So, it seems the Examiner made a big deal about the story on increased cost estimates for the Metro extension to Tysons. Several points:

1) A major reason for the cost increases is delay, and the primary source of delay has been the awful handling of the project by the FTA. That’s not Metro’s fault, it’s the fault of Bush’s anti-transit goons.

2) Costs for everything are increasing. And the increasing costs of other things are pushing up the cost of the Metro line. Highways are more expensive than ever. Virginia’s HOT lanes were supposed to pay for themselves, but the state will now have to spend millions covering overruns.

3) Cost increases for everything, and especially for energy, increase the value of the Metro line but decrease the value of highways. The potential value of transit and of a transformed, dense, walkable Tysons Corner go up as oil prices rise. The opposite is true for every mile of new pavement.

Shame, once more, on the Examiner.

In the comments, Ben Ross directs us to a piece he wrote a few years ago on the roots of NIMBYism. Check it out.

As much time as I’ve spent arguing in favor of better development policies, I think we probably need to look at infill development in the same way as we do climate change legislation. It would be great if we could go to everyone individually, make the case in favor of emission reductions, and win their support and cooperation, but that’s not going to happen. Instead, what’s needed is a policy that assesses the social cost of community actions and then ensures that we all pay our fair share of that cost (based on how much we contribute to the problem).

In the same way, I don’t think we can count on our ability to convince residents in neighborhoods all over the city that they need to be held responsible for the costs they impose on other Washingtonians, the city, and the environment. Instead, we need policies that ensure that those who really, really want to stop development can do so, so long as they’re willing to pay for that privilege. But we can’t allow our neighbors to costlessly reduce the potential of this city.

Improving educational outcomes is difficult. The challenge of providing an excellent, effective, (and reasonably affordable) education to students from all over the nation and from wildly different socioeconomic backgrounds has bested lawmakers at all levels of government. It’s really hard to know what to do.

So you’d think we’d have people looking into the question, right? Lots of researchers studying which techniques and institutional structures are most effective? You’d be wrong:

Despite the continuous call for more and better education research and development (R&D), the Department of Education’s R&D budget remains limited in comparison to that of other agencies and the private sector. For FY 2008, the Department of Education budget allotted $321 million for R&D out of a total budget of $59.2 billion. That means that R&D accounts for just over one half of one percent of total federal education funding today. The FY 2009 budget includes just a three million dollar increase in R&D funding for education for a total of $324 million.

In contrast, the FY 2008 budget for the Department of Defense allotted $77.8 billion, or 13% of its total budget, for R&D, while the Department of Energy allotted $9.7 billion or 40% of its total budget for R&D. Of the $142.7 billion in federal funds allotted for various R&D efforts in FY 2008, the Department of Defense accounted for 55% of that spending while the Department of Education accounted for a mere one fifth of one percent of that spending. The meager levels of federal funding for educational R&D are particularly problematic because, in contrast to other industries where there is substantial private R&D investment, the feds are the primary source of funding for education R&D. States and local school districts lack the infrastructure or economies of scale to make substantial R&D investments, and while private philanthropy picks up some of the slack, the $5.2 million philanthropic groups invested in education R&D in FY 2006 is tiny compared to the need.

The 2002 Education Sciences Reform Act (ESRA), sought to improve the quality of federally-supported educational research by creating the Institute of Education Sciences and demanding more rigorous standards for the conduct and evaluation of federally funded education R&D. Those were positive changes. Since the creation of IES, however, funding for education R&D, as a percentage of the total Department of Education budget, has actually fallen. In FY 2001, R&D funding accounted for three-fifths of one percent of the total Department of Education budget - $265 million out of a total budget of $42.2 billion.

That’s a shame - one of the happy consequences of NCLB is the growing number of states with accessible, student-level data that make rigorous education R&D possible in a way it never was before. For example, states and researchers could use currently available student-level data to rigorously evaluate the efficacy of various educational reform strategies-but taking advantage of that opportunity requires funding.

That’s absurd, is it not? Here we have these knock-down, drag-out fights over vouchers, unions, merit-pay, and so on, and we’re not taking the basic steps to see what works and what doesn’t. In the absence of good information, it’s no wonder ideological priors quickly reduce education debates to unresolvable shouting matches.

More research, please.

Emeka Moneme, head of the District DOT, has resigned. Read David Alpert’s take on Moneme’s career at DDOT and on the critical nature of the decision now facing Mayor Fenty. The District’s resurgence and high gas prices have created an incredible opportunity for the city, and the head of DDOT will have a great deal to say about how we use that opportunity. Fenty can choose a business as usual guy, looking to speed traffic flow and improve commuter routes from the suburbs first. Or, he can choose someone who will focus on improving mobility within the city, capitalizing on our transit and design assets, and making streets attractive places for residents, including pedestrians and cyclists. Let’s hope he has the good sense to opt for the latter.

