Transportation

Semi-Driverless Cars Available Soon 0
- March 26, 2012
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, […]
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FTA Questioned Honolulu Rail Boondoggle 0
- March 19, 2012
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 […]
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Shooting Themselves in Their Feet 0
- March 15, 2012
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 […]
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Unsafe at Any Speed 0
- March 9, 2012
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 […]
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FTA Cost-Effectiveness Rule 0
- March 6, 2012
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 […]
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Designed to Fail 0
- March 5, 2012
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 […]
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