Transportation

How Does Amtrak Determine Fares?0
- October 3, 2012
A transit advocate who calls himself Captain Transit asks, “How can Amtrak charge so much for the Northeast Corridor?” His answer, which he claims to have arrived at with the Antiplanner’s assistance, is that buses carry the low-income passengers in this corridor, so Amtrak can get away with charging first-class rates for high-end passengers. That’s […]
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Amtrak President Exaggerates 0
- October 1, 2012
Amtrak President Joseph Boardman scored a point when he announced that Amtrak operates the Rocky Mountaineer, a cruise train that takes passengers from Vancouver to Whistler and the Canadian Rockies. He made this announcement at the September 20 House Transportation Committee hearing about 41 years of Amtrak deficits. The Antiplanner had offered the Rocky Mountaineer […]
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Privatize or Contract Out?0
- September 27, 2012
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) spends $50 million more than its peers on employee benefits, says KPMG in an audit of the agency. Reducing benefits to national average levels (easier said than done) and contracting out some services such as cleaning would allow MARTA to erase a $33 million deficit in its annual […]
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Jerry Brown Tries the Google Car 0
- September 26, 2012
California Governor Jerry Brown rode in a self-driving car with Google co-founder Sergey Brin on their way to Google headquarters, where Brown signed legislation creating a framework for introducing driverless cars into California by 2015. Meanwhile, automakers are incrementally automating driving with the introduction of a variety of new technologies. On October 23, Volvo and […]
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USA Today‘s Interesting Arithmetic 0
- September 24, 2012
USA Today reports that “fewer Americans commuting solo.” As the story says, “The dismal economy and skyrocketing gas prices may have accomplished what years of advocacy failed to: getting more people to stop driving solo.” To put some numbers on this, Wendell Cox points out that the number of people commuting solo has declined from […]
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Back in the Air Again 0
- September 20, 2012
Today the Antiplanner is in Washington DC to testify at a hearing on Amtrak subsidies. The Antiplanner will tell the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee that it should “support privatization of Amtrak, in the context of a broader effort to end federal subsidies to and unfair taxation of all forms of transportation.” My testimony points […]
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