A few weeks ago I wrote that China’s urbaniztion policy was driven by the state’s desire to make households less self-sufficient, to get people trading their labor for goods and services, because the state reaps a share of formal transactions but not household production. I noted this answer was more likely than Dr. Karl Smith’s [...]

My roommate Victor Powell has made an illustration of the Central Limit Theorem that is getting a lot of attention online. It’s made in d3.js which is what we’re using at the Visualizing Urban Data ideaLab. We are making one right now about fat-tailed distributions a la Taleb. Here is the CLT:

The FHWA has released a statement about driverless vehicles and the New York Times has the story here. The FHWA is being pretty liberal right now. In the future I expect less tolerance, especially once representatives of those who drive vehicles professionally start getting concerned. Teamsters, livery associations, etc. Even without pressure groups, driverless vehicles face [...]

Karl Smith poses a theory about China’s absurdly high rates of investment: I think the Chinese government is…willing to lose money on its capital investments in order to provide jobs for people moving to the city. This is a smart move if you think cities produce agglomeration effects. With apologies to the less wonkish, China [...]

As an avid blogosphere consumer, I’ve become intrigued by what policies are perceived as exercises of government power. What counts as coercion? Recently, the Antiplanner argued in favor of allowing food stamp recipients to spend food stamps on junk food: It would be one thing if NCPPR were arguing that SNAP is a waste of [...]

This summer I’m working at a startup that uses control theory to prevent bus bunching.Their first pilot is running in San Sebastian, and right now the team is at a transit conference in Geneva hawking their wares. Anyway, I made these promo videos to explain: and an animation:

Last week I had a post about why my roommate, who is a talented computer programmer, only works a few hours per week. It turns out that a much better explanation is that he is a terrible computer programmer because he accidentally deleted priceroads.com. Now I’m back in action but it will take a while [...]

Over at Marginal Revolution, Tyler Cowen says: Voters are getting more or less what they want, which is some spending restraint, mostly holding the line on taxes, not too much trust in government as a way of moving forward, and a love of entitlements. One can find that objectionable, and indeed I do across a [...]

(a post only marginally about transportation) What is the Republican Party’s focus? Just ask, “Which causes capture the marginal returns on the party’s investments of political capital?” The GOP has often gambled political capital on uncertain drives for policies that help rich people, like Social Security privatization, while ignoring bets that would shrink government but [...]

Arlington, VA is spending about $1 million each for 24 bus stops: link. Each has room to shield about 15 people, although not very well. $1 million bus stop; Washington Post The Post says that federal and state money paid for 80% of the cost. It’s an old story: other people’s money. Transportation funding might [...]