WSJ op-ed: Transportation projects are a 'defining characteristic of declining cities'

Transportation projects like the ones being proposed by President Obama are a central characteristic of struggling urban cities, a Harvard economic professor said Friday in an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal.

Edward Glasser, an expert in urban economics, suggests that declining population numbers in Detroit show that Obama and other advocates of building more railways are pushing in the wrong direction.

"The defining characteristic of declining cities is that they have plenty of infrastructure relative to the level of demand," wrote Glasser, who is also a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City.

"Detroit didn't need the People Mover — an expensive monorail that glides over empty streets. And today, a Light Rail project is being pitched by the federal government, which seems to have learned nothing from the failures of past follies."

The administration has offered federal grants to cities for high-speed rail projects, but several Republican governors, most notably Rick Scott of Florida, have rejected the funds.

The White House's focus on transportation projects is a holdover from another era, Glasser argues.

"The White House's fondness for transportation spending may reflect the fact that projects like the Erie Canal had great value when moving goods was near impossible," he wrote. "In 1816, it cost as much to move goods 30 miles over land as it did to ship them across the Atlantic."

Now, however, Glasser said, the projects' costs outweigh their benefits.

"Neither Detroit nor the U.S. suffer from any profound transportation problem that can only be fixed with vast federal spending. The country doesn't need more People Movers," he wrote.

"It needs unleashed, educated entrepreneurs — and they will only be held back by taxes being funneled into fanciful make-work projects in a futile attempt to fix our economic malaise."

Glasser notes that Detroit's population declined 25 percent in the last decade, according to recently released census figures.