Tag Archives: civilengineering

More on Budget Cuts

Leave a reply

Secretary Lahood isn’t letting up, insisting that furloughing FAA air traffic employees is the only way he can balance the DOT books if he’s forced to cut a billion dollars. Standing in front of the White House emblem saying things like this,

“I think Republicans need to step up here,” said LaHood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois. “This requires compromise. This requires Republicans stepping forward with some ideas about how to keep essential services of government running at the level that people have been accustomed to.”

the politics is obvious.

The Secretary of Transportation should be a problem solving guy not a rank and file politician.

More on DOT Budget Cuts

Leave a reply

CNN’s Candy Crowley did an interview with DOT Secretary Lahood and challenged him on the effects of the sequester budget cuts. So glad I’m not the only one dumbfounded by the whole “we have to furlough Air Traffic Controllers” line of thinking.

At one point Lahood says the following:

Well first of all, we’re required to cut $1 billion. The largest number of employees at DOT is at FAA of which the largest number are FAA controllers. We’re going to try and cut as much as we possibly can out of contracts and other things that we do. But in the end there has to be some kind of furlough of air traffic controllers. And that, then, will also begin to curtail or eliminate the opportunity for them to guide planes in and out of airports. It’s a big part of our budget.

How do you take the following numbers and come up with $600 million in cuts to the FAA and furloughing 47,000 employees?

  • DOT FY 2013 budget is $74.5 billion.
  • FAA FY 2013 budget is $15.2 billion.
  • FAA Operations FY 2013 budget is $9.7 billion. (Air Traffic Control is a part of this $9.7 billion, not the entirety)
  • DOT FY 2013 budget cuts are $1 billion.

Politics and not problem solving.

DOT and Budget Cuts

2 Replies

Ray Lahood, Secretary of Transportation, says that DOT will have to cut nearly one billion dollars as part of the “sequester” that goes in effect if the President and Congress can’t agree on a budget. First of all, let’s just call the sequester what it is, a budget cut.

Now, no one wants to cut their budget. No person, no family, no company, no governmental agency. But when you’ve got runaway spending, no budget, and lots of debt there is really only one intelligent course of action… you spend less.

Secretary Lahood says the following in his statement on the budget cuts,

At DOT we will need to cut nearly a billion dollars, which will affect dozens of our programs. Over $600 million of those cuts will need to come from the Federal Aviation Administration – the agency that controls and manages our nation’s skies.

DOT has submitted a FY 2013 budget of about $74.5 Billion. Of that, the FAA accounts for about $15.2 Billion, or about 20% of the DOT’s budget. If the FAA accounts for 20% of the DOT budget why would they be expected to shoulder 60% of the DOT’s budget cuts ($600 million in FAA cuts divided by one billion dollars in DOT cuts)? Why so disproportionate?

Lahood only makes matters worse as he continues:

As a result of these cuts, the vast majority of the FAA’s nearly 47,000 employees will be furloughed for approximately one day per pay period until the end of the fiscal year and in some cases it could be as many as two days.

To save $600 Million the DOT is going to basically take it out of FAA employee’s paychecks. The FY 2013 budget for FAA includes over one billion for NextGen, the new radar and air traffic control system. Surely that can be trimmed to prevent cutting paychecks of employees.

For that matter, if we broaden our look at the entirety of the DOT’s budget we can find a lot of areas to cut spending without impacting the FAA so deeply and cutting into employee paychecks. The FY 2013 budget calls for $4 Billion in spending, under the Federal Highway Administration, on the Livable Communities Program.

Again, from Secretary Lahood:

Livability means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or Post Office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids at the part – all without having to get in your car.

So the Federal Highway Administration is spending $4 Billion on getting people out of their cars? That may be a good and responsible use of DOT dollars, but it sure seems like low-hanging fruit compared to FAA employee paychecks when it comes to budget cuts.

This seems like a great example of Problem #3, Politics Trumps Solutions. Secretary Lahood’s statement is nothing more than another swing in the Washington DC political fistfight over spending cuts. The cynical side of me says the Secretary of Transportation is proposing his cuts so as to provoke as much alarm as possible. Cutting pay to FAA employees and cutting the hours at Air Traffic Control towers is certainly going to sound ghastly once the media runs with it.

Why isn’t anyone challenging the decision-making behind these cuts? I find it hard to believe that the DOT can’t absorb what would amount to a 1.3% cut in their FY 2013 budget.

NYC Taxi Issues

Leave a reply

So many problems in this article about trying to update the taxi system in New York City.

  1. Livery cabs in NYC are not allowed to pick up street hail passengers. A measure to changes this outside Manhattan is bend held up in court.
  2. A proposed e-hail system that would allow people to use their smartphone to hail a cab is being held up in court.
  3. Implementing a new, more fuel efficient taxi model in NYC is also being held up in court.
  4. NYC is trying to accept a contract from Nissan for this more fuel efficient taxi that will give them sole source power for new cabs in NYC.

To put it simply, a bunch of competing special interests are tying up and preventing improvements to the NYC taxi system. This is all possible because of a quagmire of administrative rules and laws that NYC has enacted to regulate the taxi industry. What a mess.

I’ve never understood why the yellow taxis are predominantly Ford Crown Victorias. They are gas guzzlers. Why aren’t some of the companies using Honda Civics, Toyota Corollas, Chevy Malibus, of even smaller cars?

Why is it illegal for one group of cabs to pick up street hail passengers and illegal for another group of cabs to accept pre-arranged pickup?

