Be Careful What You Wish For
Norway’s SlowTV film of the Bergen to Oslo railway is beautiful and deeply moving: nostalgic. Though I’ve never been to Norway, I’ve ridden tr...
Category: transportation
Dear Amtrak: Learn How to Price Your Service
Apparently you neglected to read my last letter, but with the fast approach of National Train Day and the increase in oil prices making your services slightly m...
Dear Amtrak
You disappoint me. You don’t understand pricing. Or perhaps you simply have no experience of buying things with your own money. In any case, what are you ...
Competitive Pricing of Substitutes in Transportation
Nate Silver has an interesting, if partial, analysis of statistics comparing modes of transportation based on the National Household Travel Survey. He wonders w...
The Impact of the Daylight Saving Time Change on Traffic Accidents
It seems to me that accidents would increase during the transitional period surrounding the switch between Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time. And apparentl...
Public Works
I was listening to old shows on my TiVo while I repainted the sun room. NOW reminded me that the amount of money that governments spend on mass transit pales in...
Scooters
This morning I heard a piece on the radio about scooter sales in New York City. One of the comments piqued my interest. [The owner of Vespa SoHo, Zachary] Schie...
Mice or Men?
Randall O’Toole‘s latest book, The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future argues that...
Telephony Substitutes for Transportation
One oddity of visiting my family in Virginia is that there’s little to no cellular phone coverage in Highland County. This is partially due to the landsca...
Lesser of Two Evils
We live about five miles, 11 minutes, by car from the Kindergarten, but the Big Sister rides the bus for 30 minutes or more. Last night residents in the Mahopac...
Spare the Belt, and Spoil the Child
The Big Sister goes to kindergarten in the Fall. On Tuesday, I went to an orientation session about the school buses, where I learned an interesting thing. The ...
Amtrak Subsidies
Are Amtrak subsidies equivalent to the monies used to prevent the commercial airlines from going belly up after 9/11? If the government pays to maintain private...