Dan Coleman's blog

Yesterday, the John Locke Foundation sponsored a conference whose aim was apparently to trash rail plans for the Triangle. You can read about it in the Herald.

Some interesting excerpts:
The American dream is being challenged by "misguided planning policies" and doctrines "that call for greater government control over development, housing, transportation and consumer choice."

"mass-transit is a dollar-gulping failure"

"the cost of each passenger mile in an average car was 20 cents, compared to 60 cents for each mass-transit passenger mile. In most U.S. locations, each new rider could be provided with a leased car for his or her entire lifetime for the cost of building a mass-transit system,"

It sounds like this conference could just as well have been planned by the highway industry. The comments above reflect a glaring failure to understand federal and state transportation subsidies, the incredible success of transit in many major cities in the US and around the world, and American history.

To move away from the heat of the recent campaign but keep the focus on the relevance of campaign spending on local races, I’d like to look back at 1995. After that election, the Herald did an analysis of spending per vote for all the candidates. The results are pretty instructive. (Note: we can’t do that analysis for this year until February when the final spending reports are in.)

First and third place Chapel Hill finishers, Capowski and Andresen, spent almost the same amount per vote: $1.34 and $1.32 respectively

Second place finisher Chilton was low-spender among the winners at only $0.46 per vote. That helps explain his reputation as a savvy campaigner. (Chilton was also a strong proponent of the voluntary spending limits initiated that year by the Greens and Sierra Club).