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Transportation Energy Data

By | | Book reviews, Transportation, Useful Data
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The Department of Energy has just published the 28th edition of the Transportation Energy Data Book, including data for 2007. Since this was the source of some of the Antiplanner’s data used to compare energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions of cars vs. rail transit, it is worth taking a look to see what has changed.

Two of the most important pages contain tables 2.13 and 2.14, physical pages 64 and 65. These list the energy consumption per passenger mile of various forms of transportation between 1970 and 2007.

The tables indicate that, between 2006 and 2007, energy consumption per passenger mile of cars increased by 0.1 percent. For light trucks, it decreased by 0.9 percent, but for transit buses it increased by 1.3 percent. Airlines reduced energy consumption per passenger mile by 3.0 percent; Amtrak by 5.1 percent; and light/heavy rail transit by 4.8 percent. However, commuter rail energy consumption per passenger mile increased by 4.4 percent.

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P. J. O’Rourke on Cars

By | | Book reviews, News commentary, Transportation
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P. J. O’Rourke has a new book, Driving Like Crazy, and an article in the Wall Street Journal lamenting that the magic of the automobile “was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste, and busybodies.” Because his grandfather was once a car dealer, some readers will consign him to a part of the “vast automobile conspiracy.”

The Antiplanner, however, doesn’t believe that “Americans fell out of love with the automobile.” Except for the fact that people like something because it is less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, most Americans never were in love with the automobile — though certainly some were and still are. For most trips, cars are still less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, so they are likely to remain the dominant form of American transportation for a long time.

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Japan’s Recent Past = America’s Future?

By | | Book reviews, Meltdown
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Years ago, the Antiplanner met some students from the Maxwell School of Public Administration. I asked them what they learned at the school.

“We learned about the Golden Triangle,” they said. That sounded suspiciously like the Iron Triangle, a concept used by public-choice economists to describe the natural alliance between elected officials, bureaucrats, and special interest groups: the elected officials fund bureaucracies, who pass money and resources to the special interest groups, who donate money to the elected officials’ political campaigns.

According to the students, the Golden Triangle “is bureaucrats, elected officials, and special interest groups — with bureaucrats at the apex of the triangle, running things.” Does the Maxwell School think this is a good thing? “It’s an ideal to be achieved, but we haven’t gotten there yet,” they said.

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Bubbles, Panics, and Recessions

By | | Book reviews, Meltdown
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In the past thirty years, the world economy has suffered several major bubbles. First came the Japanese stock market and property bubbles that peaked in 1989. Scandanavia suffered real estate and stock bubbles at about the same time. These were soon followed by stock market and real estate bubbles that peaked in southeast Asia in about 1997. High-tech and telecommunications bubbles (which some count as two different bubbles) peaked in 2001. Finally, we have the current housing bubble that peaked in 2006.

Are these bubbles more frequent than in the past? Are all of these bubbles somehow related? Why is real estate connected with most of these bubbles? What tools do central bankers and other government agencies have to prevent or minimize the bubbles?

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The Antiplanner’s Library: The Big Sort

By | | Book reviews
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Urban areas like Portland are sorting themselves, with young people who like the New Urban lifestyle moving to city centers and families with children moving to the suburbs. People have noticed other sorts across the country, such as blue cities and red rural areas.

Someone has written a book about this titled The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart. This sorting, says co-author Bill Bishop, is happening at a neighborhood level, and one of the problems is that many people rarely encounter or talk with people who have different histories, lifestyles, or political views. I confess I haven’t actually read this book yet, but I’ve ordered it and will do so as soon as it arrives.

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The Antiplanner’s Library: The Myth of the Rational Voter

By | | Book reviews
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I once met a government-employed economist who believed that, because democracy is the most perfect form of government, any decision made by a democracy is automatically the best possible decision. Apparently, some people still believe that, or George Mason University economist Brian Caplan would not have had to write The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Henry David Thoreau was even more skeptical, saying, “A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.”

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Urban Planning and Liberal Fascism

By | | Book reviews, Regional planning
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Are American urban planners fascists? Conservative writer Jonah Goldberg probably thinks so. In his new book, Liberal Fascism, Goldberg argues that Italian fascists were not right-wing conservatives, but left wingers looking for a semi-socialist alternative to communism. Fascism was based on based on a combination of private means of production with government control over what was produced.

From this view, a lot of what American planning advocates say sounds fascist. In New Geographics of the American West, University of Colorado geographer William Travis expresses a desire for a “strong national role in everything from urban design and architecture to countryside protection.” He believes federal or at least state control of land use is needed in order to impose “discipline” on local development.

Travis also says that “We need to build a roster of standing land use watchdog groups” like 1000 Friends of Oregon. Brownshirts, anyone?

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The Antiplanner’s Library: Boomburbs

By | | Book reviews
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Quick: Rank the following cities from largest to smallest populations: Cleveland, OH; Kansas City, MO; Mesa, AZ; and Oakland, CA. Which did you list first? Many people will be surprised to learn that Mesa is not only bigger than the other three cities on this list, but bigger than Miami, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh.

And that, in essence, is the message of this book by urban planners Robert Lang and Jennifer LeFurgy: some fast-growing suburbs are now bigger than many central cities. But really, when you think about the fact that the suburbs have been growing faster than central cities for nearly 60 years, is that so surprising?

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Antiplanner’s Library: The Thirtymile Fire

By | | Book reviews, Wildfire
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Nothing in the history of the Forest Service has more of an emotional impact on the agency than the deaths of multiple firefighters burned in the fires they are trying to suppress. The sudden end to such young lives while performing heroic deeds can shake the agency to its core. Former Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas says that the worst day of his professional life was when 14 firefighters were killed in a 1994 Colorado fire.

But as traumatic as fire-related deaths are, a bureaucracy is driven by dollars, not emotion. Since the Forest Service’s dollars come from the top, it seems to be unable to learn the lessons being taught by deaths at the bottom.

In July, 2001, some unknown campers failed to put out their fire after grilling some hot dogs in northern Washington’s Okanogan National Forest. The fire was spotted creeping through the grasses of the Chewuch River Research Natural Area on the evening of July 9, and an elite “hotshot” crew was dispatched to put it out.

The next morning, a rookie-laden “regular” crew was sent out for what was supposed to be routine mop-up operations. But the fire blew up and killed four of the firefighters, two of them teenage girls.

The Thirtymile Fire burns over the location of fourteen firefighters trapped up a dead-end road.

The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal is John MacLean’s account of the fire and its aftermath. MacLean is the son of Norman MacLean, who wrote A River Runs Through It. John edited Norman’s posthumously-published book, Young Men and Fire, and has written two other books on fire, most notably Fire on the Mountain, which is about the 1994 fire that killed 14 firefighters in Colorado.

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Building Civic Society

By | | Book reviews, News commentary
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On October 22, the Wall Street Journal interviewed the head of NPR and asked, “Why is it important for the government to support public radio?” The answer, “It’s important to building civic society.”

How does taxing people who don’t like something to fund that thing help to build civic society? I can understand how getting voluntary contributions from people to fund something helps build a sense of community. But how does stealing help build civic society?

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