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Monthly Archives: August 2011

The City That’s Corrupt

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
32 Comments

Portland, whose slogan, “The City That Works,” was stolen from one of the most corrupt cities in America, has been rocked by a new scandal, this one involving actual charges of bribery and under-the-table dealings. The FBI raided the home and office of the city’s parking manager to investigate allegations that he accepted large bribes to turn the city’s parking meter business over to a particular company.

These allegations apparently go back several years, but only now are being investigated in detail. What is interesting is how many Portlanders read the headlines and say, “yep, it must be true,” rather than, “this would never happen in our city.” A city that wastes huge gobs of money on silly streetcar and light-rail projects just exudes a culture prone to corruption.

“Portland is one of the most corrupt and nepotistic city governments in America,” says former Portland planner Richard Carson, who walked away from a lucrative planning job because “I just could not compromise my principles for more money.” He specifically points to the city building a light-rail line after voters rejected it twice and taking money from water user fees to spend on pork-barrel projects as examples of that corruption.

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Obamacars to Cost $6,714 More?

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
29 Comments

Motor Trend magazine reports that meeting President Obama’s fuel-economy standards for 2025 will cost consumers $6,714 more per car. This is based on a paper published by the Center for Automotive Research last June, when Obama’s standards were still in flux.

There is some debate over this conclusion: a group called the International Council on Clean Transportation thinks that CAR has exaggerated the difficulties (CAR’s response). ICCT notes that the auto industry has a history of crying wolf when the federal government proposes new safety or pollution standards: Henry Ford II, for example, predicted that seatbelt and safety glass standards would “close down” his company.

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China Suspends New HSR

By | | Transportation
63 Comments

Railway Age reports that China’s Premier Wen Jiabao has suspended “approval of new railway projects” while it investigates the recent accident that killed at least 40 people.

Jiabao also said that the country would “reduce the average speed of new high speed trains at their early stage of operation.” Another report indicates that the government has ordered one of the Chinese manufacturers to stop making bullet trains “because of an improperly working automatic safety system that was causing delays on its Shanghai to Beijing line.”

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California HSR Already Over Projected Costs

By | | Transportation
33 Comments

The California High-Speed Rail Authority has finally admitted that its insanely expensive rail project will be even more insanely expensive than its official projections. The most recent cost estimates for the “train to nowhere”–the first link of the project from north of Bakersfield to south of Merced–are 40 to 96 percent higher (depending on the alternative selected) than the original According to the cialis vs viagra theory of Chinese medicine, the stress can have a bad impact on the human body, hindering the circulation of blood and also a disorder across the whole body. Iatrogenic – Adverse effects of certain medications can greatly reduce your ability to viagra 100mg usa erect your penile organ. This recent spam in the form of invitation and hidden website link clearly indicates that this attack is an initiation buying levitra online and Google Plus will soon be considered as a mark of disgrace in the society and that is why it becomes mandatory to treat this problem. But did it give a better understanding about your son’s disease: About the Immune System The immune system is made up of a network of cells, tissues, and organs that work generic cialis in canada together to protect the body. projections. These aren’t even final engineering estimates; merely part of the line’s environmental impact report.

The California legislature should put this plan back on the ballot in June 2012, as proposed by Republican State Senator Doug La Malfa. If voters kill it in June, they can prevent the authority, which plans to start construction in September, 2012, from wasting any more money.

Now, This Is Ridiculous

By | | City planning, Housing
19 Comments

What’s the most ridiculous zoning rule or decision you’ve ever heard of? Here’s a candidate: Alexandria, Virginia (which wants a Portland-like streetcar) has told property owners in one neighborhood that replacement of rusty chain-link fences violates the city’s historic preservation ordinance.

“While many feel that [chain-link] fences have negative connotations, this material has played an important role in the development of mid-century vernacular housing and their cultural landscape,” the city’s historic preservation staff noted. “By eradicating this ‘simple fencing solution,’ the applicant would be removing an important contextual clue to the original occupants of this neighborhood.”

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Let the Gas Tax Expire

By | | News commentary, Transportation
46 Comments

The Antiplanner has written several recent posts about Congressional reauthorization of transportation spending. But an even more imminent transportation reauthorization deadline is coming up: that for transportation revenue in the form of gas taxes. The law allowing such taxes is due to expire on September 30.

