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, […]
READ MOREMatthew 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 […]
READ MOREThe Antiplanner is in Nashville today speaking to the Tennessee Road Builders Association. Contrary to the claims of some, this is a rare event for me; I think I’ve only spoken to one road builder association in the past, and that was close to ten years ago. I won’t actually speak until this afternoon, so […]
READ MOREThe 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 […]
READ MOREA new census of downtown Portland employers reveals that, for the first time since the annual census began in 2001, the number of downtown workers taking transit to work exceeded the number driving in 2009. This isn’t because the number taking transit to work increased — it declined by 6 percent — but because the […]
READ MORETable 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 […]
READ MOREPlanners 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 […]
READ MOREThe Department of Transportation has announced $290 million in “livability” grants, including $25 million each for streetcars in Charlotte, Cincinnati, Ft. Worth, and St. Louis plus $5 million to extend a streetcar line in Dallas. “Streetcars are making a comeback because cities across America are recognizing that they can restore economic development downtown,” the DOT […]
READ MOREPublic transit is often portrayed as a low-cost, environmentally friendly alternative to auto driving. In fact, transit is much more costly than driving, and requires huge subsidies to attract riders. Moreover, transit systems in the vast majority of American cities use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases than the average car.
For every dollar collected in fares from transit riders, the average transit system in America requires more than $2 from taxpayers for operating subsidies plus more than $1 for capital improvements and maintenance. So it is not surprising that transit systems in Colorado require large subsidies. What may be surprising is that most are far less environmentally friendly than a typical sports utility vehicle.
READ MORELast week, the New York Times published an amazingly shallow article saying the “biggest defaulters on mortgages are the rich.” This contention is supported by a single pair of data: the owners of about 14 percent of homes worth more than $1 million are delinquent on their mortgages, while only “about” 8 to 9 percent […]
READ MOREA Florida bicycling group tells its members to ride in the middle of any lane that is less than 14 feet wide. An animation explains why doing so is safer for the cyclist and notes that (in Florida, at least) “a cyclist is entitled to use the full width of a lane that is less […]
READ MORENew reports have raised questions about and spurred opposition to California’s grandiose high-speed rail plans. First, last April, the California state auditor reported that the state’s high-speed rail authority suffered from “inadequate planning, weak oversight, and lax contract management,” which is not exactly what you want to hear about an agency that is about to […]
READ MORETongues are wagging in New York City about a new transportation technology that doesn’t require you to descend into a dank tunnel smelling of urine, sweat, and lysol. The new technology is called a bus, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority used one to introduce a new bus-rapid transit line two years ago. Not only […]
READ MORELet’s see: 100 percent cost overrun? Check. Anemic ridership? Check. Requires tax breaks, tax-increment financing, and other “public investments” to stimulate transit-oriented development? Check. Declared a great success by the transit agency desperate for tax increases to fund further rail projects? Check. Must be light rail. As Wikipedia points out, when planned in 2000, Charlotte’s […]
READ MORESpeaking of crony capitalism (as the Antiplanner was doing last week), one of the biggest sources of such urban corruption is tax-increment financing (TIF). TIF was invented in the 1950s to help cities revitalize neighborhoods that were supposedly so blighted that no one would gentrify them without government support. Today, such blight (which resulted when […]
READ MOREChip the Wonder Dog is 17 years old today, which in dog years makes him approximately as old as Walter Breuning, the former Great Northern Railway employee who is thought to be the oldest man in the world. Like Walter, who was fitted for his first hearing aid at age 111, Chip is showing his […]
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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One of the Education Policy Center’s primary goals is to educate local education leaders about important education policy issues, thereby equipping them to make intelligent, well-informed decisions in their school districts. Biennially, we update our K-12 policy issues school board member handbook to provide leaders with historical and current information from a common-sense perspective on
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