I am proud to be endorsed by these civic leaders:
Said Senator Kagan, “Gaithersburg Councilmember Neil Harris– a thoughtful and effective leader. From his fiscal prudence to his advocacy on transportation, education, and more, I strongly endorse him for reelection this fall!!!”
Jud Ashman, Mayor of Gaithersburg said, “Neil Harris continues to be an essential member of our City Council, spearheading work on school capacity and better transportation, diligently watching over our budget, and providing thoughtful and practical guidance on public safety and smart growth. I enthusiastically endorse his re-election.”
Sidney Katz, Montgomery County Council and former Mayor of Gaithersburg: “Neil Harris is serving our city for the right reasons, not about personal advancement but about a genuine dedication to giving back by improving the lives of our residents.”
Maxwell Uy, Sheriff, Montgomery County: “It’s a pleasure working with a thoughtful and fair-minded official who wants to keep our people safe, which is why I endorse Neil Harris’s re-election in Gaithersburg.”
John McCarthy, Montgomery County State’s Attorney: “Neil Harris’s support for local law enforcement including funding and training serves our community well and makes him the right choice for Gaithersburg’s City Council.”
And Congressman Trone added, “It has been a pleasure working with Neil Harris during my time in Congress. He exemplifies what is most important in our leaders: he’s pragmatic, driven, and deeply committed to serving his constituents and his community. Gaithersburg is thriving today in part because of Neil’s hard work and dedication. By applying the lessons he’s learned as a successful business owner to his results-driven and detail-oriented approach to governing, he continues to be an excellent advocate for the people of Gaithersburg and Montgomery County.”
As a boy in the 1960’s, I was enthralled by the space race and by NASA going from its start and a series of loud failures to landing on the moon inside the decade. Not only was that an inspiration for all mankind – and the moon landing was watched by on live TV by billions of people worldwide – but the work advanced technology and brought us microchips, satellites, and medical advances.
There are two stickers on my car window, one from Wharton where I went to school and he other from the Starfleet Academy where I wish I did. I was an original Star Trek fan, watching the show each week during its original run and then almost daily in reruns. I worked at Star Trek conventions in a role that was basically like a roadie, setting up and doing whatever was needed. I got to meet the stars, the writers, and other fans like me – some a bit weirder than me, I think. What we all had in common was an optimistic view of the bright future for all humanity, when we would all get along regardless of race, religion, or nationality, aided by technology. Some of Star Trek’s vision has come to pass – we’re all carrying pocket communicators, and we have computers we can talk to. Hopefully more of the vision will come to pass as well.
When I was a boy, we worried about our environment. When I went for hikes with my boy scout troop, anywhere there was a stream with a waterfall, there was a huge pile of suds — because of phosphates in the water. When you looked at the horizon there was a dark brown haze from pollution in the air. The waterfronts smelled terrible and many rivers were devoid of life. But my second-least-favorite president, Nixon, created the Environmental Protection Agency and, years later, the waters are clean, the rivers are alive, and the brown haze is gone. We need to deal with new threats like greenhouse gases and plastics in the waterways, and I am confident that the good people of planet Earth will rise to the challenges.
I believe in good people. I’ve been lucky enough to travel the world. Everywhere the cultures are different – people listen to different music, eat different food, dress differently. But everywhere people are also the same – they love their children, they form communities to help each other, and they strive for a better life. In India, I walked past a beautiful house in Delhi with a beautifully manicured lawn, and I saw a family living in a tent on that lawn, cooking their dinner on an open fire – and they looked happy, smiling and conversing. In rural China I saw people pushing an iron plow behind an ox, hard, hard work, and they were also talking to each other and laughing.
Not everyone is good. We need police and soldiers, but most people are good. Culturally we’re making progress – not as fast as technology, of course – but when I visited England I read some history and realized that it was only a few hundred years ago that religious rivals were chasing each other around the countryside and burning each other at the stake. That hardly ever happens any more. Since I was a boy in the 60’s we have made some progress as a country in improving things for women, for gays, for people of color – slowly, but mostly moving in the right direction.
