Ed Glaeser’s Rail Fail
The story so far: Ed Glaeser recently began an effort to assess the costs and benefits of constructing high-speed rail lines at the New York Times' Economix blog. Last week, he posted his first substantive take on the issue, an attempt to estimate direct costs and benefits from a hypothetical line between Houston and Dallas.
August 12, 2009
Glaeser Takes an Unserious Look at High-Speed Rail
Ed Glaeser is a very good economist, and his papers are indispensable reading for those interested in the workings of urban areas. But he is also a strident conservative, whose popular writings frequently challenge conventional progressive wisdom (and my own views).
August 5, 2009
How to Judge “Cash for Clunkers”
At this point, it's difficult to know exactly what the government's "cash for clunkers" program is supposed to accomplish.
August 4, 2009
Maryland County Foolishly Seeking Congestion Relief in New Lanes
One would not normally describe Montgomery County, Maryland as a place with retrograde views on land-use and planning issues.
July 30, 2009
Obama Admin Declines to Consider New Funding for Transportation
Having entertained legislators' own ideas about how best to fund future transportation spending, the House Ways and Means committee turned to representatives from the administration and key interest groups today to hear their thoughts on the matter.
July 23, 2009
Prospects for Oberstar’s Transportation Reauthorization Dimming
House transportation committee chairman Jim Oberstar (D-MN) has been fighting the good fight in trying to keep the hopes for a 2009 transportation bill alive, but the odds appear to be dimming by the day.
July 23, 2009
Americans Still Use a Lot of Gas
The release of the Department of Energy's Transportation Energy Data Book is a transportation stat geek's dream -- 300-plus pages of numbers detailing the way the country burns this or that moving people and freight from city to city.
July 21, 2009
A Brief Reply to Heritage’s Ronald Utt, PhD
Readers, Ronald Utt has written a memo for the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, on Barack Obama's transportation policy.
July 20, 2009
Understanding Washington’s Metro Crash
The House of Representatives subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia convened yesterday afternoon to hear testimony related to the tragic Washington Metro accident of June 22.
July 15, 2009
Obama’s Agenda for Cities: Enough Talk
In closing his speech to a roundtable on urban and metropolitan issues, given yesterday at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, Barack Obama quoted Chicago architect Daniel Burnham, who famously urged men to "make no small plans."
July 14, 2009