I’ve been meaning to do a detailed review of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Commission report (which was previously mentioned), but haven’t had time. Fortunately, the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Ron Utt has reviewed the report, which you can read on the Heritage Foundation web site.

In a nutshell, Utt says that the commission’s proposal to triple gasoline taxes is only one of several bad ideas in the report. Others include the report’s failure to acknowledge intercity bus service (which is practically unsubsidized yet must compete against heavily subsidized Amtrak) and further diversion from the highway trust fund. Utt also doesn’t like the proposed reorganization of the Department of Transportation.

I still will try to review the report in more detail soon. In the meantime, thanks to Ron, I can spend a little more time on my real job.

Lobbyists and pork-barreling politicians are opportunists, always trying to hitch their wagons to the latest political trends. A few years ago, the issue was national security. A few months ago, the fashionable political trend was “infrastructure.” Now, suddenly, it is “economic stimulus.”

The Bush-Pelosi stimulus plan calls for giving millions of people $600 each. This is going to do practically nothing about the recession we are entering, but both Republicans and Democrats want to look like they are doing something, anything, about the economy.

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I am in KC today helping the Show-Me Institute educate people about the benefits and costs of light rail. Long-time readers will recall that Kansas City voters approved a light-rail plan after having rejected such plans six times. The Show-Me Institute is releasing a report on the subject by the Antiplanner which you can no doubt find on their web site.

In a nutshell, the voter-approved plan is totally infeasible, as it calls for taking money from the bus system to build rail and presumes that the federal government will pay half the cost — which, the FTA says, it won’t if it means reducing bus service. Plus the current cost projections are 50 percent more than the costs initially projected by the line’s backers.

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The collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis led immediately to calls for increased gas taxes for infrastructure repair. The fact that at least 20 percent of such increases would be likely to be spent on transit, and who knows how much more would be up for grabs by Congressional earmarkers, was carefully kept quiet.

Now it appears likely that the collapse was not due to inadequate maintenance. Instead, it was a design flaw. According to a National Transportation Safety Board report, the bridge probably collapsed when one or more gusset plates failed. (See also this press release.)

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