Transportation Needs An Economist's Mind, Not An Engineer's

"When it comes to large-scale programmatic changes, the majority's report suffers throughout from a major flaw. It reflects an engineering mind-set, when what 21st-century transportation needs is an economic mind-set. This is a long-standing concern of mine. I'm a graduate engineer, and have only ever had a handful of formal economics courses. Yet my views on public policy have been heavily shaped by what I've learned from economists over the past 30 years. I seem to have spent much of my transportation policy career trying to teach engineers to start thinking like economists."

"Engineers think in terms of "needs"-long lists of "it would be good to do" projects. They can always think up external benefits to justify boatloads of tax funding on things they like-such as the idea that citizens and companies always need a multiplicity of "transportation choices," regardless of whether those make sense as wise investments of always-scarce tax resources. The report is chock-full of this, with major proposed expansions of federal funding for inter-city rail and much greater use of mass transit, let alone waterway (locks and dams) projects, most of which would likely have costs far in excess of benefits."