The Bottom-Up Revolution Is…Bringing the Benefits of Passenger Rail to Utah
Mike Christensen is the executive director of the Utah Rail Passenger Association, where he works to educate the public and policy makers about the value of investing in passenger rail. He also serves on Salt Lake City’s planning commission, as well as the boards of the Utah chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism, the Utah Transit Riders Union and the national Rail Passengers Association.
Christensen joins Tiffany Owens Reed on this episode of The Bottom-Up Revolution to discuss the benefits of passenger rail, including how it can lead to more productive land use, as well as his work advocating for better public transit outside of metropolitan areas.
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Tiffany Owens Reed 0:07
Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the bottom up revolution. I'm your host. Tiffany Owens. Read This is the show where I interview ordinary people who are working to improve their cities, making them more safe, more resilient, more beautiful and a bottom up fashion at strong towns. We like to call this show sort of the case study show, where you can just hear from from people who are putting strong towns principles into action. And sometimes they're not even members of strong towns. Sometimes they don't even know about strong towns. We've just heard about the work that they're doing. And we really love to capture those stories so that if you're listening to this and you've always thought, wow, I really want to be more active in my community, but I'm not sure where to start, or I feel intimidated, or just feels too big, or I feel like I'm not enough of an expert. Hopefully these conversations will help you bridge some of those confidence gaps, so to speak, and help you see that you probably have everything you need to begin a conversation in your city, to begin advocating for ways that your city could be better. Today I'm joined by Mike Christensen. He is executive director of the Utah Rail Passenger Association, where he works to educate the public and policy makers about the value of investing in passenger rail, specifically focused on connecting more towns in the state of Utah. Mike is a member of the American Planning Association, the Congress for the New Urbanism strong towns, the Association of pedestrian and bicycle professionals and the national rail passengers association. So I think we can safely say that he loves cities and he loves trains. He currently serves on the board of the Utah chapter of the Congress for new urbanism, on the board of the Utah transit riders union and on the board of the national rail passengers Association, he gave up his car in 2017 and has it looked back since? So transportation trains, all of that are it's one of my favorite topics, so I'm excited to bring Mike gone and talk about the work that he's doing. And Mike, I think you're one of the biggest fans of this podcast, because you always repost and retweet everything that I put on the show or the columns that I've been writing, so I always feel I always feel validated. Thank you for that. Welcome to the show. I'm looking forward to talking. I have a feeling I'm gonna have a hard time staying on script, because I have so many questions about trains and passenger rail and the US. So I'm sure you've learned a lot about this very complex topic, and hopefully we'll capture some of those insights for our audience. So to get things started, you're the executive director of Utah passenger rail Association. Tell us what a day is like in the life of Mike Christensen in this role, what? What keeps you busy? Maybe say like a week, you know, like, what? What keeps you busy in this role. But can you just make that a little bit more specific for us? What are you actually working
Mike Christensen 2:45
on? It varies widely from day to day. That's one. One reason why I enjoy doing what I do is because things are very different every day. There are times when I am busy because I'm traveling, going to a conference or something like that, or, for example, over this, this Christmas holiday break, I was frantically working to put together a one and a half million dollar federal grant application and but, yeah, sometimes things are pretty quiet, and I look for opportunities to, you know, come on podcasts and talk about things in general. And I also one of the other things that I do, I have been serving on Salt Lake city's planning commission for almost four years now. So I have a variety of different things that I that keep me busy.
Tiffany Owens Reed 3:54
So the spirit behind your organization? Well, the organization that that you are working for Utah Rail Passenger Association. I noticed on the website, you also have this emphasis on educating the public and policy makers about the value of investing in passenger rail. What does that look like? What does the education side look like? The conversation side? Is a lot of that happening like locally in your city, or is that more happening like on a state level,
Mike Christensen 4:22
specifically, what I've been working on is more on a state level, we are very blessed here in Salt Lake City and in the Wasatch Front, which is our greater metropolitan area of about two and a half million, to have pretty good, relatively good public transit and a good rail system. We've got over 80 miles of commuter rail and over 40 miles of light rail, and even have two miles of street car and recently added. We're up to a total of about 16 miles of bus rapid transit, but what we lack is having good public transit that extends beyond our metropolitan region into the surrounding rural areas, and that's really where I've been focusing on and I, a decade ago, went to grad school and got a master in City Metropolitan Planning. And the big focus of my research and my professional project for my degree was looking at how we could expand inner city passenger rail across Utah and into neighboring states in order to connect up the whole state, rather than just our metropolitan area. And so I've spent a lot of time reaching out to communities throughout the state and everybody, especially at a local level, is very interested, regardless of of what their their political leanings are, because they realize that it's it's something that will allow people to get into Salt Lake City for, for, you know, whatever reasons, whether it's it's going to to an NBA game watch the Utah Jazz play, or whether it's, you know, they've been diagnosed with cancer, for example, and need To come to one of the medical centers for treatment. Yeah, they people realize that there's a need to travel and that there needs to be a more diverse options, because right now, you're basically stuck with having to drive everywhere. But
Tiffany Owens Reed 7:03
So would you say a part of your job is helping policy makers understand that there's interest and demand for other options? Exactly.
