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Category Archives: Transportation

How Many Trillions to Waste?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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President Biden wanted to spend $2.25 trillion we don’t have on projects we don’t need. Republicans countered by saying they weren’t willing to spend more than $568 billion we don’t have on projects we don’t need. President Biden, desiring to show he was willing to compromise, offered to spend $1.7 trillion we don’t have on projects we don’t need.

Now the latest is that Republicans have agreed to spend “close to $1 trillion” we don’t have on projects we don’t need. Whereas Biden hinted that he would agree to raising taxes on corporations and people who earn more than $400,000 a year to pay for part of his plan, a key provision of the Republican proposal is that taxes won’t be raised on anyone to pay for it, thus absolutely ensuring we won’t have the money to pay for their infrastructure projects we don’t need.

It is easy to say that this is just politics, but I can’t help but feeling that everyone inside the Beltway has gone nuts. As I noted earlier this week, Democrats have successfully moved the goal posts so far out that Republicans think that spending nearly $1 trillion in funny money is a fiscally conservative proposal. Continue reading →

Republicans Support Deficit Spending

By | | Transportation
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Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee announced agreement on a bill to increase highway spending by 32 percent. The 2015 transportation bill included $225 billion for highways over five years. The announced agreement is to increase this to $303 billion for the next five years. The agreement said nothing about transit spending.

From 2015 to 2019, revenues into the highway portion of the Highway Trust Fund were about $37 billion a year, so at least $40 billion of the $225 billion allocated in 2015 was deficit spending. Due to the pandemic, revenues are not likely to significantly increase in the next five years, so increasing spending to $303 billion would nearly triple deficit spending.

This is a bad precedent to set considering that Republicans are trying to reduce deficit spending on transit, Amtrak, and other infrastructure. When Senate Republicans responded to President Biden’s proposal for a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan with a plan that would spend only $568 billion, Biden came back with a $1.7 trillion bill. But the White House and Congressional Democrats won’t take Republicans seriously if Republicans agree to triple deficit spending on roads. Continue reading →

$85 Billion for Empty Buses and Railcars

By | | Policy brief, Transportation
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The future of public transit is nearly empty buses and railcars. Yet President Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for spending $85 billion on transit. Although transit carries less than 1 percent of passenger travel in the United States, and no freight, this represents 28 percent of the funds Biden proposes to spend on transportation.

Click image to download a four-page PDF of this policy brief.

Considering that the pandemic has cut transit ridership by more than half, while driving has recovered to 97 percent of pre-pandemic levels, this a poor, and poorly timed, use of public funds. Biden’s plan claims that spending more on transit “will ultimately reduce traffic congestion for everyone.” Other transit advocates claim that it will help low-income people as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But none of these claims are true. Continue reading →

Safe, Cost-Effective, and Equitable Transport

By | | Transportation
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The North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) is not the worst state transportation department in the country, but neither is it the best. In 1921, North Carolina was one of the first states to impose a tax on gasoline and dedicate it to roads. It held to the user-pay principle for more than 60 years, but in 1984 it began diverting some of those fuel taxes to transit.

Click image to download an 11.5-MB PDF of this 108-page report.

Today, about 6 percent of NCDOT’s budget, which nearly all comes from highway user fees, gets spent subsidizing transit, Amtrak trains, and state-owned non-commercial airports. That doesn’t sound like very much, but the state is under pressure to increase that percentage. Continue reading →

Dems Successfully Moved the Goal Posts

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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At first glance, a proposed $400 billion transportation bill from House Republicans appears to be more reasonable than President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill or even Senate Republicans’ $568 billion alternative infrastructure plan. In fact, the latter two plans are supposed to be on top of Congress’ periodic reauthorization of routine highway and transit spending, while the House Republican plan is supposed to be for that reauthorization.

As such, the Republican plan represents such a massive increase in spending over previous years that it is almost as if it was written by the Democrats. The 2015 “FAST Act” spent $305 billion over five years, or $61 billion a year. That in itself was too much because the Highway Trust Fund collected less than $212 billion in highway user fees during those five years, so an additional $93 billion came out of deficit spending.

Considering the pandemic, revenues over the next five years aren’t likely to be much greater. Yet House Democrats proposed last year to spend $495 billion over five years, a huge increase that would require a tripling of deficit spending over the previous five years. The Republican response is a $400 billion bill, which is still a doubling of deficit spending. Instead of being ashamed of this, Republicans bragged that they are proposing “the largest percentage increase for surface transportation programs in the last quarter-century.” Continue reading →

How Public Transit Won’t Lure Riders Back

By | | Transportation
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Everybody knows that the purpose of living in cities is to keep public transit systems operating. Thus, says Bloomberg News, people who work at home are “threatening” transit for everyone else (meaning all of the 1 percenters who ride transit).

