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Latest Posts

  • More on the European Transport Myth0

    While many people believe that European travel modes are quite different from those of the United States, a close look at the data reveals two main points. First, Europeans travel a lot less than Americans: including flying, the average American travels about 85 percent more miles per year than the average Western European. Second, the […]

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  • European Housing Disasters0

    Land-use planning has made British housing so expensive that more than half of all homeowners expect to have to downsize the next time they move while only 22 percent expect to upsize. Home prices in Britain and other European countries with lots of land-use regulation tend to bubble as much as prices in California and […]

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  • Renationalization or True Privatization?0

    United Kingdom’s Department for Transportation is in trouble over a plan to transfer the franchise to run passenger trains over the London-Glasgow West Coast route from Virgin Trains (which is 49 percent owned by Stagecoach) to rival First Group. After fifteen years, Virgin Trains’ franchise is set to expire in December, and when the government […]

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  • Congress Still Perplexed by Wildfire0

    “U.S. runs out of funds to battle wildfires,” misstates a Washington Post headline. “In the worst wildfire season on record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service ran out of money to pay for firefighters, fire trucks and aircraft that dump retardant on monstrous flames,” continues the article, making two more errors. Smoke from the […]

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  • The European Transport Myth0

    An article in Transport Reviews compares U.S. and European transit usage and argues that Europeans use transit more because they have better transit service, low fares, multi-modal integration, high taxes and restrictions on driving, and land-use policies that promote compact, mixed-use developments–all things that American planners want to do here. One obvious problem with the […]

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  • Streetcar Woes0

    Portland opened its new east side streetcar line a couple of weeks ago, but the real story is in the Lake Oswego plant that is supposed to be making streetcars to run on the new line. In 2011, the company, United Streetcar, announced that its first streetcars would be several months late and it would […]

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  • How Does Amtrak Determine Fares?0

    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 Exaggerates0

    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

    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 Car0

    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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  • What Is Middle Class?0

    Critics of Mitt Romney laughed when he said that “middle-class income” was “between $200,000 and $250,000″ when what he actually said was that it was “between $200,000 and $250,000 or less” meaning that the $200,000 to $250,000 was the upper limit. As the Huffington Post points out, Democrats including Obama and Pelosi have also used […]

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  • USA Today‘s Interesting Arithmetic0

    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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  • Amtrak Shrugged0

    Watching one of the first showings of part II of Atlas Shrugged was a surrealistic experience after testifying to the House Transportation Committee about Amtrak. In the movie, government officials piously argue that for the “greater good” (a phrase that turned out to be just as deadly in Harry Potter as in Atlas Shrugged) they […]

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  • Back in the Air Again0

    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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  • Cities Growing Faster Than Suburbs–NOT!0

    A few months ago, several news outlets reported that new census data showed that the cities were growing faster than the suburbs. This brought comfort to those urban planners who believe that inner cities are better than suburbs and that most people would prefer to live in them if only they understood all the benefits. […]

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  • Highway Fund Uncertainty Leads to Ratings Cut0

    Citing uncertainties about the health of the federal Highway Trust Fund, Fitch has cut its ratings on state highway bonds in several states from AA- to A+. The bonds being cut are “grant anticipation revenue” or GARVEE bonds, which are supposed to be repaid out of federal grants. In recent years, Congressional overspending of the […]

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Contact

Amy 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

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