Post Tagged with: "President Obama"

Let’s Stimulate Smart Highways

February 24, 2009 at 1:05 am

(Source: Forbes.com)

California’s HOT expressways are on the rise but need our government’s financial support.

The “stimulus” legislation just signed into law by President Obama includes billions of dollars for transportation and infrastructure, with little regard as to whether the projects meet any serious national or regional need other than supposedly creating or “saving” jobs.

Like other goods and services in a market economy, transportation and infrastructure projects should respond to the public’s willingness to pay, not to politicians’ eagerness to spend. If the Obama administration really wants “change,” as it claims, it should change the way transportation projects are selected and financed, emphasizing market-based approaches. A good place to start would be with the $27.5 billion the stimulus bill proposes spending on highway, bridge and road projects.

If Washington insists on spending more on highways, it should at least spend it intelligently, rather than throwing it willy-nilly at projects politicians have declared “shovel-ready.”

An example of smart spending would be urban networks of “high-occupancy or toll” (HOT) expressways that accomplish specific objectives, such as increasing accessibility and reducing congestion and air pollution.

Click here to read the entire article.
Read more Comments Off

Prospects Dim for Marine One Upgrade

February 23, 2009 at 11:55 pm

(Source: WashingtonPost.com)

The prospects for building a new fleet of high-tech presidential helicopters darkened yesterday, after the new commander in chief called the costly Bush administration effort an example of military procurement “gone amok” and said he thinks the existing White House helicopter fleet “seems perfectly adequate.”Marine One in Chicago.jpg

President Obama’s remarks at the opening of a meeting with lawmakers on fiscal responsibility did not rule out finishing the program, now expected to cost more than $11.2 billion, or nearly twice the original estimate. He joked that he has not had a helicopter before, so perhaps “I’ve been deprived and I — I didn’t know it.”

But Obama’s disclosure that he had asked Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to conduct a “thorough review of the helicopter situation” amounted to a shot across the bow of large defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, the helicopter’s manufacturer. In recent years, contractors have experienced multiple cost overruns — totaling $300 billion on the 95 largest military programs, according to the Government Accountability Office — without incurring substantial penalty.

Click here to read the full article.

Read more Comments Off

Breaking News: Obama nixes plan to tax motorists on mileage

February 20, 2009 at 7:56 pm

(Source: Associated Press via Yahoo.com)

President Barack Obama on Friday rejected his transportation secretary’s suggestion that the administration consider taxing motorists based on how many miles they drive instead of how much gasoline they buy. “It is not and will not be the policy of the Obama administration,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters, when asked for the president’s thoughts about Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s suggestion, raised in an interview with The Associated Press a daily earlier.

Gasoline taxes that for nearly half a century have paid for the federal share of highway and bridge construction can no longer be counted on to raise enough money to keep the nation’s transportation system moving, LaHood told the AP.

“We should look at the vehicular miles program where people are actually clocked on the number of miles that they traveled,” the former Illinois Republican lawmaker said in the AP interview.

To read the entire article, click here.

Read more Comments Off
1 … 10 11 12