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Getting Priorities Straight

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Facing a $12 million to $17 million budget shortfall next year, Portland’s TriMet transit agency is cutting bus service for lack of funds. But it has enough funds to spend $250,000 on a giant sculpture of a deer with a baby face.

The agency has already cut bus service by 13 percent and light-rail service by 10 percent in the last two years. Yet it is spending at least $3 million on “art” as part of its $200-million-per-mile light-rail line to Milwaukie, one of the most wasteful rail projects ever. As a matter of policy, TriMet spends 1.5 percent of its capital expenditures on art, even though it is not required to do so.
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After all, the most important thing is to keep Portland weird, not to actually provide transportation to people who need it. In furtherance of that goal, TriMet recently hired a multicultural manager and a transit equity manager, no doubt paying both more than $100,000 a year.

TriMet asked the public for ideas to help it close its budget gap. Most of the ideas involved taxing someone else such as auto drivers or out-of-town visitors. How about ending capital-intensive projects and focusing on providing efficient transit service on routes and schedules that fill up the buses so that losses are minimized? I bet they never thought of that one.

RIP Bill Niskanen

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The Antiplanner was saddened to hear that William Niskanen, who for more than two decades chaired the board of the Cato Institute, died yesterday morning after suffering a stroke Tuesday night. Niskanen was a tenured professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1975 when he took a job as chief economist with the Ford Motor Company. He was fired from that job five years later when Ford wanted to lobby for restrictions on auto imports and he told them, “a common commitment to refrain from seeking special favors [from the government] serves the same economic function as a common commitment to refrain from stealing.”

After a short stint teaching at UCLA, President Reagan named Niskanen to his Council of Economic Advisors, and Niskanen eventually chaired that council. His obituary doesn’t say so, but I am pretty sure he was dismissed by Reagan in 1985 for disagreeing with some of the deficit spending that Reagan was incurring.

Niskanen’s habit of putting principle over self-interest made him a perfect fit for the Cato Institute, which–for those who don’t know–is sort of the Earth First! of free-market groups. Where Earth First!’s motto is “No compromise in defense of Mother Earth,” Cato’s motto could be “No compromise in defense of personal and economic liberty.” Cato was only six years old in 1985 and it counted itself fortunate to be able to attract a scholar of Niskanen’s caliber.

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Department of Irony

By | | City planning, News commentary
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Officials from Aurora, Colorado are in a tizzy because someone conducted some focus groups to see what taxpayers thought of a $300 million subsidy to a proposed hotel. Such focus groups “violate the ethics code for economic development organizations in the region,” said Tom Clark, the executive vice-president of Denver’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC).

Apparently, it is perfectly ethical to steal money that taxpayers had allocated to schools, fire, and police and give it to a private developer, but it is unethical to ask those taxpayers how they fell about such theft. Colorado’s “taxpayer bill of rights” prevents governments from raising taxes by more than a certain percentage each year–but tax-increment financing, the main source of subsidies for the proposed hotel, is exempt from this law.

“You can’t work against your neighbor, and you can’t run around them,” Clark said. “If you do, you’re subject to permanent expulsion from the Metro Denver EDC.” Of course, it is always possible that some people don’t want to be a part of Clark’s cozy little club of thieves.

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Donor States? Recipient States?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Ron Utt of the Heritage Foundation uses 2009 data to show that more than half the states send more gas taxes to the Treasury than they get back in federal transportation dollars. But the GAO uses 2005 through 2009 data to argue that, in fact, all the states have gotten back more than their residents paid in gas taxes.

It is likely that both are correct. Particularly in 2007 and 2008, the federal government spent more on surface transportation than it took in. If you spend more than you receive, then all everybody wins–except whoever has to eventually make up the difference.

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Then Why Did They Vote for It in the First Place?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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A new poll finds that, if high-speed rail were on the ballot today, 62 percent of California voters would vote against it. The complete poll report also indicates that 63 percent of Californians say they would never ride it if it were built.

The poll asked people about their state funding priorities. The top priorities were education (76 percent), public safety (69 percent), and social services (65 percent). Water and irrigation (29 percent) and clean energy (18 percent) scored much lower. At 11 percent, high-speed rail was last.