Mike Christensen 7:12
Yeah, a lot of times, especially when I talk with county commissioners and members of the legislature, they don't really understand the fact that not everyone can drive. Typically, the example that we use is there's usually about a third of the population that's too old, too young, too poor or too disabled to be able to drive themselves, and so there's definitely a need for it, but a lot of times, the policy makers aren't aware of that need. It's not really visible to them, and they feel like those needs are already being met because they because they can drive and because they we have good highways for them to drive on. And unfortunately, that's something that often gets overlooked. And I I'm just looking at the the next question on the list, which I think is a good one to go naturally, like, how did I how do I come to love trains well before we, before we jump
Tiffany Owens Reed 8:31
there? Because I know you have a robust backstory. What I want to know, can you share a little bit about seeing that we're just a month or two into 2025, I'm just curious, what are do you all have, like, a couple of specific goals that you're hoping to accomplish at rpa, Utah, RPA this year, this specific year?
Mike Christensen 8:49
Well, unfortunately, given the new administration in Washington, everything is very chaotic right now. So right now, everyone is in this greater realm of transportation planning, is trying to figure out exactly what's going on, and it's been very frustrating, because I mentioned before that I had worked over the holidays to put together a million and a half dollar federal grant application, and now we have no idea whether that funding program is even going to continue. And there's actually a whole lot of programs, a lot of funding out there that's been allocated, that hasn't actually been given to the recipients yet, and unfortunately, we don't know exactly where that's, yeah, where things stand, so it's a bit chaotic. But the goals that I. Have been trying to work on was, well, hopefully, if I were to have gotten that federal grant that would have brought in a lot of resources for technical assistance to Utah to be able to solve, or work, to at least work towards solving the leadership problem that we have around not just passenger rail, but also freight rail in Utah. And as an example of that, I a couple weeks ago, put together a spreadsheet of all of the grant applicant or grants that were awarded through the Federal Railroad Administration that came out of the bipartisan infrastructure law. So there was in the bill itself, it outlined 66 billion. Of that 66 billion, there was 36 billion that Congress actually approved, and by the time that of the inauguration, the Federal Railroad Administration had awarded just a little over 28 billion. And when I looked at all of that and and put together a spreadsheet of it was almost 500 awards in total, and broke it down by state, we came to realize that Utah was one of the worst performing states in the nation in terms of actually being able to take advantage of that funding, and it frankly was like really embarrassing that Utah wasn't able to make more applications for that funding, and I really blame the lack of leadership and awareness. So in a way, it like really validated the whole need for my role as a nonprofit doing advocacy around this. It really validated that role. But it's still been very frustrating because people still aren't paying enough attention to the fact that basically, out of a, you know, $28 billion of awards, we were only able to get 12 and a half million, and that put us almost dead last on the list in comparison to other states. So looking at like how we should have performed, we probably could have gotten more than 100 million looking at some of our how some of our peer states performed. And a lot of that is it's not just things for passenger rail projects, but it's also things like projects to eliminate railroad grade crossings. That's where a lot of those, usually five to 10 million awards, were involving eliminated grade crossings, which that can really be something that's extremely positive for a community, for example, if there's freight trains that sometimes stop and, you know, block crossings for extended periods of time. In fact, one of the stories that I point to, and I can't remember where in the country it occurred, but there were people in the community that were, well, it was very much like a strong towns type of approach where they realized that sometimes freight trains would completely cut off their community for hours at a time, and they noticed that it was impacting emergency services because they couldn't get fire trucks or ambulances around in a reasonable amount of time. And one of the people that was very adamant about it, and was able to get on the news and complain about it, was very worried that, you know, it was going to end up costing someone their life, and it actually happened that this guy's father passed away from a heart attack, and because of a freight train, the ambulance could not get to him in Time, and that, you know probably likely played a role in him passing away. So the to me, it's it's really bad when you reach out to policy makers with issues and saying, hey, you know here's here's funding that we. Could potentially use to mitigate an issue, and yeah, when, when they don't take advantage of that, that is a huge frustration. So yeah, that
Tiffany Owens Reed 15:11
makes sense. Um, so we'll talk a little bit more. I'll definitely ask you a little bit later about the whole funding side behind trains. But for now, yeah, I'd love to go ahead and give you a chance to share a little bit about your backstory. So can you share with us how you came to love trains, love cities, and how you found this line of work?
