Category Archives: News commentary

Last month, the Department of Transportation published a strategic five-year plan that illustrates all the reasons why government should not plan. Rather than attempt to provide the transportation services that Americans need and want, the plan aims to “transform” — i.e., socially engineer — America. Rather than focus on processes that will insure that tax dollars are effectively spent, the plan predetermines the modes of transportation that ought to be funded based on touchy-feely criteria.

Obviously written by smart-growth apostles, the plan includes all of the twisted facts and junk science so beloved of today’s urban planners. For example, page 14 says, “Over the last decade, transit ridership has grown over 20 percent, far outpacing growth in automobile travel.” In fact, urban automobile passenger miles have grown by 24 percent in the last decade (1998 to 2008), while transit passenger miles grew by only 22 percent. By comparing transit ridership with total (instead of just urban) auto travel, the plan’s writers are comparing apples with oranges.

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A new report from the Center for Neighborhood Technology claims that living in smart-growth regions isn’t as unaffordable as some (such as the Antiplanner) claim because high housing costs are offset by lower transportation costs. However, the data behind the claims leave something to be desired. Specifically, what would be desired are data.

Instead of gathering data to back up its claims, the report (and several predecessors) is based on a model of household expenditures. The model assumes that people who live in denser neighborhoods drive less and ride transit more. The model assumes that transit is a perfect substitute for driving. The model assumes that those who drive pay the average costs of driving and those who ride transit pay only transit fares. (No one in the model has to pay for the huge transit subsidies.)

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After working hard to claim the title of the nation’s worst transit system, St. Louis Metro got itself into such a financial bind that it had to dramatically cut bus service. So voters naturally responded by tripling the agency’s tax base, giving it another half-cent sales tax on top of the quarter cent it already got.

No doubt Metro will take this money and After a stressful time that you had in your office, it is viagra rx online certain that you look for help at the right time. Health benefits of generic cialis canadian wild American Ginsenghad been known much before the medical industry flourished. The appearance of viagra cialis generico is similar to other drugs on the market like cialis. This is levitra online order the reason; you have to take a lot of anxiety. go build more rail transit lines that go way overbudget and put the agency in a financial bind requiring it to ask the voters for another tax increase. This will be declared another great victory for transit and proof that voters want “livability” rather than more of those filthy automobiles — even though those same voters drive for more than 90 percent of their travel.

Two years ago, the Antiplanner reported that Washington, DC’s transit agency, WMATA, owned several modern streetcars but hadn’t built any tracks for them to run on. As today’s Washington Post observes, the cars still sit in storage, more evidence of WMATA’s ineptitude.

Other than the lack of any money to lay new streetcar tracks, a major problem is an old law that forbids streetcar companies from using overhead wires in the “federal city” (Washington’s city limits as of 1887). In DC’s streetcar era, the companies dealt with this restriction by accessing a power line through a groove in the street, much like a cable-car groove. In some cases (such as the tracks shown above, which still exist near Georgetown University today), the tracks originally were for cable cars, so it was easy to swap out an electrical cable for a mechanical one.

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