Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement Gets Thumbs Up From Federal Highway Officials

The $5+ billion plan to replace the Tappan Zee bridge got the thumbs up from federal highway officials, paving the way for New York to award the contract for a design-build to begin work on the bridge.

The federal record of decision confirms the project has met requirements under state and federal environmental law, including completing an environmental impact study, a 10,000-page document that details how the state would protect nearby communities and river wildlife during construction. A dozen federal and state agencies contributed to the document, and the draft report received more than 3,000 comments from the public.

Cuomo last week announced the creation of a selection committee, made up of artists, architects and community representatives, to evaluate each of the proposals and make a final recommendation to the Thruway Authority’s board of directors. A design-builder is likely to be selected before the end of the year.

While federal approval lets the project proceed, possible lawsuits still threaten to hold it up.

The Hudson Riverkeeper, which has criticized the plan for not adequately addressing how river life will be negatively affected, has said it would wait for the federal decision before deciding whether to take legal action.

The state must still provide a detailed financial plan, but officials have said they are hoping a low-interest federal loan will cover about half the project cost. The rest would be paid for through toll-backed bonds.

While the approvals are good news, it isn't clear to what extent mass transit - whether bus rapid transit or commuter rail, will be incorporated into the designs other than the potential to build out those components at some future point in time. The time to build in the bus rapid transit is at the outset, and while it would only address the bridge span and approaches, the entire Rockland-Westchester corridor could be adapted to bus rapid transit in phases as the state's economic situation improves.

NYC and TLC Making Mess of Taxi and Transit Systems

On top of a trial court decision yesterday that claims that the payroll tax used to fund the MTA is invalid, the Taxi and Limousine and New York City are doing their best to screw up the transportation system in the region.

The TLC has been updating the look for the ubiquitous yellow cabs. They've already signed off on a new design that isn't fully ADA compliant - because not every new cab will be required to be accessible.

Now, the TLC has decided to streamline the logos and information provided on the side of the cabs by stripping away all extraneous information.

T is for taxi, and that's good enough for the TLC. The look of the New York City taxi cab is changing again, and no we aren't talking about the Taxi of Tomorrow. Five years after the Taxi & Limousine Commission turned to Smart Design to create a new logo and graphics for NYC cabs they've gone and streamlined their work. We hope you don't like checking the current price of a taxi ride on the door of a cab!

Yup, going forward the fare panel on the side of taxis are no more. After all, we now have Taxi TVs to tell us that information (sigh). Also going away are the last vestiges of the checkered cabs as those black and white checks on the back are going away. Oh, and the word taxi. Yup, now cab doors will simply say NYC T (with the T in a black circle), not NYC Taxi.

"We have no doubt that a yellow car with a roof light with a big T will be understood as a New York City taxicab," TLC chair David Yassky explains. "Even the greenest of greenhorns will know that it’s a taxicab."

The cabs will now have a logo "T" and the cab identifier, but no other information.

They used to have Taxi written out, along with rate information.

Okay, they're trying to play around with branding, and a logo can be branded, but the word taxi can't. If that's part of the plan, then I get that.

But why drop the rate information? At a time when Mayor Mike Bloomberg has been pushing restaurants to include calorie counts on menus, he's allowing a policy that takes relevant information to commuters off the outside of cabs? How is that customer friendly? It's an asinine consideration, and the design team that came up with the plan spent just how much to revise the logos and information? It was a waste of money.

Meanwhile, back to the payroll tax. Ben Kabab highlights the multitude of problems with the ruling invalidating the tax. It is a huge hit to the MTA, which is funded in part from the tax. If it's upheld by the Appellate Division or State Court of Appeals, then the MTA would see a permanent loss of more than a billion dollars annually. That's money that can't be made up without slugging commuters or spreading out the costs to all taxpayers in the form of a new tax.

At the same time, a separate ruling invalidated the Mayor's plan to bring cab service to the outer boroughs. In that instance, the Mayor sought to make the changes in the state legislature rather than go through the City Council. The big problem is once again money. The Mayor bet a billion dollars on revenue raised from the sale of new medallions, and the court decision throws the city budget out of whack.

Taxi medallion owners have an inordinate amount of power to block any changes to the medallion system. They're vested in maximizing the costs of medallions, where the sale of an existing medallion can reach a million dollars or more. Allowing more medallions would dilute the value of existing medallions. The problem is that the medallion owners have the city council in its collective pocket and they've thwarted prior efforts to expand cab service to the outer boroughs where transit service is more spotty. The Mayor sought to change the status quo by going to the legislature, but this is a home rule issue. So, the Mayor has to go back to the drawing board to figure out how to expand service and close the budget hole of his own creation.

While he's at it, he better get on the TLC to make ADA compliance required across all cabs, not just a small fraction. And he could further assist in the transit policy by allowing disabled persons to use ADA-compliant cabs instead of Access-a-Ride buses that are costing the MTA far more than it ever imagined ($500+ million annually and growing). Since most cab rides are for far less than the cost per passenger for Access-a-Ride, a solution can be found here if the mayor, TLC and MTA can hash out an agreement.

But that means getting the medallion owners to back the changes.

Drought Continuing to Cause Major Disruptions on Mississippi River

The ongoing drought, which is one of the most severe in the last 100 years, is causing significant problems up and down the Mississippi River. The river's watershed is heavily affected by the drought, which has caused water levels to fall to close to historic lows. That means that boat traffic has slowed down, costs have gone up, and perhaps most dangerously, the salty waters from the Gulf of Mexico are pushing up the river towards New Orleans.

The Army Corps of Engineers is doing what it can to stave off a complete shutdown of river traffic and protecting the New Orleans water supply. They're busy dredging stretches of the river to keep it passable, and they're building a sill below New Orleans to try and keep the salt water from flowing up the river. Normally, the Mississippi's water flows are sufficient to keep the heavier salt water from coming upstream, but the drought conditions have lowered the flow rates.

The Army Corps of Engineers has more than a dozen dredging vessels working the Mississippi this summer. Despite being fed by water flowing in from more than 40 percent of the United States, the river is feeling the ruinous drought affecting so much of the Midwest. Some stretches are nearing the record low-water levels experienced in 1988, when river traffic was suspended in several spots.

That is unlikely this year, because of careful engineering work to keep the largest inland marine system in the world passable. But tow operators are dealing with the shallower channel by hauling fewer barges, loading them lighter and running them more slowly, raising their costs. Since May, about 60 vessels have run aground in the lower Mississippi.

The low water is not just affecting the 500 million tons of cargo like coal, grain and fertilizer that move up and down the river each year. The owners of the American Queen, a paddle-wheel steamboat that takes passengers on tours along the inland waterways, decided not to send the boat below Memphis on a trip to Vicksburg, Miss., this month. The water was deep enough, said Tim Rubacky, a company spokesman, but after conferring with the corps and the Coast Guard, the company decided that the likelihood of a barge accident and ensuing traffic closures would be too great.

