Actually, $1.25 billion is the low estimate for a light-rail line from Portland to Milwaukie, Oregon. Depending on the routing, it could be as high as $1.4 billion, not counting cost overruns.
For those of you not familiar with Portland, Milwaukie is not some distant suburb. It is immediately adjacent to Portland. I used to commute (by bike) through Milwaukie on my way from Oak Grove to Portland, and it was 8 miles to downtown. (I probably also rode faster than the light rail will go.)
The National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission has recommended a 40-cent-per-gallon increase in federal gas taxes. Supporters of the increase say it is necessary to replace aging bridges and roads.
But U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters and Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake dissented, saying that there is plenty of money to repair roads if Congress would only stop diverting it to non-highway purposes and if you add tolls into the mix.
Nothing in the history of the Forest Service has more of an emotional impact on the agency than the deaths of multiple firefighters burned in the fires they are trying to suppress. The sudden end to such young lives while performing heroic deeds can shake the agency to its core. Former Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas says that the worst day of his professional life was when 14 firefighters were killed in a 1994 Colorado fire.
But as traumatic as fire-related deaths are, a bureaucracy is driven by dollars, not emotion. Since the Forest Service’s dollars come from the top, it seems to be unable to learn the lessons being taught by deaths at the bottom.
In July, 2001, some unknown campers failed to put out their fire after grilling some hot dogs in northern Washington’s Okanogan National Forest. The fire was spotted creeping through the grasses of the Chewuch River Research Natural Area on the evening of July 9, and an elite “hotshot” crew was dispatched to put it out.
The next morning, a rookie-laden “regular” crew was sent out for what was supposed to be routine mop-up operations. But the fire blew up and killed four of the firefighters, two of them teenage girls.
The Thirtymile Fire burns over the location of fourteen firefighters trapped up a dead-end road.
The Thirtymile Fire: A Chronicle of Bravery and Betrayal is John MacLean’s account of the fire and its aftermath. MacLean is the son of Norman MacLean, who wrote A River Runs Through It. John edited Norman’s posthumously-published book, Young Men and Fire, and has written two other books on fire, most notably Fire on the Mountain, which is about the 1994 fire that killed 14 firefighters in Colorado.
The term public-private partnerships, often abbreviated PPP, has come to include two very different arrangements. One arrangement, which I prefer to call franchises, has proven very successful. Advocates of the other arrangement, which I shall call corporatism because the name I prefer is too emotion-laden, are riding on the coattails of the success of franchises.
The Antiplanner discussed this subject six months ago. But the topic has come up in the comments so it is worth repeating.
Long-time readers of the Antiplanner will remember Portland’s aerial tram, which went 280 to 1800 percent over budget, depending on what you consider the original budget to have been. While Portland taxpayers paid about $8 million of the cost, most of the $57 million cost was covered by the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU), which was at one end of the tramway.
OHSU said it was going to anchor the other end of the tram with a major biotech center, creating hundreds of jobs and $1 billion in annual sales by 2006. It persuaded the Portland city council to pony up the $8 million subsidy by saying that, if it did not get to build the aerial tram, it would put the biotech center in some other Oregon city.
The Antiplanner is in the Raisin Capital of the World today, also known as Fresno, California. I am attending (and speaking at) the San Joaquin Valley Housing Conference about California’s perennial (since growth-management planning began in the 1970s) housing crisis.
The notion that real cities have big downtowns is firmly ingrained in the minds of many urban planners and city officials. As Joel Garreau points out in Edge City, this ignores the fact that such downtowns were only built for about a century, from roughly 1820 to 1920.
Modern cities, which planners deride by calling them “sprawl,” have job centers spread out all over the place. San Jose, Phoenix, and Los Angeles are all typical examples. Planners and officials try to re-create obsolete downtowns by building pork-barrel projects such as convention centers and giving developers huge subsidies for hotels and office buildings. This enriches developers and contractors, but it never really creates a “real” downtown.
This week, the on-line edition of the Los Angeles Times has asked two famous cyclists to debate the problems of cycling in Los Angeles and the merits of trying to promote cycling to relieve traffic congestion. In one corner is Will Campbell, L.A. cyclist and blogger, who blames autos for all the problems.
And in the other corner is: the Antiplanner. This was a surprise, as I’ve never cycled in L.A., which reduces my credibility a notch (see comment from Jon). But they wanted someone who is both an active cyclist and a skeptic of spending lots of money on dedicated bike paths and lanes.
Not Los Angeles.
Former Houston mayor Bob Lanier joined a group of realtors and developers in opposing new ordinances that would impose more standards on new developments, says the Houston Chronicle. Because of Lanier’s popularity — he had an 78 percent approval rating when he was term-limited from office — and reputation as a “kingmaker,” What is Kamagra? It is an effective, reliable, functional and pocket-friendly medicine available in three different forms of consumption which includes* Kamagra levitra no prescription tablets * Kamagra jellies * Kamagra soft tablets Any of these forms can be obtained through any of authorized pharmacy. This is because tadalafil soft tabs is known to lead to depression in certain individuals, as well. – Neurotransmitter Imbalances & Abnormalities in Brain Physiology Neurotransmitters are chemical “messengers” in the brain that regulate mood, thought, and memory. Fortunately, the advanced ayurvedic treatment to eliminate PE is there to solve your problems, aid you best levitra price in forgetting your past traumas and help you lead a better and healthy life that you deserve. If any medicine affects your sex life, then you can take 100mg of kamagra jelly within a day. look at this now cialis tab his endorsement is likely to have a lot of influence.
The Chronicle also reports that the developer group, which calls itself Houstonians for Responsible Growth, gave each member of the city council a copy of the Ultimate Antiplanning book. While this is flattering, it probably won’t have quite as much impact as Lanier’s endorsement.
St. Louis’s Metro (formerly Bi-State) seems to be seeking the title of nation’s worst-managed transit system, an honor the Antiplanner has previously accorded to San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority. After carrying 55.6 million trips in 1998 — the highest level since 1983 — ridership in the St. Louis area declined to a low of 46.7 million trips in 2004.
The Antiplanner previously featured Larry Salci, the head of Metro, when he lost a lawsuit over cost overruns with light-rail contractors. It turned out that particular failure — or his big mouth — cost him his job, as he “left effective immediately” by mutual agreement with the agency’s board a week after the court decision.
