THERE IS NO HERMAN HAUPT IN BELARUS.

The Russians would probably like to have railroad transport to the front, but that doesn't appear to be the case.  "There is currently no rail traffic from Belarus into Ukraine, and Russia is not using the railways between the two countries to bolster its invasion force in Ukraine, according to the head of the Ukrainian state railway."  Some of that might be job actions by railway workers, and I keep hearing of free agents hacking into Soviet era dispatching systems.

THE FOLLIES OF ROAD SOCIALISM.

With real gasoline prices approaching all time highs, an accumulation of technocratic follies interacts in predictable ways.  Start with Slate's Henry Grabar asking readers, "Is Your Car Too Big?"  Let us be grateful what he offers is relatively straightforward, without the sissy aesthetics and pickup truck shaming that often accompanies such editorializing.

It hasn’t been that long. The last time we had a run of high gas prices was from 2011 to 2014. True, prices then maxed out at just under $4 a gallon. But adjusted against wages or inflation, prices felt even higher then. It was a major issue in the 2012 presidential campaign. We adapted—by fracking the hell out of the Great Plains and becoming the world’s top oil producer — and the issue was basically forgotten.

Until now. Spurred by post-pandemic demand and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, oil prices have gone vertical. Some Democrats want a gas tax holiday; Joe Biden has blamed oil companies for not taking him up on the permits he’s offered, and drilling; Republicans say environmental policy is at fault. Some economists think Congress needs to offer financial guarantees to the fracking industry.

Obviously, everyone and their mother is mad, mad, mad about the high price of gas, in part because Americans now are back to driving just about as much as they did before the pandemic. We’re not going to the office, but we’re not staying home. From Virginia to Colorado, drivers are liable to pull up to the pump and be greeted with a sticker of Joe Biden, pointing at their total: “I DID THAT!”

Because he did, and his administration is still of two minds on the rising fuel prices.  Some members appear to be willing to let the price increases induce the kinds of substitutions price increases, particularly permanent price increases, do, and some want to soften the blow to people who made decisions based on price levels that were more or less customary apart from disruptions of the oil supply driven by world events.  (I'd be more inclined to view price increases as permanent if I saw something like the Hotelling pricing principle for exhaustible resources at work.)  Because it's not, consumers keep responding to gasoline prices differently as they rise when some world event gets in the way and fall when the background noise becomes manageable.

A look back at 2011 suggests an interesting counterfactual: What if, facing those high prices, we had made changes on the demand side instead? Believe it or not, this was what some people thought might happen. President Barack Obama took that moment (and the conditions created by the auto bailout) to set new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, known as CAFE, which put in place ambitious fuel efficiency goals for automakers. “Slowly but surely Detroit is shifting its attention from SUVs to cars,” All Things Considered reported in March of that year.

Yes, we've seen that dynamic before, as well as the difficulty of a one-size-fits-all fuel efficiency standard.  Mr Grabar will get back to us on some of that.  First, though, he raises yet another tradeoff.

Another artifact of that heady time not so long ago was the widespread sense that the American city was reclaiming its long-lost allure, prompted by a combination of those high gas prices, low crime rates, and generational change. In an emblematic column in the Harvard Business Review, “Celebrating $4 Gas,” the economist Matthew Kahn wrote that “some people (especially the young, older households, and those who work in the center cities) will increasingly live an urban life, occupying high density apartment buildings close to public transit and walking to stores.”

Of course, Americans did not wind up driving smaller cars, taking more public transit, living in smaller homes, or inhabiting more walkable places. In fact, we did exactly the opposite.

Had any of those things come to pass, we’d be much better positioned to weather sticker shock at the pump. It’s only going to get worse come summer, as road trip season arrives and pricier “summer blends” arrive from refineries. (Yeah, there’s a winter blend and a summer blend of gasoline, adjusted to evaporate at different temperatures.)

We have the environmental lobby to thank for that seasonal blending of fuels, and there are predictable higher prices this time of year as the refiners stop refining the winter stuff and the dealers attempt to stretch out their stocks of it so as to sell the last of it out just ahead of the day it must be off the market.  The allure of thickly settled areas isn't at great if there is a contagious disease about, particularly a contagious disease that the professional managerial classes attempted to depict as really scary.  In addition, higher transportation costs lead to steeper rent gradients, pricing some of the people who might want to live in the cities further from the city centers.

GOOD NEWS FOR CHILDREN OF ALL AGES.

The convention, years ago, was that the kids could play outside after school until the streetlights came on.

