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Yglesias Is Baffled

By | | Follow up, Regional planning
69 Comments

Matthew Yglesias is baffled by reality. At least, he finds the Antiplanner’s post about how zoning codes actually work, as opposed to how Yglesias imagines they work, to be “baffling and bafflingly long.”

He boils his case down to three simple statements:

  1. Throughout America there are many regulations that restrict the density of the built environment.
  2. Were it not for these restrictions, people would build more densely.
  3. Were the built environment more densely built, the metro areas would be less sprawling.

Reality is never so simple. As you can see, it all depends on statement 1: are there regulations throughout America that restrict density? As evidence that there are, Yglesias cited the Maricopa County Zoning Code, which he claimed allows development no denser than duplexes. Apparently, he didn’t read (or was baffled by) chapter 7, which allows housing at 43 units per acre, or chapter 10, which allows anyone with 160 acres to build as dense as they want.

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Gridlock and Light-Rail Slide Shows

By | | Follow up, Housekeeping
30 Comments

On Tuesday, March 2, the Antiplanner gave an anti-light-rail slide show in Vancouver, Washington. You can download this show, with the core of my narrative in the notes, in either PDF or PowerPoint formats. Each of these files are about 15 megabytes.

There are two short videos in the show that aren’t really necessary to understand it. Of course, they won’t appear in the PDF. But if you really want to see them in the PowerPoint show, you will also need to download this 43 megabyte zip file, unzip the file, and make sure your PowerPoint software inserts the videos into the show. Sorry for the large size; these are my original videos taken in Denver and France.

On Wednesday, March 3, the Antiplanner gave a presentation about Gridlock. Although the presentations on the book vary slightly from place to place, you can download the basic presentation in either PDF or PowerPoint formats. Each of these files are about 20 megabytes.

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Bozeman Presentation

By | | Follow up
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You can download the Antiplanner’s presentation at the Montana Property Rights conference in PDF or PowerPoint formats. Both photo-heavy files are about 15 MB and include notes indicating the gist of my narrative.

Those who are interested can also download the Antiplanner’s recent Wichita presentation in PDF or PowerPoint formats. The Wichita presentations, which are about 25 MB, deal with downtown revitalization, while the Montana presentations deal with the effects of smart-growth planning on property rights.
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I also have posted last November’s presentation in Boise, which concerned streetcars, in PDF and PowerPoint formats. These are about 10 MB and, as with the Wichita and Montana files, include the core of my narrative in notes.

Strong Towns Rebuttal

By | | Follow up, Regional planning, Transportation
37 Comments

Note: Mr. Marohn of the Strong Towns blog offers the following response to my post yesterday. My own reply appears below.

I love lobster. A grilled lobster tail with a little bit of butter is the most divine food I can imagine. If I had the option, I would eat lobster every day. So why can’t I, an American living in a country of unequaled prosperity, eat lobster every day?

Well I can, if I am willing to pay for it.

You see, nobody subsidizes my lobster for me. And since I have to pay the full cost, I probably average a meal of lobster tail once a year. For the most part, if I want meat, I eat chicken, pork or beef in the form of hamburger. And I’m good with that. I could eat lobster every day if I really wanted to, but I’d have to cut way back on other things I am not willing to live without. So I make choices.

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Antiplanner Rebuttal

By | | Follow up, Regional planning, Transportation
9 Comments

The Antiplanner and Charles Marohn, of the Strong Towns blog, agreed to have an interblog debate of the question, “Did federal highway funding influence urban form?” Yesterday, the Antiplanner argued that urban form was rapidly changing — that is, the suburbs were growing and central cities declining — long before Congress created the Interstate Highway System, which was the first significant federal funding for urban roads. (Prior to 1956, almost all federal highway funding went to rural roads.) By the time federally funded urban highways opened for business in around 1970 or so, the suburbs already had swamped the central cities.

The case made by Mr. Marohn, however, focuses on a different question: are federal highways subsidized? “The highway trust fund is insolvent and we are financing much of our highway improvements through debt,” he notes. Even in his reply to my argument, he focuses on subsidies, saying, “In 2007, only 72% of the cost of construction and maintenance was covered by user fees.”

