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Monthly Archives: March 2010

Return from the North

By | | Regional planning, Travels
25 Comments

I visited a government-subsidized ice-sculpture park and rode a government-subsidized train. Sometimes, it seems like everything in Alaska is government-subsidized.

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I also spoke in several different forums. You can download one of my presentations in PDF or PowerPoint formats. This presentation focuses on the relationship between urban planning and the housing prices. I may post some of my other presentations later in the week.

Student Protests

By | | News commentary
13 Comments

The Antiplanner has long observed that everyone can justify the subsidies they get from the government. So it is no surprise that university students across the nation are protesting increases in tuition. Even though the students themselves are the ones who primarily benefit from their educations, some of them have the nerve to call tuition growth “tax hikes.”

To be fair, when the Antiplanner entered college, my tuition was just over $400 a year, which (after adjusting for inflation) is about $2,000 in today’s money. Today, in-state tuition at Oregon State University, my alma mater, is about three times that amount. Still, that’s just a third of out-of-state tuition, suggesting that in-state students pay only a third of the cost of their educations.

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The Future of French Rail

By | | Transportation
23 Comments

Even as President Obama wants to build an American high-speed rail network to match the one in France, the French have begun to question the wisdom of their own high-speed rail system. French trains are operated by a government-owned corporation known as SNCF (short for the French translation of National Railway Company of France).

By 1997, building high-speed rail lines had put SNCF €28 billion — about $38 billion in today’s dollars — in debt. Although this debt was backed by the full faith and credit of the French government, it was pretty clear that rail fares would never repay it. Since the European Union requires that member countries not subsidize transport or other things that would give companies in those countries an unfair advantage over those in other members of the EU, in 1997 France separated SNCF into two companies: SNCF would continue to operate trains, while a new company named Réseau Ferré de France (RFF, which translates to French Rail Network) builds and maintains the tracks.

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A Question for John Hickenlooper

By | | News commentary, Transportation
15 Comments

A governor is the taxpayers’ last line of defense against money-hungry bureaucrats who incessantly seek their “fair share” of worker incomes in the form of higher taxes for all sorts of boondoggles. Governors can limit the amount of money that agencies request, they can veto excessive spending bills, and they can make sure bureaucracies don’t waste money that legislatures have appropriated.

To successfully defend taxpayers, governors must be skeptical of claims made by bureaucrats and the special interest groups that benefit from excessive spending, and they must be open to listen to citizen views of proposed spending programs. Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, who is now running for governor of Colorado, has failed to meet these tests.

In September, 2004, during the campaign to spend billions of dollars on Denver-area rail transit, Hickenlooper endorsed the new tax for more trains, saying that Fastracks would “take at least 250,000 cars off the road — thereby relieving congestion.” This was a complete fabrication.

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More Bureaucracy Won’t Make Transit Safe

By | | News commentary, Transportation
12 Comments

Last week, the Federal Transit Administration presented a “scathing report” on Washington Metrorail safety programs. The report itself found that the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) frequently failed to comply with or even respond to safety requirements and investigations of the agency that has oversight authority over Metrorail safety.

Back in 1991, Congress asked the Federal Transit Administration to create a state-based transit safety program. After a mere 4 years, the FTA responded with rules (updated in 2005) requiring each state that has a rail transit system to create a state safety oversight (SSO) authority. Because the Washington Metrorail system crosses from DC into two states, its SSO is called the Tri-State (even though DC is not a state) Oversight Committee (TOC).

What the 1991 law and FTA rules did not do is give the SSOs any legal authority to compel transit agencies to improve safety. As FTA administrator Peter Rogoff told Congress on March 4, transit agencies “don’t have to respond to [the SSOs] in a timely way. In fact, they don’t have to respond to them at all.” Thus, it is not surprising that the SSO system failed to prevent accidents such as the one last June that killed 9 people in DC.

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Back in the Air Again — and Again, and Again

By | | Housekeeping
31 Comments

The Antiplanner tries to post every weekday, but I missed last Friday and may miss a few more days in March due to three more trips. Last week, as I was traveling to Portland for various events, I received a phone call from the John Stossel show inviting me to join them on Friday.

That meant flying to New York and back for perhaps 5 minutes of air time, but that’s one of the costs of living on the West Coast. My previous appearance on the show, though brief, seems to have turned out okay. But in the rush to get to New York and back, I was unable to post last Friday.

