Brookings Study Demonstrates Why U.S. Needs to Change its Approach to Transit
A recently released Brookings study titled Where the Jobs Are: Employer Access to Labor by Transit documents the problems with transit in the U.S. From the study:The typical job is accessible to only...
View ArticleShould Georgia Taxpayers Vote In Favor of the Transportation Investment Act?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution With the transportation sales tax vote around the corner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution posed whether the Transportation Investment Act is the best way to fund local...
View ArticleStreetsblog Should be Careful Throwing Stones from its Glass House
Some environmental groups unhappy with the new 27-month transportation bill are distorting the facts to make a quick point. Several weeks ago, Streetsblogsuggested that free-market think tanks were...
View ArticleThe Fed's Harmful Monetary Policy
Reason.com Today’s monetary policy debates sound increasingly like the process of trying to get a picture on the wall centered and straight: “A little more to the left.” “No, that’s not helping, more...
View ArticleReducing Traffic Congestion and Increasing Mobility in Chicago
A new study finds Chicago has severely underinvested in expressways and urges the region to embark on an ambitious long-term road-building plan. The Reason Foundation's Galvin Mobility Project plan...
View ArticleA Long-Term Plan to Significantly Reduce Traffic Congestion In Chicago
A new study finds Chicago has severely underinvested in expressways and urges the region to embark on an ambitious long-term road-building plan. The Reason Foundation's Galvin Mobility Project plan...
View Article$52 Billion Plan to Reduce Traffic Congestion In Chicago
A new study finds Chicago has severely underinvested in expressways and urges the region to embark on an ambitious long-term road-building plan. The Reason Foundation's Galvin Mobility Project plan...
View ArticleTask Force Report Warns of Darkening Clouds for State Finances, Absent Reforms
An important new report this week by the State Budget Crisis Task Force—an independent panel of experts convened by former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch and former Federal Reserve Board Chair Paul...
View ArticleAmericans Resort to Plastic Safety Nets
RealClearMarkets Americans are starting to borrow once again, they're doing so at an unexpectedly high level, but it's for all the wrong reasons.A recent Federal Reserve report revealed that...
View ArticleMAP-21 Provision May Hurt BRT
One of the policy changes in the recently passed Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st century (MAP-21) bill may help fixed-rail systems at the expense of BRT. According to Larry Ehl at Transportation...
View ArticleFate of Sales Taxes for Online Purchases
As many states struggle to solve the debt problems they created, in large part by their own fiscal irresponsibility and short-sightedness, they are looking ever more covetously at the revenues from...
View ArticleAbout that Online Sales Tax 'Loophole'
Proponents of higher taxes have taken to calling the exemption that out-of-state online shoppers enjoy a "loophole," as if it were an unintended flaw in two established court rulings that addressed the...
View ArticleThe Time-Bomb Keeps Ticking
The Wall Street Journal recently carried an essay by David Wessel, author of the forthcoming book, "Red Ink: Inside the High-Stakes Politics of the Federal Budget". It provides an excellent breakdown...
View ArticleTen Myths and Facts on Transportation Public-Private Partnerships
Buckeye Institute & Reason Foundation In an era of declining transportation funding, public-private partnerships (PPP) have the potential to offer greater flexibility and increased infrastructure...
View ArticleCalifornia Is Ground Zero for Muni Bankruptcies
Real Clear Markets Debates about the role of government are shifting from libraries and lecture halls to kitchen tables and coffee shops as municipal bankruptcies flare up across the country. And...
View ArticleAtlanta T-SPLOST is Complicated
In a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution commentary I detailed the complexity of the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (T-SPLOST) that voters will either accept or reject next...
View ArticleSales Tax Funding and Useless Rail Projects are Major T-SPLOST Negatives
Recently I was invited to an Atlanta Forward forum hosted by the Atlanta-Journal Constitution on a proposed 1% transportation sales tax appearing on Georgia residents’ ballots next Tuesday, July 31....
View ArticleBrain Hubs and the Case for Labor Mobility
Over at The American, Nick Schultz has posted an interview with Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at UC Berkeley and the author of "The New Geography of Jobs". Moretti's thesis is that new jobs...
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High Debt Levels Are Preventing Recovery
There are many challenges facing the U.S. economy today, but one of the least understood is privately held debt. Household debt in America grew to record highs during the last decade, as the promise of...
View ArticleInnovators In Action 2012
Now more than ever, governments at all levels are looking for ways to reduce spending and improve the services delivered to taxpayers. Reason Foundation's Innovators in Action series, which profiles...
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Making Phoenix a 24-Hour City: Privatizing City Permitting to Cut Red Tape...
Innovators in Action 2012 While many other cities are increasing the regulatory burden on starting or expanding businesses, policymakers in Phoenix, Arizona have recently taken significant steps toward...
View ArticleInnovators in Action: Making Phoenix a 24-Hour City--Privatizing City...
While many other cities are increasing the regulatory burden on starting or expanding businesses, policymakers in Phoenix, Arizona have recently taken significant steps toward reducing it. In our...
View ArticleDefending Limits on State Tax Powers
The U.S. Senate holds hearings Wednesday on the so-called Market Fairness Act (S. 1832), which would be better dubbed the “Consumer and Enterprise Unfairness Act,” as it seeks to undo a critical...
View ArticleCalifornia ParksSpecial Fund and the Health of Golden State Recreation
Recentrevelations from the California Department of Parks and Recreation point to $54 million in special funds squirreled away during a time when budget deficits are forcing nearly one quarter of all...
View ArticlePokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, the U.S. Attorney and What Just Happened
Yesterday brought a spate of news reports, many of them inaccurate or oversimplified, about a settlement the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan reached with two major international Internet poker...
