The Antiplanner » Planning Disasters

Category Archives: Planning Disasters

Land-Use Law Kills Nearly 100 People in Maui

By | | Planning Disasters
4 Comments

At the latest count, 93 people died in the Maui fire that also burned most of the town of Lahaina. The blame for this fire can be traced directly to Hawaii’s 62-year-old land-use law, which was written to protect Hawaii’s agricultural industry but had the opposite result.

The land-use law divided the state into urban and rural zones and heavily restricted development of the rural areas. As the state’s population grew, Maui’s median home prices rose from about 3 times median family incomes in 1969 to 7.9 times median family incomes in 2021. Any prices above 5 times median incomes are unaffordable since banks won’t approve a mortgage for a home that costs that much more than a family’s income. Continue reading →

Houston BRT Failure

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
2 Comments

A Houston bus rapid transit route over dedicated bus lanes is attracting less than 10 percent of the riders that were projected for it. The Silver Line opened in August 2020 with the expectation that it would carry 14,850 weekday riders, but in fact it is carrying less than 900 riders per weekday, about 6 percent of projections.

A Houston Silver Line sits empty, which is not unusual for it even when in motion. Photo by Ricky Courtney.

Metro, Houston’s transit agency, originally wanted to put a light-rail line in the Silver Line corridor, but opposition from local residents led it to “downgrade” the line to bus rapid transit. According to Houston businessman Bill King, Metro still managed to spend $200 million on the 4.7-mile route, mostly through tax-increment financing. This was a lot less than the $500 million or so that light rail would have cost but still a lot more than necessary. Continue reading →

Ten Things to Know About Megaprojects

By | | Book reviews, Planning Disasters
5 Comments

Megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg–who is now at Oxford University–has a new book called, coincidentally, the Oxford Handbook of Megaproject Management. His introduction, which he was nice enough to make available on line, introduces the Iron Law of Megaprojects along with “ten things you need to know about megaprojects,” at least if you think you are going to try to manage one.

The Iron Law is, simply, “Over budget, over time, under benefits, over and over again.” He says that 90 percent of megaprojects go over budget and most end up under performing. Continue reading →

Water Planning, California Style

By | | Planning Disasters, Urban areas
6 Comments

Thanks to the wonders of government planning, San Diego County residents have to pay more for water they are not allowed to use. California, as everyone knows, is suffering a drought, so the state legislature mandated water conservation statewide, whether it is needed or not.

San Diego is one place where it isn’t needed, as that county has 99 percent of its normal amount of water. Yet residents are still required by state law to “let their grass die.” The costs of providing water haven’t declined, so the reductions in water usage due to mandatory conservation measures have forced the county water authority to raise its rates to cover those costs.

But it gets worse. San Diego is about to get an overabundance of water that is more costly than ever as a new $1 billion desalination plant is about to open that will increase the county’s water supply by as much as 10 percent. The plant is privately financed, but was built only after the county signed a contract agreeing to buy water from the plant whether it needed it or not. The water authority expects to spend $114 million next year buying water that was previously costing it only $45 million. This has led it to increase in water rates yet again.

Continue reading →

Governor’s “Advisor” Actually Paid Lobbiest

By | | Planning Disasters
10 Comments

Before being shut down, the Columbia River Crossing–a consortium of eight government agencies–spent $170 million. The lion’s share of that went to one consulting firm, David Evans and Associates, which was supposed to write the draft and final environmental impact statements for the bridge.

In fact, it turns out that Evans hired a lobbyist to convince the Oregon state legislature to appropriate well over $400 million to built the bridge. But the lobbyist, Patricia McCaig, never registered as a lobbyist or revealed her source of income. Instead, she claimed to be a “special advisor” to the governor.

Tobacco browse that levitra 20 mg smoke contains hundreds of deadly chemicals and most of them can cause cancer. It has given a new dimension to our perception about sex & sexuality This product has created a new awareness about male sexual health This product benefits men with heart diseases are advised to be careful while choosing any of the erectile dysfunction remedies as some may impose a serious threat to life. click for info order 50mg viagra The stamina and vigor of copulation will be unmatched and unleashed. http://pdxcommercial.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/B39-New-Brochure.pdf cialis without prescription cheapest cialis This medicinal drug leads for the vanishing of the erectile issues that are tackled by men during erectile dysfunction. Although McCaig’s true job was made public by Willamette Week last February, no one in the state government did anything about this likely violation of Oregon’s lobbying law until after the legislature adjourned. Now, the Oregon State Ethics Commission says it is investigating McCaig for possibly violation of eight different laws. It seems likely that Evans also hired someone to lobby the Washington state legislature, which narrowly defeated a bill providing funds to the project.

