Carroll Commencement
Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > September > 23
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Editorial: Amtrak keeps hope alive for 3C trains
Last year, Gov. Ted Strickland ordered up a study by Amtrak about how Ohio’s biggest cities might be linked by passenger trains: how long it would take to build a system; how much it would cost; that sort of thing.
It was a complex study to do, because the state is a maze of ancient, modern and incomplete tracks and rights-of-way, owned by various freight train operations.
The report came in last week, in time for the state to put together its application for federal stimulus money, which is due in October.
Whether the study comforts the proponents or opponents of train travel is a matter of debate.
It projects a half million people will use the train in the first year. Seems like a lot, but that amounts to 1,300 persons a day, in a state of 11 million.
It posits six and half hours for a trip from Cincinnati to Cleveland. Some people find that laughably long, compared to car travel of 4 to 4½ hours, nonstop, depending on weather and who’s conducting your car.
But most train travelers seem likely to take shorter trips, where the time differences don’t seem so big. Anyway, there are always trade-offs in choosing modes of travel. With trains, there’s more travel time, but you can put the time to better use.
Moreover, the idea is not to replace cars, but to add an option for people who don’t have a reliable car, don’t like to drive, don’t want to use the gasoline, have trouble dealing with a spike in gas prices, or whatever.
The study puts forth a train schedule that it emphasizes is “preliminary.” To the relief of some, it imagines more than just one or two trains a day. (See page 13.)
But day trips would have to be scheduled very tightly, at best.
And the schedule doesn’t allow for, say, going to a ball game in Cincinnati from Dayton. But that’s the sort of thing that can be addressed later.
The study pegs the cost of the 3C line (Cleveland to Cincinnati, via Columbus and Dayton) at more than $500 million of federal money, plus state and local expenditures on depots and such. It says the system would need a subsidy of $17 million a year after that. Almost no train systems support themselves.
But supporters say trains can spur economic development. Officials in Dayton and Springfield heard last week from a developer from Maine who talked about a line from Boston up to Portland that has revitalized a town in between. Robert Martin spoke of $7.2 billion in construction sparked by the train.
How that experience might translate to Ohio is not clear, particularly given Amtrak’s belief in limiting the number of stops.
Springfield, where officials have already been working on getting a station built, was not included as a stop in the Amtrak study. It still has hopes of being included eventually. It has won the attention of Columbus.
Perhaps the best case for passenger trains is the nature of Ohio. The study notes that Columbus is the largest city in the country, other than Phoenix, that has no train service. (Cleveland and Cincinnati have middle-of-the-night connections between Chicago and the East Coast.)
Moreover, the state’s cities are too close together for air travel to be attractive, except from Cincinnati to Cleveland.
The Amtrak report will not keep some people from seeing the 3C project as just another dubious big-government spending project. But spending some money that results in short-term construction jobs has something to be said for it as the nation faces an expected economic recovery in which the unemployment rate may be the last statistic to improve.
Moreover, trains can be part of a turnaround for Dayton. This community stands to benefit more than most, being the smallest metro area on the proposed line that would have service in two directions.
You know how those commercials for certain anti-cholesterol drugs say they can help if combined with good diet and exercise? Similarly, if trains are combined with other approaches to economic health, they can help lower Dayton’s cholesterol.
Permalink | Comments (6) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Martin Gottlieb, Ohio government, Transportation
Martin Gottlieb: Gay rights vote foretells more about Lehner than Blair
When state Rep. Terry Blair, R-Washington Twp., voted for what was commonly known as a gay rights bill last week, a lot of people were surprised. He says in a letter on the page opposite this one that they shouldn’t have been. But, after all, no exceptions had arisen before to his identity as a conservative.
And the word does have a certain meaning. A time will (and should) come soon when conservative politicians are generally on board for basic gay rights. (This legislation was about equality in housing and jobs.) Already many conservative politicians and thinkers believe their movement should downplay the issue, rather than be seen as looking for a fight.
But when it actually came to a vote in the Ohio House, only five Republicans favored the bill, with 39 against.
Blair’s vote raised an immediate question in some minds: Has he had some experience that causes him to see gay rights differently than other conservatives? Does he have a gay friend or loved one?
That, after all, seemed to be the explanation when then-Vice President Dick Cheney broke with other conservatives and supported even gay marriage. Cheney’s daughter is a lesbian.
No, says Blair. Nothing like that. He just consulted his conscience (and his priest).
OK. So are there other surprises in store? Does he tilt to the liberal side on other social issues? Answer: He couldn’t think of any. Certainly not abortion. Not gay marriage. No.
One might note, however, that he isn’t an opponent of gambling, which some might want to count. In fact, he owns race horses. (He recused himself from a vote on the state budget because he felt the slot-machines-at-racetracks issue cut too close to home.)
The south suburbs of Dayton supplied another of the Republican renegades on gay rights: Rep. Peggy Lehner, Kettering. That, too, must have surprised people: those who assume she’s a staunch conservative because of her past as an anti-abortion activist. She’s been president of Ohio Right-to-Life. It’s a commitment of long standing.
But the vote actually gave her a chance to underline — and perhaps finally get across — a point she’s been trying to make for some time: That she’s really not the hard-charging conservative ideologue some might assume. She has presented herself as relatively moderate and pragmatic and eager to work across the political aisle. In 2004, she lost a fairly close election for the Montgomery County Commission.
If 5,000 of the 135,000 people who voted for her opponent, Debbie Lieberman, had voted the other way, she’d have won.
Observers had to wonder if her reputation on abortion had hurt her. After all, being against abortion presumably didn’t get her any votes beyond those which any Republican would be expected to get.
(On the other hand, her activism might have caused some people to contribute money to her. She outraised Lieberman 2-1.)
Meanwhile, for some Lieberman voters, abortion might have been a symbol.
Until the 1990s or so, the local Republican Party had a moderate wing. Support for abortion rights was the hottest issue identifying the moderates. Such regular election winners as Chuck Horn (a county commissioner and state senator) and Vicki Pegg (county commissioner and recorder) were members of that wing.
By this decade, that wing was routed within the party. Well, maybe some old Horn and Pegg people — nursing a little grudge — went for the Democrat in 2004.
Lehner has always seemed to be saying that Horn and Pegg supporters might be surprised how much they had in common with her, if they could get past abortion.
Since arriving in Columbus last year, she hasn’t exactly been a rebel. But the best bet is the gay rights vote says more about her general posture than about Blair, another first-termer.
Both Blair and Lehner report that the reactions they’ve received to their votes have been muted and have leaned a bit toward the positive. Maybe that’s the biggest news here: that the issue isn’t generating much heat.
Permalink | Comments (11) | Post your comment | Categories: Civil Rights, Columns, Martin Gottlieb, Miami Valley Politics
