Mobility

House Should Reject Senate Highway Bill, Move for Another SAFETEA-LU Extension

by Marc Scribner on March 14, 2012 · 4 comments

in Economy, Features, Labor, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Stimulus to Nowhere

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Just before 1pm today, the Senate passed its surface transportation reauthorization bill, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21, S. 1813). MAP-21 carries a price tag of $109 billion and would reauthorize federal highway programs for a mere 18 months. It passed 74-22, with principled fiscal conservatives voting “no.” Championed by Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer and Republican Senator Jim Inhofe — who happily admits he’s a big-government big-spender when it comes to infrastructure and national security — the bill dramatically increases funding levels while failing to make serious, significant reforms to current programs.

It also contains some terrible amendments, both germane to transportation and non-germane:

  • Amendment 1818, introduced by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.). In another example of our elected officials abusing “national security” powers to serve their own self-serving ends, Levin’s completely non-germane amendment perverts a section of the PATRIOT Act designed to stop terrorists from laundering money. It gives more power to the Treasury to attack legitimate international businesses that operate in countries with superior financial regulatory climates (such as those that don’t force banks to take part in the global economic police state that Levin envisions). In essence, Levin wishes to force the rest of the world to adopt the failed authoritarian, anti-growth policies he has long championed (with some success, unfortunately).
  • Amendment 1819, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). What is with the Rust Belt Democrats and absurd economic policy? Instead of attempting to drag the rest of the world down to a bad American regulatory climate like Levin’s amendment does, Brown’s Big Labor giveaway amendment attempts to drag America down to the Rust Belt’s economic morass — which is in large part self-imposed, by the way. The “Buy America” amendment pretends to be for “American jobs” and “American materials.” In reality, it is a sop to Sen. Brown’s Big Labor campaign donors and will significantly increase infrastructure construction costs across the country.

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Senate Should Reject Anti-Tolling Highway Bill Amendment

by Marc Scribner on March 7, 2012 · 2 comments

in Features, Mobility

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I previously wrote about Sen. Herb Kohl’s (D-Wisc.) terrible amendment to the Senate’s MAP-21 bill that would allow the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission to engage in antitrust regulatory harassment of the railroad industry, something they are currently and justifiably prohibited from doing. This is arguably the worst “germane” amendment, but another comes close.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) submitted Amendment 1568 [PDF], which is essentially the same as the Amendment 223 [PDF] to the House highway bill that was submitted by Rep. Quico Canseco (R-Tex.). The amendments seek to prohibit the use of federal funds for new tolling operations on all federal-aid highways, excluding the conversion of high-occupancy vehicle lanes to high-occupancy toll lanes. But Sen. Hutchison’s amendment takes it a step further by cutting from three to two the maximum number of projects allowed under the Interstate System Reconstruction & Rehabilitation Pilot Program. Currently, two of the three existing slots are filled by Virginia’s I-95 and Missouri’s I-70 [PDF] projects.

Much of the Interstate system is nearly 50 years old and will soon need to be completely reconstructed. Without expanded tolling or dramatic tax increases, there will not be enough funding available to complete these very important projects. Sen. Hutchison’s amendment, while supported by the trucking industry for obvious reasons, runs counter to sound transportation policy and should be opposed.

In contrast, Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.) submitted Amendment 1670 [PDF], cosponsored by Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), which would expand the existing tolling pilot program to 10 project slots, in addition to ending the 15-project cap on the Value Pricing Pilot Program. I would have loved to see this go much further, but the amendment is certainly a step in the right direction — especially in the context of the terrible policies backed by Sen. Hutchison and Rep. Canseco.

Without tolling as an available revenue collection mechanism, it will be all the more difficult to devolve transportation funding responsibility from the federal level and move toward more innovative public-private partnership models in the future. That long-term goal, I thought, was shared by libertarians and fiscal conservatives. It is disappointing that self-styled “fiscal conservatives” in Congress are so intent on protecting socialized road funding.

