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Responsive Planning vs. Prescriptive Planning

By | | Regional planning
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Houston famously has no zoning, but most American cities have some kind of planning and zoning. The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Wendell Cox, divides these cities into two kinds: those with responsive planning and those with prescriptive planning.

Responsive planning, said Cox in his presentation (3.8MB PowerPoint show) to the Preserving the American Dream conference in San Jose, is planning that zones land in response to market needs as expressed by developer’s plans. Prescriptive planning, such as smart growth, tries to impose planners’ visions on the cities and surrounding countrysides.

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The Anti-Car Movement in Britain

By | | Transportation
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British auto drivers pay something like $4 in auto-related taxes for every dollar that the government spends on highways. The surplus goes for transit, intercity rail, and other government operations.

Meanwhile, the government is doing much to discourage auto driving, including installing speed humps, red-light cameras, and the famous cordon charge for entering inner London.

All of this rankles Malcolm Heymer, a civil engineer and member of the Association of British Drivers. Heymer gave a presentation (10MB) at the San Jose Preserving the American Dream conference last weekend. You can also download the text of his presentation, which is only 248-kilobytes.

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The Nation’s Worst-Managed Transit Agency

By | | Follow up, Transportation
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It turns out that the Antiplanner is not the only transit observer who thinks that San Jose’s Valley Transportation Authority is the nation’s worst-managed transit agency. Tom Rubin, an accountant who has audited many transit agencies and seen them from the inside out, agrees.

In a PowerPoint show (17MB, or try this 2.5MB PDF) given to the Preserving the American Dream conference in San Jose last weekend, Rubin shows that VTA ranks among the bottom two or three transit operators by such performance criteria as farebox recovery (the percentae of costs paid by fares), average passenger loads, subsidy per rider, and subsidy per vehicle mile.

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Seattle Votes No

By | | Transportation
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Last week the Antiplanner failed to note that Seattle voted down a massively expensive light-rail plan. Sound Transit, the agency that is at least 100 percent overbudget and several years late on its initial light-rail project, somehow thought it could persuade voters to fund the most expensive light-rail system in the universe.

The proposed system was going to cost anywhere from $10.6 billion to $150 billion depending on who you believed. The lower figure was the capital cost in 2002 dollars; the higher was the total tax that Seattlelites were expected to fork over before the system would be completely paid off.

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The Disappearing One-Way Streets

By | | Transportation
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Montgomery Alabama is the latest to replace its one-way streets with two way. Studies have shown that one-way streets are safer and, because they move more traffic, are actually good for the businesses on the streets.

Both one-way and two-way streets are visible in this view of downtown Montgomery. Click to see a larger view.
Flickr photo by Brian Esquire.

One-way streets were a huge success in reducing traffic accidents when cities installed them in the 1950s. Those cities that have restored two-way operation that have bothered to check found that the number of accidents increased on two-way streets. So why are cities changing them back?

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The Best-Laid Plans

By | | Follow up
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A couple of weeks ago, the Cato Institute held a forum for the ultimate antiplanning book. The forum featured the Antiplanner along with two faithful allies, Robert Nelson (of the University of Maryland) and Ronald Utt (of the the Heritage Foundation).


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Cato recorded the forum and has a link to the video (in Real Player format) on its web site. But the link was broken when Cato revamped its web site last weekend. Although they may have fixed it by now, I am including the link here for those who cannot attend the San Jose conference this weekend. In addition to a moderately high-speed connection, you will need Real Player, which can be downloaded for free, to make it work.

An Open Letter to Jack Bogdanski

By | | News commentary
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Dear Jack,

Well, Jack, you made your choice. I hope you will be happy with it.

For several years now, you have blogged incisively about Portland’s high-density mania, its weird transportation projects, and its corrupt political system — or, as I like to call them, the Three Big Cons: condos, congestion, and con artists swindling taxpayers out of their money.

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Conference in San Jose

By | | Housekeeping
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Posts will be light this week as the Antiplanner is helping the American Dream Coalition put on its annual Preserving the American Dream conference in San Jose this weekend.

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Crime Near Light-Rail Stations

By | | Follow up, Transportation
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According to the mayor of Gresham, Oregon, 40 percent of robberies and drug crimes — as well as 80 percent of gang-related police calls — in his city take place within a quarter mile of a light-rail station. He made this statement in an interview with conservative talk-radio host Lars Larson.

Vandalism and burgleries are also a problem, according to this article in the Oregonian.

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Cooking the Books

By | | Transportation
31 Comments

The Salt Lake County Council of Governments recently agreed to spend $2.5 billion on rail transit. But a state auditor found that the analysis used to justify the decision contained some errors that, if corrected, would have indicated the money should be spent on roads instead.

The analysis ranked commuter rail as the second-highest priority transportation investment for the county. But when the errors were corrected, it dropped to 19th out of 34.

“So what?” say city and county leaders. They would have spent the money on rail no matter what the analysis found.

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