Stossel on Road Privatization
John Stossel says new roads should be built by private entities and paid for with tolls. He supports the privatization of existing roads as well. Subsidies to roads are small, but we don’t need to subsidize them at all and private owners would manage them better, says Stossel. The Antiplanner spent Wednesday in New York […]
Subversive Idea: We Can Keep Our Lifestyles
Instead of giving up our cars, says the August issue of National Geographic, we can simply scrub the skies of CO2. The article describes a process of removing carbon from the atmosphere that is technologically feasible. Though it is hard to guess how expensive it will be, the article suggests it will be a lot […]
Private Bus Takes Over from Taxpayers
Here’s a heartwarming story: Late last year, Clayton County, Georgia (a suburban Atlanta county) decided to terminate its subsidized bus service to Atlanta, saying it was costing $10 million a year but only bringing in $2.5 million in revenue. Despite protests from bus riders, the service was duly ended on March 31, leaving many riders […]
LA Rail Transit a Failure
Los Angeles’ rail transit system is now 20 years old, but the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Tom Rubin, questions whether it should have been built at all. “The push for rail has forced transit ridership down,” says Rubin, who was the chief financial officer of L.A.’s transit agency when the rail lines were planned in the […]
Growing Interest in Driverless Cars
As the nation’s transit industry slowly implodes from the weight of political control, the replacement for transit is getting some attention in the press. Researchers from the University of Parma are sending two driverless cars from Italy to Shanghai. Researchers at Ohio State University have received a $1.5 million National Science Foundation grant to develop […]
Transit Has $77.7 Billion Maintenance Backlog
A new report from the Federal Transit Administration says that America’s transit agencies need $77.7 billion to bring their systems up to a state of good repair. This report is an update to a previous report that just looked at seven of the nation’s leading transit systems (Boston, Chicago, New Jersey Transit, New York, Philadelphia, […]
Washington Metro Takes Action!
In an article worthy of The Onion, the Washington Post proclaims that “Dupont Circle escalator incident prompts Metro to take action.” The incident in question was the breakdown of the giant, 130-foot escalators at the Dupont Circle Metro station, which forced patrons to walk or, in some cases, crawl over handrails to adjacent escalators. The […]
Airfares Taking Flight?
Delta and Northwest have merged, and now United and Continental are merging. So naturally someone raises the specter that airfares are going to go up. “Concentration in any industry leads to higher prices,” says someone who claims to have analyzed the airline industry for 40 years. I don’t know what industry they have been analyzing, […]
And Your Point Is?
Matthew Yglesias is somehow offended by the Antiplanner’s recent post on Cato’s blog about the huge decline in the productivity of our socialized transit industry since 1970. He never addresses or even acknowledges any of the arguments made in my article. Instead, his problem is that the article “fails to acknowledge any government role in […]
Comments on FTA Cost-Effectiveness Rule
The Antiplanner has prepared several pages of comments in response to the Federal Transit Administration’s request for comments on its cost-effectiveness rule. I haven’t actually submitted this document to the FTA yet, so if you have any suggestions I am open to them. Comments are due on August 2. You can submit your comments via […]
The Problem with Transit
Table 12 of the historical tables supplementing the 2010 Public Transit Fact Book reveals that, since 1970, the number of workers needed to operate America’s public transit systems has increased by 180 percent. Table 38 reveals that, in the same time period, the cost of operating buses, trolley buses, light rail, and heavy rail (the […]
Demonizing Mobility
Planners have tried to demonize the freedom people gain from auto ownership by calling them “auto dependent.” Now they are demonizing air travelers by calling them “binge flyers.” As energy efficient as trains? So what? We’re still going to demonize it. We know binge drinking consists of drinking so much for so long that the […]
