Colorado Transit: A Costly Failure
Public transit is often portrayed as a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative to auto driving. In fact, transit is much more costly than driving, and requires huge subsidies to attract riders. Moreover, transit systems in the vast majority of American cities use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases than the average car.
For every dollar collected in fares from transit riders, the average transit system in America requires more than $2 from taxpayers for operating subsidies plus more than $1 for capital improvements and maintenance. So it is not surprising that transit systems in Colorado require large subsidies. What may be surprising is that most are far less environmentally friendly than a typical sports utility vehicle.
Washington Should Reform Itself First
By Barry W. Poulson In a May 12 Denver Post editorial, “Reforming Wall Street is Essential,” President Barack Obama makes the case for Senator Chris Dodd’s financial reform bill (what the president calls “Wall Street reforms”). The president argues that the financial crisis was caused by irresponsible practices on Wall Street, that the Dodd bill […]
Are the Rich the Biggest Defaulters?
Last week, the New York Times published an amazingly shallow article saying the “biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich.” This contention is supported by a single pair of data: the owners of about 14 percent of homes worth more than $1 million are delinquent on their mortgages, while only “about” 8 to 9 percent […]
Safe Cycling
A Florida bicycling group tells its members to ride in the middle of any lane that is less than 14 feet wide. An animation explains why doing so is safer for the cyclist and notes that (in Florida, at least) “a cyclist is entitled to use the full width of a lane that is less […]
California High-Speed Rail in Trouble
New reports have raised questions about and spurred opposition to California’s grandiose high-speed rail plans. First, last April, the California state auditor reported that the state’s high-speed rail authority suffered from “inadequate planning, weak oversight, and lax contract management,” which is not exactly what you want to hear about an agency that is about to […]
New York Rediscovers the Bus
Tongues are wagging in New York City about a new transportation technology that doesn’t require you to descend into a dank tunnel smelling of urine, sweat, and lysol. The new technology is called a bus, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority used one to introduce a new bus-rapid transit line two years ago. Not only […]
Charlotte Light Rail a Big Flop
Let’s see: 100 percent cost overrun? Check. Anemic ridership? Check. Requires tax breaks, tax-increment financing, and other “public investments” to stimulate transit-oriented development? Check. Declared a great success by the transit agency desperate for tax increases to fund further rail projects? Check. Must be light rail. As Wikipedia points out, when planned in 2000, Charlotte’s […]
TIF & Crony Capitalism
Speaking of crony capitalism (as the Antiplanner was doing last week), one of the biggest sources of such urban corruption is tax-increment financing (TIF). TIF was invented in the 1950s to help cities revitalize neighborhoods that were supposedly so blighted that no one would gentrify them without government support. Today, such blight (which resulted when […]
Levels of Long-Term Debt Within Colorado’s Local Government
The world is seeing levels of unprecedented government debt. However, the media focuses mostly on debt levels of national and state governments. For the most part, the general public has ignored the subject of local government debt. The root cause of this ignorance lies in the difficulty associated with uncovering information on local debt.
Happy 17th Birthday
Chip the Wonder Dog is 17 years old today, which in dog years makes him approximately as old as Walter Breuning, the former Great Northern Railway employee who is thought to be the oldest man in the world. Like Walter, who was fitted for his first hearing aid at age 111, Chip is showing his […]
Honolulu’s Rail Plan
Yesterday, in response to the Antiplanner’s post about crony capitalism, Scrappy commented that Honolulu needs rail transit to “reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and get us off the maddening addiction to cars.” He added that, “the environmental community in Honolulu is strongly behind rail.” I appreciate Scrappy’s comment and don’t want to discourage him […]
More GOOD News on the School Choice Front:Louisiana Adopts Special Needs Voucher
GOOD news! There are now 20 private school choice programs. Special needs children in Louisiana will have more educational choice! Read the news release from our friends at the American Federation for Children:
Children Win as Louisiana Enacts Special …