Mike Christensen 15:31
A big part of it is having had the opportunity back when I was in my formative years, having to be having the opportunity to have visited Germany twice, I went there for a month as an exchange student the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, and that was something that was a very powerful experience for me as a 17 year old, to be able to travel partly around the world and experience firsthand that people really weren't all that different, and it gave me a big preview into public transit. And then two years later, when I was 19, I went back as a missionary, and was there for almost two years, and primarily got around by riding bikes and taking public transit The whole time, and it really allowed me to challenge some of the assumptions that I had been kind of indoctrinated with as an American, growing out where the expectations were always like the quintessential American Dream, where you live in a single family home, and you drive everywhere. And I saw first hand that people, lots of people in Germany, were not living in that same manner. They were living in apartments and walking and taking transit everywhere. And in a lot of cases, you know? Well, they definitely weren't suffering any any quality of life. And, in fact, a lot of cases, they were experiencing a much higher quality of life. So that planted a lot of seeds in my head. And later on, well, I I came home and got a bachelor's in geography with the focus on GIS and but still had, like lots of interest in in transportation planning and in city planning. And so later on, I decided to go and do the Masters in in City Metropolitan Planning. And at the same time was was becoming very involved in passenger rail advocacy, and got involved with the national rail passengers Association, and had a leadership role that eventually turned into me serving on the board of directors, and that has led to other opportunities like I one of the big things that came out of The bipartisan infrastructure law was instructing the Federal Railroad Administration to do a comprehensive study of how to improve Amtrak's long distance routes. Amtrak currently operates 15 long distance routes that crisscross the country. These are the trains that operate on routes that are longer than 750 miles, and almost all the trains have sleeper cars and lounges and dining cars, and you know, and travel overnight. The problem is that a lot of there's a lot of gaps in that long distance system, and a lot of places, especially in the West, that aren't really served as well as they should be. So I was I was privileged to be one of the participants in this study, and over a two year process, we were able to to work with with the consultant team that the FRA had hired, and came up with a really good study that fills in a lot of the gap. And the network. And the only downside is that it's going to take a lot of advocacy work to actually see that vision come to fruition. So since, since this is an audio only podcast, we can't pop up the maps to do the comparison, but hopefully you can drop those maps into the description and definitely put a link in the study. And so I think a big thing coming out of this, and one of the reasons why I wanted to be on the podcast, is to just reiterate the fact that we've done this, this comprehensive study. And the metrics from that study, if somebody really wants to take a deep dive into it and look at the study, it's going to serve a whole lot more of the nation and give people a much better, much better access to being able to travel by train?
Tiffany Owens Reed 21:02
Yeah, so, um, one question that I've I, I am a huge fan of passenger rail. I would love to see more passenger rail. I once took Amtrack across country. Um, how many years ago was that? I don't remember, but I had a, I had a journalism job at the time, and I had, I was going to do this whole assignment. We had a bunch of cities planned out, and I was gonna get off in each city and do some reporting about this topic in each city. And then I also was going into, after that project, I was going into a year of more travel. So I was like, You know what? I'm just gonna sell my car. So I drove from North Carolina to California, sold my car at Carmax, which is so wild now that I'm telling you this, I can't believe it did it, which involves having to get, like, a loan to cover, like, the portion that Carmax Would it give me so I could pay off the car. Also crazy that I did that. But then I bought one of these tickets from Amtrak, where I think it was like, well, work, bought it, but it was like $600 and as long as you got out, you've had so many stops, like, you could get get off so many times. There was a bunch of rules about it, but it was a much better deal than buying a ticket for every single city that I wanted to get to. I don't remember how many cities I made it to. I do remember getting getting a really bad case of bronchitis, but I also remember, yeah, it was just really cool being able to hop on, hop off. You know, I had connections in each city that would come pick me up. I'd do my little reporting, get back on the train. I was disappointed that it was not nearly as romantic and stylish as the Cary Grant movies I'm trying to think of. I just watched this Cary Grant movie about, oh, what's it called? Most of it happens on a train. And, you know, everyone dresses so well, and then you get caught up in a murder mystery with this dashing, handsome man, and you're like, running all over the state, doing all kinds of stuff. And I was convinced that was going to be my summer. It was not. I was mostly cured up with bronchitis. But all that to say I Yeah, big fan of passenger rail. I think it would be great. Um, if, if more people had that option. Um, now that I live in Texas, I especially feel that because you live, you know everyone, if anyone's listening to the show for a long time, they know I'm always talking about living in Texas. But, you know, I live in Waco, which is two hours south of Dallas, two hours north of Boston, about three hours north of San Antonio, I think four hours north of Houston, maybe, maybe have my Texas math, right? Depends who's driving, um, and I've always thought, man, there's so many opportunities for and, you know, we have friends in each of these cities. And I've always thought, how cool would it be to be able to hop on a train, go see a friend for a weekend? You know, come back. But that's also that's just not an option, like, because we refuse to drive. It's like we don't want to put the miles on our car, we don't want to pay the gas, we don't want to deal with the parking we don't want to deal with the traffic. So I always think about all these foregone opportunities for travel, for exploration, for seeing friends, because, because we don't have another option other than using our car, and we're on one car family. So even if I wanted to just take a trip to see you know that would be that would mean leaving my husband without the car, which is just not feasible. So it's interesting, living in places like Texas that are so big that I think would really do so well with passenger rail, because people don't want to get on a plane from like you couldn't even get on a plane from Waco to like Houston, I think you'd still have to fly. We have a regional airport, but I think it's still technically to get a good deal. I feel like you'd still have to, like, go drive up to Dallas to fly down. Like, you know, it just has those weird distances between cities. But all that to say, when I think about trains, I think one of the questions that maybe people ask when you look at America, you look at the transportation landscape of America, you see all these cars, all these roads. You know, we've already, we've already invested so much money, infrastructure and land technology into building a very car oriented world. So I think some people might say like, okay, so, but. Why, like trains are cool, but why, you know, like, you know? Why? Why try to, like, use resources in a way? Why try to resurrect passenger rail and a world in a country that's so dominated by car so I wanted to value that question to you. How do you answer that question? How do you help people think about trains. How do you answer, sort of the the, so what question or the, but why question, so to speak, for something that I feel like for so many people, even if they love trains, this can just feel like such an uphill battle that it's just not even worth it. Yeah, and
