Recent Streetsblog NYC posts about Economics

What Happened to the Proposed “Transportation Tax” on Wall Street?

By Elana Schor | Apr 5, 2010 | No Comments

For several weeks last fall, as members of the House infrastructure committee pushed for passage of a new six-year federal transportation bill as a strategy to rouse the economy from recession, a proposal to pay for the legislation with a small tax on oil futures trades attracted a healthy crop of Democratic cosponsors and some […]

Wanted: Crowd-Sourced Transportation Analysis

By Charles Komanoff | Oct 16, 2009 | 12 Comments

My recent post refuting David Owen’s attack on congestion pricing ignited a long, rich thread. Here’s one comment, from "Jonathan," that struck a nerve: [A] cordon-pricing plan … which doesn’t charge center-city residents could result in an increase in those residents’ automobile use. If the streets are free of outer-borough traffic, more of my Manhattan […]

How Much Would Most People Pay For a Shorter Commute?

By Elana Schor | Sep 10, 2009 | 3 Comments

Data: IBM’s CPI As Washington conventional wisdom has it, raising gas taxes or creating a vehicle miles traveled tax to pay for transportation is impossible during the current recession. After all, who would want to squeeze cash-strapped commuters during tough economic times? As it turns out, the public is very willing to pay for the […]

How to Judge “Cash for Clunkers”

By Ryan Avent | Aug 4, 2009 | 7 Comments

(Photo: NYT) At this point, it’s difficult to know exactly what the government’s "cash for clunkers" program is supposed to accomplish. Claims about its economic and environmental benefits are increasingly detached from reality, and the chief advantage of the program would seem to be that it "worked," in the sense that it was popular among […]

Report: Good Transit and Good Jobs Go Hand in Hand

By Sarah Goodyear | Nov 20, 2008 | 1 Comment

MARTA train in Atlanta, Georgia, where officials are studying the link between transit and job growth. How could federal job creation programs be greener? Making access to public transit a priority would be one way. A report called "Uncle Sam’s Rusty Toolkit," released today by Good Jobs First, details the group’s finding that federal job-creation […]

Reason to Like Rahm Emanuel as White House Chief of Staff

By Ben Fried | Nov 7, 2008 | 1 Comment

Spotted in today’s Times story on Barack Obama’s emergency economic agenda: Mr. Obama is coordinating with Congressional Democrats behind the scenes on the stimulus plans, which would include more jobless benefits, food stamps, aid to financially strapped states and cities, and spending for infrastructure projects that keep people at work. His chief liaison has been […]

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