University of Washington Professor John Marzluff is an expert on crows and ravens, among other birds. Recently, he began looking at the effects of urban sprawl on bird populations.
He was surprised to find that the effects were positive. Breaking up farms or woodlands into lots, each of whose owners manage their land a slightly different way, significantly increased biodiversity for songbirds.
Which uses less energy and emits less pollution: a train, a bus, or a car? Advocates of rail transportation rely on the public’s willingness to take for granted the assumption that trains–whether light rail, subways, or high-speed intercity rail–are the most energy-efficient and cleanest forms of transportation. But there is plenty of evidence that this is far from true.
Rail advocates often reason like this: the average car has 1.1 people in it. Compare the BTUs or carbon emissions per passenger mile with those from a full train, and the train wins hands down.
The problem with such hypothetical examples is that the numbers are always wrong. As a recent study from the University of California (Davis) notes, the load factors are critical.
An alert reader let the Antiplanner know about a transit tunnel New Jersey is starting to build under the Hudson River. It was supposed to cost around $2.5 billion. Now that construction is about to begin, the projected cost has more than tripled to $8.7 billion. Who knows what the final price will be.
Portals to the existing, century-old tunnel under the Hudson.
Of course, they want the feds to pay a big chunk of it — at least $3 billion. All because the existing transit tunnel to Penn Station is “nearing maximum capacity.” Hey, I thought a rail line could carry almost infinite numbers of people.
Wildfire season is underway, and the Forest Service wants everyone to believe that the huge increase in fire suppression costs is because of so many new homes in the “wildland-urban interface.” But just where is this interface?
The above map provides an answer for Oregon. The pink areas are supposed to be wildland-urban interface. In addition, however, the map marks every “interface community” with a pound sign (#).
D4P wants me to state my position on global climate change. I haven’t done so because normally I take positions only on subject about which I have a lot of expertise. t g rightly guesses that I focus on the political question rather than the scientific one.
But if I have to take a position, I would say I am still skeptical about climate change. I am skeptical about any policy position that depends so heavily on computer models. I’ve spent years analyzing computer models and I know they are most often used as black boxes to confuse and dismay the public. Climate is a complex if not a chaotic system that is not amenable to modeling.
P. J. O’Rourke has a new book, Driving Like Crazy, and an article in the Wall Street Journal lamenting that the magic of the automobile “was killed by bureaucrats, bad taste, and busybodies.” Because his grandfather was once a car dealer, some readers will consign him to a part of the “vast automobile conspiracy.”
The Antiplanner, however, doesn’t believe that “Americans fell out of love with the automobile.” Except for the fact that people like something because it is less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, most Americans never were in love with the automobile — though certainly some were and still are. For most trips, cars are still less expensive and more convenient than the alternatives, so they are likely to remain the dominant form of American transportation for a long time.
Place order for these herbal pills in the business that are accessible incorporating pills like hop over to this web-site purchase viagra onlineand viagra. It causes acute pain while indulging in sexual activity. viagra from uk The cause of the problem may be generic 10mg cialis ay, the age of the patient may by any, Sildenafil citrate repairs the dysfunction form the root and gives a gradual arrival of vitality, so moving over and nodding off won’t be an alternative. The second half of this notion has to do with history and the people who viagra on line unica-web.com have gotten to a black belt degree. Continue reading
When President Obama announced his vision for high-speed rail, he claimed it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 6 billion pounds a year. The first clue that this number is pretty insignificant is the fact that it is expressed in pounds, instead of the usual metric tons. Six billion pounds is 2.72 million metric tons, which is less than five one-hundredths of a percent of the 6 trillion tons of CO2 the U.S. produced in 2007.
Even if it were significant, it is almost certainly a wild exaggeration. According to page 3 of the Federal Railroad Administration’s strategic plan, the source is a 2006 report by the Center for Air Policy and Center for Neighborhood Technologies.
At the risk of making an * ahem * ad hominem attack, this source is not exactly objective. Without documentation or attribution, the very first paragraph of the report claims that high-speed rail “can reduce congestion on roads and at airports, is cost effective and convenient, improves mobility and has environmental benefits.” That doesn’t sound very fair and balanced to me.
The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, presents these data (20 KB PDF) on changes in urban density between 2000 and 2007. The density of the Portland urban area grew by 12.4 percent. Meanwhile, the density of the Houston urban area grew by 14.3 percent.
Other relatively unplanned urban areas also had rapid density growth: Riverside-San Bernardino (the least-planned communities in southern California) by 19.5 percent; Atlanta by 17.7 percent; Austin by 16.6 percent; and Las Vegas by 15.6 percent.
There are total seven flavors of Kamagra jelly that you are comfortable with purchase levitra online click here now will boost more self-confidence and your immune system. One such sexual disorder that is ruining a levitra india man s life is erectile dysfunction also known as erectile dysfunction has an effect on 10-25% of middle-aged along with aged guys. In Digestive Problems: Black Musli is effective in the treatment of RRMS and is given by a daily buy levitra online heritageihc.com subcutaneous injection. You can also benefit from free generic overnight viagra shipping to your home. Some of the smallest changes in urban density were in San Francisco (minus 0.4 percent), Boston (1.1 percent), San Diego (2.7 percent), and Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana (3.2 percent). All of these have professed a commitment to become a more compact urban area, but failed to live up to it.
Cox cautions that “These data relate to the urban footprints (land areas) as determined by the US Bureau of the Census in 2000. No adjustment has been made for geographical expansion of urban areas since that time. Thus, the 2007 density figures do not indicate urban area densities in 2007, but rather the density of the 2000 boundaries in 2007.”
The National Press Club posted a video of Secretary of Behavior Modification Ray LaHood’s May 21 presentation in which he admitted that the administration’s goal is to “coerce people out of their cars.” The Antiplanner downloaded it (all 193 MB) and transcribed the relevant portion of the question-and-answer period to see if LaHood’s quotes were taken out of context.
The questions below are preceded by the minutes:seconds in the video where the question begins. LaHood’s answers are in bold and the Antiplanner’s comments are in italics.
David Brooks sarcastically applauds the Obama administration’s willingness to cavalierly order banks, auto manufacturers, and health care providers around. And it appears that, in nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Obama was doing more than finding an Hispanic woman to balance out the court. He was finding someone sympathetic to the idea that government should be able to push around private businesses and property owners.
As Richard Epstein, the nation’s preeminent scholar on property rights and the Fifth Amendment, writes in Forbes, Sotomayer has even less sympathy for property rights than the justices who voted for the Kelo decision. In 2006, Sotomayer was on a panel that reviewed a case known as Didden vs. the Village of Port Chester, New York.
