CHICAGO—As he prepares to leave public service, Gabe Klein, Chicago's commissioner of transportation, came to the Urban Land Institute's Fall Meeting on Friday morning to give some final thoughts on how building a 21st Century infrastructure can impact the world of real estate.
As a former director of transportation in Washington, DC, and former Zipcar executive, Klein has spent years trying to created alternatives to the traditional American reliance on private automobiles. However, he has become skeptical of the grand plans for region-spanning high-speed rail. For one thing, “when we talk about high-speed rail, we talk about 125 [miles per hour],” unlike the European, Japanese and Chinese, who frequently build trains that travel well over 200 miles per hour.
“A big project like that, you can't get anyone to agree on anything,” said Klein, at least in the US. He does remain hopeful that private industry, especially in states like Florida where many people take trips of around 200 miles, will tackle more limited projects that won't involve massive public expenditure, but instead be designed to generate profits and stand on their own. “If you focus on profitability, you give people better service” and “if there's no profit at the end of the day you lose.”
“There are a lot of old technologies that are coming back,” he added, and he encouraged everyone to think creatively about using these old ways. For example, he said plans are afoot to use seaplanes to transport people directly into downtown Chicago by landing in Lake Michigan.
He pointed to, and was proud of, the attempts by the administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel to expand transportation options in the underserved areas of city, such as the multi-billion dollar plan to expand the south side's Red Line train from 95th to 130th St. “The real estate around these nodes is going to go through the roof.”
But to make US cities truly attractive and livable, he believes, America's love affair with the car will have to cool a bit. “I think it's going to take awhile,” he noted, especially since powerful elements in the US, such as the Tea Party faction, will fight attempts to build alternative modes of transportation. “They're in a completely different space,” he said of the Tea Party.
Another difficulty building these projects comes from a certain disconnect between those in government and those in the private sector. Many in the private sector, he believes, are not accustomed to responding to government proposals, a difficult obstacle since public-private partnerships are key to building new, sustainable infrastructure. He would like to see private sector actors come up with solutions that were simple enough so that those in government did not have to study them for years. And one of the best ways to do that is to have those in the private sector take jobs in government, and vice versa, so that the two sides understand one another better.
Still, Klein hopes that private business helps support alternative modes of transport such as bicycling, and said these can help transform markets, especially urban ones, and attract new residents. He recently traveled to Minneapolis and saw its extensive urban biking trails and the phenomenon of BOD, or bike-oriented development. “There are bike shops and coffee shops and it's all springing up around the trail.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
