The Time I Called an Economist "Dude" RE: Caltrain

I've never really been called an "angry blogger" before today. Guess there is a first time for everything.

I hate arguing on twitter.  I don't think fighting in 140 characters is useful and it always just makes me mad and entrenched.  I do love twitter for sharing information, which I do very frequently as many of you reading this know.

But today I just couldn't help myself.  Right after yesterday's Caltrain post I was particularly incensed by Dr. Matthew E. Kahn, an economist who teaches at USC writing exactly what I was annoyed at the day before.  He made even more assertions that bothered me and I felt I needed to call him out on it.

@mattkahn1966 Also, Goog and FB riders take private buses. Perhaps you hadn't heard of them. Finally, why shouldn't we go after our own $$?

— The Overhead Wire (@theoverheadwire) March 14, 2017

To which he replied...

@theoverheadwire land value capture! Study some urban economics please.

— Matthew E. Kahn (@mattkahn1966) March 14, 2017

I don't expect Dr. Kahn to know where I've worked or who I am but considering my previous work on the subject I was a bit shocked by this dismissive response. I've put together parcel data over time in GIS to study the value changes in streetcar lines and have contributed to a number of papers on the subject of transit and value capture so no, I don't need to study urban economics.  I get the concept.

In fact, I understand value capture related to transit very well because of my colleagues that wrote exclusively about it at CTOD.  Case in point.

@theoverheadwire @mattkahn1966 value is already capitalized into the land, in one of the most unaffordable places to live. Capture what?

— nadine fogarty (@NadineFogarty) March 14, 2017

What Nadine is talking about has been discussed many times in her work. We know from the research that value can't be generated in significant amounts to pay for transit without vacant land to goose the increment.   

It seems as if people see Value Capture as a panacea when in reality it's a scrap that's constantly fought over.  Want affordable housing? Use Value Capture! Want new infrastructure for dense infill? Use Value Capture! Want new transit infrastructure? Use Value Capture!  And in his longer than 140 characters here is what Dr. Kahn said:

In truth, a simple Ricardian model of land would predict that the main beneficiaries will be land owners 10 to 15 miles from Silicon Valley whose land is close to the Caltrain stations.  As the train becomes faster, these suburbs will enjoy a sharp growth in housing values. A simple theory of land value capture would say that these land owners should be taxed and the collected revenue can pay for the train.   Why do the Federal tax payers get a bill while the local land owners of the land near the now faster train stations get a $ profit windfall as their asset appreciates in value?  

This ignores all the existing demands on value capture mentioned above, and that Caltrain already exists and development near it is virtually blocked.  Increases in value aren't going to come specifically from Caltrain investment, but rather from zoning restrictions. No one in? Lots of demand? Value up! That's not to say we shouldn't be trying to capture some value, but it's not going to be $2B worth of value created to pay for the line.

But here are some of his other arguments that are to me nonsense.

1.  There are 40 million people in California.  If we all pay for this "key project", then we will pay a one time fee of $16 dollars to invest in this durable capital. This is the immediate proof that California could fund this improvement on its own.

I think we already did pay for the slice of the project when we sent our money to the federal government as taxes.  In applying for funding through New Starts, we're getting our money back.  If you want devolution, say devolution.  If you think we shouldn't fund regional transportation at the federal level, then let us keep our gas taxes. But in the system AS IT CURRENTLY EXISTS, If we don't apply for that money, someone in another city will.  We don't build a lot of freeways here so we're not getting back federal money on the peninsula we're sending in for either gas or income tax.

So don't tell me we could pay for it ourselves.  Yeah. We can. But that's now how federal transportation funding works right now.  The theoretical in all of this bothers me as attack.  Because we aren't repealing Prop 13 anytime soon and the federal process for capital improvements isn't gone yet.  And it's going to be hard to kill it.  Theories are great.  But label them hopes and unicorn wishes.  Not analysis.

2. If the main beneficiaries are Silicon Valley workers, who will have a faster commute --- why don't Silicon Valley firms pay for this themselves?  Why don't the commuters pay a higher fee for the train? They can work away inside this sardine box and Facebook and Google's profits rise as their productive workers make progress.

