The Distance is Finite but the Attitude is Beyond Measure

ePluribus Media ParisNews Bureau

PARIS, FRANCE: As the crow flies, the capitol of Ohio and the capitol of France are separated by over 4,000 miles, most of them over the Atlantic Ocean. In my fourth visit to Paris this week, I’ve found that the distance between these two cities is far more than just miles.

 

There is a vast distance of attitude about how societies should work. From France’s commitment – like that of other European countries – to free universal health care (still a pipe dream for America despite the strong language from Sens. Obama and Clinton to make it happen during their presidency) to the power of public unions (40,000 teachers took to the streets recently to protest increasing years to retirement) to understanding that government is both a supplier of basics (nuclear power, inexpensive and reliable, is owned and operated by the central authority) and a protector of the public interest. This attitude is light years from red-blooded Americans like tax-cutting advocates like Grover Norquist who want government to “get our of my life” as long as  he's doing great but want it to ride to his rescue when the powers of the “marketplace” start eating him alive.

In America everything is about liberty, especially about freedom to worship as you please, which is why everyone came here in the first place. In modern day France, liberty is clearly a co-equal with fraternity and equality, two fundamentals of society rugged American individualists often treat as if they were red-haired step children.

Right outside the door of our Paris apartment, located directly across from the School of Mines on Blvd. St. Michele and a short jaunt to the world famous Luxembourg Gardens once home to the French Senate, stands a globular green goblin of sorts that gobbles up recyclables from Parisians, from plastic to cans to glass. These green waste receptacles are placed throughout Paris, a world-class city making a world-class commitment to “greening” itself and its residents by rewarding them for green behavior and penalizing them for carbon behavior.

Columbus, home to state government, has spent years dithering on delivering on its recycling program. Mayor Michael Coleman, now in his third term and who worked with me while I was the Director of Neighborhood Business Development for the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce in the mid 1980s when he was the legislative aide to then-city councilman Ben Espy, has tried unsuccessfully to convince his taxpayers to recycle their recyclables.

In a recent article by The Columbus Dispatch on the city’s recycling program, it cited statistics of only 12,514 households out of a potential pool of about 301,788 houses that have signed up for curbside recycling at a cost of about nearly $100 per year. In Columbus, as the article points out, main trash pick up is free (paid for by tax dollars) with recycling being an add-on charge. Some suburbs wrap the cost of recycling into trash pick-up, which they charge for.

In France, like it is in Italy as I recall from my trip there in 2006, trash pick up is performed on a regular basis – sometimes daily -- by unionized workers who use all sorts of mini vans and sweepers that criss-cross giant urban areas day and night.

Just to keep matters in perspective, greater Paris has nearly the population of the entire state of Ohio. So managing the disposal habits of that many people living in a relatively small area (the concept of density is big here) is both a science and an art form. And unlike Italy, especially Naples where the Mafia is a real force and where trash his piled up to such heights that the European Union is threatening to fine the country if new prime minister Sylvio Berlusconi, the billionaire media mogul, doesn’t crap a whip on his southern paisanos to stop looking at the garbage accumulate and make both the size and odor subside. After all, it’s having a market effect on the fresh mozzarella cheese Neapolitans so love, and that's bad for pizza there and here.

Coleman has not done well with recycling. But maybe he can do better with public transportation, another black eye for American cities taht generally have poorly performing and costly bus service operations that can only stay in business with hefty subsidies from Uncle Same or local taxpayers. Fees alone are inadequate. The same is true for Coleman’s Columbus, where the Central Ohio Transit Authority limps along from year to year, looking to make ends meet by either reducing routes or laying off personnel. This year, with gas and fuel costs way up, ridership has also increased, as the price of gasoline has turned once car-happy drivers into users of public transportation.

Here in Paris, where the cost of fuel in US dollars would make most Americans faint outright, the plethora of public transport, from the Metro to the train to buses and now to the affordable and cool bicycles known as "Velibe" are a joy to behold and use. Paris Mayor Delanoe, reelected recently, has plans to distribute upwards of 20,000 Velibes to anyone with a credit card (if you don't return it in 24 hour you are charged 150 Euros or about $224 USD). 