“It’s kind of like a truckful of watermelons spilling over on the expressway,” Mr. Rubacky said. “Everything’s going to come to a halt.” The boat tied up at Memphis and sent the passengers on to Vicksburg by bus, he said.

The volume of water coming down the river is so much lower than normal this summer that a wedge of salt water is creeping up the Mississippi toward New Orleans, imperiling local water supplies drawn from the river. The corps is building a sill — basically, a dam of sediment — in the river below New Orleans low enough to block the flow of salt water while letting boats pass.

When the Mississippi is low, the flow slows and sediment settles, causing the river to silt up and obstructions to form, said James T. Pogue, a spokesman for the corps in Memphis. Since 1988, when record low water on the Mississippi caused navigation to shut down, the corps has engineered ways “to help the river keep itself open,” he said, building new features like dikes that stick out into the river and “sort of act like nozzles to speed up the flow of the river” to scour the bed.

Such river training structures help to reduce the amount of dredging necessary by making the river do much of the work. The result, he said, is that even if water reaches the levels that it did before, “we’ll still be in better shape than we were in ’88.”

The river’s problems are the main topic aboard the Motor Vessel Mississippi, a giant towboat fitted by the corps with meeting rooms and used during its annual low-water inspection trip, which included a public hearing in Alton, Ill., on Friday. Some of the speakers complained about the corps’ management of the river during last year’s floods, when water at Vicksburg was nearly 59 feet higher than it has been during this year’s drought. That is the nature of the river — an engineered system, managed but hardly controlled.

What To Do With $70 Billion in Unspent Earmarks

Senator Tom Coburn has announced that the federal government has more than $70 billion in unspent earmarks on its books that must account for. This includes monies that were designated for state and local projects that those localities later chose not to do.

The $70 billion figure is money that's been unspent for years, including $13 billion in road-building money that was earmarked to the wrong places, or for projects that states and localities no longer want to build.

In one case Mr. Coburn said $29 million was dedicated to a highway interchange in Newport News, Va., in 1998, but the state abandoned the project. The congressman who sponsored the earmark died in 2000, but the money remains unspent.

In another case Atlanta is still holding onto $2.7 million in funding that was allowed to be spent only on the 1996 Olympics.

"A dollar taken from the taxpayers left unspent is a dollar not needed by the government or a dollar that did not go to someone in need," Mr. Coburn said in a letter accompanying his report. "It represents a failure to budget wisely."

That's a small sum of the total federal budget and the ongoing deficit, but it's a not insignificant sum of money that could go to any number of major infrastructure projects around the nation.

It could secure the financing (or outright pay for) for any number of bridge and tunnel projects and other critical infrastructure projects. That includes air traffic control system upgrades that would boost efficiencies for the airlines and travelers by reducing congestion at airports and reduce the amount of fuel needed to reach any number of destinations. The economic benefits of upgrading the air traffic control system could reach into the billions of dollars annually as flight times are cut by routing planes more directly to their destinations.

It could help fully fund the entire 2d Avenue Subway, which would enable hundreds of thousands of commuters to more easily reach their destinations in New York City. It could fund the replacement spans for the Tappan Zee, Goethals Bridges, or the Pulaski Skyway. It could mean the construction of the Gateway Tunnel and Portal Bridges on the NEC.

It could mean construction of replacement spans for hundreds of deficient bridges, overpasses, and roads around the nation.

It could mean addressing deteriorating conditions of sanitary sewers and water delivery systems.

It could mean addressing funding shortfalls for National Park infrastructure, such as rehabilitating roads, visitor centers, and habitat restoration.

All of these have tangible economic benefits - not only immediate benefits due to construction work and the jobs created, but the long term benefits of improving and maintaining long-neglected infrastructure.

This is one of the major shortfalls of the ARRA of 2009 - it didn't sufficiently address infrastructure work, despite plenty of shovel-ready projects around the nation that would have benefited from the work.

Gov. Christie Wont Scale Back Tax Cuts Even As Deficit Mounts

The New Jersey budget is required to be balanced pursuant to the State Constitution. How it gets to that point is up to the Governor and the legislature.

Gov. Chris Christie is determined to make good on his plan to cut income taxes, even though the latest budget projections are showing a much larger deficit than anyone had expected. It's now up to $668 million, which would normally call for a cutback on tax cuts so as to maintain the current level of spending.

Instead, Gov. Christie is looking to use transportation and clean energy funds to cover the shortfall all while maintaining the size and scope of the tax cuts.

That shortfall was announced by the Christie administration during an Assembly Budget and Appropriations Committee meeting Wednesday, with the state treasurer acknowledging to lawmakers that the Republican governor’s spending plans must be revised because Christie overestimated the scale of the state’s economic recovery.

The governor’s earlier estimates predicted a state economy that would outpace any other state in the country and be enough for tax cuts and increased spending.

Yet even as Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff politely downplayed the difference between the administration’s revised estimates and a new forecast put forward Wednesday by a non-partisan legislative budget analyst, Christie attacked the analyst personally.

“Why would anybody with a functioning brain believe this guy,” he said during a speech to transportation contractors in Trenton. “How often do you have to be wrong to be dismissed?”

Back at the committee meeting, Christie’s treasurer, however, told lawmakers that change needed to come.

“Although our revenue base is growing, the rate of growth for fiscal 2012 so far has not met the expectations we set, as of either the fiscal 2012 Appropriations Act last June or the governor’s fiscal 2013 budget message in February,” Sidamon-Eristoff said.

Democrats immediately criticized part of the governor’s plans to handle the shortfall.

They said a raid of the transportation fund — which will bring on new borrowing — means taxpayers will now have to pay interest to fund a budget that includes the income tax cut Christie has been touting since January at events from Garfield to California as his name has been floated as a possible running mate for presumptive Republican GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

Borrowing against the transportation fund robs it of both current and future funds. It means that the state's interest obligations rise and deprives future years of spending that would have otherwise been possible.

New Jersey can ill afford to cut its transportation budget. With far too many bridges, roads, and other infrastructure that is obsolete or in need of replacement/repair, the transportation budget is far too small as it is. Cutting it further will only put transportation officials even further behind on trying to keep up with current work.

Christie's move might make sense if the budget situation was a neutral to slight deficit, but it is fiscally irresponsible to make such a move when you're talking more than a half a billion dollar shortfall.

As I've been saying for quite some time now, the Governor's budget projections have been overly optimistic and it's running into a brick wall of reality. The state economy hasn't rebounded anywhere near as much as the governor forecast (it hasn't even made it as well as the OLS forecast). A far more conservative forecast would have prevented the state's budget from being that far off - and had the budget situation improved, it would have left the state in the position of having a surplus that could be used to fund pension obligations, a rainy day fund, and to eliminate debt.

