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Monthly Archives: August 2009

A Few Choice Words about Light Rail

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
78 Comments

Chuck Plunkett, a member of the Denver Post‘s editorial board, has a few choice words to say about light rail. Words like “obsolete” and “a transportation option that our environment can no longer afford.”

The Post must have joined the Antiplanner in the pockets of big oil. As recently as a year ago, Denver’s largest paper was an enthusiastic supporter of rail transit. Plunkett himself says he has “long been a fan of rail.” But after reading the Antiplanner’s analysis of light rail and greenhouse gases, and replicating that analysis using the latest available data, Plunket concludes that “further expanding rail in metro Denver would be an outrage.”

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Back on the Trail Again

By | | Housekeeping
11 Comments

In honor of the 65th birthday of Ed Crane, the beloved founder of the Cato Institute (and the only person who has ever given the Antiplanner a real job, instead of just a consulting contract), the Antiplanner is taking today off to go hiking in the Mt. Jefferson Wilderness. (Don’t tell Ed; his actual birthday is tomorrow but I am celebrating a day early.)

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In the meantime, enjoy this article by Steve Polzin, a research from the Center for Urban Transportation Research at the University of South Florida. At the risk of reducing Polzin’s academic credibility, I have to say I agree with almost everything he says.

Tolls: Who Benefits and Who Pays?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
15 Comments

The first question that should be asked about any public policy is, “Who benefits and who pays?” This can be relevant to tollroads, one of the few ideas that is supported by both smart-growth advocates and mobility supporters.

The difference is that mobility supporters believe in tolls as a way for users to pay for the facilities they use — and, not so incidentally, to give signals to those users about when and where it is particularly expensive to travel — while smart-growth advocates believe in tolls as a way of punishing those who drive and taking their money to spend on transit.

The center lanes are the Dulles Access Road; they are free but go only to the Dulles Airport. The other lanes are the Dulles Tollroad and are heavily used by commuters.

Case in point: Virginia’s Dulles Toll Road, which was once owned by the state of Virginia but lately has been taken over by the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority. The latter organization is nearly doubling tolls on the highway in order to raise money for a boondoggle of an extension of Metrorail to Dulles Airport.
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Manhattan Without Subways?

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
19 Comments

Twenty-two subway lines enter downtown (south of 60th street) Manhattan. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Council (New York’s MPO), these subway lines carried some 400,000 people into downtown between 8 and 9 am on a typical day in 2007 (open the “rec sec” sheet of the Subway data sheet).

A blogger asks, “what would it take in terms of auto facilities to replace the morning rush hour carrying capacity of the NYC subway?” He concludes it would take a minimum of 167 new lanes of bridges, tunnels, or other highways into downtown Manhattan. But there are several alternative views of his calculations.

He assumes that the only alternative to subways is autos. But what about buses? Many 40-foot buses can carry 64 passengers (42 sitting, 22 standing, which means a higher proportion sitting than on a subway). Spaced five bus lengths apart, 11 buses per minute can cruise down a highway lane carrying more than 42,000 people per hour. That means fewer than 10 new lanes would be needed to carry the people now taking subways — and those 10 lanes would take up a lot less space than the 22 subway lines.

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Ranking States by Freedom

By | | Mission
18 Comments

Some scholars at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center have compiled an assessment of the personal and economic freedom enjoyed by residents of each state. Similar studies from Cato, Heritage, and other groups have ranked various nations based on their economic freedom, but this is the first ranking of the states.

As indicators of personal freedom, the Mercatus study considers such things as marijuana, alcohol, smoking, and similar laws. As indicators of economic freedom, the study considers such things as land-use regulation, regulation or deregulation of such industries as cable television, natural gas, telecommunications, and health insurance. Each of these indicators is assigned a score (e.g., 1 if the state has a smart-growth law, 0 if it does not), which is then weighted somehow against the other indicators. The economic and personal freedom indices each rely on close to 150 different indicators, many of which are themselves summaries of several other indicators.

When the weighted results are totaled up, the personal freedom index ranges from about 0.40 (for South Dakota) to minus 0.59 (for New York), with positive meaning more free and negative less. The economic freedom index ranges from 0.27 (for Alaska) to minus 0.29 (for Maryland). When added together, New Hampshire has the most overall freedom (with a score of 0.43) and New York the least (with a score of minus 0.77).

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The Problem with Urban Planning, Part I

By | | Mission
35 Comments

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That’s Stimulating?

By | | Mission, News commentary
5 Comments

Does replacing windows on a building that is no longer used help to stimulate the economy? The Forest Service thinks so, so it is going to spend something like $1 million replacing windows on a visitors’ center that it closed in 2007. (Thanks to the Antiplanner’s loyal ally, Andy Stahl, for bringing this to my attention.)

The purpose of this part of the stimulus program is to make federal buildings more energy efficient. But if the building isn’t used, it probably doesn’t consume much energy.

The Gifford Pinchot National Forest says it might want to re-open the visitors’ center someday, if it ever gets a big enough budget to manage it. In the meantime, the new windows will provide virtually no benefit.

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Barriers to Entry

By | | Regional planning
24 Comments

During a recent meeting, the Antiplanner was extolling the virtues of Houston‘s land-use policies, and a home builder at the meeting said, “Of course, no one here wants our city to be like Houston,” meaning no one wanted Houston’s land-use regime.

Why not? I asked. “There is too much competition down there. My company can’t make a profit,” he said. “You have to have some barriers to entry to be able to make money.”

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping, Transportation
33 Comments

I am in San Jose today speaking at Santa Clara University to high school debaters who are preparing for debates on environmental policy.

In the meantime, here is a question to debate. According to this report on the cash-for-clunkers program, the average MPG of cars purchased under the program is 61 percent greater than the average of the cars being traded in.

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Ignoring the effects on the economy of boosting car sales, does this make the program worthwhile? Has anyone calculated the environmental cost of recycling/disposing of all the cars being traded in before their times (such as the 14-year-old car in the above video)?

Mark Yannone, RIP

By | | News commentary
2 Comments

The Antiplanner was sad to learn that loyal ally Mark Yannone, founder of the Light Rail Scam blog which criticized the Phoenix light-rail program, died suddenly on July 17, apparently from an epileptic seizure. Most reports say he was only 53.

In addition to Light Rail Scam, Mark had started or participated in more than three dozen other blogs, including blogs on electric cars, billionaires, and the English language. His Light Rail Scam blog carried such intriguing stories as the joint Arab-Jewish opposition to light rail in Jerusalem and the many collisions involving Phoenix’s new light-rail line.
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Yannonne was an active libertarian who ran for Congress in the last election. In the Antiplanner’s opinion, it is unfortunate that he allowed himself to be diverted in the last few months by the question of Obama’s birth certificate, but I appreciate his motto: “Zero tolerance for injustice.”