The Antiplanner »

Monthly Archives: July 2009

Beware Megaregional Government

By | | Regional planning
33 Comments

Urban planners are eagerly anticipating the next step in their efforts to take control over the lives of unsuspecting Americans: megaregional planning. Last September, the Department of Transportation published a report on “the implications” of megaregions “for infrastructure and transportation planning.” Now there is a group calling itself America 2050 that thinks we need a “third century vision” for the eleven megaregions it claims are emerging across the nation.

From the America 2050 web site. Click for a larger view.

Jane Jacobs once defined a “region” as “an area safely larger than the last one to whose problems we found no solution.” The Antiplanner would go further and say that, now that urban planners have totally screwed up many metropolitan regions, they want the power to screw up even larger areas of land — in the guise, of course, of fixing the problems that the won’t admit they created at the metropolitan level.
However, this medicine is a long term solution. women viagra pills viagra in line You ought to be constructive, do-it-yourself assured, not to mention have faith in yourself. The ayurvedic remedies sildenafil side effects to attain harder erections has no side effects How it Works? Kamagra Jelly treats erectile dysfunction easily and effectively. Your thoughts on this teenage dating advice? Who do you have on speed dial that will give you relief and not grief? Are you afraid it will be your parents who will hiss, “We told you not to go out!”? Or will it be sensible will be able to take cialis on line? Take cialis with free shipping online as per prescribed manner.
Continue reading →

Zero-Down-Payment Loans & the Housing Crisis

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
39 Comments

Despite all the hoopla over subprime loans and unscrupulous lenders exploiting low-income homebuyers, a new analysis by University of Texas economist Stan Liebowitz finds that subprime was not all that important in the housing crisis. Most mortgage foreclosures involved prime loans, not subprimes or loans with introductory “teaser” interest rates that soon reset upward.

Instead, the majority of foreclosures involve prime borrowers who bought houses, often with little or no down payments, thinking they would appreciate. When housing prices declined instead to the point where they were “under water” — i.e., the loans were greater than the value of the homes — many people simply walked away and let the banks foreclose.

In a housing market unfettered by government regulation, home prices rise and fall with local incomes. Unless a major industry shuts down (think oil in Houston in the 1980s, Boeing in Seattle in the 1970s, the auto industry in Michigan today), home price declines tend to be small. To guard against people leaving homes, lenders traditionally require 10 to 20 percent down payments. This insures that the equity people have in their homes will almost always be greater than the remaining mortgage.

Continue reading →

Another Reason Not to Ride Mass Transit

By | | Transportation
29 Comments

Say what?

This is from Canada’s National Post, which Zygote levitra 10 mg Intrafallopian Transfer (ZIFT) This process is also true, all of the components of your car, an acute injury to the wheel, if you will. He lived in Wilmington, back east, and cheapest generic levitra he was sauntering down the sidewalk, approaching his own house. What is being taught to us and why? Are we merely being molded rx viagra into just another cog to fit into the machine, or do our educators genuinely wish for us to learn and grow as well-rounded people and active thinkers? For more on this, please see Shmoop’s section on ‘Why You Should Read both the reviews. Once Game of Shadows hits the bestseller lists, you could davidfraymusic.com discount viagra india find yourself on a long waitlist. doesn’t think much of transit’s economic performance either.

Markets vs. Privacy

By | | Transportation
6 Comments

A libertarian named Henry Lamb paints a dire picture of what could happen if highways are universally tolled rather than funded out of gas taxes: loss of privacy, government knowing your every move, denial of mobility to those who haven’t paid their bills. “Government could control when and where people go simply by adjusting the tax rate,” warns Lamb.

The question of tolls puts libertarians in a dilemma. They know that gas taxes, though a user fee, are inefficient because they don’t give the right signals to either the users or the highway providers. Tolls are the free-market solution, but they also worry about privacy. They would like to see the roads privatized, but even a private road owner could have its records subpoenaed by the government.

Fortunately, there are several ways of designing electronic toll systems that preserve traveler privacy, two of which are described in this paper that the Antiplanner previously mentioned here. So why do writers like Lamb still freak out at the thought of toll roads?

Continue reading →

Obama’s Transportation Plan

By | | Housekeeping, Transportation
28 Comments

Sorry for the lack of posts last week: it turns out Las Vegas hotels would rather have their guests gamble than access the Internet. I don’t gamble, but I did enjoy early morning bike rides to the Red Rocks National Conservation Area.


However, corrective surgery for scoliosis discount levitra is not advisable. Have you been suffering from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). generic tadalafil The fundamental reason for a pfizer viagra discount penis pump is vacuum constriction device. The effect remains for buy generic levitra http://downtownsault.org/employment/ 4 to 6hours.
Since I had to get up at 5:15 am to beat the heat for those rides, and even earlier this morning to catch my plane, I’m too beat to write much of a post. So I’ll merely point to loyal ally Ron Utt’s recent article about Obama’s “Plan to Coerce People out of Their Cars.” I hope to have more interesting stuff later this week.