The dark nature of the consulting world–where government agencies overpay consultants to do various analyses and then the consultants promote the projects–always seemed apparent. But this is the first case in the Northwest at least where a consultant was caught redhanded covertly spending money lobbying for an expensive project. This is just one more reason why government should avoid doing megaprojects like the Columbia River Crossing, which involved a bridge, a light-rail line, reconstruction of numerous highway intersections, and other work.

Debate Over Plan Bay Area

By | | Follow up, Planning Disasters
8 Comments

The Antiplanner’s presentation at last night’s debate over Plan Bay Area is now available in PowerPoint or PDF format. You can also download Tom Rubin’s presentation in PDF format.

The debate was one-sided in the sense that close to 90 percent of the audience opposed the plan. One little incident sticks in my mind. During the debate, one of the plan’s supporters admitted that it was hard to predict the future, but added, “As Abraham Lincoln said, ‘The best way to predict the future is to create it.'”

I am a stickler for sourcing such attributed quotes, and that didn’t sound like something Lincoln would say. So I pulled out my iPhone and looked it up. Sure enough, it has been attributed to Lincoln–and to Peter Drucker, and to some other people. But it seems the person who actually first said it was computer programmer Alan Kay in 1971. I hope readers will understand what I mean when I say that knowing that Kay said it gives it a completely different meaning than if Lincoln had said it.

Suburbs Burn as Swedes Reject TODs

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
34 Comments

Reports of riots in Stockholm suburbs probably brings to American minds images of single-family homes and SUVs burning. Though Stockholm has plenty of American-style suburbs, the riots were not in those areas.

Instead, they were in high-density housing projects that Sweden built in an effort to promote transit ridership, which planners today would call “transit-oriented developments.” Most Swedes, however, refused to live in these projects, so they became home to Sweden’s second-class citizenry, namely immigrant and often Muslim workers.

Continue reading →

The Continuing Saga of the American-Made Streetcar

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation, Urban areas
20 Comments

Portland Streetcar, the non-profit organization that operates streetcars in Portland, is demanding that the city cough up $145,000 to fix its brand-new, American-made streetcar. Let’s take a look at the history of this car.

First, the city used its own money to buy streetcars from the Czech Republic for an average of $1.9 million apiece. Each streetcar has just 30 seats, but the cost per vehicle is about six times greater than a 40-seat bus. But that wasn’t expensive enough.

The most recent expansion of Portland’s streetcar system was funded by the federal government, which has a buy-America requirement. So Oregon’s congressional delegation and lobbyists persuaded the Federal Transit Administration to give Oregon Iron Works $4 million to build a prototype streetcar. The company used plans purchased from the Czech manufacturer of Portland’s streetcars to effectively produce a replica of those cars.

Continue reading →

Planning Is Destroying Britain

By | | Planning Disasters, Regional planning
33 Comments

The Economist reviews housing prices in London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and what do you know, it finds that high housing prices are due to urban planning. “The biggest constraint on development in London is the Green Belt,” says the magazine that calls itself a newspaper. “Tt runs (with perforations) all around London, to a depth of up to 50 miles, and bans almost all building on half a million hectares of land around the city.”

Ah, but Britain has 62 million people in an area slightly smaller than the state of Oregon (94,000 vs. 98,000 square miles), so those greenbelts are needed to preserve farms, forests, and open space, right? Not really.

As a BBC writer points out, urban areas cover just 6.8 percent of the United Kingdom (10.6 percent of England, 1.3 percent of Scotland, 3.6 percent of Northern Ireland, and 4.1 percent of Wales). Moreover, much of the land inside those urban areas is open space, so less than 2.3 percent of England, and even smaller proportions of the rest of the kingdom, have been “paved over.”

Continue reading →

Crony Infrastructuralism

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters
6 Comments

Last night, the Antiplanner dreamed that Apple, the company with the highest market capitalization in the world, was spending some of its $97 billion in cash on roads, bridges, and other local infrastructure. A crazy idea, I know, but then, in the dream, some politician says, “What a great idea! Let’s create some TIF and special assessment districts so other corporations can help our infrastructure too.”

Somewhere between dreamland and waking up, I tried to explain why this was a bad idea. Suppose a town has two business districts, I said, and one is doing poorly compared to the other, possibly because it is older. Shops, restaurants, and other tenants turn over frequently, vacancy rates are high, and the shops that do exist tend to be downscale, including thrift stores and antique malls. The other district, perhaps because it is newer, is doing much better.

Suppose the city creates a special-assessment district around the older area and uses the funds to update the infrastructure. Unfortunately, the assessments, i.e., taxes, paid by the property owners in the district force them to raise rents, which causes even more turnover. The other district will probably complain and demand its own infrastructure improvements, which the wealthier property owners will more easily afford and thus give that district an even greater advantage over its rival.

Continue reading →