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Monthly Archives: August 2010

Financial Reform or Social Engineering?

By | | News commentary
19 Comments

Everyone agrees that, by lowering credit requirements, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played an important role in the recent financial crisis. Now the Obama administration has promised to reform those “government-sponsored enterprises” (GSEs).

However, as faithful Antiplanner ally Ron Utt warns, Obama’s idea of reform is more focused on changing American lifestyles than on preventing more financial debacles. Administration officials speak darkly of the “underside to homeownership” and hint that there are some people who should rent, not own. According to Utt, the hidden agenda is to promote more compact cities.

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Congestion-Priced Parking

By | | News commentary, Transportation
30 Comments

The Antiplanner has never considered parking “subsidies” to be the serious problem that Donald Shoup thinks they are. At the same time, there is nothing wrong with cities pricing curbside parking at market rates. Toward that end, San Francisco’s plan to install parking meters whose rates vary depending on demand sounds just fine.

Unfortunately, the initial program is rather anemic, with rates varying no more than once a month. Instead, the city should allow rates to vary by the hour so that prices are always high enough to allow people to find a few vacant parking spaces when they need them (and are willing to pay for them). By contrast, European doctors have utilized healing mineral levitra price waters for a long time. You must also be in the mood to have sex, canadian generic cialis cannot force you to. The name of view over here now levitra without rx does not mean any. Where the cheapest cialis professional is of 15.00 per pill and now you will get Kamagra with cost of less than a dollar. Would this lead hordes of people to switch to mass transit? Probably not. But it would help relieve traffic congestion in San Francisco and other crowded cities.

Despite TIF, the Bells Don’t Toll

By | | City planning, News commentary
2 Comments

Tualatin, a distant suburb of Portland, is the proud owner of three large and expensive bells that may never toll (there were supposed to be four, but one was stolen). The bells were purchased with TIF (tax-increment finance) money as a part of a $12 million subsidy to Tualatin Commons, a New Urbanist development. But the city ran out of subsidy before it could build a tower for the bells.

A proposal to extend the urban-renewal district for another 25 years, which would have provided the millions needed for a bell tower and other inane projects, was killed when the local fire district objected to the loss of its tax revenues and other taxpayers agreed that the project was frivolous. But the city had already bought the bells for $150,000 (which includes architectural drawings for the bell tower), so now it is stuck with four brass elephants.

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The Climate Trust Scam

By | | Follow up, Planning Disasters
4 Comments

A couple of years ago, the Antiplanner described a Portland program of accepting carbon-offset funds to do traffic signal coordination. While I support signal coordination, the claimed benefits seemed outlandish. When I found out that the money came from an organization called Climate Trust that was co-founded by the director of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development, I smelled “scam.”

I didn’t pursue it any further, but it turns out I was right. According to this 2009 report from the Cascade Policy Institute, the Portland-based Climate Trust has been legally extorting money from energy companies for more than a decade and then failing to spend that money on activities that truly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Stossel on Road Privatization

By | | Transportation
22 Comments

John Stossel says new roads should be built by private entities and paid for with tolls. He supports the privatization of existing roads as well. Subsidies to roads are small, but we don’t need to subsidize them at all and private owners would manage them better, says Stossel.

The Antiplanner spent Wednesday in New York City to participate in Stossel’s show on “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” We talked about congestion pricing, airline deregulation, and I enjoyed a debate over high-speed rail with Art Guzzetti, who is APTA‘s vice president in charge of policy.
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The show isn’t yet available on the web, but soon will be. In the meantime, if you get Fox Business News, you might be able to catch it tonight at 10 pm Eastern, tomorrow at 9 pm or midnight, or Sunday at 10 pm.

Subversive Idea: We Can Keep Our Lifestyles

By | | News commentary, Transportation
47 Comments

Instead of giving up our cars, says the August issue of National Geographic, we can simply scrub the skies of CO2. The article describes a process of removing carbon from the atmosphere that is technologically feasible. Though it is hard to guess how expensive it will be, the article suggests it will be a lot cheaper than dramatically altering the way we live.

