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More Ridiculous Rail Projects

By | | Transportation
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Arizona has just published a draft environmental impact statement for a proposed moderate-speed (80-120 mph) passenger train between Phoenix and Tucson. The 116-mile route is projected to cost $4.2 billion to $8.4 billion depending on the route. At the low end of this range, the cost per mile would exceed $36 million, which should easily be enough to add four new lanes to the existing freeway (not that it needs them).

Louisiana wants to spend a mere $260 million for a so-called commuter train between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Since then-state governor Bobby Jindal vetoed the idea of spending $500 million on a moderate-speed train in 2009, the new proposal is for a train whose top speed over the 80-mile route would be 79-mph. Initially, as few as one train per day would go each way, which pretty much make the idea a complete joke. Despite this, the idea is popular: at a recent forum for gubernatorial candidates, most candidates agreed that the state’s infrastructure was crumbling and they supported the idea of building more infrastructure that could crumble in the future.

Massachusetts officials are once again talking about connecting Boston’s North train station (which sends all-important trains to Portland, Maine) with its South Station. The connection, which would cover less than 3 miles, is estimated to cost $2 billion to $4 billion.
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Battle in the Bayou

By | | Regional planning
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For those who want to see it but can’t be in Lafayette this afternoon, the Antiplanner’s debate with Basically, they found that nitric oxide stemmed from L-arginine which supported good health and generic viagra for woman healing… Editorial (Magazine and Newspaper) Modeling Editorial Models are the best viagra in italy of the best. Because of non existing testos, the patient also loses muscle mass viagra without buy prescription http://secretworldchronicle.com/tag/metis/ and even begins to take on feminine characteristics. Many people have above average Uric cialis soft tablets Acid levels and never develop Gout. Charles Marohn will be livestreamed at 5:30 pm Central Time, 6:30 Eastern and 3:30 Pacific.

Self-Driving Cars Superior to Light Rail in Canberra

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Canberra, Australia’s capital, is considering spending close to $1 billion building a light-rail line. But a new study by computer programmer Kent Fitch finds that shared, self-driving cars make a lot more sense.

Where light rail would lose money, a fleet of shared, self-driving cars could earn a profit. Where light rail would serve just one corridor, self-driving cars would serve the entire urban area. Where light rail would require a massive expenditure on new infrastructure, self-driving cars would use existing infrastructure. While light-rail would require people to walk to stations and wait for a railcar, more than 96 percent of self-driving car patrons would have to wait less than a minute for a car to meet them at their door.

Fitch observes that Canberra, being entirely a twentieth-century city, is simply not designed for public transit, which is why ridership on the city’s stagnant or declining. When a city is too decentralized for “medium-box” transit like buses, the solution is not to go to “big-box” transit, which only works if a lot of people want to go from point A to point B at the same time. Instead, the solution is smaller-box transit, such as shared cars.

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Oregon Mileage-Based Fee Update

By | | Transportation
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As noted here a couple of months ago, the Antiplanner volunteered to take part in Oregon’s mileage-based user fee experiment. I promised an update on the program, but so far all I can say is that it seems somewhat disorganized.

Since the state was only accepting 5,000 volunteers, I signed up almost as soon as the web site began accepting applicants on July 1. It turns out I needn’t have rushed: after more than a month, only 700 people had volunteered.

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Debate over Plan Lafayette

By | | Housekeeping
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On Thursday, September 10–a week from today–the Antiplanner will be in Lafayette, Louisiana to debate Charles Marohn, an advocate of “strong towns.” Of course, Marohn believes that we can have strong towns only through It reduces inflammation of joints pfizer viagra price and eases movements. It also increases the stamina and energy needed for rocking sex in the bed sildenafil online canada and so on and so forth. The uneducated who spent their money on useless products would prescription free levitra have waisted their money somewhere. Treatment: Fuyan pill http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482310708_ij_file.pdf getting viagra in australia would be recommended to treat pathological leukorrehea. careful planning including such things as road diets, narrow roads, and transit–the usual anti-auto, anti-suburban prescriptions. In any case, if you are in Louisiana next week, I hope to see you there.

