5. Behavior Modification. Change you can believe in ramped up nicely last week with the release of the video of a question and answer session with former Illinois congress critter and current Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood telling at the National Press Club on May 21. In the session, LaHood was asked about the administration’s livability initiative – essentially a way to force Americans out of their vehicles, out of the suburbs, onto mass transit, and back into the cities in high rises. The technique will be the use of restrictive road construction designs intended to “calm†traffic movement rather than move large numbers of vehicles quickly. Bicycles and walking are prominent parts of the plan. ... LaHood admitted that the new policies are intended to coerce Americans out of their vehicles. ...I would also expect an effort to force SUVs and light trucks off the road and force us all into the ratmobiles to be built by Government and Obama Motors and the UAW. Good luck with that. Up here in Anchorage, we have had the green fans of Portland busily mucking around with road design, bike trails, and zoning rules, much to the detriment of smooth, quick flow of local traffic. The end result has been a significant decrease in construction (basic economics – when things get more expensive, you get less of it), significant increase in costs of home ownership and local taxes. Planned economies and planned cities don’t work. They are really, really expensive and place severe limits on overall liberty and property rights. If there is any behavior to be modified, it is going to be the behavior of the bozos we elected last November. One way or another; sooner or later, it is going to happen.
