- Rail spurs economic and property development
- Rail saves people ime
- Rail “helps poor people get to jobs”
- High Speed Rail in Texas will be privately funded: ” It exemplifies what conservatives like best: private enterprise acting to make money by providing a service people want and need.”
- Rail support retail in downtowns
Monthly Archives: July 2015
High Speed Rail: Magnolia & Montgomery County are Watching You.
Montgomery County and the city of Magnolia formed a regional planning commission to monitor the proposed high speed rail project.The current path of the high speed rail proposal does not cross Magnolia or Montgomery County.
Both local governments appear to be opposed to the high speed rail and its taking of private land. As such, the city and county are being vigilent just in case.
Montgomery County Judge Craig Doyal: ” We are committed to opposing any routing of high speed rail…
Lege Trend: Laws Against Hacking a Car. Hackers Can Take Over your Car.
A reporter for Wired details what parts of a car hackers can control while you’re driving. It’s like a self driving car, driven by criminals with you in it.
Hackers are able to control a vehicle’s:
- A/C system, changing the temperature in the car
- The radio, changing channels and volume control
- Windshield wipers
- Windshield washer fluid blurring the windows
- dashboard functions
- steering
- brakes
- transmission
All of the car functions above can be controlled from a laptop by a nefarious…
El Paso Missing $20M in Transportation Funding
The case of the missing $20 Million of federal trasnportation dollars for El Paso:
The hub-bub? A claim “that the city lost more than $20 million in federal money for critical transportation projects through the Metropolitan Planning Organization due to errors on funding applications.”
The other side: The funds aren’t lost. We’ll correct our mistakes (deadlines not met, application problems), and get the money a little later. No biggie.
Road Share: Tech Helping Cities Regulate Bike Lanes
An Austin TX tech company, Codaxus, has a devise that will determine how close a car is to a cyclist. Chattanooga, TN recently hired a former Austinite who served as the police liasion to the bicylce community. Chattanooga is now using the Codaxus to enforce the bucylce safety law it has not enforced in the 8 years since it eas enacted.
Regulatory Trend for Ride-Share: Feds Issue Standards on Employees v. Independent Contractors. Big Deal for Ride Share.
To clear up the national confusion on whether a person is an employee or an independent contractor, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division set out to address the confusion with a 15-page memo of guidance.
15 pages of a guidance…from the government. How can this not go wrong?
NFIB said, ““The guidance is going to make it harder to classify workers as independent contractors,”
National Home Builders Grand Pubah said, ““I’m appalled by the procedures they’re…
Regulatory Trend for Ride-Share: $7.3M Uber Fine. Information Reporting.
California Public Utilities Commission, which has oversight of ride share and taxis, ordered Uber to “pay a $7.3 million fine and hand over required information about safety and accessibility — or shut down in the ride service’s home state.”
Other ride share companies had provided the California Public Utilities Commission information, including:
- number of customers requesting rides in vehicles accommodating people with disabilities
- how often they complied with requests from people…
Ride Share. Sharing Economy. Regulatory trend: Employees or Independent Contractors
A California regulator ruled certain ride share drivers to be employees for wage claim purposes and it has regulators, policy makers, attorneys and investors in overdrive.
Investors keep investing in the companies. The Recorder Bloomberg
Regulators & policymakers go both ways. Hillary Clinton is said to be using the independent contractor stance as a campaign issue. TechCrunch Jeb Bush is hailing a ride share vehicle to arrive at a speaking engagement with tech cred. SF Weekly …
Local Gov. Trend: Transportation Funding
Seattle has a transportation funding crisis. The mayor has called for $930 million in additional funding.
Two City Council members tried to counter the straight $930mllion levy on property taxes with a funding plan that included:
- $600 M levy on property taxes
- with a employee hours tax and a commercial parking tax
The move failed, but the creativity in the funding structure should be appreciated.
Elon Musk. Self Driving Cars. Regulations. Sun Valley.
Elon Musk talked regulations concerning self-driving cars at Herb Allen’s Sun Valley thinkfest. An attendee said, ” “What it must be to have a brain that works like that.”
What do Elon Musk, self driving cars, and regulations have to do with Texas?
Elon Musk made his first foray into policy this session with Tesla dealership issues. Now he’s thinking regulations for self-driving cars. Texas has no laws on self-driving cars. All together now, this means OPPORTUNITIES- contracts,…