The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[markhollin]

Mayor Barry and transportation advocates have a backup plan if Governor Haslam's plan fails:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2017/02/10/barry-transit-advocates-have-backup-bill-if-governors-plan-fails/97759996/

[titanhog]

Anyone notice how much worse I-440 has gotten over the past few weeks?  It's so bad that I'm going to do my best to not use it again until they fix it.

[claya91]

2 hours ago, titanhog said:

Anyone notice how much worse I-440 has gotten over the past few weeks?  It's so bad that I'm going to do my best to not use it again until they fix it.

Don't even get me started about 440. Many people wonder why 440 is concrete. The big selling point behind concrete is durability. Basically, you pay more up front but spend less in maintenance/resurfacing. I believe 440 had a projected lifespan of 20 years and here we are 30 years later patching up holes with asphalt. It's an incredibly half-assed approach to roadway maintenance that causes unnecessary wear on vehicles and creates headaches. I liken it to treating a gunshot wound with a bandaid. Hopefully the gas tax increase will help address this issue. TN used to be known for the quality of its roads and highways. It's time to pony up.

Edited February 17, 2017 by claya91

[nashvylle]

13 hours ago, claya91 said:

Don't even get me started about 440. Many people wonder why 440 is concrete. The big selling point behind concrete is durability. Basically, you pay more up front but spend less in maintenance/resurfacing. I believe 440 had a projected lifespan of 20 years and here we are 30 years later patching up holes with asphalt. It's an incredibly half-assed approach to roadway maintenance that causes unnecessary wear on vehicles and creates headaches. I liken it to treating a gunshot wound with a bandaid. Hopefully the gas tax increase will help address this issue. TN used to be known for the quality of its roads and highways. It's time to pony up.

Let's see if the gas tax passes. Fingers crossed. 

[markhollin]

Gov. Haslam amends transportation bill:  "The newly filed amendment would allow local governments to hold public votes on surcharges to existing local taxes as possibilities to pay for public transit projects. This means Middle Tennessee officials could look to local property taxes, business taxes, motor vehicle taxes, tourist taxes, etc., as a way to fund transit projects."

http://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2017/02/22/haslam-tweaks-transportation-bill-gives-transit.html

[FromParkAveToTN]

Property taxes should be off limits as a funding source. Most people who own property are the least likely to use public transportation.

[nashvylle]

11 hours ago, FromParkAveToTN said:

Property taxes should be off limits as a funding source. Most people who own property are the least likely to use public transportation.

not true. 

[smeagolsfree]

If that was the case then folks that had no children would balk at paying their taxes. Mass transit is part of the infrastructure as are schools, and those thing are and should  be subject to a property tax or other forms of taxation. If people cant get to work because the roads are jammed with cars with no Mass Transit option, they would be raising hell. Actually some are now.

[MLBrumby]

Remember "Red" means stop. Not even 5:00 cst yet... 

 

[Guest]

Red does not mean stop...maybe deep red (see I-440) but otherwise it is just slow but moving.

[nashvylle]

22 minutes ago, nashville_bound said:

Red does not mean stop...maybe deep red (see I-440) but otherwise it is just slow but moving.

doesnt make me feel any better. Traffic is a huge issue in Nashville and I pray we can find a solution. 

[fieldmarshaldj]

1 hour ago, nashvylle said:

doesnt make me feel any better. Traffic is a huge issue in Nashville and I pray we can find a solution. 

Two words: Flying cars.

[rookzie]

5 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

If that was the case then folks that had no children would balk at paying their taxes. Mass transit is part of the infrastructure as are schools, and those thing are and should  be subject to a property tax or other forms of taxation. If people cant get to work because the roads are jammed with cars with no Mass Transit option, they would be raising hell. Actually some are now.

(you think??? !!)

[Guest]

I am not posting this to make a political statement....this corruption, malfeasance, and outright criminal corruption in the rule and not the exception. I hope the supporters of local mass transit fight for above-board dealing and avoid back-room double-dealing.

Chao’s Choo-Choo Stop A $647 million grant two days before Obama left the White House.

 

[BnaBreaker]

33 minutes ago, nashville_bound said:

I am not posting this to make a political statement....this corruption, malfeasance, and outright criminal corruption in the rule and not the exception. I hope the supporters of local mass transit fight for above-board dealing and avoid back-room double-dealing.