Under standard time, play time ends early much of the year.  Under all-year-round daylight saving time, play time ends at a reasonable supper time during the winter, and there's plenty of after-supper play time much of the year.

That diagram is from a Steven Taylor post in Outside the Beltway, with this summary.  "Further, the main issue of contention is the morning, as everyone gets a better sunset situation with DST."  The tradeoff is generally one of child welfare, as that extended playtime comes with a lot of school bus pickups (or kids walking to school, where that still happens) in morning darkness.  The end of two changeovers per year, though, means an end to that foolishness about gaining or losing an hour of sleep.  "[T]he change really does require a physical and mental reset twice a year."  Yes, and kids notice that they have to come in long before supper, and dogs probably notice the same thing, even though supper still comes at 5.30.

DON'T REOPEN THE CONCENTRATION AND PROFITS RESEARCH TOOLKIT.

Here's where we were, six years ago.

Once upon a time, before powerful computers and all matter of advanced methods for decomposing residuals, empirical research in economics looked relatively simple. For instance, one could dip into the Census of Manufactures, come up with a return on assets, regress it against the four-firm concentration ratio, and make an inference about the exercise of monopoly power. The economic tricks have gotten better over the years, but as a research question, this one appears to have gone out of fashion about thirty years ago.

In part, that's because the original research methods weren't precise enough to satisfy the econometricians, and in part it might be because the research findings didn't support popular narratives. "William G. Shepherd, then of the University of Michigan, published a paper arguing that about three-fourths of national income originated in "effectively competitive" industries by 1980; that improvement over about half of the income over the preceding twenty years reflecting antitrust enforcement and increased international competition."

Six years ago, it was political economists in the Obama administration suggesting the concentrated industries were taking an unreasonable toll.  Now, it's political economists from the Obama administration, and they're likely to be disappointed.

If the president and a gaggle of officials with Ivy League degrees say the market is overly concentrated – that we are being squeezed by the harmful effects of monopoly – does that make it a fact?

Not according to a new study sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and conducted by NERA, which Harvard Law Professor Emeritus Laurence Tribe has called “one of the foremost economic consultancies.” When NERA’s economists analyzed these claims, they found no general trend towards increasing industrial concentration in the U.S. economy from 2002 to 2017.

That's useful to know, as that's a trend of forty years of increased competition in the U.S. economy.

It's important to distinguish rising prices by exercise of monopoly power from rising prices by printing money.

A little history shows why: From 1979 to now, the prevailing standard for regulators and judges has been the Consumer Welfare Standard – by which mergers, acquisitions, and business practices have been judged solely by their impact on consumers. Under this standard, inflation had been at historic lows since the early 1980s. What changed in the last year? Did all the CEOs of America bump into each other on the golf course and decide to conspire against the American consumer? Or is it more likely we’re facing the consequences of historic levels of debt, “quantitative easing” and money printing, and record spending?

Higher prices that follow from an exercise of market power are reductions in economic welfare.  The economic welfare effects of monetary inflation are harder to capture, as well as to tie to specific companies.

GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

Judge Bans Alcohol at Eastern Michigan Fraternity.

A Michigan county judge issued a preliminary injunction banning alcohol and limiting the number of guests at a fraternity at Eastern Michigan University on Wednesday, The Detroit News reported.

The preliminary injunction against Delta Tau Delta was sought by city officials in Ypsilanti, the town where Eastern Michigan University is located, and Washtenaw County prosecutor Eli Savit, who filed a lawsuit against the fraternity in January. The lawsuit alleges Delta Tau Delta created a public nuisance in its fraternity house or on nearby properties “where 15 reported sexual assaults and other crimes fueled by ‘copious’ amounts of alcohol consumption have been reported,” according to The Detroit News.

All such injunctions do is move the parties further out of view, or perhaps to spring break settings.

TODAY'S CRACKER LINE.

During the American Civil War, the federal Anaconda Plan intended to take away the rebellious states' ability to supply themselves, and the rebels attempted the same trick to get rid of forces supposedly surrounded in Chattanooga in order to prolong the rebellion.  That didn't work out so well, did it?

Now Vladimir Putin is attempting his own Anaconda Plan, but he doesn't control enough of Europe's geography to make it happen.

The convoy was carrying 45 vehicles — retrofitted Jeeps, ambulances, an armored bank truck and an army field kitchen — as well as 24 tons of diesel. It had traveled overnight from Lithuania as part of a swelling supply network racing to catch up with the return of war to Europe. More than a dozen volunteer drivers, including one whose relief work was normally limited to helping motorists stranded on the highway, had driven hood-to-taillight almost around-the-clock to rendezvous with Ukrainian fighters.