CEI Podcast for March 1, 2012: A Highway Bill Everyone Can Hate

by Ryan Young on March 1, 2012 · 1 comment

in CEI Projects, Mobility, Podcast

Have a listen here.

Land-Use and Transportation Policy Analyst Marc Scribner explains why almost nobody is happy with how this year’s highway bill is turning out. Fiscal conservatives are leery of the price tag. Earmarkers are disappointed at efforts to make the bill pork-free. Transit activists are upset that the current version of the House bill would end the practice of using 20 percent of gas tax revenue to subsidize mass transit.

Airline Carbon Taxes: The EU vs. the World

by Marc Scribner on February 23, 2012

in Economy, Environment, Global Warming, International, Mobility, Regulation

On Tuesday and Wednesday, representatives from 23 nations gathered in Moscow to discuss their response to the European Union’s mandatory airline carbon taxes. CEI’s Fran Smith has covered this story here and here. Based on the contents of the joint letter that came out of the Moscow meetings this week, the EU (and the airline traveler) is in for a world of pain. Unless the EU backs down, this will likely turn into a trade war. China is already forbidding that its airlines pay carbon fees to the EU Emissions Trading System, and they have threatened in the past to impose either high tariffs or outright landing bans on EU airlines.

Here’s the attached list of possible actions being considered against the EU:

  1. Filing an application under Article 84 of the Chicago Convention for resolution of the dispute according to the ICAO Rules for the Settlement of Differences (Doc 7782/2);
  2. Using existing or new State legislation, regulations, or other legal mechanism to prohibit airlines/aircraft operators of that State from participating in the EU ETS;
  3. Holding meetings with the EU carriers and/or aviation-related enterprises in their respective States and apprise them about the concerns arising out of the EU-ETS and the possibility of reciprocal measures that could be adopted by the State, which may adversely affect those airlines and/or entities.
  4. Mandating EU carriers to submit flight details and other data;
  5. Assessing whether the EU ETS is consistent with the WTO Agreements and taking appropriate action;
  6. Reviewing Bilateral Air Services Agreements, including Open Skies with individual EU Member States, and reconsidering the implementation or negotiation of the ‘Horizontal Agreement’ with the EU;
  7. Suspending current and future discussions and/or negotiations to enhance operating rights for EU airlines/ aircraft operators;
  8. Imposing additional levies/charges on EU carriers/ aircraft operators as a form of countermeasure;
  9. Any other actions/ measures.

All of this spells bad news for international travel, trade, and the fragile domestic economies in Europe and the United States.

Regulation of the Day 210: Transgendered Air Travelers

by Ryan Young on February 15, 2012

in International, Mobility, Personal Liberty, Precaution & Risk, Regulation

Canada is cracking down on the latest terrorist threat to innocent people everywhere: transgendered people. A July 2011 provision added to the Canadian Aeronautics Act’s Identity Screening Regulations says, “An air carrier shall not transport a passenger… who does not appear to be of the gender indicated on the identification he or she presents.”

Suppose someone was born female but lives life as a male. If his valid government-issued photo ID still identifies him as female, he may not board an airplane. It can take years of filling out forms and enduring hearings to convince courts to legally recognize that someone has crossed genders, as the economist Deirdre McCloskey (formerly Donald) movingly writes in her autobiography, Crossing. The result is a de facto ban on flying for most transgendered Canadians.

Dennis Lebel is Canada’s Transportation Minister. He supports the ban. He believes it increases passenger safety.

It doesn’t, actually. Here’s why. A passenger is a threat if he carries weapons or explosives on board. If he doesn’t, he’s not. This is true whether or not his appearance matches his ID, or whether it says “M” or “F.” This is true even if the passenger uses a fake ID, or none at all. Can this person bring down a plane? That is the question.

In other words, showing ID has precisely nothing to do with passenger safety. It’s all for show. The point is if you have weapons and explosives or not.

