usdot

RITA is not the name of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. It's a federal agency you probably never heard of before - we hadn't - and stands for Research and Innovative Technology Administration. Part of USDOT, RITA has just released a survey of electronic toll collection technologies and how widely they're deployed across the US.

Reading USDOT's 'strategic plan' and listening to the chatter of US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood about the wonders of bicycles and other 'non-motorized transportation'  is enough to persuade most people that the monkeys have taken control of the National Zoo. Monkeys after all can learn to ride bicycles, but not cars.

Perhaps that's an unfair slur on our fellow primates?

One reader emailed us in concern. He thought from our piece on the USDOT's "strategic plan" and the environmentalists who seem to be in charge these days at USDOT that we'd be against sound walls and wildlife protection. He manufactures soundwalls and thought we were the enemy. Wrong. We love soundwalls. Seriously.

USDOT with a "Strategic Plan 2010-2015" reaches new depths of incoherence and sloganeering on behalf of an extreme green agenda. The inescapable conclusion from this Plan is that an organization that at times has housed decent transportation professionals has been thoroughly debased, and now is run by political hacks - who are anti-transportation, and thankfully, very incompetent.

USDOT's TIFIA office is short of money and has announced it is closing the open door to loan applications that it has operated back to passage of the original Transportation Infrastructure Finance Innovation Act (TIFIA) of 1998.

A press release from USDOT (11/16) “U.S. Transportation Secretary Slater Announces Final Rule on Steam Locomotives” reads: