Irreverent and Unsolicited Advice to Transit Advocates – Part 2

(Editor’s Note: This week Fox and Hounds is running a five part series by Norm King dealing with transportation issues based on his years of experience as a city manager and transportation consultant) Transit Investment Up, Ridership Down Don’t deny the decline. Accept that transit ridership is not performing anywhere near the levels projected before […]

Irreverent and Unsolicited Advice to Transit Advocates

Part 1: Strategies Not Goals The other day I attended an excellent seminar “Future of Public Transit” sponsored by the Lewis Center at UCLA, attended mostly by transportation practitioners and students who want so badly to believe that public transportation is the wave of the future. I was struck by the desire of some presenters […]

The Pope’s Problem

Pope Francis is using his concern about global warming as a vehicle to attack capitalism, to promote socialism and to emphasize his message about concern for the world’s poor. Personally I do believe that human-induced global warming is occurring. And I am sympathetic to his concern for the world’s poor but not his views on […]

High Speed Rail’s Collision Course: Part Two, Broken Promises

In Part One I focused on some of the key cost and benefit issues relating to California’s high speed rail (HSR) proposal.  The following is a review of previous commitments about how HSR would be built and perform, which appear impossible to achieve under the present proposal. In summary, the scaled back system now envisioned […]

High Speed Rail’s Collision Course: Part One, Funding, Costs and Benefits

This is not exactly a response to David Salaverry’s three part Fox & Hound’s series on California high speed rail (HSR), it is hard to respond to someone who argues three sides of an issue.  Salaverry emphasized the “political” aspects of the issue in all three of his contributions.  My comments will be more focused […]