Category: Transportation governance

  • On transportation waste

    A pair of interesting articles showed up in the past week, highlighting a fundamental disconnect between various factions in the infrastructure wars. Ashley Halsey III of the Washington Post wrote an article bemoaning the lack of trust that much of the public has that their infrastructure dollars are being spent wisely, given the current state…

  • The Transportation-Industrial Complex?

    The California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA), the entity charged with overseeing the design and construction of the proposed HSR line eventually intended to connect the LA Basin with the Bay Area (and other points as well), last week dropped a proverbial taco into the punch bowl when they announced a revised business plan with…

  • Calling All Wonks

    Scotty hit it in the open thread for this month, but I want to reinforce it – Metro is taking applications for three seats on TPAC – the “Transportation Policy Alternatives Committee”. As I suspect I’ve mentioned before, TPAC is one of the places where I got my education in transportation policy. Six citizens have…

  • Public projects, political capital, and the sunk cost fallacy

    How the sunk cost fallacy, particularly applied to political capital, can cause public officials to insist on the timely completion of dubious projects.

  • Squaring the circle: The problem of over-constrained projects.

    How to deal with overly-constrained projects