Lebel and the Canadian security screeners who work for him should keep this in mind. The nasty little provision may or may not be specifically targeted at gender crossers. But in practice it is discrimination, and it does not make air travelers any safer. If anything, by distracting screeners from searching for weapons and explosives, it makes passengers a little less safe. This is bad policy all around. It should be repealed immediately.

Lame Duck Sen. Herb Kohl Continues Quixotic Battle Against Rail Carriers in Senate Highway Bill

by Marc Scribner on February 15, 2012 · 1 comment

in Features, Mobility, Regulation

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wisc.), who will not be seeking reelection this November, decided that he would make one last-ditch attempt to get his awful piece of legislation from last year (the Railroad Antitrust Enforcement Act) passed by the Senate as an amendment to their highway bill. The primary purpose of the legislation is to remove the limited antitrust exemptions granted to America’s private railroads. Right now, the Surface Transportation Board, which is the watered-down successor organization to the tyrannical Interstate Commerce Commission, has sole authority in ruling over matters of competition policy within the railroad industry.

You might ask, “Why do the railroads get that special privilege? Is that fair?” Fairness is not the proper way to look at it; rather, common sense and economic sanity is. Given the type of industry the railroads are — vertically integrated (they own and manage both track and the trains) network industries that operate across many states — applying traditional antitrust scrutiny to railroads is wholly inappropriate if the goal is to maximize social welfare. The Surface Transportation Board, while certainly a regulator with serious problems, has a wealth of technical knowledge and experience in dealing with this very special industry. This is why most people who know anything about railroads, who are not in the pocket of major shipper lobbies, react with horror whenever knuckleheads in Congress introduce such dumb legislation.

Unfortunately, Sen. Kohl, an antitrust-maximalist romantic if there ever was one, wishes to open the door for potentially disastrous actions on the part of the U.S. government. I suspect Kohl, along with others who rely on outdated antitrust and industrial organization theory to formulate their opinions of railroads, has forgotten what happened when the railroads were heavily regulated by the ironfisted ICC. The entire industry almost collapsed and Northeast freight service was taken over by the federal government after the Penn Central went bankrupt. But since the Staggers Act that deregulated the railroad industry, shippers and consumers alike have enjoyed huge benefits, all while the industry consolidated and returned to profitability.

The ICC may have been terrible and the STB may be bad, but Kohl is proposing that we unleash the antitrust zealots at the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission. That’s not just terrible, that’s completely insane!

While Sen. Kohl’s legislation has essentially zero chance in becoming law, if you need another reason to oppose the Senate’s surface transportation bill, it is terrible enough to justify voting no on the entire Senate package if it is accepted as an amendment.

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Even Liberal Reporters Sour on Stimulus-Funded California Rail Boondoggle

by Hans Bader on February 8, 2012 · 1 comment

in Economy, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Stimulus to Nowhere, Zeitgeist

Even reporters at the famously-liberal Los Angeles Times have soured on California’s $100 billion-plus rail boondoggle, whose cost will far outstrip whatever the state will get from the $800 billion stimulus package to build it.  But the paper’s editorial board, which supported the stimulus package, continues to back the project, which has ballooned in cost from $33 billion to over $100 billion.  (Managing to see the bright side of even the most pernicious government waste, the paper’s board cited other boondoggles with approval, like Boston’s disastrous Big Dig project, which resulted in motorist fatalities. It praised that infamous project for replacing “what used to be an expressway” with “a downtown park”, despite the fact that it caused “severe delays” for motorists and had a skyrocketing price tag of more than $15 billion.)

But as its own reporter, Steve Lopez, recently noted, there is no telling how much the project will ultimately cost, or when it will actually be completed:

The projected completion date has gone from 2020 to 2033. The anticipated cost has ballooned to as high as $117 billion, and no one seems to have a clue where the bulk of the money would come from. The state auditor and the state Legislative Analyst’s Office have raised serious concerns, and the rail authority’s own peer review group said the project represents “an immense financial risk” to the state. And two weeks ago, the railroad authority’s top executive resigned.To top it off, a poll last fall said nearly two-thirds of registered voters would run this train off the rails if they had a chance to vote again.

