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Posts Tagged ‘Ken Orski’

California’s “Train to Nowhere”

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Innovation NewsBriefs Vol. 21, No. 30 On December 2, the California High Speed Rail Authority approved  a staff recommendation to  begin construction of California’s 500-mile high-speed line with a 65-mile segment of track in Central Valley, from Borden in Madera County (pop. 57,000), through Fresno  to Corcoran (pop. 14,500) north of Bakersfield.  Roelof van Ark, […]

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The Unraveling of the High-Speed Rail Program: A News Analysis

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

The future Republican House leadership is determined to retrieve whatever remains of the unspent and uncommitted stimulus (ARRA) funds. So has stated Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), the prospective House Appropriations Committee chairman, as he introduced a bill (H.R. 6403, the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Rescission Act”) to rescind any unobligated ARRA funds and return them to the U.S. Treasury. Even already obligated ARRA funds may be at risk. Congressional GOP aides are reported to be closely reviewing agency records to identify particular stimulus-funded projects that could still be “reasonably” halted because work on them is only beginning.

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A Fresh Look at the Prospects for Transportation in the New Congress

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Last month we conducted an informal survey among colleagues in the transportation community about the outlook for the federal surface transportation program in the year(s) ahead…One comment from a veteran transportation insider summed up concisely the collective mindset: “There will be nothing ‘transformational’ about the future program,” he opined.

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A rail reality check that President Obama should heed

Wednesday, November 17th, 2010

Innovation NewsBriefs Vol. 21, No. 28 PRESIDENT OBAMA wants Americans to zip around in high-speed trains, just as many  Japanese, French, and Chinese already do. For him, the goal seems almost as much about  national pride as job creation or energy savings. “There’s no reason that Europe or China should have the fastest trains,” he has said. […]

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Update: The Federal High-Speed Rail Program: A Post-Election Reality Check

Wednesday, November 10th, 2010

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s decision to cancel the proposed commuter trans-Hudson rail tunnel (ARC) offers another example of a resolve by the new wave of fiscally conservative governors to rein in spending on public works that, in their judgment, present an unacceptable level of risk and cost. While Christie’s decision was widely condemned as shortsighted by members of the infrastructure lobby, it was supported as fiscally prudent by a majority of New Jersey voters. (By a margin of 51 to 39 percent according to a Rutgers University poll).

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High-Speed Rail Debate Refuses to Quiet Down

Monday, November 1st, 2010

In a November 1 column in the Washington Post reproduced below, the respected economist Robert J. Samuelson attacks the Administration’s high-speed rail program as “wasteful spending masquerading as a respectable social cause.”…Samuelson’s blunt assessment appears in stark contrast to the Administration’s confident prediction, in the words of top federal transportation officials, of “a world class network of high-speed corridors” that would connect “80 percent of America in the next 25 years at a cost of $500 billion.” How can professional judgments be so diametricaly opposed and whose judgment will prevail?

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Prospects for Transportation Legislation and Other Infrastructure Ventures

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010

What are the prospects for surface transportation legislation in the 112th Congress? We explored this question informally in conversations on the sidelines of several recent meetings and conferences, by reviewing debates on the National Journal’s Transportation Blog and by soliciting observations from colleagues in the transportation community.

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Living in Denial

Monday, October 18th, 2010

The reaction of various advocacy groups to President Obama’s recent call for a $50 billion stimulus spending plan for transportation infrastructure was predictable. They applauded the President’s initiative and thought that Congress should promptly approve the spending request…But convincing the next Congress of the need to act, whether to fund the infrastructure “down payment” of $50 billion or to authorize a proposed $500 billion multi-year surface transportation program, will not be easy.

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The Miller Center Proposes a New Transportation Agenda

Tuesday, October 12th, 2010

In the relentless 24/7 news cycle of the news media, the release of another policy report by a group of experts causes hardly a ripple. At best it earns a perfunctory mention by the news services and in a few trade publications, only to be buried and forgotten in the next day’s avalanche of fresh news. The report “Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda,” published by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia on October 5, deserves a more considerate treatment. The report not only stands out because it is the product of a distinguished bipartisan group of national thought leaders in transportation but also because it shows a keen grasp of the issues surrounding contemporary transportation policy.

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Transportation Funding in a Changing Political Environment

Monday, October 4th, 2010

A series of events toward the end of September addressed the challenge of inadequate transportation funding, a quandary that has long bedeviled transportation advocates. Collectively, these events paint a picture of a transportation community that is eager to increase investment in infrastructure but struggles in vain to find the means to pay for it — and probably can expect little help from the next, more fiscally conservative Congress, bent on reducing spending.

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