Government Procurement, Transit-Style

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) has written a detailed 33-page request for bids for — wait for it — cake.

VTA needs the cakes for the three dozen or so retirement parties it holds each year (it should be a lot more). To submit a bid, a bakery must be willing to provide any of eleven flavors (do you want peach or marble?), sixteen fillings (pumpkin or mint cream?), five icings (butter cream or cream cheese?), and six toppings (jimmies or walnuts?). Plus the cakes have to be decorated with flowers, streamers, or other ornaments.

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New Job

Today, I start work as a senior fellow for the Cato Institute. I will still live in Oregon but will visit Cato’s offices in Washington, DC every few weeks. Cato wants me to work on a variety of urban, transport, and resource issues.

I will continue to post to this blog, of course, and may occasionally update other parts of the Thoreau Institute web site with links to recent articles and research. I will also keep volunteering for the American Dream Coalition, though Kathleen Calongne will take over some of my work there.

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A couple of people have asked if I will add a comment preview routine. I will see what I can do. It is supposed to be a simple matter of turning on a WordPress plug in and adding one line of code to the template. But where does that line go?

Siemens Bribery Scandal and Light Rail

The Wall Street Journal today has a lengthy article about the Siemens company bribing government officials to get contracts. Among other things, Siemens builds light-rail cars.

As far as I know, Siemens has never bribed an American public official to get a contract to for its rail cars — at least, not in the sense of paying people under the table. Instead, it routinely makes large contributions to political campaigns involving light rail.

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The Incentive Problem: Why Planners Always Get It Wrong

Government planning fails because planners face the wrong incentives. Instead of being rewarded for doing good things for their communities, they are rewarded mainly for pleasing other planners. This incestuous system is a recipe for failure.

In a previous post, I listed seven reasons why government planning — that is, long-range, comprehensive planning that often regulates other people’s property — cannot work. I’ve discussed four reasons in detail, and now it is time to address reason number 5: the Incentive Problem.

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Even More on the Aerial Tram

Yesterday’s New York Times features an article on Portland’s aerial tram. Portland is the “city that loves transit”? More like, the city whose officials love to spend money on transit.

Meanwhile, the Federal Highway Administration publicly expressed criticism of Portland’s transportation planning. “It is difficult to find a transportation focus” in the plan, says the agency. I guess they didn’t get the memo: in Portland, transportation spending is about real estate, not about moving people and goods.

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The Mythmaking Continues on the Portland Aerial Tram

Last week the Oregonian told us that Portland’s $57 million aerial tram was built “on budget” even though the projected cost at the time the Portland city council agreed to build it was only $15.5 million. Now, the Seattle Times reports that the tram “already has helped spur a much broader $1 billion development of the riverfront district.”


Supposedly, this tram car can hold 78 people, but don’t expect that many to ever ride it. City of Portland photo.

It won’t be long before real estate promoters in Seattle, Oakland, and any other city that has 500-foot-high hills will be thumping to have taxpayers build them their own aerial trams.

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Moderating Posts

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If your post includes lots of links and you don’t want it held until I have a chance to review it, you might break it up into two or more posts.

Getting People Out of Their Cars

Page 2 of a transit plan for Charlotte, NC, says:

Mobility: Mobility has several components. One is ridership, both in terms of how many people will ride new services and how many new transit trips are attracted away from autos. Reducing auto use lowers congestion, air pollution and energy consumption.”

Too many planners assume without question that “attracting people away from autos” is a good thing. Supposedly, autos are bad because they cause congestion and air pollution, and they consume energy. Yet too many transportation planners are willing to create congestion and air pollution and consume huge amounts of energy in order to get trivial numbers of people out of their cars.

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Transportation: Planning or Procrastinating?

According to the Texas Transportation Institute’s annual mobility reports, traffic delays due to congestion have been growing at nearly 8 percent per year since 1982. Those who closely scrutinize urban transportation planning in the U.S. increasingly believe that planners are doing everything they can to avoid solving this problem.

Case in point: Portland, Oregon, which sits astride the Willamette River and has ten roadway crossings of that river. One of them, the Sellwood Bridge, is structurally unsound and in 2004 the county engineer has banned all trucks and buses from the bridge. I can testify that the bridge is also one of the least bicycle-friendly bridges in the city.

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