While governments negotiate over fighter jets and high-end weapon systems, soldiers on the ground are struggling to fill more basic needs. With Ukraine’s own factories shut down by shelling, its forces rely increasingly on volunteer, pop-up supply chains like this one for vital gear, including body armor, medical supplies and the pickup trucks and SUVs they covet as fighting vehicles.

A second convoy was scheduled to arrive later in the day, packed with generators, radios, surveillance drones, night-vision gear and, most coveted of all, almost 7,000 bulletproof vests and helmets. For the soldiers, it is a lifeline.

These are primarily civilian efforts, although civilians in the former Captive Nations have long memories.

“I heard they needed bigger vehicles and four-wheel drives,” said Dainius Navikas, 43, a Vilnius management consultant who immediately thought of his black 2015 Grand Cherokee. “I had no choice. The Ukrainians are fighting for us.”

Navikas and wife drove the Jeep — along with an extra set of winter tires — to a designated garage on the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital. They found a lot packed with dozens of vehicles ready to be processed and shipped to Ukraine.

Some had been signed over by their owners. Others had been bought by Blue and Yellow.

“When they hear we are buying for Ukraine, a lot them of them drop the price immediately,” said Lukas Pacevicius, the owner of the garage, who has largely suspended his regular business activities.

Then relays of drivers get the materiel to the front.

With the sun still high, the convoy pulled out, flanked by a pair of Lithuanian police cars. Just outside of Vilnius, a group of people on a pedestrian bridge shouted and pumped their fists when the odd parade rolled under.

“It feels very important,” said one of the drivers, who like several volunteers spoke on the condition of anonymity due to a combination of modesty and security concerns. “We still have a lot of crazy Fifth-Column types around,” said another driver, referring to Russian sympathizers.

The convoy moved as fast as its slowest truck, about 50 miles an hour on average. At a gas station just before the Polish border, Lithuanian police handed off to their Polish counterparts. Sometime after 2 a.m., everyone pulled into a rest area north of Warsaw for two hours of sleep.

By dawn, forests had given way to rolling fields. The police escort kept their lights flashing and sounded their sirens as the trucks rumbled through red lights. Surprised locals stared from village sidewalks.

Nineteen hours and many cans of Red Bull later, the convoy pulled up at the unmarked entrance to Ukraine.

What we don't get to see might be more significant.

SOMETIMES RAILWAY PRESERVATION IS SIMPLY RAILWAY PRESERVATION.

I had originally flagged Steven Hayward's "So we can’t say 'steam engines' anymore with the frisson of a P.G. Wodehouse character?" for a Friday short take.  (I suspect Mr Hayward is Power Line's resident ferroequinologist.)  Then Reason's Liz Wolfe tied on to the story.

Richard Trevithick did not own slaves. He was a barely literate engineer, born toward the end of the 18th century, who grappled with—and ultimately solved—the question of how to improve the steam engine's size and efficiency. He's still getting canceled, though, or at least linked to the slave trade he played no part in.

Apparently, because Locomotion and the Steam Elephant and the rest helped Britannia rule the waves, and ships carrying slaves rode those waves, even Trevithick's work had to be "contextualized."  Does that contextualization include "reducing carbon dioxide emissions?"

The steam-powered locomotive was born out of necessity; in Cornwall, where Trevithick lived and worked at the time, there were few coal deposits, but lots of ore mining. Mine operators needed to conserve fuel and needed lightweight, more efficient engines to better transport materials to mining sites.

It's all so stupid, only an academician would believe it. "That he is now receiving posthumous dishonor, for sins of the British empire that he played no personal part in, is more a reflection of the social justice–obsessed times we live in than any fault of his."  And how interesting are museums going to be when every exhibit has to be "contextualized" by the most tendentious manifestations of presentism?

A HOLODOMOR READING.

It's the tradition at Common Dreams to publish an essay on the Irish potato famine as their St. Patrick's Day observation.  It's the nature of leftists to kill the buzz.  "For better or worse, St. Patrick’s Day is a brief period when people pay attention to all things Irish. It is a good time to revisit Ireland’s Great Famine and the refugee exodus it unleashed."  It continues in predictable ways.

During the first winter of famine, 1846–47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry — food that could have prevented those deaths.

The shape of the wound of famine was British colonialism and the capitalist system, which prized profit over the Irish poor. See our role play, “Hunger on Trial,” which can bring this insight to life in the classroom — and help students consider the roots of today’s unnatural disasters.