Chao’s Choo-Choo Stop A $647 million grant two days before Obama left the White House.

 

Looks like you have to subscribe to the WSJ to see the article.

[Guest]

I will paste...I do not subscribe and it came up so I was not aware.

 

Quote

March 5, 2017 6:17 p.m. ET

The Obama Administration may have left town, but its legacy lives on across the country in Sacramento. So congratulations to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao for putting a stop to some dubious grant-making for San Francisco Democrats by a former Obama official in another imbroglio for California’s bullet train.

Last month Ms. Chao said she is delaying indefinitely a $647 million federal grant for the Caltrain commuter service that former Federal Transit Administration chief Carolyn Flowers approved two days before President Obama left office. Ms. Flowers now works at an engineering company that is a contractor for the Caltrain project. Last week Governor Jerry Brown sent a letter to Ms. Chao begging her to release the funds pronto. “Can we discuss this on the phone?” he asked in a handwritten note.

California’s 14 House Republicans have asked Ms. Chao to withhold the federal cash until an audit is completed on California’s misbegotten bullet train. An internal Federal Railroad Administration analysis in December found that the train’s first segment in the sparsely populated Central Valley is running 50% over budget.

 

How does the electrification of Caltrain connect to high-speed rail? Good question. The bullet train will supposedly link to Caltrain, though that may not be for several decades, if ever, at the current rate of construction. Since the choo choo may never reach the Bay Area due to litigation and funding shortfalls, Bay Area Democrats late last year wrote legislation that would make $600 million of the $10 billion in high-speed rail bonds that voters approved in 2008 available for electrifying Caltrain. This may be unconstitutional as legislators aren’t allowed to amend measures passed by voters, and some taxpayers have sued.

Ms. Flowers decided to help her progressive friends in San Francisco on her way out the door by fast-tracking the federal grant for Caltrain. Now she’s returned through the other door to collect a piece of the cash. Sacramento is America’s western swamp.

 

[ruraljuror]

3 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

I am not posting this to make a political statement....this corruption, malfeasance, and outright criminal corruption in the rule and not the exception. I hope the supporters of local mass transit fight for above-board dealing and avoid back-room double-dealing.

Chao’s Choo-Choo Stop A $647 million grant two days before Obama left the White House.

 

I also don't subscribe to the WSJ so I can't see the details of this particular project, but I definitely agree that corruption, cronyism, malfeasance, and insider dealing in these kinds of projects is all too common and is nothing short of criminal.

Along those lines as far as things that we should maybe be keeping an eye on, here's an interview from a few days ago with our newly confirmed Secretary of Transportation, who also happens to be the Senate Majority Leader's wife and the daughter of one of the richest men in China (who made his money as a financier).  She's promoting tolls and privatization as the 'out of the box' thinking that will save our entire national infrastructure.  The interview is below for those interested.

I'll celebrate her efforts to seek out and eliminate any corruption that may have been involved in the San Francisco commuter project subsidy.  But like I said, for those of us who are interested in these kinds of things, her plans for our entire national infrastructure might be worth keeping an eye on. 

 

 

[grilled_cheese]

Wow.  That was a pretty good speech she had prepared.  Stumbled a couple times but glad Hannity was there to tee it back up for her.  Her Wikipedia page is a pretty good read.  Seems like a really hard working American who pulled herself up by the bootstraps and didn't take any handouts!

[Guest]

Horrible interview, however public/private partnerships for rebuilding the nation's infrastructure are the only way to start paying for the massive backlog. 

I do hope that GCHEESE is being sincere in his admiration for Secretary Chao. I choose to give him the benefit of the doubt since tone is so difficult to interpret online. Her resume is quite impressive - MountHolyoke - Harvard Business - Bank of America - Citi Corp - Appointments by 3 Presidents - 36 Honorary Degrees - Not too shabby.

[Neigeville2]

On 3/6/2017 at 8:48 PM, grilled_cheese said:

Wow.  That was a pretty good speech she had prepared.  Stumbled a couple times but glad Hannity was there to tee it back up for her.  Her Wikipedia page is a pretty good read.  Seems like a really hard working American who pulled herself up by the bootstraps and didn't take any handouts!

