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 […]
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 […]
Congress Extends Transportation Bill 90 Days
The Senate reluctantly agreed to a 90-day extension of the 2005 transportation bill. This means the federal government will continue to spend more money on transit and highways than it collects in gas taxes and other highway fees. Senate Democrats rancorously blamed the 90-day extension, as opposed to the two-year extension passed by the Senate, […]
Brinkmanship
Having failed to pass a reauthorization bill, Congress has only a few hours to extend the current law, which expires on Saturday. On Tuesday, however, the House failed to pass a 90-day extension to the law. On Wednesday, it failed to pass a 60-day extension to the law. Supporters of an extension are are making […]
Hiding in the Bills
One of the special-interest provisions in the transportation bill that passed the Senate a couple of weeks ago is a requirement that operators of passenger trains be licensed by the Surface Transportation Board. There is one and only one exception: Amtrak. Supposedly, this could give Amtrak an edge when it competes with other companies for […]
Dreams of Trains
Speaking of dreams, some of the Antiplanner’s best dreams involve riding intercity trains, particularly riding in a dome car. I had my first ride in a dome car when I was a young boy and my family took the Northern Pacific North Coast Limited from Portland to Fargo, during which trip I spent most of […]
Semi-Driverless Cars Available Soon
Continental Automotive, a company that makes tires and other parts, has put together a semi-driverless car for Nevada. Under the rules in that state, which legalized driverless cars last year, a car must successfully go 10,000 miles without an accident before being marketed in the state. Continental’s car, which is based on a Volkswagen Passat, […]
FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle
Internal emails reveal that Federal Transit Administration officials were skeptical of Honolulu’s plan to spend $5.3 billion on a 20-mile rail transit line. City voters approved this line only after an expensive and hard-fought campaign. One FTA email accused the city of Honolulu of “lousy practices of public manipulation” and argued that the FTA should […]
Shooting Themselves in Their Feet
After fiscal conservatives successfully scuttled a House transportation bill that would have ended pork and allowed Congress to minimize deficit spending, the Senate has passed a bill that is full of pork and will practically mandate deficit spending. The good news, such as it is, is that the bill only reauthorizes federal spending for two […]
Unsafe at Any Speed
Three months ago, Washington MetroRail’s Blue and Orange lines shut down when parts fell off the braking gear of one of the railcars, damaging another car. Hundreds of riders had to evacuate and train service was delayed for hours. The disk brake that fell off the Metro railcar in December. Metro initially blamed the malfunction […]
FTA Cost-Effectiveness Rule
As if projects such as the Honolulu rail line aren’t a big enough waste of money, Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood is seeking to change the Federal Transit Administration’s process for evaluating grant proposals for rail projects. As if to illustrate the slow and cumbersome nature of federal programs, LaHood originally proposed to revise these […]
Designed to Fail
Are American cities competing to see which can come up with the most ridiculous transit proposals? If so, Honolulu will probably win, hands down. The nation’s 52nd-largest urban area has only about 950,000 people, yet it is spending $5.3 billion, or more than $5,500 per resident, to build a single 20-mile rail line. That’s probably […]
