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Debunking Coercion Part 3
Does Forcing Density on People Improve Livability?

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Is Portland’s land-use planning process reducing sprawl and auto driving? The Congress for the New Urbanism wants to think so, but they ignore the high cost that planning is imposing on Portland-area residents.

Are Transit-Oriented Developments Changing People’s Travel Habits?

My critique of Portland’s transit-oriented developments (TODs) argues, “there is little evidence that they have significantly changed people’s travel habits.” Rather than respond to this, Michael Lewyn says that the percentage of people living in these developments who use transit is higher than the national average.

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Debunking Coercion Part 2
Who Put Light Rail in the New Urbanist Platform?

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Portland’s well-publicized planning process is having insignificant effects on travel habits of the region’s residents. Instead, it is simply leading to more and more costly congestion. Yet the Congress for the New Urbanism wants to believe that the system is working so badly that it is willing to selectively use numbers that seem to support its case without looking at the big picture.

Transit’s Anemic Growth

Michael Lewyn’s critique of my paper on Portland reviews Portland’s transit ridership starting in 1986, the year Portland opened its first light-rail line. From this point of view, light rail looks successful. This selective use of data neglects to observe the decline in ridership, and huge decline in transit’s share of travel, that took place during construction of the light-rail line. In a pattern that would be repeated in many other cities, rail cost overruns in the early 1980s forced TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, to reduce bus service and raise fares.

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Debunking Coercion Part 1
The Debunking That Doesn’t Work

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The Congress for the New Urbanism can’t decide whether it favors coercion or not. The group believes that New Urban designs — high-density, mixed-use developments with pedestrian-friendly layouts — will make cities more livable and that there is a large pent-up demand for such livability. But at least some of its members are not sure they trust people to choose New Urban living, so they are willing to force those choices upon people.

One of the first things CNU did when it was founded in the early 1990s was publish a list of “New Urban basics” saying, “All development should be in the form of compact, walkable neighborhoods and/or districts.” Another document, called the Charter of the New Urbanism, held that existing suburbs should be reconfigured along New Urbanist principles. This doesn’t offer much choice for people who don’t want to live in compact developments.

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More on Light-Rail Transit Crime

By | | Follow up, Transportation
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A brawl involving 100 to 150 people shut down Portland’s eastside light-rail line last Friday night. This naturally raises the question, “What is the relationship between light rail and crime?” Portlanders are beginning to wonder as one part of the city, informally known as Felony Flats, is suffering a crime wave.

Felony Flats is in southeast Portland near the 162nd Avenue Station on the Gresham-to-Portland light-rail line. It is reputed to have the city’s “highest density of drug labs and ex-convict residents.”

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The Market Works

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Wildfire
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In my previous post on wildfire, D4P argued that government should require the use of nonflammable roofs and other firesafe practices on homes near wildfire-prone lands. I responded that this should be left to insurance companies.

It looks like the insurance companies are taking care of the problem. “Spooked by devastating wildfire seasons, the nation’s top insurers are inspecting homes in high-risk areas throughout the West and threatening to cancel coverage if owners don’t clear brush or take other precautions,” says the Associated Press.

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What is changing? Katrina, 9-11, and other disasters have forced the insurance industry to sharpen its pencils and insist that people make more effort to reduce risks.

Bay Freeway Update: Going Back to Cars (Updated)

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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BART carried a record number of passengers on Monday, April 30, the day after a tanker truck blew up and destroyed a key part of the Oakland freeway system. BART and other transit systems offered free service on Monday, so they don’t have exact counts. However, on Tuesday, BART carried about 10.8 percent more than on a normal weekday, but only 5.2 percent more on Wednesday and 7 percent more on Thursday.

Wikipedia photo by T.J. Morales.

As Tom Rubin says, the real test is what happens to Bay Bridge counts. On Monday, the bridge carried about 18 percent fewer cars than usual. On Tuesday, it was down to 14 percent; on Wednesday, 11 percent. Part of the decrease in bridge traffic from the east was offset by an increase from the south as drivers realized that there would be less congestion due to the freeway collapse.

AC Transit, the agency that provides bus service throughout Oakland and the rest of Alameda County (including a few routes that cross the bridge to San Francisco) did not record any more riders on Tuesday than on a normal weekday.

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Update on Measure 37

By | | Follow up, News commentary
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Faithful readers of the Antiplanner will recall that loyal opponent DanS predicted that Oregon would repeal measure 37, the property rights law, by 2008. He believed so strongly that Oregon voters were fed up with the law that he offered to bet the Antiplanner, with the stakes being a dinner.

The Democratic majority in Oregon’s legislature is apparently not so confident about the mood of the voters. After all, 61 percent of voters approved measure 37. While planning proponents are pushing hard to get the legislature to amend the law, few are actually talking about repeal.

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Bay Freeway Update: No Traffic Snarls

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Will the tanker truck accident that destroyed a key part of the San Francisco Bay Area freeway network cost commuters millions of dollars a day? Will those commuters respond by switching to public transit? So far, the answers seem to be “no” and “maybe.”

Flickr photo by Thomas Hawk

The closure of a freeway interchange that normally sees 80,000 vehicles a day did not result in huge traffic jams yesterday or this morning. Many people may have used the free public transit offered by the state, but so far no reliable reports have said how many. (Transit was free yesterday only; today it should be back to normal fares.) Continue reading →

“This Pig Stinks,” Say Bus Ads

By | | Follow up, News commentary
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Opponents of a tax increase for Grand Rapids transit (previously discussed here) have a new ad, illustrated below.


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They are paying the transit agency $290 to carry a 2-foot-by-6-foot version of the ad on one of its buses. Isn’t freedom wonderful?