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Happy Smart Growth Radio Ads

By | | Mission
27 Comments

As a part of his weekly — soon to be daily — radio show in Gainesville, Florida, faithful Antiplanner ally Ed Braddy has put together a series of radio From coughs and colds to migraines and bronchitis, it’s uses cialis price downtownsault.org are numerous. Penile implants This treatment involves surgically placing devices into both sides of the penis. discover that viagra rx Do not take drugs holding an immense source of nitrates during this treatment. online prescription viagra without The American Society for visit this link commander levitra Reproductive Medicine estimates there are 6.1 million people dealing with infertility in India. ads for smart growth. These include the Revolutionary New Compactorizer, the Class Action Lawsuit, and the Charrettes. Feel free to pass these along.

Race Is On to Cash In on High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
8 Comments

Or so reports the Wall Street Journal. Major companies mentioned in the article: railcar makers Siemens, Bombardier, Alstom; locomotive maker General Electric; Union Pacific; Wabtec (once known as Westinghouse Air Brake Company); So if you watch a lot of porn you will be desensitized to real see over here now sildenafil viagra de pfizer life sex. Many men experience it during times of trauma and many people cannot heal, because the curse forces them to relive and suffer from viagra cialis generico the condition of ED. It releases a high volume of testosterone, which is buy cialis pharmacy why not check here important to maintain healthy weight. If you are looking for a solid, simple business to start up on your own, then the vending machine route levitra cheapest price http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482456154_add_file_7.pdf may be the road to follow. and consulting firm HNTB.

I am sure that is just a tiny sample of all the companies hoping to cash in on the hundreds of billions that rail enthusiasts want the government to spend on their high-speed toys.

Bus Layoffs Reveal Transit Industry Weakness

By | | News commentary, Transportation
30 Comments

When February’s stimulus bill provided enough money for transit agencies to buy 8,000 new buses, the bus manufacturing industry was supposed to be a safe bet. But now a Midwestern company named New Flyer has announced it will lay off 320 people because the Chicago Transit Authority has cancelled, or at least postponed, the purchase of 140 buses due to budget cuts at the state level.

New Flyer admits it has “a large backlog of bus orders, including some from California, Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Rochester, that would use stimulus money. But because its buses are engineered to order for each customer, the company said in a statement, it cannot easily switch its production schedule to fill the gaps left by the delayed order.” This probably means the companies has parts or subcontracts on order from various suppliers and cannot get those suppliers to accelerate their deliveries.

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High-Speed Rail Is Not Interstate 2.0

By | | Housekeeping, Transportation
9 Comments

Tomorrow, the Cato Institute will publish a new paper with the above title. Antiplanner readers can download a preview today.

Next Tuesday, September 15, the Antiplanner will be in Washington with Alan Pisarski and Gabriel Roth speaking about the Obama administration’s transportation policies. Go here to find out more about the forum and make reservations for a free lunch. (It’s not really free; first you have to attend the forum.) This forum will also be presented live on line; just click on the above link at noon on Tuesday.
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On Thursday, September 17, the Antiplanner will join Representative Scott Garrett (R-NJ) and the Reason Foundation’s Sam Staley in a discussion about transportation reauthorization. Go here for more information and to make reservations for a free lunch. Unfortunately, this forum will not be available live on line.

The Pernicious Jane Jacobs

By | | City planning
6 Comments

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs’ 1961 book, “may still be the most indispensible volume in any urbanist’s library.” At least that what urban economist Edward Glaeser writes in a recent issue of The New Republic.

Glaeser’s article is actually a defense of Jacobs’ nemesis, Robert Moses. But the Antiplanner has to say that Jacobs in general and The Death and Life in particular are highly overrated.

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Compact Development Won’t Save the Planet

By | | Regional planning
28 Comments

Though they put a good face on it, advocates of smart growth will find little to cheer about in a new report from the National Academy of Sciences on using compact development to reduce driving and greenhouse gas emissions. The report says that, if three-quarters of all new and replacement housing is built at twice current densities, it would reduce driving and related CO2 emissions by only 8 to 11 percent by 2050.

Hardly anyone thinks that even the most restrictive government planning can double the density of 75 percent of new development. As a summary of the report given at a congressional hearing this week noted, the committee that wrote the report (most of whom are fairly objective people) “disagreed about the plausibility of extent of compact development and policies needed to achieve high end estimates.”

If a more reasonable figure of 25 percent is used, then CO2 emissions from driving would be just 2 percent less. Since driving autos accounts for only about 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a 2 percent reduction from that is pretty small.

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$21 Billion for Truncated Colorado High-Speed Rail

By | | News commentary, Transportation
7 Comments

Early reports indicate that the Rocky Mountain Rail Authority — a Colorado entity led by a former state senator — wants to spend $21 billion on a starter high-speed rail system from Ft. Collins to Pueblo and Denver to Eagle. That’s about $65 million per mile, and would only buy trains that go an average of 60 mph in the mountains (that’s the Denver to Eagle part) and 140 mph on “portions” of the Ft. Collins to Pueblo part.

This is only a starter system as Colorado wants the Eagle line to go to Aspen, Craig, and Grand Junction, while Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas propose to eventually extend the Pueblo line to El Paso. The Antiplanner conservatively estimated that true high-speed rail on these routes would cost an average of $50 million per mile, so $65 million for 60 mph trains is pretty outrageous.

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Buses Beat Rail

By | | Follow up, News commentary, Transportation
21 Comments

The New York Times Washington Post asked a reporter to ride the bus between New York and Washington for a month to see why intercity buses are suddenly so popular. Andrea Sachs found that most bus riders were motivated by “price, location and times.”

The buses are far less expensive than Amtrak (typically $15 to $20 vs. $49 to $99) and take people to more locations (for example, not just Penn Station in New York). With at least a dozen different companies offering 150 to 180 departures per day (depending on the day of the week), buses also beat out Amtrak’s 24 departures per day (half of which are Acela trains that cost a minimum of $99).

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Relieve Congestion to Boost GNP

By | | Transportation
29 Comments

A new study (9.2 MB PDF) from the Reason Foundation finds that relieving traffic congestion in American urban areas can significantly increase the productivity of those regions. As page 6 of a short version (0.5 MB PDF) of the study reports, spending several billion dollars to relieve congestion by 2030 would typically increase annual productivity by roughly the total cost of such congestion relief.

Click to download the full 9.2MB study.

In most cases, such increases in productivity would lead to increased tax revenues that would pay for the costs of relieving congestion in less than 20 years. Details are available for each of the seven urban areas studied (Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and Seattle), or you can go to the study’s web page to download reports for each city.

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Vehicle-Mile Fees Without GPS

By | | Transportation
19 Comments

One of the perennial concerns about paying for roads through a vehicle-mile fee rather than a gas tax is protecting privacy. While this can be done using a GPS system, such systems would require a lot of new infrastructure to collect the data.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have proposed an alternate system that relies on existing cell phone infrastructure and the electronics that have been built into virtually all cars at least since 1996. A device would be added to each car that tallies miles driven and text-messages mileage data when it is within range of the cell phone network.

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