Her father, James S.C. Chao, is a shipping magnate who founded the Foremost Group.^[63] In April 2008, Chao's father gave Chao and McConnell between $5 million and $25 million, which "boosted McConnell's personal worth from a minimum of $3 million in 2007 to more than $7 million"^[64] and "helped the McConnells after their stock portfolio dipped in the wake of the financial crisis that year."^[65]   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Chao#The_Chao_family

I could pull myself up if I had bootstraps like that.

[Guest]

Chao and Sen. McConnell, her husband inherited from between 5 and 25 million when her mother died...the horror. Money made by her immigrant father who started a successful global enterprise after fleeing a communist civil war. 

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by Guest

[Dale]

19 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

Chao and Sen. McConnell, her husband inherited from between 5 and 25 million when her mother died...the horror. Money made by her immigrant father who started a successful global enterprise after fleeing a communist civil war. 

 

I don't suppose he was a legal immigrant ?

[ruraljuror]

21 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

Chao and Sen. McConnell, her husband inherited from between 5 and 25 million when her mother died...the horror. Money made by her immigrant father who started a successful global enterprise after fleeing a communist civil war. 

 

 

The issue isn't the Chao's history, but the fact that they are among the super wealthy does create somewhat of a conflict of interest for two reasons--their families/business partners have the assets to participate in (and therefore profit from) the very public-private partnerships she's promoting, and they would also stand to be taxed the most heavily if we were to properly fund and maintain our infrastructure as we have traditionally throughout the history of our country.

When the interstate system was built, for example, the marginal tax rate over 90% on income over 400k.  In today's dollars, that's about 3.1 million.  Makes it easy to build a pretty substantial and impressive infrastructure with that kind of revenue coming in.  Given that the wealthy among those previous generations made such a significant contribution to create the infrastructure we already have in place, we could certainly maintain and expand upon that infrastructure with a substantially less 'taxing' arrangement.  I think something in the range of a 55% marginal tax rate for income earned about 5 mil would probably get the job done.

Of course that's where the conflict of interest comes in when you have billionaires making these kinds of decisions on behalf of public policy.  Obviously, they have a substantial amount to lose (or to patriotically contribute, depending on one's perspective) if infrastructure spending was funded as it had been traditionally.  On the other hand, tolls and public-private partnerships offer not only the opportunity to avoid the kind of tax increases that would be necessary to properly fund infrastructure spending, but also the opportunity for (often guaranteed, as in the case of private prison contracts) profit. 

But, other than the super wealthy who can avoid those taxes and profit from the partnerships, who is it that benefits from tolls and privatization of our infrastructure?  Certainly not the people who live in places where it's simply not profitable to maintain competent infrastructure. And for the people who do live where it's very profitable to maintain competent infrastructure, they can rest assured that the money that comes out of their pockets every time they pay the toll doesn't just cover the costs to maintain the infrastructure they're using, it also provides some significant juice that goes straight into the pockets of a private corporation instead of...I don't know...a governmental body who could use some of that money to help maintain infrastructure in those pesky non-profitable places.  

But how would it even work? Where does the extra value come from to make these profits possible?  If you think taxes are fickle, wait 'til you see surge pricing hit the tolls on the commute home.  Better still, how about real-time surge pricing on your home waterline during a drought--of course you have to buy the upgraded equipment if you want to know the actual price of the water coming out of your tap at any given micro-second, otherwise you just find out when you get the bill.

In short, I really don't understand what the possible appeal could be for the privatization of our infrastructure--except for the super wealthy, as noted--but I'd love to at least hear a good argument for it so that way I could at least understand the reasoning behind it. Regardless, I certainly don't appreciate Chao's attempt to dress it up as 'out of the box' creative thinking, as if this is some kind of novel concept. That sort of misleading framing does not give me confidence that she believes in the product she's selling. 

 

 

 

[jmtunafish]

A friend who lives in Smyrna posted this on Facebook today.  I thought it was pretty funny.

[rookzie]

4 hours ago, jmtunafish said:

A friend who lives in Smyrna posted this on Facebook today.  I thought it was pretty funny.

 

I think it's cool, that That Child has managed to amass such a sizable collection of cars at such a young age, as he appears to be, and given the benefit of any doubt that they indeed are all his.  I think he was coached into this, but he knows the value of not tearing up his stuff before it leaves the box, so when he gets to H.S, then maybe he'll be "found" by Joe Elmore and end up on "Tennessee Crossroads".