Monthly Archives: May 2009

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood lashed out in response to George Will’s claim that LaHood is trying to be “Secretary of Behavior Modification” — by casually admitting it.

“About everything we do around here is government intrusion into people’s lives,” says LaHood. Admitting that Obama’s policies are, in fact, “a way to coerce people out of their cars,” LaHood commented that, “The only person that I’ve heard of who objects to this is George Will.”

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Members of the House of Representatives submitted their requests for 6,868 earmarks for the next reauthorization of federal surface transportation spending. That’s only about 500 more than the number that was officially in the 2005 transportation act (an “official” earmark is numbered in the bill; the asterisk in the linked table indicates there were several hundred more unnumbered earmarks).

At $136 billion, the total cost of these earmarks would be almost six times as much as the $24 billion cost of earmarks in 2005. Of course, this is far from the final total. The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee says it may pare these down. On the other hand, the Senate is likely to add to the list.

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Riders of Washington, DC’s Metrobus system are much more likely to be low-income minorities than users of the Metrorail system, according to a 2007 survey. The median income for Metrorail riders is $102,100, while the median income for bus riders is only two-thirds as much at $69,600; more than half of bus riders are minorities while three-quarters of rail riders are non-Hispanic white.

Back in the 1970s, public subsidies to transit were justified on the grounds that cities needed transit to serve low-income people who could not afford to own their own cars. That reason has been forgotten in the rush to build rail lines that will attract middle-class people out of their cars.

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If you like driving a big car or SUV, the good news about Obama’s new fuel-economy standards is that they won’t dictate what kind of car you will be able to buy in the future. If you want to buy a 15-mpg SUV, Detroit (or Aichi or Wolfsburg) will be free to make and sell you one.

The bad news is that the standards may make your car more expensive. Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards are actually calculated as the mean of gallons per mile, not miles per gallon. So, as of 2016, for every 15-mpg model made by an auto maker, that company will have to make five models of cars that can go 50 mpg in order for its fleet to meet Obama’s new target. Since bringing each new model to market can cost billions of dollars, if there are not enough people who want to buy those fuel-efficient cars to cover their design costs, the company will have to add a share of those costs to your SUV.

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Add Austin’s Capital Metro to the list of transit agencies that have gotten themselves into serious financial trouble because they insisted on building an expensive rail transit line. After blowing $300 million on a commuter-rail line and other questionable improvements, Capital Metro is heavily in debt and lacks the resources to fund bus and other planned expansions.

High-cost transit: Scheduled to begin operating in March, the tracks are built, the vehicles are not yet paid for, the system isn’t running, and no one knows when service will begin.

Just a few years ago, the agency had $200 million in the bank. But its CEO considered that a liability, not an asset, because “everyone in town thought we were rich, and they were coming after it.” He argues that blowing a bunch of money on unnecessary projects was necessary to protect the agency’s assets.

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Even for a famous transportation writer, it is amazing how many factual errors Tom Vanderbilt, the author of a book on traffic congestion, managed to pack into a single article in Slate. Is it because he ventured into a field beyond his expertise and is relying someone else’s erroneous data? Or is he being deliberately deceptive?

The Milwaukee Road’s Hiawatha was one of the nation’s first “high-speed trains,” but it began service in 1935, not in the 1920s. Otto Perry photo.

His thesis is that “trains are slower now than in the 1920s” because railroad technology “is worse now than it was in the early 20th century.” Both these statements are flat-out wrong: trains are faster today, and rail technology has been thoroughly revolutionized since the 1920s.

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