Tag Transportation

planning, Zoning

How to Obscure Reality to Make Planners Seem Important

Regular reader, Bill forwarded this article from the New York Daily News calling it an “outstanding collection of anti-density and anti-market propaganda presented (as always) as objective journalism.” The article is riddled with misconceptions (aka Urbanism Legends) about zoning and development and is a perfect example of the quality of journalism that touches on city development issues referenced in today’s earlier post, Journalists and Cities. Let’s spot the more egregious statements from City and residents aim to keep Rockaway low-density: “The hope is to spur investment by maintaining low-scale development that fits into the area’s historic character. Similar zoning changes in Bay Ridge, Park Slope and the West Village along the Hudson River inspired great growth.” hmmm, restrictions inspire growth? Rockaway’s last zoning change came in 1961, allowing multifamily homes to be built where single-family homes once stood. The results were rapid development and streets butchered by an ungainly mix of large and small apartment buildings and homes. Wait, growth is bad? “We don’t have the space to be densely populated, and the owners of these big buildings don’t even live here” more space :: more density? not the equation I learned “Home prices should begin a steady increase if this zoning gets us better transportation.” This “zoning” that brings transportation sounds even nicer than the tooth fairy, and just as real. “I don’t know if the new upzoning of 116th St. will work, but I do know that the old, low-scale zoning on 116th St. did not bring in the amount of new businesses and investment required to improve the area.” Then again, density is good for retail… To ensure that parking does not become a problem, Gaska worked with Burden’s city planners to ensure that each new development has parking for at least 85 percent of the residents, […]

Adam Hengels
June 30, 2008
8 Comments

Transportation

CTA “Super Station” Mothballed

Photo by flickr user mss2400 Thanks, DBM for the tip: Faced with runaway costs, the CTA and City Hall slammed the emergency brakes Wednesday on ambitious plans to build a “super station” in downtown’s Block 37 to speed express trains to both Chicago’s airports. A combined $213 million has been spent on the project, yet there is not much more than a massive hole in the ground to show for it. At least an additional $100 million would be needed to complete the subterranean station, the CTA estimated. “The Block 37 curse continues,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a transportation and urban planning professor at DePaul University who has for years doubted the viability of the transit project. read the Chicago Tribune article here: CTA ‘super station’ in a hole Damn. I was really looking forward to the express connection to the airports. Had I not gone back to grad school, I would have worked on the subway station and tunnel design. But, I was always suspicious of how/if trains would actually be express without adding significant amounts of track and switching. With any major Chicago public project, always be suspicious that it will cost what the politicians say. The common joke is that there is a factor of 2.5: actual cost / original announced cost. The funny thing is that the factor seems pretty close to accurate. I wonder if there is any real data on that. I definitely recommend reading Here’s the Dealby Ross Miller, to learn the long history of Block 37 and political meddling in Chicago’s downtown.

Adam Hengels
June 12, 2008

privatization, Transportation

CATO Podcast: Transportation

Today, I was listening to CATO’s Daily Podcast about transportation with Samuel Staley of the Reason Foundation. I started listening to him talk about the best ways to plan highway systems and said to myself, “Oh boy, here we go again another so-called “free-market” person talking about how the government can ‘pave our way out of congestion’.” “We’ve got the space, and we’ve got the land, and we’ve got the wealth” to pave away congestion. That’s a very collective “we” for a supposed free-market person to use. But, after about 5 minutes of that, he goes into how we now have the technology to privatize highway use and are 15 years away from the technology to privatize even local roads. Now we’re talking. We need to actually begin to tie those traditional market mechanism to the products that are being developed and implemented at the local level, and that’s something we’ve never been able to achieve before. It’s an exciting time for transportation policy. If, transaction costs are no longer the obstacle to privatization, society needs to start shattering these bureaucracies and selling the roads to the private sector. I think the biggest hurdles to privatization are peoples’ perception/biases and politics. People never paid for roads before, so it’ll take effort to convince them it is not as free as the air we breath… download mp3

Transportation

Happy 125th, Chicago’s L

Stephen Smith at rationalitate picked up on a Wired article and posted Thomas Edison builds the first el: today is 125th anniversary of the debut of Thomas Edison’s elevated electric railway demonstration in Chicago. The project was financed with $2 million in private funds, through the newly-incorporated Electric Railway Company. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the days when the government wasn’t so involved in transportation and regulating land use, and that it was actually possible for the market to come up with transportation solutions We’ve come along way in destroying transit by government over-spending since the good ol’ days…. photo by flickr user harshilshah

Transportation

Market Incentives to Conserve Resources

The economics blog, Knowledge Problem on how prices effect individuals incentive to conserve: Conservation of resources: Prices change everything Steven Stoft, at the EU Energy Policy Blog, observes that market driven conservation is a slow process: Conservation is the main way consumers respond to high market prices. When price goes up, consumption comes down–but it takes a while for the full price effect to play out. The market eventually shifts demand in the long run, as individuals adjust their behaviors in reaction to higher prices. To what extent will sustained high gas prices cause people to shift their location preferences towards a less gas-dependent urban lifestyle? (assuming high prices are here to stay) How long will it take for us to see a difference in where people prefer to live? Graph from the NY Times

sprawl

Krugman: Stranded in Suburbia

Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed this morning how the US living and transportation patterns will not cope with high oil prices as well as European cities: Changing the geography of American metropolitan areas will be hard. For one thing, houses last a lot longer than cars. Long after today’s S.U.V.’s have become antique collectors’ items, millions of people will still be living in subdivisions built when gas was $1.50 or less a gallon. Infrastructure is another problem. Public transit, in particular, faces a chicken-and-egg problem: it’s hard to justify transit systems unless there’s sufficient population density, yet it’s hard to persuade people to live in denser neighborhoods unless they come with the advantage of transit access. Over the long-run the US can adapt it’s living patterns to expensive oil by curbing it’s habit of subsidizing roadways. However, only if density restrictions soften accordingly. If drivers were responsible for the full costs of their location and transportation decisions, they would gradually locate to more European-like locations. This will naturally increase the demand for transit. Private investment and entrepreneurship under such conditions should be able to provide innovative solutions to the chicken-and egg problem Krugman is concerned about.

Transportation

How McCain or Obama Can Permanently Eliminate the Gas Tax, Cut Pork and Help the Environment

John McCain and Hillary Clinton have both supported the idea of a “Gas Tax Holiday“. The whole idea of a Holy Day to celebrate the worship of socialized transportation catered by Santa Clinton/McCain seems pretty absurd to me. Nonetheless, they expect pandering to gas-addicted voters to pay off in their election hopes. Unfortunately, such a gas holiday would burden the deficit, incentivize the burning of fossil fuels, and further socialize our transportation system. Highway advocates currently cling to arguments that roads are more “free-market” than transit because the costs of maintaining the highways are paid by the user through gas taxes and user fees. That is a myth to be debunked in future posts, but the argument would be void during McCain’s new “holiday”. And, with future tax money footing the bill instead of gas users, we would have a full blown transfer of wealth from the responsible taxpayers who don’t depend on petroleum to the gas guzzlers and petroleum industry. I propose a more free-market solution at the federal level – get out of the transportation business altogether! The federal government would end the gas tax permanently, but at the same time deed the entire federal highway system over to the individual states where the highways are located, and abolish the Department of Transportation over a span of a few years. The individual states would be free to handle their transportation as they see fit, as long as the they do not diminish the military’s ability to mobilize forces for defense. States could pay for maintenance of the assets in ways that best suit them, whether it be a gas tax, tolls, property taxes or states could actually raise money through complete privatization of the new assets. Besides easing the burden on the deficit, getting the federal government out […]

Transportation

Should the Government Build the Cars or the Roads?

I tend to agree that there is some hypocrisy in the conservative/libertarian world when it comes to transportation, which is part of the reason I started this blog. A more free-market transporation system would certainly lead to a more urban land use pattern; something between pre-auto, transit-reliant density and current auto-reliant sprawling suburbs. Regardless, market-based solutions will lead to a denser land use pattern in the long-run. This article discusses governement’s role in infrastructure and some libertarian free-market advocates’ strange love affair with government planned highways: Maybe the Government Should Build the Cars Is transportation like education, a communal service that works best through heavy general funding that pays off down the road in a community’s overall prosperity, or is it best delivered by targeting users, especially road users through congestion pricing to reduce demand and increase revenues? Also: King of the Road They seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism, and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism. However, the above article portrays the government as the hero for overspending on highways, but what do you expect from a magazine named Governing? Rationalitate: Libertarians for Statism on the Governing article: “[o]ur national road system would never have been built if every street were required to pay for itself.” Yeah, that’s exactly the point! Our “national road system” is the problem, and the author’s implication is that not only would there be no “national road system,” but that roads are indeed synonymous with transportation. But just because we wouldn’t have trillion-dollar pavement stretching across the continent doesn’t mean we wouldn’t be able to get across the continent – or, more importantly, wherever it is that we want to go. Latest: How McCain or Obama Can Permanently […]

Adam Hengels
April 19, 2008
3 Comments

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