Mike Christensen 25:35
I think I find myself having to more or less kind of explain what a train is in this context a lot. And I think a big part of that is, well, you know, if you're a strong towns, you know, listener, then you are probably already aware of the term Moto, Moto normativity, or also known as car brain, where it's like our entire lives have have kind of devolved into worshiping cars, and we we have forgotten all of the other modes that that we can hopefully have available to us. And I think I also want to coin another term, which would be Aeron normativity, which is kind of the same thing, but in a context of flying, where we have kind of resigned ourselves to always expecting flying to be a terrible experience, which it it often is we often feel like we are being herded like cattle on the planes. And so I think we've basically forgotten that there should be other options. And I kind of look at it too in a way. Well, you know, strong towns listeners are definitely familiar with missing middle housing as a concept, and I think that what we have is kind of missing middle transportation, in a way in America, because we have, well, and I really look at flying and see it as basically being public transit, because we are all getting onto a shared vehicle, which is also heavily subsidized. Don't actually think about it that way. But so yeah, we we often can understand like public transit in the context of going long distances on planes or going short distances on local transit. And we kind of miss this missing middle of inner city, trans transit options. And that is really a role that public transit, or that, excuse me, that passenger rail is, is really well designed to fill, and especially for those distances where it just feels too long to drive. But it, on the other hand, just is too short to really have flying make any sense, and especially since short distance flights really are super inefficient, because you expend a whole lot of fuel just to get up to cruising altitude, and then it's time to land. So that's really the role that that we're looking for passenger rail to fill. And one of the things that people often forget about passenger rail, and I think it's really like the arrow normativity we we always experience flying is basically going from point A to point B, and very rarely are you ever on a flight that makes more than one stop. And so we forget that trains have this magical ability to be able to have multiple stops along one journey, and that really makes it very powerful and and cost effective, because it really doesn't cost a whole lot in terms of operations or capital to add more stops along a route. And a really good example that I like to point to, I will. I will point to Amtrak's California Zephyr, because that's my favorite Amtrak route, since it's the one that serves Utah, and the route is over 2000 miles. It goes from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay Area and back. And when I. I mentioned that to people, they often question why anyone would want to ride a train for almost three days, when you can just fly between Chicago and the Bay Area and Well, the reality is that it's actually very few people that actually ride the train its entire length. And the power is that I forget exactly how many stops are on the route, but I think it's it's about 35 stops. Well, when you multiply out all of the different combinations, there are over 1000 different station pairs that are served by one train. And that means that you can efficiently be able to serve a whole lot of of city pairs that you wouldn't be able to serve any other way. Well you you could with, like inner city busses, and people can always make those trips driving, but it definitely would not make any sense to to provide that same connectivity with airplanes, right?
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:11
So you mentioned this concept of, was it modal normativity? I think is what motor
Mike Christensen 31:19
normativity? Yeah, that's, the geeky term for car brain.
Tiffany Owens Reed 31:26
Something I was thinking about as I was prepping for this conversation, and even as you were talking, was just this idea that because of the car saturation of the US and the level of car dependence. I think there can be this illusion that driving is what people want to do. Since people are driving, This must be what they want to do. I had dinner yesterday with for it was like a birthday dinner with two teenagers, and one of them was complaining about needing more repairs on her car. And I just kind of, I was like, Yeah, doesn't this make you wish that we had trains? And she was like, honestly, I wish I could just walk. And I think, like, one of the problems with the whole conversation about investing in transit is the way that motor normativity sort of perpetuates this illusion that because of the sheer volume of people driving, This must be what people want, and we don't have a good way of capturing people's interests and alternatives. Like, there's no good way to capture, like, if you could, I don't know how you would even do this. Maybe AI can do it. You know, if you could, like, scan, I don't know, some people QR code at a stoplight and be like, Would you rather be driving right now? Or some kind of like, like, do you really want to be driving right now? Some kind of survey, you know, where it's like, how many people in their car actually driving would be interested in doing something other than driving? Exactly?
Mike Christensen 32:50
I have, I have a couple thoughts on that. One, it reminded me, well, I I've owned a town home for almost 20 years now, and I'm right across the street from a 711 and I remember, like, more than a decade ago, I had a roommate who was so experiencing car brain, so much to the fact
Tiffany Owens Reed 33:14
I feel like I know what's gonna happen. Yeah, he
Mike Christensen 33:17
would walk all the way to the back parking lot where his car was parked just to drive across the street to the 711 and he would do it because he like, oh, I don't want to walk all the way across the street to the 711 but he was walking farther to just get to his car than he would if he Just walked across the street. And so it's in one we did a little introduction over zoom a couple days ago. And one of the things that that, that you mentioned, was that one of the things that feeds into car brain is the fact that if you've already bought the car and paid for the insurance, and you've got it maintained, and you've got a tank full of gas, you've all already got that sunk cost into it that just encourages you to use that mode that much more often. And I, as someone who I ditched my car eight years ago, and it I have a different perspective, because I don't have that sunk cost. So it, I feel like when I'm evaluating which mode to use for a particular trip, that it's on a much more even footing, and so I am very unlikely to go and rent a car or even do Uber or Lyft if my E bike or my transit pass, can you know is sufficient for the trip I need to make. So I think part of. But as if we can start to shift people out of those sunk costs, getting people to have fewer cars per household, even if we can't get them all the way to no cars per household.
