Monday, February 21, 2011

Density Lobby Uncovered!

So according to Joel Kotkin (only go to the link if you have to), the Density Lobby is made up of the following nefarious groups:
Then there’s what might be called the “density lobby” — big city mayors, construction firms and the urban land owners.
Even Tom Rubin, a self proclaimed train lover and "transit expert" who has never recommended a train in his Reason Foundation consulting history, gets in on the action.
“High speed rail is not really about efficient transport,” notes California transit expert and accountant Tom Rubin. “It’s all about shaping cities for a certain agenda.”
Why would Mayors of big cities surrounded by suburbs ever want to promote density or a (gasp!) agenda!? I mean San Francisco has so much room to grow. The Pacific Ocean is endless! Also, damn those "urban" land owners for wanting to make money. As opposed to the angel pure "suburban" land owners and road construction firms. Seriously Joel? Is Siemens wanting to build more trains not as bad as Ford wanting to build more cars?

I'm also a member of the density lobby as are many other amazing bloggers and activists out there who share a love of density. Perhaps these mayors, construction firms and urban land owners would like to become card carrying members.


Also, this article mentions boondoggle for the third article today (see post below). This must be one of the talking points sent out by the RNC this weekend along with the "Obama is so out of touch he wants to spend money on trains" meme that showed up on the weekend talk shows and in various seemingly random articles this weekend.

This is a Boondoggle

This is a boondoggle. It's a craft project that we used to do in Boy Scouts so that we had something to put our keys on.

via Etsy Crap

Now, the overuse of the term boondoggle to describe projects that may or may not be bad but rather the writer doesn't like because its a hefty investment is epic. I find that its mostly writers and columnists who also use the phrases:

Streetcar Named Desire - Seriously. Stop it. It wasn't cool the first time you thought of it for an article headline, what makes you think its original the millionth time? Searching for an article on streetcars shouldn't bring me every mom and pop production of a a Tennessee Williams play.

19th Century Technology - So was the car. Karl Benz is the originator of the four stroke engine we know today in 1885. Frank Sprague made electric traction (electric railways) usable en masse in 1887. Also Portland Cement that we use in concrete was from the 1840's.

Driving pays for itself - I'm not going to waste time typing what people that read this blog already know.

If anyone has any other terms that the opposition uses that drive you nuts because of their truthiness, please use the comment section below. I saw boondoggle for the umpteenth time today while reading some articles, and it kinda made me want to hurl. But I wrote this to vent instead.

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Thursday Night Notes

Some notes for the weekend...

If road projects like this one had to go through new starts they would never get built. This road like all other ring roads is about development. But you're not allowed to build a transit line and let ridership grow. It has to be on target! Double standard.

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Ed Glaeser floats the "We should invest in NE Corridor for HSR only" meme that's going around. See post below. Also, how can you say we shouldn't be building major city pairs for places that do already have the density? I never understand the idea that we should just wait until conditions are just right everywhere. That's just a stall tactic.

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If transit were all designed to look this good maybe more people would ride.

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THIS is the reason for my skeptical nature on BRT. People in Berkley or in West LA are going to screw the whole plan to make it worthless. You spent all that time to get what? A red bus that skips a few stops?

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Northeast Corridor Rulez!

I appreciate the Northeast Corridor and would love for us to spend more money there. But don't screw over California or other mega regions to do it. Last week Mayor Bloomberg was talking about the national investments in HSR (from Second Ave Sagas) and it seems like he's taking the attitude that investing anywhere else is silly because the NE Corridor is where its at.
With projects in Florida, California and the Midwest garnering headlines, the Northeast Corridor has taken a backseat in Washington with only one percent of federal HSR funds coming our way. “That simply just doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
Sure it makes sense, but not in the way that he wants it to. I would LOVE if we doled out money based on merit which we're starting to do with TIGER and HUD grants but then those people that are elected called politicians in places that don't have a lot of population concentrated don't want their money all sent to the Northeast Corridor. Not to mention that sometimes I feel like people don't understand geography or population of the rest of the country (not readers of this blog of course). I can't tell you how many times people say they'll be able to hop up from San Diego to visit San Francisco. When I ask them if they like 8 hour drives they say "WHAT?!"

Also, just adding up from Wikipedia CSAs and MSAs not in CSAs, along the California HSR corridor we get the following:

Los Angeles CSA - 17,786,419
SF-San Jose-Oak CSA - 7,427,757
San Diego MSA - 3,053,793
Sacramento CSA - 2,436,109
Fresno CSA - 1,063,899
Bakersfield MSA - 807,407
Stockton MSA - 674,860
Modesto MSA - 446,997
Visalia MSA - 429,668 !B9871841047192


Merced MSA - 245,321

Then there are a bunch under 200,000. But that is ~34.4 million or 11-12% of the United States population. Compare that with the NE Corridor numbers from the New Republic blog post on Mega Regions. From the graphic we can add up to about ~44.2 or 14-15% along the NE Corridor. I left out Springfield and Poughkeepsie.

In any event, I hope these loosely added numbers put some things into perspective. I wasn't quite sure what I was going to get out of it but felt like it was close. I'm guessing that the Midwest Hub HSR network probably puts together city pairs that add up to a lot of population as well. The difference between the NE Corridor and other regions though, is that the NE Corridor exists, Amtrak from San Diego to Sacramento or San Francisco does not. Again, I'm not saying don't invest in the Northeast Corridor, or that medium speed rail is a great idea (that's a whole other post) but also let's not pretend like the Northeast Corridor is the only place where HSR can exist. It is not the center of the Universe. That is the Planet Nieuw-Vennep.