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Climate as an Indicator of Faith in Government

By | | Follow up
34 Comments

The Antiplanner wrote last Friday’s post in a rush after four days of dealing with near-record low temperatures, so it was probably a bit jumbled. Yet it set off a healthy debate that was both polite and instructive. So let’s continue a bit further.

On Sunday, Chris Matthews asked his guests — Dan Rather, Kelly O’Donnell, Helene Cooper, and Andrew Ross Sorkin — why it is that roughly 80 percent of liberals believe we need climate change legislation while 80 percent of conservatives don’t. Since Matthews and all of his guests are liberals who believe we need climate change legislation, they couldn’t figure it out.

The answer, as I was trying to get across last Friday, is that liberals believe government is good and they want more of it. The climate issue is just one more excuse to justify a bigger government. Conservatives believe government is bad and they want less of it. So, even those who agree that anthropogenic climate change is real are not going to accept that government has a role to play in solving the problem.

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American Dream Conference

By | | Follow up
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The Antiplanner’s faithful ally (and frequent commenter on this blog), Jim Karlock, has posted 28 videos of presentations at the 2007 Preserving the American Dream conference, which was held in San Jose. The Antiplanner helped organize this conference

Most of these presentations are excellent. Alan Pisarski, Sam Staley (on public-private partnerships), and Adrian Moore do a great job of decontructing federal transportation funding — and Gabriel Roth and Fred Foldvary make the case for completely privatizing roads and transit.

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Buses Beat Rail

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

The New York Times Washington Post asked a reporter to ride the bus between New York and Washington for a month to see why intercity buses are suddenly so popular. Andrea Sachs found that most bus riders were motivated by “price, location and times.”

The buses are far less expensive than Amtrak (typically $15 to $20 vs. $49 to $99) and take people to more locations (for example, not just Penn Station in New York). With at least a dozen different companies offering 150 to 180 departures per day (depending on the day of the week), buses also beat out Amtrak’s 24 departures per day (half of which are Acela trains that cost a minimum of $99).

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High-Speed Mythology

By | | Follow up, Transportation
8 Comments

The Midwest High-Speed Rail Association (MHSRA, as distinguished from the Midwest Regional Rail Initiative or MRRI) has a web page that supposedly separates facts from fiction. In fact, this page plays fast and loose with the facts. Since many of the “fictions” that the group supposedly exposes are from the Antiplanner, I’ll take this opportunity to respond.

As you read through the MHSRA’s supposed list of fictions, keep in mind that the reports the MHSRA is reviewing were written in response to Obama’s and MRRI’s plan to boost the speed of Midwestern and other passenger trains on existing freight lines to 110 mph. The MHSRA wants to build brand-new tracks that will allow much higher speed passenger trains. Without making the distinction, it often conflates these two proposals, responding to criticisms of 110-mph trains by arguing that the criticism is wrong when applied to 150-mph or faster trains. In fact, proposals for 150-mph or faster trains have their own flaws that the MHSRA conveniently ignores because they were rarely mentioned in reviews of 110-mph rail proposals.

Supposed fact: Critics of high-speed rail are “advocates for the status quo,” meaning “gridlock, high fuel costs and severe pollution.” Reality: The critics cited by the MHSRA (Cato, Heritage, and Reason) all support devolution of federal transportation programs to the states, an end to all transportation subsidies, and cost-effective means of enabling mobility while protecting the environment. This is hardly the status quo and is arguably further from the status quo than advocates of high-speed rail.

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The Country Is Ready for Free Money

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

Forty states have asked the federal government for a total of $102 billion for high-speed rail. This suggests that the Antiplanner’s estimate of $90 billion for the cost of the Obama high-speed rail plan was low.

Secretary of Behavior Modification Ray LaHood says that this “shows that the country is ready for high-speed rail.” Of course, all it really shows is that state bureaucrats are ready for free federal money.

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