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Tag protectionism

Obama administration sells transit out to protectionists (again)

I’m not sure how I missed this (actually, I have an idea – more on that in a minute), but back in February the Federal Transit Administration issued the following warning about strengthened “Buy America” transit procurement protectionism: Congress and the Obama Administration asked Americans to provide $787 billion to help avoid an economic catastrophe and restore and modernize America’s infrastructure.  In return, the Federal Government asks recipients of Recovery Act funds to be held accountable to the American public by using these resources to maximize opportunities to put Americans back to work and to support our domestic manufacturing industry. In order to support this goal, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will not consider any requests for a public interest waiver of FTA’s Buy America regulation for Recovery Act projects.  If issued, such waivers would allow recipients of Recovery Act funds to procure steel, iron, or manufactured products, including rolling stock, that are not produced or manufactured in the United States.  I will not waive Buy America for Recovery Act projects because such action would undermine the very purpose and intent of the Recovery Act—to preserve and create jobs in America.  In addition, FTA will continue to carefully scrutinize requests for waivers based on non-availability to determine whether suitable American-made alternatives exist, and if none do, whether the funds can be used in an alternative manner that fulfills the goals of the Recovery Act.  Similarly, FTA will examine requests for cost-differential waivers to determine whether the cost savings justifies the loss of American jobs, especially in critical manufacturing sectors.  By necessity, FTA will extend existing, standing waivers—for products exempted by the Federal Acquisition Regulation, microprocessors and microcomputers, and small purchases—to Recovery Act-funded procurements, although I encourage recipients to use their best efforts to carry out the intent of Congress and the Obama Administration […]

LaHood’s revealingly stupid reply to the WaPo’s HSR criticism

The WaPo earlier this week ran an editorial against California high-speed rail, and on Friday ran a response from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. As the dedicated anti-California HSR blog High-Speed Train Talk says, the letter does a pretty good job of summing up everything that’s wrong with the guy. The letter starts off with this stunningly ignorant comparison to highway building in the 1950s: If President Dwight D. Eisenhower had waited until he had all the cash on hand, all the lines drawn on a map and all the naysayers on board, America wouldn’t have an interstate highway system. And if it didn’t have an interstate highway system, maybe rail transportation wouldn’t have died out in the first place! We also learn that “put[ting] Californians back to work” is “perhaps [the] most important” goal of the project – a candid admission that this project is more about making work for union workers than it is about transportation. This was obvious beforehand – we will, after all, pay double for the HSR trains due to procurement protectionism – but it’s nice to see LaHood finally admit it. And just in case we still harbored any delusions about LaHood’s reasoning skills, he rounds the letter out with this blatant tautology: Focusing the total sum of our federal dollars in one project, as The Post suggests, is a poor strategy that will not serve our long-term goal of creating a national high-speed rail network.

The “Systemic Failure” of US transportation policy

Today I stumbled upon a blog that’s gotta be the best one I’ve found in a while. It’s about US transportation policy by a blogger who seems to be based somewhere in the Bay Area, and it’s called, fittingly, Systemic Failure. The post that first got my attention was this one about London’s bike sharing system likely being profitable in the future, which made me realize that this would be a great first government transportation program to privatize, especially considering that the government is keeping the price extremely low (it’s free for trips under 30 minutes) and the system is struggling to keep up with demand. I assume the reason that private companies didn’t try this earlier was that city governments have no framework for renting out small parcels of public space for use as bike racks – this despite having a vast infrastructure in place for renting similar parcels to drivers on a short-term basis (i.e., on-street parking!). But beyond that, (s?)he does a great job covering a range of transit issues, from the misguided attempts at federalization of transit safety by Obama after the WMATA Red Line crash in 2009 (1, 2, 3, 4) to the inanity of helmet laws (1, 2). The “Drunk Engineer” also offers blistering critiques of American protectionism in transit procurement, including one in which he describes the horrible inefficiency of Buy America provisions, which wreaked havoc on a Houston streetcar project and caused a Bay Area transit authority to have two completed Japanese pilot cars disassembled and shipped to the US where they would then be reassembled to conform with the law (another example here). Another interesting post that I found was this one about Senator Barbara Boxer’s insistence that Metrolink trains have two conductors onboard for safety reasons, despite the lack of […]

Airport Protectionism?

Richard’s Real Estate and Urban Economics Blog – Federalism and Taxis Taxicabs in the Washington area are regulated by various jurisdictions–DC cabs may not pick up fares in Virginia and Maryland, Virginia cabs can’t get passengers in the District and Maryland, and District Cabs are forbidden from pick ups in Maryland and Virginia. In New York, they charge an additional $15 surcharge fee to take a taxi to Newark, NJ. It seems like interstate protectionism to me, nudging me to use LaGuardia or JFK.

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