The Washington Post has a story on Oregon’s United Streetcar company, which is supposedly geared up to manufacture 24 streetcars a year but has only managed to sell 18 and delivered all of them late. The story comes complete with photos of federal officials like Tim Geithner wearing ill-fitting sack suits like soviet commissars as they inspect the heavily subsidized factory.
For the Post, the story is not so much that the streetcars were delivered late, or that they were ineptly built, or that they cost $4 million while the Czech streetcars that they copied only cost $1.9 million. Although the article alludes to these problems, what appears to upset the Post the most is that giving millions of dollars in subsidies to an Oregon company that never built a transit vehicle in its life didn’t miraculously create a manufacturing powerhouse that is exporting streetcars all over the world. For some reason, other countries don’t want to pay twice as much for streetcars that are delivered late and fail to live up to promised specifications.
United Streetcar only managed to sell streetcars to three cities–Portland, Tucson, and Washington, DC–and they all signed contracts before the company developed its track record of late deliveries. Given that record, it isn’t surprising that other cities that are thinking about streetcars aren’t planning to buy Oregon.
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The elected officials who promoted this boondoggle–people like Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Peter DeFazio–like to think of themselves as venture capitalists providing funds to new industries that will eventually be highly profitable. The problem is that government can’t pick winners because it doesn’t know the future any better than anyone else. While venture capitalists risk their own money on what they hope will be the Next Big Thing, Blumenauer and DeFazio want to risk your money. And rather than search for the Next Big Thing, they risk it on something that was a big thing 120 years ago but was already on its way out 90 years ago.
Meanwhile, Tempe, Arizona appears determined to spend $200 million on three miles of streetcar line. Given Tempe’s current population of 168,000 people, that’s nearly $1,200 per resident for a line that few will ever ride and others will curse for causing congestion. Presumably, Tempe has at least learned from Tucson not to buy its streetcars from Oregon.
And I was just talking about this failure of a company with a friend. I expect the usual suspects to show up and claim the Antiplanner’s argument is invalid because he misspelled a word or missed a comma.
And [NO SENTENCE STARTS WITH AND] I was just talking about this failure of a company with a friend. I expect the usual suspects to show up and claim the Antiplanner’s argument is invalid [MISSING COMMA] because he misspelled a word or missed a comma.
Thus? 🙂
You ought to sometime write a larger insight on why light rail/streetcar projects fare a bitter better in EU. Cost overruns are a problem here too, but we usually get to extend the systems beyond the first stage demonstration lines to modest networks that at least appear purposeful instead of a gimmick. Like I watch the list of your second generation streetcar systems with single lines lengths of 3-6 miles, of course that serves little use for anyone.
Is it just different society with different values emphasis on things, or are we all idiots with too much money under the socialist dictatorship of planners ?
I’d say, Germany deserves a special mention, because after a war, it largely reformed its surviving streetcar systems, so when other places closed their old systems down, Germans saw that not economical thing to do just yet. Later they started to turn many of these systems onto more light rail / subway like architecture, thus was born the concept of Stadtbahn. If it wasn’t for Germany and its well developed light rail architecture, doubtfully the light rail boom of the 90s would have take place.
And I apologize all the stupid typos.
The article is self evidently correct, nothing to argue about so we’ll argue grammar, OK?
And starting a sentence with a conjunction is fine.http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/01/can-i-start-a-sentence-with-a-conjunction/
“And even Mary could assure her family that she had no disinclination for it.” [Jane Austen]
“And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.” [John F. Kennedy]
But surely the shouting of “all caps” is inappropriate in these erudite chambers.
Freeman,
Thanks for your comments. Germany and Czechoslovakia (and many other countries in Europe and elsewhere in the developed world) never paved over their dense walkable neighborhoods with freeways and parking lots like American cities did, so it’s not surprising that they are inspirations for emulation by those of us in the U.S. who want to restore what has been destroyed here.
@ Fred_Z: Starting a sentence with a conjunction is certainly not okay, unless the writer is a 18th century author, or admits to being a politician.
Buying British or buying American doesn’t really help anyone in the long run, as Antiplanner’s article shows. And (?) yet, this practice is still very common.
Starting a sentence with a conjunction is a matter of style, not grammar. It is also a matter of formality, and given that this is a blog and not a peer-reviewed publication, it’s fine.
“Because” is not a conjunction. Therefore, a comma is not required before it. It is also not an ambiguous statement. At any rate, this again is style rather than grammar.
If you’re going to critique grammar, please know something about it first.
Well, I think they were just poking fun, Frank. Regardless, I do want to point out that the troll who popped in to gloat about Europe’s “walkable neighborhoods” is wrong; cars carry the majority of passenger traffic in the EU, and their usage is increasing, not decreasing. This is despite the punishing fuel taxes that keep gas prices anywhere from 5 to 10 dollars a gallon.
@metrosucks:
Europe is a very diverse place. Venice, for example, is all walkable – there are no cars outside an area around the entrance road. London is heavily into bicycles and public transport. Also, there is beautiful Bath, where I live, overrun with cars because the alternatives don’t really work, and it is hard to find politicians who are prepared to work with the public to make things happen.
My point is that outside of a few city centers, the car still rules in Europe, and its use is increasing.
You really think?
