When Is a Fee a Tax?

Years ago, Oregon voters approved a ballot measure that required a vote of the people before any local increase in taxes or user fees. As the Antiplanner supports user fees as a way of improving government efficiency, I asked one of the measure’s authors why he included user fees in the measure. “You know if they were exempted that local governments would just claim every tax increase was a user fee.”

It seems to me that user fees can clearly be distinguished from taxes: fees go to the use for which they are paid while taxes go for other uses. That question might be settled by a recent lawsuit filed against the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority, which is Dulles Toll Road in order to raise money to build the Silver Line extension of the Washington Metrorail system.

Continue reading

Demand for Free Money Continues to Grow

The demand for rail transit “is strong all across the country,” says a new report from Reconnecting America. How do they know? They simply added up all the “planned and proposed fixed-guideway transit projects” they could find.

They found a total of 643 projects (1-mb Excel spreadsheet) in about 80 urban areas whose total costs were estimated to be $233 billion. Of these, 43 are under construction, 95 are in the engineering phase, 108 are doing an alternatives analysis, 358 are “future plans,” and 39 are “stalled.” If all of these projects were built, the group promises, they “would connect 3.5 million more jobs to transit, an increase of 25 percent.”

Wowee! Spending more than a quarter of a trillion dollars (plus cost overruns) would connect transit to 2.5 percent of all jobs in the country. At that price, it would cost a mere $8.2 trillion to connect the remaining 82.5 percent of jobs to transit. That makes perfect sense in a Bizarro world considering Congress just killed President Obama’s high-speed rail plan to supposedly connect 80 percent of Americans for a mere half a trillion dollars.

Continue reading

Updates from All Over

California Republicans are proposing to divert federal grants for the state’s high-speed rail program to improving U.S. Highway 99 instead. Highway 99 is the major route through California’s Central Valley connecting Modesto, Fresno, and Bakersfield, while Interstate 5 skips those major cities. Highway 99 is highly congested and is in relatively poor shape, and Representatives Denham, Nunes, and McCarthy argue that fixing and expanding it would do more for the region’s economy at a lower cost than high-speed rail.

Over in China, the head of the country’s high-speed rail authority was fired for some combination of corruption and poor quality construction. Recent reports found that low-quality concrete was used in constructing some Chinese high-speed rail routes, which is likely to create maintenance headaches and force slow-downs in the trains in as little as five year.

Continue reading

High-Speed Rail Hearings

You know that Congress is serious about getting the facts about high-speed rail when it holds a hearing on high-speed rail in Grand Central Station. Rail advocates proposed to extend the Northeast Corridor rail system to Springfield. Videotaping is often discouraged at Congressional hearings, but fortunately the Antiplanner was able to obtain the video of this hearing shown below.


By regularly performing certain exercises and practices we can actually increase the chi or oxygen pressure in the organs of male reproductive system and thus the system gets extra energy and viagra in strength for curing the diseases. Tattoos were already practiced hundreds of years and it is a healthful addition http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/2017FW-3.pdf free sample levitra to any Western dietary plan. Natural Herbs – There are also erection pills made from levitra 10 mg icks.org natural herbs that can help sufferers get hard erections. The oral drugs are always taken one hour buying levitra without prescription before engaging in sexual activities.
As noted in this advertisement for a rail system in North Carolina, the arguments for high-speed rail and urban rail transit are much the same: the costs are really, really high (“jobs!”), the transportation is convenient (if you happen to be going to one of the few places it goes and are willing to walk when you get there), and it is very affordable (provided you have billions in “stimulus” money).

More Overbudget Rail Projects

The planned Honolulu rail line is likely to go at least 30 percent over its projected costs, and ridership is likely to be 30 percent less than forecast, according to a new report commissioned and released by Hawaii’s governor. The report cost $350,000, which means it commands more respect than if one of the Antiplanner’s faithful allies had written it for free. (Actually, one of the Antiplanner’s faithful allies, Tom Rubin, did help write the report–but not for free.)

The report says the rail line, which the city projected would cost $5.5 billion, is likely to cost at least $1.7 billion more. While local voters approved a sales tax increase to pay for the line, the report projects that tax will be insufficient to pay for the rail line. Over the next 30 years, “The total capital and operating subsidy paid by local taxpayers” on top of the sales tax “is estimate to range from $9.3 billion . . . to $14.5 billion.”

