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Category Archives: News commentary

That’s Stimulating?

By | | Mission, News commentary
5 Comments

Does replacing windows on a building that is no longer used help to stimulate the economy? The Forest Service thinks so, so it is going to spend something like $1 million replacing windows on a visitors’ center that it closed in 2007. (Thanks to the Antiplanner’s loyal ally, Andy Stahl, for bringing this to my attention.)

The purpose of this part of the stimulus program is to make federal buildings more energy efficient. But if the building isn’t used, it probably doesn’t consume much energy.

The Gifford Pinchot National Forest says it might want to re-open the visitors’ center someday, if it ever gets a big enough budget to manage it. In the meantime, the new windows will provide virtually no benefit.

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Mark Yannone, RIP

By | | News commentary
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The Antiplanner was sad to learn that loyal ally Mark Yannone, founder of the Light Rail Scam blog which criticized the Phoenix light-rail program, died suddenly on July 17, apparently from an epileptic seizure. Most reports say he was only 53.

In addition to Light Rail Scam, Mark had started or participated in more than three dozen other blogs, including blogs on electric cars, billionaires, and the English language. His Light Rail Scam blog carried such intriguing stories as the joint Arab-Jewish opposition to light rail in Jerusalem and the many collisions involving Phoenix’s new light-rail line.
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Yannonne was an active libertarian who ran for Congress in the last election. In the Antiplanner’s opinion, it is unfortunate that he allowed himself to be diverted in the last few months by the question of Obama’s birth certificate, but I appreciate his motto: “Zero tolerance for injustice.”

Moving More Expensively

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
36 Comments

Environmental groups just published Moving Cooler, a report that argues we need to reduce driving in order to reduce global warming. Transportation expert Alan Pisarski has written a critique of this report, saying it is more of a sales document than a credible analysis.

“The benefits and the costs involved” in the report “are so corrupted to be meaningless,” says Pisarski. For example, the time penalty from forcing someone to switch from a 15-minute auto trip to a 60-minute transit trip is assumed to be zero, transit subsidies are not counted, and all mobility losses from coercing people out of their cars are counted solely as benefits.
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Everything I have seen suggests that we can make technological improvements to cars and highways that will reduce greenhouse gases at costs ranging anywhere from minus $50 to $50 a ton. Meanwhile, rail transit and more compact development will reduce greenhouse gases at costs ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 a ton — if they reduce them at all. Until all technological options have been used, we shouldn’t even be talking about the behavioral ones.

The Country Is Ready for Free Money

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

Forty states have asked the federal government for a total of $102 billion for high-speed rail. This suggests that the Antiplanner’s estimate of $90 billion for the cost of the Obama high-speed rail plan was low.

Secretary of Behavior Modification Ray LaHood says that this “shows that the country is ready for high-speed rail.” Of course, all it really shows is that state bureaucrats are ready for free federal money.

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Killer of the Year

By | | News commentary, Transportation
11 Comments

You have to wonder if the American Public Transit Association (APTA), America’s own transit lobby, is embarrassed that it named the general manager of Washington Metro, John Catoe, the Outstanding Public Transportation Manager of 2009 less than a month before his railroad killed nine of his customers.

He was lauded in the award for overhauling a transit system that had recently killed six people and suffered a train derailment that injured 20. I guess his overhaul didn’t work as well as APTA thought.

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How to Spend $100 Million Doing Nothing

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
17 Comments

The bureaucrats planning a new bridge across the Columbia River between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington have so far spent $65 million — and by this time next year, they will be up to $100 million — all without accomplishing a thing.

That could have been enough money to replace the Sellwood Bridge, which is in much worse shape, both functionally and structurally — than the Columbia River bridge, but which planners say they don’t have any money for. Maybe that’s because they are spending all their money on planning.

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Apocalypse ASAP

By | | News commentary, Transportation
35 Comments

People like James Howard Kunstler, who is committed to the death of the suburbs, and this guy, who thinks gasoline will “inevitably” reach $20 a gallon, see only good coming from these futures. For example, the latter character thinks that expensive gasoline will cure American obesity. He doesn’t explain why the Netherlands, where gas is expensive and lots of people walk and cycle, has obesity rates that are only about 10 years behind those in the U.S.

The Antiplanner hates to disappoint anyone, but we aren’t going to be giving up our cars anytime soon. If the price of gas goes up, we’ll either find more oil or we will find substitutes for that oil. For example, MIT is developing an electric car with a new kind of batteries that can be recharged in 11 minutes. Then there’s the Tesla Model S, whose batteries can be switched out in five minutes.
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Regarding a different mode of transportation, someone has proposed a new airport on Manhattan Island, which would be a lot more convenient for many people than the airports now serving New York City. Where would it go? Why, in the largest piece of undeveloped land in Manhattan, namely Central Park. Of course, it’s a prank; if they had wanted to be taken seriously, they should have proposed to turn the park into high-density, transit-oriented developments.

DC MetroRail: An Accident Waiting to Happen

By | | News commentary, Transportation
7 Comments

The “failsafe” train control system that was supposed to prevent the June 22 accident that killed nine subway riders in Washington DC appears to be breaking down throughout the MetroRail system. Although Metro’s general manager claimed that the agency tested all of the circuits and had not found any problems, the Washington Post has uncovered documents revealing problems with at least four of the region’s five rail lines.

The good news is that reporters are finally becoming skeptical about the supposed utopian virtues of the transit industry. A FoxNews reporter found a DC bus driver reading a book while driving in traffic. DC bus drivers are some of the highest paid public employees in the nation, many earning well over $100,000 a year. But I guess that isn’t enough for them to keep their attention on their jobs.
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Meanwhile, the reporters in Portland who revealed TriMet’s expensive health insurance plans attempted to interview transit union officials for their responses, but the officials didn’t have time. They did, however, have time to make a youtube video responding to the “lies” in the news reports. They blame the lies on “right winger” John Charles, former head of the Oregon Environmental Council, current head of the libertarian Cascade Policy Institute. Isn’t it wonderful how we can just dismiss someone because they are a “right winger”? It makes things so easy; you don’t have to think about the issues themselves.

TriMet Is Failing, So Build More Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
32 Comments

Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, spent something like $166 million on its commuter-rail line which at one time was supposed to cost $104 million. The line is now carrying fewer than 600 round trips per day. It isn’t really surprising since the line goes from nowhere to nowhere.

The agency offers free health insurance, costing as much as $1,900 per person per month, to all its employees, retirees, and their dependents. This turns out to be the best transit agency benefits package in the nation. Aside from being reminiscent of the benefits programs that sank General Motors, it is so outrageous that the president of TriMet’s board actually resigned because he felt it was so unfair to taxpayers.

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Gimme Gimme Gimme

By | | News commentary, Transportation
13 Comments

The Department of Transportation has received 278 applications for high-speed rail stimulus funds. Not surprisingly, the various proposals add up to far more than the $8 billion that is available for such projects.

Six New England states want the entire $8 billion for themselves. North Carolina wants $6 billion. Oregon & Washington are hoping for $2.1 billion. Texas wants a modest $1.7 billion, mainly for planning 200-mph trains between San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston.

That’s almost $18 billion so far, and this barely scratches the surface of the proposals.

Continue reading →