Tiffany Owens Reed 35:14
Well, and also I just, I keep coming back to this, like preference capture problem, you know, because I think it's a very big problem, like there's no meaningful feedback loop to really understand what people want. So thinking of your work where, like, you're trying to help policy makers see that even if people are driving, that doesn't mean they want to, even if you you know, if people own one car, two cars, it doesn't mean they want to. And it doesn't mean that just because you're seeing them drive at any particular point in time, that every trip they think of making will actually get made, right? And I think this, I think the the whole message behind passenger rail is like we're opening up options for people to take trips they might not. They probably maybe they wouldn't have taken otherwise, right? And also giving giving people a chance to like, express a different preference, which I feel like you saw in that long term study with Amtrak, with just the the engagement with people who were interested in alternative options. And even despite the sunk costs, it seems like there is latent demand for a different way of getting between multiple cities, specifically, passengers Exactly.
Mike Christensen 36:25
Yeah, we're seeing that because Amtrak has slowly been expanding service, and as it expands service and provides more opportunities for people to take the train, the overall ridership of Amtrak keeps going up, so there's definitely a latent demand and but yeah, there's, there's this assumption among a lot of the policy makers, and even, like I remember as a grad student being in A transportation planning class where every week we would have a guest speaker, and one of the guest speakers that we had was the head of planning for the Utah Department of Transportation, and he told us that, oh well, our focus is on Driving, because that's what most people prefer. And I raised my hand, and I was like, can't remember exactly what I said, but I got some cheers from my fellow classmates, but I basically said that this is very much like the owner of a fast food chain saying, well, we only offer fries as our only side, because that's what we see, that everyone prefers, but it's the only option. And that is kind of like the thing that underlies what has been, yeah, like the whole theme of of transportation planning has been this, this false assumption that everybody prefers to drive. And what we tend to see as we expand options is that people really want alternatives, and yeah, and but it's really hard to overcome that inertia and actually get things moving in
Tiffany Owens Reed 38:23
the road. It's also, I think it's also hard to even for people who say they would prefer to be able to walk bike or take public transportation or passenger rail. I think, I think the myth has gone so deep that that it's moved categorically out of this is a trend. This is like a decision I'm making as a consumer, between a consumer and a provider, and I can make a different choice to like this is a cultural rite of passage that I just have to do, and I'm just gonna have to absorb all my frustration and all the waste and all the foregone opportunities, because that's what you do as an adult. It's become like a it's gone from being, I don't even know the language for describing like, the way we have just been sort of hijacked to think about transportation. I think you understand what I'm trying to say. Maybe you could say it differently. But there's just, there's like a mind game that's being played. I think, on people where they on a day to day basis, they get frustrated by traffic. They get frustrated by part having to constantly look for parking. You know, they get frustrated by so many of the side so many of the side effects, so many of the consequences of car culture. And yet they don't feel free to translate that into a different consumer op, consumer choice, different consumer behavior, and I know part of it is because they can't. In some cases, there is no public transportation, there are no bike lanes, there is no good infrastructure. They couldn't get to their job without their car. But just the fact that it never, I think for so many people, it never dawns on them that this is a actual choice. And. Even if it even if they got as far as just seeing like, how the system has been ripped against their ability to make a different choice, that I feel like that would even be a good outcome, even if they realize like, wow, this is a total, free, total choice, except I've been deprived of options, and I can't really do anything different right now. But I think so much could help if people just realize like, this is not like wearing clothes you don't have to, you know, it's, it's, it's categorically different from that. It's the same thing as deciding if you're going to get tacos or sandwich for lunch, right? And, and I know that, I know that's, that's a limited, limited metaphor. But I I think there's something categorical, categorically misleading that's happened with cars in our culture, to get people to think that despite how, how much it's depleting them of resources and freedom, that fundamentally this is something they just have to do, and they have to also get their kids to do it
Mike Christensen 40:59
exactly. And I remember when I first got rid of my car, having a friend say, well, like, oh my gosh, how are you going to get groceries now? And I realized, well, his whole frame of reference was the fact that he goes to Costco once a month and, like, totally packs his trunk full of food and, like, he couldn't wrap his head around the concept of, you know, going to a grocery store a couple times a week and only getting, like, one one bag, yeah, and, or, you know, one of the things that well, even before I got rid of my car, I was already having lots of stuff delivered by the big company with the A to Z logo we're not gonna mention, but like that which
Tiffany Owens Reed 41:48
shall not be mentioned. Yeah,
Mike Christensen 41:49
it's, there's, I think the problem is that, well, when we see this in housing too, because it's like, you know, everything revolves around single family homes in America and the way people think, and it's like we tend to get in this habit of thinking that there are only certain ways that our needs can be met. And it I'm going to use an example from well, I did another podcast on Friday where I'm I'm still single, I'm 47 I'm also a member of the predominant religion here in Utah. And so it was an episode for a podcast about being single and Mormon. And one of the things that I was talking a lot about my transportation experiences and the fact that once in a while it is hard trying to date if you don't own a car, and it's not because of the actual transportation, but it's like the social stigma of like, oh, you know, if I am asking a woman out and she's like, Oh, this guy who doesn't own a car is asking me out, well, is it because he's unable to drive, or is he too poor to afford a car? And so it's like, I realized that a lot of actually owning a car is not about transportation, but it's more like signaling your status in society depending on, like, what type of car you can afford and And often it's like a projection of your personality it's
Tiffany Owens Reed 43:44
funny that you brought that up, because I remember, when I dated my now husband in Texas, I remember feeling actually kind of suffocated by how everything had to be oriented around the pickup and the drop off, you know. And I remember missing just being like, hey, I'll meet you at this park, and we'll go for a walk, and then I'll walk you home. Or, hey, let's meet at this just the, I guess for me, I actually like the independence of, you know, within the dating process, of being like, I'll meet you there instead of have, you know, because I didn't have a car in Texas, I had to be picked up if we were going anywhere, and then dropped off. And I didn't, I didn't, wasn't my favorite thing. And it just got me thinking about, like, you know, I feel like dating in New York City has to be a little bit more magical because of all the walking you can do exactly, and like, all the like, things you can stumble upon together, versus, like, I'll pick you up, we'll go to this place, I'll take you back. And there's nothing like, really. There's not really much to do in between the specific destinations, right, besides talk and the car, which I guess is supposed to be romantic. I didn't find it very romantic, but,
