The Antiplanner »

Monthly Archives: June 2009

High-Speed Rail Presentation

By | | Housekeeping
10 Comments

This noon, the Antiplanner giving a presentation (9 MB pdf) on high-speed rail at the Heritage Foundation. For once, I prepared the presentation in advance and even typed in the text Do not cialis sildenafil set an unrealistic goal which you know is impossible to achieve. The seed powder is administered through nose during nasya karma to reduce cheapest cialis uk headache. Eat fruits and vegetables more, as they contain antioxidants that help keep order cheap viagra try over here arteries open. This sexual condition is characterized by the inability to get and keep optimal erection viagra samples during intercourse. of my narrative. It presents some new information and some information that has previously been mentioned on this blog but was not in my 2008 report on high-speed rail. Enjoy.

Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
12 Comments

The Antiplanner is spending this week in Washington, DC. I’ll be giving a presentation on high-speed rail at the Heritage Foundation on Wednesday (I’ll post the presentation tomorrow). If you really wish levitra 20 mg to have the best erections when you are sexually aroused and make love for longer duration. These folks believe that if they are feeling incapability for gaining or holding enough erection, they can get longer cialis tadalafil 20mg lasting erection as well. It improves testosterone and strengthens the online viagra pills reproductive organs. Usually the impotency in men is of many kinds, but in the passage, viagra side effects natural treatment is the theme we offer to interstitial cystitis patient. Unfortunately, seating is limited and it is booked up. But if you are in the DC area, contact me and maybe we can get together some other time.

NY Times on High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
17 Comments

The New York Times Sunday Magazine focused on infrastructure this week and included an article on California high-speed rail. The article included a chart comparing the fares or costs for driving, flying, or taking the high-speed train from Los Angeles to Sacramento.

According to the chart, the airfare is $100, driving is $50, and the train will be $55. That is exceedingly optimistic: the current Amtrak fare is $55, and most other high-speed rail lines cost more than the conventional trains.

But the chart leaves out a big cost: the subsidies. Subsidies to driving and flying are about a penny a mile, or about $4 for the trip from L.A. to Sacramento. But when the construction cost of the California high-speed rail system is amortized over 30 years and then divided by the projected annual passenger miles, you get a construction subsidy of 32 cents per passenger mile, or more than $120.

Continue reading →

Suckered Again

By | | City planning, News commentary
18 Comments

The Congress for the New Urbanism is holding its annual convention, which means it is time once again for the New York Times to get suckered into publishing a story about how rail transit spurs development. The Antiplanner calls bullshit on that.

The article opens with a heartwarming tale of how light rail turned a dusty cow town in Texas into a thriving, New Urban community. Naturally, the writer never mentions the tax-increment financing that supported this redevelopment.

Continue reading →

New Urbanists Revealed to Be Train Nuts

By | | News commentary
44 Comments

The Congress for the New Urbanism is having its annual convention in Denver, so some California New Urbanists chartered two private rail cars to get there. The 35-hour one-way trip cost $1,400 each, about $1,200 more than airfares.

Flickr photo by SP8254

The bragged about how they chose a “sustainable” way to travel. What a wonderful example for the rest of us! If only ordinary people had the time and money to spend 35 hours and $1,400 on a trip that would cost about four hours and $200 on a plane. The Denver Post says that at least some of these New Urban planners work for the government, so they have time and money to blow. Heck, since they are New Urbanists, they effectively all work for the government since so little New Urban development is actually built for the market.

This article will discuss some get free viagra of the reasons for poor erection quality. So, to enjoy some order cheap viagra more happy moments in the life buy Silagra and make love as being a romanticist. This medicine is purchase levitra supposed to be eaten up with the help of extensive research and clinical studies, medical experts have succeeded in inventing effective oral medicines that work by improving the overall blood circulation. Thus, steps should be taken to control body weight, which will improve erectile function. new.castillodeprincesas.com viagra properien In fact, trains might use less energy per passenger mile if you cram 80 people in each rail car. But the cars they chartered can only accommodate 10 to 12 people for an overnight trip. Their trip consumed far more energy and emitted far more greenhouse gases than if they had flown.

Flickr photo by Train Chartering & Private Railcars

As it happens, the Antiplanner once rode the Silver Solarium, the car featured in the article, on an Amtrak trip from Los Angeles to New Orleans. I haven’t taken the time to digitize my photos from that long-ago time, so you’ll have to be satisfied to see how the car looks today. Riding in a dome car, even one without all the luxury frills of a private car, is to me the pinnacle of travel. But that doesn’t make it sustainable.

High-Speed Rail: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone

By | | Follow up, Transportation
30 Comments

Some readers seem to think I have an ingrained hatred of trains. Nothing could be further from the truth. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s, I used the train as my exclusive mode of travel outside the Pacific Northwest. I made many trips to Washington, DC by train. I was over 30 years old before I flew in an airplane for the first time, and that was only because I was going to Alaska, which you can’t get to by train (while there, I rode both the Alaska Railway and the White Pass & Yukon Route).

If the United States had a true national high-speed rail network, I could see myself taking the train to DC now. Portland to DC is about 2,800 miles, which would be 20 hours in a 140-mph train (which is approximately the average speed of trains whose top speed is 220 mph, the speed the California High-Speed Rail Authority aspires to). That could be enough to get me to stop flying, especially if the train was timed to arrive in DC at, say, 8 in the morning.

Continue reading →

Urban Sprawl Is for the Birds

By | | Regional planning
35 Comments

University of Washington Professor John Marzluff is an expert on crows and ravens, among other birds. Recently, he began looking at the effects of urban sprawl on bird populations.

He was surprised to find that the effects were positive. Breaking up farms or woodlands into lots, each of whose owners manage their land a slightly different way, significantly increased biodiversity for songbirds.

Continue reading →

Which Is Greener?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
37 Comments

Which uses less energy and emits less pollution: a train, a bus, or a car? Advocates of rail transportation rely on the public’s willingness to take for granted the assumption that trains–whether light rail, subways, or high-speed intercity rail–are the most energy-efficient and cleanest forms of transportation. But there is plenty of evidence that this is far from true.

Rail advocates often reason like this: the average car has 1.1 people in it. Compare the BTUs or carbon emissions per passenger mile with those from a full train, and the train wins hands down.

The problem with such hypothetical examples is that the numbers are always wrong. As a recent study from the University of California (Davis) notes, the load factors are critical.

Continue reading →

New Jersey’s Big Dig

By | | News commentary, Transportation
26 Comments

An alert reader let the Antiplanner know about a transit tunnel New Jersey is starting to build under the Hudson River. It was supposed to cost around $2.5 billion. Now that construction is about to begin, the projected cost has more than tripled to $8.7 billion. Who knows what the final price will be.

Portals to the existing, century-old tunnel under the Hudson.

Of course, they want the feds to pay a big chunk of it — at least $3 billion. All because the existing transit tunnel to Penn Station is “nearing maximum capacity.” Hey, I thought a rail line could carry almost infinite numbers of people.

Continue reading →

Defining the Wildland-Urban Interface

By | | Wildfire
32 Comments

Wildfire season is underway, and the Forest Service wants everyone to believe that the huge increase in fire suppression costs is because of so many new homes in the “wildland-urban interface.” But just where is this interface?

The above map provides an answer for Oregon. The pink areas are supposed to be wildland-urban interface. In addition, however, the map marks every “interface community” with a pound sign (#).

Continue reading →