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The “Systemic Failure” of US transportation policy

Today I stumbled upon a blog that’s gotta be the best one I’ve found in a while. It’s about US transportation policy by a blogger who seems to be based somewhere in the Bay Area, and it’s called, fittingly, Systemic Failure. The post that first got my attention was this one about London’s bike sharing system likely being profitable in the future, which made me realize that this would be a great first government transportation program to privatize, especially considering that the government is keeping the price extremely low (it’s free for trips under 30 minutes) and the system is struggling to keep up with demand. I assume the reason that private companies didn’t try this earlier was that city governments have no framework for renting out small parcels of public space for use as bike racks – this despite having a vast infrastructure in place for renting similar parcels to drivers on a short-term basis (i.e., on-street parking!). But beyond that, (s?)he does a great job covering a range of transit issues, from the misguided attempts at federalization of transit safety by Obama after the WMATA Red Line crash in 2009 (1, 2, 3, 4) to the inanity of helmet laws (1, 2). The “Drunk Engineer” also offers blistering critiques of American protectionism in transit procurement, including one in which he describes the horrible inefficiency of Buy America provisions, which wreaked havoc on a Houston streetcar project and caused a Bay Area transit authority to have two completed Japanese pilot cars disassembled and shipped to the US where they would then be reassembled to conform with the law (another example here). Another interesting post that I found was this one about Senator Barbara Boxer’s insistence that Metrolink trains have two conductors onboard for safety reasons, despite the lack of […]

Asian megacities, free and unfree: Shanghai, Beijing, and Seoul

Guy Sorman has an absolutely fascinating article in the City Journal about Asia’s megacities, and I can’t bear to bury it in a link list. He takes a very negative view of Shanghai, citing its deputy mayor for finance’s candid admission that it’s a “costly facade to maintain,” and blasts Beijing for its never-ending ring roads, among other things. But halfway through the article, he takes up the issue of Seoul, and each paragraph is more interesting than the last. He describes the transition from military dictatorship to liberal democracy thusly: Democratization has helped transform Seoul into a more livable city in an extraordinarily short time. Before democracy, the authorities pursued economic growth at virtually any cost: real estate operated with little constraint, the number of private cars swiftly exceeded street capacity, public transportation was shoddy, and public spaces were basically nonexistent. But Seoul’s mayor during the 2000s, Lee Myung Bak—formerly the CEO of the Hyundai Construction Company—understood that Seoulites wanted a city center, plazas, gardens, and spaces to shop and stroll, and he led a dramatic reshaping of the city, preserving what was left of the past but making huge improvements in urban amenities. He won the nickname “Bulldozer” for good reason. Among the projects undertaken while he was mayor: the Han’s banks, formerly devoted to parking garages and freeways, became accessible to pedestrians; an ancient stream, the Cheonggyecheon, which once flowed through Seoul until buried by a freeway, was restored, helping vivify the central city; and rapid-transit buses joined the city’s transportation system. During his mayoralty, too, formerly abandoned industrial areas transformed into gentrified neighborhoods, Korean versions of New York’s Meatpacking District. These popular changes helped propel Lee Myung Bak to the South Korean presidency in December 2007. From there, it only gets better from a market urbanist […]

More weekend links

1. Cuban dissident blogger (as in, living in Cuba) Yoani Sánchez describes the state of the Cuban real estate market, and discusses new rules that apparently legalize buying and selling houses, though she has her doubts that the government will allow the overt displays of inequality that would undoubtedly occur once the market is liberalized. 2. The NYT Magazine has a profile of a physicist who claims to have mastered the mathematics of the city. Hmm, where have I heard that before? He’s got some positive things to say about cities over suburbs and Joel Kotkin seems to disagree with him (always a plus in my book), but at the end of the day there’s something about him and his context-free pronouncement about “cities” writ large that really rubs me the wrong way. 3. A preservation vs. development story in the NYT about Seoul’s traditional “hanok” houses, with the chief preservationist being a white foreigner who doesn’t approve of interior redesigns or added basements or second stories. Something tells me he proably wouldn’t be a huge fan of my “development as preservation” theory.

Weekend links

1. Lydia DePillis responds. I’m all for upzoning only(/mostly) poor neighborhoods if that’s all the extra density we can get (though here at Market Urbanism we’re kind of utopians – we don’t care much about political feasibility), but I’m not nearly as optimistic about inclusionary zoning as she is. At its worst it’s a tool for anti-growth suburbanites to kill new dense development while seeming like they care about the poor, and at it best it’s a misguided tax on developers of multifamily units that helps only those resourceful and connected enough to get themselves a rent controlled apartment, which is then subsidized by the neighbors who didn’t manage to get one. 2. Philadelphia eases up on the parking minimums, but parts of Center City and (all of??) Old City, both of which have incredible transit access, will still require 1 off-street space for every three units of new construction, which seems like a lot more than they have now. 3. Vancouver contemplates raising its height limits. Of course, all new towers will have to meet higher-than-LEED Gold standards – god forbid anyone should acknowledge that density is, in and of itself, good for the environment. 4. Jersey City looks like it will get its High Line, but the question now is, how much development will be allowed around it? 5. One NYC councilman wants to impose rent controls on commercial landlords. The “Small Business Survival Act,” he likes to call it. 6. Tysons Corner scores a huge new development with a 33-story tower and a “European styled esplanade” in front of the new Tysons Central Metro station, while the Lower East Side debates kinda sorta maybe thinking about developing seven acres of parking lots near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. 7. Hipster Runoff, the hipster blog of record, […]

