Free Republic

In July Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe stood on the platform of a train station in Alexandria to announce that the U.S. Department of Transportation had granted $165 million for the Atlantic Gateway project.While this is a multimodal project featuring rail, bus, and highway improvements, it was clearly the latter that most enthused the governor. At one point during his remarks, he declared that because of the road projects, “Today, the congestion is going to end!”The primary focus of the highway improvements will be an extension of the HOT (high occupancy toll) lanes on I-95 and I-395. The only other speaker...

With a lagging economy, high unemployment, and aging transportation systems, Americans debate the best ways to invest in their infrastructure and stimulate economic activity – from high-speed rail and congestion pricing, to cutting pork and tapping private capital. High-speed rail is a big part of the answer During the Great Depression, businesses and governments agreed that transportation modernization was essential to restoring prosperity. The 1930s saw the emergence of the freeway (the first one opening in Los Angeles in 1940) and the airport as important modes of transportation. Together with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, these...

Robert Poole, a mechanical engineer who has advised the administrations of George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to privatize U.S. highways, estimates that more than $25 billion in Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) highway projects are planned or approved in the United States. Now, a prominent Oklahoma state representative has invited Poole to promote his PPP toll road ideas, a move evidently designed to counter growing citizen opposition. Poole Lobbies for PPP Highways in Oklahoma Oklahoma House Speaker, Republican Lance Cargill, the founder of a group known as The 100 Ideas Initiative, has invited Poole to give a June...

Ric Williamson, a former state legislator and longtime pal of Gov. Rick Perry, runs the monthly meetings of the Texas Transportation Commission like a traffic cop. Staff members give brisk status reports before Williamson dismisses them so the next bureaucrat can take the podium. If members of the public embark on a diatribe, Williamson will let them prattle on with an air of friendly indulgence. Then, rounding his shoulders and leaning forward—using body language no doubt perfected when he and Perry were freshmen state representatives harrying their elders—he’ll pleasantly announce that their time is up. As commission chairman, Williamson sits...

In Maryland, like in many other states, candidates carrying the designation of "libertarian" emerged on the ballot. In Maryland, the libertarian Senate candidate was Kevin Zeese, a former official of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. He wants the government to leave him alone so he can smoke dope. Generally speaking, libertarians are supposed to favor limited government and low taxes. Yet, the libertarian magazine Reason has astonished many observers by publishing an article that seems to be endorsing global taxes and the world government such a scheme would entail. In an article about the collapse of...

Californians' wariness of new debt is just one problem facing backers SACRAMENTO – After years of criticism about failing to invest in infrastructure, lawmakers now face questions about whether they are trying to do too much. The Legislature and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger placed a record $37.3 billion package of public-works bonds on the Nov. 7 ballot for roads, schools, housing and flood control. BIG BONDS The governor and legislative leaders have placed a record bond package on the Nov. 7 ballot: Proposition 1B – $19.9 billion for transportation Proposition 1C – $2.85 billion for housing Proposition 1D – $10.4 billion...

Politics: Two policy groups say plan would increase state's debt SACRAMENTO - Two nonpartisan policy groups on Tuesday said there are major problems with the $37.3 billion public works package that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Legislature put on the November ballot, representing the first opposition to the plan by an organized group. The Reason Foundation, a nonprofit libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles, and the Performance Institute, a San Diego-based for-profit that describes itself as nonpartisan and dedicated to improving government performance, said the bonds would dangerously increase the state's debt load without providing clear benefits to residents....

The Reason Foundation, which is dedicated to promoting Libertarian ideas, is out today with a white paper arguing against the package of bonds -- at a total cost of $84 billion -- put on the November ballot by lawmakers and the governor. The authors, including one economist who served on Gov. Schwarzenegger's California Performance Review, argue that the bonds only add to the state's debt and avoid the type of long-term planning needed to meet infrastructure requirements. The bonds, they say, "represent a new pinnacle of fiscal irresponsibility and lack of policy imagination. Rather than taking on record-breaking debt to...

Governor emphasis on tollways, private road-builders has generated urban and rural unrest Rick Perry's political problem with transportation, to the extent that he has one, may be that he's trying to douse a fire in 2006 that won't ignite for another 10 to 20 years. His critics say, no, the problem is that Perry wants to charge us for the water. What isn't in dispute is that the Republican governor and his appointees over the past six years have turned Texas transportation on its head, moving the state from financing public roads solely with taxes to a system that would...

(AXcess News) Washington - Drivers who are sick of rush-hour gridlock may one day soon be able to buy their way out by paying to get into toll road lanes. That's the goal of some environmental and transportation groups, one of which made a sweeping call Tuesday for highway planners to consider tolls as an option for every new U.S. road. Led by the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, lobbyists said toll roads would help improve under-funded transportation projects by connecting them to private investors' capital. "There's a transportation funding crisis in this country," said Patrick D. Jones, the...

A legislative package that calls for the state to build more toll roads in partnership with the private sector, charge tolls in existing car-pool lanes and streamline the way it designs and builds new roads was unveiled in Sacramento on Thursday. State Business, Transportation and Housing Secretary Sunne Wright McPeak announced the makeup of the package Thursday, calling the "GoCalifornia" plan an innovative reform and revitalization measure for California highways. "We're putting the 'go' back into California's transportation system which has stalled after years of neglect," McPeak said in a written statement issued from the agency's Sacramento headquarters. "GoCalifornia will...

After helping create California's highly anticipated government reform plan, George Passantino now is spreading the word about the plan at the grassroots level. For Passantino, a Palmdale resident, that includes a stop Tuesday at the Palmdale Rotary Club meeting, where he will explain the recommendations of the California Performance Review, or CPR. Passantino was a director for the CPR, which was organized by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who promised to dramatically reform the state's government. The CPR proposed thousands of ways to streamline the state bureaucracy, including dissolving hundreds of boards and commissions with highly paid appointees. The plan could save the...

The state budget deal contains some devastating compromises, including one that will hit California's kids hard: Republicans agreed to drop their demand to revise a 2002 law that largely prohibits schools from hiring private firms for food, transportation, and janitorial and landscaping services. The failure to repeal this law and give districts more control over funding puts California at odds with national trends in utilizing public- private partnerships to improve public education and condemns many districts to financial straits. Schools across the country have saved millions through outsourcing, thus directing more resources to classrooms. When the St. Louis school district...