I've experienced the consequences of negativity before. We can't let those consequences affect our mobility.

A New York Subway train pulls into 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station. (Photo courtesy of NYCgo.com)

I’ve written before about the negativity that surrounds discussion of U.S. transit and is especially problematic in Washington, DC. My sentiment about excessive complaining dates back to when I was a freshman in high school.

That year, our baseball team entered the season with big expectations. It had only been two years since our school had reincarnated its baseball program, and the team had won just one game during that time. But I was among a promising crop of young players who hoped to help make the Sacramento Country Day Cavaliers a contender.

We won our first scrimmage impressively. But then, the rain started pouring on us – literally.

It rained almost every day during March 2006, one of those months when California experienced floods instead of wildfires. In the small-school Central Valley Christian League, infield tarps and grounds crews weren’t a thing, so we experienced rainout after rainout, even during respites in the weather.

Thus, we practiced, day in and day out. We didn’t have a baseball field on our campus (we played our “home” games at a public park that the city perpetually deemed “unplayable” during the rainy season), so we got the most we could out of a patch of grass behind our gym.

Finally, the weather cooperated for a couple days, and game day arrived…on the road against Woodland Christian, a local power at the time. We held our own for a while, but couldn’t overcome our inexperience. The Cardinals’ pitchers shut us down, and after a couple times through the lineup their batters figured out my change-up. They pulled away in the late innings, and the final score was 10-0.

Despite the loss, our young team showed plenty of potential that afternoon in the shadows of Yolobus headquarters. Though some of our players had never taken part in a competitive baseball game before, we hadn’t humiliated ourselves and were able to compete toe-to-toe for several innings with a team that, despite its town’s lack of passenger rail service, would go on to win our league.

But instead of using those positive achievements as an inspirational foundation to build on, our coach dwelled only on what we had done wrong in his postgame speech. He ranted about how horribly we’d played, implying that we hadn’t given any effort. We spent the entirety of our next practice – held during yet another heavy rainstorm – running around and around our patch of grass. This was not a planned workout session designed to build our strength and improve our ability, nor a test of some new mode of active, shared micromobility, but instead a form of meaningless punishment.

Our demoralized team never recovered. We had some flashes of glory – including, during my junior season, two no-hitters in the same week – but from that fateful 2006 day on our dugout was a place of pessimism and negativity, rather than one of enthusiasm and hard work. We later found funding to construct an on-campus practice infield and moved from the CVCL to the Sacramento Metropolitan Athletic League, but were unable to shed our mediocrity. We entered the final day of my senior season with a shot at a .500 finish, but failed to get the job done, sealing a fourth straight losing year.  

Studies have linked ride hailing to worsening congestion in cities, and such congestion can delay buses. (Photo courtesy of CityLab)

Transit in the U.S. today has a lot in common with the 2006 Country Day Cavs.

Over the past half-century, preferable transportation options have been little more than an afterthought to most Americans, neglected in a culture where mobility was synonymous with cars and nothing more. But today, a new generation is yearning for more convenient, sustainable, and affordable ways to get around, creating hope that options like transit and cycling will develop into mainstream transportation modes.

However, the past couple of years have demonstrated that plenty of challenges must be overcome for this to happen. These challenges – including the impacts of venture capital-funded, car-based competitors; endless fighting for street space; infrastructure hostile to people who aren’t in cars; strict zoning laws; and constrained government budgets – have put us in an uphill battle comparable to the one our baseball team faced in Woodland, testing how we handle adversity.

So far, much of the transportation community has given into the inevitable temptation to dwell on the negatives, much as my coach did.

Discussion often focuses on the uniquely American phenomenon of short-term declines in ridership and how traditional transit doesn’t stand a chance against [insert trendy buzzword].

For example, a recent headline in CityLab – a publication with a perspective generally favorable to transit – essentially declared Los Angeles’s Measure M, which was passed two years ago and is funding dozens of ongoing and proposed projects benefitting rail, buses, bikes, and roads, a failure. The article had a couple decent points, such as the fact that supporters of American transit projects focus too much on reducing traffic congestion, and not enough on how the projects will improve the overall transportation system.

But its overall message – that transit can only succeed if we intentionally go out of our way to make driving “harder” – is unnecessarily defeatist. As demonstrated by robust bus service in low-density Canadian communities and recent ridership increases in car-loving American places like Houston, it is also incorrect.

Furthermore, Washington, DC-area news sources have published multiple articles recently regarding the effects of the ongoing government shutdown on the region’s transportation system. With more than 100,000 area workers furloughed, usage of both roadways and transit is down from this time last year, as would be expected. Though going such a long time without a paycheck is horrible for all involved, the resulting reduction in farebox recovery has given local media – which has cast the reduced traffic congestion in a positive light – yet another reason to predict doom for increasingly reliable WMATA.

Woodland, CA's Clark Field, where Woodland Christian beat Sacramento Country Day 10-0 in 2006. (Photo courtesy of Small BallFields)

It’s much easier for people to point out wrongdoing than to formulate constructive solutions to problems. In the short term, it’s also more self-gratifying to be negative, as dwelling on shortcomings we don’t bear direct responsibility for helps us forget about our own imperfections.

But in the long run, as I’ve seen with both baseball and transportation, negativity only harms our quality of life.

At Sacramento Country Day, the consequences have come full circle, as the school’s administration rejected a recent proposal to allow high school students to walk to a nearby shopping center at lunchtime. Though the proposal had countless upsides – such as increased physical activity, access to a healthier array of lunch options, and a chance to experience a real-world activity prior to college – the administration cited a pedestrian-hostile intersection near campus as one of the primary justifications for its decision.