A few weeks ago, President Obama nominated San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro to be the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. While some suggest that this may be bad for Castro’s future political career, he wouldn’t be the first mayor to be tapped for a cabinet position and then return home to be elected to higher office.
What seems more certain is that Castro’s departure from San Antonio weakens political support for the city’s misbegotten streetcar plan. A couple of years ago, when the Antiplanner wrote a critique of a proposed San Antonio steetcar, proponents believed they had everything wired to build the line.
Opponents, however, hammered away at the proposal, arguing, among other things, that when voters rejected any funding for light rail in 2000, they were also rejecting streetcars. At that time, and until just a couple of years ago, the Federal Transit Administration classified streetcars and light rail as the same thing.
Signs or Symptoms of Intimacy Feeling that one does not feel great to stay so viagra sildenafil mastercard negative. A cialis 100mg canada natural product is offered by Botaniex with Passion X. If your partner argues for no major reason, it is necessary for a man to make satisfied his lady love by all means including the sexual satisfaction. http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/?buy=4402 buy cialis Another high risk factor http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/cars-for-sale/2011-toyota-corolla-s/ viagra sales in canada is low birth weight, slow growth of foetus, premature birth, and postpartum hemorrhage and so on. Outside of San Antonio’s transit agency, the three biggest supporters of the 5.9-mile streetcar project were Castro, Centro San Antonio (a downtown booster group), and County Judge Nelson Wolff. Now, Castro is gone and Wolff says he is too busy running for re-election to work for the streetcar. Opponents, meanwhile, have a petition campaign to give people another chance to vote on it.
Ironically, the author of this article calls streetcar opponents “ideologues.” But, as the Antiplanner noted in a recent op ed in the San Antonio Express-News, the case against the streetcar as a waste of money is strong. After all, for a mere $83 million per mile, the streetcar will provide lousy transit service and increase congestion for auto drivers.
You probably wouldn’t call the streetcar’s supporters ideologues. Centro San Antonio obviously sees the streetcar as a way of increasing the values of its members properties. But any changes in property values due to transit improvements are a zero-sum game: rises along a transit line are offset by declines (or slower increases) in values elsewhere in the city.
According to Wendell Cox’s analysis of Census data, only 6.1 percent of San Antonio jobs are located in the city’s central business district. Property owners in the area clearly have an inferiority complex, one that can only be remedied by the application of huge taxpayer subsidies at the expense of everyone else in the city. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen.
“But any changes in property values due to transit improvements are a zero-sum game: rises along a transit line are offset by declines (or slower increases) in values elsewhere in the city. ”
That’s an amazing claim! Why are are property values within a single city a zero-sum game? Are there any studies that give evidence for this?
gilfoil – PORTLAND, OREGON! The Streetcar loses $10M a year and rising – you can walk faster than it travels. The Streetcar has not driven development as “planned”, retail business has actually seen a decline in traffic along its route since it was built, and ridership isn’t close to what was promised.
“retail business has actually seen a decline in traffic along its route since it was built”
What about property values, though? Did they go up along the streetcar routes and decline elsewhere? That would be some evidence that property values is a zero-sum game as the Antiplanner claimed.
retail business has actually seen a decline in traffic along its route since it was built
That’s strange, because the Antiplanner said above that the streetcar would “increase congestion for auto drivers”. Wouldn’t a decline in traffic lessen congestion for drivers?
Traffic to the business is not the same as traffic along the street. Nice try streetcar shill. Come in here just “asking questions” while trying to discredit the Antiplanner. Try harder next time.
metrosucks, I’m sure the Antiplanner has an answer to my question; he’s probably writing it up even as I type.
Thinking more about the Antiplanner’s claim that “any changes in property values due to transit improvements are a zero-sum game”. Doesn’t this claim imply that we should scrap all existing transit lines – including buses? Granted, the Antiplanner favors buses over light rail, but nevertheless, aren’t buses also “transit improvements”? If they improve property values, we’d be obligated to shut them down, it seems. Perhaps we should keep only the ones that are property-value neutral, since at least in that case, they won’t affect property values elsewhere.
That’s an amazing claim! Why are are property values within a single city a zero-sum game? Are there any studies that give evidence for this?
No.