Instead, we're seeing Christie falling into the same trap as previous governors - using fiscal gimmicks to balance the budget and raiding state trust funds to cover current year obligations rather than taking the hard steps of balancing revenues with obligations.

Cut the Fat, Cut the Gas Consumption?

In the past few days, there have been a series of reports about the costs of obesity on the American economy. The study attempts to quantify how much obesity costs for health care, transportation, and other factors.

Because obesity raises the risk of a host of medical conditions, from heart disease to chronic pain, the obese are absent from work more often than people of healthy weight. The most obese men take 5.9 more sick days a year; the most obese women, 9.4 days more. Obesity-related absenteeism costs employers as much as $6.4 billion a year, health economists led by Eric Finkelstein of Duke University calculated.

Even when poor health doesn't keep obese workers home, it can cut into productivity, as they grapple with pain or shortness of breath or other obstacles to working all-out. Such obesity-related "presenteeism," said Finkelstein, is also expensive. The very obese lose one month of productive work per year, costing employers an average of $3,792 per very obese male worker and $3,037 per female. Total annual cost of presenteeism due to obesity: $30 billion.

Decreased productivity can reduce wages, as employers penalize less productive workers. Obesity hits workers' pocketbooks indirectly, too: Numerous studies have shown that the obese are less likely to be hired and promoted than their svelte peers are. Women in particular bear the brunt of that, earning about 11 percent less than women of healthy weight, health economist John Cawley of Cornell University found. At the average weekly U.S. wage of $669 in 2010, that's a $76 weekly obesity tax.

MORE DOCTORS, MORE PILLS

The medical costs of obesity have long been the focus of health economists. A just-published analysis finds that it raises those costs more than thought.

Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of Health Economics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.

Nationally, that comes to $190 billion a year in additional medical spending as a result of obesity, calculated Cawley, or 20.6 percent of U.S. health care expenditures.

One aspect that seems to have currency is that a nation of overweight people driving and flying costs more - a whole lot more - than a nation that would weigh at recommended levels. Reducing obesity levels could save up to a billion gallons of gasoline a year.

The Atlantic reports that the amount of fuel we're using is on the rise as well, as heavy occupants need more fuel to get from Point A to *insert drive-thru joke here*. A 2006 study shows that Americans weigh so much more than they did in 1960 that we're using up almost an additional billion gallons of petrol every year.

That's about $4 billion a year at today's gas prices, and nearly one percent of overall fuel usage. And that was back in 2006 – as we continue to plump up, the dollars continue to pile up. Inside Line reports that each pound we gain as a population adds up to another $39 million. It's too bad we can't get stop/start tech for our appetites.

Regular readers might remember a similar story about the 2006 study that claimed the U.S. is using an extra 153 million gallons a year. That was an estimate based on actual fuel deliveries. The new number, 938 million gallons, comes from engineer Sheldon Jacobson of the University of Illinois.

Considering that automakers are spending billions of dollars trying to shave just a few pounds off their automobiles to make them more fuel efficient for EPA testing (and the Consumer Reports real world driving results that factor into purchasing decisions for many consumers), the fact that so many people are overweight negates the fuel economy measures that automakers are putting into their vehicles.

People have to realize that their weight costs them considerably. A sedentary lifestyle helps no one, least of all those who lead them.

At the same time, taxing sugar or fast food isn't the solution either - not when so many people simply don't exercise or when you see all the millions of people struggling with diet plans and exercise plans.

Responsible eating habits help, but it comes down to exercise and the need for people to actually motivate themselves to get off the couch and do something - anything - that gets them moving.

Obsolete and Dangerous Infrastructure Contributed To Deadly Bronx River Parkway Crash

Over the weekend there was a deadly accident on the Bronx River Parkway adjacent to the Bronx Zoo. Seven people were killed when their vehicle somehow managed to cross four lanes of traffic and over the side barrier and crashed more than 60 feet below into a storage yard at the zoo.

Local politicians are clamoring for action and wondering why the elevated section has high curbs and insufficiently high railings to prevent vehicles from careening off the roadway.

A perfect storm of factors — including a measly 4-foot guardrail and a concrete curb bizarrely placed along a section of the Bronx River Parkway — could have contributed to the crash that killed seven relatives there Sunday, experts said.

“Highways are not supposed to have curbs,” said Robert Sinclair, spokesman for AAA New York, referring to the 2-foot-high ledge along the right side of the highway that the SUV struck, sending it over the guardrail before it plunged 60 feet onto Bronx Zoo turf.

“And not only is there a curb there, [but] it’s particularly high,” he said.
In addition, the guardrail “would need to be higher for that area because you’re trying to keep vehicles from flying off because of the 60-foot drop. And you’ve got that catapulting curb there.”

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. also zeroed in on the 4-foot-high rails, calling for state officials to reassess their height in that spot.

“I believe strongly if the railing was higher, at the very worst we would have had a very bad car accident and not a vehicle going over and killing seven,’’ Diaz said.
“We [need] them at least 10 feet or more so this doesn’t happen again.’’

He said he also asked authorities, “Why is the rest of the parkway always smooth and [in] the elevated portion there is always potholes?”

There are indeed a host of reasons why this roadway is so dangerous - and those reasons aren't confined to the Bronx River Parkway viaduct in question.

The same issues can be raised of a stretch of the Cross Bronx Expressway where the viaduct seems to roll up and down by several feet - especially in and around the expansion joints and the drains along the center of the highway. It is all too easy for a vehicle to lose control under those circumstances.

It comes down to the fact that many highways in the area, and indeed around the nation, are obsolete and need major reconstruction or repair to bring them up to a state of good repair. Patching potholes on these structures is a temporary fix - it would take a reconstruction to provide a significant upgrade to the facilities.

However, there are some fixes that could improve safety along the Bronx River Parkway - though drivers might not necessarily like it.

Reduce the number of lanes of traffic from three to two in each direction and provide a breakdown lane that can give drivers a chance to correct themselves. Work should not have to wait until the next decade to reconstruct the highway. This is a stretch that has already taken lives due to poor and obsolete design. We shouldn't have to see more lives lost on this stretch due to the fact that the money can't be found sooner to rebuild the highway so that it is safer for all who use it.

This horrific tale once again highlights the need to maintain and upgrade existing infrastructure to current design standards to reduce the chances for deadly accidents that could be prevented using modern design techniques that keep vehicles on elevated structures and eliminate obstacles that could launch vehicles over the side.

