Houston
Texas Gov Rick Perry Could Get Four More Years to Build Mega-Highways
This is the fourth installment of Streetsblog Capitol Hill’s series on key governor’s races. Earlier we brought you stories about a candidate who likes bikes but isn’t sure about transit in Tennessee, the choice between light rail and bus rapid transit in Maryland, and how bike paranoia is cutting the GOP off at the knees in Colorado. Here we turn to Texas.
October 27, 2010
High-Speed Rail: Still a Good Idea
You may remember, back in August, economist Ed Glaeser's series on high-speed rail at the New York Times' Economix blog. Glaeser put together a back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit analysis of a hypothetical Houston-Dallas line, which purported to show that rail was a poor investment. You may also remember me responding in detail, and generally pointing out how woefully incomplete and misleading his analysis was.
October 22, 2009
Bridging the Local-National Message Divide: The Climate Bill is the Answer
This week, I was fortunate to attend the Open Cities conference in Washington (along with fellow Streetsbloggers Elana Schor and Aaron Naparstek), on the ways in which new media is shaping urban policy.
October 9, 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
Stim Cash Gone Bad: Feds Fund Houston’s Highway to Nowhere
Reuters just wrapped up a two-day "Infrastructure Summit" and published a great collection of stories about the state of transportation policy in the U.S. I especially like this piece, featuring Robin Holzer of the Houston-based Citizens' Transportation Coalition, who does a great job illustrating some of the major deficiencies that the federal stimulus bill failed to address:
May 8, 2009