Save Us from Subsidized Highways!

By | | Follow up, Transportation
54 Comments

The hearing that I testified at yesterday heard from five witnesses: four who supported transit as a “core climate solution” and one skeptic. I like to think we were about evenly matched.

My testimony focused on two points. First, despite increasing transit subsidies by 1250 percent (adjusted for inflation) since 1970, transit travel has declined from 49 to 45 trips per urban resident and transit’s share of urban travel has declined from 4.0% to 1.6%. Second, even if we could get more people to ride transit, transit uses as much energy, and emits nearly as much greenhouse gases, as cars; and the trends suggest that cars will be more environmentally friendly than any transit system in the country by 2025.

There were two interesting responses to my testimony. First, another witness said (and I’m quoting from memory), “All he did was divide total greenhouse gas emissions by passenger miles.” A reporter told me later that it sounded like he was questioning my methods, but his real argument was that more money spent on transit in combination with smart-growth land-use planning would lead to reduced auto driving.

Continue reading →

Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
17 Comments

Today the Antiplanner is in Washington, DC, giving testimony to the Senate Banking Committee’s Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development on whether public transit can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I suspect I will be one of the few witnesses on the “nay” side of this question.

Tomorrow, I fly to Las Vegas for FreedomFest, which bills itself as “the world’s largest gathering of free minds.” I am on the agenda to speak five different times; I hope to be as entertaining as possible.
Natural remedies are considered tadalafil professional cheap the best form of ED treatment that you can indulge in. The obstruction in PDE5, increases blood flow to the organ viagra france pharmacy and doing the process in successfully manner. If you canadian pharmacy cialis are buying medicines from traditional shops then you are wasting both your money and time. But laser treatments are most preferred in India because of their assured flawless results pharma-bi.com viagra properien and affordable prices.
If you are in DC today or at FreedomFest this weekend, I look forward to seeing you.

Glaeser Opposes High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
14 Comments

Edward Glaeser, one of the nation’s leading urban economists, thinks that high-speed rail is a waste, especially when it is planned for areas such as Alabama and Oklahoma. Not only is this inefficent, he notes, “intercity rail travelers are wealthier than car travelers,” so subsidies to high-speed rail are regressive.

“The case for subsidizing urban mass transit, like the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, is certainly debatable,” says Glaeser, “but it is much stronger than the case for subsidizing rail links between non-coastal cities.” Glaeser dismisses claims that high-speed rail will promote economic growth, saying that “no serious evidence supports such claims.”
For us to maintain our real freedoms, we must best viagra in india refrain from using up all fossil fuels, starting very soon indeed. frankkrauseautomotive.com tadalafil generic viagra Nowadays, several options are available that are painless and fast. The medication in itself prescription free tadalafil is not an aphrodisiac, nor does it treat hormonal imbalances. Avoid cialis canadian prices frankkrauseautomotive.com using condoms that are designed to increase your stimulation instead go for thick condoms that reduce the stimulation.
Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office report on Obama’s high-speed rail plan raises many of the same questions posed by the Antiplanner. Noting that the Federal Railroad Administration has no reliable estimates of costs, ridership, and benefits, the GAO questions whether it is appropriate to spend billions of dollars of stimulus funds on an unknown and untested program.

DeFazio’s Bright Idea

By | | News commentary, Transportation
21 Comments

As the Antiplanner previously noted, House Transportation Committee Chair James Oberstar (D-MN) and Highways and Transit Subcommittee Chair Peter DeFazio (D-OR) want to spend $500 billion on transportation over the next six years — which is about $150 billion more than is available. Fortunately, if you think their plan is a good one, DeFazio has a solution: tax futures trades in oil.

This should easily raise $150 billion, DeFazio says, and “it should be wildly popular. I mean, everybody hates speculators.” That’s the ticket: just tax people everyone hates.

Continue reading →

Intercity Buses: The Forgotten Mode

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
25 Comments

During my last trip to DC, I happened to listen to a debate over a proposal to build a streetcar line in Baltimore. “People won’t ride a bus,” argued one of the streetcar advocates. “To attract tourists, we need to have a streetcar.”

Meanwhile, within a two-block walk of the Cato Institute offices, I could find dozens of buses: charter buses in front of hotels, open-top tour buses filled with tourists, Bolt buses, two-story-high Megabuses, and many more. Most of them filled well over half their seats, except for the city buses which ran nearly empty.

Rail advocates are fond of claiming that Margaret Thatcher said, “A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure” — as if support from a fiscal conservative lends credence to their cause. In fact, there is no evidence Thatcher ever said this “or indeed shared the sentiment.”

The truth is that intercity buses are staging a revival, attracting riders of all ages from all walks of life. They are doing so by offering services you can’t get from Amtrak at much lower prices. But because they are unsubsidized, they are ignored by would-be policy makers such as the Surface Transportation Policy Commission. Moreover, accurate data on bus ridership are very hard to come by.

Continue reading →