Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. ... Each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
-- From President Barack Obama's inaugural speech
The days when we were told America would be all right if we just kept shopping are officially over.
Our new president's speech may not have a signature line, an "ask not what your country can do for you" brush stroke, but Mr. Obama said things that made sense and have been a long time coming.
"Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.''
We can all buy that, though none of us can say exactly what it means. Rare is the thinking citizen who doesn't have an idea of how to remake America, which means our national makeover has thousands of interpretations.
The real work of government comes not in soaring oratory but in the dry verbiage and dollar signs in legislative bills and construction contracts. As we fix a country reeling from the broken bubbles of easy credit and trickle-down mythology, one thing isn't changing:
We're still paying for the work of the nation with borrowed billions, with the national tab already through the roof. So weaning ourselves as much as possible from foreign oil has to be central to any stimulus.
Here in Pennsylvania, that means "a culture change under the heading of smart transportation," Pennsylvania Department of Transportation Secretary Allen Biehler said last week. The top priority won't be projects that keep us tied to our oil addiction and further strain our resources for highway maintenance, like completion of the Mon-Fayette Expressway. Mr. Biehler needs to fix more than 8,500 miles of poor, existing roads and 6,000 structurally deficient bridges, and he's looking to add mass-transit options, too.
People are beginning to get that we can't have it all. A week ago, I asked Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato whether his transportation priority would be a light-rail link between Downtown and Oakland or completion of the Mon-Fayette to Pittsburgh and Monroeville, and he answered, "I think we need 'em both."
That won't do with a president who says we need to make hard choices. Yesterday, he said if he had to pick, he'd opt for the light-rail extension in Pittsburgh.
That should be an easier sell in Harrisburg and Washington. Mr. Biehler said, "I don't know where $5 billion comes from" to complete the Mon-Fayette. There had been talk of innovative public-private partnerships, but those proposals were made in the hallucinogenic easy-credit days of the recent past. Mr. Biehler doesn't foresee enough volume on this road to provide the toll money to pay for itself.
So he's looking at light-rail projects and inter-city passenger rail, at giving people more travel choices, at "making investments that will produce good sustainable benefits." He'd like to help the household that makes six car trips a day cut that to four.
Allegheny County seems to be in a good position. In 2007, Mr. Onorato's "transportation action team," a committee of government and business leaders, put together a wish list that includes light-rail along Second Avenue to Oakland and a more ambitious extension to Pittsburgh International Airport.
That airport line would be far more costly and far less important than an Oakland-Downtown link; less than 20 percent of airport passengers and employees are coming from Downtown and Oakland, the Post-Gazette's Joe Grata reported in 2007.
But the county has right of way along Second Avenue. It could extend a line from the First Avenue T station, Mr. Onorato said, above the Eliza Furnace Trail or on the land of the Pittsburgh Technology Center, and then run up Panther Hollow to the universities and hospitals of Oakland.
Getting the federal money remains a big "IF," but a rail link between Downtown and Oakland -- the second- and third-largest job centers in the state after center-city Philadelphia -- is surely one way to chip away at oil consumption.
The new president promises "to spend wisely, reform bad habits and do our business in the light of day." He asked us all to hold the government to account, to make sure that, in closing the distance between rhetoric and reality, government doesn't go off the rails.
Are we ready to make hard choices? Let the arguments commence.
First Published: January 22, 2009, 5:00 a.m.
