TRANSPORTATION - Miscellaneous - Independence Institute

Congress Still Perplexed by Wildfire 0
- October 9, 2012
“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 Myth 0
- October 8, 2012
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 Woes 0
- October 4, 2012
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
- October 3, 2012
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 Exaggerates 0
- October 1, 2012
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
- September 27, 2012
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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