It's not all silicon valley workers, and many of these riders don't work for Facebook or Google or the giants because those workers ride their tech buses to work. As public transit, it should be affordable to everyone to make the economy work.  Perhaps they need an employment tax like Portland uses for Tri-Met, but ultimately electrification and speeding up the train allowing more people to take it benefits the environment and people that can't afford a car. 

Silicon Valley is a rich region.  Why on either equity or efficiency grounds does it merit federal transport subsidies? If this project is so valuable, why hasn't the local region figured out a local funding strategy?  My theory is simple.  Since the local political leaders thought that Hilary Clinton would be elected President, they chose to delay the project until her team agreed to provide the subsidy.  The temptation of waiting for other people's money caused an inefficient delay in launching a productive project (the faster train). Now a game of "chicken" is playing out .  I'm sure that speeding up the train is a good public policy. Now, there is a fight over who pays for it.  The winners from the local public good improvement should pay!

Sure! Caltrain officials just were waiting for Hillary to win. This is what made me tweet because its a stupid assertion that doesn't even make sense.  The federal funding process of capital projects doesn't follow a political cycle.  It happens when it happens because of all the analysis that needs to be completed behind the scenes. 

And the FTA has been funding projects since 1991 through different administrations. How is it so hard to think that good projects that get rated highly in a very scrutinized process (more than highways ever will be) wouldn't be approved even in a new Republican administration.  Perhaps they should have thought better because of the asshole tendencies of Trump.  But it was the minority party in the State of California at the federal level that pulled this for political and not value reasons. 

So now according to Dr. Kahn I'm an angry blogger.  I guess I also wear pajamas and live in my parents basement instead of doing my actual work as a transportation and planning consultant, podcast host, and aggregator of news about cities.  Perhaps my 8 years working for a well known non-profit research organization counts for nothing too.  At least my blog allows comments.  I wouldn't want Dr. Kahn to be inundated with views that challenge his blog assertions.

Letters from Southeast Asia

Our good friend and sometimes guest blogger Ed recently came back from Southeast Asia.  As they often do, our foreign correspondents take wonderful transit pictures abroad.  Enjoy these beauties.

Seafarers of Scandinavia

Well maybe not, but we got rained on.  Every two years I try to go somewhere interesting for a vacation. Over the last few years I've been to Eastern Europe and Italy with my parents and sister and decided to go a bit further north in Europe to Scandinavia this time.  I try to share some photos and stories so here is my latest adventure!

First we flew into Stockholm, some of the highlights included the awesome train from the airport that took 20 minutes to downtown at 205 km/hr.  That's one fast ride. Over the course of two weeks, we flew, took intercity rail, tram, bus, commuter bus, metro, ferry, large ferry, taxi, and yes rental car.  It rained a lot so no bikes.  But its not all about transportation.  Here are some shots from Sweden and Denmark.  I'll get to Norway in another post.

Scandinavia is famous for bikes, but I was impressed also with the subways and trams. I would be remiss if I didn't start with the Trams. This lane is shared by Trams and buses and the vehicle is a Bombardier Flexity.



Here's Rush hour in Stockholm:



And one of the worst traffic nightmares in the city (Slussen Locks) protects cyclists with some colorful barriers



But even more fun in these cities is the old central city.  In Stockholm, this area is known as Gamla Stan. The Central Square known as the Stortorget has a fountain that is the center of the country.  Distances in different parts of the country are measured to it and it has been the location for some famous historical events.  It is said that the white stones on the red building in the photo represent each of the Swedish nobles that were beheaded in the square by the King of Denmark. 



Back in the narrow passageways behind the Stortorget you can see small Phoenix's over windows representing who had paid their fees for the fire department to save the house.



Across the lake from Gamla Stan is the 1700s Warship Vasa that sunk only a few minutes after launch and was only found again at the bottom of the lake in the 1950s. It is probably one of the most amazing things you'll see in the city.





On to Copenhagen, home of the bikes! It's a great city but I thought it felt a little less clean than Oslo, Bergen, or Stockholm.

In the Assistens Kirkegaard, half park/half cemetary, noted Danes including Hans Christian Anderson and Neils Bohr are buried. It's a beautiful place.



Off the main shopping street, a small back ally called the Pistolstrade will bring you to some Half Timbered buildings that are fun and brightly colored.