Note, though, the Contemporary Relevance that follows.

Michael Pollan notes in The Botany of Desire, “Ireland’s was surely the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly.” But if only this one variety of potato, the Lumper, failed, and other crops thrived, why did people starve?

Thomas Gallagher points out in Paddy’s Lament, that during the first winter of famine, 1846-47, as perhaps 400,000 Irish peasants starved, landlords exported 17 million pounds sterling worth of grain, cattle, pigs, flour, eggs, and poultry — food that could have prevented those deaths. Throughout the famine, as Gallagher notes, there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.

The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time.

More than a century and a half after the “Great Famine,” we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions.

Maybe something that happened halfway between the potato famine and today is relevant.  Hungry Irish who had the means to emigrate did.  Hungry Ukrainians during collectivization did not.  Applying Taylorist notions of standardization to agriculture, without market tests, tends not to end well.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Despite nuclear weapons now being available, natural boundaries are still useful for political divisions.  Even if somebody's going to suggest I'm a Russian agent for noting that to be true of the Dniepr.

Another short course in traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.  Some of the links are to longish articles.

KARMA COMES FOR THE LEGACY MEDIA.

No, the Sunday show panelists and moderators aren't Democrat operatives, not at all.  "During a rowdy and contentious panel segment on Sunday’s Meet the Press, panelist and NBC chief Washington correspondent and MSNBC host, Andrea Mitchell made the hilarious claim that she’s a journalist and not a Democrat."  A squabble of Crossfire-esque proportions ensued.

The lone Republican on the panel, Danielle Pletka, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, finally had a chance to weigh in. “I think President Trump's judgment on Russia and on Putin has not been awesome. I think Mike Pompeo misspoke,” Pletka said briefly before being cut off by Mitchell who took issue with what she said. “He said it several times,” Mitchell claimed.

Pletka replied: “I know Andrea, but I don't think that's what he believes.” Then the entire panel erupted and started shouting at Pletka as Todd failed to do his job as the "moderator."

Clearly flustered from being shouted at and not allowed to get a word in, Pletka put her foot down: “Hang on. First of all, there are four of you and one of me. I'm the only Republican sitting here. Hang on a second.”

Mitchell did not like being outed as a Democrat even though she outs herself every day on national television, including numerous times on the panel moments before.

She snapped back: “We're not Republicans or Democrats, we're journalists.” Todd then followed up gesturing towards Mitchell, Welker, and himself “well, three of us are.”

The truth is none of them are. They have proven time and again that they are leftist hacks who are disguised as journalists.

Danielle Pletka's role on Meet the Press is that of Kenny Jay or George Gadaske in wrestling, but the Sunday shows try not to deteriorate to squabbles of Seinfeld-esque proportions, let alone to jumping off the top rope, although it might be amusing to watch the truculent chipmunk, let alone Andrea Mitchell, jump off the top rope, or any rope.

Think that "leftist hacks who are disguised as journalists" is harsh?  Think again, dear reader.

It took the Gray Lady nearly 17 months to grudgingly concede even a fraction of what New York Post readers learned in October 2020. Of course, [New York] Times readers would have learned all that too if their paper was still in the news business instead of being a running dog for Democrats….And what’s the Times going to do about the e-mail where Hunter [Biden] complains to his daughter that his father takes half of his income from him?

To paraphrase Mohandas Gandhi, objective journalism would be a good thing.

TODAY IN ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY.

National Review's Madeleine Kearns chats with Harvard swimmer Schuyler Bailar, a female-to-male crosser who still swims with the real girls and failed to qualify for the national championships.

I think a lot of people think that they’re experts. I think most people do not care at all about women’s sports, for the most part. And we can see that by the fact that nobody watches the WNBA. . . . A lot of these people who are here do not care about the wage gap between professional women athletes, professional men athletes. People are not fighting against this rampant sexual abuse of girl athletes that’s happening all around the country. So, there’s a lot of things that people don’t care about within women’s sports until a trans woman wants to play, and suddenly everybody is a woman sports-fairness advocate. So, I don’t think that there’s much validity to their arguments.

Such a bundle of non-sequiturs.  It's possible that more people would watch the WNBA if that league would offer a value proposition to the general public, rather than the cloying wokery that makes their games high-end date night for lesbians.  Wage gap notwithstanding, a biologically confused mediocre basketball player might not be able to make any kind of a salary playing against the men, and yet turn into an instant dominating post player in the WNBA.  Likewise, Olympic gymnasts have done yeoman service calling attention to the grooming and pedophilia among team doctors.  That's unlikely to be a sport in which crossers will have an advantage, the former men being too clunky and the former women being too weak.

