Transportation

Another LRT Exceeds Minimalist Expectations 0
- September 19, 2011
Norfolk Virginia finally opened its light-rail line, and ridership “exceeds expectations” at 5,600 riders a day. Considering they run 212 trains a weekday, that’s just over 26 passengers per train. How many 40-passenger buses would have been needed to handle all that traffic? Of course, the rail line exceeded expectations in many other ways as […]
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Ten Best Transit Cities? Not!0
- September 15, 2011
Someone asked the Antiplanner to comment on this list of the supposed ten best transit cities in the nation. The list includes, in order, New York, Denver, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Portland, Washington, San Jose, Honolulu, and Salt Lake City. This is supposed to be for students, but it must really be for students who […]
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Can Buses Compete with Planes?0
- September 14, 2011
The House of Representatives agreed to extend reauthorization for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for four months and for surface transportation for six months. That’s not as long as the two years the Senate wanted for surface transportation, but apparently House Republicans weren’t ready to give up the gas tax (which would otherwise have expired […]
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Louisville Bridge Is Falling Down?0
- September 13, 2011
The Interstate 65 bridge across the Ohio River was closed after inspectors found “two cracks in a load-bearing structure of the bridge.” Naturally, this has generated huge traffic jams, as many people in southern Indiana use the bridge to commute to Louisville and the six-lane bridge carries 60,000 to 90,000 vehicles a day. Flickr photo […]
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Arizona Judge Orders More Transit Subsidies 0
- September 9, 2011
When the Arizona legislature cut state subsidies to urban transit, an environmental group challenged the cuts in court. The federal judge agreed with the environmentalists and ordered the state to restore the subsidies. How can a judge order a legislature to spend money that the legislators felt they didn’t have? Apparently, the state had written […]
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U.K. HSR Questioned 0
- September 6, 2011
The venerable Economist has come out in opposition to a $52 billion plan to build high-speed rail from London to Manchester and Leeds. As the magazine-that-calls-itself-a-newspaper explains in an accompanying article, the new line would take two decades to build and produce questionable benefits for the nation. While rail proponents claim that new train lines […]
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