Vaporware Transit

There's a concept in software development called "vaporware": a product that's talked up and used to generate interest or investment but never actually exists or was never nearly capable of what was promised even if it technically existed in some form (the eternal "we'll add that feature in six months").

This concept can be applied more broadly, and today I want to discuss it in terms of mass transit and the promises we make about our cities, with three examples: two from my own experience and one famous recent example.

1. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

The most obvious recent example of vaporware in transit is Elon Musk's hyperloop, which promised immense speeds across long distances with untested technology and a proposed system all across the US.The article I just linked to is from 2018; it's not hard to miss that the fast supposed pace of implementation has not occurred. Instead, it appears that the idea was floated mainly to try to derail the California High Speed Rail project (a project that has had enough of its own problems that one might be tempted to add it to this list without Musk's help). 

What Musk's company (The Boring Company, and admittedly decent pub) has built is a tunnel for cars under Las Vegas. But it's not exactly beating high speed rail in speed; it's for cars and doesn't do a ton of actually useful stuff. I'm not saying all hyperloop ideas will eventually resolve into the current Vegas Loop. But I am saying that trains are, by now, a pretty robustly tested technology that works. Opting for or even considering untested or undreamed-of alternatives to replace trains is both an inefficient approach (just build the trains faster!) and leads to disappointment and a sense that major transit investments are all vaporware themselves. 

We don't need to find new solutions for transit; we need to actually build the ones we already know about 

Just build the dang train.

2. Don't let entrenched interests stand across progress yelling stop

My personal current White Whale of transit is the Quad Cities to Chicago rail link that's been unable to move forward for fifteen years despite allocated federal funding. That funding has been extended again, but there's no actual progress to report. Unlike the Hyperloop, this is tested, well-known tech. There literally used to be a train in the 20th century! But Iowa Interstate owns the tracks and isn't interested in playing ball.

This is unacceptable; we don't let private companies own the interstate highway system and prevent its use (some private companies do operate toll roads, but the government doesn't let them shut the road down). This project should under no circumstances have turned into vaporware. It's not a hard lift in terms of technology, engineering, or construction. It's expensive -- but the money has been allocated (and letting it delay only makes it more expensive both in inflationary terms and in terms of infrastructure decay). I'm not advocating for going back to blowing up whole neighborhoods for the highway, but when a specific corporation stands in the way of improving its own right-of-way to avoid having to let it be used for public good, perhaps that is a thing we should not support. 

Just build the dang train, again.

3. If you build it, be willing to operate and fund it

Finally, let us visit Rochester, NY, which ran a ferry to Toronto, ON, Canada for...generously...two years (it did not run most of that time). There were major problems with how the project was organized and implemented and, quite honestly, I am not saying that it was ever going to actually work. 

But dang, I wish it had; having lived in Rochester for four years (well after the ferry ceased operations), direct access to Toronto at a speed that (due to geography, going across rather than around a lake) was faster than driving would have been wonderful. A game changer. All those things the city was hoping for when the project was pitched.

Again, it was horribly mismanaged. But abandoning a project not expected to be actually financially sound for 2-3 during year 2 is a failure of financial planning and political will. Transit takes time to find its audience, and become part of people's lives. If you build an ambitious project, stick with it long enough to get to that stage, or any project can become vaporware.

Also, maybe write your contracts more carefully and vet your operating company if you farm it out. Just saying.

Vaporware is bad for individual projects, but it's killer for the idea of transit overall, especially in a country like the US that has seen a lot of transportation infrastructure either not built or decayed over the years. We need to avoid these pitfalls--overpromising with untested tech, letting projects linger unbuilt, and abandoning them before they find their users--in order to make sure we don't let promising ideas fall by the wayside. Or more positively, so we can have better transit for us all.