The Antiplanner » News commentary

Category Archives: News commentary

Skeptical about Streetcars? You’re a Racist!

By | | News commentary, Transportation
10 Comments

Count on someone at the Washington Post to play the race card in the postmortems over the Arlington streetcar. “Lower-income, racially diverse South Arlington has been counting on the Columbia Pike and Crystal City streetcar projects to deliver a jolt of growth,” says Post columnist Robert McCartney. The county board’s decision to kill the streetcar will therefore “deepen” the “class and racial divisions” that afflict the county.

Yet the people who were against throwing close to $600 million down a couple of ratholes ($358 million for the Columbia Pike streetcar and $227 million for a Crystal City streetcar) aren’t racists. They were just unlike McCartney in their ability to see through the rhetoric and lies used to promote these boondoggles.

Compared with buses, streetcars are inferior in every way but one: they are slower, have fewer seats, add more to congestion, and when one breaks down they all have to come to a stop. The only thing that streetcars excel in is spending other peoples’ money. After seeing the county blow through nearly $1 million on a bus shelter that didn’t even shelter bus riders from the elements, voters were fed up with spending what was supposedly other peoples’ money.

Continue reading →

Columbia Pike Streetcar Cancelled

By | | News commentary, Transportation
13 Comments

The county board for Arlington County, Virginia, has voted four-to-one to cancel all planning for a proposed $358 million, 7.7-mile streetcar line along Columbia Pike. This should also effectively shut down planning for a Crystal City streetcar that was projected to cost $227 million.

The decision came on the heels of board member John Vilstadt’s re-election with 56 percent of the vote. Despite being an incumbent, Vilstadt was running at a disadvantage as an independent in a strongly Democratic district. Streetcar supported had hoped that Vilstadt’s election in a special vote last spring was “a fluke.” Yet, by making the streetcar the centerpiece of his campaign, he was able to prevail against a strong Democratic challenger.

Local political experts predicted predicted that Vilstadt’s decisive victory would kill the momentum behind the streetcar. “There is no way” that board members who are up for re-election next year can win “if they’re running as pro-streetcar candidates,” said Ben Tribbett. Tribbett’s prediction has come true. At least three of the other Arlington board members could read the election returns and agreed with the board chair that “the only way to move forward together … is to discontinue the streetcar project.”

Continue reading →

Too Many Goals

By | | News commentary, Transportation
5 Comments

Last week, the director of the Civil Rights Division for Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD), Kenneth Hardin, was indicted for having allegedly “corruptly solicited and accepted money from a person intending to be influenced and rewarded in connection with RTD business.” While no further details were provided by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver, it is reasonable to speculate that Hardin is being accused of accepting a bribe to give a minority preference to a potential contractor that wasn’t really minority owned.

Federal regulations require transit agencies that receive federal funding “To ensure nondiscrimination in the award and administration of DOT-assisted contracts.” The best way to “ensure nondiscrimination,” the regulations go on to say, is to set aside a specific percentage of contracts for “disadvantaged business enterprises.” By definition, a “disadvantaged business” is one that is at least 51 percent owned by minorities, women, or other “individuals who are both socially and economically disadvantaged.”

In other words, and something that will not surprise anyone familiar with American civil rights laws, the rules require that agencies ensure nondiscrimination through discrimination. In RTD’s case, the agency is committed to making sure that at least 15 percent of its contracts go to disadvantaged businesses, and Hardin’s job was making sure that happened.

Continue reading →

Linking Users and Producers

By | | News commentary, Transportation
11 Comments

After last week’s election, the Antiplanner failed to note that Seattle voted strongly against another monorail boondoggle. More than 80 percent of Seattle voters agreed this would be a waste of money.

At the same time, nearly 60 percent of Seattle voters agreed to increase subsidies to bus service by raising sales taxes and imposing a $60 a year fee on auto owners. According to census data, 21 percent of Seattle commuters take transit to work. It seems surprising that many if not most of the people who drive to work would be willing to tax themselves to support transit, especially since what they are really doing is supporting light rail, to which the Puget Sound Regional Council allocates all the big bucks while bus transit gets cut.

Texas voters agreed to dedicate half of oil & gas severance taxes to road construction and maintenance. This is expected to generate about $1.7 billion a year.

Continue reading →

What Should Republicans Do?

By | | News commentary
10 Comments

Republicans have taken both houses of Congress and are eager to make changes. But they haven’t collectively decided what those changes should be. Here are some suggestions.

1. Learn from history.

At least since the Clinton administration, and to some degree for a couple of decades before that, this country has suffered from a consistent pattern. First, one party takes the White House and Congress. Thrilled with the taste of power, they overreach, provoking a backlash. As a result, the other party soon takes control of at least one house of Congress, leading to gridlock for the next several years.

Republicans should seek to avoid this scenario this time around. Instead of immediately trying to pass legislation that will please certain of their constituents, Republicans should think about how they can stay in power for more than a few years. That means an incremental approach to change, but each increment should be designed to make the next increment more, not less, politically feasible.

Continue reading →

Voters Reject Taxes

By | | News commentary, Transportation
28 Comments

Light rail lost in Pinellas County (St. Petersburg), Florida by 62 to 38 percent. Light rail in Austin is going down by 58 to 42 percent. A transit tax in Polk County, Florida, is also losing.

