Comments are due this Thursday on the draft environmental impact report for Plan Bay Area, a regional plan written for nine counties that surround San Francisco Bay. This plan is so poorly written that it makes me proud to be an antiplanner; if I were a real planner, I’d be ashamed to be associated with a profession that could produce such a shoddy plan.
The main problem with the plan is that its main prescriptions were set in advance of any analysis of whether they would be effective. In fact, planners never did analyze whether those or any alternative policies would cost-effectively meet the plan’s goals.
Under California law, the plan must meet two goals: reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make housing more affordable. The heart of the plan calls for densification of dozens of neighborhoods in the region and expansion of rail transit service by more than 35 percent. The plan also calls for tightening existing urban-growth boundaries, so to achieve planned densification and accommodate an anticipated 30 percent population growth, the plan requires the destruction of more than 169,000 single-family homes.
Planners didn’t do any analysis to show that densification and rail transit will reduce greenhouse gases or make housing more affordable. Of the five alternatives considered in the plan, all but the “do-nothing” alternative target neighborhoods for densification and increase rail transit by more than 35 percent. While do nothing does not target specific neighborhoods for densification, it still densifies, and it also increases rail transit by 25 percent. So it is clear that planners really didn’t consider any alternatives other than densification and more trains.
A careful analysis of data in the environmental impact report reveals that densification and transit improvements together are projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by less than 1 percent. All the other emission reductions that the plan takes credit for come from other programs, mostly programs done by other agencies. While the plan does not have any cost data, it is likely that those other programs cost far less than densification and rail improvements.
Even the less-than-1 percent reduction in emissions depends on planners’ optimistic projections that more rail transit will boost per capita transit ridership by 40 to 60 percent; in fact, despite all the rail transit built in the region in the last 30 years, per capita transit ridership has declined by 35 percent and per capita transit passenger miles has declined by 5 percent since 1982.
On top of that, far from improving housing affordability, the plan admits that densification will actually make housing less affordable. The plan calls for mitigating this by subsidizing housing for a relative handful of low-income people, but those subsidies will probably just make housing even less affordable for everyone else.
California law requires that per capita greenhouse gas emissions from autos be reduced by 15 percent by 2040. As it happens, another California law, known as the Pavley law, requires that future cars be more fuel efficient. By 2040, that law will reduce per capita emissions from cars by at least 27 percent.
So how can the plan justify using subsidies to densify scores of neighborhoods and expanding rail transit when those policies will do almost nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Simple. Planners simply ignored the Pavley standards when calculating whether an alternative complied with the per capita emissions standard. Although they also calculated emissions with the Pavley standards, they nevertheless concluded that (without the Pavley standards) the only way to meet the 15-percent-reduction requirement was to densify and increase rail service.
In short, Plan Bay Area planners not only failed to plan properly, they were dishonest with their results. Next time someone asks me why I’m an antiplanner, all I’ll have to do is point to Plan Bay Area.
I’ll finish my comments by Thursday morning and post them here.
Interesing, today Amtrak unveiled is next generation of locomotives to replace it’s aging fleet.
http://news.yahoo.com/amtrak-unveils-locomotives-replace-aging-fleet-091231616.html
If you can’t build transit that serves the city and makes peoples’ lives easier, then of course the answer is to change the city and people’s lives to make transit easier.
I can’t help but gag on the irony that in the home of Silicon Valley, the best idea they could come up with in the 21st century is to try to remake the city into a 19th century city.
This is great news for Stockton, who should be emerging from bankruptcy right around the time this new “plan” is set in place. They should be ready to receive the hordes of residents driven out of the Bay Area by ever-higher housing prices.
The Antiplanner thus spaketh:
The plan also calls for tightening existing urban-growth boundaries, so to achieve planned densification and accommodate an anticipated 30 percent population growth, the plan requires the destruction of more than 169,000 single-family homes.
Some explanation of this claim is needed. My cursory look at the various “priority development areas” outlined by Plan Bay Area shows them to be primarily commercial land uses, with relatively few single family houses. At 6 units per acre, the “169,000+ single family houses” claimed by The Antiplanner has to be “destroyed” would cover 28,000 acres, e.g., nearly the size of the entire City and County of San Francisco. Randal, you need to “show your work” on this one.
OK, now I see what The Antiplanner was claiming. In Table 2.3-2 on page 2.3-5 of the Draft Plan Bay Area EIR, they’re projecting a net decline of 169,100 in demand for single family housing in the Bay Area.