What NYC seems to have is a bunch of different taxi services that have a monopoly on their respective service. When there is a desire to add value or improvement for the customers it gets mired in regulatory court battles as these monopolies try to protect their turf.

Seems like the whole business could be greatly simplified. Create a simple system of standards for the cabs and allow operators to pick the cars they want to match those standards. Let companies accept passengers in whatever form… street hail, pre arranged over the phone, regularly scheduled, smartphone app, etc. I’m sure there is a need for more regulation and rules than I’m aware… but from the article above I’m also sure there is currently far too many regulations and rules. Consumers, as well as the industry, seem to be suffering for it.

Aircraft Innovation/Technology

Leave a reply

Thinking further on the problems enumerated in the Boeing article by Eamonn Fingleton the recurring theme is government subsidization of Boeing’s competition. A few questions with no palatable answers:

  1. How can they afford NOT to outsource production to Japan when the government is underwriting the costs?
  2. How do they handle a competitor (Airbus) who is so heavily supported by local governments?
  3. What policies can the US government promote that will strengthen Boeing against these problems?

Mr. Fingleton makes a key point… free trade isn’t really free trade when it is one sided. We’ve opened our doors to the world and other governments are essentially “buying” our high-value manufacturing through subsides on their end.

I don’t think direct government subsidies to Boeing is the answer, those never work as intended. How about tax incentives for US manufactured components? Or perhaps trade tariffs on Airbus aircraft to equalize the subsidies that Airbus receives from the various EU and European governments? Any other ideas?

Unintended Consequences: CAFE Standards

Well, it appears that CAFE Standards are going to be effective enough to reduce the tax revenue from the gas tax. The CBO is reporting that over the next 10 years revenue from the gas tax will be reduced by $57 billion.

This makes sense and actually indicates the CAFE Standards are having the desired effect… increasing fuel efficiency and thereby reducing consumption for gas vehicles.

What’s disappointing is the that CBO proposes solutions that really just address the symptom. This from autobloggreen:

The CBO suggests three ways to deal with the shortfalls: do nothing (i.e., keep on transferring money from the general fund), spend less on highways and mass transit or raise the gas tax (or other taxes and direct them to the Fund).

The problem is that under this system not only are the true costs of the infrastructure hidden from the end user, but many hybrid and electric vehicles will be getting a “free ride”. Hybrid and electric vehicle use, and therefore wear and tear, of the infrastructure occurs without those operators sharing the cost of the infrastructure.

Simple solution… usage tax. Pay per mile (or your unit of measure of choice).

More at The Detroit News.

More on Ending Ehthanol Subsidies

From The Economist, Fiscal Sobriety:

Taking everything into account, ethanol releases almost as much carbon dioxide as petrol does. As Michael Greenstone, the director of the Hamilton Project, a liberal research group, puts it, “Ethanol is largely farm support policy, not environmental policy.”

This is a good first step in addressing Problem #2 and revealing the true costs of our transportation system.

Federal Ban on Handheld Cell Phone Use in Cars

The Infrastructurist has a post about Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood’s efforts to ban cell phone use while driving.

Beyond these basic guidelines, the bill directs the Department of Transportation to conduct a thorough study of distracted driving and, within two years, to recommend a standard of minimum penalties for the offense. States that refused to comply with this standard in a timely manner would have a portion of their highway funding withheld (McCarthy suggests 25 percent) — a penalty modeled on current federal blood-alcohol content standards.

Typical Federal government here.

Do we really need a thorough (ie. expensive) study of distracted driving? C’mon! We’ve all been stuck behind the guy on the cell phone who isn’t paying attention to traffic… and many of us have probably even been that guy. Also, rather than an outright ban, they are going to set a standard of minimum penalties and then extort the States into adhering.

Spend more money than necessary to study a problem, develop a set of penalties, and in the end pass along all cost of enforcement to the individual states.

Dallas’ Suburb Commuter Train

The Transport Politic has a write-up on the just-opened Denton County A-Train. He makes a couple salient points I’d like to highlight here.

The whole route, including the 8-minute connection? About 80 minutes. Compare that to the express bus service between Denton and Dallas that was offered until now, which could make the link in about one hour.

The now-longer ride will not provide much convenience for people who make the daily commute, and in terms of speed itself it is a downgrade from the old service (though of course the train offers more station stops).

There were better alternatives to this commuter line but…

The fact that Denton County is not a sales tax-paying member of DART (but rather operates its own agency, DCTA) poses a major obstacle; why would DART make an effort to incorporate services by another entity into its plans if the two did not cooperate? This project may come to be interpreted as yet another failure of American metropolitan areas to act regionally.

Politics trumped solutions. A private entity wouldn’t have made this mistake. We need to find a way to enable private companies provide these services.

A final excerpt:

…perhaps the greatest success of the project’s backers was getting it funded in the first place through the creation of a 1/2-cent sales tax in 2002, approved by the electorate by a wide margin, and the redirection of road tolls, which covered 80% of the cost (no federal dollars were involved to speed up the process).

Three thoughts here.

Firstly, wow! A locally-funded commuter rail line with no federal money! Excellent. Folks will vote to fund transportation solutions that they need. Why send the money to Washington when the local entities can handle it? Conservative or Liberal, if the project makes sense and betters the community, folks will do what it takes to fund it.

Secondly, funding this with road tolls was an innovative idea. I wonder if they’ll continue to fund operations out of road tolls.

Finally, note that one impetus for funding this project locally was that Federal dollars would have slowed down the project. Politics trumps solutions. The more government you involve the more politics get involved.