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Partly based on this poll, transportation expert Ken Orski argues that “it looks like the end of the line for high-speed rail.” However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority still has several billion dollars of spending authority and the mandate to begin construction in the Central Valley by September 30, 2012 (or it will lose federal dollars). Unless the state legislature stops them, I would be more surprised if they voluntarily stopped than if they began building a train to nowhere.

Music City Star Continues to Bilk Taxpayers

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Nashville’s commuter train, the Music City Star, is “really taking off,” at least according to an op ed in the Tennessean written by the transit agency CEO, Paul Ballard. Actually, the best that can be said for the train is that Ballard hasn’t been fired over it yet.

The Music City Ripoff.

Starting the commuter train cost taxpayers $41 million and operating it cost $3.3 million in 2009. But Ballard points to a 24 percent increase in ridership in the last twelve months so that the train is now carrying an average of 1,225 trips per weekday.

The problem is that 124 percent of nearly nothing is still nearly nothing. Ballard’s agency had predicted that, by 2012, the train would be carrying 1,900 trips per weekday. Unless it gets a 55 percent increase in ridership next year, it’s not going to make it. Apparently, Ballard defines “success” as “we’re still losing more money than we predicted we were going to lose, but not as much as we used to lose.”
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Blame the Insurance Company

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Here’s a tip for transit agencies: Buy insurance guaranteeing ridership revenue so that, when you screw up and ridership declines, you can sue the insurance company to cover the revenue losses. That’s what Washington MetroRail has done in response to ridershop losses that it claims resulted from the 2009 accident that killed 9 people.

According to Metro, delays in repairs led to systemwide losses of 6 million trips, which would have produced about $13 million in revenue. So it wants its insurer to cover those revenue losses. The Washington Examiner article about the lawsuit strongly hints that at least some of those ridership losses might have been due to the shrinking economy instead.
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What the article doesn’t say is that the accident was caused by Metro’s own failure to adequately maintain its signaling system. Why bother to maintain your rail lines when your insurance company is obligated to cover your losses when the system fails?

Triple-A Sues PATH

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The American Automobile Association is suing the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey (PATH) for raising bridge tolls. AAA doesn’t oppose tolls, but it does oppose tolls whose revenues won’t be spent on activities that have a “functional relationship to transportation.” Since these bridge tolls will be used to subsidize the new World It is the only medicine available in market for best online cialis same use. So many no rx levitra http://respitecaresa.org/get-fit-and-support-the-children-of-respite-care/ erectile dysfunction treatments take this challenge freely and provide completely recovered sexual health to the person. They manufacture generic equivalents of a best buy on cialis number of cardiovascular diseases. The male will still get orgasm, but his penile organ will have difficulty remaining hard for romantic order viagra from canada intimacy. Trade Center, AAA argues they are illegal under federal law.

The Antiplanner cheers AAA’s suit, but wonders why the association didn’t sue PATH years ago when the original World Trade Center was also being subsidized by bridge tolls. Maybe the current political environment has emboldened AAA to be a little stronger in representing its members’ interests.

DC Congestion the Worst

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The Texas Transportation Institute has published its 2011 urban mobility report, and this year it is based on real measurements of actual congestion rather than formulas. According to the report, in 2010 the nation’s worst congestion was in Washington, DC, where the average commuter wastes 74 hours a year sitting in traffic compared with only 64 hours in Los Angeles, which long was rated as having the worst congestion.

While that’s great news for pundits who want to write about how the nation’s capital is thriving while the rest of the country is miserable, it doesn’t ring true to the Antiplanner. According to 2008 data published by the Federal Highway Administration, the nation’s most productive highways are in Los Angeles.

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What Is Middle Class?

By | | News commentary
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A couple of weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal reported that Proctor & Gamble was no longer marketing to the middle class but instead has a two-tier marketing strategy (if you don’t have a subscription, you can get the gist of the article here). This has led to all kinds of discussion by the chattering class about America’s disappearing middle class.

The implication of the WSJ article is that Proctor & Gamble is marketing to an upper class and a lower class. The Antiplanner disagrees. What we are seeing instead is a re-bifurcation of what for a time was commonly called the middle class into what sociologists usually define as the middle and working classes.

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