Transportation

Inflation Eats Infrastructure Bill

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In addition to restoring allegedly crumbling highways and transit lines, the 2021 infrastructure bill was supposed to provide tens of billions of dollars for building new infrastructure.  read more »

April Transit Falls to 58.7% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

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Transit ridership in April 2022 was 58.7 percent of April 2019, according to data released yesterday by the Federal Transit Administration. This is down from March  read more »

Is it Ethical to Purchase a Lithium Battery Powered EV?

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With numerous State Governor’s having issued executive orders to phase out the purchasing of gasoline driven cars within the next decade or so, and the automobile manufacturers efforts to phase into only manufacturing EV’s here’s some food for thought  read more »

Tokyo, Osaka & Nagoya Cores: Migration Losses

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As Japan fell into population decline early in the last decade, the Tokyo area (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba prefectures), in something of a paradox, experienced population increases.  read more »

In Five Years, Sound Transit Has Racked Up An Additional $50B for Rail Plan

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Since 2017, Sound Transit’s full system expansion went from costing taxpayers $92 billion to an incredible $142 billion, and project completion was stretched from 2041 to 2046.  read more »

ATC – and Northern Indiana – Prosper as RV Sales Boom

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Few beehives of industrial activity have prospered more through the last decade than Elkhart County, Indiana. As the global capital of recreational-vehicle manufacturing, the area prospered from the RV-sales boom after the Great Recession and amid $2-a-gallon gasoline, and then the industry got another accelerant when Americans fled to the great outdoors over the last couple of years in reaction to the pandemic.  read more »

Transit Ridership 53.8% of Pre-Pandemic Levels

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Transit agencies carried 53.8 percent as many riders in February 2022 as in February 2020, according to data issued last week by the Federal Transit Administration.  read more »

Farmer Craig Hits an Oily Patch

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For years I’ve bought the majority of my meat and eggs from a farm family north of the city. Every two months Farmer Craig drives down in a refrigerated van and I fill my freezers with lamb, poultry, pork, and beef.  read more »

Oversupply of EV's from Foreign Manufacturers and Lack of Demand May Be Global Financial Shock

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Until the current elite owners can demonstrate to the middle-income and those on fixed incomes that their EV’s are their primary family workhorse vehicles, and a solution to shipping potentially flammable EV batteries to American ports is resolved, may all be a prelude to a financial crisis brewing for the auto industry.  read more »

Gas Prices and Transit

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While no Americans are happy about the “special military operation” in Ukraine, transit agencies and advocates are positively giddy about the effect of that operation on gas prices.  read more »