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 […]
READ MOREThe world won’t be the same without you. I’ll remember your songs every time I hike in the wilderness. 1953-2010
READ MOREWill 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 […]
READ MORE“We need to rethink rail,” says Fred Jandt, the editor of Mass Transit magazine. After first defending his credentials as a rail and transit advocate, he admits, “Rail is expensive.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it is “prohibitively” expensive, he says, “but it may be something we need to rethink.” This need-to-rethink was inspired by Joel […]
READ MOREThe owner of a beauty shop who applied for a loan from a community development fund received a response calling her “one crazy ass bitch” and suggesting that she was under a “delusion that somehow you might be credit worthy.” The author of the letter, who was suspended for a week without pay, later wrote […]
READ MOREResidents of Lake Oswego, Portland’s wealthiest large suburb, have hired one of the state’s leading (and most liberal) political consultants to oppose a planned streetcar between downtown Portland and their community. Who has the bucks to hire Bergstein? One of the names mentioned is Elaine Franklin, wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Packwood. As Bojack […]
READ MOREDonald Shoup supports free parking. At least, in a response to my first post about Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking, Dr. Shoup points out that he only wants the price of parking to be “right,” and “the right price [for parking] will often be zero.” However, the main purpose of Shoup’s response is […]
READ MOREHDR, a consulting firm that routinely misleads cities in order to get contracts promoting and designing streetcars, has written a report for the Michigan Department of Transportation that greatly exaggerates the benefits of public transit. In claiming that those benefits are “conservatively” $805 million a year, the report makes many unwarranted assumptions. The most important […]
READ MOREThe Antiplanner’s Ride Around Crater Lake Three Times in One Day (RACLTTOD) went well. My brother Richard joined me for all three laps, his wife Carin for two, and the Antiplanner’s faithful ally (and sometimes commenter) Andy Stahl for two. With two 2-mile detours to Cloud Cap overlook, Richard and I did a total of […]
READ MORETwo weeks ago, the Antiplanner responded with dismay to George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking. This led to a variety of responses in the blogosphere, none of which address the Antiplanner’s point. Instead, they all argue against the minimum-parking requirements found in many zoning regulations. In particular, Cowen himself points […]
READ MOREProbably no more posts this week as the Antiplanner is heading down to Crater Lake for RACLTTOD–Ride Around Crater Lake Three Times in One Day. The Crater Lake rim road is about 33 miles around with about 3,800 feet of elevation gain. Three laps, with a couple of side trips to a point called Cloud […]
READ MOREI have a friend who needs my help, and I hope some of my readers will help him too. Back in 1985, the Antiplanner worked exclusively for environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society, reviewing Forest Service plans and helping environmentalists understand how the Forest Service worked. My research showed that the Forest […]
READ MOREAmericans want high-speed rail, as long as someone else pays for it. States are chuffed upset, for example, because the federal government now says it wants the states to put up 20 percent of the capital cost. The original Federal Railroad Administration grant guidelines issued back in 2008 suggested that the feds might pay all […]
READ MOREThe New York Times loves to tell stories of people who got off the “work-spend treadmill” by selling off all but about 100 personal items and moving into a 400-square-foot studio apartment in Portland. Even the Wall Street Journal has jumped on board by telling the heartwarming story of someone who bought and remodeled a […]
READ MOREFaithful Antiplanner ally Craig sends this amusing article from the Portland Oregonian in 1988. Unfortunately, a subscription to NewBank is required to view the link, but the gist of the article is that Congress gave Portland’s TriMet transit agency $6.2 million to subsidize a development on the city’s light-rail line that would make the light […]
READ MOREThe Antiplanner blew it yesterday by saying there was no free parking in Manhattan, which shows this Oregon resident doesn’t spend much time in the Big Apple. It turns out Manhattan has lots of free on-street parking, though on many streets you have to move your car to the alternate side of the street every […]
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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