Market Urbanism

Italy’s Austerity Plan Spurs Transport Deregulation

Stephen Smith — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:10:50 +0000

There’s been a lot of handwringing by American lefties over the austerity plans that Germany is asking indebted eurozone governments like Italy and Greece to implement in exchange for bailouts, but many aspects of the plans – especially labor market deregulation – are long overdue no matter which side if the aisle you sit on (in the US, at least). In searching for information on the deregulatory aspects of Prime Minister Mario Monti’s “Save Italy” austerity plan, I came upon this interesting bit on transport deregulation in Corriere della Sera. I’ve never actually studied or spoken Italian, but hopefully this is a workable translation, if a bit literal:

The recipe that the Antitrust Authority has chosen for taxi liberalization will double the number of licenses, but with each driver receiving a second one as compensation….

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Cutting Costs On California HSR Doesn’t Have To Add Delays

Stephen Smith — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:29:11 +0000

Scrapping viaducts like this would make California HSR cheaper, faster to build, and easier to maintain, without a loss in quality

The recent peer review report recommending that California delay construction on the first segment of its high-speed rail project has caused a bit of consternation in the transit twittosphere. Blogger The Overhead Wire wrote, “Sorry, but defunding HSR won’t make local agencies $10b richer.” I replied, “But it might start a long-overdo convo on costs,” and he responded (and many agreed): “and then nothing will get done in my lifetime and costs won’t matter….

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In Defense Of Land Reclamation: It Ain’t All Palm Islands!

Stephen Smith — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 07:55:04 +0000

Earlier today Urban Photo Blog tweeted earlier today a link to an article about Hong Kong’s latest land reclamation project, with an obviously sarcastic “because it worked so well in Dubai!” tacked on at the end. Not to pick on Urban Photo Blog – actually, his Twitter account is definitely one of the best I follow – but I think that some of boomtime Dubai’s real estate projects, among them the infamous Palm Islands, give land reclamation a bad rap.

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Freakonomics Quorum: Can Amtrak Ever Be Profitable?

Stephen Smith — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 21:23:09 +0000

Are America's private railroading glory days gone forever?

The folks at Freakonomics have asked me to contribute to a “Quorum” on Amtrak and whether it can ever be profitable. Maybe I was a sucker, but it looks like I hewed closer to the question that some of the other contributors….

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California HSR Review Panel Recommends Against $2.7 Billion Bond Issue

Stephen Smith — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:12:19 +0000

Enormous viaducts like this are one reason for the project's ballooning cost estimates

Well, the other shoe has finally dropped: the California High-Speed Rail Peer Review Group is recommending that the state legislature not authorize the issue of $2.7 billion in bonds to begin paying for the state’s planned $98.5 billion high-speed rail line….

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Qatar’s Skyscraper Diplomacy

Stephen Smith — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:13:41 +0000

London’s Shard tower, soon to be the tallest in Europe, is, financially speaking, a bit puzzling. Europe is in the midst of an economic crisis, and London’s Southwark, across from the skyscraper-crazed City of London, is gentrifying, but not the safest place for a massive real estate investment. The developers have yet to sign a major office tenant, and nobody is expecting the project to turn much of a profit.

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The Lord Gave To NYC Tech Start-Ups And Universities, And The Lord Hath Taken Away

Stephen Smith — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:53:11 +0000

Stanford's (losing) vision for Roosevelt Island, with requisite acres of green

Big news out of New York City: Stanford pulled out of Bloomberg’s applied sciences university “competition” after Cornell got an enormous donation, leaving the upstate university the front runner to build a new campus, likely on Roosevelt Island. This comes with up to $100 million in state subsidies, plus free land and invaluable planning acquiescence.

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The Central Park Caper And Transit NIMBYism

Stephen Smith — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:42:04 +0000

It has often been suggested that one of the reasons that American subway construction is so expensive is that our laws are too friendly to NIMBYs. That is to say, contractors will be paid to engineer expensive, long-term solutions to avoid short-term disruptions to neighbors during construction. The most prominent example is avoiding cut-and-cover subway construction in favor of digging deep holes with tunnel boring machines that don’t disrupt the surface as much.

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