Economics
What The Debt Ceiling Vote Means For Transportation
Yesterday, the House of Representatives took a “symbolic” vote on raising the debt ceiling without any “strings attached” – i.e., the trillion dollars worth of spending cuts the Republicans are insisting on before they’ll agree to raise the debt ceiling.
June 1, 2011
Study: Building Roads to Cure Congestion Is an Exercise in Futility
We hear it all the time: The road lobby insists that the only way to reduce mind-numbing traffic congestion on the roads they built is to build new roads. Federal funding gives huge blank checks to state DOTs, which tend to prioritize road building over transit, bridge maintenance or anything else. But mounting evidence suggests that building new roads won't do anything to alleviate congestion.
May 31, 2011
Five Media Myths That Perpetuate Car Culture
Another day, another news story, another media outlet wielding an old saw like this one: high gas prices are a political problem for the president because Americans "love their cars." American car culture, fed by everything from our sprawled out landscape to a daily bombardment of car ads, is kept alive by journalists’ use of a set of hackneyed narratives. Beyond clichés, these story lines represent a collection of myths that shore up an unhealthy, unequal, and ultimately unsustainable car system.
May 23, 2011
Brookings: Transit Access to Jobs Is the Missing Link
If you’re a middle-income person living in the Philadelphia metro area, there's an 85 percent chance you live within three-quarters of a mile of a transit stop, and you probably have to wait about 12 minutes for a bus or train. But if you're looking for work, beware: only 20 percent of the jobs in the region are accessible to you via transit in a reasonable amount of time.
May 13, 2011
Transpo’s Losses in First Round of Spending Cuts Look Worse Than They Are
The two houses of Congress were so much at odds over the Republicans’ proposed spending cuts that they needed two more weeks to bicker about it. So last week, they pushed off a little longer final passage of the budget for a fiscal year that started five months ago. But in order to even pass that measly two-week extension, Democrats needed to accede to $4 billion in cuts.
March 7, 2011
Get Rich While Reducing Emissions: Smart Growth Keeps Looking Smarter
Just when you may have been looking for ways to counter that Pew report which poo-pooed the environmental impacts of transit and smart growth, here’s more evidence that reducing driving has an essential role to play in meeting economic and environmental goals: A new report from the Center for Clean Air Policy concludes that compact development will build wealth and cut carbon emissions.
January 21, 2011
Combat Joblessness, Stripe a Bike Lane
A bummer of a jobs report came out today, showing that although unemployment dropped to its lowest point in 19 months, it's still way higher than economists had hoped.
January 7, 2011
New Report Examines the Media’s Role in the Gas Tax Debate
The success of state-level plans to increase gas taxes is tied to the media's portrayal of the proposals in question, with narratives tied to "crumbling infrastructure" and "economic progress" showing more success than those emphasizing long-term transportation budget gaps, according to a new report released by the University of Vermont's Transportation Research Center (TRC).
May 26, 2010
Tracing the Fault Lines Between Public and Private Transit Operators
Should private transit companies enjoy the same federal gas tax exemption that many public operators receive? How does the existence of private inter-city bus service affect the government's development of new high-speed rail lines? And does it matter that private transit firms are eligible for public subsidies, even if at a much smaller rate than public rail and bus agencies?
May 25, 2010
Dems, Obama Pushing Back Against Car Dealers’ Consumer Loophole
Auto dealers lobbied hard to win an exemption from the new consumer protection agency created by Congress' pending financial reform bill, but their free pass could fall by the wayside today as senior Democrats and President Obama press for a crackdown on deceptive lending practices in all industries.
May 13, 2010