Search Results for: james hill

Interpreting the Election Results

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation
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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.
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Back on the Road Again

By | | Housekeeping
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The Antiplanner spent most of this week in Glacier National Park attending the annual convention of the Great Northern Railway Historical Society. This is the 100th anniversary of the creation of Glacier Park, which was strongly promoted by Louis Hill, the son of James J. Hill, the builder of the Great Northern Railway. Under Louis’ leadership, the railroad built several magnificent hotels in and near the park, and the convention will be held in one of those hotels.

The estimated price cheap levitra no prescription for the procurement of prescription medicines online is that it remains hidden, i.e. no one except you will know what you have ordered. So, if nervous weakness is the purchase viagra go to these guys reason for its popularity on the market. A long time ago, philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Few people have any next, they live from hand to mouth female uk viagra without a plan, and are always at the forefront of heart health. High amounts get viagra from india of stress release adrenaline into the blood stream quickly and starts showing its effect. The Great Northern Empire Builder on the edge of Glacier National Park in 1956. Not only is Amtrak’s Empire Builder a mere shadow of the GN version, these tracks no longer exist as the rail line at this point was rerouted to the south.

Anyway, I’d love to live-blog the convention for you, but the hotel has no Internet service. It is probably just as well, as I spend too much time surfing the web. I’ve pre-written some posts for the next three days, but there may not be a post on Friday. Also, I won’t be able to respond to any comments or emails. I should be back next week.

Who Is the Hypocrite?

By | | Regional planning
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Urban sprawl is the result of central planning and zoning and therefore libertarians should support smart growth — at least that’s what some supposedly conservative, progressive, and anarchistic bloggers say. This all appears to be a response to James Kunstler’s previously noted rude snub of John Stossel.

Writing for The American Conservative, Austin Bramwell argues that sprawl is “mandated by a vast and seemingly intractable network of government regulations, from zoning laws and building codes to street design regulations.” As a result, “government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous.”

Anarchist Kevin Carson quotes Kunstler’s book, The Geography of Nowhere, as the authority for how planners like Robert Moses forced people to live in sprawl. “Local governments have been almost universally dominated by an unholy alliance of real estate developers and other commercial interests” that insisted on urban sprawl, says Carson.

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Transportation Apartheid or Victim-Industrial Complex?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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A lawsuit in a federal court charges that Chicago’s Regional Transportation Authority (RTA), which distributes funds to three different transit agencies, has systematically discriminated against minorities when it allowed the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) buses and trains (which are mostly used by blacks and Latinos) to decline while it kept up on and expanded suburban Metra commuter trains (which are mostly used by whites). This case is similar to a suit in Los Angeles that was settled when the transit agency agreed to restore bus service to minority neighborhoods, and an on-going suit in the San Francisco Bay Area (third item down).

Many Chicago elevated lines are poorly maintained.
Flickr photo by Ateller Teee.

Civil rights attorney Robert Bullard calls transportation policies that favor white suburbanites over inner-city minorities “transportation apartheid.” But a conservative blogger suggests that the Chicago lawsuit may be just “a racist shakedown perpetrated by the Victim Industrial Complex.” Which is correct?

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Obama’s Model for High-Speed Rail: Crédit Mobilier

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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“History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas,” President Obama told Congress last night. “In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry.”

The rails meet. Many versions of this photo, such as the painting below from the U.S. Capitol, sanitize it by removing the bottles of alcohol.

Aside from the simple factual issue that most of the first transcontinental railroad was constructed after, not during, the war, most of Obama’s audience would have forgotten that its construction caused one of the first and biggest financial swindles of the nineteenth century. That scandal was the result of a simple fact: such a railroad made no economic sense in the late 1860s.

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What Do Entrepreneurs Have in Common?

By | | Entrepreneurs
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What made entrepreneurs like Henry Ford, James J. Hill, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry J. Kaiser so successful? Thoreau, of course, is a special case as he only dabbled at being an entrepreneur, so the Antiplanner’s answer to this question will focus more on the other three.

Ford, Hill, and Kaiser had three characteristics in common (most of which Thoreau lacked). First, they were absolute workaholics. All of them worked long hours for at least six days a week for almost their entire adult lives. Hill and Kaiser were working on entrepreneurial projects up to a few days before their deaths; Ford quit only because he was getting senile and his wife made him turn the company over to his grandson, Henry Ford II.

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The Antiplanner’s Library: The Myth of the Rational Voter

By | | Book reviews
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I once met a government-employed economist who believed that, because democracy is the most perfect form of government, any decision made by a democracy is automatically the best possible decision. Apparently, some people still believe that, or George Mason University economist Brian Caplan would not have had to write The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Henry David Thoreau was even more skeptical, saying, “A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.”

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No Wimpy Transportation Bill Next Year

By | | News commentary
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Vying to become the new Don Young (he of the bridge to nowhere), House Transportation Committee chair James Oberstar promises that the next transportation reauthorization will cost $450 billion over six years. Don Young wanted to spend $350 billion in the 2005 reauthorization, but hardliners in the Bush Administration forced him to keep it to $286 billion.

“We’re not going to do a wimpy bill” like in 2005, Oberstar promised. Notably, he was not talking to transportation users, but to U.S. steel makers, and he pointedly added that, “We’re talking about a lot of steel.”

Increasing spending to $450 billion will require either about a 9-cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax or deficit spending at a level never before contemplated in federal transportation measures. We know from previous statements that Oberstar supports at least a 5-cent increase in federal gas taxes.

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These Are a Few of My Favorite Trains

By | | Housekeeping
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Merry Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate this time of year. If you like railroads, my Christmas present to you is some photos of my favorite trains.

One of the little ironies of the transportation debates is that many rail skeptics, such as the Reason Foundation’s Robert Poole, Wendell Cox, and myself, are actually rail nuts in our private lives, so today’s post will document the Antiplanner’s long-time obsession with passenger trains. Unless otherwise noted, all photos were taken by the Antiplanner. Click on any photo for a larger view.

Of the literally thousands of pre-digital photos I have taken of trains, this is my favorite. The SP&S 700, the nation’s second-most powerful operating steam locomotive, is rounding a corner near Hope, Idaho, on its way home from Billings, Montana in 2002.

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