by Brian Yanity, insurgent49

     Imagine waking up in a future Anchorage where you can buy all the groceries you need, go to your favorite restaurant, or visit your favorite park without using your car ... an Anchorage where clean, quiet electric buses and streetcars make up the bulk of commuter trip.  Is this just a wild daydream, or necessary for the city’s future existence?  The up-front benefits of public transit, particularly electric-powered public transit, are obvious: easing of rush hour traffic, less pollution, and more energy efficiency.  After all, about half of the energy used in Alaska is for transportation.

     What got me thinking about this topic was a conversation I overhead recently while eating in a midtown Anchorage restaurant.  Someone at the table behind me was complaining as a People Mover bus went by on Benson Boulevard: “those passengers pay $1.50 to ride, while the rest of us taxpayers subsidize each ride another 5 to 7 dollars”.  This individual then said how many times he had seen buses running in this city with almost no passengers in them. Another person sitting at the same table chimed in about how public transit doesn’t work in Anchorage, and would not be necessary for another 50 years.

     To be fair, most of the SUVs I have seen around this town have only one person in them, with room for up to eight more. It is true that People Mover rides are subsidized $5 every ride, but the gasoline each driver pays for at the pump is subsidized even more.  On a nationwide basis, the true economic costs of oil include the military imperialism to secure foreign reserves, the domestic reserves extracted on public land, tax exemption, environmental destruction caused by oil production and refining, not to mention air pollution from burning all that oil.  Taking into account all the ‘externalities’ that producing one gallon of gasoline requires, the true price would be around $9 or $10 a gallon.

     The People Mover annual operating budget is around $10 million, 75% of which is footed by municipal taxpayers.  That $10 million represents less than 5% of the municipality’s $330 million annual budget. The capital costs for new road construction projects in Anchorage are expected to be $1.4 billion over the next 20 years, or $70 million a year.  One might take the ‘cynical’ approach and claim that a lot of this money is payback to the powerful construction-industry lobby.  Buses do use these roads as well as private vehicles. However, taking a glance at the ratio of private automobiles to public transit vehicles in Anchorage gives you a hint at who is really being subsidized.  Expensive-to-build areas such as Hillside and low-density housing served by expensive streets are paid for by all citizens of Anchorage.

     In the rest of the United States after World War II, widespread suburban development happened only because of federal subsidy (federal highways and VA home loans).  All across the contiguous 48, the interstate highway system was almost entirely subsidized by the federal government.  To this fact, most car drivers would explain that building roads and streets is a necessary public service that benefits all of society.  Public transit should be also treated as a public service, not unlike the water or sewer system, and publicly owned utilities are a tradition in Anchorage.  Ignoring all the government subsidy of the private automobile, about 15,000 freedom-loving people move by People Mover daily.

     Subsidy of public transit is also great way to transfer wealth from the rich to the poor. As a university student, I am very proud that my free rides on the bus are fully subsidized by the generous people of Anchorage.  University and college students in this country are very under-subsidized, and my small bus subsidy is a way getting back at this systemic injustice.  The community economic benefits of public transit include the fact that many low-income workers get to their jobs this way.

     In the future, Anchorage housing could be planned in such a way to maximize use of public transit.  Anchorage was built and laid out in the era of cheap oil, an era which is soon coming to an end.  Alaskans will continue to pay just as much for gasoline as the rest of the country, because Alaska refining capacity just does not have the economy of scale that the big ones have in California, Texas, or Louisiana.  Opening ANWR is not going to make our gasoline any cheaper, not even in Anchorage or Fairbanks.  As oil production is a global market, the price of gasoline here in Alaska is largely dictated by Middle Eastern oil supplies, not North Slope production. 

     In Anchorage, as in many of the cities of the western U.S., a “frontier boomtown” ideology has guided urban planning or lack thereof.  Market “logic” dictates that the short-term profits of real estate agents and developers are more important than the long-term interests of society as a whole.  Other west coast port cities such as Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco have been forced to plan for some kind of rational yet dense development.  We should follow their example for a more sane future.

     What can we do about the Anchorage transit system? To start, rush-hour transit service in Anchorage needs to be increased to every 15 minutes to attract drivers out of their cars, and studies need be done on possible future public transit options such as an electric light rail system.  Get involved with your neighborhood community council, and write to your representative on the municipal assembly, who is more likely to listen to you than any of our congressional legislation.  Check out the announcement below about the Anchorage Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) from Andre Camarra of the Alaska Center for the Environment:

     Now is the time to speak up so your opinions are included in the draft plan, to be released May 25.  Comment online to planners at LRTPComments@ch2m.com

     Let the planners know that you want them to follow Anchorage's adopted comprehensive plan and build a northern city with:

- less traffic congestion
- more housing and commercial development in the central business district so more people can walk to work.
- major investments in street cars, commuter rail and buses so families are not forced to drive so often,
- linked sidewalks and trails that are maintained all year around,
- transportation investments that improve the city, not divide neighborhoods and bring more pollution to the city.

Contact Mayor Begich and the Assembly about your priorities.

Mayor - http://www.ci.anchorage.ak.us/Feedback/mayorfeed.html
Assembly - http://www.muni.org/feedback/assemblyfeed.html
More info can be found on the project website at: www.muni.org/transplan/