Just give Access-a-Ride users cash!

The New York City MTA is starting a paratransit pilot program whereby it seeks to control skyrocketing Access-a-Ride costs by basically handing out unlimited vouchers for cabs for handicapped residents traveling below 96th Street in Manhattan, who would only have to pay $2.25 for each ride. I’m no fan of enormous and amorphous unfunded mandates like the ADA in the first place, and it does seem very unfair to force cities to offer huge public transit subsidies to the elderly and disabled, while not forcing towns without transit to do a damn thing to increase mobility for those who can’t drive. (I should note that the pilot program only applies to the 75% of Access-a-Ride users who aren’t in wheelchairs.) But if we’re going to have these mandates, it seems to me that a better way to achieve mobility for those who cannot climb steps or walk long distances is to simply hand out cash grants. This pilot program brings us closer to that ideal, but there are two main problems with it: the scope of alternatives offered, and the unlimited manner in which they’re offered. Let’s start with the unlimitedness. This was clearly already a problem with Access-a-Ride, as its costs have been exploding ever since it was implemented, but it will be an even bigger problem when using the subsidies becomes even easier. My understanding of Access-a-Ride is that it’s unreliable and difficult to use – while not an ideal rationing device, at least this gave people an incentive to limit their use of it. But when claiming the subsidy is as easy as hailing a cab, I can foresee some definite abuses and overuses. The current program is incredibly expensive ($49 for each door-to-door ride!) compared to estimates for taxicabs ($15/ride), so it probably won’t become more […]

The problem with “public” transportation

  The blog 2nd Ave. Sagas has written something that I think sums up pretty well transit advocates’ poor knowledge of private mass transit history: Of course, public transit is vital to the city’s well being. Because Manhattan is an island, it can’t handle the traffic. It’s a commercial hub in a geographically isolated area that needs the subway — and requires people to travel for a while — to thrive. That our city’s forefathers had the foresight to build a vast public transit system is a minor miracle, and it’s sort of silly that we have such a love-hate relationship with the subway and the public transit system. Without it, New York City as we know it simply wouldn’t exist. The biggest problem here is the conflation of “public transit” with “mass transit.” When New York’s rail lines were first built, they were private enterprises, not public ones. And Benjamin Kabak doesn’t explicitly say it, but when people talk about a city’s “forefathers,” they’re almost always talking about lawmakers. And in the late 19th and early 20th century, when New York’s massive transit networks were being built, lawmakers did pretty much everything they could to stifle the budding transit market – the idea that any of them had any “forethought” is absurd. But secondly, Benjamin Kabak’s reverence for New York City’s subway system ignores the far more important contributions to the city made by streetcar and elevated train lines. As I’m learning in Robert Fogelson’s Downtown, NYC’s publicly-built subways paled in comparison to the privately-constructed elevated trains and streetcar networks that crisscrossed the five boroughs. Even today, NYC buses, which mainly run along the old streetcar routes, have twice the ridership of the Subway. And although the Subway was heavily subsidized by the government, the truth is that it […]

This is how gentrification happens: Northwest DC and the height restriction

Lydia DePillis wrote the Washington City Paper’s cover story on the case for Congress overturning DC’s height limit, which should be very familiar to readers of this blog. It’s got some interesting history in it (DC’s height limit was apparently influenced by George Washington’s personal aesthetics, despite the fact that he never governed from the city), but the part that was really interesting to me was the part where she discusses what the new limitations should be. It’s not politically practical to advocate for lifting the limit without reservations, as we here would like, and there are the usual caveats and equivocations (“What if additional height were granted on a competitive basis, and awarded for the best design?”). But the part that really stood out to me was this graphic (click on the image and scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see a bigger version), outlining where Lydia thinks the height restrictions should be lifted: Anyone familiar with DC geography will notice that the area most insulated from change – Northwest DC – is the richest part of town, full of desirable white neighborhoods. The areas where DePillis advocates lifting the height limit – neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River figure prominently in the graphic – are far blacker and poorer than the rest of DC. Sure, there are pretty buildings in NW and a lot of ugly ones in Anacostia, but there are also beautiful homes off of Benning Road and shitty ones in Burleith. (Which, I should add, could desperately use some taller buildings, given its proximity to the perpetually housing-strapped Georgetown University and its rather ugly architecture compared to Georgetown proper.) This tactic of upzoning poor black neighborhoods while leaving white neighborhoods unchanged is very common, and I realize that Lydia is just trying […]

