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Monthly Archives: January 2013

LaHood’s Legacy

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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As the Antiplanner noted yesterday, Ray LaHood’s lasting legacy as Secretary of Immobility is the loosening of requirements for major transit capital grants in new rules issued a few weeks ago. This is most important for streetcar fans, since the Bush-era rules pretty much predetermined that streetcars were not a cost-effective use of federal transportation dollars. As a result, most of the streetcar projects that LaHood was able to fund came out of stimulus funds, not transportation funds.

With the floodgates opened, expect to see a rash of streetcar applications. Reconnecting America, a pro-transit group, has cataloged more than 600 transit plans under way in more than 100 metro areas. These include 125 streetcar projects in at least 50 cities which may now be eligible for funding now that LaHood has eliminated the Bush cost-effectiveness criteria.

ProjectsCost/Mile (Millions)Daily PM/Million $ Cost
Rapid Bus215309
Commuter rail11617269
Bus rapid transit13516177
Light rail11882121
Heavy rail3448071
Streetcar1254158
Interstate Highways1108,000

This table shows the estimated capital cost per mile of various types of transit projects identified by Reconnecting America. “Rapid bus” is Reconnecting America’s term for fast, frequent bus service with limited stops on existing roads; “bus-rapid transit” is Reconnecting America’s term for similar bus service on dedicated roads. The daily passenger miles per million dollars of capital cost is a crude measure of cost-effectiveness calculated by multiplying projected daily trips for each mode times the average length of trips by that mode (1.75 miles for streetcars; 4 miles for bus; 5 for light and heavy rail; and 20 miles for commuter rail) and dividing by the capital cost. The last row, representing the Interstate Highway System, is offered for the sake of comparison.

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Goodbye Ray LaHood

By | | News commentary, Transportation
6 Comments

Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood has announced his intention to leave office as soon as a replacement can be found. Aside from an admirable emphasis on safety, LaHood’s main legacy will be a weakening of the cost-effectiveness requirements for transit grants so that, now, the most ridiculously expensive transit projects can get federal funding.

As a result, more than 100 metropolitan areas are lining up with proposals for insanely expensive rail projects. While this is good news to snobs who think that the only real transit is on rails, it is bad news for taxpayers as every rail project funded means money is being wasted that could otherwise have been put to good use.
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Naturally, there is plenty of speculation about who Obama might select to replace LaHood. Some of the names include Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa; Oregon Representative Earl Blumenauer; and former Minnesota Representative James Oberstar, all of whom support the administration’s pro-transit, anti-auto agenda. The Antiplanner is hoping for Blumenauer, the current godfather of Portland’s light-rail mafia, as his move into another job would shake up Oregon’s power structure in ways that might prove positive in the end.

Are Flu Vaccines Worthwhile?

By | | Housekeeping
16 Comments

Fever, headache, sore throat, congestion (of the nasal not the traffic kind)–it all sounds so easy. Having experienced the early symptoms of the flu when the Antiplanner was still in St. Louis on Saturday, then getting hit particularly hard on Sunday, I can testify that the flu is no picnic. So I have to wonder: should I have gotten a flu vaccine earlier this season?

If the vaccine were certain to have prevented this bout of sickness, the answer is most likely “yes.” But the vaccine doesn’t protect against all strains of the flu–the chances of still getting the flu after getting the vaccine may be as high as 40 percent.

On the other hand, the vaccine has enough mercury in it that the State of Washington has had to suspend its legal limits in order to make the vaccine available. A 40 percent chance of still getting sick but a 100 percent chance of having a toxic chemical injected into your bloodstream doesn’t sound good.

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CNN Not Impressed with Vermont’s “High-Speed Rail”

By | | Transportation
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Vermont officials are proud that a federal high-speed rail grant allowed them to take 29 minutes of the Vermonter schedule between New York City and Burlington. This is quite a bit less impressive than it sounds, as the speeded-up train still takes 9.5 hours for an average speed of 38 mph. By comparison, Megabus does the same trip in as little as 6.5 hours. Megabus slao has the advantage of reaching inner Burlington, while Amtrak stops in the suburb of Essex Junction, about 7.5 road miles away.

CNN rode the train and was less than impressed. After all, the top speed of the train in most of Vermont is a mere 59 mph, though there is a short stretch of 79-mph track. CNN’s Drew Griffin wonders why high-speed rail money was used for such a low-speed project. (A scruffy looking Antiplnnner briefly appears in the CNN video.)
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To be fair, the Obama administration always knew that its high-speed rail plans would be incremental in those states that weren’t building brand-new rail lines, which means (since Florida dropped out) any state but California. Still, it is worth questioning wny the government has to subsidize trains when companies such as Megabus and Bolt Bus can provide faster, more frequent service with relatively few subsidies.

Light-Rail Inefficiency Project

By | | Transportation
12 Comments

Stung by the entirely accurate criticism that it is one of the worst-run transit agencies in America, San Jose’s VTA has come up with a breath-taking plan for improving its efficiency. Naturally enough, the plan is called the light-rail transit efficiency project.