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The subject of the show taped on Friday (which will be broadcast in the next week or two) was the effects of government regulation and zoning on business. When he called, the show’s producer, Maxim Lott, asked he who they could get to advocate for stricter land-use regulation. I suggested James Howard Kunstler. Kunstler, however, was still mad at being edited in an appearance on Stossel’s ABC show, so he told Lott to “tell Stoessel he can kiss my ass.” Kunstler missed a bet, since Stossel’s new show on Fox is unedited (though they would probably bleep out any of the profanity that Kunstler seems to like).

In any case, on Wednesday, March 10 the Antiplanner will fly to Alaska for several events in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Sarah Palin’s hometown of Wasilla. On March 20, I’ll talk about smart growth in Orange County, California, at an event sponsored by the Pacific Research Institute. Then, during the week of March 22, I’ll be in Chicago, Racine, Waunakee, Madison, and Minneapolis to promote my book, Gridlock. If you are in any of those places, I hope to see you there.

Gridlock and Light-Rail Slide Shows

By | | Follow up, Housekeeping
30 Comments

On Tuesday, March 2, the Antiplanner gave an anti-light-rail slide show in Vancouver, Washington. You can download this show, with the core of my narrative in the notes, in either PDF or PowerPoint formats. Each of these files are about 15 megabytes.

There are two short videos in the show that aren’t really necessary to understand it. Of course, they won’t appear in the PDF. But if you really want to see them in the PowerPoint show, you will also need to download this 43 megabyte zip file, unzip the file, and make sure your PowerPoint software inserts the videos into the show. Sorry for the large size; these are my original videos taken in Denver and France.

On Wednesday, March 3, the Antiplanner gave a presentation about Gridlock. Although the presentations on the book vary slightly from place to place, you can download the basic presentation in either PDF or PowerPoint formats. Each of these files are about 20 megabytes.

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Federal Highway Funds Frozen

By | | News commentary, Transportation
27 Comments

The distribution of federal highway revenues to the states ended on Sunday night thanks to Congress’ failure to extend surface transportation funding. This means that transit agencies and highway departments may temporarily lack funds to pay their bills.

Democrats in Congress had proposed to extend funding through the end of the year as a part of a bill extending unemployment compensation. But Kentucky Republican Senator Jim Bunning objected to the unemployment bill, since there was no money to pay for it. So the House passed a bill extending transportation funding for four weeks, but Bunning objected to that as well. Bunning agreed yesterday to drop his objections, but the funds will remain frozen for a few more days.

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Back on the Road Again

By | | Housekeeping
33 Comments

The Antiplanner is doing a lot of traveling this month. This week its Portland and Vancouver. Tonight, at 6:30, the Antiplanner will tell some of the good folks of Vancouver about the perils of light rail. The event is sponsored by We the People and will be at Harney Elementary School at 3212 E. Evergreen.

On Wednesday at noon, the Antiplanner will speak to the Portland State University Planning Club in room 212 of the Urban Center Building, 506 SW Mill. Should I give the “smart growth is a dumb way to plan” speech or the “government planning is evil and you should all change your majors” speech?
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Presuming I survive that encounter, at 6 pm Wednesday I’ll be at the Executive Club, which meets for dinner at the Airport Shilo Inn at 11707 NE Airport Way. Here I’ll present my new book, Gridlock. If you are in Portland, I hope to see you at one of these events.

Wisconsin’s High-Cost, Low-Speed Rail

By | | Transportation
18 Comments

Wisconsin was the fourth-highest (after California, Florida, and Illinois) recipient of federal high-speed rail money, receiving $823 million to initiate Milwaukee-to-Madison service. The state’s application proposes to use this money to operate six trains a day between the two cities as a continuation of service from Chicago to Milwaukee.

The proposal does not call for high-speed (faster than 125 mph) or even moderate-speed (faster than 80 mph) rail. Instead, the top speeds will only be 79 mph until even more money is spent improving signaling to allow for “positive train control” (which insures trains will automatically stop when necessary even if the engineer fails to stop the train).

With three stops between Madison and Milwaukee, the average speed will be just 58 mph. That’s a bit higher than the current Badger Bus, which averages 42 to 52 mph depending on which bus you take. But the rail route is longer than the bus route, which means the train will take longer (1 hour 40 minutes) than the fastest bus (1 hour 30 minutes).

In addition, the bus stops in the middle of the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison, while current plans call for the train to terminate at Dane County Airport on the edge of town, with transit connections to downtown and the university. This gives even the slower (1 hour 50 minute) buses a huge competitive advantage.

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