“Transit system usage and fare revenue are likely to be substantially lower than is project,” adds the report, “since the Plan’s projection would require an unprecedented and unrealistic growth in transit utilization for a city that already has one of the highest transit utilization rates in the country.” Update:The full report is downloadable from a state web site. Continue reading

Interpreting the Election Results

Tea party supporters do not agree on a lot of issues, but are firm on two things: cutting government spending and protecting property rights. What do the election results mean for the future of land-use and transportation planning?

On one hand, many of the results look promising for supporters of property rights and efficient (user-fee-driven) transportation policies.

  • Wisconsin rail skeptic Scott Walker, who promised to cancel the state’s moderate-speed rail project, soundly trounced the pro-rail incumbent governor.
  • Ohio elected fiscal conservative John Kasich, who is also a rail skeptic, as governor, probably dooming that state’s moderate-speed rail plans.
  • Florida appears to have elected fiscal conservative Rick Scott as governor. He will probably take a hard look at that state’s high-speed rail programs.
    Continue reading

Dead Again

New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie rekilled the Hudson River tunnel project. He had killed it before, a couple of weeks ago, but then promised to reconsider his decision at the request of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Christie did not want to burden New Jersey taxpayers with the cost overruns, now anticipated to be at least $4 billion. Canceling the project means New Jersey has to repay the federal government $350 million spent on planning the project, which seems a bargain by comparison.

Continue reading

NJ Governor Cancels Raildoggle

The big transportation news while the Antiplanner was in Japan was that New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie cancelled a major rail construction project: a planned new tunnel under the Hudson River. Spurred by cost overruns, Christie said “far more than New Jersey taxpayers can afford and the only prudent move is to end this project.” The tunnel was originally projected to cost $5 billion, but the latest estimates are as high as $14 billion.

Soon after the announcement, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood met with Christie to twist his arm “present a number of options” to keep the tunnel project alive. Christie agreed to revisit the decision, though he remains painfully aware that the project is ruinously expensive for New Jersey.

Christie’s decision, assuming it is sustained, raises an intriguing question: what other raildoggles are susceptible to similar cancellation by a single official such as a governor or mayor? This is especially pertinent as many fiscally conservative candidates are likely to take office in January.

Continue reading

Los Angeles Rip Off

In 2008, L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa promised voters that extending the city’s Red Line subway would relieve congestion. Voters believed him and supported a sales tax increase to build the line. Now the environmental impact report finds that the subway line will increase rush-hour traffic speeds on parallel streets by, at most, 0.3 mph (p. 3-34). Not surprisingly, some voters — or at least writers at the LA Weekly — feel ripped off.

LA Metro’s response quibbles about the cost of the project. LA Weekly says “Metro plans to use up to $9 billion in sales taxes” on the project, while Metro says the construction cost will be only $4.0 to $4.4 billion. Metro is being disingenuous as both statements can be correct if (as is likely) Metro borrows enough money to incur $4.5 billion or so in interest and finance charges. (Half of the overall payments on a 30-year loan at 5.3 percent turn out to be interest.)

Continue reading

More Rail Skeptics

“We need to rethink rail,” says Fred Jandt, the editor of Mass Transit magazine. After first defending his credentials as a rail and transit advocate, he admits, “Rail is expensive.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it is “prohibitively” expensive, he says, “but it may be something we need to rethink.”

This need-to-rethink was inspired by Joel Kotkin’s recent article in Forbes. Though Jandt is put off by Kotkin’s use of the word “boondoggle,” he admits that Kotkin’s “piece was more carefully considered with numbers to back up the writer’s arguments.” (Kotkin’s numbers come from Antiplanner allies Tom Rubin and, no doubt, Wendell Cox.)

It is hard to tell from Jandt’s rambling blog post just how he thinks rail can be rethought, but he suggests that “we need something in-between what we have for rail and what we have for buses” and points out that “most of the movement has been made on the bus side. Buses have moved more toward trains than the other way around.” In other words, buses are flexible: they can act like buses, but they can also act like railcars (i.e, bus-rapid transit). Railcars can act like railcars, but they can’t act like buses.
Modulation: 1, the first tea on Beiwan, into the water. 2, the first drink tea and drained, add the second bubble rose, viagra wholesale uk and then into the flour for batter and finally into the pan. I focused on this topic in my EBook: viagra pfizer 25mg Healthy Pancreas, Healthy You. As doctors in male diseases often complain: ‘patients infected india online viagra with chronic protatitis is most difficult to tackle, ‘ and it is true. Don’t reduce or increase the dosage of the Silagra with 50 mg at initial stage and if no side effects are caused then you can take increase dosage to 20 mg in a day.It must be taken orally and is generally safe for long-term usage. tadalafil pharmacy
Continue reading