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Monthly Archives: July 2011

Mica’s Retort to U.S. C. of C.

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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In recent months, the Antiplanner has wondered if Representative John Mica, chair of the House Transportation Committee, would act as a true fiscal conservative or revert to his old ways of pork barreling for his state and district. The reauthorization proposal he made last week provides one answer; another can be found in his response to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which had criticized Mica’s plan for reducing spending by 35 percent.

The letter castigates the Chamber for demanding higher taxes and more spending. Mica specifically notes that the Democrat’s proposal for reauthorization would have required a huge increase in gas taxes yet reduced highway construction, stymied public-private partnerships, and created numerous new programs that would have diverted even more money away from meeting highway needs. “Despite these flaws,” says Mica, “your organization enthusiastically encouraged support for the legislation.”

Mica notes that, at one time, the Chamber “would advocate strong infrastructure and responsible fiscal policy,” whereas now its main goal “appears to be to lead the lobby for tax increases.” “It is unfortunate that the leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce still does not recognize that the American people have rejected excessive deficit spending and tax increases.”

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Why Some People Support High-Speed Rail

By | | Transportation
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One reason some people support high-speed rail is that it provides an opportunity for all sorts of fact-finding missions, such as this trip to Europe. “High-speed rail is becoming a reality in the U.S.,” says the Transportation Research Board (a part of the National Acadamies, a supposedly private but actually government-funded and government-created group of organizations). So naturally a bunch of These factors play an important role and also have low self esteem because they cannot fully give cheap cialis 20mg what is expected of them as guys. One should be very careful while women viagra australia using Kamagra pills. Just like any other type of sleeping condition like pickwickian syndromeand exploding head syndrome, you need order cheap cialis to consult your doctor about any sleeping issue. Obesity can promote atherosclerosis, and become the reasons of their separation as well. cialis on line australia engineers and other consultants have to go to Europe on a two-week trip to find out how they do it there.

Sadly, for those of you ready to pack your bags, word via email is that the trip has been cancelled. Maybe it’s because the status of American high-speed rail has changed back from “becoming a reality” to “still a fantasy.”

Food Deserts Don’t Make You Fat

By | | City planning
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Among the wacky ideas held by many urban planners is the notion that “food deserts”–that is, areas of cities without supermarkets–contribute to obesity. According to this theory, people who lack access to supermarkets eat many unhealthy meals at fast food restaurants. This reasoning is used to justify subsidies to supermarkets–often financed through TIF–in those areas.

However, the Los Angeles Times reports that a new study from the University of North Carolina Nutrition Transition program finds that merely putting a supermarket in the middle of a food desert won’t change people’s eating habits.

The Antiplanner checked the home page for Barry Popkin, the author of the UNC study. He’s found that the entire world is getting fat, not just those “auto-dependent” Americans. The average body-mass index (BMI for an American six-year-old is 22.2; the average for a six-year-old in China–which has one-sixth as many cars per capita as the United States–is 24.8. So much for the idea that rebuilding America to look more like Europe or Asia will cure us of our obesity. Continue reading →

Another County Heard From

By | | Housekeeping, Transportation
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1.389 Million Lies about Mica Plan

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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The responses to Representative John Mica’s plan to reduce transportation spending to affordable levels are shrill and bombastic. “1.4 million infrastructure jobs lost due to republican transportation budget short sightedness” claims a Florida newspaper. It’s the “road to ruin” says Oregon Representative (and ranking minority member on the Highways and Transit Subcommittee) Peter Defazio. Many others decry Mica’s proposals to cut or merge their favorite slush funds programs.

Let’s look at that 1.4 million jobs claim. The paper said Mica’s plan would “eliminate one million four hundred thousand jobs with the cuts to be made to our transit funding.” That is laughable. Page 18 of APTA’s Public Transportation Fact Book says the transit industry employes about 402,000 people. Federal funding of about $5.2 billion in 2010 represents less than 10 percent of total transit industry expenses of about 57 billion (page 22 of APTA Fact Book).

Mica’s presentation suggested that transit and highways would each be cut by about the same amount. Cutting federal funding by 30 percent thus represents a 2.7 percent drop in transit funding. If no other funds are found to replace the decline in federal funds and transit agencies find no ways of saving money other than to lay off personnel, a 2.7 percent drop in funds may result in a loss of 11,000 jobs. The Florida paper was off by a mere 1 million 389 thousand jobs, or about 12,600 percent.

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Mica Would Cut Transport Funds by 30%

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Fiscal austerity is the theme of House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica’s long-awaited proposal for reauthorizing federal surface transportation funding, which he released Thursday. Unlike the 2005 reauthorization and President Obama’s proposed reauthorization, Mica’s proposal, which is supported by other Republican subcommittee chairs but has been blasted by Democrats, calls for spending no more than revenues.

