Month: March 2009

Forbes has a list of the 100 most congested intersections in the United States. I expected at least one would be from our area, but none were. 87 of out the 100 are in the Chicago, Los Angeles or New York areas, which I guess sounds about right. But amazingly Austin has four on the list (who would have guessed that?). I used to live on 6th and Harrison in San Francisco, about three blocks from #46 on the list (7th and Bryant) and I’m amazed that intersection isn’t in the top 10: it once took me 45 minutes to get from the 101 off-ramp to my house four blocks away. From that day on, I took Caltrain to work without fail.

From here (the author there has driven through all 100).

Any attempt to get more taxing authority for transit out of the state legislature is running into the mantra that you can’t raise taxes in a recession.  That’s in spite of the short term economic impact of cutting back service: forcing the poorest, who are least inclined to save, to buy gasoline instead of a product that creates more jobs.

Now here’s Yglesias making the medium-term economic growth case for funding transit adequately right now:

Which means that a global recovery could spark a rise in oil prices that hits America specifically very hard and in effect strangles our recovery in the crib. At that point it becomes an open question as to whether we drag the world down with us, in which case the cycle repeats, or if we just get left behind as continued global growth keeps pushing the price up and pinching American consumers harder-and-harder.

The answer, of course, is to take advantage of this period of “output gap” and low Treasury rates to invest in expanded mass transit capacities. But while the stimulus bill does do some good stuff for transit, it’s not even enough to make up for the rate at which state and local governments are curtailing transit services, much less to really leave Americans in a position to ride the bus to the new jobs we’re hoping to see created in 2010.

This blog has a few pictures of the demoliton of the vacant buildings on the Capitol Hill staging grounds. All of the salvagable pieces of the interiors of these buildings have already been removed, so there’s no exciting hidden treasures being destroyed, and while it’s a little sad to see the buildings destroyed, I’m extremely excited about the construction finally beginning.

 

Via Slog.