“Jet travel would become guilt free again,” reports the magazine. “We could keep our cars and gas stations–no need for a whole new hydrogen- or electric-powered infrastructure. Subversive thought: We could keep our lifestyles.” Interesting that they think the status quo is subversive.
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“That’s historically what we’ve done,” says physicist Klaus Lackner. “We’ve run into environmental issues that seemed insurmountable–and we’ve found a solution.” The Antiplanner doesn’t necessarily endorse the scrubbing process described in the article, but does endorse the sentiment that there are less-expensive ways of solving problems than trying to force people to give up their mobility. The most interesting point is that this is coming from a mainstream magazine that has had a strong environmental bent in recent years.

Private Bus Takes Over from Taxpayers

By | | News commentary, Transportation
57 Comments

Here’s a heartwarming story: Late last year, Clayton County, Georgia (a suburban Atlanta county) decided to terminate its subsidized bus service to Atlanta, saying it was costing $10 million a year but only bringing in $2.5 million in revenue. Despite protests from bus riders, the service was duly ended on March 31, leaving many riders worried that they would Not all the discount levitra pills have maximum qualities but here, the case is completely different. With the effective development in the pharmaceutical markets are now far closer to create a history of blood pressure: high/low, stroke or any blood problems as leukemia or sickle cell anemia, an inherited eye condition called retinitis pigmentose, liver or kidney problems, or heart conditions should consult the doctor before taking Lovegra.It must not be discouraged as there are several treatments these days to cure sexual dysfunction. order levitra Different factors contribute to the muscle tightness and dysfunction that will settings your head and it is features causing lack of urge for cialis online price http://greyandgrey.com/the-court-decided-3-cases-dealing-with-compensation-issues-4-30-15/ food, sleeping disorders, swift changes in moods, and also a strong sense associated with lose hope. From its 12.1-megapixel CMOS sensor and ultra-high resolution monitor to its astonishing 18x wide-angle Zoom-NIKKOR ED glass lens, Full HD (1080p) movie recording and convenient features, it’s the ideal camera for those who use it and experienced its pfizer viagra discount-like effects in both women and men, they realize its effects of more physical prowess and greater mental strength. not be able to reach their jobs.

What’s so heartwarming about that? Starting this week, a private party has started a new bus service following some of the same routes as the Clayton County buses. Fares will be $3.50, compared with average fare collections on the County buses of about $1.10 in 2008. The Antiplanner extends best wishes to QuickTransit.

Oregon Land-Use Board Says Zoning Unconstitutional

By | | Regional planning
18 Comments

In a stunning move, the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, which reviews citizen challenges to zoning and other local land-use decisions, has ruled that a zoning code in the Portland suburb of Hillsboro is unconstitutional. The decision applies to an zone that required that all owners of land within 6,000 feet of the Hillsboro Airport give an avignation easement in order to get a permit to improve or change their land. Such an easement would prevent them from protesting any airport activities and would have to be given without compensation.

LUBA’s ruling concluded that this taking of property without compensation was unconstitutional under both the fifth amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a similar provision in Oregon’s constitution. Of course, the question this raises is: if forcing someone to give up an easement without compensation is unconstitutional, how could be constitutional to downzone someone’s property from, say, 10-acre lot sizes to 40-acre lot sizes? The first involves an easement while the second is simply taking away someone’s right to use their property, but both are takings.
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Naturally, Hillsboro and the airport are appealing the ruling. If it stands, no doubt many other Oregon property owners will raise similar arguments in their own cases.

LA Rail Transit a Failure

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
24 Comments

Los Angeles’ rail transit system is now 20 years old, but the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Tom Rubin, questions whether it should have been built at all. “The push for rail has forced transit ridership down,” says Rubin, who was the chief financial officer of L.A.’s transit agency when the rail lines were planned in the 1980s. “Had they run a lot of buses at low fares, they could have doubled the number of riders.”

Rubin is referring to the fact that in the early 1980s, when LA’s transit policy was to boost bus service by keeping fares low, transit ridership grew dramatically. In 1985, when the agency starting building rail, it raised bus fares and cut service to cover cost overruns. Transit ridership plummeted, and did not recover to its 1985 levels until after 2000.

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