That means a bill that is less than half as large as Obama’s proposal, and about 30 percent smaller (in real dollars) than the 2005 bill. Gas tax revenues and other federal highway user fees (mainly a tax on truck tires) total about $35 billion a year, which over six years with inflation is expected to produce about $230 billion. This is well short of the $480 billion that Obama wanted to spend and also a painful drop from the $50 billion a year spent by the 2005 law. Mica blamed the shortfall on new House rules that says Congress can’t spend more than revenues.

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Spain’s High-Speed White Elephants

By | | Transportation
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How did I miss this story? A European publication describes Spain’s high-speed rail system as “a bona fide policy error typical of a nouveau riche nation.”

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Spain has spent or is spending 6 billion euros on a high-speed network that is only expected to carry about 1 percent as many passengers a year as the nation’s commuter trains. Moreover, the high cost of high-speed rail fares “forces young people onto the bus” (which, as the Antiplanner pointed out earlier this week, isn’t necessarily a bad thing since buses are far less expensive and can be far more energy-efficient than trains). The bad thing is that rail advocates in the U.S. use Spain’s example to argue that we should build similar white elephants.

A Different Kind of TIF

By | | City planning
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The Antiplanner’s visit to Lafayette, Louisiana was highly educational. Among other sights, I saw River Ranch, a very successful New Urban development that (according to local tax activists) was built without any tax subsidies. Although I personally would not want to live there, the development commands high prices even in the recession.

River Ranch Rowhouses start at $375,000 for 2,000 square feet, but owners are asking nearly $600,000 for the 2,800-square-foot corner model shown here. Single-family detached homes for sale include a 2,500-square-foot house for $550,000 and a 4,300-square-foot house for $725,000. Most single-family homes appear to be on fairly small lots. Given Lafayette’s median family incomes of less than $50,000, these homes are hardly affordable, but the development proved to be very successful.

I also learned that Louisiana tax-increment financing (TIF) is quite different than in most other parts of the country. In 1988, the state authorized cities to use property taxes, sales taxes, or hotel occupancy taxes for TIF. But property tax TIFs are limited to that portion of property taxes that are not already obligated to some specific purpose–and most property taxes are so obligated, so most if not all Louisiana TIFs rely on sales and hotel taxes instead.

Also, most, though not all, sales-tax TIFs are in the form of an additional sales tax on top of the existing tax (which is 4 percent for the state and a variable amount, generally around 4 percent, for local governments). TIFs that are on top of, rather than out of, the existing tax do not take money from schools, fire, and other urban services, which eliminates many of the objections to TIFs. (At least some other states that use sales tax TIFs, such as Colorado, also add the tax on top of, rather than out of, the existing tax.)

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Florida Governor OKs SunRail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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In what could be an ominous decision for the future of federal transportation funding, Florida Governor Rick Scott got out of the way of SunRail, a costly commuter-rail project in Orlando. While his Tea Party supporters strongly opposed the project, Scott said that he didn’t have the authority to kill the project.

As reported in the New York Times a few days before Scott’s decision, the main backer behind SunRail is Representative John Mica, who chairs the House Transportation Committee. Mica has a history of supporting pork barrel for his district, but after the 2010 election he at least paid lip service to fiscal conservatism. When Governor Scott killed the Florida high-speed rail, which Mica had supported, Mica got with the program and quietly joined the Congressional coalition that effectively killed the entire high-speed rail program.

The SunRail project will eventually cost $1.2 billion, more than a third of which will be spent buying right of way from CSX. CSX is one of Mica’s big supporters, and the Times openly accuses Mica of supporting the project as a favor to the railroad. By vetoing the project Scott could have given Mica cover for its failure.

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Questions about Intercity Buses

By | | Follow up, Transportation
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The Antiplanner rarely responds to comments in a post, but Andrew asked many good questions and requested a lot of background information last week. Most of his questions are answered by citations in the report, but since he did not seem to understand those citations, here are my responses.

1. “Intercity buses carry at least 50% more PM than Amtrak in Amtrak’s showcase Northeast Corridor.” “How is this computed and what are the data sources? What trains are you including in the Amtrak total vs. what buses?

I compiled the on-line schedules for what turned out to be sixteen different bus companies for the week of May 15 to 21. The schedules included all buses connecting Northeast Corridor cities: Boston, Providence, New Haven, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington. I used Google maps to calculate the bus miles between these cities. I then calculated seat miles assuming that premiere lines like Bolt, DC2NY, and Vamoose have 50 seats, Megabuses have 79 seats, and Chinatown buses have 56 seats. My numbers may be an underestimate as some companies may not post their schedules on the web.

To convert to passenger miles, I assumed the seats are 60 percent full. According to the American Bus Association, this is accurate for the major carriers but conservative for the Chinatown buses. Even if the buses are only 50 percent full (which is Amtrak’s average), they carry far more people than Amtrak.

My Amtrak numbers come from page C1 of Amtrak’s 2010 performance report. The September report includes data for the entire fiscal year. Seat miles and passenger miles can both be calculated from this table. I only included Northeast Corridor trains, not trains such as the Crescent, but I also did not include buses such as New York to Raleigh or New York to Atlanta.

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