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Monthly Archives: August 2012

Flash! Amtrak Food Services Loses Money

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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House Transportation Committee Chair John Mica says that Amtrak is losing $84 million a year on its food services. A recent report from the Amtrak inspector general says that at least part of the loss is due to thefts from Amtrak food-service personnel.

Florida Representative Sandy Adams–who, due to redistricting, is facing Mica in this year’s election–says that Mica’s criticism of Amtrak’s losses is “an election-year stunt.” Adams, who is supposed to be a Republican, is critical of Mica’s solution, which is to turn over food service to private companies. Why “put taxpayers on the hook to continue a subsidy to the companies who win the concession bid”? asks Adams.

Of course, the answer is that private companies are more efficient, less likely to have onerous pension and health care liabilities, and will probably have better methods of making sure employees don’t steal from them. Any Republican should know this answer, but Adams’ response to Mica is no doubt an election-year stunt.

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Rail Propaganda Is Not a Civil Right

By | | News commentary
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Honolulu’s transit agency signed millions of dollars worth of contracts to Parsons Brinckerhoff and other consultants to spread propaganda in favor of its $5 billion rail project, which is a major issue in tomorrow’s Saturday’s mayoral election. When a member of Honolulu’s city council proposed to require the transit agency to terminate these contracts and limit its public relations programs to just one staff member (instead of the current ten), the agency responded saying that it was required by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to issue the propaganda.

This and other federal laws, says the transit agency, “require recipients of federal transit funding to engage in an active, inclusive, and extensive public participation and involvement process in the planning, implementation, operation, and improvement of public transit projects.” This would be believable if the agency ever actually listened to any member of the public who is not enthusiastically in favor of its vision of an ugly elevated rail line through Honolulu. While the agency has jumped through the hoops of seeking comments on environmental impact statements and other documents, it has totally ignored any the substance of those comments (such as a request that the agency compare rail with a wide range of alternatives).
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Propaganda is not public involvement, and transit agencies that conduct advertising or other campaigns to gain support for their projects (as opposed to simply getting new riders) are deceiving the public and wasting their money.

Here and There

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Atlanta wisely voted down a transportation tax. Some thought it spent too much on highways; some too much on transit. But wherever the money would be spent, why should transportation be paid for out of taxes when users will (and should) pay for it?

Meanwhile, the race for mayor of Honolulu is heating up with pro-rail groups spending $1 million against former Governor Ben Cayetano, who has vowed to kill the city’s $5 billion rail project. Cayetano nevertheless appears certain to get a plurality of votes in next Tuesday’s election, but probably not enough to avoid a runoff election in November.
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Meanwhile, the Antiplanner has started a new blog dedicated to the Silver Age of passenger trains, which the Antiplanner defines as lasting from 1934, when the first streamliners appeared, to 1971, when Amtrak took over. As a fan of those trains, the Antiplanner has collected hundreds of pieces of rail memorabilia, which I’ve scanned and will post at the rate of at least one per day over the next year or so with only occasional political commentary. Regardless of how you feel about transportation policy, if you love trains, you’ll enjoy this new blog.

Champions of Pork

By | | News commentary, Transportation
48 Comments

For the White House to declare someone a “champion of change,” they apparently have to be a champion of pork. The first person listed helped plan the California high-speed rail system, whose projected costs have more than doubled in since voters approved it in 2008. The original cost projections, made in the late 1990s, were only $15 billion, but the state’s High-Speed Rail Authority has managed to push those costs up to more than $100 billion.

The second champion of change is the CEO of a company that is making electric buses. Each bus is supposed to save transit agencies $100,000 a year in fuel costs (though they don’t say how much the electricity costs). Sounds good, except that three buses and two charging stations cost $5.6 million, which is more than $1.8 million a bus. Since an ordinary bus costs about $300,000, that means it will take more than 15 years to recover the extra cost. Guess the expected lifespan of a bus (hint: it is three years less than 15).

Not only that, “without government funding for research and development, Proterra wouldn’t be in its current position” to make these buses, according to the champion of change. So the buses required subsidies to develop, they require subsidies to buy, and the Antiplanner won’t be surprised if they require subsidies to operate.

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