Not to worry. Someone named Kristin Schwab, over at Marketplace, has a plan to “lure riders back” to transit. (Is that like luring little kids with candy?) Transit is safe from COVID, she claims, but to overcome public perceptions that it is not, transit agencies should still require people to wear masks and regularly clean transit vehicles. Okay, that’s not so much a plan as it is wishful thinking.

Back at Bloomberg, San Francisco writers Tiffany Chu and Daniel Ramot say that we should fix transit by (1) giving it dedicated funding, meaning funding that transit agencies are sure to get no matter how poorly they perform; and (2) tie funding to outcomes, meaning transit agencies only get money if they produce results. These contradictory suggestions are made worse by the “outcomes” Chu and Ramot suggest, including “expanding access to jobs, improving cost efficiency, driving equity and reducing carbon emissions.” Continue reading →

Columbia River Bridge Faces Opposition

By | | Transportation
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The revived plan to replace the I-5 bridge over the Columbia River between Portland and Vancouver has been hammered by two liberal transportation experts in Portland. New Urbanist Joe Cortright calls it “vastly oversized and over-priced.” David Bragdon, former president of Metro, one of the agencies that wrote the original plan, documented years of falsehoods perpetrated by planners and called the proposal the “most expensive, stupid something” that could be done in the corridor.

As I noted recently, the plan called for a 12-lane bridge to serve a six-lane freeway. It also included a bridge for light rail even though voters in both Portland and Vancouver had rejected funding for this light-rail extension. Piling stupidity on stupidity, the plan called for a bridge that couldn’t open for ship traffic, and because light-rail trains couldn’t go up a steep enough grade to allow such traffic, planners proposed to buy out several existing shipping companies rather than leave light rail out of the plan.

Predictably, Cortright complains about the 12 lanes without ever mentioning the light-rail boondoggle. Bragdon only mentions light rail to suggest that the Washington Department of Transportation planned to stab Oregon in the back by deleting light rail from the project after it was approved. The reality is that both the 12 lanes and the light rail were insane and planners were crazy to propose a project whose 12 lanes would alienate the New Urbanists and whose light rail would alienate fiscal conservatives. Continue reading →

The Case Against Amtrak

By | | Transportation
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CNN says that, with Biden’s proposal to give Amtrak $80 billion, “Amtrak’s moment may finally have arrived.” But what would it mean for Amtrak to have a “moment”? Would it mean that passenger trains return to once again become an important source of transportation, as they were in the 1920s? Or does it mean that Amtrak will get a lot more money for continuing to carry a trivial share of the nation’s passenger travel?

Click image to download a five-page PDF of this policy brief.

Since 1971, Congress has given Amtrak about $54 billion in subsidies, which in today’s dollars is about $85 billion. Biden’s plan would nearly double that in one fell swoop. But this is not going to double Amtrak ridership. For one thing, eleven years ago Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor had a $52 billion maintenance backlog, and it is undoubtedly larger now if only due to inflation. More than half of the $80 billion Biden proposes to give it will be spent rehabilitating existing infrastructure, not making improvements that are likely to increase ridership. Continue reading →

VMT Recovers to 97.2% of Pre-Pandemic Miles

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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Miles of driving in March 2021 were 19 percent greater than March 2020 and just 2.8 percent less than March 2019, according to data released late last week by the Federal Highway Administration. This is the first time in more than a year that driving exceeded 93 percent of pre-pandemic levels.

Motor vehicles and highways have proven to be the most resilient form of travel during and after a pandemic.

At 99.7 percent, rural driving was nearly at 2019 levels. Urban driving lagged at 96.0 percent, but was still well ahead of urban transit. Continue reading →

Honolulu Rail Disaster Gets More Disastrous

By | | Transportation
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When we last looked at the Honolulu rail project, less than a month ago, the projected cost had risen from $5 billion (when the city decided to build it) to $11.3 billion and the date it was expected to open had been delayed by more than 11 years. It’s gotten even worse since then.

Wheels that are too narrow will slip off tracks at joints like these, known as “frogs.” Photo by Meggar.

The latest problem is that the railcar wheels are too narrow for the tracks. To negotiate “frogs,” the places on switches where tracks cross, the wheels need to be a half-inch wider. Continue reading →