Mike Christensen 44:47
yeah, that's my
Tiffany Owens Reed 44:48
take on the relationship between transit and dating. I think dating while walking is better. Maybe I'll do something with this dating while walking. Yeah,
Mike Christensen 44:56
it's it's a weird thing. And my. My experience has been that actually taking the date on the train ends up being a much better experience, because you can have a conversation and give each other your full attention. Yeah, exactly right. And yeah, yeah, you're not distracted by having to drive. So,
Tiffany Owens Reed 45:23
all right, Mike, we have so many more questions, and we're talking to 45 minutes, okay, but I do want to try. I do want to bring up something else when you're talking about making the case for passenger rail. I asked you about this in our prep chat, our intro chat, but I'm just, I would like for you to share your insights, obviously, in this recording, have you, or anyone that you, that you worked alongside, or that you've talked to or come across in the passenger rail space. I'm just curious if, in the spirit of strong towns, if there has ever been made an argument for passenger rail based on, I'm thinking specifically of like downtowns, of how passenger rail from downtown to downtown could allow for an alternative land use model for a lot of the land in these downtowns that's currently dedicated to parking because, and I know that would mean needing also alternative transportation within the city, not just for people coming from other cities. But I feel like whenever I've thought about trains, public transit, passenger rail. I've always thought, I feel like a lot of people fixate on transportation as its own end, which is fine, but I also wonder if, like, there's a case to be made for passing for any type of transportation improvement as a means to another end, which is more productive use of our land because of how much land gets dedicated to driving and parking, etc. What's your take on that? I
Mike Christensen 46:43
think that's one of the most powerful aspects of passenger rail, is that it can connect city core to city core. And, you know, because unfortunately, well, yeah, we we can't have airports downtown. That just doesn't work. So, yeah, one of the great things of arriving by train is the fact that it's usually bringing you into the downtown, and I think that they're just in general that transit oriented development is one of the biggest tools that we have in being able to maximize that investment, and that's actually something that even though we have a very conservative state legislature here in Utah, we also have a lot of legislators who are real estate developers and so we have actually had bills passed in recent years that have called on cities to up zone the areas around transit stations in order to better make better use of land use around stations and make better use of the investment that was made to build that transit in the first place. And I think that that is a tool that we can continue to really push as as a way to move this forward. And another thing is, one of the things I really like to point out about the FRA is the Federal Railroad Administration Amtrack daily long distance service study, is that all of the routes that are being proposed in it the rail infrastructure, the rails are already there to provide the service. So it's utilizing existing freight infrastructure. So the bulk of the capital costs are just acquiring more trains to be able to operate the service. So in a way, it kind of fits with all of the strong town mantras of doing things, taking the next smallest step forward, because that, using the infrastructure that's already there, is kind of the next natural step forward. And the one downside, I had one colleague A while back, you know, ask, because we were, we were at a conference where we were hearing a lot about things like tactical urbanism and, you know, examples of people being upset that, you know, their neighborhood was missing a crosswalk, and so they went and just painted their own crosswalk. Well, unfortunately, there's not really a way that you can take that small of an incremental step with something like passenger rail. You can't just go out and borrow a train from somebody and start operating service. Process, which I would love to do, but it doesn't work that way. So this is kind of like the next smallest step that that we can take. And in a lot of looking at the research, the Yeah, we were talking about the latent demand for it that definitely exists. One of the really good examples is that the last new route that Amtrak added was, well, the Twin Cities to Chicago that has already been served by Amtrak's Empire Builder, which runs between Chicago and Seattle and Portland. But they definitely saw that there was demand for additional service between Twin Cities and Chicago, so they launched the Borealis service, and that has been hugely successful and very quickly shattered the ridership expectations, and they're currently working on looking at how they can add an additional round trip on that route. Hearing you
Tiffany Owens Reed 51:13
mentioned that makes me wonder if, going back to what we were saying about how the whole transportation ecosystem conversation, however we want to frame it, they lack a meaningful way to capture people's real preferences. I think the other side of this too is that so many people fixate on driving as the fundamental behavior that that shapes people's decision making. But I actually wonder I have a theory. This would be my theory that the reason why there's so much increased ridership around chains has, I wonder if it has more to do with avoiding parking. I wonder if like, it's actually not the like. I just wonder, sometimes I'm like, I feel like, whenever I hear people complain about things related to it's not the driving, I think most people probably enjoy the actual driving, but I think it's traffic and parking that are actually the instigators to looking for other options. So I wonder if, when you see these increases in ridership between cities like this, if a lot of it has to do with a really high interest in avoiding those two negative, negative experiences associated with driving, maybe not driving itself. I
Mike Christensen 52:16
have a similar theory. But from my perspective, a lot of the I think demand is for maximizing screen time, and it's because, like, if I if there's somewhere where I have to go and I've got to drive for a couple hours, it's a frustration around not being able to do other things that I could be doing if I wasn't glued to the steering wheel. Yeah,
Tiffany Owens Reed 52:51
