IN THE MORNING rush hour on the Jones Falls Expressway, as the traffic slows to a speed approximating a snail with a hernia, I have learned where it is best to drive in which specific lane, and where I am likely to lose my mind no matter where I navigate.
The vice president of the United States says he understands, and for this we are all filled with gratitude.
On the Jones Falls Expressway, there are people leading otherwise blameless lives whose driving habits make me crazy. These lunatics shouldn't be allowed to cross the street by themselves. For their vehicular crimes against mankind, I want them shot at dawn as part of a daily feel-good feature on CNN.
Thank you for feeling my pain (and theirs), Al Gore.
The vice president, apparently not one to leave things for the last minute, has begun campaigning for president. He does this because, by the calendar, only one year and eight months remain until the next general election.
Going right for the big issues, Gore, speaking the other day in Des Moines, Iowa, promised to create a more "livable world" if elected president. There was a simpler time, which some of us might still remember because it involved such issues as World War II and Hitler and, later, fallout shelters and nuclear missile crises, when the promise of a "livable" world was meant quite literally.
But now we have Gore connecting the word "livable" with the notion of traffic congestion and suburban commutes. Some have heard this reference and laughed. Once, we put people in the White House to worry about the "livable" future of the human race. When the future arrives, does the president sit in the oval office and monitor traffic patterns on the Jones Falls Expressways of the nation? Isn't this why we have traffic copters?
Gore says his concern is about more than traffic, it's about creating more family time for frazzled parents.
"We're seeing the daily commutes get longer and longer," Gore said. "And for people who don't think that it's a problem that parents are caught in traffic jams that are lengthening each day, I'll tell you, they haven't been in traffic jams and don't know what it does to the desire to balance work and family."
Swell. But I have a question for Gore, based on new U.S. Census Bureau figures, relating to all those cars on the Jones Falls Expressway: How do we get people to move back into American cities, the place where so many of them work for a living, so they can spend quality time with their families instead of spending so many hours a day stuck in highway traffic?
The latest census figures arrived the other day, and contain the usual disheartening news for the city of Baltimore: 11,592 more people left between 1997 and last year. It's a slower pace than previous years, but it adds up to a loss of 90,421 residents (12 percent of the population) in the 1990s. The city's population, 645,593, hasn't been this low since 1910.
The surrounding counties, of course, continue to grow. But not like before. In recent years has come a hopscotch effect, with families leaving the city and leaping past Baltimore County (4 percent growth in the '90s) for Howard County (26 percent growth), Carroll (21 percent), Harford (18 percent) and Anne Arundel (11 percent).
Hence, all those moms and dads stuck in lengthening rush-hour suburban backups when they ought to be home with the kids, or at least reaching for an after-hours drink while the kids are bunkered in their rooms watching MTV.
The vice president surely understands: This is bigger than rush-hour backups, which are only symptomatic of people deserting cities because they can't find decent public schools, can't fall asleep from the sound of sirens, can't balance the checkbook in the face of high property taxes.
Why doesn't Gore talk about those things? If he doesn't, he becomes a flip side of the Republicans, who ignored city concerns for years because they assumed their natural constituents had all moved to suburbia. Will Gore kiss off cities because he assumes their residents, including large minority populations, are already in his pocket? Is this all about winning back the suburbs from Republicans?
As the century begins to slip away from us, it's become clear that the suburbs now have their own set of problems: aging neighborhoods, public schools seeing flickers of academic slippage, slowly increasing crime and drug traffic.
The cities have been dealing with such problems for at least the past 40 years, and wondering when Washington might lend more help. To have Al Gore talk about highway backups feels frivolous because it sidesteps the very conditions that put all those drivers on the highway in the first place, wondering why they're spending their lives in the eternal slow lane.
Pub Date: 3/18/99