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Dead Again

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie rekilled the Hudson River tunnel project. He had killed it before, a couple of weeks ago, but then promised to reconsider his decision at the request of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Christie did not want to burden New Jersey taxpayers with the cost overruns, now anticipated to be at least $4 billion. Canceling the project means New Jersey has to repay the federal government $350 million spent on planning the project, which seems a bargain by comparison.

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Rest in Peace, Old Friend

By | | Follow up
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July 1, 1993 – October 11, 2010

Chip on Christmas, 2009.

Knowing this day would eventually arrive didn’t make it any easier, nor did the fact that, at 17 years three months, Chip outlived most other dogs of his size by several years. If I live to share my home with a hundred more dogs, I’ll never find one as nice as Chip.
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His last portrait, October 11, 2010.

What gentler eye, what nobler heart
Doth warm the winter’s nip
Than the true blue orb and the oaken core
Of beloved old dog Chip?
(after Walt Kelly)

Farewell, Walkin’ Jim

By | | Follow up
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The world won’t be the same without you. I’ll remember your songs every time I hike in the wilderness.


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1953-2010

High-Speed Rail Deathwatch

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
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Will a high-speed rail line ever be built from San Francisco to Los Angeles? The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) has less than 10 percent of the money it needs to build this line. The plan is increasingly under fire from local and state organizations. On one hand, President Obama’s vague and controversial proposal to spend $50 billion to “rebuild 150,000 miles of roads [and] construct and maintain 4,000 miles of railway” could keep the California project alive. On the other hand, if Republican Meg Whitman is elected state governor this November, she could kill the program.

Can’t afford to build it; can’t afford to run it. Maybe it isn’t needed?

A recent op ed in the San Francisco Chronicle succinctly points out that projected costs have nearly doubled since voters approved the plan, adequate funding is unavailable, and–“with 10 airports and six competing airlines”–the San Francisco-Los Angeles corridor doesn’t need high-speed rail anyway.

Perhaps most important, the measure approved by voters in 2008 forbade any tax subsidies for operations. Yet recent recalculations of ridership projections and costs make it clear that fares will never cover operating costs, so even if they build it, they would not be able to run it (at least, without changing the law and finding money for operating subsidies).

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Donald Shoup on Free Parking

By | | Follow up, Transportation
13 Comments

Donald Shoup supports free parking. At least, in a response to my first post about Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking, Dr. Shoup points out that he only wants the price of parking to be “right,” and “the right price [for parking] will often be zero.”

However, the main purpose of Shoup’s response is to correct my mistaken claim that he supports maximum-parking requirements, requirements that all businesses charge for parking, or other coercive policies. I apologize for that error.

In fact, Shoup’s book, The High Cost of Free Parking, argues only that cities should eliminate minimum-parking requirements and charge market rates for on-street parking, things that the Antiplanner favors as well. Where we disagree is about the effects of these policies.

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Free Parking Revisited

By | | Follow up, Transportation
13 Comments

Two weeks ago, the Antiplanner responded with dismay to George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking. This led to a variety of responses in the blogosphere, none of which address the Antiplanner’s point. Instead, they all argue against the minimum-parking requirements found in many zoning regulations.

In particular, Cowen himself points to a study that found that Los Angeles’ minimum-parking requirements forced some developers to build more parking than they would have without such requirements. But Cowen’s op ed was titled, “Free Parking Comes at a Price,” not “Minimum-Parking Requirements Come at a Price.” The op ed was based on a book by Donald Shoup titled “The High Cost of Free Parking,” not “The High Cost of Minimum-Parking Requirements.”

Nothing the Antiplanner wrote defended minimum-parking requirements. Instead, the Antiplanner pointed out that, even without such requirements, most businesses still provide free parking for their employees and customers. It is one thing to oppose minimum-parking requirements as an unnecessary form of government regulation. It is another thing to favor government regulation mandating that private businesses charge for parking.

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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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FTA Wants Your Comments

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
2 Comments

Last January, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced that he was replacing rules that required that federal transit grants had to be “cost effective” with rules promoting “livability.” Yesterday, the Federal Transit Administration asked for your comments on this proposal.

The FTA doesn’t have new rules yet; it just wants to know what you think of the idea. Considering that the head of the FTA has revealed that he is skeptical of expensive rail projects, especially when cities can’t afford to maintain and operate the systems they have, they might genuinely be interested in some new ideas. After all, how livable can a city be where lots of people have given up their cars for transit only to find that the transit agency has stopped running for lack of funds?

Speaking of costly transit, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has just published a new paper on the cost of transit in that state. The paper also shows how Tennessee transit systems use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases, per passenger mile, than cars or even SUVs. The only really efficient transit system, the paper shows, is vanpooling, which is the closest thing most transit agencies have to actual automobiles.

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Left-Brain vs. Right-Brain Debate

By | | Follow up, Travels
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On Wednesday, April 14, the Antiplanner had the honor of debating James Kunstler, the famous author of Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency. The students at Brown University who set this up chose the topic, “Building America: Who Should Control Urban Growth–Planners or Markets?”

I’ve never met Kunstler before, and I was a bit nervous since he hasn’t exactly been friendly on his blog. But he turned out to be very warm and congenial. We share many recreation interests and I am sure we could be friends if we didn’t live on opposite sides of the country, which (despite our mobility) might be a bigger barrier than being on opposite sides of the political debate.

Kunstler and I were each asked to speak for 25 minutes, after which we were invited to ask each other one question. Then the floor was opened to questions from the audience, mostly (I was told) students in political science, environmental studies, urban planning, and economics.

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Political Asymmetry

By | | Follow up
27 Comments

On Wednesday the Antiplanner expressed disappointment that St. Louis voters agreed to triple the sales tax so the region’s transit agency can go on another rail construction spree. In response, faithful opponent Dan commented that, “the voting-age population again has…um…different…priorities than the collection of white conservative males who consistently oppose these ballot questions.”

The Antiplanner respectfully disagrees. Instead, what I see is a powerful asymmetry in rail transit elections. On one hand, it is easy for a transit agency to put a measure to build rail transit on the ballot. Usually, the agency has to do nothing more than have its board of directors pass a resolution. On the other hand, it is very difficult for the public to put a measure on the ballot to stop rail transit. At best, they can do so by collecting tens of thousands of signatures. Many states don’t even provide that option.

Many transit agencies also have discretion to choose when to hold the election, and in the St. Louis case it clearly decided to have the election in an off-month of an off-year when turnout would be low. Barely 150,000 people voted in this year’s election vs. more than 500,000 in the November, 2008, election in which voters rejected Metro’s tax increase.

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