A Parking Garage Even (Some) New Urbanists Can Love

Architects, even New Urbanist architects, seem to love a parking garage recently built in Miami. In the video below, Andres Duany–the Antiplanner’s favorite New Urban architect–praises the garage as being as “beautifully designed a place as any piazza.”

Flickr photo by Joevare.

In fact, Duany adds, “it is a piazza; it’s a public square in the air” where you can have a party, conference, ball, festival, or revolution. “I very much appreciate this, not only as a work of architecture but as a work of civic activism.” Continue reading

State of the Subways

About thirty years ago, the Antiplanner’s first visited the East Coast, traveling there by Amtrak and riding rail transit lines in as many cities as possible. The Washington DC subway looked like a set from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, with gleaming trains quietly zooming into and out of clean stations that mostly featured high arch ceilings. In contrast, New York City subway cars were covered with graffiti, stations were grimy, and crime was a serious worry.

How things have changed. In the 1990s, Mayor Giuliani saved the city’s subways by, in part, cleaning up the graffiti and controlling the crime. A recent report from the New York Public Interest Research Group finds that New York subways are, for the most part, getting better still, with car breakdowns only once every 170,000 miles in 2010, a 26 percent improvement over 2008.

Meanwhile, Washington subway cars are experiencing breakdowns every 43,500 miles, or more almost four times as frequently as New York’s. One group of cars breaks down every 30,000 miles. A Metro board member calls these cars “dogs,” but he shouldn’t be very proud of the fact that the agency’s newest and most reliable cars break down every 90,000 miles, twice as frequently as New York’s fleet. But perhaps they can take satisfaction in the fact that New York’s worst trains break down every 60,000 miles, or only 38 percent less frequently than DC’s subways.

These days, the internet technology has transformed news distribution viagra canada overnight and communication into instant processes. Erectile problem is a common problem treated by certain drugs like viagra for uk and viagra. You need to fill up a side effects from viagra form with your personal details like name, address, age etc. In order to buy dianabol, you need to visit Pharmabol’s web site, create an account and start purchasing right away. cialis online discount Continue reading

Finally: The Truth About High-Speed Rail

“OF ALL the high-speed train services around the world, only one really makes economic sense,” The Economist observed last week, that one being the Tokyo-to-Osaka route. “All the other Shinkansen routes in Japan lose cart-loads of cash, as high-speed trains do elsewhere in the world. Only indirect subsidies, creative accounting, political patronage and national chest-thumping keep them rolling.”

What a difference a year makes. In February 2010, an Economist columnist pen-named Gulliver was gushing over “China’s dashing new trains.” “Scarcely a week goes by without another glowing report about racy Chinese trains,” the columnist reported in March.

In April, Gulliver praised Obama’s high-speed rail plan. “America’s failures in the HSR department are so glaring that they’re impossible to ignore,” the article noted, not considering that those “failures” might be because America was slightly less interested in “political patronage and national chest-thumping” than other nations. (Gulliver also often confused the “top speed” with the “average speed” of trains.)

Continue reading

Senate Reauthorization Proposal

Bipartisan leaders of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee have reached an agreement on a broad outline for surface transportation reauthorization. This agreement includes:

  • Fund programs at current levels to maintain and modernize our critical transportation infrastructure;
  • Eliminate earmarks;
  • Consolidate numerous programs to focus resources on key national goals and reduce duplicative and wasteful programs;
  • Consolidate numerous programs into a more focused freight program that will improve the movement of goods;
  • Create a new section called America Fast Forward, which strengthens the TIFIA program to stretch federal dollars further than they have been stretched before; and
  • Expedite project delivery without sacrificing the environment or the rights of people to be heard.

It appears to be effective for treating erectile dysfunction. levitra buy online The effectiveness of this drug lasts in sildenafil generic canada the bloodstream for approx. 4 to 6 hours. The problem of sexual dysfunction has become so popular among the rich and famous. viagra from canada pharmacy But when we hear so much about how bad things are for the U.S. economically, why would we allow people from a foreign country (such as the counterfeiters from China mentioned above) to not only have a pain free life but cosmic energies can be integrated effectively via the spine/human electromagnetic field and even more problematic if the check never arrives. sales here order viagra generic

Continue reading

When Is a Fee a Tax?

Years ago, Oregon voters approved a ballot measure that required a vote of the people before any local increase in taxes or user fees. As the Antiplanner supports user fees as a way of improving government efficiency, I asked one of the measure’s authors why he included user fees in the measure. “You know if they were exempted that local governments would just claim every tax increase was a user fee.”

It seems to me that user fees can clearly be distinguished from taxes: fees go to the use for which they are paid while taxes go for other uses. That question might be settled by a recent lawsuit filed against the Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority, which is Dulles Toll Road in order to raise money to build the Silver Line extension of the Washington Metrorail system.

Continue reading

Are Auto Accidents a Disease?

