Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Because Everyone Wants to Live in Houston
Ed Glaeser says its a middle class paradise when it comes to costs. What do you think? I feel like there is something missing. Isn't giving up something a cost? Isn't there a cost in a primarily car oriented lifestyle which seems to cause Houston to have somewhat of an obesity problem? I know there are a lot of people in New York or even here in San Francisco who would rather be lower on the totem pole than rich in Houston. Would San Francisco be the same place if we reduced regulations? Probably not. I don't know the overall answer to any of this, I just know that pitting one city against another is hard to do because they are such different places. So many different variables.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Employment, Residential Booming Near Transit
The state’s new Urban Transit Hub tax-credit program, which took effect in January for sites near mass-transit stations, is already stimulating the market, real estate specialists say, even though it applies in only nine cities.It's great because its predicated on locating near transit so even if these offices move out of Manhattan, people can still get to work on transit, and it opens up less invested areas for dense employment development.
Mr. Pozycki said the tax credit program is a crucial reason why SJP decided to move forward with its third corporate center building in Hoboken, which had sat on the drawing boards for nearly four years. (During that time, SJP shifted its focus to the hot Manhattan office market, and has begun construction of 11 Times Square, a glass-and-steel tower at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street.)
On the opposite side of the country, Salt Lake City is seeing more building permits for dense housing near transit. From the Salt Lake City Tribune:
Industry insiders say surging gasoline prices, a sagging economy and energy-policy uncertainty due to the presidential chase have combined to create the latest condo spurt. And it's no coincidence the new league of lofts are located near TRAX light-rail lines.
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TRAX spine gets lofty: Open-plan lofts and energy-efficient condos are sprouting along the TRAX spine on the fringe of downtown. There is the funky Angelina's Corner on the curve of 700 South and 200 West and ultra-green Rowhaus just north of the baseball park on West Temple, and there are hundreds of units planned at Market Station, a walkable development slated for the warehouse district in South Salt Lake.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Media Framing on LRT Expansion
In Phoenix it was the light rail "displacing" homeowners, as if there was a train booting out the owners with its foot, ...er pantograph. We later find out at the bottom of the article that the homeowner didn't really have to leave and that about 15 feet was being taken from the property, more than likely not where the line was going to be running. That and he asked that the transit authority buy the whole property, which they did. It seems to me that leaving out those points until the end of the article is a bit misleading.
Then there's a story in the Rocky Mountain News in Denver where the Light Rail Line again by itself is "forcing" the business to close. Reading down further in the article, the local transit agency is just saying that the property owner won't be able to use the RTD ROW that it has owned and kindly allowed the business owner to use as a crossing.A buyer told Goodrich that he would buy the house if it were rezoned as commercial property. Goodrich approached the city to change the status and found out it was interested in buying 15 feet of the front yard that faced 19th Avenue. Goodrich petitioned the city, asking they buy the entire property. They agreed and bought the house.
This is the kind of narrative we've had to go through for a long time, the idea that the new transit lines are the problem. No one (well no one in the news) discusses the insane displacement that occurred during the construction of the interstate highway system. Putting it into perspective, during the time of Moses, half a million people were displaced by the New York freeway system construction.But an RTD spokeswoman Sunday said Crespin's business is caught up in an unfortunate crisis of access. RTD has allowed access to the property over its right-of-way for years. But now the agency needs the route for light rail.
"RTD for many years has kept that offer going, and we've allowed them to cross the tracks, which are our property, to have access to the (business)," said RTD spokeswoman Pauletta Tonilas. "Last July we sent them a notification letter letting them know they were going to have to cease doing that."
I wish CNU had put together a youtube video of that speech Robert Caro gave at the Congress in Austin about his book about Robert Moses, The Power Broker. It was very moving and showed the pain and suffering that went into building the interstate highway system.
But back to the above. If we're going to change the idea that transit is second class, there needs to be a framing and narrative change. I'm not quite sure how to go about it, but I thought I would at least start by pointing it out.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Belmont Stakes Expects Record Rail Ridership
With a huge crowd expected at Saturday's Belmont Stakes, the Long Island Rail Road is preparing for record ridership of up to 30,000 people to historic Belmont Park in Elmont and is promising plenty of trains to carry them. "As long as there are people, we're going to keep running trains," LIRR spokesman Joe Calderone said.