From my active days as a small business advocate with the Columbus Chamber and through my management of the public-private policy formulation think tank called the Neighborhood Business Roundtable,  which helped spawn an urban development agenda whose multi-layered, interacting working parts won two national awards for design and execution and that lead the charge on turning a formerly rundown, dilapidated inner city neighborhood into the tourist destination now known as “The Short North,”  transportation was in integral part of the plans for the area between the convention center and The Ohio State University.Debates over where to place public parking lots so gawkers and gastronomes alike could bring their car Downtown to live it up and have fun was integral to urban design and function.

When I and others who made contributions of their own to the embryonic stages of the area traveled to Kansas City to make our final presentation for the All-America Cities Award program, we saw the concept of street cars at work. They provided both a flourishing touch and a practical means of moving people through targeted neighborhoods. Yet some 20 years later, Columbus is still delinquent on a practical and affordable system that can catch the eye of residents and tourists alike and stay out of their pocketbook at the same time.

Paris on the other hand is rich in Metro stops, train routes, buses and the Velibe program. France, like the rest of Europe, has bicyclists galore, whereas in America, bicycling is mainly for kids who are biding their time until they can own a car. From business types wearing office gear to young women wearing short skirts and racing down a street with a cell phone in one hand and goodies in a handle-bar basket, children of all ages are using bicycles to make their way around the city. The unwritten rule here in Paris is "no harm no foul," which means you can do almost anything as long as you don't hit anyone. This would not be tolerated in the USA, where street police would pounce on your for a minor offense. So what seems like chaos to Americans who are afraid to get out side the lines on the street or in life, is just normal competition and good judgment to your average Parisian.

My one-week Metro pass – which also allows me to ride on buses and trains within certain zones – cost about 16 Euros or about $24 USD (using $1.50 USD to the Euro). Friends changed USD into Euros at a bank today and paid $1.71 for the privilege to do so.

Using my high-speed French Internet broadband connection, second only in speed to that of Japan (America ranks about 23rd out of the 30 advanced nations in Internet speed in a BBC survey), I cruised through my milk run of 25 Ohio blogs and found one at Buckeye State Blog, written by Nick D, apropos to my life in Ohio last week and my life in France this week.

In it Nick D makes a good point, one long overdue for many of us, but one whose time has come even for the under-40 crowd. Mr. D laments that for the past 60 years “America has largely eschewed investing in public transportation like commuter rail, light rail, and subways in favor of more and larger highways extending deeper out into the exurbs.” How right you are Mr. D.

For our entire history, America has been outward bound from central cities to the vast expanse of our endless suburbs, where the miles between urban problems, such as crime, poor schools and other factors, also served as a psychological barrier or sorts that justified the move by families with children to the outer limits of urban areas.

But what they realized is that without a car, it’s tough to lead a normal life like any Parisian can who doesn’t have a car but who has enough modes of affordable transportation to choose from that not having a car isn't a bad decision. Cars are expensive in the USA and more so in Europe, where a Brit told me today that gas in London, England is closer to $12 USD per gallon,  given the strength of the British Pound). Gasoline in Paris, in USD, is about $8 per gallon, even though they pump in liters here. Added to the high cost of gas is the challenge of where to park a car. With nothing like the flat parking lots that dot Downtown Columbus like a patchwork quilt of bad decisions, putting a car, even a small one of which there are many here in Paris, is a real problem. Space is precious here, which is why density is critical.

But believe it or not, one can live comfortably an entire life time without owning a car. But cars here are different, especially in size. My theory is that cars in Europe are built to fit the cities – old, with narrow lanes first designed for horses and carriages -- while US cities are built to fit American cars, which are bigger then ever and take up even more room. Having spent months in various countries in Europe, I've only seen one Hummer. It may be the symbol of American might in America, but in France its a symbol of what's wrong with American thinking and behavior with respect to living a car-centric life at all costs.

Density, a new word for Americans, is key to urban living here. Whereas urban sprawl, as it is in Ohio and every other state in the Union, is par for the course. If Horatio Alger were alive and living in Europe, he wouldn’t say “Go West Young Man,” he would say “Build Up Young Man,” which turns density into the driving force behind public transportation.

As Coleman rolls out his new, costly street car plan for Columbus, I find it ironic to say that as much as I'm an advocate for public transportation, he's got the cart before the horse here. But that’s been how Columbus works its ideas out. For decades and decades, no one really lived in Downtown Columbus, except for street people and residents of the YWCA. In recent years, however, developers sought and received "incentives" to spur them to build in a market where they didn’t build before because they didn't see a marketplace for Downtown living.

