The Antiplanner » Home Page

CHSRA Chair: “Our Engineers Are Incompetent”

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
17 Comments

The California High-Speed Rail Authority approved the Train to Nowhere, a plan to build the first leg of the high-speed rail line from a small town to no town. I suppose you have to start somewhere, but given the likelihood that the state won’t get any more federal funds, this seems like an exercise in folly.

Meanwhile, emails revealed that Curt Pringle, the chair of the California High-Speed Rail Authority (and mayor of Anaheim), thinks that the authority’s engineers are incompetent. “I do not think that the engineers working on the Anaheim to LA segment are capable of doing the work,” wrote Pringle last January. They “don’t live in the real world.” Continue reading →

Gold-Plated High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
9 Comments

Recently, someone asked the Antiplanner why Amtrak’s high-speed rail plan is so expensive. They were referring to a proposal published in late October to increase speeds in Amtrak’s Boston-to-Washington corridor to 220 mph.

The plan calls for spending $117 billion in the 427-mile corridor, for an average cost of nearly $275 million per mile. That’s almost ten times Florida’s projected cost of $30 million per mile and close to three times California’s projected cost of about $95 million per mile. Wikipedia reports that France kept the cost of one line down to $25 million per mile, but only by making compromises with grades and curvature. Continue reading →

Fast Train to Nowhere

By | | News commentary, Transportation
11 Comments

The federal government’s most recent $900 million grant to the California High-Speed Rail Authority came with a string attached: most of the money had to be spent, not in Los Angeles or San Francisco where most potential rail patrons are located, but in the central valley. Handed out just before the election, the grant was a blatant attempt to help the re-election effort of U.S. Representative Jim Costa. It might have made a difference, for despite the fact that Costa’s district leans heavily Democrat, he won over an unknown Republican candidate by a mere 3,000 votes.

But now California has to deal with the fact that it only has enough funds to build a high-speed train to nowhere. The authority expects to vote tomorrow on whether to start construction from Borden to Corcoran. To be fair, the route would go through Fresno, but it wouldn’t take anyone in Fresno to anywhere they might want to go at a high speed: Borden is barely a dot on the map, while Corcoran is the home of Charles Manson and his fellow prisoners.


View Larger Map
Continue reading →

Megabus Business Booming

By | | News commentary, Transportation
27 Comments

Ridership on Megabus is “well up from last year,” and starting in about two weeks the company plans to expand service to several new cities. Megabus will then serve nearly 50 major cities, all with virtually no subsidies.

Megabus near Chicago Union Station.
Flickr photo by compujeramey .

Meanwhile, high-speed rail nuts want to spend tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of public money on trains that, for the most part, won’t run faster than Megabus and for many years won’t be running at all. In contrast, Megabus has low start-up costs and can tailor services to local demand.

Continue reading →

Where Do We Draw the Line?

By | | City planning, News commentary
40 Comments

“How much is sustainability worth?” asks Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Nigel Jaquiss. “Try $65 million in public money.” That’s how much taxpayers will be spending on a $72 million “green” building in downtown Portland. At $462 a square foot, it will be “perhaps the most expensive office space ever built in Portland.”

The director of the Oregon Environmental Council defends the building as something that can “leverage long-term outcomes,” whatever that means. But she would defend it, since the state is promising OEC, 1000 Friends of Oregon, and other left-wing environmental groups office space in the building at low rents that are guaranteed to stay fixed for decades.

Continue reading →

Happy Thanksgiving

By | | Housekeeping
4 Comments

The Antiplanner wishes everyone a happy holiday. This year the Antiplanner is thankful for having had the company of Chip the Wonder Dog for more than 17 years.