On the other hand, if you're a track mom or a swim dad, and you've given a lot of early mornings over to getting your girl to practice, you're going to be cheesed off if somebody who is not right in the head crashes your kid's sport.  Here's a British feminist, Kellie J. Keen-Minshull, who the alphabet people would likely smear as TERF, making that case.

I think that women have often been in a defensive position, trying to defend the attack on our rights. And I think actually, we need to be far more on the front foot, far more taking the conversation to the trans activists. The reason I had a confrontation in Atlanta today was the woman who calls herself a man sat in front of me and started cheering on Lia, you know, Will Thomas in a women’s race. And so, I felt it was necessary to actually have that conversation. Our rights are totally attacked, so we can never truly be agitators because our situation is presented by others and formed by others; we are merely responding to the attacks.

That "we can never truly be agitators" is woke silliness with a British accent.  By that logic, only people with privilege can be agitators, but to do so on behalf of people lacking privilege is inauthentic??

Ukrainian cities are on fire, and such is the state of intellectual discourse?  Let's see, when the final whistle sounds, whether the Ivy League is relevant in swimming.

A CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY.

From 15 Days to Two Years.

In March 2020, once-free citizens around the world surrendered their liberty and livelihoods in a futile attempt to “stop” a virus. The most technologically advanced civilization in the history of mankind quickly adopted medieval fixes that bordered on quackery, sold by snake oil salesmen in the credentialed class and news media, codified through executive fiat by elected leaders of both parties.

Tell us what's on your mind, Julie Kelly.

Trump’s catastrophic decision to acquiesce to the demands of Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx—the former a charlatan, the latter a dunce—and shut down the country two years ago this week was by far the worst moment in his presidency and rivals the worst moment in any presidency. As usual, however, Trump’s first instinct (the one he suppressed to appease those demanding we honor The Science™) was the right one. The cure should not be worse than the disease, he fretted. He knew it, but he listened to the quacks anyway.

The cure, of course, got worse. Emboldened by their success in forcing Trump to authorize the first 15-day shutdown, the then-adored Fauci and Birx took it a step further. With two dubious projection models in hand, the pair went to the White House at the end of March 2020 and convinced Trump to extend the lockdowns another month.

Bend over, here it comes again.

In the past couple of weeks, the UK and several countries in Europe, including Germany, France and Switzerland, are experiencing a new wave. At least 12 countries, geographically extending from Finland to Greece, are experiencing new increases in cases, some quite marked, such as Austria exceeding its pandemic peak, and Finland with an 85% increase from the prior week. Many of these countries are also showing a rise in hospital admissions.

This is the sixth warning from the UK and Europe to the United States.

Indications within the United States support the idea that new wave is already getting started.

You can bet the fearmongers will be back at it.

Add to all this is what is happening in China, which has fully relied on a zero-Covid policy, resulting in very little natural immunity, and vaccines that have weak efficacy against Omicron. Now this country is facing major outbreaks in two of its most populous cities, Shanghai and Shenzhen, and undoubtedly the whole country will be affected. We learned in 2019 that what happens in China doesn’t stay in China.

The time for American Covid denialism is long past.

You can bet the Karens will get back to doing what they do best.

Democrats didn’t reverse their COVID panic until they saw dismal polling results.

But will the public fall for it? Given what we’ve witnessed over the past two years, unfortunately, the answer might be “yes.” Millions of our countrymen have revealed themselves to be miserable sociopaths gratified by human suffering, especially that of children. These ghouls still rage at the sight of unmasked kindergarteners and college football stadiums filled with joyous students.

A healthy, or rather, unhealthy, portion of the American public will gladly do this all over again. They now mourn the fact that life is slowly returning to normal, continuing to wear two face masks in a sign of defiance and solidarity with their fellow nutcases. For its part, the Biden regime is keeping the re-entry door to lockdowns open just enough to blow it wide open again months from now if necessary; the useless face mask mandate on airplanes and mass transit, for example, has been extended until at least April 18.

Never mind the collateral damage to the children who are allegedly the reason for Democrats being Democrats.

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE.

Putin Receives Nobel Prize In Medicine For Ending COVID Pandemic.

News of the swift and nearly-miraculous end to a years-long pandemic came at a serendipitous moment for members of a certain American political party.

