House Votes to Take Back High-Speed Rail Funds
One more nail in the high-speed rail coffin: The House of Representatives voted to redirect $833 million from high-speed rail to Midwest flood relief. This is money that the Department of Transportation had awarded to Amtrak and Northeast Corridor states in May, but since Secretary Ray LaHood hasn’t actually signed the checks yet, Congress can […]
Omaha’s Unlivable Plan
Three years ago, the Antiplanner reviewed the regional transportation plans for the nation’s 70 largest metropolitan areas and found that 40 of them had some form of “smart-growth,” anti-auto policies built in. One that did not was for Omaha. Omaha planners are eager to rectify that situation. Perhaps in response to Ray LaHood’s direction that […]
Mica’s Retort to U.S. C. of C.
In recent months, the Antiplanner has wondered if Representative John Mica, chair of the House Transportation Committee, would act as a true fiscal conservative or revert to his old ways of pork barreling for his state and district. The reauthorization proposal he made last week provides one answer; another can be found in his response […]
Why Some People Support High-Speed Rail
One reason some people support high-speed rail is that it provides an opportunity for all sorts of fact-finding missions, such as this trip to Europe. “High-speed rail is becoming a reality in the U.S.,” says the Transportation Research Board (a part of the National Acadamies, a supposedly private but actually government-funded and government-created group of […]
Another County Heard From
The Antiplanner is leaving tomorrow for DC for another Hill briefing on transportation. In the meantime, you can read this article about Mica’s reauthorization proposal if you aren’t already tired of the subject.
1.389 Million Lies about Mica Plan
The responses to Representative John Mica’s plan to reduce transportation spending to affordable levels are shrill and bombastic. “1.4 million infrastructure jobs lost due to republican transportation budget short sightedness” claims a Florida newspaper. It’s the “road to ruin” says Oregon Representative (and ranking minority member on the Highways and Transit Subcommittee) Peter Defazio. Many […]
Mica Would Cut Transport Funds by 30%
Fiscal austerity is the theme of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica’s long-awaited proposal for reauthorizing federal surface transportation funding, which he released Thursday. Unlike the 2005 reauthorization and President Obama’s proposed reauthorization, Mica’s proposal, which is supported by other Republican subcommittee chairs but has been blasted by Democrats, calls for spending no […]
Spain’s High-Speed White Elephants
How did I miss this story? A European publication describes Spain’s high-speed rail system as “a bona fide policy error typical of a nouveau riche nation.” Spain’s Talgo high-speed trains look a little like Donald Duck. Wikipedia commons photo by Peter Christener. Spain has spent or is spending 6 billion euros on a high-speed network […]
Florida Governor OKs SunRail
In what could be an ominous decision for the future of federal transportation funding, Florida Governor Rick Scott got out of the way of SunRail, a costly commuter-rail project in Orlando. While his Tea Party supporters strongly opposed the project, Scott said that he didn’t have the authority to kill the project. As reported in […]
Questions about Intercity Buses
The Antiplanner rarely responds to comments in a post, but Andrew asked many good questions and requested a lot of background information last week. Most of his questions are answered by citations in the report, but since he did not seem to understand those citations, here are my responses. 1. “Intercity buses carry at least […]
Back in the Air Again
The Antiplanner is in Washington DC today to testify before a Senate subcommittee about the role of urban transit in the lives of elderly and disabled passengers. My testimony argues that, as I pointed out here a few days ago, most senior citizens will continue to drive as long as they are able. When they […]
Intercity Buses: The Fastest-Growing Mode
Tomorrow, the Cato Institute will release a new report on intercity buses that Antiplanner readers can preview here. This is an expansion and update from an Antiplanner article posted almost exactly two years ago. For that post, I reviewed schedules for about a dozen different bus companies in the Boston-to-Washington corridor and calculated that they […]