Recalcitrant Republicans held airline ticket taxes hostage for several weeks over subsidies to a baker’s dozen out-of-the-way airports. They let the debate over raising the debt limit go down to the wire. What’s to prevent them from refusing to reauthorize the federal gas tax?

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Obama Undercuts Case for HSR and Rail Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
55 Comments

President Obama has ordered the auto industry to make cars that average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. This is after his 2009 order directing the industry to make cars that average 34.5 miles per gallon by 2016.

As a free-market advocate, I should be outraged that Obama is ordering private enterprise around like a petty dictator. But actually I feel schadenfreude for all the anti-auto environmentalists who will now have an even more difficult time claiming we need to invest in transit and intercity trains to save energy.

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Bolt, Megabus Taking Passengers from Amtrak

By | | Transportation
35 Comments

More than a third of Bolt and Megabus riders in the Boston-to-Washington corridor say they would have taken an Amtrak train if the “new model” of bus service were not available. (The new model relies on curbside stops instead of stations, mainly non-stop service between cities instead of multiple stops between major cities, internet ticket sales, and fares set by yield management–with the first seats sold going for very low prices.) Amtrak lost far more customers to the new model than conventional carriers such as Greyhound.

To reach this finding, Joseph Schwieterman–a professor of public service at DePaul University–and his students and associates at the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development surveyed nearly 400 Bolt and Megabus riders in New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, as well as nearly 400 Megabus riders and 275 Greyhound passengers in Chicago, Indianapolis, and St. Louis.

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Paradox or Not?

By | | News commentary
25 Comments

Every family, every company, every nation must decide how much to spend today and how much to save/invest for the future. The decisions they make reflect their internal discount rate, which is the rate (expressed as an annual percent) that they discount future benefits and costs.

In the case of the recent debt deal, Democrats want to spend more now and not worry about future costs, indicating they have high discount rates and value present consumption much more highly than the future. Republicans want to save now, which they hope would have the effect of leading private investors to invest that savings effectively. This suggests they have a lower discount rate and value the future more highly.

On the other hand, considering the climate change issue, liberals tend to want to reduce current consumption in order to protect the distant future, which suggests a low discount rate. Fiscal conservatives see the future as highly uncertain and prefer to increase current wealth, which sounds like they have a higher discount rate. (A true application of the “precautionary principle,” conservatives argue, would be to invest in things that have immediate returns, such as reducing malaria and other major diseases, with the expectation that society will be wealthier and better able to deal with climate change if and when it actually happens.)

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America 2050: Forget about the Forgotten Mode

By | | Follow up, Transportation
37 Comments

Half truths, innuendo, and pseudo-science form the basis of a recent response to the Antiplanner’s recent paper, Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode. The basic thesis of the response is that intercity buses have a role to play in a “balanced transportation system,” but they are “no replacement for high-speed rail.”

Of course, the Antiplanner never argued that buses were a replacement for true high-speed rail. But it did show that existing bus schedules in many corridors are faster, more frequent, and charge far lower fares than Amtrak in the same corridors. Of course, there is a “replacement” for high-speed rail: it is called “air travel” and it is far faster and costs about a fifth as much per passenger mile as Amtrak’s Acela.

In any case, America 2050 says the Antiplanner ignored “one of the most powerful arguments for rail: providing an alternative to highway congestion.” I didn’t address that argument in the paper on buses because, as I’ve shown before, it’s a stupid argument. Highways move about 85 percent of all passenger travel, and more than a quarter of all ton-miles of freight in this country. If they are congested, maybe we should relieve that congestion rather than spending hundreds of billions of dollars on an elitist rail network that won’t relieve congestion and won’t carry than a tiny fraction of the number of people (and none of the freight) moved on the highways.

But we can’t fix highway congestion, says America 2050: “providing additional road space does not solve congestion; in fact it creates additional demand for driving.” That’s another stupid argument for four reasons. First, my bus paper never advocated building new roads, and if asked, I would have suggested relieving congestion using congestion pricing of roads before building new capacity.

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