One Major New York Metro Area Bottleneck To Be Replaced; Another Awaiting Federal Approval

Utter the words Kosciuszko bridge to a New Yorker, and besides the multiple inflections and pronunciations, you'll get a string of epithets. The bridge spans Newtown Creek straddling the Brooklyn and Queens border, but it also links the Brooklyn Queens Expressway with the Long Island Expressway (LIE).

The bridge is functionally obsolete and a danger to the public. It is built without modern sight lines, lacks breakdown lanes, and the merge lanes for traffic coming from the LIE is nonexistent. Vehicle crashes on the bridge are frequent, and cause significant backups on major arterial highways.

In other words, it's a prime candidate to be replaced.

Talks have been underway for years to replace the bridge, and within the past couple of years, the talk has given way to tangible progress on a design competition and this year Gov. Cuomo and the New York State legislature have adopted a transportation budget with $460 million going to the bridge replacement.

Construction on the project is scheduled to begin by next April 1, and the new structure is expected to be ready by 2017. It is one of hundreds of structurally deficient bridges around the state.

New York Works is a so-called infrastructure bank that draws from pooled government and private funding designed to speed up spending on big infrastructure projects.

The state Department of Transportation is in charge of the project, but its website hasn't been updated to reflect the state funding, or which of the four design alternatives have been chosen. I'm rather partial to the cable stayed version, though the through-arch design strikes a balance between reflecting the original truss design and a modern design aesthetic.

Regardless of the design chosen, it will incorporate new technologies, improved safety and sight-lines, and better integration of traffic flow. The old span will remain in use until the new span is completed.

Meanwhile, the Port Authority is awaiting word from the federal government on approval to lift the roadway on the Bayonne Bridge to permit Super Panamax shipping to clear the span. Failing to lift the bridge would mean the New York/New Jersey port would be at a major competitive disadvantage and force shipping to go to other East Coast ports to offload and would affect thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of business.

Mayor Bloomberg Pushing Ahead With 7 Line Expansion To Secaucus

While New York is looking at the replacement of the Tappan Zee bridge and Amtrak is contemplating the Gateway tunnel project, New York City's Mayor Mike Bloomberg is forging ahead with a proposal to expand the 7 Line to Secaucus along much of the right of way that would have been utilized by the cancelled ARC tunnel.

In fact, Gov. Chris Christie, who killed the ARC project, appears to be for the project and is letting Bloomberg take the lead.

The cross-Hudson tunnel would connect to the 7 train, which is being extended from Time Square to a new terminal at 11th Avenue and 34th Street. The current project will be completed in 14 months.
The next steps in the process are a full business plan and environmental-impact study, which have not yet been commissioned.
During his weekly radio appearance on WOR Friday, Bloomberg didn’t reveal his enthusiasm for the project, saying only, “If there’s money for it and it makes sense, I’d certainly support it.”
But yesterday, Bloomberg spokeswoman Julie Wood sounded a more optimistic note: “Since we began exploring this idea, we continue to think it has a lot of potential as a way to cost-effectively improve regional transportation and also create thousands of jobs.”
Officials in the Christie administration and the Port Authority are working with City Hall on the No. 7 concept, but insist that the mayor take the lead.
Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said yesterday, “We have been intrigued all along by this as a potential alternative.”

A year ago, Bloomberg was reluctant to pony up any dough when Christie killed a New York-New Jersey tunnel project called ARC, or Access to the Region’s Core. That project called for a new tunnel for NJ Transit commuter trains to be built from Secaucus to Herald Square.

Christie said ARC’s design was flawed, and its price tag was no longer reasonable after ballooning to a range of $11 billion to $14 billion -- up from $8.7 billion.

Early estimates say a No. 7 tunnel could be built for less than $10 billion, a sum that would be split among the city, the PA and New Jersey. Officials are also planning to hit up the feds for cash.

Extending the No. 7 to New Jersey would quickly become a key talking point in the mayor’s legacy.

The 7 Line is already being extended to 11th Avenue and 34th Street from Times Square. That segment is likely to go into revenue service in less than 2 years. If the 7 Line ran from Secaucus, a New Jersey commuter could transfer at Secaucus (the first stop) and have a one-seat ride into Queens (including Citifield) for Mets games.

Critics may complain that this doesn't provide the kind of one-seat ride that commuter rail across the Hudson would do, but that's rediculous. The NYC MTA subways operate 24/7/365, and that's far better service than NJ Transit provides. It would be a tremendous increase in cross-Hudson passenger capacity; far in excess of what NJ Transit would ever hope to achieve. Further, it would make true use of the Secaucus boondoggle - turning it into a true first-class transit hub ripe for development in New Jersey. It would mean that commuters would no longer have to go into Manhattan to catch the subway; they could do so from Secaucus and not have to hassle with bridge and tunnel tolls and traffic.

It's a win-win for everyone involved, but for the costs. The MTA is still cash-strapped, and they have other projects on their plate that are oft-delayed, including East Side Access and the 2d Avenue Subway. The debt load by the MTA is particularly concerning, especially since the state and city have raided the MTA coffers and/or reduced commitments for mass transit over the years. More and more of the MTA budget is being used for debt service, rather than capital budget or operating budget purposes. That will require an infusion of money to bring the system onto solid fiscal ground.

Details Emerging About Proposed Tappan Zee Bridge Replacement

Since the Federal government pushed to expedite the Tappan Zee bridge replacement, details have been limited as to what the bridge will look like and what kind of accommodations for mass transit will be included.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHA), which is behind the project, set the budget at $5.2 billion and the bridge will actually be two separate spans north of the current span. The termination points on either shore of the Hudson will be the same but the bridge will take a new alignment. Each new span will have four 12-foot wide lanes plus a full sized shoulder for emergency service/breakdowns. The current span lacks a breakdown lane, which means that any disabled vehicles results in massive traffic jams during rush hour or peak travel times.

To arrive at $5.2 billion, mass transit is not being included. That means no rail connections or bus rapid transit, although federal planners say that the bridge design could include structures designed to allow rail or bus rapid transit to be built at a later date.

The existing span is overcrowded and deteriorating after 56 years of use. Earlier this month, the Obama administration helped jump-start replacement plans for the Tappan Zee Bridge, declaring it eligible for fast-tracked federal approvals.

However, one aspect of the proposal will not be going forward, at least not yet. The mass transit aspects of the new bridge were dropped, which helped trim the cost to $5.2 billion from as much as $21 billion. The document only talks of future mass transit.

Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino thinks that leaving mass transit off the current design is short-sighted. "I am troubled by the proposed design's absence of a mass transit component that would help alleviate congestion," he said. "A new bridge — without a mass transit component — would already be at capacity on the day of its opening."

The plan calls for two separate four-lane spans, separated by a 42-foot gap — which is where a future mass transit component could be included. It would be built just north of the current bridge

The scoping document supersedes all the work done to date on a design that would incorporate mass transit in some form in a Rockland-Westchester transit corridor upgrade that would run to nearly $30 billion if fully built. The bridge component including mass transit was likely to run to $10 billion.

