Transit Lobby Strong Like Ox

I almost spit out my drink when I saw this comment from our favorite O'Toole.

Second, Congress could increase the share of funds dedicated to transit. The transit lobby is powerful and the highway lobby is weak, but the latter probably still has enough power to stop that idea.

Bwahahaha. I wonder if Randall was out teabagging today.

Shaking in Policy Boots

The opposition is getting worried and you can tell when their rhetoric starts to sound like this:

At the same time, many environmental groups, labor unions, consultants, and construction companies are urging the federal government to redirect federal transportation policy toward 19th century transportation options by shifting federal resources from highways and autos to transit and trains, as well as hiking and biking, in the belief that these latter modes--while slower and more costly--are more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly. With an opportunity to receive greater subsidies, the transit and train lobbies have moved aggressively to influence Congress and the media, and many in Congress are already promising to push for these changes.

In other words, watch out for BIG RAIL and SUPERTRAINS! Turns out, Obama doesn't listen to these dudes. We're looking at transit stimulus rather than Iran War Games at Heritage. The rest of the Heritage article is the usual shpiel about ridership share and all the other BS you come to expect from the sprawlistas.

This brings up another issue that Yglesias talked about today as well. With the auto industry, these guys (Cox and Utt) have been pushing hard in parrallel with the auto industry for standards that deny many people a lifestyle they would like to have and independence from an expensive habit.

The auto industry has provided a decent living to a large number of Americans for many decades. But it’s also been a very pernicious force on our public policy. If car companies expect progressives to deliver them a financial rescue, then it only seems fair to me that progressives will want the companies to stop blocking key elements of the progressive political agenda. That means dropping lawsuits like the one aimed at forcing California to lower its fuel efficiency standards, it means stopping involvement in whatever anti-green climate change front groups these firms are involved with, it means seeing members of congress from Michigan and other rust belt areas offering assurances to colleagues that they won’t stand in the way of serious climate legislation, etc.
...
These firms will be okay. Giving federal subsidies that are then used to lobby for pro-pollution public policy is not okay.

If only we could stop junk planning theory as well.

Watch Out for Big Rail

Mr. Setty referenced the article earlier but this quote is hilarious:

And then you’ve got the rail transit lobby. The transit lobby is about 4 or 5 times bigger than the highway lobby. People always think there’s this huge highway lobby, but the highway lobby is very small compared to the transit lobby. And there’s enormous profit to be made. The average urban freeway in America costs about 5 to 10 million dollars per lane mile, and the average light rail line is cost up to 80 million dollars a route mile. So obviously there’s a lot more profit to be made building rail than there is building highway and so naturally the companies like Parsons-Brinkerhoff and so forth – Bechtel –that build transit are going to be lobbying for it.

Of course this is all bs, but if we (I'd be all about being a part of big rail if it existed) had as much power over the road folks as Randal says, I think we'd see a different landscape in congress and in our communities. Perhaps big rail is bigger than we think or perhaps it has a different name, the livable communities movement.

H/T ASD