Category Archives: News commentary

Gas prices are at record levels, transit ridership is growing, so what do transit agencies do? Cut service!. Denver’s Regional Transit District says it plans to cut some of its “lowest-performing routes,” including one of its light-rail lines.

Of course, transit agencies face higher fuel costs, too. And since transit fares cover only 28 percent of average transit costs (and just 13 percent in Denver), increased ridership doesn’t pay for much of the increased cost.

RTD says that one of the buses it plans to cut costs $330,000 a year and only carries 295 riders a day. Assuming they mean “weekday” (and annual ridership tends to be about 300 times weekday ridership), that works out to an operating cost of about $3.73 a rider. But the average bus operated by RTD costs $3.46 a rider, which isn’t much less.

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Barack Obama attracted some 72,000 people to a waterfront rally in Portland, my old hometown. Aerial photos of the event (which are copyrighted so I won’t include them here) are pretty incredible.

Part of the rally stands in front of one of Portland’s subsidized New Urban developments.
Flickr photo by Selena Marie.

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India built a bus-rapid transit line, but put the bus stops on median strips in the middle of a busy highway. Since it opened nearly a month ago, there have been This energy will allow you to take the medication in the first place. buy levitra wholesale Most of cialis for women the adverse reactions have been reported shortly after sexual activity. You need to have the correct facts when you are using order levitra online kamagra. Men suffering from ED no prescription viagra go into worst conditions. three to four pedestrian accidents a day.

Maybe it was just poorly designed. But maybe spending $52 million on a seven-mile bus-rapid transit line wasn’t such a good idea anyway.

Before the weekend, Hillary Clinton was expected to win Indiana by 5 percent and lose North Carolina to Barack Obama by only about 8 percent. Then, on Sunday before the election, Hillary made the mistake of offending a group of people who she thought were irrelevant.

You know the rest: Hillary barely won 1 percent more votes than Obama in Indiana and lost North Carolina by more than 14 percent.

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After writing a paper showing that rail transit is a waste of energy, the Antiplanner discovered that UC Irvine economist Charles Lave had written a similar paper for The Atlantic Monthly way back in 1979. So I’ve been quoting him as often as possible. Now comes the sad news that he has passed away. From his vita I infer that he was about 69.

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Another Tuesday, another primary that won’t resolve the Democratic nomination. For the first time since 1972, my home state’s primary is likely to take place before all the decisions are made. While Oregon’s votes won’t be counted for two more weeks, our mail-in ballots are already in hand. To date, the Antiplanner has only skirted the presidential campaign, but since I am about to vote, it seems worthwhile going over my reasoning.

For me, the biggest issue today is the war in Iraq. This war was a mistake in almost every possible way. It reduced our standing in the international community, made no sense at all as a part of the war on terror, ignored the Powell Doctrine of when and how we should go to war, and probably made life worse for most residents of Iraq (though better for the Kurdish minority). Domestically, the war’s high cost has dramatically reduced the value of the dollar, from 1.10 euros in 2002 to 0.64 euros today. You can yak about peak oil and Chinese demands for energy, but it was this devaluation more than anything else that has been responsible for the run up in fuel prices.

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Vying to become the new Don Young (he of the bridge to nowhere), House Transportation Committee chair James Oberstar promises that the next transportation reauthorization will cost $450 billion over six years. Don Young wanted to spend $350 billion in the 2005 reauthorization, but hardliners in the Bush Administration forced him to keep it to $286 billion.

“We’re not going to do a wimpy bill” like in 2005, Oberstar promised. Notably, he was not talking to transportation users, but to U.S. steel makers, and he pointedly added that, “We’re talking about a lot of steel.”

Increasing spending to $450 billion will require either about a 9-cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax or deficit spending at a level never before contemplated in federal transportation measures. We know from previous statements that Oberstar supports at least a 5-cent increase in federal gas taxes.

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