DS
gilfoil – “What about property values, though? Did they go up along the streetcar routes and decline elsewhere?” The short answer is NO! It made absolutely no difference, because The Portland Streetcar doesn’t really serve any high traffic area.
It did not increase property values. The subsidies that the city poured into the area increased values somewhat, but the streetcar itself, did not. And the subsidies that were given to streetcar areas was money stolen from basic services and goods in other parts of the city, which caused those neighborhoods to deteriorate, and their value decrease.
metrosucks (nice nick btw), what city are you talking about?
My moniker is a reference to the fact that the Metro regional government of the Portland area sucks.
All cities that install streetcars suffer this zero sum game. Streetcars always come along with huge subsidies (which are the real drives of any development in the streetcar corridor) and a necessary taking of resources from other parts of the city to make frivolous improvements to the streetcar areas.
gilfoil – It looks as if you are unprepared for factual debate and have no clue as to the realities those who are forced to live in the communities that government planners change for the sole purpose of driving undesirable socioeconomic elements away – people – in order to make room for those with the trait’s that they desire.
gilfoil, you’re wasting your time if you expect factual, or reasonable, argument here.
gilfoil, you’re wasting your time if you expect factual, or reasonable, argument here.
That’s what Hitler said when he approached the rest of the world with his racist and tyrannical theories, and was rebuffed. So he decided to stick with other fanatics who shared his delusions.
Btw msetty, how’s it coming along on convincing the rest of the US to fork over 50 trillion dollars for your rail grievances??? How many venues have you been laughed out of?
Can’ take the heat msetty because you don’t have to live in the hell holes you expect the rest of us too? Sorry I have to live in among the “Smart Growth”, Urban Renewal, Light Rail and Streetcar, all surrounded by an Urban Growth Boundary. The More affluent in West Portland gets its sewer improvements paid for, parks maintained, and streets repaired, while those of us living in East Portland don’t. Our children go without sidewalks to and from school, while planners plot and scheme to impose more infill, higher densities, and cut our access to, and frequency of, Public Transit. The Portland City Council uses our tax revenue to construct streetcar lines, high density high rises downtown, and we don’t get the parks and roads promised us 30+ years ago. Let me reiterate the streetcar in Portland doesn’t work, removes capital from circulation that could be better spent on roads, bus lines, and infrastructure. Portland has seen NO benefit to real property values from streetcar, business has seen reduced traffic – its documented, and the reality is that you refuse to believe that your vision – along with gilfoil’s is nothing but a FAILED mantra.
Tombdragon, what you’re touching on is the fundamental problem with these projects. Local government goes from providing public goods to being a developer.
What about property values, though? Did they go up along the streetcar routes and decline elsewhere? That would be some evidence that property values is a zero-sum game as the Antiplanner claimed.
This is a more difficult question than you think. For starters, define ‘elsewhere’. It could be anywhere in the same region. And it is hard to ensure that whichever place that is is also similar in all other respects to the place that received the streetcar.
Suppose that the benefit received from a streetcar is proportional to the distance from it (a station, say). There might be a measurable impact on a small number of properties nearby, but properties not anywhere near it are unlikely to see much effect. The effect might be small and negative (after all, somebody’s income must be taken to pay for it), but probably not noticeable in a strict statistical sense.
This is generally the M.O. for streetcar projects. There is a small, concentrated group of supporters, many of whom stand to benefit directly from its provision, and a much larger group who will end up paying, but who will see no benefit. As long as the group who pays is large enough that the cost to any individual is relatively small — small enough not to provoke significant protest — the project will likely move forward. Concentrated benefits, dispersed costs.
In short, there have been (to my knowledge, at least) no studies of this ‘zero-sum’ hypothesis, largely because of the measurement problems involved. We can neither confirm nor deny it.
Here you go msetty, and gilfoil – they are making room for you – come on and move here, live in the kind of development you promote, I dare you! Bet you don’t have the guts to even answer.
http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/06/east_portland_growth_slow_it_d.html#incart_river
Tombdragon,
in case you missed it, like 99% of the other hypocrites and wannabe tyrants pushing smart growth on the “rest of us”, Msetty lives on acreage far away from any rail, or bus stops, for that matter. He’s not even in a city.
I suspect “gilfoil” is a planner who decided to be “coy” about his desires to stuff all of us in a high rise apartment and ride the rail.