Not all transportation taxes are losing. Voters in Alameda County (Oakland), California, approved a sales tax that will provide some money for roads but will mostly go to transit and bike/pedestrian paths. Clayton County, Georgia approved a sales tax to bring Atlanta transit into the county. But Maryland voters agreed to protect gas taxes and other highway funds from being diverted to other uses, while Wichita voters rejected a sales tax increase that would have funded a variety of things including transit.

The big news for transportation activists, however, was the strong rejection of light-rail ballot measures in Austin and Pinellas County. Opponents in Austin were better funded than those in Pinellas County, and even some rail supporters joined the opposition in Austin saying that the proposed route wasn’t the best place for a light-rail line. Opponents in Pinellas, meanwhile, had to overcome strong support from most local media and borderline-illegal campaigning in favor of rail by the transit agency and other government agencies. So it was a surprise to see that Pinellas voters rejected rail by an even larger margin than those in Austin.

Benefits of Taking kamagra for ED Treatment according to their health complications. 20mg pill must sildenafil purchase be swallowed completely with water for ease swallowing. Basically a person faces erectile dysfunction only when they face cute-n-tiny.com buy levitra issues in their erection. http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/pug-in-a-darth-vader-outfit/ cialis sales canada Premature Ovarian Failure When a woman suffers from Premature Ovarian Failure, infertility is the outcome. You will see the list of options and rests with one providing viagra österreich here the widest vary. Continue reading →

Indiana Tollroad Operators File for Bankruptcy

By | | News commentary, Transportation
2 Comments

The consortium that paid $3.8 billion to lease the Indiana Tollroad filed for bankruptcy yesterday. The operators–a Spanish company named Cintra and an Australian company named Macquarie–said that revenues were up and costs down, but it wasn’t enough for them to keep up on their mortgage payments.

According to toll-advocate Robert Poole, the problem was that Cintra-Macquarie had structured its debt to require a large payment after ten years, but the recession prevented it from collecting enough money to meet that schedule. On the other hand, toll critic Terri Hall argues that the bankruptcy helps demonstrate that such leases are inappropriate and cronyistic.

Coincidentally, Poole and Hall debated tollroads and public-private partnerships at the American Dream conference in Denver last Friday. (The debate also included Greg Cohen of the American Highway User Alliance.) Hall argued that long-term leases allowed governors such as Indiana’s Mitch Daniels to collect and spend large sums of money during their administrations but left travelers paying heavy tolls for generations to come.

Continue reading →

What Happened to Progressives?

By | | News commentary
12 Comments

“Fifty years ago this month, Berkeley was the epicenter of the Free Speech Movement,” intones Robert Reich. “Now, Berkeley is moving against Big Soda” by imposing a one-cent-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks.

Naturally, Reich fails to see the irony that a city known for freedom is now attempting to take away people’s freedom. Of course, a one-cent-per-ounce tax doesn’t really take away freedom to enjoy sugary drinks. Nor does quadrupling the price of housing take away freedom to live in a single-family home. The whole point is to reserve these privileges for the wealthy, who no doubt are considered refined enough to appreciate the homes and drinks they consume.
And because viagra online in canada it is automated, you will have time for important things. The patients used levitra no prescription http://valsonindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/VIL-DIV-2010-2011.pdf to be deprived of love, sex and other health disorder. It also dilates the blood vessels to get more energized usa discount cialis and work more efficiently. But you have a choice to online order for viagra age well.
The same people who supported free speech are those who support taxing behaviors they don’t approve. They don’t believe the government should have the right to censor what we say, but they do believe the government should have the right to censor what we consume or where we live. I hope some cultural anthropologist has studied how the Progressives managed to transition from suspecting government to loving it.

Robots Want Your Job

By | | News commentary
16 Comments

America has more than three million transportation workers, more than any other occupational group, and they are all about to lose their jobs to self-driving vehicles. They might fight it, says this video, but “the workers always lose; economics always wins.”

Fortunately, the creator of this video doesn’t understand economics (for example, it is not something that wins or loses). He equates humans with horses, saying that horses never expected that they would lose their jobs to motor vehicles, but as it turned out their population peaked in 1915 and has been declining ever since.

Continue reading →

Farewell to an Honest Planner

By | | News commentary
14 Comments

I never met Sir Peter Hall, who died last week, but I feel like I’ve lost an old friend. His books helped guide me through the history of urban planning and its growing obsession with densification.

Cities in Civilization is his most-frequently mentioned book, mainly because its 1,129 pages made it such a formidable reference. Though I have two copies of that book, the book I really love is Cities of Tomorrow, which traced the history of the urban planning profession.

In it, Hall noted that the earliest urban planners were anarchists who sought to free the working class from their high-density hovels. But that changed when Le Corbusier, who Hall called “the Rasputin of the tale” of urban planning, proposed that all cities should consist solely of high-rises. Planners flocked to this idea, and after World War II, nations all over the world rebuilt their slums or bombed-out areas into high rises. Far from freeing the working class from density, planning became all about forcing the working class into density.

Hormonal imbalances may trigger due to hormonal treatment of prostate cancer, levitra super active and a fat-rich diet. viagra for sale mastercard This is absolutely unfounded since this pill is not designed to provide protection against STDs. You can place your order online and enjoy discounted rates: best pharmacy viagra (Tadalafil) : It helps in treating and improving your impotence. Our inability to function normally can be devastating to say the least and many men tend to have a higher risk of a condition associated with the poor blood supply to the penile organ. cialis professional cipla Continue reading →