yeah. The opportunity costs, I think people are very sensitive to the opportunity costs around driving, because it's, it's quite high and it's quite it's very real. All right, so let me see where are we in our list of questions. Okay, I want to ask you about funding. So you talked a lot about this at the beginning of the show, and I know that there's a lot of upheaval right now around what's happening in Washington, and uncertainty that's creating around various types of funding for lots of different things. However, some other people have pointed out like, hey, maybe this is a good chance for cities sort of rethink their dependence on federal funding for all kinds of things, including Transportation Innovation. What do you if you had to look into the future with all of your experience? Do you think there's a Do you think there's a way cities can become more independent when it comes to funding? Because I every time I talk to somebody about transportation, even here in Waco, you know, our transport, our local transportation system, is actually not an official department of the city, which is one thing, but secondly, it has a very tiny budget. So anytime I'm like, Oh, what about this? What if we could do that? What if we could do that? You know, everyone, it always comes back to Money and, you know, and then you you think about all these things you can do to improve, it's like, well, you just have to. Just have to go fight for grants. And I'm like, really, that seems like a highly inefficient, super unpredictable, vulnerable way to do anything. So I'm just curious, what's your take on on the long term sustainability of this, like high level of reliance on federal funding for transportation? Do you think there's a future where cities can learn to be more creative and and I know it gets tricky when you're talking about state level transportation projects, because the amount of coordination you probably have to do just probably kill it. But anyway, what's your take on that?
Mike Christensen 54:34
It's Well, one of the big problems that, while I see this being involved in both transportation and land use issues, which are both two sides of the same coin, but I see like one of our big problems in the US is the fact that we tend. Tend to do all of our land use planning at a city level, and we tend to do transportation planning at a more regional and state level. And it gets it makes it difficult overall, because lots of times cities are making land use decisions that aren't really maximizing the efficiency of transit investments. So in the short term, I am not sure if we're going to be able to figure out better ways to fund transit, but maybe in the longer term, and one of the things I would love to see is kind of focusing on value capture strategies like tax increment financing is like the most one that we're in our tool belt as planners, that we're most familiar With, but basically recognizing the fact that when you make a significant transit investment in a neighborhood, that that will increase the overall property values and the values of the land. And so probably one of the best ways to offset that transit investment would be to figure out a way to capture that increased property and land value, but it's it's still something that's difficult to get right, but it's basically the entire like, if you go to Tokyo, that is how they build their entire
Tiffany Owens Reed 56:40
route. Could we make it in a chat conversation about trains without talking about Japan? I mean, to happen? Um, okay, but I also want to talk to you about the I want to ask about, like, the private model I have you tracked what's happening in Florida with the bright line. Because I the reason why I'm saying this is because I'm connecting two things that we're talking about with, like, a there's like serious price distortions related to driving. So much of it is subsidized. You know, people are not exposed to the real cost of driving that it has on our cities, that it has on, even on our pocket pocketbooks. And then we talked about the the preference capture. There's no real way to capture what people actually want to be doing, and there's no way to translate that into actual market realities, right? People say they want this, therefore we can provide this service. That's a very broad, non nuanced way that, you know, markets kind of work, you know, you kind of figure out what people want, and then you you provide that service. So I don't, I don't know if there's an equivalent of like, but I just feel like it's all connected. I think so much of the reliance on federal money has a lot to do with the fact that transportation doesn't really function like a real free market in so many ways, and that there is so much subsidy, so much price distortion, and no real dialog with the consumer. And so I'm just curious if you feel like the private model that we're seeing in Florida with the bright line, if you feel like that does a better job of stuff, at solving some of those problems, and maybe, maybe providing the type of proof of concept that more cities and regions would need to see in order to get on board and say, like, okay, maybe we need to get on board with this, because look at, we'll look at what we're observing. And maybe, yeah, I guess combining that with some sort of value capture, I don't, I don't know if that would work. But what do you think about that
Mike Christensen 58:22
bright line is an interesting example to point to, because, unfortunately, it's kind of a bit of a one off situation. And for those not familiar with bright line. It is a private inner city rail service that operates between Miami fort, Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, and has recently been extended up to the Miami International Airport, or not Miami International Airport the Orlando International Airport. Bright line success. The reason why it's kind of a one off is because there was this underutilized freight line that happened to be positioned right in the most real estate advantageous location going along the Florida coast, and the company that owned that freight line realized that they were basically sitting on a real estate gold mine. If they were able to find the right investors to make the right real estate investments, that they would be able to to use the rail line as a catalyst for the real estate development, and so it's basically a situation where they really aren't making much money, if any at all, on the the actual operation of the train. But it. It is basically maximizing that transit oriented development potential to their advantage. And that's actually
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:00:07
nothing new. I mean, that's how that's how trains and street parts used to work very hand in hand with real estate development. The
Mike Christensen 1:00:14
difficulty in being able to replicate, replicate that model elsewhere is the fact that most of our rail infrastructure, most of the freight lines around the country, are owned by private companies that are not really interested in in replicating that same model. And so basically you'd have to have real estate companies that would be willing to buy into some type of arrangement with the freight companies. So it's a lot harder to do, and it's one of the reasons why there's actually a growing movement for a change in the way that our freight rail system is structured. Because, like the problem is that are the freight rail companies really have become almost like Wall Street investment products, they have maximized their operations for maximum return for investors, rather than maximizing the amount of freight that can be moved, which, if they were functioning more like a utility, that would be their goal. And so there's, there's been a push for being able to make some type of change that on one of the end of the spectrum might be adding more regulations on freight railroads so that they are more incentivized to move more freight rather than just maximize profits. Or the other extreme, is to actually have the nation nationalize all the railroads and just have public ownership and have them, but basically operate the way that, like our freeways and highways operate where anybody who wants to move? You know, any trucking company can just move on, move freight on our on our highways. It's it's not partially monopolized like our freight rail infrastructure is. And making changes would would definitely benefit passenger rail too, it'd be much easier to get new services started. So that's helpful. Yeah, a whole bunch of information.
