Another County Heard From
Article on high-speed rail in the on-line edition of USA Today. Key point: “The history of transportation shows that we adopt new technologies when they are faster, more convenient, and less expensive than the technologies they replace. High-speed rail is slower than flying, less convenient than driving, and far more expensive than either one. As […]
NJ Governor Cancels Raildoggle
The big transportation news while the Antiplanner was in Japan was that New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie cancelled a major rail construction project: a planned new tunnel under the Hudson River. Spurred by cost overruns, Christie said “far more than New Jersey taxpayers can afford and the only prudent move is to end this project.” […]
Report from Japan
On Monday, the Antiplanner rode a high-speed train from Tokyo to Nagano, probably the most expensive high-speed rail route in the world. According to one source, it cost more than half a billion dollars per mile in 1997 dollars, no doubt because much of the route is in tunnels. The train I was on was […]
How to Fool Transit Riders
Recently, FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff told transit managers, “you can entice even diehard rail riders onto a bus, if you call it a ‘special’ bus and just paint it a different color than the rest of the fleet.” Eugene, Oregon’s Lane Transit District (LTD) proved this with its EMX bus-rapid transit line. When this line […]
Los Angeles Rip Off
In 2008, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised voters that extending the city’s Red Line subway would relieve congestion. Voters believed him and supported a sales tax increase to build the line. Now the environmental impact report finds that the subway line will increase rush-hour traffic speeds on parallel streets by, at most, 0.3 mph (p. […]
Another Rail Project Goes Overbudget
With phase 1 already under construction, planners now say that phase 2 of Washington’s Dulles Airport rail line will cost almost 50 percent more than previously projected. Of course, the bus-rapid transit project that most people wanted could be running today at a fraction of the cost. One way to save money, planners say, would […]
Highways Safer Than Ever
It’s official: fewer than 34,000 people died in highway accidents in 2009. That is the fewest highway fatalities since 1950 and the lowest fatality rate per billion vehicle miles in automotive history. In 1910, nearly 450 people died for every billion vehicle miles driven. This declined to 150 by 1930, 72 by 1950, under 50 […]
Private Transit
Many analyses of transit presume that, if government did not subsidize transit, transit wouldn’t exist and everyone who rides it would instead be driving cars. In fact, there are many private transit lines, but they are hard to find partly because the Federal Transit Administration’s National Transit Database only includes lines that are subsidized and […]
High-Speed Fantasy Land
One of the strongest arguments critics raise against California high-speed rail is that it will require huge operating subsidies. Promoters promised that not only would fares cover operating costs, the trains would earn such large operating profits that private investors would be willing to put up around 20 percent of the capital costs if they […]
Should Buses Use Alternative Fuels?
Fred Jandt’s rethinking rail article on the Mass Transit web site (discussed here on Monday) offhandedly mentioned “what Foothill Transit did this week” with buses. That was a reference to the introduction of some of the first all-electric buses in the U.S. A mere 10-minute recharge of the batteries on these “ecoliners” is supposed to […]
Trannie Mae: Obama’s New Bank
President Obama’s new “plan“–more of a sketch, really–to “Renew and Expand America’s Roads, Railways and Runways” calls for spending $50 billion rebuilding 150,000 miles of roads, building and maintaining 4,000 miles of rail, and rehabilitating 150 miles of airport runways and installing a modern air traffic control system. Where do these numbers come from? Is […]
High-Speed Rail Deathwatch
Will a high-speed rail line ever be built from San Francisco to Los Angeles? The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has less than 10 percent of the money it needs to build this line. The plan is increasingly under fire from local and state organizations. On one hand, President Obama’s vague and controversial proposal to […]
