Ryan Avent
Recent Posts
The Assumption of Inconvenience
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The secret of European eco-friendliness? Maybe not. Photo: romerican/Flickr Early this week, I noticed a number of my favorite bloggers linking to this Elisabeth Rosenthal essay at Environment 360, on the mysterious greenness of European nations. The average American, as it happens, produces about twice as much carbon dioxide each year as your typical resident […]
Do Highway Users Pay for the Highway System? Not Even Close.
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We tend to have a few good laughs when Randal O’Toole fires up his Cato computer and weighs in on transportation issues. It’s hard to take seriously a man who thinks that having the government tax people to build something which it then gives away for free is the libertarian ideal. Do federal gas taxes […]
What Should We Learn From Moses and Jacobs?
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There is probably no more beloved figure in urbanism than Jane Jacobs, who fought to preserve some of New York City’s most treasured neighborhoods and who gave urbanists some of the field’s fundamental texts. As Ed Glaeser notes in the New Republic this week, Jacobs died in 2006 "a cherished, almost saintly figure," while her […]
More People, Less Driving: The Imperative of Curbing Sprawl
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Experience with case studies has made it clear to many urban planners and environmentalists that to maximize the benefits of transit investments, and to slow growth in traffic congestion, vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and carbon emissions, you have to focus on land use. Photo: Penn State. This knowledge has begun working its way into the […]
The Power of Transit-Oriented Development
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Back in the late 1970s, when Washington’s Metrorail system first began operating in Arlington County, Virginia, the future of Arlington and other old, inner suburbs was far from certain. Across the Potomac, the District of Columbia was suffering from depopulation, rapidly rising crime rates, and serious fiscal difficulties. Ballston Metro station, Arlington Co. Photo: Point […]
How to Judge “Cash for Clunkers”
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(Photo: NYT) At this point, it’s difficult to know exactly what the government’s "cash for clunkers" program is supposed to accomplish. Claims about its economic and environmental benefits are increasingly detached from reality, and the chief advantage of the program would seem to be that it "worked," in the sense that it was popular among […]
Understanding Washington’s Metro Crash
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The scene of the June 22 Washington D.C. Metro crash. Photo: AP The House of Representatives subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia convened yesterday afternoon to hear testimony related to the tragic Washington Metro accident of June 22. The proceedings got off to an appropriately somber start, as California […]
The Imminent Irrelevance of Randal O’Toole
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Two things were clear at this morning’s hearing of the Senate Banking Committee concerning green investments in public transportation. First, transportation experts and leading legislators are very much in agreement on how transportation spending should change. And second, Randal O’Toole’s days as anything other than an anachronism are numbered. Cato Institute fellow Randal O’Toole testified […]
STAA Tuned: Transpo Bill Leaves Funding Question Hanging
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We now have in our hands the 775-page Surface Transportation Authorization Act, which was released yesterday by James Oberstar (D-MN), chairman of the House transportation committee. It is, in many ways, a remarkable bill — a blueprint for how transportation planning and infrastructure construction might undergo a significant shift away from the mindsets that have […]
Randal O’Toole: Taking Liberties With the Facts
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The Cato Institute’s Randal O’Toole gets under the skin of many of those interested in building a more rational and green metropolitan geography, but in many ways he’s an ideal opponent. It would be difficult to concoct more transparently foolish arguments than his. The man is an engine of self-parody. Is this spaghetti bowl turning […]