Transportation

One More Chance 0
- February 14, 2012
Construction on Honolulu’s ill-conceived rail line–at least $5.7 billion, and more likely at least $7 billion, for a 20-mile elevated line–is supposed to start next month. Polls indicate that voters who once supported the project have turned against it. Fortunately, Hawai’ians have one more chance to stop this idiotic project before too much money is […]
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The Future of New Starts 0
- February 13, 2012
Should federal transportation funds be distributed to states and cities based on fixed criteria, such as population and land area, or should they be handed out based on the political whims of whoever is in power at the moment? While Republicans in Congress are moving in the former direction, the Obama administration is moving towards […]
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The Seductive Appeal of Value-Capture Finance 0
- February 8, 2012
Today, the Antiplanner is in North Carolina, where transit agencies seem to be competing to plan the wackiest, most-expensive rail transit lines that few people will ever use. Right now, the leading contender must be Raleigh, which (according to a paper by UNC-Charlotte transport professor David Hartgen and transit accountant Tom Rubin) is planning a […]
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Mica Introduces Surface Transportation Bill 0
- February 1, 2012
House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica introduced a proposed surface transportation bill yesterday. Titled the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act, the bill contains something to make everyone happy as well as things to make everyone unhappy. To please Senate Democrats, who want to keep spending more than the government is collecting in […]
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Breaking Down the Barriers 0
- January 30, 2012
Leave it to the New York Times to put the most negative spin on a conference about driverless cars. “Collision in the Making Between Self-Driving Cars and How the World Works,” reads the headline. As the Antiplanner wrote three years ago, the main barriers to driverless cars are institutional and bureaucratic, not technological. So it […]
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Building Eyesores Creates Jobs, Especially When You Tear Them Down 0
- January 25, 2012
Honolulu has the best bus system in America, taking a higher percentage of commuters to work and carrying more daily riders per capita than any other bus system. But just having the best bus system isn’t good enough for some people, who just have to have a rail line to have “real transit.” So the […]
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