In a bid to preserve or create much-needed jobs, most of the stimulus spending for infrastructure is pushing short-term fixes, like repaved roads. Such projects have undeniable added value, allowing traffic to flow more smoothly and preventing crater-sized potholes from blowing out tires. Yet the roads will simply have to be repaved a few years down the line. In the long run, whether the stimulus helps bring down unemployment or not, little will have changed.

“Few of the [stimulus] projects are transformative,” said Joseph Schofer, professor of civil and environmental engineering …

Just as polls show that Americans are increasingly worried about government living beyond its means, President Barack Obama goes and announces he’s shoveling out another $8 billion for high-speed rail that is neither high-speed nor smart.

Blood-sucking politicians from Illinois wanted $4.5 billion of that, but had to settle for only $1.23 billion, for a ridiculous plan to shuttle a few hundred passengers each day between Chicago and St. Louis, at only 30 m.p.h. faster than now.
Oh yes, starry-eyed train fans will point out that eventually the trains will reach speeds …

State Transportation and Toll Road officials are discussing how to finish building the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway to Nowhere so that it connects with the airport and nearby toll roads, according to the Daily Herald.

This I gotta see.
Where to put the confounded highway and how to pay for it have held it up for decades, leading to the well-worn quote about how the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway goes neither to O’Hare or Elgin.
Currently, the eastern leg ends in Itasca, about five miles short of the airport, and feeds into such congested arterials as Thorndale …

Once again, the big, bad, white suburbs are victimizing poor, minority Chicagoans.
That’s the underlying logic of a class action suit brought against the state, RTA and Metra by a public interest law firm that hasn’t a clue about the Pandora’s Box that it is opening.

According to the suit, filed Wednesday in federal court, white suburbs somehow have hijacked the formulae for distributing government subsidies among the CTA, Metra and Pace.
Sounding more and more like his race-baiting old man, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. pronounced: “Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. …

“O’Hare Expansion Fight Grounded for Good,” announced an NBC Channel 5 headline on the Chicago television station’s website. “City will pay Bensenville $16 million”
Well, not quite yet “for good;” there’s still a major church-state fight working its way up to the Supreme Court over whether Chicago can ride roughshod over a religion’s right maintain an undisturbed cemetery, in conformance with its tenets, in the path of the expansion plan’s most southern runway. Ignore it if you will, but the high court’s decision in the suit by St. John’s United Church …

Desperate for new money for the O’Hare Airport expansion boondoggle, the Daley administration is placing its hopes on a 63 percent increase on a tax imposed on airline passengers.
Under legislation already passed by the House, airport operators, such as Chicago, would be authorized to increase the airline passenger facility charge (PFC) by $2.50, to $7, generating an estimated $87.5 million annually for the expansion.
Chicago, unable to get the airlines on board to help finance Phase 2 of the O’Hare expansion, is looking forward to the passage of the bill in …

On the train to Chicago’s O’Hare: “No way. It’s neither one thing nor the other and just look at this sad excuse of a train to the airport.”
More at the Financial Times

Hold on a second; where does it say that you’re entitled to park cheaply on a public street?
You’re not, but that’s the assumption behind all the crabbing about the city’s “obscene” increase in parking meter rates. Put aside questions about the competence of the company now running the meters and whether Mayor Richard M. Daley could have squeezed another billion or so out of the company for the 75-year lease. Also, put aside how badly the company has bollixed the job and questions about whether it was a sweetheart deal.
That’s …

How much would you pay to get to Milwaukee 10 minutes faster?
Not a cent, you say? Nothing against Milwaukee; it’s a lovely town. But, if President Barack Obama gets his way, the Milwaukee-in-a-flash dream could cost taxpayers hundreds of millions. His vision of a network of high-speed trains — many fanning out from Chicago to Milwaukee and elsewhere — would cost $8 billion. Actually, that’s just the start. The eventual cost to taxpayers of creating a network of trains zipping across America at rocket-train speeds would be way, way more.
Some …

PARIS—Getting here was not half the fun—it was none of the fun.
An irritating time going through security before departing O’Hare plus further grief arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport rubbed raw my discontent with air travel and reinforced my view that investment in high-speed railroads may be the most valuable aspect of President Obama’s stimulus package.
He plans to put $8 billion into developing high-speed rail for two years, then an additional billion for each of the next five. That will not exactly catch us up to the great railroad system …