rail

Wilbur Smith Associates (WSA) record of traffic and revenue forecasting is blasted in a study done by a retired federal government economist Terry Maynard for the Reston Citizens Association (CRA) in northern Virginia. The report supports a call for an independent review of the WSA/CDMSmith traffic and revenue forecast of the Dulles Toll Road.

Former Hawaii Governor Ben Cayetano announced he was coming out of retirement to run for  Honolulu Mayor on a platform of ending the hugely expensive Honolulu rail project. 

Montgomery County is leading toll revenue and engineering studies and public outreach for major rail and road improvements in the US422 corridor northwest of Philadelphia to be funded by collecting all-electronic tolls on the presently untolled highway.

Virginia House speaker William Howell says the Dulles Rail project proposed for the median of the Dulles Toll Road and Dulles Greenway is an "incredible waste of money" and may actually worsen traffic conditions in northern Virginia by encouraging higher density development. Future ownership of the Dulles Toll Road is at stake in the controversy over the $5 billion rail project.

Timothy W Martin secretary of the Illinois Department of Transportation 2003-2007, now a senior VP of CTE/Aecom said at a conference recently that Chicago doesn't need toll express lanes because it has something better - passenger rail lines in expressway medians. They carry far more people than the same space devoted to highway lanes, he claimed.

This is nonsense, but it's commonly held nonsense. An urban myth.