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:02:48
I'm glad you're able to provide some perspective on that. So we're gonna wrap things up here. I warned you at the start of the shows, like I sometimes I go off script and we just have conversation. I think that's kind of what happened here. So in closing, I'm I'm going to ask you the question I ask everybody I bring on, tell us a little bit about where you live your city. What do you love about it, and maybe you can share two or three favorite places that you recommend people check out if they come to visit.
Mike Christensen 1:03:16
Well, I've been living here in Salt Lake City for over 20 years now, so I really enjoy it, because it's a you get the feeling of being in a big city, but you're still very close to nature. We are within an hour of multiple ski resorts, and we love to brag that we have the greatest snow on Earth, and it's great to be able to hop on my bike and ride from my office downtown, and in less than an hour, I can be out in the middle of a beautiful canyon up in the mountains and actually not have any cell phone service at all. So it is great to have all of those things so close here and Salt Lake City is kind of a city that is unexpected by people who visit here that they don't expect to see the level of urbanism that you see. And it's kind of a weird situation, because I recently learned what the term primacy means in metropolitan demographics, and Salt Lake City is what we call a low primacy city, which means that salt lake city proper, our population is less than 10% of the overall metropolitan area. So there's, there's lots of people that say that they live in Salt Lake City, but they really live in one of the suburbs. Yes, but yeah, and we've been making huge investments in transit in the last couple decades, and also in increasing our bike network. So it's it's suddenly become a great place for transit and biking, which is evidenced by the fact that I got rid of my car. But yeah, we also have five different national parks in Utah, so Salt Lake City is a great place to come and visit for that and, Oh, and one of the things I wanted to mention, one of the things that if you come to Salt Lake City, you've definitely got a visit is Temple Square in downtown Salt Lake City, but don't come visit for Temple Square for until about two years from now, because temple, Salt Lake City, Temple has been undergoing a huge retrofit, seismic retrofit, and it was just announced last week that that's going to be wrapping up in two years, and from June until October of 2027 there's going to be an open house for everyone to come and and see inside the newly refurbished and retrofitted temple. So that's that if you are anywhere near Salt Lake City in 2027 you're definitely going to want to come see that. Okay,
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:06:29
any any favorite coffee shops or local eateries that you like to take people to check out
Mike Christensen 1:06:35
we have one of the the great things about Salt Lake City is we have so much good food from all around the world, but I think we definitely punch above our weight when it comes to Mexican food. And my neighborhood is home to red iguana, which is such a popular restaurant that they actually built another red iguana, just like a block and a half away, and it was actually featured, or it has been featured multiple times on diners drive ins and dives. So if it gets the Guy Fieri seal of approval, then we know that it's got to be good. But yeah, and there's also great other restaurants, like one of my favorite places to go is the Park Cafe, which has it is my favorite place in Salt Lake City to do brunch at it. It's named the Park Cafe because it's right across the street from one of our biggest parks, and it has a very interesting vibe that a lot of the people that work there are Hispanic, but the owners are also a big Grateful Dead the great big Grateful Dead fan. So there's like, Grateful Dead paraphernalia all over, but they're also big Star Wars fans, so there's also, so is this weird, like Hispanic Grateful Dead Star Wars
Tiffany Owens Reed 1:08:21
All right. Well, thanks so much, Mike. I always I'm at the point now with hosting this show, hearing all these recommendations that I just want to plan out like the most epic road trip ever, and just go see all these cities, you know, meet all the people I've had on and check out all the food. Thank you so much for coming on and talking. Oh, you're welcome if you've listened to this entire episode, thank you for for sticking with us. This is longer than normal, but hope you learned something about passenger rail. If you know someone in your community who you think would make a great fit for the show, please let us know using the suggested guest form in the show notes. I'll be back next week with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
ADDITIONAL SHOW NOTES
Local Recommendations:
Mike Christensen (Twitter/X)
Utah Rail Passenger Association (website)
Tiffany Owens Reed (Instagram)
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Tiffany Owens Reed is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.