By Jim Cameron
It’s been a busy week on the transportation beat. Not much of it good:
Cheaper Cars? The US Dept of Transportation is rolling back Biden-era plans to require automakers to increase their fleet’s MPG. Rather than the goal of 50.4 mpg, the new rules will settle for 34.9 mpg by 2031. The White House claims this may save you $1,300 on the cost of a new car.
But savings on the sticker price won’t be free. Because the new cars won’t get the targeted mileage improvements, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates you’ll spend $1,624 more for gas over the life of your vehicle.
By the way, according to the industry ‘bible’, Kelley Blue Book, the average new vehicle in the US now costs $50,089, up almost 2% in one year.
That will puts new vehicle buyers in Connecticut into a higher tax bracket: 7.75% sales tax for “luxury cars” vs the usual 6.35%, meaning the average new set of wheels in Connecticut will now, legally, be a luxury.
Elvin Hernandez. Photo courtesy Hernandez family
Another Connecticut Dept of Transportation Death: For the second time in two years a Connecticut Dept of Transportation highway worker has been killed doing his job. Sixty-year-old Elvin Hernandez was doing road maintenance on I-95 when he was hit by a car that was driving on the grass on the right shoulder near exit 20.
The driver of that car, Edward Myers, also age 60, was arrested and admitted to officers he’d just used heroin. Myers was convicted of DUI this past April and has been on probation. He’s now being held on $2 million bond, charged with manslaughter.
Working alongside our highways with cars zooming by at high speed is a challenging and dangerous job. Recent efforts at placing speed cameras in work zones have seen some success. A pilot test for eight months in 2023 saw 24,900 warning notices issued to drivers but only 750 violations. During testing this spring cameras clocked 8.4 million cars passing the work zones, 1.36 million of them exceeding the speed limit. More than 150 drivers were clocked in excess of 100 mph.
Tariffs & New Rail Cars: Metro-North parent MTA (the Metropolitan Transportation Authority) plans to spend $23 billion on new rail cars, subway cars and buses. But the price tag is being inflated by $1 billion due to new tariffs imposed by the Trump administration on imported components. That’s enough money to buy 150 LIRR train cars, almost 1000 buses or more than 250 subway cars.
The White House tariffs on imported railroad gear “will not result in a [domestic US] railcar manufacturing boom; it will only raise costs for transit agencies at a time when other construction costs are skyrocketing” the MTA board was told this week.
That’s code for eventually “higher fares.”
BrightlineWest Brightline.com
Brightline: As I predicted weeks ago, this modern, stylish, for-profit passenger railroad in Florida has filed for bankruptcy. Ridership and fares are not growing as fast as hoped… revenue is less than half of what was predicted… so the railroad has had to restructure $2.5 billion in debt.
So much for the free market saving passenger rail, fueled by junk bonds.
Meanwhile, the railroad’s trains between Miami and Orlando will keep running.
However, Brightline’s plan for a high-speed line from Southern California to Las Vegas is already behind schedule and still hunting for money.
JIM CAMERON has lived in Darien for over 30 years. He serves on the Darien RTM and is Program Director of Darien TV79. He served 19 years on the CT Metro-North Rail Commuter Council, four as its Chairman. In 2014 he founded a new advocacy group, The Commuter Action Group which advocates on behalf of Metro-North riders. His newspaper column “Talking Transportation” runs in several newspapers as well as Greenwich Free Press. Archives can be found at www.talkingtransportation.blogspot.com
You can contact Jim at [email protected]