold. Yet most Republicans oppose public transit expansion (as do many conservative Democrats), with few prominent exceptions like Florida Rep. John Mica and the late Paul Weyrich. Why is this? Schaengold writes,

Sadly, American conservatives have come to be associated with support for transportation decisions that promote dependence on automobiles, while American liberals are more likely to be associated with public transportation, city life, and pro-pedestrian policies. This association can be traced to the ‘70s, when cities became associated with social dysfunction and suburbs remained bastions of ‘normalcy.’ This dynamic was fueled by headlines mocking ill-conceived transit projects that conservatives loved to point out as examples of wasteful government spending.

Of course, just because there is a historic explanation for why Democrats are “pro-transit” and Republicans are “pro-car” does not mean that these associations make any sense. Support for government-subsidized highway projects and contempt for efficient mass transit does not follow from any of the core principles of social conservatism.

Schaengold goes on to refute the canard that highway-oriented development is the free market at work. In fact, highways are one of the largest big government spending programs, and American’s choice to build them instead of transit was almost entirely a governmental decision.

Furtermore, argues Schaengold, “Pro-highway, anti-transit, anti-pedestrian policies work against the core beliefs of American conservatives in another and even more important way: they create social environments that are hostile to real community.” They promote impersonal big-box retail over community-building small business, prevent communities from sharing the work of raising children by forcing parents to spend most of their time driving children from place to place, and turn neighbors into strangers.

These arguments apply equally to bicycle transportation as to transit. Cyclists, like pedestrians, move at speeds conducive to seeing the window displays in small shops and are more likely to treat other people as human beings instead of as obstacles to speed around, and represent a free market of people making individual transportation choices. Yet cycling has become even more a Republican symbol of liberal yuppiedom than transit.

As Stephen Miller points out, in this week’s Republican response to the President’s radio address, Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) repeats Eric Cantor’s inaccurate month-old claim citing “new bike racks in Washington, DC” as an example of wasteful stimulus spending. Promoting the idea that real conservatives drive big muscle cars and mow down liberal walkers, bikers and subway riders may play well with a shrinking segment of the Republican base, but if conservatives were really serious about recapturing a sense of community engagement lost in the last century, they’d rethink this knee-jerk reaction against any form of transportation with less than 250 horsepower per person.