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Monthly Archives: February 2013

Safety vs. Fuel Economy?

By | | Transportation
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Robert Norton is a former attorney with Chrysler, so he must know cars, right? Apparently not, for his recent National Review On-Line article about auto safety misses the mark.

Norton frets that Obama’s fuel economy standards, which require that the average car sold in 2025 gets 52 mpg, will lead to dangerous cars. His evidence is a thought experiment.

“Imagine a head-on collision,” he says, of “a Cadillac Escalade and the other a Chevy Volt. Which would you want to be in?” He thinks it is obvious that anyone would want to be in the Escalade. Yet many small cars are considered safer than many larger vehicles.

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Rearranging the Park Benches

By | | City planning, News commentary
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Our cities are in trouble. Most have huge unfunded pension and health-care obligations. Their infrastructure is old and so poorly maintained that it can’t power a football stadium for the full length of a game. Their schools have significantly lower high-school graduation rates than the suburbs, even after accounting for differences in incomes. Housing in many cities is unaffordable, roads are congested, and jobs are fleeing, even in supposedly urban industries such as high tech and finance.

Urban planner Richard Florida has a solution: President Obama should create a new federal Department of Cities. That’s right up there with rearranging the benches at Battery Park before Superstorm Sandy hits.

Like many planners, Florida believes problems can be solved from the top down. He is famous for urging cities to adopt policies that make housing unaffordable, forcing poor and moderate-income people out, thus increasing average incomes and making it look like the cities have attracted high-income “creative” people.

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LaHood’s Cost-Effectiveness Rule

By | | Transportation
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It was with some trepidation that the Antiplanner finally took the time to carefully read the Department of Transportation’s final rules for major transit capital grants. Long-time readers may recall that the Antiplanner is concerned about the cost-effectiveness of these grants, and urged the Department to strengthen those requirements–without much hope that the Obama administration would pay any attention.

The law requires the Department to take cost-effectiveness into account when it considers applications for funds for streetcars, light rail, and other “New Starts” transit projects. But the Federal Transit Administration had always given this only token consideration until Bush’s second Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, put some strict limits on just how expensive projects could be if they were to get any federal funds.

Secretary LaHood chafed at these limits, particularly because they prevented any funds being given for streetcars. So he announced in 2010 that he was going to get rid of the limits. On behalf of the Cato Institute, the Antiplanner commented on LaHood’s proposal to make the change and then commented on the draft rules.

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