US Federal Policy

Guest Post: U.S. Transit Needs an “Emergency Operations Fund”

This guest post is by Ron Kilcoyne, General Manager/CEO of Greater Bridgeport Transit in Bridgeport, Connecticut.  Ron’s previous posts include CEO of Santa Clarita Transit near Los Angeles and manager of research and planning for AC Transit in Oakland, California.  The views expressed are his own and not those of his agency.

What will it take to restore all the transit service cuts over the past two years and prevent additional service reductions? I haven’t found an exact number but 10% of the total cost of providing transit service nationally would be good rough estimate.  For example, at least two suburban transit systems – one in Cleveland OH, another in Atlanta — have or will shut down completely this year. The Chicago Transit Authority anticipates eliminating 14% of it service on February 7. Colorado Springs CO reduced service by 53% on January 1. Between late 2008 and this spring Orange County Transit reduced service by 22%. Continue Reading →

Quote of the Week

When everyone was “driving” horses, and nobody had cars, and there were no gas stations, every isolated new stretch of road built in 1902 could not possibly have passed FTA cost benefit analysis criteria.  — Russell Bozian, in an email.

Did Sim City Make Us Stupid?

250px-SimCity_Classic_cover_art My post on the lack of good simulation games triggered this reverie from Peter, regarding the city-planning simulation game, Sim City:

Ah, SimCity.  … As a youngster I spent many hours building fields of residential tract housing, industrial parks, huge blighted and substantially vacant commercial districts, mega-highways connecting them all, and Godzilla.

When I recently discovered that the original SimCity was released as open source, I had to download it and try it out. I knew that it was inaccurate, but it was nostalgia. Then I discovered exactly how inaccurate it was. “No mixed residential and commercial areas?!? WTF!” I did play it long enough to also notice that transportation was pretty much a capital expenditure with no operating costs. Sigh.

Yes, those are the two of the worst fallacies built into the original Sim City:  

Continue Reading →