When in Doubt...

make stuff up. Don't let those silly facts get in the way.

The Stakes of Stim

In track when teammates of mine used to get stim it was usually attaching wires to their muscles and turning a knob so that electricity would course through and loosen them up. Similar to the knob turn, folks in Congress are looking to pull the lever on a stimulus package to get things going. This idea isn't new. It was what got us through the great depression and built some of the most sturdy bridges, lodges, and infrastructure ever. These days when we build, it seems so cheap. We're always looking for shortcuts, but we shouldn't be doing that this time. We should be investing in our future, and hopefully it's a green one.

In Portland, city officials are already preparing lists of infrastructure projects they might launch with an infusion of federal money. It would be a nice silver lining for Portland if the economic crunch bought a refurbished bridge over the Willamette, or a streetcar extension.

This would be a big boon for cities that have projects ready to go. As I said in an earlier post, it will be a huge deal for cities like LA and Seattle to pass their transit measures. Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland, and Houston already have a lot of engineering done for their new lines and if infused with stim, they could push that money to other transit projects to extend thier networks furthering the gap between them and those which are falling further behind.

If for instance Seattle drops the ball, it will be harder for them to seek stim money for projects that were rejected on a ballot measure. Though it might be a boon for thier streetcar infrastructure, regional transit might suffer from a crisis in confidence where opponents claim the win and the upper hand in cash direction. With the stakes so high for federal funding opportunity, it's important that these measures pass, else an opportunity that happens once in a century to double up on much needed transit capital spending could be lost.

Mapping the Tube

From The Bellows. It's a 25 minute documentary from the BBC. If you have the time, take a look. Steve B, I thought you would enjoy this one.

The Earl of Transit

The push for an infrastructure stimulus is ramping up and Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Portland is taking the lead.

After years of defeats and futility, Blumenauer is convinced the odds are increasing that Congress could approve this investing as much as $50 billion to improve infrastructure with more next year if Obama is elected.

I'm sure we'll see more discussion of this as we get closer to and after election day. Depending on who gets elected, it could break either way. I've already seen a number of opposition blogs and talkers posting an earlier post from the DOT's economist that was posted to Ma Peters blog. That post has also been discussed by Ryan as well. I remember when people were saying Gore and Bush were the same. Even though they were different, no one would make such a statement today with the current candidates and on issues like this.

TODcasts Available from MTC

Even if you can't be in the station areas, these Podcasts about TOD in the Bay Area are interesting and have a lot of information. I highly recommend them if you're in the area and want to go TOD sightseeing as well. There are five of them including Hayward BART, San Pablo's BRT, San Francisco's Third Street Corridor, Redwood Caltrain, San Jose Downtown. Check em out.

Repaving on the Orange Line

While the transit agency is blaming the contractor, the contractor is blaming the weight of the buses. The total cost will be about $2 million dollars to repave to the right strength. I wonder how soon the pavement will deteriorate on the rest of the line that was built correctly. Does anyone know how long until they fixed the Pittsburgh busway? I can't seem to find any information on it.

Eugene BRT Commercial

Has anyone heard a train go clickety clack lately?

Transit Trouble Coming from Wall Street

This could cause transit agencies trouble. Basically, transit agencies make deals for cash where they sell their capital assets such as buses and trains then lease them back. Metro could owe millions over those leaseback deals.

Things started to go downhill when AIG ran short of cash after running up billions in losses tied to the housing slump. Its credit ratings were slashed and the firm was on the verge of collapse last month when it was bailed out by the federal government.

The lower credit ratings triggered a clause in the lease-back agreements that require the MTA to either find a new firm to guarantee the deals, or reimburse investors for their down payments and lost tax benefits, — a scenario that could cost the transit agency between $100 million and $300 million.

It hasn't happened yet, but if it does, the agency would have no choice but to slash service drastically. It could also hit BART, Muni, WMATA, and the CTA though there was no hint AIG was involved in those as well.

Many of the nation’s largest transit agencies participated in such deals. Among them are the San Francisco Muni system, the BART rail system in the Bay Area, the Chicago Transit Authority and the Washington, D.C., Metro system.

Signs of the Apocolypse

Lindsey Lohan was on the Acela. I don't know if that's a good or bad thing.

Investment Spending

This is what I talk about when I get annoyed that the FTA won't build tunnels and instead points the cost effectiveness of bus rapid transit. While the cost of the tunnel is more, it sure lasts a long time, and should be amortized as such.

And as people like Minnesota congressman James Oberstar have pointed out, the failure to separate government investment from government consumption has perverse effects on how the government spends money, leading it to emphasize projects that cost less on an annual basis but more on a long-term basis, while also leading us to underestimate the benefits to the economy at large of investments in things like infrastructure, basic research, and so on.

As Oberstar said:

Many argue that our current method of accounting biases spending decisions against physical infrastructure by requiring infrastructure to be paid for all at once rather than over its useful life. Thus, infrastructure investments are not judged on their long-term economic return, but rather on a distorted view of their "up-front" impact on the budget.

H/T Bellows