This is getting fun, now. Further comments from the Brookland listserv after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

So, there’s this and this. And also this.

I’m not an expert in police tactics, so most of my recommendations to help reduce crime involve long-term investments in health, education, and public services. But it does seem to me that there is something to be gained from significantly increasing the number of police officers walking the beat and regularly interacting with residents. It strikes me that this might improve the public’s trust of police officers and reduce harassment claims. And it would cost money to put more officers on the street, but presumably some of that cost would be recovered by reduced expenses on gasoline, auto maintenance, accidents, and compensation of people run down by cruisers.

Unfortunately, I blew my whole commemorative budget on that giant silver $20 9/11 bill. Which I promptly used to buy gas.

A federal task force says speculation isn’t driving up oil prices. Rather, we’re using too damn much oil:

As Congress debates how to curtail the role of speculators and rein in rising oil prices, a federal task force said Tuesday that it had so far found no evidence that those investors are systematically pushing up the cost of energy.

Instead, in an interim report made public on Tuesday, the task force said that its research “does not support the hypothesis that the activity of these groups is driving prices higher.”

The preliminary study concluded that the rise in oil prices over the last five years was “largely due” to fundamental factors like rapidly rising consumption and sluggish growth in energy supplies worldwide.

The analysis was headed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with help from six other agencies, including the Federal Reserve and the Treasury.

Conservatives may jump in at this point and say it’s all the more reason to start drilling. Only, if you look at the potential oil available from drilling in ANWR and offshore, it’s nowhere near enough to cover declines in supply elsewhere and demand growth. Any Congressional plan that doesn’t include ways to facilitate demand reduction is a waste, pure and simple. We have to use less, and so we really ought to be figuring out how to make using less less painful.

Newsweek interviews Amtrak CEO Alex Kummant. Sample:

Which U.S. routes could see the most immediate improvement.
If you look at Chicago to Detroit … it’s a complex railroad, but for less than a billion dollars, you could make that a high-speed passenger corridor. Some of the lines around Chicago are practically ready to go to support 110-miles-per-our travel. We’d like to look south of Washington, heading toward Richmond. In Florida, many of the routes are the right distance for a lot of improvement.

This bugs me a little:

Speed is certainly factor in how people choose to get around. The top American trains go 150mph. European trains top 200.
Those trains run on dedicated right-of-ways reserved just for them. We’d love to be the TGV if we had a spare hundred billion dollars to create separate right-of-ways and spend the next 20 years in court on eminent-domain proceedings to build out in some of the most densely populated areas. I believe that there will eventually be high speed in the country like that, but it’ll probably start farther west where they’ll be less trouble putting in dedicated routes.

I know it’s important to be realistic, but shouldn’t we expect the Amtrak CEO to cast the potential and achievability of HSR in a slightly more positive light? And mightn’t it be worth noting that $100 billion is less than three years’ worth of federal highway spending?

Here’s a contrast:

Average motorists in Mississippi spent nearly 8 percent of their incomes on gasoline in 2007 and drivers in South Carolina and Georgia spent more than 7 percent, according to the report released on Tuesday by environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Meanwhile, drivers in the Northeast spent the least amount of their incomes on fuel with Connecticut motorists paying just over 3 percent. Drivers in New York spent about 3.3 percent and motorists in Massachusetts spent about 3.5 percent.

There are several things involved here. One is that the south is generally poorer than the northeast (especially the gulf coast), so households spend more on necessities. Another is that southern metropolitan households are paying less for housing than those in the northeast, so if we look at total housing and transportation costs, the gas price increase isn’t quite as painful.

All the same, this is going to have big implications for much of the south, but especially in rural areas. Atlantans have built themselves a pretty awful urban structure, but residents there nonetheless tend to be rich and do have some (though very limited) transit options. Over time, transit service will increase. Density will increase, and households will shift to more efficient automobiles.

But what about small town Mississippi? There’s hardly any transit, and most homes probably can’t afford a new Prius. It’s interesting to imagine that some of the greatest increases in density may come in rural areas, where living closer to things is the only real substitute available for driving. Rural areas may come to look more like they did one hundred years ago when towns clustered around the railroad junction.

Oh, and the less pain on the road thing referred to this:

According to the National Safety Council, as gas prices have risen this year, the number of traffic-related deaths has decreased.

Researchers with the NSC reported a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths overall through May of this year, compared with the first five months of 2007, including a drop of 18 percent in March and 14 percent in April.

But of course, what we really need to do is drill anywhere and everywhere so we can go back to driving as much as we possibly can.