The rail project won’t even be useful or economically viable once it’s finished, since travelers will be able to travel more cheaply by road or air than by taking the train.  As syndicated columnist Amy Alkon notes, “this is a totally unnecessary train (and I say that as a train lover). It’s $59 from LA to SF on Southwest if you book in advance,” less than a train ticket will likely cost.  And although the project is misleadingly called a “high-speed” rail project, it turns out that “the train couldn’t really run high speed” after all.

As Tim Cavanaugh noted in Reason, the Los Angeles Times reporter, Steve Lopez, had

the good fortune to answer to the newsroom rather the opinion section, where bullet-train belief still reigns as supremely as it does in Gov. Jerry Brown’s rumpus room. The important thing is that one more prominent Golden State blowhard is sealing the case against the vacant and bankrupt high-speed rail project. . . . In a piece I missed earlier this month entitled “Keeping faith with California’s bullet train,” the ed board praised the High-Speed Rail project because it is similar to Boston’s notorious Big Dig and the building of the pyramids by slaves.

The Obama Administration still supports this boondoggle even though it has been criticized by other liberal newspapers like the Washington Post.  That paper, which has not endorsed a Republican for President since 1952, criticized the project in an editorial entitled “California’s High-Speed Rail System Is Going Nowhere Fast.”

As we noted earlier, the small fraction of the stimulus package that was earmarked for transportation was devoted disproportionately to laying the groundwork for wasteful “high-speed” rail boondoggles that are not actually “high” in speed. These multibillion dollar rail boondoogles would provide work at inflated wages for politically-powerful unions. But these projects are expensive white elephants that would be used by very few travelers at an enormous cost per mile, and not enable trains to go anywhere near as fast as they do in Europe, Japan, or China. (Other union-backed provisions in the stimulus package wiped out jobs in America’s export sector.)

Obama relied on exaggerated claims to push through the stimulus package, claiming it was needed to prevent an “irreversible decline” in the economy,  even though the Congressional Budget Office admitted that the stimulus package would shrink the economy “in the long run.” Even an old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus might have been something that America could not afford at a time of record deficits. The Congressional Budget Office, ignoring various flaws in the stimulus package, argued that it would boost the economy in “the short run.” But even the CBO conceded that the stimulus would shrink economic output in “the long run” by increasing the national debt and thus crowding out private investment.

Regulation of the Day 208: Re-Booking Flights

by Ryan Young on February 2, 2012

in Mobility, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

Four of air travelers’ five biggest complaints are about the TSA. Right up there on the list with everyone’s favorite sexy-searchers has to be airlines’ habit of nickel-and-diming customers for checked baggage, blankets and pillows, and most anything else that isn’t bolted to the cabin floor.

This business practice, called unbundling, does help keep ticket prices low, as I’ve previously explained. But it’s still annoying; people are transaction-averse.

The Department of Transportation, knowing a good PR opportunity when it sees one, recently passed a rule forbidding one type of extra charge. Airlines may no longer charge re-booking fees if passengers re-book their flights within 24 hours of first purchasing them. Many passengers will no doubt welcome the change. The trouble, which the DOT does not acknowledge, is that it isn’t free. CNN’s Aaron Cooper explains:

The airline says the regulation forces them to hold the seat for someone who may or may not want to fly. As a consequence, someone who really does want to fly wouldn’t be able to buy that seat because the airline is holding it for someone who might or might not end up taking it.

In other words, there will be more empty seats, which costs the airline potential revenue. Passengers will also have a harder time finding a seat on nearly-full flights. That’s why Spirit Airlines, a low-fare airline that practices an extreme form of unbundling, is adding a $2 “Department of Transportation Unintended Consequences Fee.” Re-bookers’ gains come at everyone else’s loss.