And I believe that incentives are more powerful than punishments. I learned this in a high school psychology class and see this power in my work and my family and in public life. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a very short story called Harrison Bergeron about a future where smart people had to wear headphones that played random loud noises, where graceful people had to wear weights, all with the goal of making everyone equal. That is not the vision of the future we aspire to. When I worked in the videogame industry, one of our new game producers decided to personally punish players for bad behavior by banning them, but then the producer realized that she was not going to reach her bonus goals because banning players meant that they did not spend money in the game. So she quickly shifted to developing new systems in the game that automatically prevented the bad behavior. And she later created a system where players were able to advance by mentoring other players, teaching skills to help them advance, and also fostering a community.
This opinion piece was published in the Washington Post on July 28, 2019.
Neil H. Harris is a member of the Gaithersburg City Council and a voting member of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments Transportation Planning Board.
Transportation in Maryland is in dire need of an upgrade. But the ongoing politics and a battle between “transit people” and “roads people” is getting in the way of “just need to get there” people. What you’re not hearing is the reason nothing is moving.
There is no money.
The state and counties have little wiggle room in their budgets compared with the costs to improve transportation. There is almost no capacity to borrow more; bonding ability is limited because additional borrowing would lower credit ratings and make borrowing costs unsustainable.
This explains why the currently proposed projects are focused on ways to bring private money to transportation projects. A monorail project on Interstate 270 is being studied because it looks as though a private enterprise could build and operate it without public funding or significant environmental impact, paid for out of the farebox. Highway widening was structured as a public-private partnership because there is no available public money, so private companies were invited in to provide upfront funding and be repaid from toll revenue. The approach can be debated, but in today’s environment, there is a lack of viable alternatives to fund projects.
If we want other, better types of transportation, we’re going to need to follow Steve Jobs’s advice and “think different.”
The proven first step costs nothing, or nearly nothing: Remap our bus routes. Transit ridership is down 12 percent since 2015. And that is true in our region and in most of the country. Two exceptions are Houston and Seattle, where ridership is up. In those areas, bus routes were completely redrawn to reflect current transportation patterns, which are very different from when the routes were conceived. After a minimal period of disruption, while people adjusted to the new routes, ridership increased and travel time decreased.
Transportation is a leading cause of increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Rather than trying to completely change how transportation works, why don’t we make transportation better? Incentives for zero-emission vehicles would continue the ongoing trend of reduction of vehicle emissions (thanks to better fuel efficiency) without requiring a radical change in human behavior. I hope my next car is electric, and so do most people I know. Public policy should make that selection easier through expanding rebates and high-occupancy-lane and toll preferences.
The Virginia authority has designed a smart system that is effective at focusing tax money on programs that provide immediate and long-term benefits. This is new funding that cannot be used to cover existing expenses, and the state and local governments cannot reduce already existing funding. The authority spends most of the funding on regional projects in all modes — transit, pedestrian and bicycle, roads, etc. The remaining funds are given to the local jurisdictions for approved local projects.
Virginia has not solved transportation congestion yet, but it has initiated a large number of projects in a wide variety of transportation modes. Early data is already showing progress.
If we don’t start, we can’t get there.
Today, we are underinvesting in Maryland. We can adapt Virginia’s transportation authority blueprint to fund congestion relief in Montgomery, Prince George’s, Frederick and other counties where congestion and travel times are in crisis.
Today, there is no money.
Until there is money, all we will get is more arguing, politics, and congestion. Our leaders need to work together. We need to re-engineer our bus routes, reduce auto emissions and find fiscally sound ways to get Maryland moving. It’s time to think different.
Curious about Monorail? Here is a video produced about the project to connect Shady Grove with Frederick.
The MoCo Show was kind enough to invite me to join them, and the podcast can be heard here:
I have been championing our city developing a long-term vision, and that process began this year. Read about what we’ve done so far in this article:
The city updates our strategic plan each year. This is the latest:
Cause for concern — we need to do a better job of economic development. The Gaithersburg model should be adopted county-wide!