Click image to download an 8-MB presentation describing San Jose’s “light-rail efficiency plan.”

The plan (see summary here) consists of spending up to $25 million building two passing tracks so that express light-rail trains can pass local trains in downtown San Jose. I know what you’re thinking: this has to be a work of genius. I mean, who would ever think of one transit vehicle passing another? Except, of course, buses, which do it all the time and which don’t need millions of dollars of new infrastructure to make it possible.
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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
6 Comments

The Antiplanner is flying to St. Louis today to speak tomorrow at a conference about the Constitution. I am not a Constitutional expert, but they asked me to speak about mobility. Winter Cherry or viagra no rx Ashwagandha-It is a strong adaptogen found in the nature. Before the initiation of the massage therapy tadalafil 20mg price can reduce muscle tensions through improved blood circulation. Animals are very active creatures and they tend to go away on their own. http://greyandgrey.com/third-department-2-14-13/ order generic viagra get viagra no prescription Another reason for Kamagra’s popularity is that it isn’t about the points or the rebounds, but the timing of it all for Dirk Nowitzki. If you are in the St. Louis area, I hope to see you there.

The Continuing Saga of the American-Made Streetcar

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation, Urban areas
20 Comments

Portland Streetcar, the non-profit organization that operates streetcars in Portland, is demanding that the city cough up $145,000 to fix its brand-new, American-made streetcar. Let’s take a look at the history of this car.

First, the city used its own money to buy streetcars from the Czech Republic for an average of $1.9 million apiece. Each streetcar has just 30 seats, but the cost per vehicle is about six times greater than a 40-seat bus. But that wasn’t expensive enough.

The most recent expansion of Portland’s streetcar system was funded by the federal government, which has a buy-America requirement. So Oregon’s congressional delegation and lobbyists persuaded the Federal Transit Administration to give Oregon Iron Works $4 million to build a prototype streetcar. The company used plans purchased from the Czech manufacturer of Portland’s streetcars to effectively produce a replica of those cars.

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The Tax Foundation Responds to the Antiplanner

By | | Follow up, Transportation
1 Comment

Last Thursday, January 17, the Tax Foundation (TF) issued a paper arguing that only 32 percent of state and local highway costs were paid out of user fees, while the remaining costs came from “general funds.” In a post here, I pointed out that, actually, user fees for highways cover 76 percent of the costs of roads and most of the remaining 24 percent come from interest on user fees before they are spend and bond sales that will be repaid out of user fees.

TF replied, saying the Antiplanner “conflates taxes and fees.” In fact, TF specifically said that state gas taxes are user fees, but somehow defined federal gas taxes as “general funds.” I simply argued that, to be consistent, TF should count federal gas taxes as user fees as well.

TF went on to say, the Antiplanner “suggests we include federal gasoline tax collections in state-local revenue.” Again, TF said that federal gas tax collections are “general funds” and I disagreed with that statement. If state gas tax collections are user fees, then federal gas tax collections are too. They are certainly not general funds, any more than state gas taxes are general funds, since federal law dedicates them to transportation projects and mostly to highways.

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Blumenauer Endorses Vehicle-Mile Fees

By | | News commentary, Transportation
16 Comments

Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) has introduced a bill directing the Department of Transportation to start vehicle-mile fee pilot programs in every state and authorizing $150 million to fund the program. Since privacy is a major concern for many people, Blumenauer’s bill wisely makes protection of personal privacy a top priority of the program.

Oregon’s bicycle-riding, bow-tie-wearing member of Congress.

Blumenauer’s support for vehicle-mile fees is refreshing considering that, during the last Congress, the House passed a bill forbidding the Department of Transportation from even studying the possibility of such fees. (Fortunately, the otherwise-conservative member of Congress who introduced that bill ended up being a one-term congressman.) But Blumenauer’s stance also has some questioning his motives as he is a major advocate of smart growth and rail transit.

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Getting Highway Numbers Right

By | | Transportation
16 Comments

“Gasoline taxes and tolls pay for only a third of state and local road spending,” claims a report released yesterday by the Tax Foundation, a supposedly independent, non-partisan group. “The rest was financed out of general revenues.” According to the group’s calculations, users paid just $49 billion of the $155 billion cost of roads in 2010, the last year for which data are available.

The Antiplanner is the first to admit that highways are subsidized. But do subsidies cover more than two-thirds of the costs of roads? No way. The Tax Foundation, which claims to be “guided by the principles of sound tax policy: simplicity, neutrality, transparency, and stability,” is simply wrong.

First, the group counts federal aid to states as “general funds.” In fact, 100 percent of that federal aid comes from gas taxes and other user fees such as taxes on large trucks and tires.

According to the Federal Highway Adminitration’s Highway Statistics table HF-10, the feds collected $35 billion in gas taxes in 2010, of which $29 billion was given to the states for roads. For some reason, though the Tax Foundation counts state gas taxes as user fees, it doesn’t count federal gas taxes as user fees.

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