Sunday, January 31, 2010

Sunday Night Notes

A few things to chomp on:

State lawmakers in California are understanding what parking is not. Free.
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MARTA is a big reason why UPS located its headquarters in northern Atlanta. It's pretty interesting how much development happened around the MARTA stations outside of downtown.
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Since High Speed Rail is such a newfangled thing to most people in the United States, many want to put it into the urban transit category when thinking about its mission. However this is not the case. In my opinion its intercity transport like airplanes. Often opposition to HSR brings out the density straw man to oppose expansion of intercity rail lines but then they would also have to argue that airports and greyhound bus stations need density to operate as well.

I also believe that HSR is a one way train. It's not necessary to have density to operate between cities but it starts the conversation on increased density and transit service once it gets there. And I feel that the comparisons to Europe and density are really mischaracterized discussions about connectivity and service levels. Ultimately the reason why HSR is fairly useful in Europe is because you can get a train to everywhere. Much like the Hub and Spoke airport system in the United States.
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Wendell Cox is always a fun comic relief.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wendel Cox: "Gasoline taxes and highway tolls built and maintain intercity roadways, and they also support mass transit with $10 billion in subsidies annually. Intercity buses require no taxpayer funds. Only rail requires heavy subsidies."

HUH!?

Matt Fisher said...

Oh yeah. As to what Cox said, it could be that Rupert Murdoch let this through. Once again, everything Cox says is a lie. He is fearful that the Autopia he wants our society to be is in decline, so he resorts to rubbish about how rail is overly subsidized and highways "pay for themselves".

Pantograph Trolleypole said...

Please keep it civil.