P. J. O’Rourke on Cars

P. J. O’Rourke has a new book, Driving Like Crazy, and an article in the Wall Street Journal lamenting that the magic of the automobile “was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste, and busybodies.” Because his grandfather was once a car dealer, some readers will consign him to a part of the “vast automobile conspiracy.”

The Antiplanner, however, doesn’t believe that “Americans fell out of love with the automobile.” Except for the fact that people like something because it is less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, most Americans never were in love with the automobile — though certainly some were and still are. For most trips, cars are still less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, so they are likely to remain the dominant form of American transportation for a long time.

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Six Billion Pounds? Not Likely and Not Worth It

When President Obama announced his vision for high-speed rail, he claimed it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 billion pounds a year. The first clue that this number is pretty insignificant is the fact that it is expressed in pounds, instead of the usual metric tons. Six billion pounds is 2.72 million metric tons, which is less than five one-hundredths of a percent of the 6 trillion tons of CO2 the U.S. produced in 2007.

Even if it were significant, it is almost certainly a wild exaggeration. According to page 3 of the Federal Railroad Administration’s strategic plan, the source is a 2006 report by the Center for Air Policy and Center for Neighborhood Technologies.

At the risk of making an * ahem * ad hominem attack, this source is not exactly objective. Without documentation or attribution, the very first paragraph of the report claims that high-speed rail “can reduce congestion on roads and at airports, is cost effective and convenient, improves mobility and has environmental benefits.” That doesn’t sound very fair and balanced to me.

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Houston Densifying Faster Than Portland

The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, presents these data (20 KB PDF) on changes in urban density between 2000 and 2007. The density of the Portland urban area grew by 12.4 percent. Meanwhile, the density of the Houston urban area grew by 14.3 percent.

Other relatively unplanned urban areas also had rapid density growth: Riverside-San Bernardino (the least-planned communities in southern California) by 19.5 percent; Atlanta by 17.7 percent; Austin by 16.6 percent; and Las Vegas by 15.6 percent.

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Cox cautions that “These data relate to the urban footprints (land areas) as determined by the US Bureau of the Census in 2000. No adjustment has been made for geographical expansion of urban areas since that time. Thus, the 2007 density figures do not indicate urban area densities in 2007, but rather the density of the 2000 boundaries in 2007.”

More on LaHood

The National Press Club posted a video of Secretary of Behavior Modification Ray LaHood’s May 21 presentation in which he admitted that the administration’s goal is to “coerce people out of their cars.” The Antiplanner downloaded it (all 193 MB) and transcribed the relevant portion of the question-and-answer period to see if LaHood’s quotes were taken out of context.

The questions below are preceded by the minutes:seconds in the video where the question begins. LaHood’s answers are in bold and the Antiplanner’s comments are in italics.

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Sotomayer: To Hell with the Fifth Amendment

David Brooks sarcastically applauds the Obama administration’s willingness to cavalierly order banks, auto manufacturers, and health care providers around. And it appears that, in nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Obama was doing more than finding an Hispanic woman to balance out the court. He was finding someone sympathetic to the idea that government should be able to push around private businesses and property owners.

As Richard Epstein, the nation’s preeminent scholar on property rights and the Fifth Amendment, writes in Forbes, Sotomayer has even less sympathy for property rights than the justices who voted for the Kelo decision. In 2006, Sotomayer was on a panel that reviewed a case known as Didden vs. the Village of Port Chester, New York.

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LaHood: “Yes, I am Secretary of Behavior Modification”

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood lashed out in response to George Will’s claim that LaHood is trying to be “Secretary of Behavior Modification” — by casually admitting it.

“About everything we do around here is government intrusion into people’s lives,” says LaHood. Admitting that Obama’s policies are, in fact, “a way to coerce people out of their cars,” LaHood commented that, “The only person that I’ve heard of who objects to this is George Will.”

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Earmark Pigfest

Members of the House of Representatives submitted their requests for 6,868 earmarks for the next reauthorization of federal surface transportation spending. That’s only about 500 more than the number that was officially in the 2005 transportation act (an “official” earmark is numbered in the bill; the asterisk in the linked table indicates there were several hundred more unnumbered earmarks).

At $136 billion, the total cost of these earmarks would be almost six times as much as the $24 billion cost of earmarks in 2005. Of course, this is far from the final total. The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee says it may pare these down. On the other hand, the Senate is likely to add to the list.

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George F. Will Nails It

Mild-mannered Republican Ray LaHood has been transformed into the Secretary of Behavioral Modification. As Will notes, the behavioralists don’t know their history and fail to recognize that behavioral tools are costly and produce little benefit. Moreover, once they get started, there is no These blogs involve the popular blogs like the road rash blog, the cialis viagra levitra fit city blog, the luxury life blogs and several other blogs. The side effects of this faulty habit are disastrous and, may ruin the entire life of viagra generic discount the suffering person. Experiencing order cheap levitra http://secretworldchronicle.com/2019/09/ep-9-39-interlude-giants-in-the-ocean/ diarrhea after having a gallbladder removed is not a reasonable statement. Since the mobility of the levitra prescription blood vessels get clogged, men are ought to lose their erection of the male partner. end to the amount of meddling they are willing to do in people’s lives.

Portland Congressman Earl Blumenauer has offered to defend the behavioralists in a debate with Will. The Antiplanner would be willing to make a rare return to Portland to see that.

Rail Is for the Elite

Riders of Washington, DC’s Metrobus system are much more likely to be low-income minorities than users of the Metrorail system, according to a 2007 survey. The median income for Metrorail riders is $102,100, while the median income for bus riders is only two-thirds as much at $69,600; more than half of bus riders are minorities while three-quarters of rail riders are non-Hispanic white.

Back in the 1970s, public subsidies to transit were justified on the grounds that cities needed transit to serve low-income people who could not afford to own their own cars. That reason has been forgotten in the rush to build rail lines that will attract middle-class people out of their cars.

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Op-Eds in USA Today

The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute, has a different take on Obama’s fuel-economy plan in an op ed in USA Today.

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