The modus operandi for Columbus is to see something another city has done – research triangles, connecting buildings with walkways, trash burning power plants, city center malls, flower shows and so on – and spend time and money shaking down the usual crowd of donors – The Limited, Worthington Steel, Nationwide Insurance and others – to juice up public support for it -- maybe donate a few bucks along the way to leverage more public dollars from the city, county or state -- so design and engineering can proceed, which then becomes a reason to continue the project even if it makes no sense or the costs get out of whack.

We saw this game plan work in the 1980s and beyond when professional sports teams and their cherished ballparks became the hood ornaments that cities like Columbus and Cincinnati and Cleveland all turned to their local legislative delegation to get money for. First comes talking a good game at home about community pride and the need for taxpayers to sink precious public dollars into the interests of private companies, then to convince the public to make further investments in the form of capital improvements that further feather the nest of private owners.

Coleman’s street car program has moved along at the pace of real cars on Downtown streets, which is to say not very fast. Light rail has been talked about for at least a decade with nothing to show for it. What is really needed is a multi county financing commitment to COTA, so public transportation can become the link that makes the region work. But that won't happen. Coleman is proposing that only businesses within certain limits of the proposed street car route pay for the cost of the system build out. With numbers soft and vague as they are and always have been when big projects are proposed so as to keep taxpayers in the dark about the true, long-term costs, it was only a matter of time before those numbers were picked over like the bones of a freshly baked Thanksgiving turkey.

Columbus has a habit of drawing patterns in the clouds and then bashing them about for years before either some corporate titan like Les Wexner, founder of The Limited, comes around and puts up a few dollars or a group of crabby, rebellious citizens mount a drive to put the issue on the ballot and let all Columbus voters have their say on it.

So while Columbus knocks about for years wondering why it can’t build a very short light rail line or even a super snazzy street car line, like the one I saw in the Detroit airport whisk people from one end of the 2.5 mile length to the other, the City of Lights is getting ready to deploy as many as 2,000 two-people electric cars by 2009 that will be the car equivalent of their Velibe program. If you peddle or go electric, you'll be smiled on; whereas if you’re a carbon junkie, life won’t be as easy for you, especially on the cost side of it.

As Mr. D from BSB put it:

“The reason the rising price of gasoline hurts so much is that, with it, 60 years of poor planning comes home to roost. 60 years of people like my former economics professor Bill Bogart driving the transportation conversation who never anticipated that the day would come when demand for transportation fuels would outstrip supply, and that energy-intensive methods of transport like cars and planes that are sexier than passenger rail would become unaffordable. 60 years of white flight and bigger McMansions further from work. 60 years of moving away from neighbors of a different color, rather than working together. 60 years of allowing inner cities to rot while tax dollars were funneled to build new roads, fire stations, water lines, and schools out where the wealthy were building new homes.
Of course it goes without saying that if it took us 60 years to get into this mess, its going to take more than a few months to get out.”

We have certainly been fiddling while Detroit burned us. Adding more irony to our dire situation, the big oil companies are laughing all the way to the bank. Had the price of gasoline been raised to include a portion that would help fund more mass transportation, we would have been better off for it. But as it is, we get nothing from what we pay at the pump while Exxon and the desert oil sheiks smile.

And of all the forms of transportation I see here in Paris, the one used by more than anyone here are their feet. The vibrancy, zest and excitement of the day is just getting out and walking, miles and miles maybe, but walking. The upside of that is this: the only fat person I see each day is me looking at myself in the mirror in the morning. There are no two-ton people moving around in golf carts like we see in the states in nearly any supermarket, from Wal-Mart Supercenters to Meijer’s or Kroger’s. The two French grocery stores I found yesterday have thin isles with no massive Hummer-sized Sam’s Club carts to push around. Thin carts for thin isles, pushed by thin people. In general, Europeans value taste over quantity, a lesson Americans have yet to learn.

John Michael Spinelli is a former Ohio Statehouse government and political reporter and business columnist. He now serves as the OhioNews Bureau Chief for ePluribus Media Journal. Find ONB archives here. If readers have a news tip or story idea about Ohio politics or government, contact the OhioNews Bureau at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it