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NARP Reaches Out at Green Festival
Friday, October 16, 2009
As part of our ongoing effort to spread the word about our work and its timeliness to receptive audiences, NARP exhibited a booth at what is billed as “the nation’s premier sustainability event.” The Green Festival, now in its seventh year in four US cities, was held October 10th and 11th at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington. Thousands were in attendance over the course of the exposition, which featured over 350 exhibitors, primarily vendors of a variety of Earth-friendly products.
NARP’s booth featured large posters showing how unsustainable the US transportation system is, proclaiming trains’ environmental benefits, and giving reasons for becoming a member of the Association. Copies of our brochures and the August/September issue of our newsletter were on hand and were well-received. Eleven NARP members from the Washington area volunteered to staff the booth. Each enjoyed the chance to talk to others about passenger trains and why more of them are needed, and partook of the Festival’s exciting atmosphere. Twelve passers-by signed up for membership, while a host of others said they would join online.
While the Green Festival was a high-caliber event with a significant price tag, there are festivals and fairs in almost every community in the country that welcome nonprofits to host a table, tent or booth either free or at low cost. We encourage those of you who would like to improve NARP’s publicity and boost membership to participate in these kinds of events. Our staff will help you get prepared, answer your questions, and send you materials to display and hand out.
Spending an afternoon sharing with others the reasons why you are committed to bringing more and better passenger trains to the US is both fun and satisfying. Small organizations get bigger primarily through word-of-mouth. Anything you can do in your spare time to advance our cause is greatly appreciated.
Click “Read More” to see a few photos of NARP’s Green Festival volunteers and our display.
—Malcolm Kenton
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: activism, advocacy, booth, display, environment, festival, green, membership, outreach, sustainability, table, volunteers,Yes, We Can Invest More in Trains While Managing our Public Debt
Thursday, April 21, 2011
When concern about the size of the federal deficit is high, many people ask whether it is prudent to make what seem to be very large public investments in passenger trains. We think it is, and here’s why:
- Current federal spending on intercity passenger trains represents less than 10 minutes’ worth of federal spending. Eliminating every non-security function of the federal government outside of entitlements and interest would have reduced the deficit by $666 billion last year, not even half the deficit.
- Strengthening urban and intercity public transport helps avoid expenditures on highways and aviation and reduces the cost of social problems by making life easier for people who can’t or don’t want to drive. Doing so has the dual benefit of making for a healthier population through increased physical activity, and decreasing transportation’s impact on the air, water and land we all depend on.
- High Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail grants are merit-based, while highway money is distributed on the basis of a formula that actually rewards inefficiency, that is, overdependence on cars. The more a state’s residents drive, the more they contribute to the federal Highway Trust Fund through their gas taxes, and thus the more the state can spend on highway construction and maintenance.
Expanding and improving the national passenger train network gives the nation a sounder fiscal position for the future by facilitating our society’s adaptation to three mounting challenges that will come to define the early 21st century: inexorable population growth, the inevitable continued rise in the price of petroleum (on which much of our present standard of living is founded), and the related threat from worsening climate change.
If we are left without a world-class railroad network, we will all be stuck with longer and costlier commutes, leisure trips will become unaffordable to all but the wealthiest, and the effects of climate change (decreased agricultural output, more frequent severe weather, etc.) will become more pronounced more quickly.
We can’t afford not to ramp up investments towards a bigger national network of fast, frequent, reliable, modern passenger trains.
—Ross Capon and Malcolm Kenton
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: federal deficit, infrastructure investment, national debt, oil prices, passenger trains, population growth, sustainability,
A Field Guide to False Anti-Train Arguments
Thursday, January 12, 2012
If you’ve been reading this blog, getting NARP emails, or following the debate surrounding passenger train development, you’ve surely heard the worn-out, cliched barbs that defenders of the status quo repeatedly throw at proposals to ramp up investment in trains. If you’ve sometimes found yourself at a loss for short, effective, fact-based rejoinders, then you’re in luck.
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| Image: PennDesign |
Our partners at the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) have developed a handy document called Inventory of the Criticisms of High-Speed Rail with Suggested Responses and Counterpoints. These can be applied not just to “true” high-speed rail projects like California’s, but also to as-important undertakings to make existing trains faster, more reliable and more frequent.
The common theme found throughout the document—one on which NARP and all our partners have been focusing our rhetoric—is that, while rail projects may look costly now, it will cost a lot more to accomplish (or leave unaccomplished) the same mobility and economic development goals later by other means later on. Remember: the purpose of transportation systems is not to be profit centers on their own, but to serve as the the bloodstream that keeps the rest of the economy going.
Criticism of passenger train development tends to focus on the fact that it won’t be profitable and will require ongoing subsidies. The returns on investment in modern passenger trains won’t be seen in the form of profits for their operators, but rather in the form of increased economic activity and profits for other businesses in the areas the trains serve—not to mention a cleaner environment, a better quality of life, and easier, safer, more affordable mobility for the people living in those areas.
Posted by Malcolm Kenton
Tags: apta, balanced transportation, cost of inaction, economic development, federal transportation investment, high-speed rail, passenger train development, sustainability, train opponents,©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website
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