The photos of Chip that I’ve previously posted here were mostly taken in the digital age. I recently spent a couple of days scanning many of the photos taken during the film era. If you want to see more unbearably cute puppy photos, click on through, and click on any photo for a larger view. We’ll leave political discussions to other posts. Continue reading →

Crying Over Cancelled Trains

By | | Transportation
28 Comments

There is much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over the so-called high-speed train in Wisconsin. A Madison newspaper that calls itself “the Progressive Voice” claims that Governor-elect Walker’s promise to cancel the Milwaukee-to-Madison train is economic treason. That makes sense if you agree with Paul Krugman that the federal government should spend a few more trillion dollars on “stimulus” projects that few people will ever use. For those who think that the national debt plus social security obligations plus medicare obligations are likely to bankrupt the nation if not immediately fixed, the real economic treason would be to build the rail line.

Labor unions and other rail activists held a candlelight vigil last night to “save the train” and the thousands of jobs it would supposedly produce. If they really want to create jobs, they should bring back stagecoaches and riverboats.

The fact that, after spending nearly a billion dollars, the average speed of this supposedly high-speed train will be only 59 mph doesn’t seem to bother people. Nor do they fret about the fact that the subsidies to each train rider will be more than $100. Continue reading →

Why Transit Will Never Be Energy Efficient

By | | Transportation
24 Comments

At a recent presentation, the Antiplanner mentioned that transit is not energy efficient because most transit vehicles run nearly empty most of the time. A “gotcha” look appear on the face of an audience member, who said, “but what if more people rode transit?” Yes, and cars would be more energy efficient if they were filled to higher occupancies, the Antiplanner replied, and if pigs could fly, we could just ride around on pigs and we wouldn’t need to debate this at all.

ModeAverage Occupancy
Automated Guideway7%
Cable Car36%
Commuter Rail21%
Demand Response12%
Heavy Rail17%
Light Rail14%
Motor Bus15%
Trolley Bus16%
Van Pool59%
Ferry Boat20%
Publico34%
Monorail7%
Inclined Plane19%
Vintage Trolley10%

Yet there are very good reasons why public transit occupancy rates will never rise much above their current levels of about one-fifth full. Suppose you take a bus or train to work during rush hour and it seems full. But it really only seems full as it approaches the center of town. It is likely to be nearly empty when it starts its journey in the suburbs, and be nearly full only when it gets close to the city center. Over a single, one-way journey into town (or out of town in the afternoon), the vehicle is likely to average only about half full. Continue reading →

GOP Advances Two Decades

By | | News commentary, Transportation
15 Comments

A left-wing blog accuses Republicans of wanting to “bring transport policy back to the 1950s.” At least, the GOP is two decades ahead of where the Democrats wanted to go, considering that 110-mph intercity trains and light rail both date back to the 1930s, and streetcars to several decades earlier.

Denver Zephyr traveling at 90 mph in 1939. Otto Perry photo. The train’s average speed of about 65 mph was far greater than the so-called high-speed trains proposed for Ohio (average 38.5 mph) or Wisconsin (average 59 mph).

The truth is that Republicans are proposing to be far more fiscally responsible than the Dems. Where House Transportation Committee chair James Oberstar proposed a $500 billion spending bill when less than $300 billion was available to spend, Republicans say they will spend no more than is actually available.

Continue reading →

CBO: User Fees for Infrastructure

By | | Transportation
9 Comments

The Antiplanner has long argued that transportation and other infrastructure should be paid for out of user fees, because user fees are the best indication that such projects will be truly productive. A report this month from the Congressional Budget Office reaches a similar conclusion.

The report observes that “carefully selected infrastructure projects can contribute to long-term economic growth,” but that “the potential gains from public spending for transportation and water infrastructure depends crucially on identifying economically justifiable projects.” In order to identify such projects, “the demand for infrastructure could be better aligned with the existing supply by putting a price on those services that reflects the full cost of using infrastructure.” This price should include “both the cost of providing infrastructure services and the costs that one person’s use imposes on others”–in other words, congestion pricing.

The report adds that the federal contribution to infrastructure projects should depend on “where the benefits are expected to accrue.” Projects that primarily provide local benefits should primarily be funded by the locals, while projects that provide more national benefits could get more federal funding. Federal funding of primarily local projects would “result in too many projects, or projects that are too expensive, being undertaken.” Continue reading →