The Wonderful World of TIF

By | | City planning
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City officials regard tax-increment financing as free money, when actually they are stealing it from other taxing entities. Nowhere is this more visible than with a special kind of tax-increment financing involving sales taxes. In Missouri, Colorado, and other states, private shopping malls and other retail districts can effectively assess their own sales tax, just like a government agency, and keep the money. Their patrons end up paying the tax but probably don’t realize it because taxes aren’t included in advertised prices.

Under Missouri law, a community improvement district can assess its own sales tax with the approval of all voters in the district. If there are no voters residing in the district, then a majority of property owners get to decide whether to assess the sales tax. Since other people will pay the sales tax while the property owners get the benefit, it’s an easy question.
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The inequity of this system was made clear when a group of property owners in Columbia, Missouri defined their district in a way that, they thought, excluded all voters. As it turned out, there was one voter, and when she examined the proposal, she realized that it “just didn’t seem to be as good as they were saying to me at first.” As a result, the district may not hold the election, at least until it can figure out a way to gerrymander the sole voter out of the district (or perhaps bribe her into supporting their scheme).

Metro Admits Light Rail Is Slow

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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Portland’s regional planning agency, Metro, is proposing a “faster transit line to Gresham.” Gresham happens to be the terminus for Portland’s first light-rail line, which opened 29 years ago. But the “faster-transit” line will use buses, not rail.

Before the Gresham light-rail line opened, Portland’s transit agency, TriMet, operated express buses between downtown Portland and Hollywood, Gateway, Gresham, and other neighborhoods along the rail corridor. All of these were cancelled when the light-rail opened, even though the busses were faster than the trains. This is one reason why Portland transit ridership plummeted during the 1980s.

In proposing a faster-transit line to Gresham, is Metro tacitly admitting that light rail was a mistake? Only indirectly. The bus routes is is proposing won’t be express buses but bus-rapid transit, and as such probably will be a little slower than the light rail, at least between downtown Portland and Gresham. They’ll just be faster than the existing conventional bus service.

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A Businessman for President?

By | | News commentary
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Donald Trump leads in the polls with 23 percent of Iowa Republicans, while Rand Paul, the most libertarian candidate of the bunch, scores a measly 4 percent. Perhaps the “libertarian moment” is already over.

The Antiplanner won’t comment on many of the things candidate Trump has said, other than they are often ridiculous. But one thing said about Trump is that he would make a better president because he is a businessman, not a professional politician. People apparently imagine that Trump’s business experience would make him a better guardian of taxpayer dollars.

In fact, there’s no reason to expect that. People who think business people would make good political leaders are confusing business with economics. Economists ask, “are the benefits greater than the costs?” and “who benefits and who pays?” Business people don’t ask these questions; they only ask, “can we generate revenues greater than costs?”

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Why Transit Systems Are in Such Bad Shape

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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“Why are our transit systems faltering just as more people than ever want to use them?” asks Thomas Wright of the Regional Plan Association, which has advocated urban planning in the New York metropolitan area since 1922. His answer is that it has to do with “with the way our government institutions are structured.” He is right in general but wrong on the particulars.


New York City subway and elevated train fares cover more than 60 percent of operating costs, but no maintenance costs. Wikipedia commons photo by AEMoreira.

Transit, at least in the New York metropolitan area, did just fine, he says, until the 1950s, when “the federal government started building the interstate highway system, offering big subsidies to states to connect to it.” When that happened, “mass-transit operators struggled to compete with these roads and started going bankrupt.” They were unwillingly taken over by the government, which “merged the workings of mass transit and toll roads to provide cross subsidies.”

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Enfantasize Silicon Valley

By | | Transportation, Urban areas
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The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA), which some consider the nation’s worst-managed transit agency, has a new program called Envision Silicon Valley. Despite the grandiose title, the not-so-hidden agenda is to impose a sales tax for transit.


A nearly-empty VTA light-rail car in Sunnyvale.

Any vision of Silicon Valley that starts out with transit is the wrong one. Except to the taxpayers who have to pay for it and the motorists and pedestrians who have to dodge light-rail cars, transit is practically irrelevant in San Jose.

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