Search Results for: rail

California High-Speed Rail in Trouble

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
118 Comments

New reports have raised questions about and spurred opposition to California’s grandiose high-speed rail plans. First, last April, the California state auditor reported that the state’s high-speed rail authority suffered from “inadequate planning, weak oversight, and lax contract management,” which is not exactly what you want to hear about an agency that is about to build the most expensive state-sponsored public works project in history.

Second, a new report from the University of California found that the state’s ridership forecasts “are not reliable.” Based on a re-assessment by economist David Brownstone (who is fast becoming one of the Antiplanner’s favorite economists) and two UC engineering profs, the fares needed to cover the trains’ operating costs would have to be more than double the original projections, which is also more than the cost of flying. Since the measure approved by voters in 2008 forbade any state operating subsidies, such high fares would doom the project.

Continue reading →

Charlotte Light Rail a Big Flop

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
28 Comments

Let’s see: 100 percent cost overrun? Check.

Anemic ridership? Check.

Requires tax breaks, tax-increment financing, and other “public investments” to stimulate transit-oriented development? Check.

Declared a great success by the transit agency desperate for tax increases to fund further rail projects? Check.

Must be light rail.

As Wikipedia points out, when planned in 2000, Charlotte’s light-rail line was supposed to cost $225 million. The final cost turned out to be $467 million. Even after adjusting for inflation, that’s close to a 100 percent cost overrun. (Actually, considering inflation from 2000 to 2007, that’s about a 75 percent cost overrun.)

You need to massage your penis regularly with Mast Mood sildenafil india price Oil to ensure sufficient blood flow and improve libido naturally. A small piece of overnight viagra jaggery can treat the erectile dysfunction to fair extent. Please note that buy viagra from india these are not all same. The most common ones are headaches, stuffy nose, back pain, upset stomach order levitra online and flushing. Continue reading →

Honolulu’s Rail Plan

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
27 Comments

Yesterday, in response to the Antiplanner’s post about crony capitalism, Scrappy commented that Honolulu needs rail transit to “reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and get us off the maddening addiction to cars.” He added that, “the environmental community in Honolulu is strongly behind rail.”

I appreciate Scrappy’s comment and don’t want to discourage him from participating in this forum, but I find it sad that my former colleagues in the environmental movement have become so innumerate that they would support a turkey like the Honolulu elevated rail plan. The final environmental impact statement for that project is now available. Let’s see what it says about saving energy, carbon, and driving.

Start with energy. Table 4-21 of the FEIS says the project will save 396 million British thermal units (BTUs) of energy each day, or 144,540 million BTUs per year. Sounds great, except that page 4-206 says project construction will cost 7.48 trillion BTUs. That means it will take 52 years of savings to pay back the energy cost. Long before 52 years are up, huge energy investments will be needed to replace rail cars, worn out track, and other infrastructure. So there is likely no net energy savings.

Continue reading →

FTA Chief Criticizes Rail Transit

By | | News commentary, Transportation
18 Comments

In a speech in Boston early this week, FTA Administrator Peter Rogoff sounds like he is channeling Wendell Cox or another of the Antiplanner’s faithful allies.

“Supporters of public transit must be willing to share some simple truths that folks don’t want to hear,” said Rogoff. “One is this — Paint is cheap, rails systems are extremely expensive. Yes, transit riders often want to go by rail. But it turns out you can entice even diehard rail riders onto a bus, if you call it a ‘special’ bus and just paint it a different color than the rest of the fleet.” By coincidence, the Antiplanner made the same point on the same day as Rogoff’s speech.

Rogoff pointed out that America’s transit systems have $78 billion of deferred maintenance, the vast majority of which is for rail lines even though the majority of transit trips are by buses. His point is not simply that we aren’t maintaining rail lines, but that such maintenance is extremely expensive and rail supporters often deceptively ignore such costs when trying to sell new rail lines to the public. “if you can’t afford to operate the system you have,” Rogoff warns urban leaders, “why does it make sense for us to partner in your expansion?”

Continue reading →

Chicago Rail Tragedy

By | | News commentary, Transportation
14 Comments

A sad story from Illinois: Phil Pagano, the head of Metra, Chicago’s commuter-rail agency, was recently accused of granting himself an unauthorized $56,000 bonus (on top of his regular pay of $270,000) in 2009. The agency initially denied it, but then announced it had suspended Pagano during its investigation, which later revealed that he had written himself forged signatures on checks totaling “about $100,000” (update: now up to $475,000).

In response, a few hours before a planned meeting with the agency’s board of directors, Pagano walked in front of one of his trains and stared into the face of the engineer as it ran him over. In his pocket investigators found “a copy of Metra’s procedures on how to handle a service disruption after a suicide.”

Without making light of this tragic situation, faithful Antiplanner ally Peter Samuel asks a good question: Why do we pay transit agency executives so much money in the first place? Samuel points out that the Illinois Tollway carries ten times as many passenger miles (and infinitely more freight) as Metra, yet the CEO of that agency makes only $189,000 a year.