View ArticlePicking Apart Krugman's Ridiculous Housing Op-Ed
Most of the time when I read Paul Krugman's op-eds I disagree with him. I shake my head in frustration that he is misleading tens of thousands of people. I wrestle with the question of why economists...
View ArticleCongress Kicks the Can Down the Road on Sustainable Highway Funding
Public Works Financing In finally enacting a reauthorization measure, MAP-21, Congress kicked the can down the road when it comes to sustainable highway funding. Instead of repairing the increasingly...
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Users Experience Symptoms of the Spectrum Crunch
Some 77 percent of wireless phone users who use their phones for online access say slow download speeds plague their mobile applications, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet and American...
View ArticleFacebook Tests the Waters of Net Gambling
Facebook has quietly launched a real-money online gambling application in the U.K., marking a major thrust of the social networking site into online gambling.The Financial Times is reporting that...
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Private Debt Is Crippling the Economy
Reason.com America’s economic pundits are not very creative. For the past several years, their gripes about economic growth have fallen into several staid categories: Monetary policy (“the Fed should...
View ArticleMaking the Case for Tolling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution When transportation experts compare Atlanta's congestion problem with that of comparable large urban areas, one major difference leaps out of the data. Atlanta relies...
View ArticleNo Cybersecurity Act is Better Than a Flawed One
Displeased with the failure of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 in the Senate, President Obama has signaled that he intends to move forward, possibly forcing businesses to implement many of the bill's...
View ArticleObama's Flawed Cybersecurity Strategy
President Obama seems to be poised once again to use executive powers to get what Congress won't give him.In this case, it's the imposition of a sweeping set of cybersecurity mandates and regulations...
View ArticleAtlanta not "Devastated" by Sales Tax Rejection
Before late July’s transportation sales tax vote in Atlanta, some politicians warned Atlanta voters that rejecting the 1 percent Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (T-SPLOST) would...
View ArticleThe XpressWest High-Speed Rail Line from Victorville to Las Vegas: A Taxpayer...
This Taxpayer Risk Assessment examines the financial risks to taxpayers of the proposed XpressWest high-spreed rail project from Victorville to Las Vegas. There would be no need for a Taxpayer Risk...
View ArticleStudy: XpressWest Train Likely to Fail, Costing Taxpayers Up to $6.5 Billion
XpressWest, the proposed high-speed rail line from Victorville to Las Vegas, is based on a series of overly optimistic, outdated market and ridership assumptions that make the project likely to fail,...
View ArticleGAO Praises BRT
Several weeks ago the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a positive study of U.S. based Bus-Rapid-Transit (BRT) systems. Thirteen of the 15 projects that provided study data reported...
View ArticleDoes the Paul Ryan Choice Ensure a Real Housing Debate?
RealClearMarkets A standard line in the punditry circuit this week has suggested that Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate will bring a welcome measure of substance to the race. If...
View ArticleThe Troubling Persistence of Policy Clichés
A cable TV monopoly is imminent and high prices loom, at least as far as the Associated Press is concerned.That was the angle of a widely syndicated AP story last week reporting that in the second...
View ArticleTo Avoid Massive Tax Hikes, Privatize State Lotteries
Today my colleague Leonard Gilroy and I published a piece on Real Clear Markets entitled, "To Avoid Massive Tax Hikes, Privatize State Lotteries." The piece begins:As states continue to grapple with...
View ArticleImproving Freight Planning and Finance
Earlier this month DC chapters of the Women’s Transportation Seminar, Young Professionals in Transportation and the Transportation Research Forum met to discuss creating and funding a national freight...
View ArticleLeaders Discuss Future Federal Role in Transportation
One session at The Institute of Transportation Engineers Annual Meeting and Exhibit in Atlanta focused on the new federal role in transportation under the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century...
View ArticleGov. Brown's Pension Reform "Outline" Underwhelms
Governor Brown's pension reform "outline" is out. California is certainly in desperate need of pension reform. Heck that was true back in 2005 when Reason called out the crisis before anyone was...
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Transforming Education at the Local Level: Douglas County Leading the Way
Innovators in Action 2012 Everybody’s talking about education reform and it’s easy to understand why. America’s education system is outdated and broken. While national leaders opine on the subject, a...
View ArticleInnovators in Action: Transforming Education in Douglas County, Colorado
Everybody’s talking about education reform and it’s easy to understand why. America’s education system is outdated and broken. While national leaders opine on the subject, a groundbreaking...
View ArticleTo Avoid Massive Tax Hikes, Privatize State Lotteries
Real Clear Markets As states continue to grapple with ongoing fiscal pressures, some are beginning to explore an innovative new lottery privatization model with the hopes of increasing revenue. To the...
View ArticleLaHood Calls Silver Line a Model and Then Rips Agency Building the Line
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood praised the Silver Line heavy-rail transit project on Monday. Then on Tuesday LaHood castigated the agency building the project, Metro Washington Airports Authority...
View ArticleDon't Believe the Near-Term Housing Data...
RealClearMarkets Housing data showing rising prices released over the past week has inspired a chorus of cheers. "The housing market is beginning to find its footing again," exulted CNBC. "The free...
View ArticleTexas Transportation Institute Knows how to Measure Congestion
My friends atStreetsblog, upset with the MAP-21 highway bill that revoked the clause allowing entities to spend highway funds on transportation museums, are turning to the administrative rulemaking...
View ArticleCalifornia Legislature Mandates that "Public Service" Be Required for...
As Dan Walters reports in the Sacramento Bee:A third element would be required in the hiring and promotion of faculty members. It's called "service." The specifics of Assembly Bill 2132 appear to give...
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