Archive for January, 2008
Sigh
C’est moi. Matt, good man that he is, argues in favor of high-speed rail in the U.S. Like that his commenters get their knives out. Rail is stupid! We’re too big a country! Rail loses money! Etc. Why is everyone so quick to assume that rail is a terrible idea? What part of spending $200 [...]
Meanwhile
I’ll see what Mayor Fenty comes up with, but I have to say at the moment that I am not fond at all about the idea of bringing the Redskins back into Washington, at a new stadium on the RFK site. As an abstract concept, it seems awesome; in practice, it’s a really bad idea, [...]
Scuttled
So it appears that the Metro extension to Dulles may be dead. Virginia officials are going to attempt to answer the FTA’s concerns by early next week, but given the pronouncements made by the transit body, things don’t look good. This is extremely unfortunate. There are obviously some problems with the Metro plan, as is [...]
Fed Free
Obviously, I’m sick to death of hearing about the FTA’s reservations on the rail line to Dulles. They’ve handled this incredibly poorly, which is exactly no surprise, because the Bush Administration wouldn’t be the Bush Administration if it weren’t using its powers to make shit run less smoothly. At the same time, I’m a little [...]
Slug
Those of you not from around here may not be familiar with the concept of slugging. Slugging is an informal carpool system that sprung up in Northern Virginia in response to the construction of High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, which may only be used by cars containing multiple passengers. At various points along the highway, folks [...]
Plug It In
Lots of things out there at the moment on electric cars and plug-in hybrids, including this plan to electrify Israel’s automobile fleet. Here’s a passage from the Times story on the Israel plan: Israel, where the round-trip commute between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem is only 75 miles, is considered a good place to test the [...]
Ask the Bellows
John Holbo highlights some absurd argumentation on the part of David Frum, who writes: Voters sense this truth. It’s an observable fact that those voters who care most deeply about equality – deeply enough to organize their lives to live in egalitarian communities – overwhelmingly vote Republican. Take a look at a map of the [...]
No Cars Go
I’ve come to the conclusion that if I think hard enough about a topic for long enough, Ed Glaeser will write a paper on the topic, answering many, if not all, of the questions I had. Today, Richard Florida directs us to new research from Glaeser and Co., examining the role of public transportation in [...]
Fare and Foul
A commenter on an earlier post directed me to this CBO study analyzing the effects of recent gas price increases, and I thank him, because it’s incredibly interesting. One point I’d like to highlight, of particularly relevance given Metro’s recent fare increase and discussions of significant potential increases in VRE fares, as well, is that [...]
Bubbles
Matt writes that Washingtonians get a skewed picture of the economy, because the Washington economy is unique and pretty strong. Richard Florida responds: Oh really? What freakin’ planet are these people on? How air-tight is their bubble? I lived in Washington DC – in northwest Washington DC, and sure I was surrounded by just these [...]