A prominent environmentalist in Lane County, Oregon, has persuaded the county commission to rezone forest land at the urban fringe to allow him to put a house on it. His argument is that, since there are houses on the land next to his land, he should be allowed to put a house on his land too.
By that reasoning, urban-growth boundaries should be expanded whenever a landowner adjacent to but outside the boundary is ready to build a home. Sounds like a good policy to me.
Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, “knows the key to increasing ridership is offering more frequent bus service.” But, guess what, the agency is devoting all of its resources to building rail lines that hardly anyone will ride. So the only way it will actually be able to increase ridership is to get a tax increase.
Portlanders voted against expanding the convention center (the twin glass towers), but the city expanded it anyway and now is mostly empty. Portlanders voted against expanding the light-rail system, but TriMet expanded it anyway, and now it says it doesn’t have enough money to improve bus service. (I think the high rise visible between the twin glass towers was also subsidized — JK will know for sure.)
Flickr photo by ahockley.
TriMet is funded out of an “employee tax” (it’s really an income tax, but it doesn’t appear on people’s paychecks as a payroll deduction, so most people other than employers aren’t aware of it) that is scheduled to increase over the next decade.
Someone recently brought to my attention a 2005 article published in the Washington Monthly, a magazine that used to call itself “neoliberal” before the neoconservatives gave neos a bad name. Anyway, the article in question is called Auto-Mobility: Subsidizing America’s commute would reward work, boost the economy, and transform lives.
Flickr photo by VirtualEm.
The thesis of the article is that driving a car is no longer “a lifestyle decision.” Instead, Americans drive because “to get to work, the vast majority of Americans have to drive.” Thus, the writer argues that Congress should change tax policy and allow commuters to deduct the cost of their driving from their taxes, and, further, that the federal government should “offer tax credits that would lower the cost of commuting to work for low and middle-income employees, and would allow low-income workers who can’t afford a reliable car to get one.”
This year is the fiftieth anniversery of the Town & Country Act, which the British Parliament passed in 1947. The law set aside most rural land in Britain as “greenbelts” or otherwise off limits to development and built new homes in the form of high rises throughout the war-damaged country. The Town & Country Act also inspired similar laws in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several U.S. states.
Thanks to the law, Britain today has some of the least affordable housing in the world. For example, London realtors recently converted a 320-square-foot public toilet into a tiny house and sold it for $195,000, and converted a 6’x9′ storage closet into an apartment and rent it for $1,400 a month.
Townhouses in London typically sell for $600,000 or more.
Flickr photo by Sacred Destinations.
Sound Transit, which is way overbudget in the construction of Seattle’s first light-rail line, now wants voters to approve a measure to build 50 more miles of light rail for the modest cost of $10.8 billion (in 2006 dollars). That’s a mere $216 million per mile, which is about four to five times the average cost of light-rail construction elsewhere.
I suspect this is going to be an uphill battle for the transit agency, if only because the Seattle Times article reporting this story emphasizes a much-higher figure of $23 billion (which includes projected inflation and some finance charges). Newspapers that want to promote light rail usually underplay the cost, but the Times feels burned by the last rail plan, which it supported, and which ended up costing far more than was projected.
Sound Transit, which wants to build 50 more miles of light rail, is also running commuter trains. Ridership proved so far below forecast levels that the agency ended up selling many of the commuter cars it had purchased for the operation.
Flickr photo by MGJeffries.
In preparation for my lecture in San Jose last week, I took a look at the environmental impact report for the proposed BART extension to San Jose. Even though rail advocates are telling people BART will take two freeway lanes’ worth of people off the roads, I was not surprised to find that, in fact, BART will do absolutely nothing to relieve peak-hour congestion.
Chapter 4.2 of the environmental impact report compares peak-hour traffic in 2030 with and without BART on all major freeways in the region. Without BART, these freeways are expected to carry an average of nearly 10,000 cars per hour. If BART is built, the report projects that it will take an average of 59 cars per hour off the freeways.
Chalk up another subsidy to Portland transit-oriented development. TriMet, Portland’s transit agency, bought a piece of land next to a light-rail station for $907,000. It is selling it to a non-profit group for $300,000 on the condition that the group builds a high-density project.
The project will actually be built by Walsh Construction, a company owned by Tom Walsh and his family. Tom is a member of Neil Goldschmidt’s light-rail mafia. They campaigned together for city council when Neil first ran for that office (Neil won, Tom lost), and years later Neil scored Tom the job of general manager for TriMet. From that position, he handed out all sorts of subsidies for transit-oriented developments, many of which were built by his family’s company.
Neil Goldschmidt is disgraced and out of power, but his legacy of subsidies and favored contractors lives on.
Ashland is second only to Bend in being the least affordable city in Oregon. This lack of affordability is welcomed by many of its residents, who want to keep their home values high so they can feel like millionaires, even if that wealth is only on paper.
Unfortunately, one important tool to make housing less affordable, inclusionary zoning, is not available to Ashland because it is illegal in Oregon. Despite lobbying by the city, it appears that the state legislature won’t change the law.
Downtown Ashland. Flickr photo by dolanh.
The latest estimates say that Denver’s FasTracks rail projects are only $1.5 billion overbudget, not the $1.8 billion originally reported. The $300 million savings comes from such things as single-tracking light-rail lines that were originally planned to be double tracked.
Denver’s Regional Transit District (RTD) plans to make up the $1.5 billion by selling $800 million more bonds (thus making for a longer pay-back period), and asking the federal government for more money. But officials still expect a $400 million or so shortfall.
In my previous post on wildfire, D4P argued that government should require the use of nonflammable roofs and other firesafe practices on homes near wildfire-prone lands. I responded that this should be left to insurance companies.
It looks like the insurance companies are taking care of the problem. “Spooked by devastating wildfire seasons, the nation’s top insurers are inspecting homes in high-risk areas throughout the West and threatening to cancel coverage if owners don’t clear brush or take other precautions,” says the Associated Press.
Sea http://www.learningworksca.org/item-6226 online cialis weeds – are an important source of iodine, that can meet deficiencies that have an impact on thyroid functioning. The HDS http://www.learningworksca.org/webinar-series-quantitative-leap-how-math-policies-can-support-transitions-to-and-through-college/ cialis pharmacy online assessment therefore provides valuable information that can prove handy while you’re driving. Get issues located generic viagra from usa in little finger together with try and remove negative opinions from your mind. I recommend moderating every single comment to start with, the reason being blog spam viagra in usa is more prevalent than email spam. Why didn’t this happen before now? First, less than 0.2 percent of homes burned each year are the result of wildfires, so it just hasn’t been important to them. Second, the Forest Service has always exerted enormous efforts to try to protect buildings, even if it means spending a million dollars to protect a $10,000 structure.
What is changing? Katrina, 9-11, and other disasters have forced the insurance industry to sharpen its pencils and insist that people make more effort to reduce risks.