“While Putin should receive credit for ending this pandemic, President Biden also deserves praise for ending the pandemic and fulfilling yet another campaign promise like all of the other campaign promises he totally keeps fulfilling,” said Jen Psaki to a journalist and future coworker at MSNBC, “Yes, Putin’s magical ability to end this pandemic bodes well for any democrat running for reelection this November, but that’s just a happy, happy coincidence.”

Thanks to the Russian President’s decisive blow against the COVID pandemic, Democrat-run states across the U.S. immediately began lifting draconian, life-crushing, and statistically racist mask and vaccine mandates in workplaces, restaurants, and even schools. This great news about the scientifically plausible and immediate end to the pandemic is sure to be one of President Biden’s main talking points during his first State of the Union speech.

President Putin showed up in person to receive the Nobel Prize, and then asked to stay in the "super-secret Nobel Prize Compound" as he was hiding from mobs of angry Russian citizens for no apparent reason.

Reality, alas, is less funny.

LET'S MAKE THE OFFICIAL GUIDE GREAT AGAIN.

The High Speed Rail Alliance have released their Christmas list, er, recommendations for a national system of faster passenger trains.

The Federal Railroad Administration should create a national plan, as directed in the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act. The FRA’s existing regional plans are a good start, but large portions of the country are not accounted for. The most glaring omissions are connections between the Midwest and the Northeast Corridor; Texas and surrounding states; and many western states.

Those omissions are holdovers from the privately operated railroads. Missouri Pacific discontinued almost all of its once-extensive service from St. Louis through Little Rock and into Texas, and Texas to Denver is a bit of a traffic desert, while Penn Central eliminated any semblance of a corridor service west of Harrisburg on the former Pennsylvania Railroad lines or west of Buffalo on the former New York Central.

If you have a railroad atlas showing the principal trunk lines, circa 1950, you will understand the reference in the title to my post.

Our technical advisory committee in particular drew parallels to the planning of the Interstate Highway System. While construction began under President Eisenhower in the 1950s, the planning began in the 1930s. The interstate highway network was constructed by a variety of project sponsors and owners, but a national plan ensured that the system would work together as a whole and provide a similar experience nationwide. An integrated national rail plan can serve the same function, ensuring that passengers can travel throughout the country by train.

The national plan (as in the FRA’s regional plans) should also use the Integrated Network Approach: recognizing the power of network connections to create more opportunities to use the system and therefore increase ridership and revenue on each segment. Basically, this means offering connecting bus and other intermodal connections to boost ridership and make travel anywhere in the network as quick and convenient as possible.

Just as we have been saying for years.

In addition, this list would like some passenger-specific trackage under the tree.

The most glaring example is the need for a South-of-the-Lake Reroute (SOTL): a new passenger-dedicated mainline across northern Indiana. Several corridors linking Chicago to cities such as Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and New York funnel around Lake Michigan through northern Indiana. The FRA’s Midwest Regional Rail Plan recognizes that several of these city pairs have sufficient volume to warrant the construction of a 186-mph or faster high-speed line through this region.

This need for the SOTL has been recognized for decades. It would benefit many states, and would indirectly benefit the entire country. In fact, Amtrak first designed a new routing in the mid-1990s. However, the current state-driven process for seeking funding has meant that this project has not moved forward. In large part, this is because most of the needed infrastructure will be located in Indiana, where top political leaders to date have had little interest in the project.

We can’t allow individual states to hold up progress for the rest of the country. The FRA should identify a way within current law to actively lead this on projects like this, and seek a sponsor to implement their construction. In this way, ordinary changes in political control and priorities in individual states need not hold up what the rest of us need.

I wonder if there's a way to subcontract such a project to Brightline?  A purely governmental operation is too likely to be hamstrung by rent-seekers.  On the other hand, the right sort of offer to the freight railroads, perhaps involving the restoration of tracks that were once there, is not off the shopping list.

Our technical committee argues against investing in major improvements to core routes that would need to be shared with privately owned freight railroads. Sharing the same lines for both freight and passengers has certainly led to many woes and delays for Amtrak and its riders.

Nonetheless, the Alliance has long argued that our plans must make sense for America’s largest freight railroads (sometimes referred to as the Class 1 railroads—companies you might have heard of, including Union Pacific, BNSF, or Canadian National). These railroads, which currently own most of the track that Amtrak uses, have a vested interest in improvements to their infrastructure. The FRA should encourage the railroads to take the lead in creating a service development plan for the Amtrak routes they operate.