Of course, The Antiplanner is engaging in a bit of propagandizing here by claiming a decline in demand is tantamount to destroying 169,000+ single family housing units. Well…NO.
If The Antiplanner argued that it is highly unlikely that this demand projection is correct–e.g., that market prices would tend to self-correct and many people that the DEIR claim would be living in apartments and condominiums would choose single family houses if available (which makes perfect sense), then I’d agree that the forecast may be suspect.
But to make the claim that 169.000+ single family houses would be destroyed is very dubious reasoning. And too typical “cherry picking” of the information available.
In fact, the analysis says this about the Bay Area housing demand projection, to which I say “it figures” that The Antiplanner didn’t mention it:
The projected oversupply of single-family homes is expected to reduce demand for other housing types by almost 170,000 units as some households that would otherwise choose multifamily units instead opt for single family homes made more affordable due to excess supply. As a result, new multifamily housing demand is estimated at 394,000 units, and 306,000 new units for attached town homes (Table 2.3-2). Although this suggests no demand for newly constructed single-family homes, some production will like- ly occur as the Bay Area housing market adjusts to these trends.
Page 2.3-5 before Table 2.3-2.
NOTHING about 169,000 single family housing units being “destroyed.” In fact, they expect some additional single family housing production during the planning horizon, increasing the overall Bay Area supply somewhat.
I am so glad that the subject of ethics is being raised in regard to urban planning. Studying Portland (where I live) I see the same kinds of untruthfulness.
The American Planning Association has an ethics code and I have considered discussing
some Portland malfeasance with that body. I wonder if the ethics code has teeth. I know that they would probably dismiss any claims made by the Anti-Christ, oops I mean Mr. O’Toole, because of politics. Does anyone know if the ethics code has teeth?
MSetty,
Plan Bay Area planners know about as much about “demand” as a 12-year-old. For one thing, demand is not a point; it is a line, and lines cannot be expressed as single numbers. Adding 30 percent more people to the Bay Area while contracting urban-growth boundaries will require replacement of single-family homes with apartments. The whole “demand” issue is just a cover-up for what planners want to do.
Plan Bay Area planners know about as much about “demand” as a 12-year-old.
Of course this is false. The trendline is down for the demographic that wants SFH. But you knew that.
DS
The Antiplanner wrote:
[Emphasis added]
Plan Bay Area planners know about as much about “demand” as a 12-year-old. For one thing, demand is not a point; it is a line, and lines cannot be expressed as single numbers.
Absolutely correct. Making it one number assumes that the Bay Area economy is absolutely predictable and probably stagnant.
Adding 30 percent more people to the Bay Area while contracting urban-growth boundaries will require replacement of single-family homes with apartments. The whole “demand” issue is just a cover-up for what planners want to do.
The probability of that many single-family detached homes getting torn down, absent massive blighted and abandoned areas (as can be found in cities like Detroit and Baltimore) is pretty close to zero. I think elected officials would get voted out of office before such a plan could come close to getting implemented.
Joel Kotkin writes about the oligarchs in Silicon Valley on the NewGeography.com, and mixes in a discussion of economic conditions and existing land use there: America’s New Oligarchs—Fwd.us and Silicon Valley’s Shady 1 Percenters
Two paragraphs:
The good jobs that are being created are also heavily clustered in one region, the west side of the San Francisco peninsula—a distinct and geographically constrained zone of privilege. The area boasts both formidable technical talent and, more important still, roughly one third of the nation’s venture funds along with the world’s most sophisticated network of tech-savvy investment banks, publicists, and attorneys.
But little of the Valley’s wealth reaches surrounding communities. Just across the bridge to the East Bay are high crime rates and an economy that’s lost about 60,000 jobs since 2001 with few signs of recovery. Inland, in the central Valley, double-digit unemployment is the norm and local governments are cutting police and other core services and even trying to declare bankruptcy.
The magic trick of projecting the future is not to do it in a short time frame in which you can be proven wrong in a time that can affect your paycheck. Anyone can take past data and find the trend they want, project it forward towards what they want, and then be able to deny any problems if the next few years do not follow their “long term” trend.
If you make a 50 or 100 year prediction, then you have to wait for at least 1400 years for that prediction to have a “90 percent confidence level.” Thus, all these predictions are by definition not “science”.
Sad that some don’t understand that restricting supply adds to price.
Scott: Sad that some don’t understand that restricting supply adds to price.
THWM: That is why so many transit projecst have such inflated prices.