{"id":820,"date":"2004-03-31T01:50:30","date_gmt":"2004-03-31T06:50:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2004\/03\/highway_bill\/"},"modified":"2004-03-31T01:50:30","modified_gmt":"2004-03-31T06:50:30","slug":"highway_bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2004\/03\/highway_bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Highway Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Bush threatens to make this<\/a> his first veto. Will he deliver? In an election year?<\/p>\n

At a time when the federal budget deficit is approaching a record $500 billion a year, the House of Representatives will open debate Wednesday on a bill that includes $4.6 million for water taxis in New York, $2 million to build a bike trail in Durham, N.C., and $74 million for a bridge over the Trinity River in Dallas.
\nThose projects are part of a massive highway and transit construction bill that would cost $275 billion over six years. Billed as a “jobs creation” measure, the highway legislation is a time-honored way for lawmakers facing November elections to send money back home to their districts.
\nIt would boost transportation spending by 26 percent by authorizing $217 billion for highways, $51.5 billion for public transit and about $6 billion for a variety of safety programs. The House is expected to pass the bill Thursday. The Senate passed its $318 billion version in February.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course participating contestants walk away with great parting gifts:<\/p>\n

“Everyone on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is each getting $40 million to $90 million for their districts,” said Keith Ashdown, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a fiscal watchdog group that combed the bill line by line.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Interesting analysis:<\/p>\n

The bill is intended to improve American transportation and ease highway congestion. Each year Americans spend 51 hours more commuting during rush hour than they would with manageable traffic, according to Tim Lomax, a research engineer for the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. The institute tracks congestion patterns in 75 major metropolitan areas. The average delay is four times what it was in 1982.
\nBut building more highways is only part of the solution, Lomax said. In fast-growing areas with open land “you are going to need more roads and transit to serve the people,” he said, “but you also have to get more out of the capacity we already have.”
\nOther ways to ease congestion include removing wrecked vehicles more quickly and synchronizing traffic signals. Incentives to encourage commuters to travel in off-peak hours also help. Building residential areas near shops and office buildings allows people to walk instead of drive, Lomax said. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Congress critters don’t get as much bang from urban planning and synchronized traffic flow as they do from nifty new highways and bridges. So guess where the money continues to flow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Bush threatens to make this his first veto. Will he deliver? In an election year? At a time when the federal budget deficit is approaching a record $500 billion a year, the House of Representatives will open debate Wednesday on a bill that includes $4.6 million for water taxis in New York, $2 million […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-820","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}