We Can’t Afford What We’ve Got, So Let’s Build More

A rail broke on DC Metrorail’s Red Line last week, leading to “major delays.” Such problems are increasingly frequent now that the rail system is 30 years old and Metro can’t afford to replace worn out equipment.

Heck, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) ” can’t even afford to operate, much less maintain, the system it has. It expects a $176 million shortfall in its budget next year. Somehow, officials think they can trim $103 million from the budget without cutting service, but that still leaves $73 million in service cuts.

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Google Searches Per Mile

A new study concludes that Google’s servers emit 7 grams of CO2 for every search. Since burning a gallon of gasoline releases about 8,880 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere, you can calculate your car’s Google-equivalent by dividing your car’s miles per gallon into 1,269 (8,880 divided by 7).

My 1986 Mazda still gets about 33 miles per gallon and I do about 40 Google searches per day, which is the equivalent of driving my car a little over 1 mile. Of course, I probably visit at least 20 web sites for every Google search I do. If each of those web servers generate as much CO2 as Google, that means my Internet usage is equal to driving 20 miles a day.
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Should we tax the Internet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions?

Light-Rail Follies

Phoenix opened its $1.4 billion light-rail line for business on Saturday, December, 27. Thousands of people lined up to ride it during the first four days, when it was free.

Flickr photo by Phxwebguy.

Some riders were treated to a little extra excitement when light-rail trains were involved in several collisions with automobiles. The first accident took place on December 2, when Phoenix Metro was testing the system. The second collision happened on the day after it opened to the public. The car’s driver, apparently an illegal alien, fled the scene on foot.

But it was the third collision, less than a week later, that raised the most eyebrows. A pickup truck had stopped at a light-rail crossing for a train to go by. After the train passed, the crossing gates lifted, the light turned green, and the pickup tried to cross — only to be hit by a train going in the other direction. Apparently Metro still has to get the bugs out of its crossing gates.

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The Blogosphere vs. the Broadcastsphere

Anyone listening to the major broadcast networks — NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS — might be convinced that nearly all economists are united behind Obama’s proposed economic stimulus proposals. Just about all of the reports I have heard exclusively quote economists who think such a fiscal stimulus will be a good thing.

In the blogosphere, however, the debate rages between economists such as Paul Krugman, who think that the bigger stimulus, the better; and those such as Tyler Cowen, who remain unpersuaded. Many of the latter question whether a stimulus will work at all. Others think a stimulus might work in theory but that Congress is too likely to turn it into a pork fest for it to have any positive effect on the economy.

Update: Two more lists of stimulus skeptics can be found in the New York Times economix blog and a John Boehner press release. Plus David Brooks (who I pan in another post) expresses his skepticism for reasons that are more practical than technical.

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U.K. to Expand Urban-Growth Boundaries

Gordon Brown, the U.K. prime minister, is preparing to order local governments to expand the amount of land available for development so as to alleviate that nation’s high housing prices. Although the media presents this as a conflict between “the environment” and affordable housing, it is in fact a conflict between an elite’s desire to preserve rural open space vs. a working-class desire for decent housing.

Wendell Cox’s survey of housing prices found that the U.K. had some of the least-affordable housing in the English-speaking world. Unlike Canada and the U.S., which both have some unaffordable areas and others that are affordable, virtually all of the U.K. is unaffordable.

Urban-growth boundaries can trace their origin to Queen Elizabeth I, who in 1580 ordered her people to “desist and forbear” any new construction within three miles of the gates of London. The U.K.’s Town & Country Planning Act of 1947, probably qualifies as the world’s first modern smart-growth law.

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Keep Your Bureaucrats Out of My Sense of Community

One of the things that make the Antiplanner see red is whenever anyone talks about the need for government to help create a “sense of community.” John Gardner, of Common Cause, thinks of government “as a critical partner in” restoring a sense of community, and particularly would like to see more federal involvement.

As noted here last week, David Brooks thinks the infrastructure stimulus bill can build a sense of community by helping to “create suburban town squares.” Architect/planners like Andres Duany think their designs create a sense of community for the people who live in them.

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Colorado Railcar Closes Doors

The company that tried to sell “Diesel multiple units” to the nation’s transit industry is officially out of business. The company’s bumpy history was noted here a couple of weeks ago.

In retrospect, it is hard to believe that a railcar manufacturer could have failed after a more than a decade in which the transit industry furiously spent well over a hundred billion dollars of the taxpayers’ money on various rail transit schemes. This is especially so considering that RTD, Colorado Railcar’s “hometown agency,” ordered a record-breaking $187 million worth of light-rail cars from Siemens. But Colorado Railcar only managed to sell its product to two different transit agencies, one in Florida and one in Oregon.

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Happy New Year

Today is the Antiplanner’s second anniversary, and to express my appreciation to everyone who reads and comments, I am offering another gift. A few weeks ago, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight posted the third quarter home price indices for states and metropolitan areas.

These data are, in my opinion, much better than the more-frequently cited Case-Schiller index, which covers a much more limited set of cities and states. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight uses the Case-Schiller method of comparing same-home resales, but applies it to every state and metro area in the country.

I’ve enhanced these files by adding a few basic calculations and charts. The original data are still in columns A through E of the spreadsheets. In column F (in every 134th and 135th row), I’ve calculated the percentage by which housing prices increased after the first quarter of 2000 to their peak and the percentage by which prices declined after their peak.

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Who Is He Talking About?

David Brooks writes that suburban growth in the 1980s and 1990s “overshot the mark.” People moved further out from urban centers than they really wanted to, and as a result ended up “missing community and social bonds.” “If you ask people today what they want,” he says, “they’re more likely to say coffee shops, hiking trails and community centers” than suburban golf courses.

How does he know? How many people has he talked to? What data does he have to support this? If it is true, I don’t have any problem with it, but I don’t want to see people make policy based on New Urbanist fantasies and speculations.

The actual numbers show that some people are moving downtown (often supported by local subsidies), but the suburbs are still growing far faster. Sociological analyses find that people in the suburbs have more social ties, not less, than people in central cities, so the whole “sense of community” argument stinks.

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