It isn’t often that businesses stand up to regulators. More and more, they can be seen holding hands and gazing into each others’ eyes while dreams of increased budgets and decreased competition dance through their heads.

That’s why Spirit’s pointed sense of humor here is refreshing. The DOT isn’t taking too kindly to Spirit’s Economics 101 lesson, but then again, they’re the ones who forgot about tradeoffs. They’re everywhere.

The Silver Platypus

by Jack Mann on January 25, 2012 · 2 comments

in Features, Labor, Mobility, Regulation

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Last week, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority announced it was considering scrapping the Silver Line stop at Dulles Airport.

Though the Silver line was designed specifically to provide service to Dulles Airport, MWAA Board Member Bob Brown said it “wouldn’t be much of an additional burden on riders because even if Metro stopped at the airport people would still have to take a hike to the airport terminal” (1,150 feet – more than three football fields).

That’s right, MWAA just admitted that the proposed metro stop at Dulles Airport would be so inconvenient that air travelers aren’t likely to use it. So if the Silver Line is really just a westward extension of commuter rail that might not even stop at Dulles Airport, why is MWAA still involved?

More importantly, why would Virginia (one of only eight states with a AAA bond rating and the only one to have kept it without interruption for the last seventy years) surrender authority over a $6.8 billion infrastructure project to a notoriously secretive and debt-addicted semi-private entity like MWAA?

Virginia turning the reins of a large and complex project over to an opaque agency with a worse credit rating than France might seem completely backwards, but maybe the alternative to MWAA is even worse. One argument in favor of giving MWAA jurisdiction over planning the Silver Line is that it is a less wasteful and incompetent entity than the Kafkaesque Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, which will ultimately run it.

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Media: If You Wear Headphones while Walking, You’re as Good as Dead

by Marc Scribner on January 17, 2012

in Features, Mobility, Precaution & Risk, Zeitgeist

Post image for Media: If You Wear Headphones while Walking, You’re as Good as Dead

Various media outlets are trying to scare the bejesus out of us by reporting on a new study published in this month’s issue of Injury Prevention, a leading peer-reviewed journal focused on — you guessed it — research related to reducing injuries. “Deaths of Headphone-Wearing Pedestrians Increase, Study Finds,” was the title of Bloomberg’s article on the research paper. This is one of the more accurate headlines I’ve seen on the study, although even this one is likely being misinterpreted by many, as I’ll explain in a moment. An example of an inaccurate, sloppy, scaremongering title comes from the Toronto Sun, “Wearing headphones while walking can be deadly: Study.” Please. Wearing headphones while walking will almost certainly not kill you.

Many in the media have been conflating what the researchers found, that more pedestrians involved in vehicle collisions have been reported to have been wearing headphones, with “headphone-wearing increases pedestrian-vehicle crash risk.” While the authors note that there is most likely a link between increased risk of pedestrian-vehicle collision and the pedestrian wearing headphones, they specifically point out in their conclusion: “Also, since this is a retrospective case series, neither causation nor correlation can be established between headphone use and pedestrian risk” [emphasis added]. This is because the methodology used by researchers to determine the number of collisions in recent years relied heavily on searches of news databases, such as LexisNexis and Google News, which is not the most scientifically robust way to tabulate incidents given media biases.

It is also worth noting, as the researchers themselves note in their paper, that while these headphone-wearing-pedestrian collisions more than tripled over the six years studied, MP3 player ownership quadrupled over the same period. Simply because more pedestrian-vehicle collisions involving headphone-wearing pedestrians while ownership of headphone-dependent devices increased at a greater rate does not prove headphones necessarily increase pedestrian-vehicle collision risk by much. If a greater proportion of pedestrians are wearing headphones, you would expect that more vehicle-pedestrian collisions would involve pedestrians wearing headphones.

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