Back into the City, the City Hall is defended by a pair of fearsome looking Walruses (Walri?)



Across town at the Rosenborg Slot (Castle), the crown has been showing off the Jewels and living quarters of Danish Kings since the end of the 19th Century. These are some of the toy soldiers kept in the basement vault.



Christian IV was the major part of the progress of the Danes and there are a number of monuments to his movement to Lutheranism around the city including this history statue. The guy was pretty hardcore. At his castle Rosenborg, there is a room with his shirt bloodied after a battle and the shrapnel pulled from his eye that he made into ear rigns and gave to his mistress. That's love right there. Or something...



The first day we also took a train to Roskilde, home to a major music festival and the Viking Ship museum. I highly recommend it if you have kids, or even if you don't. The cool thing is that they show how the ships are built and how they used the wood to build them. This photo shows what parts of the tree they used for certain parts of the boat. Also, they've uncovered a number of viking ships including merchant vessels and warboats. Very cool.





I've got a lot from Norway as well. I'll post those later this week. Until then you can see them all on my Flickr page.

OT: 120 Minutes on MTV

Before I was a transit geek I was a runner.  After my freshman year in high school, I became a real runner and actually trained for it, logging around 45 miles a week then and working my way up to a few 90-100 mile weeks in college.  During that time in the summer when you were on your own to train, I would run late at night.  During the day I was a lifeguard at the local pool but at night it was my job to run.  But at times it could get lonely on the streets under the lights at about 10-11pm at night and a few times I was followed home by police officers who thought I would break midnight curfew.

Via

Because it was such a solemn undertaking, I often brought along my walkman sports.  Because running was bouncy, I made mix tapes using my stereo from CDs at home and had a few favorites at the time.  It varied based on my tastes but this was officially the time when I started to make music a part of my life.  Many of the songs that I have in my itunes now were from that era, and I can often remember the part of the run when Depeche Mode came on or Gravity Kills.

But when I would get home from my run at midnight or so it would be about 80 degrees out still and I needed some time to cool down.  So after I had hosed off (yes I said hosed, one of the reasons why I can't stand humidity and live in San Francisco) I would come in the house, get a glass of water, and turn on the TV.  More often than not, every day but Saturday was MTV which would play videos late at night or show Beavis and Butthead/Daria.  Saturday nights was time for SNL if I could catch it.  Those were the glory days with Chris Farley, Adam Sandler and Phil Hartman.

But Sunday nights were 120 minutes, which basically got me introduced to alternative music that I ended up liking much more than what everyone else seemed to be listening to at the time.  Top 40 or country was prevalent and while I did like some Top 40, alternative was more my style.  So when I heard 120 minutes was coming back I was elated.

When looking up the old 120 minutes show archive, I was amazed at how much the show did actually shape my tastes.  Going through the videos played during each of those shows was like going back in time.  I don't have all of them on my ipod but I do know that I liked most of them.  Just going through 1995 made me smile. Bands like Catherine Wheel, the Toadies, Jeff Buckley, Blur, and the Rentals just to name a few were on the list.  If you're a lover of alternative music from the early to late 90s, check out the archive just for the names alone.  Instant memory flashback.

I don't have cable these days but I am going to watch the show online and hopefully Matt Pinfield will bring back its former glory and introduce me to the music like I remember, with back stories, associations, and random information.  That's something you can't get from Pandora or other music sharing systems and it's one thing I think that has made finding new music much less enjoyable over time.

So even though MTV doesn't play videos and got lame, if you love music, check out the first episode.

Transportation Bill Downfall Parody

It was only time before this happened. Anyone else tired of waiting for a transpo bill?

If you haven't seen a downfall parody before, you can find some really good ones here. This one, Hitler finds out about the downfall parodies, is quite hilarious as well.

Caution, harsh language.

The Need for Speed

I enjoy my trips on BART to my Grammas house.  Especially when Highway 24 is moving slow but I'm moving soooo fast.

Planners Using Twitter

As many of you know I tweet as @theoverheadwire. Same planning stuff with a bit of personal mish mash. It's interesting to see how we use blogs and twitter differently. As of late, I've stopped posting a lot of my Notes posts and left most of the articles to twitter. Sometimes that's annoying as it doesn't allow much editorializing due to the character limit, but it allows me to do more generally.