The main criticisms levied at the new expedited proposal is that it provides for no mass transit when the bridge is completed and the promise of building mass transit at a later date is cold comfort for those who have to make the trip at present. I am generally in agreement that mass transit needs to be included in some form, but I don't think heavy commuter rail is needed. The MTA might want to expand its service and connect its east of Hudson and West of Hudson service areas across the replacement bridge, but it has had limited ridership on its existing service (and a significant portion of the Port Jervis branch remains largely out of service due to Irene).

Second Avenue Sagas thinks that the state and federal government are making a mistake by killing the mass transit portion along the lines of the ARC tunnel cancellation by Gov. Chris Christie in New Jersey. In fact, they think that it's an even bigger mistake.

In a way, then, this decision is worse than New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s move to cancel the ARC Tunnel. There, he simply let the status quo stand. Here, Cuomo and the Feds are on the verge of funding something that will move transit-oriented progress backward in time. Even if the state or D.C. eventually found the money to add transit to the middle of the bridge, a wider roadway already in use won’t move the region forward.
It’s not too late for the Tappan Zee. The public comment period on the scoping document will last another three weeks, and already the public is making its voice heard. Yet, government officials say they had no choice. The money, they say, simply wasn’t there. Yet, New York could probably get away with tearing down the Tappan Zee and building nothing if they spent the $5.2 billion on improving rail service. That’s the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

They can't tear down the bridge, which is a critical component of the NYS Thruway and is a vital north/south connector through New York and a major hub for east-west traffic that seeks to avoid congestion through New York City.

Bus rapid transit makes far more sense since it requires less infrastructure to accomplish and could set the stage for rail to supplant rapid transit in the future. I don't think commuter rail component for the corridor is truly viable when better options would be for the expansion of the Spring Valley line into Rockland that take commuters into NY Penn/Hoboken via Secaucus. It's far more cost-effective than trying to build a completely new route with the hope of building the connectors at a later date. The MTA can barely complete repairs to the Port Jervis line, so where is it coming up with the funds to provide service across the bridge?

At the same time, it shows that the federal govenrment is unresponsive to the needs for mass transit and is unwilling to pay for it; it refused to take on the potential and likely cost overruns on the ARC tunnel that New Jersey taxpayers would have had to endure despite this being an interstate project. The federal DOT refused to budge on backstopping New Jersey on the cost overruns, so Christie killed the project before taxpayers took a huge hit; and the replacement Gateway tunnel proposal is better aligned for high speed rail, NJ Transit gets and cost overruns will be backstopped by the feds rather than New Jersey or New York taxpayers solely.

The feds are looking to spread money around as much as possible, and that means that they aren't funding projects that are truly deserving - such as incorporating the mass transit into the bridge design. Yet, there is a solution here within New York's grasp.

It means having the state pony up the difference to make sure that the federal portion gets utilized while incorporating the transit segment. That will take political capital from Albany and Gov. Cuomo doesn't appear willing to put that kind of money aside for mass transit. Neither is Westchester or Rockland capable of putting up money necessary for transit improvements through their respective counties.

Higher tolls along the NYS Thruway were going to be part of the state's bridge replacement plan, but that should still be incorporated in the project to make sure it gets built with a full-incorporated and built transit component.

Missing the Real Story About the Port Authority Easter Traffic Jam Response

Much is being made in the Star Ledger and the Staten Island Advance about the Port Authority's failure to provide sufficient cash lanes for traffic entering Staten Island during the Easter weekend. The traffic jams meant some people waited hours to go over the Outerbridge Crossing or the Goethals Bridge and the Port Authority held public hearings for people to vent their complaints about the problem.

Port Authority Chairman Christopher Ward was contrite in how the Port Authority will handle the situation going forward, and while commuters were calling for his head and the firing of those responsible for not having sufficient toll collectors on hand, Ward's response is instructive:

"Without a doubt, it was a management failure and I take full responsibility for it," Ward told angry commissioners during a morning meeting of the Port Authority’s operations committee.

Later in the day, addressing reporters after the full board’s regular monthly meeting, Ward apologized to the public, acknowledging Sunday’s traffic nightmare was not up to the Port Authority’s usual performance standards.

Ward said the agency plans to fill eight vacant toll collector positions. In addition, he said, agency managers will be given the authority to open E-ZPass lanes to all traffic. To minimize revenue losses, the agency would use cameras already in place to photograph license plates of non-E-ZPass users and then mail them a bill for the toll, Ward said.

"We consider this unacceptable," Port Authority Chairman David Samson said of Sunday’s problem. "We’ve got Mother’s Day coming up. We’ve got Memorial Day coming up. We’ve got the 4th of July. It’s unthinkable that we would have these problems."

Cedric Fulton, the agency’s director of bridges, tunnels and terminals, said the normal contingent of toll collectors for the three Staten Island crossings — the Outerbridge Crossing and Bayonne and Goethals bridges, is 39. But because of the vacancies, there are now 31 collectors, just four above the normal weekend staffing level of 27, Fulton said.

Read that part in bold again.

That's a program that would eliminate the need for toll collectors altogether, not just during peak time periods. If that program were instituted, it could eliminate the need for the toll barriers at those Port Authority bridges and tunnels - and eliminate the traffic jams created when commuters cross the bridges. Eliminating the toll barriers completely would smooth traffic flow and reduce congestion, emissions from idling vehicles, and improve air quality.

The switchover to the system that Ward proposes cannot come soon enough, and should be vastly expanded to include all the Port Authority bridges and tunnels - precisely because it eliminates the need for toll barriers that are a regular source of congestion and air pollution.

EZ Pass violators are already ticketed and fined with a camera system (that works to some extent). Ward's proposal expands on this system, but doesn't go nearly far enough. The Port Authority needs to move in the direction of the MTA, which is converting to a cashless toll collection system on the Henry Hudson Bridge linking Manhattan with the Bronx.

Digging Out

The sun has come out and the winds are still howling, but the snow has finally stopped in my corner of New Jersey. It was a Nor'easter to remember and the New York City Metro area is beginning the tough task of digging out from a major snowstorm that has crippled transportation throughout the region and affect air travel around the US and across the globe.

The storm dumped the heaviest snows across much of New Jersey, with the heaviest amounts running from Mahwah, New Jersey south through Monmouth County. New York City saw at least a foot of snow in most places. Long Island got a little less, but they saw some of the strongest winds during the storm. The storm has set all kinds of records throughout New Jersey.

