By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
SEPT. 10, 2019 | In our family, it was those children in China that my parents mentioned.
“Eat your peas. Do you know that there are poor, starving children in China that would be so thankful if they had your food, like your peas, to eat? Don’t waste food. Eat up. You are so lucky that you don’t live like the poor starving people in China.”
Perhaps your family had a variation to this, depending on where you live. Maybe you were told about the “poor starving children” in South America, or Africa, or the Yukon, who didn’t have those awful green peas (or broccoli or eggplant) that we were served on our plates. (To this day, we’re no fan of broccoli or eggplant.)
Now that I think about it, I was never admonished to eat my wieners. They disappeared before my folks could think of the Chinese children.
Today parents are telling their children less about food, but more about competition. Not only must children study to improve their grades because “you have to compete with your classmates,” but also “You are not just competing with people in your own school, but all across America, and even with students in China.”
Parents: don’t tell me you haven’t told your children that.
Let’s move from families to Gwinnett County as a whole. Today our county is not only competing with Cobb or Chatham or Cherokee County for jobs, but is competing with Holland or New Zealand, and yes, with China and Korea, for jobs.
We are also competing in another way. We are competing with the way our people get to work. And right now, Gwinnett’s scorecard on mass transit shows a big zero wins, and three losses, as it has turned down improving its links to mass transportation (as defined by MARTA), three times.
That’s why a story out of Phoenix, Arizona needs your attention. The suburban part of Phoenix voted recently to expand its suburban light rail transit system by an unexpectedly overwhelming margin. Look at other areas who compete with us:
- Houston has greatly revamped its bus service.
- Salt Lake City has built a 19 mile north-south line (1999) and expanded transit ever since.
- In Los Angeles, Between 1980-2008, voters approved three transportation sales tax measures for transit and rail.
- But in Durham, it turned down plans for a light rail system, as have Nashville and Baltimore.
Canada also competes with us. An item in Vox Media notes: “Compare, say, Portland to Vancouver, or Salt Lake to Edmonton, or Des Moines to Winnipeg. Culturally and economically, they’re very similar cities, but in each case the Canadian city has two to five times as much transit service per capita.”
So today, while we in Metro Atlanta, but especially in Gwinnett, piddle with the way we need to move people from home to work, or from home to recreation or to a session at the Atlanta Symphony, we show little urgency about this.
Yet if we are to compete with other cities, just in the United States, we must address this issue and move toward having a victory lap with a reasonable solution. After all, we are competing for jobs with not only Phoenix, but Houston, or Shanghai. If we are not careful Singapore, Amsterdam and London will forge ahead of us. They’re the real threats now.
Makes you wonder: do parents in Hong Kong say: “Eat your bok choy! Think of the poor starving American children who don’t have food like that?”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Follow Us