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Category Archives: Planning Disasters

Ho-Hum, Another Rail Transit Project Is Way Over Budget

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation, Urban areas
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FasTracks, the $4.7 billion project that aimed to build six new rail transit lines in the Denver metropolitan area, now looks like it will be a $6.5 billion project at least. Transit agency documents obtained by the Denver Post reveal that the latest cost estimates for every single rail line are an average of 64-percent greater than when voters approved the project in 2004.

A light-rail train slowly makes its way through downtown Denver.

According to the Post, the overruns “include almost $1 billion in design and engineering, $345 million in construction materials, $56 million in the price of rail cars and nearly $600 million in unexplained “contingency” costs, among other elements.” RTD, the transit agency, says it thinks this is high, but agrees that the cost will definitely be higher than the 2004 estimates. (The numbers in the Denver Post story are in 2006 dollars, while the $4.7 billion total is in “year of expenditure” dollars.)

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Did the Portland Streetcar Generate $2.3 Billion in Development?

By | | Planning Disasters, Urban areas
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According to the city of Portland, the city’s streetcar line generated nearly $2.3 billion worth of development. They calculated this using a very simple methodology: they simply added up all the development that had taken place within three blocks of the streetcar line since the line had opened and attributed it to the streetcar.

As Tom Rubin says, that is like giving a rooster the credit when the sun comes up.

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Where Is Your Adaptive Management Now?

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
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A supplemental environmental impact report (SEIR) has just been issued for the extension of BART to San Jose. Planners say the 16.1-mile extension will cost a whopping $4.7 billion, yet they project that it will increase local transit ridership by only 2 percent.

By coincidence, $4.7 billion just happens to be the cost of Denver’s FasTracks plan, which is supposed to build about 119 new miles of rail lines plus busways for 18 miles of bus-rapid transit. San Jose taxpayers are obviously not getting much for their money.

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The Mythmaking Continues on the Portland Aerial Tram

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
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Last week the Oregonian told us that Portland’s $57 million aerial tram was built “on budget” even though the projected cost at the time the Portland city council agreed to build it was only $15.5 million. Now, the Seattle Times reports that the tram “already has helped spur a much broader $1 billion development of the riverfront district.”


Supposedly, this tram car can hold 78 people, but don’t expect that many to ever ride it. City of Portland photo.

It won’t be long before real estate promoters in Seattle, Oakland, and any other city that has 500-foot-high hills will be thumping to have taxpayers build them their own aerial trams.

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For Sale: Closet for $335,000

By | | Planning Disasters, Regional planning
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From London, the least-affordable housing market in the world, comes news that a 77-square-foot closet can be yours to live in for just $335,000 (plus an estimated $59,000 to clean it up and add such luxuries as electricity and heat).

Such high prices are the result of green belts and an anti-housing planning process. While this closet is in one of the wealthier parts of London, other recent real estate deals in England include:

Eugene Bus-Rapid Transit Disaster Update

By | | Planning Disasters, Transportation
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In a previous post, I warned that the Eugene bus-rapid transit line may not live up to expectations. In particular, test runs indicated that it might go as fast as promised — an average 16-minute trip from downtown Springfield to downtown Eugene. Some people thought that it was just a matter of getting the bugs worked out.

The line has now been open for more than a week, and they still can’t meet the 16-minute schedule. Sometimes a bus has fallen so far behind its schedule that the transit agency has had to pull it from the line.

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Planning Makes World Housing Unaffordable

By | | Planning Disasters, Regional planning, Urban areas
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Urban planners have made housing unaffordable in places like San Jose and Portland. But planning has created affordability problems that are at least as serious in Australia, Britain, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand.

That’s Wendell Cox’s conclusion in his third annual housing affordability survey, which looks at housing prices in 159 housing markets in the United States and British Commonwealth countries.

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Portland Tram “on Budget”

By | | News commentary, Planning Disasters, Transportation
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The myth-making has already begun. The Oregonian reports today about Portland city employee Rob Bernard, which it describes as the man “most responsible for opening” Portland’s new aerial trams “on schedule and on budget.”

On what budget? As Jim Karlock documents, the tram went more than 500 percent over the original projected cost, and its operating costs are at least 250 percent over projections. I’d like to have a budget like that!

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