This is a snowstorm that developed just before Christmas across the South, so the storm's wintry effects were felt across much of the country. This puts the storm's intensity way up there on a scale of Northeastern storms. The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale measures the effect of snow and takes storm totals and measures them against the population impact:

The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale (NESIS) developed by Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini of the National Weather Service (Kocin and Uccellini, 2004) characterizes and ranks high-impact Northeast snowstorms. These storms have large areas of 10 inch snowfall accumulations and greater. NESIS has five categories: Extreme, Crippling, Major, Significant, and Notable. The index differs from other meteorological indices in that it uses population information in addition to meteorological measurements. Thus NESIS gives an indication of a storm's societal impacts. This scale was developed because of the impact Northeast snowstorms can have on the rest of the country in terms of transportation and economic impact.

It will probably be a few weeks before the storm totals are plugged into the formula to determine the intensity, but this storm appears to have the characteristics of a major to crippling storm due to the high storm totals through New Jersey and New York City, along with the widespread snows from the Southeast through New England.

Despite the fact that the subways and buses and trains were canceled throughout the City and some commuters were stuck on subway cars for hours, Mayor Mike Bloomberg had not declared a state of emergency. Snow plows are having a tough time getting through side streets because of stranded cars; had the state of emergency been declared, people would have been less likely to be on the streets and the plows would have a better chance of getting through the streets.

It was a mistake for him not to declare a state of emergency, even as his Department chiefs and OEM were busy telling people to stay off the roads.

A Blizzard Warning is in effect for New York City from Sunday, December 26, until Monday, December 27, at 6 PM. Stay off the roads. The city needs to clear the roads of snow and abandoned vehicles so public safety can respond to emergencies. Use mass transit and exercise caution. Be safe when clearing snow.

It's tough to use mass transit when they aren't operating.

You know it's bad when there's snow deep into subway stations underground.

While only NYC area airports are closed (EWR, LGA, and JFK), and there aren't delays elsewhere in the nation, passengers are going to find that it may take days before they can return to NYC because of all the cancellations and delays.

Still, for those who don't have to dig out, it is truly a winter wonderland out there and a beautiful sight to behold. I'll be posting photos through the day.

UPDATE:
The NJ Turnpike was a mess as a closure of the George Washington Bridge overnight meant that trucks and other vehicles couldn't go across and were stranded all along the northern stretch of the Turnpike.

Good luck finding shovels, snow brushes, or snow blowers as they're sold out all over the area. I probably should have bought a snow blower at Costco back in November, when an electric model was on sale for about $200. Oh well.

UPDATE:
New Jersey drivers are reminded to clear all the snow off their cars. Under a recently enacted law, drivers will be fined for driving with snow on their roof tops.

The Future of Travel Will Remain Unkind To Travelers Because of Terrorism

The Retorican isn't alone in suggesting that traveling commando may be the future of air travel (traveling naked has also been suggested).

So much about air security and preventing terrorism is about the perception of security and safety than actual security and safety. Techniques that might actually prevent terrorism are not adopted or employed because of privacy concerns or discrimination, when there are clear profiles of individuals who have committed acts of terrorism in the past.

NY State Assemblyman Dov Hikind was looking to introduce legislation requiring profiling, but his statement shows that he doesn't get the security situation either.



He was talking about profiling people from the Middle East and South East Asia, when Mutallab was from Nigeria (which is in Africa) and had a Nigerian passport along with a valid US visa. Profiling based on location by itself doesn't work; the Fort Dix Six were originally from Albania (Europe). Other terrorists were home-grown.

The main issue is that the overwhelming majority of those seeking to engage in mass casualty attacks aboard aircraft are engaged in jihad. That means looking for those who would fit that profile.

Christopher Hitchens encapsulates the issue more succinctly and deftly than I could.

What nobody in authority thinks us grown-up enough to be told is this: We had better get used to being the civilians who are under a relentless and planned assault from the pledged supporters of a wicked theocratic ideology. These people will kill themselves to attack hotels, weddings, buses, subways, cinemas, and trains. They consider Jews, Christians, Hindus, women, homosexuals, and dissident Muslims (to give only the main instances) to be divinely mandated slaughter victims. Our civil aviation is only the most psychologically frightening symbol of a plethora of potential targets. The future murderers will generally not be from refugee camps or slums (though they are being indoctrinated every day in our prisons); they will frequently be from educated backgrounds, and they will often not be from overseas at all. They are already in our suburbs and even in our military. We can expect to take casualties. The battle will go on for the rest of our lives. Those who plan our destruction know what they want, and they are prepared to kill and die for it. Those who don't get the point prefer to whine about "endless war," accidentally speaking the truth about something of which the attempted Christmas bombing over Michigan was only a foretaste. While we fumble with bureaucracy and euphemism, they are flying high.

The idea of patting down and going through the security checkpoints are more for providing the veneer of safety and security. With limited resources at our disposal, the need to focus them where they can do the most good is needed.

Regulations that limit who can get up to go to the bathroom and when during a flight makes no sense as a terrorist can simply blow up the plane from his or her seat. Screeners asking whether you packed your own bags is another inane issue; it does little to separate out true threats from those who aren't. On this point, the Israelis have made it an art form of screening out threats based on asking a series of questions that can weed out those who are traveling for business or pleasure and those who have another agenda. It takes a different level of training, and an acceptance by the flying public to accept more invasive questioning over itiniaries than many are accustomed to today when flying on US domestic airlines (and indeed much of the world's airlines).

Still, when it comes down to it, it is up to each individual to look out for their own security because you can't expect the security procedures in place to catch every terrorist every time; the Northwest Airlines Flight 253 outcome is proof positive that individual passengers have to act to save themselves and their fellow passengers. That really remains the last line of defense against terrorism when the terrorist tries to smuggle explosives on board on his person. We can only hope that the security measures in place prevent terrorists from bringing those explosives on board in their checked luggage - a situation that the other passengers have no control over.

And while much of the focus remains on aircraft security, other forms of mass transit remain exposed to the threat; buses and rail traffic can just as surely be attacked by terrorists with deadly consequences. Ignoring that threat is at our continued peril.

Feds Impose 3-Hour Limit On Airline Strandings

Airlines will have to pony up sizable fines if they strand passengers for more than 3 hours on tarmacs due to delays according to new rules promulgated by the federal Department of Transportation.

Under the new regulations, airlines operating domestic flights will be able only to keep passengers on board for three hours before they must be allowed to disembark a delayed flight. The regulation provides exceptions only for safety or security or if air traffic control advises the pilot in command that returning to the terminal would disrupt airport operations.

U.S. carriers operating international flights departing from or arriving in the United States must specify, in advance, their own time limits for deplaning passengers. Foreign carriers are not covered by the rules.

Airlines will be required to provide food and water for passengers within two hours of a plane being delayed on a tarmac, and to maintain operable lavatories. They must also provide passengers with medical attention when necessary.