One would assume our society is pretty much as saturated with cars as yours. Like everyone has one who wants to have one. Just the more densely planned city centers encourage and enable usable transit. It’s not significantly different in small towns I believe.
I really don’t have the numbers, though.
One real problem with cars is in densely zoned areas is parking. If it’s on ground level one really can’t build traditional perimeter blocks and it just ends up into commie block suburb with apartment buildings far apart surrounded by parking lots or if a parking garage or a cave is made that may easily add over 50 % more to the price of every single apartment. If the parking is built by the municipality as usual, they get substantially subsidized because the running fees that users are ready to pay don’t kill the capital investment. Oh well, another argument for the antiplanner I guess.
These densely zoned blocks get built though because there are people who are willing to pay for the high square meter price for the luxury of living near everything. Its still only a small fraction of overall development.
Like everyone has one [a car] who wants to have one.
Perhaps that is true for the more affluent west, but the situation is much different in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet satellites. The average monthly wage in Bulgaria is $554, and cars aren’t much cheaper there, especially now that the old socialist Ladas have been banned from the highway. So in places like Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Macedonia, etc., the generalization that everyone who wants a car has one simply does not apply.
From Sep 13 to 0ct 6 I drove Franfurt/Main-Nuremberg-Prague-Veseli/Moravou-Starnberg-Pali/Hungary-Budapest-Carnuntum-Veseli-Karlovy Vary-Frankfurt.
4000k in 3 weeks. Great fun. Tried subways, S-Bahns and U-Bahns, in Munich, Prague and Budapest. Blech. Subways for more than 3 people, the best of them, are inconvenient and more expensive than car+parking. On Saturday and Sunday September 20 & 21 we drove from Starnberg to Zeppelinstrasse by the Deutsches Museum in the heart of Munich in the midst of Oktoberfest. Both days we parked for free, it being a week-end. On the Saturday we spent the day in the Museum, on Sunday we walked a few blocks to the Muenchener Altstadt and drank a beer or three at the Hofbraeuhaus, the Platzl, the Viktualenmarkt and perhaps a few in between. And after. Thanks heavens for our designated driver, the Krauts tend to be harsh on drunk Canadians zooming around.
Where was I? Oh yeah, urban train passenger transit sucks, an outmoded 1-D technology in a 2-D world.
And Frank is dead right about eastern Europe. The Czech Republic seems to be doing well, Hungary to a lesser extent, but the highways going east have many, many small trailers with Polish, Romanian or Bulgarian plates carrying 1-3 cars obviously for resale there.
‘Course Frank is right. He lives in the real world, not the planner fantasies spouted by people like msetty or gilfoil. Cars are freedom, and most people want cars so they don’t end up living their life according to the regimented schedule of the local transit district. This is the same all over the world.
@ metrosucks:
“Cars are freedom”
Debatable. On a freeway, you can only go in one of two directions. You can go by transit, which in no way reduces that freedom of movement, and then switch to local individual transport close to your destination – or indulge in the hope that this day, unlike all previous ones, the road will be free-flowing for you and everybody else’s individual transport system. Cars are not freedom – they are the triumph of hope over experience.
Freeman wrote:
You ought to sometime write a larger insight on why light rail/streetcar projects fare a bitter better in EU. Cost overruns are a problem here too, but we usually get to extend the systems beyond the first stage demonstration lines to modest networks that at least appear purposeful instead of a gimmick. Like I watch the list of your second generation streetcar systems with single lines lengths of 3-6 miles, of course that serves little use for anyone.
Is it just different society with different values emphasis on things, or are we all idiots with too much money under the socialist dictatorship of planners ?
My take is that most EU cities with a lot of streetcar lines kept them – and thus there is a culture of taking streetcars that some U.S. cities once had. The city I am most familiar with is Helsinki, Finland, which has a great system of streetcars that get a lot of use in the downtown and nearby areas of the city. Helsinki kept its streetcar system (which dates back to when Finland was a part of the Russian empire prior to 1917) in large part because they could not afford to replace it with buses (though they could now, but won’t, in large part because of the heavy ridership that the system enjoys).
It also helps that motor fuel is taxed at a rate high enough that fuel costs are about double what they are in the United States.
Gilfoil wrote:
Thanks for your comments. Germany and Czechoslovakia (and many other countries in Europe and elsewhere in the developed world) never paved over their dense walkable neighborhoods with freeways and parking lots like American cities did, so it’s not surprising that they are inspirations for emulation by those of us in the U.S. who want to restore what has been destroyed here.
I did not like the way that some freeways were run through urban areas of the U.S. The Cross-Bronx Expressway part of I-95 being one example.
But similar mistakes were made on the European side of the pond. Even through “dense walkable” neighborhoods. The Essingeleden motorway (E4/E20) through Stockholm being a prime example. But in spite of that motorway, the area around it is still dense and walkable, and is still popular.
“Cars are not freedom – they are the triumph of hope over experience.”
So the second part of this is so trite as to be meaningless. As for the first part, I’ll remember that some one on the internet said this when I’m hiking in the Olympics or at Snoqualmie Pass, or when I’m rolling down a 4×4 road in central Washington, surrounded by nothing but sage and open vistas. Nope. Certainly not freedom.
@C. P. Zilliacus
Yay, another Finn.
I was specifically thinking the new Jätkäsaari district in Helsinki when I wrote about parking troubles.