Why do liberals confuse inputs with outputs? Matthew Yglesias raves about how wonderful Los Angeles is for building more rail transit, even though the city’s last burst of rail construction resulted in a 17 percent decline in transit ridership. A Los Angeles attorney named Robert Garcie provides an antidote to Yglesias’ rantings. He notes that […]
READ MOREThe Oregonian reports that drivers for TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, are taking so much overtime that many get little sleep. Paying for overtime costs taxpayers a lot of money and the lack of sleep creates hazardous situations. This TriMet light-rail train crashed into the bumpers at the end of the line because, investigators found, the […]
READ MOREVirginia Governor Bob McDonnell wants his state to be the first to end the gas tax. The Antiplanner supports that idea because gas taxes are an imperfect user fee. However, McDonnell proposes to replace the gas tax with a 0.8-cent sales tax that he says will generate more revenue than the gas tax. If your […]
READ MORELexus cautiously presented its work towards a self-driving car at the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show yesterday. Audi has taken the bolder step of obtaining a Nevada license for its self-driving car. Tire maker Continental has also entered the field. Lexus (which of course is owned by Toyota) is advertising its technology as more of […]
READ MOREHere is the second of my statements of principles for the New Year. 1. The Property-Rights Principle: Government should not regulate land uses except to prevent trespasses or nuisances. People should be allowed to use their land in any way they see fit provided their use does not harm others (such as through air, water, […]
READ MOREThe Bipartisan Policy Center released an “infographic” arguing that there is an imminent shortage of rental housing. “Five to six million new renter households will form over the next ten years,” says the “graphic” (quotations used because it really isn’t that graphic), but a “slowdown in new construction . . . means rental market conditions […]
READ MOREThe “obesity crisis” became a hot topic just over a decade ago when the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) published data showing that American weights were increasing. All sort of interest groups jumped on this crisis, including urban planners who blamed obesity on urban sprawl and driving. If obesity has a cause, it is more […]
READ MOREThe New Year seems an appropriate time to state, or restate, the main goals of this blog. Today the Antiplanner will focus on transportation. Future manifestos will focus on land-use regulation and public land management. Any suggestions for improving these principles and corollaries are welcome. 1. The Transportation Agency Principle: The sole goal of government […]
READ MOREThat is, near the top of the list of the nation’s worst transit systems, says the San Jose Mercury-New. “The near-empty trolleys that often shuttle by at barely faster than jogging speeds serve as a constant reminder that the car is still king in Silicon Valley,” says the paper, “and that the Valley Transportation Authority’s […]
READ MOREHave a Happy Hanukkah, Wonderful Winter Solstice, thrilling Kwanzaa, Festive Festivus, glorious Gurnenthar’s Ascendance, or whatever holiday you celebrate. From the Antiplanner dogs, Smokey & Buffy.
READ MOREGarl Boyd Latham, of the Texas Association of Railroad Passengers, predicts that San Antonians will be “pleased by streetcars once they are running.” His response to the Antiplanner’s op ed critiquing the city’s streetcar plan basically amounts to, “don’t confuse me with the facts; I know what I believe.” To be precise, Latham says, “An […]
READ MOREThe Auto Train, which carries passengers and their autos between Virginia and Florida, was a “private failure” but a “public success,” says the January, 2013 issue of Trains magazine. For those who don’t know the story, the Auto-Train began as a private venture when a Department of Transportation employee named Eugene Garfield took a DOT […]
READ MOREThe costs of collecting electronic tolls are rapidly declining, particularly for roads that only accept electronic tolls. In 2009, when I was writing Gridlock, the best available estimates indicated that 12 to 23 percent of toll revenues went to collection costs, compared with just 3 percent for state gas taxes. However, a recent paper from […]
READ MORE“When does regulating a person’s habits in the name of good health become our moral and social duty?” Dr. David Agus asks in a New York Times op ed. The answer, says Agus, is “when all of us are stuck paying for one another’s medical bills (which is what we do now, by way of […]
READ MOREA common saying (sometimes attributed to Samuel Francis, but I first heard it before he is supposed to have said it) inside the DC Beltway, at least among fiscal conservatives, is that America has two political parties: the Evil Party and the Stupid Party. It appears to the Antiplanner that the Stupid Party has once […]
READ MOREIt took several days to transfer all the files, but the Antiplanner has a new web host and it seems to be working fine. I lost the last post and I think some of the comments on the next-to-last post, but I’ll live with that rather than try to recover them. I’ll be playing with […]
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
Over at Education Next (one of my favorite stops these days), professors Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky say there may be a way to make a positive move beyond the traditional debate over teacher pensions:
The critics of DB [defined benefit plans] are correct that current plans are seriously underfunded in part because benefits are not […]
READ MORELast week I asked what Denver Public Schools was up to with a plan to change the enrollment policies for some of its charter schools, making them into “boundary schools.” What’s up with that?
When you’re 5 years old like I am, you can tend to be insecure about questioning authority so often. Thus I was […]