In any event, I think twitter can be used effectively. I recently had a phone chat with Kristen Carney (@cubitplanning) about how I got started on Twitter and why I use it. I'll admit, it's not for everyone, but it certainly is useful at finding lots of quality information and news. And no, you don't have to know whats going on with Britney Spears or Ashton Kutcher because you can choose not to follow them!

Also, Kristen has a post about twitter happenings at the APA conference.

Making Stuff Up

I know that Robert and everyone else is going to take a hammer to this one, but it's really annoying when people like Megan McArdle just make things up or toss out random numbers to make her feelings on a subject seem right. Here's the immediate culprit that made me want to post.

San Francisco-LA, the route my fellow journalist wanted to travel, isn't even on this map; the Bay Area MSA only has about 4 million people in it. By contrast, the smallest city on the Chinese map has a population over 5 million, and that's considerably understated, because I used just the population of the city, not the outlying areas that might conceivably drive in to use the HSR.

I know that blogs are blogs, but where is the sourcing for the numbers? If I use numbers I'm always trying to cite them. Why is she using MSA of San Francisco and Oakland instead of the Bay Area CSA? The Bay Area CSA is actually 7.4 million, not 4 million. That's a HUGE difference. Not to mention that she's talking about SF to LA, wherein LA's CSA is 17.8 million people! And then where's the link to Chinese cities? A simple wikipedia search would help even a little.

Finally, there are other high speed rail lines that were built WITH regard to environmental issues and have greater similarities to the possible US system. I think a comparison to France, Spain, or Netherlands/Germany would have been more apt in this circumstance.

Anyway, posts like this are why I get annoyed at general commentators taking stabs into my area of specialty. I've also mentioned before that if they are this bad at my subject, how are they in other people's areas? The focus of blogs like Human Transit, the Urbanophile, or the Transport Politic are always going to be much more informative than most of Megan's posts. But we push back on her because more people read her blog.

Music Sunday: City Pavement

I always like posting songs related to urbanism or city life. Here's one from the UK.

OT: There's More to College Than Football

I like football. I watch a lot of games during the season but as a former athlete in an Olympic sport I got really annoyed at the Football coaches at Texas fairly often. They have always been shortsighted in terms of other sports and academics. Take for example Jamaal Charles who is now the big play maker for Kansas City. The kid was super fast and ran track at Texas in the offseason. The short story of it all was that track in college gave Charles something to do in the offseason to keep his focus on something other than the street.

Back in Port Arthur, track had kept Charles focused. It had given him something to do during football offseason, when cousins found trouble .

Now I often defend athletics because I was an athlete who benefited from competing for a division one school. But there were times when I had to fight my guidance councilor to take harder classes. At times she would try to give me easy classes because of catering to the lowest common denominator in the program. People who just needed classes to stay eligible to play.

Speaking for myself, I chafed at the idea of not being able to take classes like Military History to 1900 because others said they would be hard. (One of the most fascinating courses I took in Undergrad outside of my major classes) But this also speaks to the fact that colleges don't see football players as part of the student body. In fact it is evidenced every time we get a good athlete who wants to run track and play football. Usually football wins out:

Charles says he was told that if he wanted to maintain his place as the Longhorns' starting running back, he'd have to abandon track and make football a year-round commitment.

There were many guys who liked to run who were told they couldn't. I don't doubt that studying more tape helps. But Football isn't the center of the universe. If they are enrolled in school, let them take the classes they want. And if they want to play another sport that helps their football playing in the offseason why not let them?

Wednesday Night Notes

Steve Patterson discusses the passing of an influential figure in city planning's past who often advocated for widening streets and euclidean zoning.
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There's been an interesting discussion going on about industry clusters. I wish I had more time to write about them. The interesting thing is that these clusters don't necessarily have to be urban. Rural clusters such as wind farms in Texas and wine making in Sonoma show lots of promise in raising wages while other clusters such as Tech are looking to intensify to provide amenities on par with what urban workers are looking for. I hope others tackle this subject because I'd like to see some opinions on the cluster's effect on urbanism and urbanization in these rural areas.
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A pretty cool spread on the future of Denver. via Denver Infill Blog
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Happy Birthday Streetsblog.net. Here's to next year!
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I've also started tweeting more article links. Follow @theoverheadwire or visit the bottom right of the blog for more links.

