Three Tidbits

Three tidbits today:

First, from an article about the troubled MBTA Commuter Rail in this week’s Globe magazine:

Even Fred Salvucci, a former state transportation secretary, concedes the point. "It would take a very large number of people getting out of their cars to result in free flow," he says. "And if you had free flow, other people would jump into their cars and get into it. It's like shoveling the ocean."

Yes it is indeed like shoveling the ocean. Free is the key word here. If you want to reduce highway congestion, then you must charge people a premium if they choose to use highways during rush hour. Can’t do that? Yes you can. Existing Fast-Lane tags note the time you enter a freeway down to the second. Mandate the tags and bill people. But we won’t do that because we have not the political will to do so. Singapore has done this exactly for years. You pay “peak” or “off-peak” rates every time you drive your car through downtown Singapore.

Second, from Cathy Young’s column today, where Ken Bode the PBS Ombudsman is quoted concerning an upcoming PBS documentary:

''After close review including discussions and e-mail exchanges with those involved with the program or closely affected by it, I found the program to be so totally unbalanced as to fall outside the boundaries of PBS editorial standards on fairness and balance."

The program alleges that male wife-beaters and child abusers frequently are given custody of their children by the courts. Ken Bode is the classic John Kerry voter, not any kind of conservative. But guess what? PBS is running the program anyway. Heh. What liberal bias?

Finally, James Carroll writes of the young journalist kidnapped in Iraq:

“If it were not for the disastrous policies of George W. Bush, Jill Carroll would be fine today, but it would be wrong to turn her kidnapping into yet another cudgel with which to bang against the war.”

For Carroll, this is a sign of significant progress!