editorial

There is an especially misleading, ill-informed and - if we might editorialize - plain stoopid editorial on HOT lanes and tolling in The Washington Times November 1. Addressed to Virginia voters it attacks the McDonnell administration for "sticking stubbornly by its unpopular decision to convert Interstate 95 into one big toll road."

It cites a Quinnipiac University survey that, it says, found 52 percent of Virginias who "don’t want tolls."

A consultants' report on the North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) makes the amazing statement that the toller needs to realign its "racial composition." This is not Germany in 1935 or South Africa in 1955 but Texas USA in 2011, and the nasty and nutty report is apparently commissioned and paid for by the tollway authority in Dallas TX. The racial recommendations are quite prominent in a supposed "financial and performance review" of the toller.

Almost no one had heard of Shanksville Pennsylvania until 2001/09/11 but it's the most satisfying of the 9/11 stories to remember. The deaths on the UA93 757 plane that crashed in an open field near tiny Shanksville were no less tragic for those who died and their close-ones than the deaths of those who perished at the World Trade Center in New York or at the Pentagon in northern Virginia.

Here is a call for an Open Door for Japanese refugees from the earthquake/tsunami devastation.

It's 'innovative finance' writ large. The US President's budget for transportation provides for $556b surface transportation spending over six years, a 60% increase over the inflation-adjusted spending of the last six years, they say. And for 2012 the administration proposes $112b in spending (styled 'investment'), almost double 2011's outlays.

The White House budget chapter on transportation has a summary box called "Funding Highlights" but there's not a single mention of funding under that heading. It's a list of bullet points about proposed spending, called investments.

Arlington County has run up expenses of $546k on so-called lawyers supposedly challenging the VA/I-395 HOT Lanes in US District Court in Washington DC. The lawyers employed seem to have been recruited from the ranks of the more venomous bloggers, their law suit being full of fiery denunciations of USDOT as making an "outlandish" determination in approving the project, and as being "intentional" in flouting anti-discrimination laws.

Bill Kristol recently made a prescient point about our times and the leadership needed. The challenges we face, he argued, are not easy but they are quite simple. Sensible policies don't require any great subtlety of thought: "Commonsense and courage will suffice." He was talking about the challenges of terrorism, of government budgets, entitlements v self-reliance and the like.

An international roundup of weather problems by the Wall Street Journal sees this winter shaping up as one of the coldest in decades not just here in the US but around the world:

"While much of the US shivers, in Europe, the UK and France were bracing for a front of severe weather as heavy snowfall and ice caused widespread disruption to air, rail and road networks.

Maine Turnpike should ask HNTB for their money back on consulting fees on the York Toll Plaza replacement. HNTB as general engineering consultants have been providing false and misleading advice to Maine on the state of all-electronic tolling (AET).

Talk about trying to order back the tide!

Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun is fighting in the courts to try suppress a safety inspection report on his toll bridge. His lawyers cite national security and various confidentiality agreements.

Piffle. 100% piffle.

No report on the safety condition of a publicly used bridge can possibly be justified as "secret."