Open Up Your Eyes

Tonic is one of my favorite bands of all time. And its kind of funny since this was their first song on the radio and in video. Their second song If You Could Only See was probably on your radio every day in 1997. But this video is interesting to me because of the sprawly nature to it. As I look back at it, I try to think about what was going through my head when I saw it the first time. Probably something along the lines of, that would be awesome to skate through these neighborhoods. There's so much space for you and your friends to goof off. It's certainly something you couldn't do on a city street and this neighborhood looks just like any other suburban neighborhood you could find.



Update: Ughh. You'll have to go to youtube to see it. Universal obviously doesn't think that people sharing their videos is a good thing. When are these people going to learn about the internets?

At Rail~Volution

Posting is going to be slow over the weekend as I am at Rail~Volution. Got some good sessions lined up including one with Ryan Avent, Aaron Renn (The Urbanophile) and Adam Gaffin (Universal Hub). You can follow along on twitter with the hash tag #RV09.

And I'm Back in the Game! Italy Blogging

Hope you all had a good two weeks. My two weeks were awesome. I think everyone should take a break once in a while. It will do wonders for your mind.

I don't have as many transit pictures from this trip as I wasn't in cities as much. I did visit Milan and Turin and got a couple of streetcar, bus, and train shots but i'll share those later. I also took a lot of different modes of transportation, basically everything except a bike which i've already gotten crap for on facebook :) The final tab is such: Car, tram, train, subway, bus, cog railway, arial ropeway (tram), boat, plane, taxi, foot. Lots of foot. I did see a lot of bike sharing in small towns which was surprising and I really enjoyed my boat rides, which I don't do much here. In any event, here are some of my favorite places from the trip. I'll get back to regular blogging tomorrow.

The beaches were mostly stones



This is Zoagli (Zwal-e) The towns on the coast hug the hills



In Zoagli we got to see how silk and velvet fabric was made





We drove through the Alps on Mountain Roads





See the three portals for the road?



Drove through the upper lakes, prettiest bus stop ever?





Scene from the top of the aerial ropeway



Portofino was nice



My Great Grandparents likely graced these spots in the hills above Chiavari in a small commune called Ne. It was really great to see where at least part of my past came from. The terraced hills are everywhere, these are for olive trees.





The Cinque Terre was amazing





and the water was blue, but a color I had never seen.





It was a great way to take a break. I highly recommend going to Italy, especially the Piedmont south of Turin.

Away From Computers

I'll be taking two weeks off from my computer, leaving it at home while I go on a much needed vacation. I'll likely be tweeting from @theoverheadwire but probably not too often. Since no one is here to post I'll put up a couple of reruns from years past. Hope everyone has a great first half of October.

Tuesday Night Notes

Tram trains in are starting in England. It would be interesting to see if cities in the United States start looking at tram trains as a model.
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Kemper Freeman really doesn't get the gold mine he could be standing on.
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Apparently the Lehman collapse has slowed Caltrain's electrification. From house testimony:

Losses in our county alone, for example, include: $25 million in San Mateo County Transit Authority funds that will stall planned electrification of the Caltrain Peninsula Commuter Rail Service

Blogging Sustainability

You all might have noticed a reduction in posts over the weekend and sometimes during the week. Alas the go go go of the blog and work together started to get to me and so I decided that Friday and Saturday were best left away from trying to post and try to regain something of a life. I envy people like Andrew Sullivan who have decided to take a complete month off of blogging and detach from the digital world. Ultimately my life as I lived it the last few years was/is unsustainable. Lack of sleep makes you mess up posts and probably also makes you susceptible to being sick more often.

With that being said, this isn't a GBCW post. Rather, it's just an announcement as to why things might seem a bit slower or less frequent. I'm still excited about this stuff. It still boils my blood. But trying to collect articles for work and blog my thoughts is wearing me out. So if you want to follow whats going on every day, check out the articles I send out at work every day. I try to pull together things that are interesting to TOD and transit from the approximately 400 news articles and blog posts I read daily. Some of these things you get on the Overhead Wire, some of these things you get on the CTOD blog.