From January to June this year, 613 planes were delayed on tarmacs for more than three hours, their passengers kept on board.

That's great for those flying, but why limit it to airlines?

Railroads, like commuter lines and Amtrak, are also susceptible to stranding passengers. Just this weekend, 150 passengers were stranded on a LIRR train for more than five hours during the blizzard that hit the NYC metro area. They had no food, water, or heat during that time.

The Ronkonkoma-bound train left Penn Station at 2:53 a.m. Sunday and passengers were still on their way to their final destination more than five hours later, Railroad spokeswoman Susan McGowan said. The train was first delayed by snow and ice and was then stopped by a passenger car that became stuck while crossing the tracks. Then, the train was stopped again when the weather caused the locomotive pulling the train to break down. McGowan says the train was towed to a nearby station and passengers were put on a second train and sent on their way by 8:15 a.m. No injuries were reported.

While that doesn't compare to some of the horror stories from hours of delays on tarmacs around the nation, railroads should be held to the same standards of accountability.

NYC MTA Testing New Hybrid Electric Buses

After noting earlier this week that the NYC Sanitation Department was testing hybrid trucks, the New York Times is reporting that the NYC MTA is testing another batch of hybrid electric buses. These new buses are a radical departure from earlier designs, since they aren't powered by traditional piston powered engines, but diesel turbines that generate power for electric motors.

The low-floor, hybrid electric DesignLine bus runs on a diesel turbine engine, instead of the diesel piston engine that powers the vast majority of New York City Transit’s 4,600 buses. The turbine produces alternating current, which charges the battery that powers the motor that drives the wheels. Like other hybrid electric models used by the authority, the new DesignLine bus has regenerative braking, meaning that the batteries are recharged each time the driver applies the brake.

The buses have a capacity of 35 or 37 seats, depending on the configuration, with standing room for 30.

The Times doesn't report the cost of the buses or the gas mileage expected, so we've got to dig a little deeper.

DesignLine is based in Charlotte, North Carolina. The cost for a new hybrid bus? $550,000, or $200,000 more than the typical price of $350,000 per standard diesel powered bus. Some reports suggest that the price for a DesignLine hybrid is over $600,000, but that probably depends on the specifics requested by the bus services purchasing.

With the City of New York running thousands of buses, that's quite a tidy sum to shell out. How much can those hybrids save in fuel costs? According to the Charlotte Area Transit System, the hybrid buses provide a 34% improvement in miles per gallon and a 41% decrease in maintenance expenses. The hybrids are expected to last twice as long as a regular bus and with only 5% of the carbon footprint.

That has the potential to bring significant cost savings over the standard powered vehicle, but the high up-front costs will deter many transit departments from converting because of limited funds available, even with the presence of federal funds. It would require bonding and incurring debt that must be repaid over the long term, and which would reduce any cost saving. The purchase of this radically new design would also mean maintenance shops will have to retool to provide the necessary servicing of engine components.

If the current 90-day evaluation proves successful, the City will purchase 30 of the hybrid buses, with an option to buy 60 more.

Yet Another Reminder Why Drivers Must Respect Trains

The NJ Transit Bergen Line Train that I was on got lucky. It was only delayed for 20 minutes or so as passengers from another train were brought on board. Those passengers were not nearly so lucky. They were on board a train that struck a car that stayed on the tracks despite the flashing signals and gates at Midland Avenue in Saddle Brook.

The passenger of that car, a middle aged woman, was lucky to be alive. She was receiving medical attention but appeared to be okay.

The car wasn't.

 

Apologies to those who find this photo to be crummy condition. It was taken with my cellphone while the train was moving through the area, but it's still more than you'll likely see in the evening news. NJ Transit calls this 20 minute delays in both directions.

This particular intersection is one of the most dangerous in New Jersey, and there have been multiple incidents such as this in the past. It is long past time for NJ Transit and the local community to eliminate this particular grade crossing.

The fact is that all too many people see this:


... and ignore it.

People die as a result of ignoring those signals. Today's accident victim was lucky. Luck is going to run out at this crossing.

This particular crossing is notorious for accidents, primarily because of its location and how it cuts across NJ Transit's right of way:


View Larger Map

This leads to multiple accidents, both on NJ Transit right of way, and for cars attempting to avoid crossing there by traveling on Erie Street instead.

Latest Staten Island Ferry Incident Raises Troubling Questions

This week, the John Marchi lost power as it was set to dock at the St. George Ferry Terminal in Staten Island and 15 people suffered minor injuries. The crew did a great job in preventing further injuries, but reports indicate that there has been a troubling spate of problems with the Marchi losing power during its operations.

The Marchi is one of the newest Staten Island ferries, and yet it has lost power on several occasions, including once where it required tugboat assistance to complete a trip. In fact, since it went into service four years ago, it's lost power eight times, which is far more than just the usual teething problems. The NYC DOT isn't exactly saying that there's a problem, and they'd rather focus on the fact that this crew did a great job of preventing a more serious incident.

This week's incident is apparently the result of a blown transformer.

"We know a transformer failed, and things went from there," said Staten Island ferry Chief Operating Officer James DeSimone.

The four-year-old ferry, the John J. Marchi, struck a pier at the St. George Terminal on Wednesday evening. The vessel was taken out of service for repairs.

DeSimone said the ferry fleet undergoes quarterly inspections by the Coast Guard and additional city checks he compared to preventive maintenance.

The transformer wouldn't normally be inspected and would be expected to last about 15 years, he said.

No one quite knows why the one transformer caused a series of failures leading to a complete loss of propulsion.

So far, it appears the problem started when a transformer failed, shutting down the power to one of the motors that drives the propeller. Then other motors shut down, Captain DeSimone said.

“We understand how the one drive could go off because the transformer failed, but not why the other three drive motors powered down,” he said. “It is what we are trying to determine now.” The final results will be sent to the Coast Guard, he said.

The crew passed alcohol tests, which are required after accidents, and results of similar drug tests are pending, according to a spokesman for the Transportation Department.

Obama's Latest Grand Plan: Massive Public Works Projects

It's been done before. It was called the WPA, CCC, and TVA (among other alphabet agencies spawned by FDR's New Deal.

The problem is that we aren't facing 30% unemployment and much of the nation already has been built out with infrastructure. The problem is that we've been borrowing to pay for the upkeep on existing infrastructure and no one has any money to pay to maintain it, the federal government included. Throwing billions more at transportation projects around the nation isn't going to create new jobs - it's going to keep those already in the construction industry busy. It's going to keep the unions busy.

A transportation stimulus package will not create new jobs in other industries, and will further spend money that the nation simply doesn't have.

President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he's asked his economic team for a recovery plan that saves or creates more than 2 million jobs, makes public buildings more energy-efficient and invests in the country's roads and schools.