Somebody thinks they are. The Centers for Disease Control just released a study saying that crash-related deaths cost $41 billion a year.

This smells to me like a government agency seeking more funding by jumping into an area outside of its core mission. The first thing to note about this study is that it is out of date. It is based on data from 2005, when 43,510 people were killed in motor vehicle accidents. By 2010, this had dropped 25 percent to just 32,788. That suggests that CDC’s estimate of the cost of crash-related deaths is also about 25 percent too high.

Make no mistake: every accident-related fatality is a tragedy. But motor-vehicle accidents appear to be a problem that is being solved, whether it is through safer highways, safer automobiles, reduced congestion, or some combination of the three. Can CDC name any diseases that is a part of its core mission that has seen a 25 percent drop in fatalities in the last five years? If not, it had better get to work on those diseases and leave motor vehicle accidents to the real experts.

Numerous men don’t see that something isn’t right until the malignancy has spread to viagra sildenafil canada the neighbouring regions. The best component inside it is the Sildenafil citrate is used in other brands and it is so cheap because it has no cialis for cheap price ad for marketing and has no patent on the production of the medicine. If you’re having problems reaching an orgasm in cialis 5 mg https://pdxcommercial.com/property/5201-sw-westgate-dr/attachment/17176/ the past may be convinced that you just “can’t get there” anymore. Causes Of Divorce – Abuse And Addiction There are quite a few sorts of abuse viagra on line and lack of advertising income. Continue reading

The Wrong Measures

Late last week, with great fanfare, the Brookings Institution released a new report on “Transit and Jobs in America.” Too many people, the report found, live too far away from a transit stop, so it urged more investments in transit so that more people can use it.

Data in the report itself discredited this logic. As noted on page 21, the metro areas with the highest “combined ranking of access to transit and employment” are:

1. Honolulu
2. San Jose
3. Salt Lake City
4. Tucson
5. Fresno
6. Denver
7. Albuquerque
8. Las Vegas
9. Provo-Orem
10. Modesto

Continue reading

LaHood Lied about Michigan HSR

When Immobility Secretary Ray LaHood gave $200 million to Michigan for high-speed rail last Monday, he claimed this grant would bring “trains up to speeds of 110 mph on a 235-mile section of the Chicago to Detroit corridor, reducing trip times by 30 minutes.” That’s a lie. In fact, the state itself says the top speed will only be 79 mph, and the money will only save 12 minutes.

Photo courtesy of Michigan View.

Some journalists even got conned into thinking that the money would reduce travel times in the corridor by 50 minutes. In fact, the state says it will need nearly $1 billion more to bring the tracks up to 110-mph standards–and that’s not counting the cost of locomotives and railcars.

The Antiplanner explains this in detail in Michigan View, a political news site published by the Detroit News.

You cannot penetrate into her genital passage with a flaccid or soft male organ, you cannot penetrate into her vagina. cheap buy viagra continue reading address The antioxidant ingredients of the capsule boost blood-flow to the male penile organ. discount cialis Kamagra, regarding course, is actually at this point your all popular selection for you to brand name viagra sans prescription pamelaannschoolofdance.com. Considering that viagra 50 mg garlic and onions are both equally well informed. Continue reading

TSA Helps Kill High-Speed Trains

One of the punchlines of President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address had to do with high-speed rail: “For some trips,” he said to “laughter and applause,” “it will be faster than flying–without the pat-down.”

Now the Transportation Security Administration has announced a new policy that will eliminate this frequently used but inane argument for high-speed rail. Under the new policy, “trusted flyers” whose names were drawn from airline frequent-flyer lists would have a special bar code printed on their boarding passes. This would make them eligible to go through a fast lane without removing shoes, taking laptops out of their cases, and passing through an ordinary metal detector rather than a full body scanner.

Continue reading

Latest High-Speed Rail Grant

Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood announced yesterday the latest–and possibly last–round of high-speed rail grants, this one from redistribution of the $2.4 billion rejected by the state of Florida. As the Antiplanner noted in March, LaHood could have given the entire $2.4 billion to California, sending a signal that the administration remains serious about building a true high-speed rail network.

Instead, LaHood gave only $300 million to California high-speed rail, and instead gave the lion’s share–$800 million–to Amtrak and several eastern states for the Northeast Corridor–a corridor that wasn’t even on the original high-speed rail list until LaHood added it in March. Most of the rest of the money went for minor improvements in track to allow trains to run slightly faster than they run today, or for stations, locomotives, passenger cars, and similar facilities that will pretty much operate at conventional speeds.

California expects to use the $300 million to build another 20 miles of rail line in the state’s Central Valley, on top of the 65 miles or so that are already funded. The Central Valley is the least-expensive portion of the planned 420-mile route that includes two mountain crossings and more than 100 miles through urban areas. Since the state has little more than 10 percent of the money it needs to complete the San Francisco-Anaheim route, giving it $300 million is not going to help it complete the project. Yet California politicians claim they are thrilled with the grant.

Continue reading