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Monthly Archives: February 2010

Federal Highways and Urban Form

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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Note: This is the first of what may become a series of interblog debates between the Antiplanner and Charles Marohn of the Strong Towns Blog.

Many opponents of low-density suburbs — areas they derisively call “sprawl” — argue that Americans would not have chosen to live in such areas unless they were subsidized or forced to do so. One of the most important such subsidies, they claim, is the Interstate Highway System.

“For more than a generation,” argues former Milwaukee Mayor and current head of the Congress for the New Urbanism John Norquest, “urban sprawl sprung up with federal assistance [such as] excessive road building . . . that interfered with the free market.” He adds that, “urban superhighways should be relegated to the scrap heap of history.”

Would our cities look a lot different if the federal government had not built the urban interstates (which were the first major urban highways built with federal assistance)? I argue that the differences would be minor.

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Clearing Up a Mystery

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The 2001 National Household Transportation Survey (NHTS) found that the average motor vehicle contains about 1.6 people (see table 16). But a report from the Department of Energy observes that “intercity trips [have] higher-than-average vehicle occupancy rates” (see appendix C-3, page C-3.4).

How much higher? The answer, curiously, comes from the California High-Speed Rail Authority, which commissioned a study that found the average occupancy of autos in intercity trips is 2.4. Any fuel-efficiency comparisons of autos and intercity rail should use this number, not 1.6.

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Back in the Air Again

By | | Housekeeping, Urban areas
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In a trip sponsored by the Kansas Chapter of Americans for Prosperity, the Antiplanner is speaking tonight at the Bank of America Center in Wichita, a city that is just discovering the wonders and costs of modern urban planning. I’ll be speaking to some groups there Friday as well.

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If you are in the area, you can find more information here. I look forward to seeing you there.

One More Strike Against High-Speed Rail

By | | Transportation
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At last, a new reason why high-speed rail won’t work: bad architecture. According to this Chicago Tribune architecture critic, Chicago’s Union Station once had a beautiful, skylit concourse between the waiting room and trains, but it was replaced by a couple of skyscrapers. Now travelers have to walk through low-ceilinged tunnels that are confusing, apparently because you can’t see the sun. This means high-speed rail is doomed to failure — unless, of course, we spend a few more billions on beautiful new stations.

Actually, I’ve been to Union Station many times and never got confused in the tunnels (there are really only two directions to go). But leave it to an architect (or architecture critic) to say that we can make high-speed rail work by spending more money on building design.
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Chicago used to have six trains stations — Central, Grand Central, LaSalle, Northwestern, Dearborn, and Union — and now it is down to one (though remnants of some of the others still exist). But I suspect that, even if we spend a trillion or so on high-speed rail, that one will still be adequate to handle the traffic.

Obama’s Transportation Budget

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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The White House released its proposed 2011 federal budget today, including the transportation budget. For the most part, this budget is an extension of past budgets, but it includes a few new programs.

First, the budget includes $4 billion for a National Infrastructure Innovation and Finance Fund, also known as an “infrastructure bank.” The Antiplanner has a couple of problems with this idea. First, infrastructure should be paid for out of user fees, not tax dollars. Second, unlike many other transportation funds, which are distributed based on specific formulas, this fund will be an “open bucket.” This will give states incentives to come up with the wackiest, most expensive transportation projects.

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High-Speed Raildoggles

By | | News commentary, Transportation
28 Comments

A day after proposing a spending freeze (that everyone from Glenn Beck to Paul Krugman thinks is stupid), Obama gleefully announced $8 billion in federal grants for high-speed rail. But Obama knows full well that the final cost will be much, much more than $8 billion.

How much more? The Antiplanner once estimated $550 billion in capital costs (not counting cost overruns). BNSF CEO Mark Rose guesses $1 trillion (he must have included cost overruns). Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio compromises at $700 billion.

“The thing is unimaginably expensive,” admits DeFazio. But, he adds, $700 billion is “the same amount of money that Congress gave in one day to Wall Street!” In trying to make high-speed rail sound cheap, he is hoping you won’t remember that Congress didn’t give Wall Street anything; it was almost all loans and most, if not all, will be repaid. That won’t happen with high-speed rail.

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