Let's see what happens, or if improved passenger trains again become a political hobbyhorse.

VILLANOVA BEATS MICHIGAN STATE.

That's not an implausible outcome for the ongoing men's basketball tournament. and it's not unknown for Arizona to be an early out.  I'm referring, though, to Inside Higher Ed's Academic Performance Tournament, which has some play value, subject to the disclaimer, "We wouldn’t suggest using our bracket predictions to guide your office pool picks, let alone to bet your paycheck."

THE TECHNOCRATIC VISION BACKFIRES.

Another decade, another fuel price scare, another misinterpretation of suburbanization.

“In the US we really saw an increase in automobile use in the post-world war two period, the baby boom generation. At that point in time, we had this new availability of relatively inexpensive mass-produced automobiles, this is the first time that people from middle income households can purchase a motor vehicle,” said Gregory Rowangould, the director of the Transportation Research Center at the University of Vermont and an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering.

“And at the same time you have soldiers returning from world war two, starting families, we have a huge population boom, so there’s also a need for more housing.”

At the time many cities were polluted, noisy and generally less attractive, Rowangould said. It led to a boom in the construction of suburban housing: cars and the suburbs went hand in hand.

“That has just been a pattern in the US that, once started, it’s been really persistent.”

The construction and planning of these new suburbs rarely included viable bus or train options. Many new neighborhoods didn’t have walkable amenities either. Now, people needed cars to go shopping, or take their kids to the swimming pool, and certainly to get to work.

Residential density makes getting to work or going shopping using the transportation company easier, perhaps at a greater risk of a plague running rampant. At the same time, though, orderly zoning appealed to the brains trusts of the era, and the rapid transit services that might have been laid down in anticipation of people building further from the cities was gone, a Depression era casualty of the Public Utility Holding Company Act.   Thus we get the exurban development pattern.

That's not to say people might not change their behavior if the incentives are right.

Many of the people in those areas live in homes in the suburban sprawl, rather than in the city itself, however, and to really successfully implement a shift away from cars, some believe there has to be a shift in the very way we live – by moving people back towards the center of cities.

“If we really want to move the needle on this, we are talking about people’s lives changing and we are talking about people living differently, and I don’t want to understate that,” [planning company engineer Christof] Spieler said.

It's possible that the needle might move for a variety of reasons, and the best thing for the Wise Experts to do is to lie down until the urge to micromanage goes away.  "In the same way that the American High built environment emerged piecemeal, whatever comes next is also likely to take shape piecemeal, although some experiments might be more successful than others."  In addition, thinking about your regional transportation authority like a business might work: connect the nodes where the most potential riders are first.

3.14159 ...

Today was a gorgeous day for a walk to the coffee shop during the three p.m. hour, so no Pi Day post at just before 4 pm.  Here's a recollection from a few years ago, about the role of pi in the trigonometric funtions.  Although radians aren't intuitive, particularly if you're brought up on degrees, there are a few tricks following therefrom for capturing the jagged with the smooth.

And, if you're worried about having some pie during Lent, recall that sin(π) = 0; and if you've had some pie, your sin actually decreases if you have a little more!

Apparently, today is also National Potato Chip Day.  Time to sine off and chow down.

NO PENN CENTRAL UNIVERSITY.

We had some fun last year with Pennsylvania university officialdom pursuing some operational economies, or something, combining a few state colleges that will not be busting any brackets anytime soon.  "We could call the first grouping the Great Western and the second grouping the Great Northeastern."

Almost.

The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education Board of Governors has chosen a name for the new institution that will oversee Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield Universities: the Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania.

The board voted in July to merge six universities into two. Bloomsburg, Lock Haven and Mansfield now exist under one umbrella institution in the northeastern part of the state, while California, Clarion and Edinboro Universities have become one institution in the western part of the state. Each campus will retain its own name and brand identity. Existing foundations and alumni associations will also remain separate, and each campus will continue its athletics programs, logos, colors and mascots.

In October, the board decided on Pennsylvania Western University as the umbrella name for California, Clarion and Edinboro Universities.

Reality has not yet weighed in.

GOVERNOR PRITZKER TRAILS BY 19,580.

The geographic area and population of Illinois are both similar to those in Sweden, and there are similarities of the Chicago and Stockholm metropolitan areas.  But  Springfield politicians are hazardous to your health.  Although the indoor mask mandate for eateries and the like expired at the end of February, and the school kids are being allowed to breathe again, Governor J. B. Pritzker (D-Lake Geneva) has not relinquished his ability to micromanage and destroy local businesses.  I am pleased to report that the indoor mask mandate for eateries and the like will be expiring in two weeks, on 28 February, although children of all ages will still be subject to the Biden muzzles.