"We won't just throw money at the problem," Obama said in his weekly radio address and Internet video. "We'll measure progress by the reforms we make and the results we achieve — by the jobs we create, by the energy we save, by whether America is more competitive in the world."

Obama's remarks come after the Labor Department announced Friday that employers cut 533,000 jobs in November, the most in 34 years.

He wants to spend billions to make government buildings more efficient. Try closing a few. Federal spending is out of control, and making government buildings more energy efficient sounds great in principle, but isn't that something that should already be included in operational and maintenance budgets? Replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs isn't exactly rocket science, and the savings would be considerable across the entire government. We don't need a massive infusion of billions of dollars to do that. We need common sense from building operators throughout the country to do it.

The idea of spending billions to upgrade the transportation infrastructure again sounds like a great idea, but what exactly are we talking about? Are we going to completely redo the FAA's computer systems to enable GPS positioning and advanced ground control so that planes can fly closer together and no longer need to be confined to traffic corridors that are maxed out, especially during peak periods? Does it mean billions spent to upgrade Amtrak's Northeast Corridor to enable Acela to actually run at the high speeds that it was originally intended to do - about 140 mph, which would substantially cut down on congestion in the Northeast and possibly provide Amtrak with a route that actually makes money over the long run?

Does it mean rebuilding bridges and tunnels in places that actually need them rather than building stuff for the sake of building them?

New York City could use a new freight rail tunnel between New Jersey and Brooklyn to relieve congestion along its existing bridges and tunnels because there is only one circuitous rail route off Long Island, and the failure to build a rail tunnel has doomed millions of people to unending congestion and increased traffic and transit costs as a result of delays and traffic. The City could also use federal funds to complete the full length of the Second Avenue line, rather than just the section already under construction. It too would relieve congestion and spur economic development.

In Chicago, much of that city's famous elevated subway is in dire need of replacement and reconstruction because the city has mismanaged its resources and shirked its responsibility to maintain the system.

The aforementioned projects would benefit the largest number of people, but they're also among the most costly propositions, in the tens of billions of dollars if work started today.

Obama wants to upgrade schools, which again sounds great in theory, but the practice has been anything but successful. New Jersey's example is a textbook example of a disaster. Billions spent on schools and a fraction of the projects were completed. Corruption, graft, and broken promises were the hallmark of the New Jersey experience. There's no reason to believe that the federal government would do any better.

If anything, billions would be consumed by the federal government bureaucracy and never find its way into actually getting anything done. Jobs may be created, but they're not ones that are in the private sector; it would be growth in government jobs that become nearly impossible to cut since they have the power of the unions backing them.

Wizbang has more on Obama's proposals and criticizes its lack of focus on power generation and transmission. Ed Morrissey slams Obama's transportation proposals as not only unaffordable, but makes mincemeat of Eisenhower's intentions when setting up the Interstate highway system. It wasn't a jobs program that spurred Eisenhower to build the Interstate highways; it was national defense.

Now, perhaps Obama is using the jobs program as a way to get people to spend money in a roundabout way to improve the nation's ability to send equipment and materials in case of disasters (and that's actually a sound reason to upgrade transportation systems nationwide given failures in hurricanes and other natural disasters), but there's no reason to think that Obama thinks in those terms. To Obama, this is strictly a jobs program.

A Nonstory About Obama's Official Limo

Are we supposed to derive some kind of outrage over the fact that President Elect Barack Obama's official limousine is going to be a gas guzzler as compared with the eco-leftist claptrap we've heard him talk about out on the campaign trail?

Nope.

There are two completely different things at play here. One is the security of the President of the United States. The limo used by the US Secret Service is designed with one thing in mind - to make it as secure as possible against a wide range of threats against the President. That means making it durable and resistant to mines, bombs, and snipers.

It means that the vehicle is going to weigh a lot and must be designed to absorb lots of damage and continue running and the mileage isn't a concern. Perhaps at some point down the road the Secret Service will commission the construction of a hybrid vehicle for the Presidential motorcade, but it surely isn't a top priority.

Still, a hybrid limo for the President could provide certain additional benefits beyond the green talk. Hybrids can have lots of low-end torque, which is useful to get out of sticky situations in a hurry. When combined with a conventional engine, you can have lots of top end speed. That's a combination that should be favorable to the Secret Service. Perhaps, they are not satisfied that the hybrids today can take the kind of damage that they must be expected to absorb and continue running. After all, the hybrids have to carry battery packs that go in locations that may be required for armor, and until the batteries are miniaturized, this will remain a problem.

Tolling Times For NJ Drivers

Once again, New Jersey drivers are going to be treated as piggy banks for the state. New Jersey offiicals are floating the idea of raising tolls on the NJ Turnpike and the Garden State Parkway next year by a considerable amount (50%) and then again in 2012, and then again several years following that.

I've seen several versions, but The Star Ledger reports:

The plan was sent to Gov. Jon Corzine yesterday and is expected to be introduced at a public meeting next week. If enacted, it would mean the cost of a typical 23-mile trip on the Turnpike would jump from $1.20 to $1.80 next year. It would rise to $2.70 in 2012 and reach $3 after 2023.

Tolls on the Garden State Parkway would rise at a similar pace. The current average of 35 cents per passenger car would rise to 50 cents next year, 75 cents in 2012 and reach 85 cents in 2023.

The hikes would be the first since 2000 and would be used to widen the Turnpike and Parkway, invest $1.25 billion in a new rail tunnel under the Hudson River and repair and replace decrepit bridges.

The Turnpike Authority can implement the toll hikes without any action by the Legislature, although Senate President Richard Codey (D-Essex) said lawmakers might hold hearings on the proposal.

The money is supposed to go to widen the turnpike and Parkway, but drivers might have a hard time stomaching the idea of funding mass transit to the tune of $1.25 billion, even though that would help take additional drivers off the roads.

My concern is that the state has mismanaged its transportation infrastructure for decades. They've plowed money into white elephants like the Secaucus Junction (boondoggle). The Northeast Corridor suffers because of Amtrak neglect and mismanagement of federal assets as well, and the new rail tunnel will improve reliability along the entire system by eliminating a critical bottleneck into Manhattan. It also provides redundancy in case of problems with one track.

Still, New Jersey drivers have to wonder where all the billions of dollars spent by the Turnpike and GSP authorities have gone over the years when they see roads in such poor condition year after year.

They can look north and see that the NYS Thruway Authority, which manages a system far larger than the NJ Turnpike, has generally been able to maintain its roads at a high level.

While I expect NJ drivers to complain and politicians are themselves seething over the idea of running for reelection with the toll hike as a looming issue, I don't think the hikes are going to go away or that it will end up changing the outcome in November. There are simply too many entrenched interests and people will continue putting up with the nonsense in Trenton the way they always have.