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Monthly Archives: October 2011

Remembering Jane Jacobs

By | | Housekeeping, Regional planning
5 Comments

An article in The American Conservative commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of publication of The Death and Life of Great American Cities. The publication also asked the Antiplanner to join a number of New Urbanists and others in an on-line seminar about the influence of Jacobs on American cities.

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At least six of the other eight participants in the webinar are hardcore new urbanists, so naturally they disagree. In my opinion, the best review of The Death & Life was by an amazing sociologist named Herbert Gans, and it is available on the web to subscribers of Commentary magazine. If you are a subscriber, I heartily recommend the review.

Then Why Did They Vote for It in the First Place?

By | | News commentary, Transportation
5 Comments

A new poll finds that, if high-speed rail were on the ballot today, 62 percent of California voters would vote against it. The complete poll report also indicates that 63 percent of Californians say they would never ride it if it were built.

The poll asked people about their state funding priorities. The top priorities were education (76 percent), public safety (69 percent), and social services (65 percent). Water and irrigation (29 percent) and clean energy (18 percent) scored much lower. At 11 percent, high-speed rail was last.

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Partly based on this poll, transportation expert Ken Orski argues that “it looks like the end of the line for high-speed rail.” However, the California High-Speed Rail Authority still has several billion dollars of spending authority and the mandate to begin construction in the Central Valley by September 30, 2012 (or it will lose federal dollars). Unless the state legislature stops them, I would be more surprised if they voluntarily stopped than if they began building a train to nowhere.

The Density Fallacy

By | | Book reviews, Regional planning
16 Comments

A decade or so ago, an Economist senior editor named Frances Cairncross wrote a book called The Death of Distance which argued that, thanks to declining transportation and telecommunications costs, distance really doesn’t matter anymore. So it is ironic that another Economist writer, Ryan Avent, has written a new book arguing that “Distance is not dead” and proximity to other people still matters.

The Antiplanner previously mentioned this book, The Gated City (available only from Amazon in Kindle format for $1.99), a couple of weeks ago, but now I’ve finished reading it and can write a more detailed review.

Ryan’s book makes the following argument:

1. Denser cities are more productive
2. Due to NIMBYs, denser cities also have higher housing costs
3. Get rid of the NIMBYs, and cities will become even denser and more productive

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Music City Star Continues to Bilk Taxpayers

By | | News commentary, Transportation
19 Comments

Nashville’s commuter train, the Music City Star, is “really taking off,” at least according to an op ed in the Tennessean written by the transit agency CEO, Paul Ballard. Actually, the best that can be said for the train is that Ballard hasn’t been fired over it yet.

The Music City Ripoff.

Starting the commuter train cost taxpayers $41 million and operating it cost $3.3 million in 2009. But Ballard points to a 24 percent increase in ridership in the last twelve months so that the train is now carrying an average of 1,225 trips per weekday.

The problem is that 124 percent of nearly nothing is still nearly nothing. Ballard’s agency had predicted that, by 2012, the train would be carrying 1,900 trips per weekday. Unless it gets a 55 percent increase in ridership next year, it’s not going to make it. Apparently, Ballard defines “success” as “we’re still losing more money than we predicted we were going to lose, but not as much as we used to lose.”
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