It is time for a reckoning.  Kevin "Healthy Skeptic" Roche counts the ways.

On behalf of the public, I would like an apology from those responsible for the disastrous handling of the epidemic response.

Our public health experts owe us a very, very large apology for seeming to be completely ignorant of basic tenets of respiratory virus disease and epidemiology. These experts and our political leaders were the worst of the worst during the epidemic, in large part because they planned and implemented the terror campaign.

Every message and pronouncement invoked danger and safety. We were basically encouraged never to leave our homes and never interact with friends, family, or strangers. We were led to believe that if we contracted the virus we would certainly be hospitalized, die or transmit it to some vulnerable person.

In their monomaniacal obsession with Covid-19, these public health dunces also ignored the broader health of the citizenry, to which they have done immense and lasting harm. They hid data, made up data, and ignored research, all to support their beliefs, and they were just beliefs, about how best to address the epidemic. The actions of the public health authorities we are told to rely on were disgraceful and frankly all but a few should be fired.

There's much more at the link, including this indictment, which could be applied with little amendment to the potbellied dictator in Springfield.

Our own governor was a classic case: the inestimable Incompent Blowhard and Prevaricating Weasel, using a model known to be flawed to terrify Minnesotans into believing tens of thousands of them would die even if we followed his complete shutdown orders, at every briefing promoting fear, lying about the effectiveness of his suppression orders, hiding and massaging data to support those orders, even when he had evidence they made no difference, and never, ever once taking responsibility for the consequences of his actions. Unfortunately, he fit right in with most of our other governors and the federal administrations during the epidemic.

The good news is, the people have a say.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker is the “favorite” to win a second term but it won’t be a “walk in the park” —no matter how deep his billionaire pockets.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot is in so much political trouble she may want to consider not even trying to get reelected.

That’s the no-holds-barred assessment from David Axelrod, an astute political strategist who has helped to elect mayors, senators and the nation’s first Black president.

Turf them out. There are others.

A service called Worldometers has been keeping track of coronavirus infections and deaths, disaggregated in a number of ways.  With local, state, and federal governments in the United States changing the way they count infections (and they might be rethinking how they classify deaths) I'm not sure how valid any numbers, even from a service consistently used from month to month, is.

The latest report from Sweden counts 2,466,577 infections, up by 69,247 from last month, and 17,765 deaths, a change of 1,120 from that report.  The logic in Sweden is that the spike of the latest variant is over.

The latest report from Illinois counts 3,048,042 infections, an increase of 46,271 over last month, and 35,998 deaths, adding 1,347 to the Pritzker Body Count in one month.  Fewer additional infections, more deaths.  Tell me again how effective all the extra mitigations have been.

As of this afternoon, the state counts just over 21 million doses of the various vaccines administered; they've updated their talley to disaggregate among finished and partial vaccinations.  The state no longer counts the scary variants.  The current mix of infections is low on Delta, and high on Xi Omicron.

These posts will continue, less frequently, as long as update information is available.

At Valentine's Day, the governor trailed by 19,533.

At the National Day of Service, the governor trailed by 17,062.

Note the time series: a margin of terror that used to be growing by hundreds in a week was growing by  less, that is, until the ukases went back into effect.  We're still adding around a thousand in a month.  The details for earlier in 2021 and the end of 2020 are on page 2.  Tell me again how all this micromanagement is for our benefit?

TODAY ON THE UNUSUAL OCCURRENCE REPORT.

It's always important to have the brakes set, the reverser centered, and the controls disabled by taking the brake and reverse levers with you.  Otherwise, somebody might be led into temptation.

On Friday morning, March 7, 1958, at 2:10 a.m. at the Calumet Rail Yards, a Chicago and Northwestern Railroad train crew, with their train parked and running, disembarked to take a breakfast break.

When they returned after breakfast, the engine and nine cars were gone.

The train traveled 10 miles and went through 20 crossings before the engine and two box cars smashed through a dead-end obstruction, traveled 60 feet, and plunged into 18 feet of water in the Two Rivers harbor.

It wasn't the sort of neglect that led to Lac Megantic being destroyed. Nor was it an Andrews raid. But somebody tampered with the train. "Further investigation by police found that someone had boarded the engine and advanced the throttle. The train was traveling at an estimated 50 to 60 mph before it took the plunge into the harbor." It's still an unsolved cold case.