July 1, 1993 – October 11, 2010 Chip on Christmas, 2009. Knowing this day would eventually arrive didn’t make it any easier, nor did the fact that, at 17 years three months, Chip outlived most other dogs of his size by several years. If I live to share my home with a hundred more dogs, […]
READ MOREThe 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.” […]
READ MOREOn 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 […]
READ MORERecently, 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 […]
READ MOREEven smart-growth planners believe, or say they believe, that Le Corbusier‘s Radiant City would be an awful place to live. If you agree, then Seoul is a scary place, as much of it consists of hundreds of high-rise apartment blocks. Seoul occupies less than 2 percent of Korea’s land area but contains 40 percent of […]
READ MOREThe Antiplanner is flying to Seoul, Korea, today to speak at a conference tomorrow (Thursday local time) on conflict management and collaborative governance. Apparently, someone heard about the Forest Options Group, a committee of environmentalists, timber industry leaders, and Forest Service officials that I helped organize in the late 1990s. The group urged the Forest […]
READ MOREIn 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. […]
READ MOREPowerPoint shows from the 2010 Preserving the American Dream conference are posted on the American Dream Coalition web site. Here are a few interesting comments made at the conference. “The U.S. Department of Transportation was created on April Fools Day, 1967. Today, it produces a product (mobility) that it doesn’t understand and doesn’t care much […]
READ MOREThe Antiplanner is flying to Orlando today for the eighth annual Preserving the American Dream conference. I’ll also be traveling for the following two weeks through October 7. Postings during this time may be light, especially if I can’t find good internet connections.
READ MOREWith 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 […]
READ MOREIt’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 […]
READ MOREMany 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 […]
READ MOREOne 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 […]
READ MORETime used to be a news magazine with (for part of its history) a strong anti-communist slant. Apparently, news doesn’t sell anymore in the Internet age, as Time is now more of an opinion magazine. So when last week’s cover story was titled, “Rethinking Homeownership,” the Antiplanner assumed this would be another smart-growth diatribe against […]
READ MOREThe Antiplanner spent most of this week in Glacier National Park attending the annual convention of the Great Northern Railway Historical Society. This is the 100th anniversary of the creation of Glacier Park, which was strongly promoted by Louis Hill, the son of James J. Hill, the builder of the Great Northern Railway. Under Louis’ […]
READ MOREFred 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 […]
READ MOREAmy Oliver Cooke, Director
Email: Amy@i2i.org
Phone: 303-279-6536, ext 107
Amy Oliver Cooke, Director
Email: Amy@i2i.org
Phone: 303-279-6536, ext 107
Who knew it would be such a busy week? Before I head off to go play in the snow or jump in a pile of leaves or two — you never know with the weather here in Colorado — I thought you’d like to see the new results from the Association of American Educators nationwide […]
READ MOREAs explained by author Marya DeGrow, conflict between some Colorado public school districts and parents led to the adoption of a 1988 legislative bill that established guidelines for home education.
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More than three dozen states have some type of Blaine clause in their state constitutions. These problematic clauses prohibit government aid to “sectarian” institutions. Though this language has been euphemized to stand for the “separation of church and state,” such an outlook misinterprets the religious protections outlined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution
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