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Housing Markets Are Melting Down

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
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The U.S. housing market, which helped keep the world economy afloat for the first half of this decade, is deflating. Here are some signals:

  • The Census Bureau reports that sales of new homes in January 2007 were about 20 percent less than in January 2006. All of this decline was in the West (where new home sales fell by 50 percent) and South (where they fell by 11 percent); sales in the rest of the country were about the same.
  • At least twenty-two mortgage companies who lend to subprime borrowers have gone bankrupt in the past two months, leading some to call this a “panic.”
  • Almost 25 percent of existing mortgage debt is under adjustable rate loans whose rates will be adjusted upwards this year — in many cases to rates well above the fixed rates now available.
  • Already, foreclosures are running 25 percent higher than last year.

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Columbia Crossing Follow Up: 12 Years to Plan a Bridge

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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In my post about the Sellwood Bridge I noted that Portland planners seem to take inordinate amounts of time to make decisions about new roads. In a post on the Columbia Crossing I noted that Portland transportation planners seem to be going out of their way to drive up the costs of new roads.

When I was writing about the Columbia Crossing, I didn’t notice that the region has already spent ten years “planning” this bridge, and expects to take at least two more. At the rate they are going, it will probably take a lot more than two years to reach a decision, much less to actually start any construction.

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Ottawa City Council Kills Light-Rail Line

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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In what I regard as a victory for common sense, the Ottawa city council has killed a planned light-rail line. Unfortunately, this may be a costly decision as a previous city council had signed a contract to construct the line, and the contractors say they want compensation for the cancellation.

The 18-mile line, which had been approved by the city council last July, was expected to cost CN$778 million, or about CN$43 million per mile. The Province of Ontario had promised to cover about CN$400 million of this cost, leaving the city to find CN$378 million.

Light rail passing high-density housing in Moscow. Photo by Lowell Grattan.

But after having spent CN$65 million on the project, a new city council elected in November decided light rail was a waste of money. In December, they voted 13-11 to cancel just before a contract deadline.

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Tax Subsidies to New and Old Urbanists

By | | News commentary, Regional planning
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The subsidies mentioned in yesterday’s post about Denver were in the form of tax-increment financing (TIF). For those unfamiliar with the term, tax-increment financing is the principal method of funding urban renewal. An urban-renewal agency draws a line around an area to be renewed, and for the next twenty or so years all property taxes collected on any new improvements in that district — the “incremental” taxes — are used to subsidize the renewal program.

Usually, the agency estimates future tax revenues and then sells bonds to be repaid by those revenues. The bond revenues might be used for infrastructure such as streets, improvements such as parking garages and parks, or they might simply be given to the developer as seed money for the project.

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Portland Not the Only Place Subsidizing New Urbanists

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
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New Urbanism, as everyone knows, is morally superior to old suburbanism. So New Urbanists are clearly entitled to huge subsidies to support their environmentally friendly lifestyles. Such as subsidies for parking garages near their subsidized high-density housing.

The Antiplanner has covered such subsidies to Portland developments. But other cities subsidize them as well. An op ed by Jennifer Lang in Saturday’s Rocky Mountain News describes some of these subsidies in the Denver metro area.

This parking garage in downtown Denver was built with a $2.1 million subsidy that planners said was needed so the New Urbanists living in subsidized downtown lofts would have a place to park their SUVs. Photo by the Antiplanner.

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Junk Science Week: #2 – Density & Congestion

By | | News commentary, Regional planning, Transportation, Why Planning Fails
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I’ve previously discussed the myth that density relieves congestion, yet it persists. Most recently, planners in Fairfax County, Virginia say they want to put thousands of high-rise apartments in Tysons Corner in an effort to increase the density and relieve congestion around proposed rail stations.

Planners claim that Ballston, a rail station on the DC Orange line, proves that this strategy is successful. The opening of the Ballston station in 1979 led to a lot of transit-oriented development, and today many people in the area walk or take transit to work.

However, planners fail to mention that a major freeway, I-66, opened at about the same time, and it probably did more to stimulate development than the rail line. At least, other stations that were not close to new freeway interchanges failed to develop as planners hoped.

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A Billion Here, a Billion There, Pretty Soon You Are Talking About Real Money

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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Portland-Vancouver are debating the replacement of the Interstate 5 bridges crossing the Columbia River. Cost estimates are now as high as $6 billion.

“The bridge is probably a billion,” says the project manager. “The transit piece, similar.” Plus various extras; it all adds up.

The original Columbia River bridge was built in 1917, and a duplicate bridge was added in 1958.

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Judging Planners by Their Intentions

By | | News commentary, Urban areas
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A group called Sustainlane has ranked America’s largest cities for their sustainability. Which is number one? Why, Portland, of course.

But I have a few questions about how they calculated their rankings. Most of their data are based on secondary sources. Take public transit, for example, which, they say, is based on the “2003 Texas Mobility Study.” Based on whatever this study is supposed to say, Portland gets a greenish score of 20 while Honolulu gets a yellow 28 (apparently, smaller numbers are better).

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GAO Adds Transportation to Its “High-Risk Series”

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The Government Accountability Office (which I still think of by the easier-to-say and more accurate name of General Accounting Office) has identified a number of federal programs that are “high risk due to their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement.” This year, it has added transportation to this High-Risk Series.

“Revenues from traditional funding mechanisms may not keep pace with demand,” says the GAO. This problem is compounded by “the absence of a link between federal grant funding levels and specific performance-related goals and outcomes, resulting in little assurance that federal funding is being channeled to the nation’s most critical mobility needs.”

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Two-Way or One-Way?

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Urban areas
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Burnside is a major street in Portland, notable for dividing north Portland from south Portland. West of the Willamette River, Burnside carries tens of thousands of cars each day on its four lanes moving in both directions. A block away, Couch Street is a much narrower, two-lane one-way street and moves only a few thousand cars each day.

Portland proposes to replace Burnside’s four fast-moving lanes with two slow-moving lanes.

Portland is proposing to turn Burnside and Couch into a one-way couplet. That is, Burnside would carry eastbound traffic and Couch would carry westbound traffic.

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