Electric Cars Will Save Us — NOT!
Last week, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report that found–surprise, surprise–electric cars aren’t all that green (at least from a climate view) if the electricity used to recharge the cars comes from burning fossil fuels. Yet, in a Colbert-like manner, a colleague of one of the report’s authors asks in a blog post […]
Transportation Bill Going to Conference Committee
The House and Senate plan to hold conference committee negotiations over the transportation reauthorization bill. Early this year, the House Transportation Committee had approved the most fiscally conservative reauthorization bill considered by congress since 1991, if not since 1982. Yet the bill never reached the floor of the House due to opposition from fiscal conservatives […]
Innovative (Meaning Insane) Land-Use Policy
The Belgian Port of Antwerp needed to expand. But Belgium has a policy that any greenfield development must be offset by set-asides of already developed land. So the residents of an entire town were forcibly evicted and their town declared a “new nature preserve.” The buildings in the town were not leveled, and instead planners […]
The Non-Story Story
Nearly two years ago, the Federal Transit Administration released a report saying the transit industry has a $77 billion maintenance backlog. So why is the Associated Press making a big deal of this report now? “Americans are turning to trains and buses to get around in greater numbers than ever before,” says the AP. “The […]
Declares or Declared?
“California Declares War on the Suburbs,” reports Wendell Cox’s op ed in the Wall Street Journal (or at least the headline so reports). This has led to all sort of supporting commentary in the conservative blogosphere, along with articles from the left that claims Cox is full of it. All the Antiplanner wants to know […]
Book Review: All the Devils Are Here
In the Antiplanner’s recent review of Margin Call, I wrote, “No bank secretly realized that mortgage-backed securities were worthless and unscrupulously sold them to unsuspecting buyers.” The authors of All the Devils Are Here would apparently disagree. Unlike most of the books about the financial crisis that the Antiplanner reviewed last year, which each tended […]
Wishful Thinking
Have American cities stopped growing at the urban fringe? Some people think so based on a trend of one or two years during the worst recession since the Great Depression. The Antiplanner’s loyal ally, Wendell Cox, doesn’t think so. Are Americans shifting in droves from from cars to public transit? Based on similar short-term evidence, […]
Cold Feet on Rail Transit
The Virginia legislature appears to have rejected a plan to spend $300 million in state money on construction of the Dulles rail line. This is only about 10 percent of the money needed to finish the line to Dulles airport, but it will put a crimp in plans to do so. This is a line […]
The Post: Not Even Loans for High-Speed Rail
The Washington Post, the newspaper of record from our nation’s capital, is somewhat of a bellwether of public opinion on high-speed rail. Back in 2009, when Obama first proposed to build a high-speed rail network, Post editorial writers were all for it as a way of reducing congestion. In 2010, the paper published an op […]
PolitiFact Gets the Facts Wrong
Charlie Hales is the Portland city commissioner who admitted that rail transit doesn’t lead to economic development, so he demanded that the city subsidize such development. Then, he persuaded the rest of the city council to build a streetcar line, subsidized development along that line, and proudly proclaimed that streetcars led to economic development. He […]
Back in the Air Again
Today the Antiplanner is in Maryville, Tennessee, speaking to Maryville College students about transportation issues.
Breaking Promises
The high-speed rail ballot measure that California voters approved in 2008 made two promises: first, that fares would cover operating costs; and second, that trains would carry passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in just two hours and forty minutes. The first promise will be hard to keep but no one will know for […]
