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Obama’s Model for High-Speed Rail: Crédit Mobilier

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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“History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas,” President Obama told Congress last night. “In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry.”

The rails meet. Many versions of this photo, such as the painting below from the U.S. Capitol, sanitize it by removing the bottles of alcohol.

Aside from the simple factual issue that most of the first transcontinental railroad was constructed after, not during, the war, most of Obama’s audience would have forgotten that its construction caused one of the first and biggest financial swindles of the nineteenth century. That scandal was the result of a simple fact: such a railroad made no economic sense in the late 1860s.

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Flaws in the HSR Plan

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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When President Obama persuaded Congress to include $8 billion for high-speed rail in the economic stimulus, he had in mind upgrades to existing freight and Amtrak tracks that would allow trains to go as fast as 110 miles per hour. In a lot of places, the main upgrades that are necessary are improvements to grade crossings.

Under Federal Railroad Administration rules, no grade crossings are allowed when trains go above 125 miles per hour. At 110 to 125, an “impenetrable barrier” (such as this four-gate crossing) must block traffic at grade crossings. From 60 to 110, the FRA allows conventional two-gate crossings, that is, the gates only need to block the “entering” lanes of the road.

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The other good news is that none of the 20 passengers on board the train were hurt either. Twenty passengers? Why are we spending more than a billion dollars a year subsidizing Amtrak trains, much less considering spending tens of billions on high-speed rail, when some of those trains carry fewer than half as many passengers as could fit on a typical intercity bus?

We Can’t Afford to Run What We’ve Got, So Let’s Go to China

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Transit ridership is supposedly up, so naturally Denver’s Regional Transit District is eliminating 10 transit routes, including one light-rail route and several express bus routes. This bold move will cover less than 20 percent of the agency’s $23 million gap in its budget, suggesting Denver transit riders can expect lots more route cuts in the near future.

Meanwhile, RTD board members are letting taxpayers pay for their trips to China, $329 per night beachfront hotel rooms, and $70 dinners (unsupported by receipts). Due to declining sales tax revenues, the agency has imposed salary freezes on staff — except, of course, General Manager Cal Marsella, whose contract probably makes him the highest-paid public official in the state of Colorado.

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Obama’s Housing Plan

By | | News commentary
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Help buyers who are under water? The Antiplanner is okay with that; it isn’t the buyers’ fault that urban planners made housing prices volatile (unless, of course, the buyers supported those planning restrictions).

Arrest the decline in housing prices? Not so smart. The real problem is that, even after the crash, prices are still way too high in California, Florida, and several other states. Median housing prices should be twice median family incomes. If they are any higher, they should be allowed to fall.

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California: Smart Growth & Broke

By | | News commentary
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The state of California has a $41 billion budget deficit. This is even worse when you realize its total budget is $143 billion, so the deficit is is 29 percent of the budget.

The planning advocates who frequent this blog will deny it, but it is no coincidence that California has the strongest smart-growth laws in the nation and the worst deficit of any state in the nation.

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The Truth Comes Out

By | | News commentary, Transportation
18 Comments

Nevada Senator Harry Reid was the first to publicize the last-minute insertion of $8 billion in the stimulus package for high-speed rail, so many people thought he put it into the bill in order to start funding a maglev line from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. However, Politico reveals that it was President Obama himself who wanted the provision.

Obama failed to communicate this desire until after the House passed its stimulus bill. When he told the Senate he wanted money for high-speed rail, it cut funds for highways, transit, and airports by $8.3 billion and added $2 billion for HSR plus $5.5 billion for “Discretionary Grants,” which presumably could go for either roads or transit.

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Obama thinks building high-speed rail can be a part of “rebuilding America.” The Antiplanner, of course, is skeptical. But what kind of high-speed rail does Obama want? California’s 220-mph lines on exclusive rights-of-way? Or much-less-expensive upgrades to freight lines that will allow passenger trains to go, say, 110 mph? Neither will do much for personal mobility, but at least the latter will waste a lot less money.

Metro Fail

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
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In an effort to lead the region in becoming more sustainable, Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, invested resources in entirely the wrong areas and so failed to significantly reduce its own energy consumption and pollution. But don’t believe me; just read this report by Metro’s own auditor.

The audit found that 91 percent of Metro’s carbon emissions resulted from power consumption and gas flaring at Metro’s landfills. Metro spent 3 percent of its sustainability resources trying to reduce these outputs. Meanwhile, commuting by Metro employees accounted for just 6 percent of Metro’s carbon emissions. So naturally, Metro invested 59 percent of its sustainability resources trying to get its people to drive less.
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The report doesn’t say whether Metro actually was able to persuade some of its employees to drive less, and Metro probably has no idea. This is completely typical of Metro planning: focus on the wrong problem, don’t measure the outcomes, declare victory, and go home. Only in this case, Metro has an internal auditor keeping it honest.

Australia Forest Fires: Just Like American, Only Different

By | | News commentary, Wildfire
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Australia’s tragic fires have reignited a debate over public land policies that echoes the same debates in the U.S. There’s the timber industry leader who says the fires could have been prevented if only the industry had been allowed to cut more trees. There’s the conservative columnist who suggests that environmentalists be lynched for preventing broadscale fuels reduction measures.

Flickr photo by Barnardoh.

Australian forests are a bit different from those in the U.S. Eucalypts tend to be very resinous in an ecologically calculated effort to dominate the forests by burning out the competition (and then grow back faster than anything else). Lodgepole pine is similar though it does not burn so explosively.

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HSR Big Winner in Compromise Stimulus Plan

By | | News commentary, Transportation
25 Comments

The House proposed no money for high-speed rail. The Senate proposed $2 billion. So what do they compromise at? $8 billion. Plus Amtrak gets $1.3 billion, which is also more than in either the House or Senate bills.

Highways and urban transit get the amounts in the Senate bill, $27 and $8.4 billion, which is less than the House bill. Since the total for transportation is $46 billion, that leaves about $1.4 billion for airports.
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Just where are they going to find $8 billion worth of shovel-ready high-speed rail projects? Not in California, where I doubt they will be ready to begin construction for another couple of years.

Bye Bye Rent-a-Bikes

By | | News commentary
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Remember how Austin and some other American cities left yellow-painted bicycles lying around for anyone to use? And how they were all stolen in a few weeks?

Then Portland said, “Let’s do what Paris does: Rent bikes. Anyone who pays a monthly rental fee gets a key and can unlock and use bikes whenever they want.”


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Bikes for rent in Paris.
Flickr photo by CeesOK.

That program turned out to be highly successful in Paris. At least, if you don’t count the fact that over half the bikes were stolen in 18 months, and most of the rest had to be replaced due to vandalism. So much for another great scheme for collective transportation.