John Hennessy III,
P.E.
TRANSPORTATION ALTERNATIVES
THE NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT’S (NYPD) STATED GOAL IN THE MAYOR’S MANAGEMENT REPORT IS TO “REDUCE THE INCIDENTS OF TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS, INJURIES AND FATALITIES.” This is a just and admirable aim, yet the NYPD is not doing everything it can to achieve it because the department ignores its own traffic safety data and chooses not to enforce the traffic violations that are the most harmful to New Yorkers. This is the enforcement gap.
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION by Clifford Winston Introduction Transportation is a friction—a cost in both money and time—that must be incurred by individuals and firms to complete almost any market transaction. An efficient and extensive transportation system greatly enriches the standard of living in modern society by reducing the cost of nearly everything in the economy; expanding […]
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The Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency (CREATE) program partners is pleased to announce their second “GET ON BOARD”, a Business-to-Business Exchange on October 16, 2013 at The Ford Chicago Assembly Plant, 126th at Torrence Avenue, Chicago, IL, 9am -12pm. This CREATE business networking event will connect rail industry executives, government transportation agency heads, and […]
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METROPOLITAN COUNCIL
MZ STRATEGIES, LLC
In evaluating its regional solicitation process, the Met Council wanted to know how other regions manage this process, including the extent to which federal highway funds are blended, how preservation and maintenance needs (particularly for transit) are met, and what type of alignment exists between selection criteria and regional policies or goals.
Innovation Newsbriefs
Vol. 24, No. 13 (update)
In the longer run, greater state fiscal autonomy and financial sophistication could modify the federal-state relationship in transportation. There would be less need for direct financial aid to state DOTs and more emphasis on credit assistance to support transportation investments of truly national scope and significance. (High-Speed Rail in the Northeast Corridor comes to mind). At the same time, federal oversight of state transportation programs could be reduced to reflect the smaller federal fiscal footprint.
“You can’t say ‘Okay, we have X amount of money, go do something. You have to spend it within a year.’ I think the debate got caught up into not looking at long-range infrastructure projects that are sustainable and allow a much more efficient operation dealing with sustainability of businesses using the infrastructure or the private sector…America has to get back because it’s not just the roads, it’s the water systems, it’s the energy systems, it’s transportation, its looking at things and how, with sustainability, we can be more efficient.”
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REASON FOUNDATION
Steady increases in vehicle fuel economy, the lack of inflation indexing of fuel tax rates, and political gridlock over increasing fuel tax rates all make it very difficult even to maintain current pavement and bridge conditions and prevent congestion from getting even worse. The transportation community agrees that we need to phase out fuel taxes and replace them with a more sustainable funding source, generally agreed to be mileage-based user fees of some sort. But no consensus exists on how and when to do this.
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Congress should establish a National Infrastructure Bank (NIB) capitalized with the proceeds from a onetime repatriation tax holiday. The primary barrier to an NIB—a targeted mechanism for financing infrastructure projects of national significance— is finding a way to build the loan fund. Untaxed overseas corporate profits, which currently provide little support to overstretched federal budgets, represent an untapped revenue source that could quickly fund an NIB, without a direct appropriation.
Innovation Newsbriefs
Vol. 24, No. 12
The California High Speed Rail project was dealt a serious blow when Judge Michael P. Kenny of the Sacramento Superior Court ruled on August 16 that the California High-Speed Rail Authority “abused its discretion by approving a funding plan that did not comply with the requirements of the law.”
Innovation Newsbriefs
Vol. 24, No. 11
The inability of Congress to pass even a simple annual appropriations bill does not bode well for a congressional agreement on the much more complex and costly multi-year surface transportation bill that must be reauthorized by October 2014.
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