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This Is Why They Call It “Lie Rail”

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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When the Antiplanner spoke in Norfolk two years ago, my opening line was “They should call it lie rail because everything about light rail is a lie.” The proponents of building light rail in Virginia Beach have certainly proven that to be true.

Above is an advertisement for the ballot measure. In addition to saying, “Reduce Traffic Congestion,” which it won’t do, it says, “Connect the Oceanfront, ODU [Old Dominion University], Airport & Naval Base.” Yet the ballot measure proposes to increase local property taxes to build a three-mile, $300 million light-rail line that won’t go to any of those places. They say they have long-term plans to build extensions to those places, but they also say that don’t plan to come back and ask for more tax increases.

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2014 Transportation Energy Data Posted

By | | Transportation, Useful Data
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The energy efficiency of the average car on the road increased slightly in 2014 as did air travel, but the average light truck and Amtrak used slightly more BTUs per passenger mile in 2014 than in 2013. That’s the finding from the latest edition of the Transportation Energy Data Book (6.5-MB PDF), which was posted on line on Monday. Specifically, these numbers are from tables 2-15, highway modes, and 2-16, non-highway modes.

The book is published each year by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In addition to the book in PDF format and the individual spreadsheets for each of the 250 tables in the book, they usually have a link to all the spreadsheets in ZIP format, but the isn’t available yet.

According to the spreadsheets, most forms of urban transit became a little more energy efficient in 2014. I suspect declining fuel prices will produce some different results for 2015. Transit ridership is falling, so transit’s energy efficiency per passenger mile is likely to decline, as is Amtrak’s. If falling fuel prices allowed airlines to keep fares lower and fill more seats, airline fuel efficiencies may increase.
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Don’t Ride the Tide-tanic

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The Wall Street Journal suggests that a light-rail line that is on next week’s ballot in Virginia Beach would end up being “empty trains to nowhere.” That’s based on the fact that the existing Norfolk light-rail line that this one would connect with is one of the emptiest in the country with the highest subsidy per rider. The only problem with the Journal‘s article is that it doesn’t acknowledge the much larger light-rail boondoggles on the ballot in Los Angeles, Seattle, and other cities.

As it happens, the Antiplanner is flying to Virginia Beach today to participate in an open forum about the light-rail proposal. The forum will take place Wednesday evening. What are you waiting for? Come and learn driving and levitra price my link make the difference. Though the variations of any kind can be taken care of with the herbal supplements for ordine cialis on line healthy bones. Shilajit Gold Benefits: Gold is called Swarna bhasma in ancient ayurvedic texts for cialis in india price its abundant health benefits, Kesar and other important herbs like Ashwagandha, Kaunch Beej and Safed Mushali to form a power packed super food. You can use this herbal cure viagra on line to treat fatigue troubles. If you are in the Hampton Roads area, I hope to see you there. In the meantime, due to the length of the flight, I may not have a chance to post here tomorrow.

Not Guilty

By | | News commentary, Public lands
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It seems like we’ve been here before. A bunch of people mount a protest against the federal government. The only real violence is committed by the police. When seven of the people are put on trial for conspiracy charges, they turn the courtroom into a circus. The nation is shocked when all of them are found innocent of conspiring to break the law.

I’m writing, of course, about the Chicago Seven, one of whom, Tom Hayden, passed away earlier this week. Just four days later, the Malheur Seven were similarly found innocent of conspiracy charges in Portland.

The parallels go further. After the Chicago Seven cases were heard (but before the jury rendered a verdict), the judge cited the defendants for contempt of court and sentenced them to 2-1/2 to 4 years in prison (all of which were reversed on appeal). After the Malheur Seven jury presented its verdict, U.S. marshalls arrested and allegedly tased one of their lawyers for protesting the detention of his client without offering a warrant.

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Debt Without Deficits

By | | News commentary, Transportation
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According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal deficit in 2016 was $590 billion. But the federal debt in 2016 grew by $1.4 trillion. That means the debt grew by about $800 billion more than the deficit. How can that be?

The answer is that Congress uses all kinds of accounting tricks to pretend that money it borrows isn’t part of the deficit. You can read a complete list of those accounting tricks in an article by Dr. Lacy Hunt (you’ll have to get a free subscription to John Mauldin’s newsletter to read the article, which is well worth doing if you are at all interested in macroeconomic issues).