Midweek link list

1. Mumbai is rethinking its density bonuses for developers who build parking lots and hand them over free of charge to the city. 2. Tort liability driving away possible MARC operators. 3. San Mateo County legislators threaten to charge San Franciscans a congestion charge similar to the one that the city is proposing to charge San Mateo (and East and North Bay) commuters. Bring it on, I say – it’s about time drivers were charged for using local roads. 4. The Supreme Court refuses to hear West Harlem business owners’ appeal against the city’s decision to use eminent domain to hand Manhattanville over to Columbia University. 5. The NYT has a story about a commercial kitchen-for-rent in Queens, calling it a “lifeline” for for “100 small businesses.” It’s a nonprofit, but even renting a space there for 6.5 hours in the middle of the night costs $154. I’m still waiting for the Times story about the many more people who cook illegally out of their own homes and whose businesses are therefore stunted and precarious, all because they can’t afford to comply with the city’s onerous health and zoning codes. 6. The US may have 1 billion parking spaces. This does not in and of itself prove that we have too much, but for those of us who already believe that zoning codes mandate more parking than the market would provide (for which there is good empirical evidence), it’s a horrifying thought. 7. Yonah Freemark discusses how Hong Kong’s transit agency uses property development to internalize positive transit externalities and maintain (relative) independence from the municipality. 8. The WSJ reports on the strong market for downtown office space, especially compared to declining suburban office parks.

Abandoned properties require reform, not more money

A few decades ago, abandoned urban property wasn’t much of an issue, since cities were in clear decline and it wasn’t obvious that anyone even wanted the land to begin with. But with the revival of downtowns (including Detroit’s!) and cities in general, the issue of derelict property is going to become a lot more embarrassing and inexcusable. Philadelphia alone has 40,000 abandoned or vacant properties, and despite Mayor Nutter’s supposed dedication to fixing Philadelphia’s blight, the Daily News doesn’t sound optimistic. And while they acknowledge that one-quarter of these properties are government-owned, I think they downplay Philadelphia’s culpability with the half of all vacant private properties that own backtaxes. As emphasized in a Radio Times discussion on the topic of vacant properties in Philadelphia, it is the city’s job to deliver a credible threat to property owners that their land and buildings will be seized if they don’t pay their taxes. This is a basic function of government, and one with broad political support (who, besides drug dealers and the homeless, has an interest in empty buildings?) – the fact that the city is failing at it is a very troubling sign. As usual, throwing money down the hole (the subject of my favorite Onion video) is the most popular insider solution. But despite spending almost $300 million during his eight-year term as mayor, John Street “fell far short of his goal to demolish 14,000 buildings.” The “mo’ money” approach even has intellectual backing, with a Philadelphia Fed, ironically enough, publishing a report by Alan Mallach explaining how the federal government should throw $3.92 billion (warning: PDF) at the problem. But Philadelphia’s problem is not like Detroit’s, where the property needs to essentially be rewilded – Philadelphia is not in decline, and these abandoned properties are common even in […]

Private parking contracting giving ‘privatization’ a bad name

In the past Market Urbanism has been lukewarm on parking “privatization” (Adam on Chicago and me on LA), but I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s a bad idea. To start off with, these “privatizations” are actually private contracting schemes – the “owners” are barely even allowed to set their own prices, nevermind decide to use their land for, *gasp* something other than parking. The possible benefit from the market urbanism perspective is that they seem to be accompanied by the raising of parking prices, but the potential pitfalls are actually quite large. Yonah Freemark explains, in a commentary on NJ Transit’s plan to “privatize” its parking lots: Moreover, the privatization of parking management prevents the agency from engaging in what is perhaps the most promising use of that resource: Redeveloping it into transit-oriented developments. In places like the San Francisco Bay Area, former transit parking lots have been successfully morphed into neighborhoods where people live in close proximity to public transportation and therefore use it frequently. Will the privatization deal make such projects impossible? My only quibble with Yonah (and just about everybody) is that the market’s contribution to urbanism is maligned and neglected enough as it is – do we really have to associate yet another sprawl-inducing policy intervention with “privatization”? But beyond that, he’s got a point – rather than taking on entrenched suburban interests, we’re just adding another layer of government dependents, this time of the monied corporate variety (bidders include KKR, Morgan Stanley, Carlyle, and JP Morgan). The land on which transit parking lots sit is uniquely positioned to be converted into dense development, and the only thing worse than sitting on the land would be for the agencies to sign away their rights to change that within the foreseeable future. The good news, […]

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