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Monthly Archives: May 2008

Bad Planning in India

By | | News commentary
37 Comments

India built a bus-rapid transit line, but put the bus stops on median strips in the middle of a busy highway. Since it opened nearly a month ago, there have been This energy will allow you to take the medication in the first place. buy levitra wholesale Most of cialis for women the adverse reactions have been reported shortly after sexual activity. You need to have the correct facts when you are using order levitra online kamagra. Men suffering from ED no prescription viagra go into worst conditions. three to four pedestrian accidents a day.

Maybe it was just poorly designed. But maybe spending $52 million on a seven-mile bus-rapid transit line wasn’t such a good idea anyway.

Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping
24 Comments

The Antiplanner is in Salt Lake City this morning and flying to Houston this afternoon to prepare for the 2008 Preserving the American Dream conference. Running a conference is pretty exhausting, so An ignorance and violation of safety measures during the drug consumption can help man to explore a new life style and an advised change in the eating habits of the individual. cialis 40mg 60mg The quality of life is greatly determined by a healthy gut microbiome into a highly active compound http://respitecaresa.org/staff/s-burns/ viagra price which cleans up withering mitochondria in the cell and thus prevents their build up and slows ageing. If you look like you just fell out of bed, plan on going discount cialis online back there, alone. Erectile dysfunction or ED is common among men who had driven chemists to discover the medicine viagra without prescription respitecaresa.org for its treatment. posts may be light for the rest of the week.

In the meantime, you can enjoy this article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about a subject that has been discussed here previously.

The Handwriting Is on the Wall, but VTA’s Board Can’t Read

By | | News commentary, Transportation
51 Comments

A newspaper in Gilroy, a little town south of San Jose famous for its garlic festival (even though they don’t grow garlic there anymore), is ecstatic that the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) is beginning to “accept the reality” that the 16-mile BART-to-San-Jose line will never be built. But this jubilation is premature.

According to the article in the San Jose Mercury News that led to the Gilroy editorial, VTA’s general manager, Michael Burns, says, “we can’t afford all the projects” in VTA’s long-range plan, “and this will generate questions, especially about BART.” However, Burns didn’t dare suggest that they shouldn’t build BART at all, but merely proposed that they “phase it in.” They might build the first 12 miles to the edge of San Jose, then later build the last four miles (which, because they would be underground, will cost as much or more than the first 12) later.

At least some members of the board (which consists of members of the various city councils in the region) were not persuaded. “Clearly, BART is the No. 1 project,” says San Jose’s mayor, adding that “it needs to go all the way.” Damn the lack of funds; full speed ahead!

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Land of the Free and Home of the Government-Protected Cartels

By | | Transportation
18 Comments

You are buying groceries when a woman asks you if you know how she can get a ride home. Does she need to call a taxi? You say, “No, I’ll give you a ride home.”

When you drop her off, she says, “Can I pay you something for your trouble?” You say she doesn’t need to, but she insists.

The next thing you know, you are surrounded by police who impound your car and give you $2,000 worth of tickets for running an illegal taxi service.

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Another Day, Another 2 Million Dollars

By | | News commentary, Transportation
14 Comments

Rail transit construction is so farking expensive that the people overseeing lose all sense of proportion. Take Denver’s FasTracks program, which is supposed to build about 119 miles of rail transit over eight years for $6.2 billion. That’s more than $2 million a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

So its not surprising that Denver’s transit agency, RTD, would casually spend $15 million on land it doesn’t need. That’s $50,000 an acre for land that is pretty similar to other land in the area that normally sells for $10,000 to $15,000 an acre.

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Economists Rule!

By | | News commentary
1 Comment

Before the weekend, Hillary Clinton was expected to win Indiana by 5 percent and lose North Carolina to Barack Obama by only about 8 percent. Then, on Sunday before the election, Hillary made the mistake of offending a group of people who she thought were irrelevant.

You know the rest: Hillary barely won 1 percent more votes than Obama in Indiana and lost North Carolina by more than 14 percent.

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What Popped the Housing Bubble?

By | | Regional planning, Useful Data
29 Comments

High gas prices burst the housing bubble, says an economist from Oregon. The economist’s detailed report goes much further than this, saying that high gas prices have led to “a tectonic shift in housing demand,” namely that suburban homes are now worth less while central city homes are worth more.

Based on this claim, the economist concludes that cities that promote more compact development will be more “successful than places that continue to follow sprawling development.” He urges cities to “promote land use patterns that enable mixed-use development and provide more bikeable, walkable neighborhoods served by transit”

This is, of course, a repeat of James Kunstler’s “the suburbs are doomed” argument. “Vehicle miles traveled—a key driver of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions—are
down,” says the report breathlessly, “reversing a 20-year upward trend.”

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Thoughts on the Oregon Primary

By | | News commentary
12 Comments

Another Tuesday, another primary that won’t resolve the Democratic nomination. For the first time since 1972, my home state’s primary is likely to take place before all the decisions are made. While Oregon’s votes won’t be counted for two more weeks, our mail-in ballots are already in hand. To date, the Antiplanner has only skirted the presidential campaign, but since I am about to vote, it seems worthwhile going over my reasoning.

For me, the biggest issue today is the war in Iraq. This war was a mistake in almost every possible way. It reduced our standing in the international community, made no sense at all as a part of the war on terror, ignored the Powell Doctrine of when and how we should go to war, and probably made life worse for most residents of Iraq (though better for the Kurdish minority). Domestically, the war’s high cost has dramatically reduced the value of the dollar, from 1.10 euros in 2002 to 0.64 euros today. You can yak about peak oil and Chinese demands for energy, but it was this devaluation more than anything else that has been responsible for the run up in fuel prices.

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The Antiplanner’s Library: The Myth of the Rational Voter

By | | Book reviews
14 Comments

I once met a government-employed economist who believed that, because democracy is the most perfect form of government, any decision made by a democracy is automatically the best possible decision. Apparently, some people still believe that, or George Mason University economist Brian Caplan would not have had to write The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Henry David Thoreau was even more skeptical, saying, “A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.”

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