Saturday, April 21, 2012
Why Your Highway Has Potholes - WSJ.com
This fits my government at work (wasting money) category.
Don't miss "8,074 Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees made $100,000 or more" in New York City alone...
Don't miss "8,074 Metropolitan Transportation Authority employees made $100,000 or more" in New York City alone...
The Wall Street Journal includes this in their recent opinion column:
"Even with a recent 2.3% gain in bus and rail use due to high gas prices, public transit still accounts for a mere 2% of all inner-city trips and closer to 1% outside of New York.
Since 1982 government mass-transit subsidies have totaled $750 billion (in today's dollars), yet the share of travelers using transit has fallen by nearly one-third, according to Heritage Foundation transportation expert Wendell Cox. Federal data indicate that in 2010 in most major cities more people walked to work or telecommuted than used public transit.
Brookings Institution economist Cliff Winston finds that 'the cost of building rail systems is notorious for exceeding expectations, while ridership levels tend to be much lower than anticipated.' He calculates that the only major U.S. rail system in which the benefits outweigh the government subsidies is San Francisco's BART, and no others are close to break-even."