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The LIRR only began keeping ridership numbers on Stakes Day in recent years. The largest ridership the railroad has on record to the Belmont Stakes came in 2004, when 25,581 customers went to watch Smarty Jones, who fell short of the Triple Crown when he was upset by Birdstone.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Road Networks Grow Like Leaves
The researchers developed a simple mathematical model that can recreate the characteristic leaf-like patterns that develop, growing a road network from scratch as it would in reality.
The main influence on the simulated network as it grows is the need to efficiently connect new areas to the existing road network – a process they call "local optimisation". They say the road patterns in cities evolve thanks to similar local efforts, as people try to connect houses, businesses and other infrastructures to existing roads.
This is important for transit. The reason being that roads have evolved over hundreds of years often one street at a time. But we always get hammered when one transit line doesn't cure all of the region's ills. The reason being that we're providing core arterial service and depend on the smaller connections to be made by foot, bike, and car. In cities such as New York where the transit system starts to mimic the road network do we see how transit can help everyone with affordability, mobility, and energy independence. I wish folks would realize you have to start small, and grow to a network.
Monday, April 7, 2008
Congestion Pricing Dies on the Vine
Eric says it best, New York just approved a citywide parking lot.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Obama on Congestion Pricing
Obama just keeps getting better and better.REPORTER: Later, in an exclusive interview with WNYC, Senator Obama said he supports congestion pricing.
OBAMA: I think Mayor Bloomberg's proposal for congestion pricing is a thoughtful and innovative approach to the problem.
REPORTER: Obama said congestion pricing should not replace federal funding of mass transit.
H/T Streetsblog
Monday, March 17, 2008
"He Had No Transportation Experience"
Even if the next president reverses its policies, the Bush administration will leave a legacy of new toll roads across the country, a growing number of public roads leased to private companies, and dozens of stalled commuter rail, streetcar and subway projects -- including the $5 billion extension of Metro to Dulles International Airport.As mentioned in a post by Steve Davis at Smart Growth America, one of the targets Duval and Gribbin hope to get rid of with congestion pricing is earmarks. But as he also mentions, earmarks are a small part of the total expenditures with most of the money going to state DOTs who spend it without goals or measures of success on freeways. But many of the earmarks are projects that have merit, but can't wrestle funding away from We've seen this in the last week where there has been a fight over an earmark for the Central Corridor, a very worthy project.
But here's a catch with the congestion money giveaways. The funding for those pilot congestion pricing projects came from funds that usually go to replacing buses in cities and the small starts program. Congestion pricing has nothing to do with funding for buses in rural areas or in cities that need to replace older buses but have seen their funding continue to sucked up by gasoline prices.
"I couldn't believe they could get away with this, to just take that money away," said Mark Munson, director of the Regional Transit Authority in Dubuque, which has been frequently forced to deny trips to the elderly and disabled because there are not enough buses and volunteers can't fill all the gaps.Duvall is unapologetic, saying the traditional pork-barrel process of divvying up transportation dollars is bad policy. The proof, he said, is the fact that increased government spending on transportation has not slowed congestion.
If pricing is implemented, there should be a real plan to give people an alternative of real rapid transit. The New York plan is great because they have plenty of alternatives to get places in the pricing zone. Ryan discusses the need to do both as well. And Frank at Orphan Road warns us to be wary of going too far.
This is the reason why it really matters who becomes President next. Political appointments really have a huge push on policy and if we keep the same trajectory, we'll be stuck with these two guys for 4 more years.
And if you think there were a lot of innocent contractors on the death star, Ryan has some conspiracy theories for you as well. I'm not sure if they are that far from the truth given what has happened since Bush took office.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
News Around the Blogosphere
Streetsblog covers the story of a man that got thrown in jail for painting his own crosswalk.
Stephen Rees discusses how privatization of the tube is leading to a £2 B pound loss now that London had to bring it back under public ownership. He states its not a result Wendell Cox will be trumpeting any time soon.
Ryan at Transit Miami busts the Hurricane and overhead wire myth.
Ben at Second Avenue Sagas reports the NYC Subway has its highest ridership since 1951.
Want more awesome blogs like these to read? Visit City Transit Advocates!
Monday, January 7, 2008
The First Carbon Credits for Rail
I do know that folks in Portland and New York city are looking for ways to capture carbon credits. This might be a better way to start than going after the amount of tailpipe emissions saved by people moving from cars to transit which is often hard to figure out, but should be done eventually. I wonder how hard it would be to retrofit the New York City Subway Cars with this technology?
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Miami Surprise + Subway Rangers
Also, there was an article in the New York Times on how the Rangers take the subway to work while the Knicks park their cars wherever they want. Streetsblog has the coverage in the link above.