Category Archives: News commentary

The Christian Science Monitor has another puff piece about streetcars and how Portland’s streetcar attracted “around $2.5 billion” worth of development. I don’t need to repeat again that this development was really attracted by other subsidies.

The article quotes Urban Land Institute researcher Robert Dunphy, who says that streetcars are not transportation but “amenities.” The article says that “most streetcars operating today — with the exception of those in larger cities such as Portland or San Francisco — fall into that category.”

But San Francisco doesn’t have any streetcars (unless you count cable cars, which are quite a different beast) and Portland’s streetcar is clearly an amenity. I suspect the writer is confusing streetcars and light rail. Another recent article about the wasteful San Jose BART extension confused light rail with commuter rail.

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How do Americans respond when gasoline prices go up? A recent survey finds that many people make an extra effort to find low-cost gas dealers. But very few — only 11 percent — say they respond by driving “a lot less.”

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The Bush administration is proposing to give $130 million in grants to cities that want to build electronic toll systems they can use to reduce congestion. Electronic tolling can help congestion by allowing road managers to charge more during busy periods and make sure the roads never get congestion.

Congestion pricing is an amazingly simple and low-cost solution to congestion. Everyone expects airline tickets to cost more at Christmas and Thanksgiving and hotel rooms to cost more in the summer (except in Florida where they cost more in the winter). So we are all used to the idea of congestion pricing.

Unfortunately, most of us are also used to the idea of driving on toll-free roads, so any proposal to turn an existing free road into a congestion-priced road is met with stiff resistance. The Wall Street Journal warns that some people are going to call such tolls a “tax” to build political opposition.

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Dave Barry’s column welcoming people to the Superbowl in Miami has some interesting comments on Miami’s rail transit system.

Miami’s rail system “does not go to many other places that many Miami residents would like to go, which is why most of them do not use it,” says Barry. “To them, the Metrorail train is a mysterious object that occasionally whizzes past over their heads, unrelated to their lives, kind of like a comet.”

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The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) has written a detailed 33-page request for bids for — wait for it — cake.

VTA needs the cakes for the three dozen or so retirement parties it holds each year (it should be a lot more). To submit a bid, a bakery must be willing to provide any of eleven flavors (do you want peach or marble?), sixteen fillings (pumpkin or mint cream?), five icings (butter cream or cream cheese?), and six toppings (jimmies or walnuts?). Plus the cakes have to be decorated with flowers, streamers, or other ornaments.

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The Wall Street Journal today has a lengthy article about the Siemens company bribing government officials to get contracts. Among other things, Siemens builds light-rail cars.

As far as I know, Siemens has never bribed an American public official to get a contract to for its rail cars — at least, not in the sense of paying people under the table. Instead, it routinely makes large contributions to political campaigns involving light rail.

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Yesterday’s New York Times features an article on Portland’s aerial tram. Portland is the “city that loves transit”? More like, the city whose officials love to spend money on transit.

Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration publicly expressed criticism of Portland’s transportation planning. “It is difficult to find a transportation focus” in the plan, says the agency. I guess they didn’t get the memo: in Portland, transportation spending is about real estate, not about moving people and goods.

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