What Is Middle Class?
A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Proctor & Gamble was no longer marketing to the middle class but instead has a two-tier marketing strategy (if you don’t have a subscription, you can get the gist of the article here). This has led to all kinds of discussion by the chattering […]
High-Speed Rail Is Still Dead (and Let’s Keep It That Way)
The Senate Appropriations Committee voted to spend a token $100 million on high-speed rail after its own transportation subcommittee had zeroed out funding for the program. The purpose, said a rail advocate with US PIRG, is “to keep things on life support until Congress comes to its senses.” The only way Congress will “come to […]
Another LRT Exceeds Minimalist Expectations
Norfolk Virginia finally opened its light-rail line, and ridership “exceeds expectations” at 5,600 riders a day. Considering they run 212 trains a weekday, that’s just over 26 passengers per train. How many 40-passenger buses would have been needed to handle all that traffic? Of course, the rail line exceeded expectations in many other ways as […]
Can Buses Compete with Planes?
The House of Representatives agreed to extend reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for four months and for surface transportation for six months. That’s not as long as the two years the Senate wanted for surface transportation, but apparently House Republicans weren’t ready to give up the gas tax (which would otherwise have expired […]
Louisville Bridge Is Falling Down?
The Interstate 65 bridge across the Ohio River was closed after inspectors found “two cracks in a load-bearing structure of the bridge.” Naturally, this has generated huge traffic jams, as many people in southern Indiana use the bridge to commute to Louisville and the six-lane bridge carries 60,000 to 90,000 vehicles a day. Flickr photo […]
What’s the Opposite of a “Clean Extension”?
While the Antiplanner was in Montana, President Obama asked Congress to pass a “clean extension” of the surface transportation laws. By this, he meant that Congress should continue spending money like a drunken sailor the way it has been spending it for the past several years (more specifically, spending it faster than it has been […]
Another Bad Idea
Someone named Marc Fasteau urges the United States to adopt an industrial policy. Because, after all, it worked so well in Japan (two lost decades of nearly zero economic growth), China (rapid growth but rampant corruption), and Germany (which has fined one of its biggest manufacturers more than $1.5 billion for bribing local officials to […]
Pipeline Brings Attention to Tar Sands
The New York Times editorialized against a pipeline aimed at bringing petroleum from Alberta into the United States, saying the pipeline “would traverse highly sensitive terrain” and the oil involved would generate too much carbon emissions. As far as “highly sensitive terrain” goes, the federal government’s environmental review found “no significant impact” from the pipeline. […]
Why Conservatives Hate Trains
Debates over high-speed rail and federal transit funding have inspired a number of writers asking why conservatives hate passenger trains. Most of them get it wrong. The real answer is: they don’t. They just hate subsidies, at least if they are fiscal conservatives (as opposed to social conservatives like the late Paul Weyrich). Case in […]
World Boondoggle Center
The World Trade Center that was destroyed almost ten years ago was a frequently photographed symbol of New York City, but it was also a huge boondoggle of the New York & New Jersey Port Authority that was heavily subsidized by motorists paying bridge tolls. So of course, it is completely appropriate that the building […]
One More Reason to Shrink Government
The Antiplanner used to think that a sure sign of a centrally planned economy is when the capital is the wealthiest city in the country. So what does it say about the United States when Washington DC has the highest median income of any metropolitan area in the country? I learned this little tidbit from […]
The City That’s Corrupt
Portland, whose slogan, “The City That Works,” was stolen from one of the most corrupt cities in America, has been rocked by a new scandal, this one involving actual charges of bribery and under-the-table dealings. The FBI raided the home and office of the city’s parking manager to investigate allegations that he accepted large bribes […]