Having sex regularly can apparently make cialis prices you appear 10 years younger than your real age. Surgery was viagra without prescriptions canada http://deeprootsmag.org/2017/03/14/16832/ the only option available in the past. We breathe in, each day, industrial levitra prices click over here emissions, that contain arsenic, antimony and cadmium. Its important to http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/12/04/the-yuletide-report-from-the-chairman-of-the-board/ order generic levitra recognize that there is both good stress and bad stress. Continue reading →

Not So Fast for High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
10 Comments

Over most of Obama’s so-called high-speed rail network, the administration proposes to run passenger trains at top speeds of 110 miles per hour on the same tracks as freight trains. But CSX says it will not allow passenger trains to run faster than 90 mph on the same tracks as its freight trains. If the government wants to build new tracks, they must be at least 30 feet from CSX freight tracks.

Since New York, among other states, was counting on using CSX tracks for some of its moderate-speed rail routes, the Empire state has unsuccessfully pressured CSX to change this policy. Last month, the director of the state’s high-speed rail program quit in disgust because she felt other state officials were lying to CSX and not negotiating in good faith.

Continue reading →

Nix on Rocky Mountain High-Speed Rail?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
6 Comments

After getting burned by Denver’s Regional Transit District, Colorado Moreover, order viagra overnight works best when taken on an empty stomach. All these herbs are blended in right combination to boost secretion of testosterone. cialis online best When will a cancer patient who has had treatment experience impotence? Depending on the cialis online pill midwayfire.com treatment, the experience of the surgeon, and the progress of the cancer, it may be right away. There can be physical, mechanical, interpersonal or emotional problems and these should be resolved canadian generic viagra to prevent dissatisfaction and confusion in conjugal life. doesn’t seem eager to drink the Kool-Aid again.

Rail Transit vs. Driverless Cars

By | | News commentary, Transportation
40 Comments

After two years of delays, Austin’s Capital Metro plans to finally begin operating its commuter-rail line today. This is not before at least one more example of the agency’s incompetence to build and run a rail line — it spent millions on steel ties only to discover they were not properly insulated for the system’s electronic signaling system.

The Antiplanner has often said that the only reason to build rail transit is if you have a lot of money burning a hole in your pocket, and that was apparently the case in Austin. Capital Metro had $200 million in the bank and feared taxpayers would cut its subsidy or demand that some of the money be given to other agencies. So it blew the money on commuter rail, is now nearly broke, and its general manager was forced to resign in disgrace. No doubt it will claim the commuter-rail line is a big success and ask voters for a tax increase so it can build more.

Continue reading →

The Future of French Rail

By | | Transportation
23 Comments

Even as President Obama wants to build an American high-speed rail network to match the one in France, the French have begun to question the wisdom of their own high-speed rail system. French trains are operated by a government-owned corporation known as SNCF (short for the French translation of National Railway Company of France).

By 1997, building high-speed rail lines had put SNCF €28 billion — about $38 billion in today’s dollars — in debt. Although this debt was backed by the full faith and credit of the French government, it was pretty clear that rail fares would never repay it. Since the European Union requires that member countries not subsidize transport or other things that would give companies in those countries an unfair advantage over those in other members of the EU, in 1997 France separated SNCF into two companies: SNCF would continue to operate trains, while a new company named Réseau Ferré de France (RFF, which translates to French Rail Network) builds and maintains the tracks.

Continue reading →

Gridlock and Light-Rail Slide Shows

By | | Follow up, Housekeeping
30 Comments

On Tuesday, March 2, the Antiplanner gave an anti-light-rail slide show in Vancouver, Washington. You can download this show, with the core of my narrative in the notes, in either PDF or PowerPoint formats. Each of these files are about 15 megabytes.

There are two short videos in the show that aren’t really necessary to understand it. Of course, they won’t appear in the PDF. But if you really want to see them in the PowerPoint show, you will also need to download this 43 megabyte zip file, unzip the file, and make sure your PowerPoint software inserts the videos into the show. Sorry for the large size; these are my original videos taken in Denver and France.

On Wednesday, March 3, the Antiplanner gave a presentation about Gridlock. Although the presentations on the book vary slightly from place to place, you can download the basic presentation in either PDF or PowerPoint formats. Each of these files are about 20 megabytes.

The spots are scattered cialis generika click to find out in no particular pattern. It’s intricate to pinpoint why some people have a bent http://seanamic.com/author/czak2015/ order generic levitra to sexually harass co-workers. Learn from the best and don’t make the exact same way as the canadian viagra samples synthetic approach of using prescription drugs by blocking the DHT hormone and stopping it from attaching to the hair follicles. On another note, these drugs manage or even treat mentioned shortcoming of the generic overnight viagra essential factors. 1. Continue reading →