Another Smart-Growth Plot?
“Under Obama’s proposal, fewer to own homes,” reported the Antiplanner’s local paper. The paper was reprinting an article from the New York Times, whose original headline was the slightly less inflammatory, “Administration calls for cutting aid to homebuyers.” Is this another smart-growth plot to restrict homeownership only to the wealthy? Or is it a rational […]
High-Speed Train Wreck
Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood says the administration’s high-speed rail fantasy won’t be derailed. But remember, this is the guy who said “there is no stopping” high-speed rail in Wisconsin a few months before the November election–and then he killed Wisconsin’s project himself when the “wrong party’s” candidate won the governorship. Wikipedia commons photo of […]
High-Speed Pork
President Obama proposes to spend $53 billion on high-speed rail over the next six years, or nearly $9 billion a year. No one knows where this money will come from, especially in view of Obama’s proposed spending freeze. Some speculate that the administration will propose to take it out of gasoline taxes, but the nation’s […]
Are Earmarks Dead?
Congressional leaders have promised a two-year moratorium on earmarks. Some in Congress are even trying to get the money back for orphaned earmarks, i.e., earmarks that have not yet been spent. There are usually lots of orphaned transportation projects because the states are not really interested in doing earmarks that override their own priorities. It […]
Have an Opinion? You’re Violating the Law!
A group of neighbors asked state highway officials to install traffic signals on a road near their Raleigh, North Carolina suburb. They buttressed their request with an eight-page analysis of the highway complete with maps and traffic projections. View Larger Map The state was so impressed that it agreed to install the traffic signals, right? […]
Ending Urban Redevelopment
Despite pressure from cities, Jerry Brown stands firm in his proposal to end redevelopment agencies, a plan he says will immediately save the state $1.7 billion a year, and more than double that after 2012. Meanwhile, the Idaho Freedom Foundation publishes a report proposing to eliminate urban renewal in that state. Urban-renewal agencies in Idaho […]
High-Speed Rail Hearings
You know that Congress is serious about getting the facts about high-speed rail when it holds a hearing on high-speed rail in Grand Central Station. Rail advocates proposed to extend the Northeast Corridor rail system to Springfield. Videotaping is often discouraged at Congressional hearings, but fortunately the Antiplanner was able to obtain the video of […]
Is It Real or Is It Portlandia?
If you buy more than $50 worth of stuff, Office Depot will deliver for free. But they might deliver it in a carbon-spewing truck, so the city of Portland has given a $6 million, five-year contract to a delivery company that promises to deliver office supplies by electric-powered tricycles. B-Line’s slogan is “sustainable urban delivery”–but […]
Yield to Transit’s Moral Superiority
Everyone knows that transit is morally superior to automobiles, so it is no surprise to see state legislatures passing laws requiring auto drivers to yield to buses when they are pulling into traffic from bus stops. The stated reason for the law–that “the inability of buses to get quickly back into the traffic flow after […]
Regulating to Prevent the Last Crisis
In addition to mentioning high-speed rail a couple of times, President Obama’s state of the union speech mentioned the need to regulate the finance industry to prevent the kind of global crisis that took place in 2008. This received one of the loudest applauses of the evening as it has become conventional wisdom that the […]
State of the Federal Budget
In his state of the union address, President Obama proposed to build a high-speed rail network reaching 80 percent of Americans within 25 years. But he also proposed to freeze domestic spending for five years. These two goals are incompatible. We can build that rail network, but it will not lead to the economic revival […]
House Transportation Subcommittee Chairs
Yesterday, Representative John Mica, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, announced the names of the chairs and members of the committee’s various subcommittees. The good news for those who believe in user-fee driven transportation is that the chair of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee is John “Jimmy” Duncan, Jr., who is probably one […]