If you want to get these in your mail daily, send me an email. It's free so totally worth it! Sorry for the crossover plugs because as I said, I like to keep my opinion on TOW and work separate as much as possible, but trying to keep up everything is tiresome. So anyway, thanks for continuing to read and I'll be keeping it up!

Shameless Plug

So at work we're starting a blog. The basic premise is best practices and information on Transit Oriented Development including hopefully posts from experts from around the country and more information about the work we do. I don't mention work here much because well I'd rather this blog stay my own opinion and not drag work into it. But in this instance, I thought folks would be interested in what is going on over there. So check it out if you get a chance.

Comment Rejection

At the moment I have comment privileges on posts that are older than 5 days. If the post is older than 5 days the comment gets moderated. I don't think I have rejected a real comment yet, just a lot of spam, which is why I set it up that way. But today because my fingers were dumb I accidentally rejected two comments. Apparently once you reject you can't go back, even if you hit the back button. In any event, I took a screen shot of the two comments and posted below. If you wrote them (Bob + MV), I'm really sorry I deleted them, I didn't mean to. Perhaps you can post them again. This is the only way I could save them...

Sunday Backlog Links

So when I got back from LA yesterday and checked my feed reader my jaw dropped when the 1000+ number showed at the top. Too much information every day. It's amazing what the internet has brought but also time consuming. I can see why some completely eschew the process keeping themselves sane.

Another interesting thing that I missed is the end of the Stimulus craziness. Instead of running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I missed it all, which when I got back was oddly comforting. It can be quite crazy in Washington DC dealing with movement efforts because of the thousands of changes every day. Some find this exciting but with my background in distance running, I don't quite understand it. The franticness of it all goes against everything I learned from running, including patience and putting in your daily miles over a long term period to reap rewards. It's not quite as opportunistic which is satisfying, at least to me personally. Guess thats just my personality.

In any event, here are my favorite bits from the catch up process.

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A history of the Subway in Los Angeles. After being there Friday and riding the Subway and the 704 Rapid, I see absolutely no reason why people are opposed to more rail extensions. The ride was bumpy and crowded and needed a lot of work in the wayfinding department. There was no map so I knew where I was going and no announcements of transfer points. Transit TV is worthless as well.



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It's amazing when you hear stories of Japanese soldiers that were found on Islands many years after the Second World War was over still thinking they were in the war. Similarly, it's amazing when a fight is lost over rail people still continue to fight it, even after the voters strongly affirmed their will.
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Why are we still propping up the auto industry? And why do we consider transit expansion an "extra thing", something that is a novelty when its more of a necessity than tax breaks for automobiles.
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Gavin has officially lost my vote for Gov. His smarmyness probably had lost it anyway. Perhaps Jerry Brown or Antonio are better. Maybe, maybe not.
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If you have to vote for transit improvements, shouldn't we have to vote for roads as well?
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The Green Line in Dallas has created 2,200 jobs. It's really too bad we couldn't fund more of these lines.
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20 TOD projects in Charlotte are paused or canceled. This is a slowdown of 3,000 units. If we do give tax breaks to new home buyers, it should be near transit but I'm not sure if giving breaks is a smart idea in any context.

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No such thing as Green Personal Transportation?
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Developers say eliminating a station on the Corridor Cities Transitway would hurt their large development scheme.
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At least we'll be able to get around Spain. They are planning a huge HSR network. Seems like they are the leaders in the next major infrastructure movement. Perhaps when President Eisenhower goes to Spain he can see how it worked and promote it here. Then another group will co-opt it and turn the autobahn into a mover within cities instead of between them. Did I just get my time periods mixed up?
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Copying an idea that I believe came from Columbus, the Charlotte Bobcats are selling transit tickets with thier event tickets. I think this could be a very real way to raise capital for transit projects and allow people to use thier event tickets as proof of purchase (POP)
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This is what the Stimulus was supposed to fix, but won't. We'll have to depend on the transportation bill for this. In the meantime, work should be done to get land along the lines ready for the future.
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Who knew that streets built before the suburban sprawl craze were actually safer than the roads built for cars. Well data backs that up as well.