From the Antiplanner’s point of view, the most important accounting trick is that some spending from borrowed money is regarded as “an investment,” and so isn’t counted in the deficit. This includes student loans and highway and transit spending. In 2016, Congress borrowed $70 billion to pay for highways and transit, yet that isn’t included in the $590 billion deficit.

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Density and Auto Commuting in 2015

By | | Regional planning, Transportation
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A few weeks ago, the Antiplanner posted commuting data from the Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey. But I haven’t compared commuting with urban densities since the 2000 census. The chart below shows this comparison for 226 urbanized areas.

For each decennial census, the Census Bureau maps the land around each major city that is urbanized. The agency’s definition of “urban” is lengthy, but basically it is about 1,000 people per square mile, or 500 people per square mile if the land around them is developed for urban but non-residential purposes. The agency does not remap areas between decennial censuses, so I used the 2010 boundaries to calculate both population density and how people get to work in 2015.

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Run for Your Lives! It’s Megalopolis!

By | | Regional planning
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When I was about 12 or 13 years old–this would have been about 1964 or 1965–my elementary school principal gathered the upper classes into the auditorium and gave a lecture about megalopolis, the huge expanse of urbanized land stretching from Boston to Washington. I don’t know why he did that–as far as I can recall, he never gave a lecture on any other subject while I was at that school–but he was obviously inspired by French geographer Jean Gottmann’s book, Megalopolis.

At 810 pages in length, the book was as massive as its subject, but its thesis was simple. As stated in his introduction, Gottmann held that “The Northeastern seaboard of the United States is today the site of a remarkable development–an almost continuous stretch of urban and suburban areas from southern New Hampshire to northern Virginia and from the Atlantic shore to the Appalachian foothills.” This unique (at least in the United States) area has unique problems, Gottmann contended, including “Transportation, land use, water supply, cultural activities, use and development of resources.” Moreover, because it was chopped into eleven states or parts of states, the region’s residents weren’t able to solve those problems. As a result, he predicted, poverty, resource shortages, and pollution were likely to get worse.

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The New Urban Agenda

By | | Regional planning
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Last week, the United Nations conference on housing and sustainable development, Habitat III, adopted the New Urban Agenda. Is this a new version of Agenda 21 aimed at controlling how we live and use our land?

Yes and no. Yes, it is an update to Agenda 21. No, it won’t control how we live any more than the original. If you are worried about such control, look to the city planners on your local government’s staff rather than to some United Nations document.

A close reading of the New Urban Agenda suggests it was heavily influenced by first-world urban planners. But it is filled with so many fudge words and modifiers that it ends up with no meaning at all. Certainly, the United Nations is more interested in eliminating poverty and improving sanitation in developing countries than in interfering with the daily lives of people in developed countries.

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Seattle Millennials Should Move to Houston

By | | Housing
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The Seattle Post-Intelligencer says it has found the best Seattle homes for Millennials. Judging by the paper’s suggestions, Seattle Millennials should move to Houston. Houston may not have Mt. Rainier, but it has beautiful lakes, a sea coast that is just about as nice as Washington’s (though not as nice as Oregon’s), and most important, it doesn’t have urban-growth boundaries which means it has much more affordable housing.


Click any photo to go to the listing for that property.

The P-I‘s first suggestion is a 720-square foot, two-bedroom, one-bath home on a 5,000-square-foot lot. On the plus side, the living room has hardwood floors. On the minus side, the asking price is $259,950–and if Seattle’s housing market is anything like Portland’s, it will go for more than that. At the asking price, the cost is $361 per square foot.

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Portland, Thy Name Is Density

By | | City planning, Housing, Urban areas
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Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability is following the White House’s advice by proposing to increase the densities of nearly two-thirds of the city’s single-family neighborhoods. Under the proposal, duplexes, triplexes, and accessory dwelling units would be allowed in single-family areas.

The plan also proposes to limit the size of a home to about half the square footage of the lot it is on, while at the same time allowing buildings to cover a larger area of the lot. That’s supposedly to prevent McMansions, but it also just happens to encourage people to build two separate homes on one lot (one of which would be called an “accessory” unit).

Portland’s current mayor, Charlie Hales, is a strong advocate of densification–so long as it isn’t in his backyard. When the city proposed to increase densities in Eastmoreland, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods on the city’s east side, residents strongly protested. Hales, who just happens to live there, backed them up. Judging from the map on page 14 of the proposal, neither Eastmoreland nor the wealthy Tualatin Hills neighborhoods are among those that would be rezoned. Continue reading →