Running Scared

The green movement is gaining influence and looking for 10% of the revenue for carbon credits. But this is scary to the highway movement as their influence and scare tactics wear thin.

According to Greg Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance, the changing partisan guard in Washington has made highway groups wary of the focus on transit funds. “People are much more nervous about being on the chopping block,” he said. “It seems like the anti-highway crowd has much more influence than they had in the past.”

Anti highway? How about pro livable communities.

More Regressive Progressives

You know the type, those who think that having a hybrid car alone will help their environmental credentials but don't do much else. They are also the ones that push against new development just because they don't like how it looks or feels, and they'll cry traffic! Those are the folks that got called out in the aptly named article: You're Not an Environmentalist if You're a NIMBY. So true. The hardest part is taking folks seriously who want to stop growth on high capacity transit corridors or in the core cities themselves. Yet with the climate that we have, San Francisco and Oakland are the best suited for emissions reducing development.

Creative People Walking to Bowl

When do trends or catch phrases end? Does a good background idea like the Creative Class ever just go bad? What does this mean for Walkable Urbanism or Bowling Alone? Folks like Richard Florida, Chris Leinberger and Robert Putnam build up names for themselves around a central theme. The theme must be a good idea at some point, and why if it was so catching before, does something fade or not fade?

I think you have to look at the underlying facts and basic premises of it all. At the most basic level, every city has a creative class, but at what point does being a really lame city hurt you and the generation of big ideas? To me all of these folks have something in common in that they are trying to figure out why there are some places that people like to live more than others. But the boiled down answers aren't so simple as they make them out to be. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Electroexecution of the Milwaukee Road

Every once in a while I'll stop reading articles and pick up a book. Sometimes its a book I started but put down for reasons unremembered. Recently I opened up Internal Combustion again. I highly suggest the read, especially the chapters on the Milwaukee Road. It's fascinating to see how efficient and cost effective the Road was before you factored in the corruption and construction mischief.

An ICC investigation concluded that the total cost, more than quadruple the orginal estimate, could not be justified by any adequate engineering or traffic surveys that were made. On the contrary, everything indicates that the project was the result of rivalry between powerful groups. Competitor railroads immediately began snatching up land to sell to the Milwaukee at severely inflated levels or started calculated bidding wars to drive up the prices.

It's sad really that more lines hadn't been electrified and that the true sustainable value of this route was not emulated in places inside of the United States. Ultimately it was in Europe, and they enjoy the success they built after our lead with the MR.

But here are a few key passages on pg 188 that stood out in the book to me on how the Milwaukee died after its tough beginning.

JP Kiley was a Milwaukee vice president determined to eliminate all electric lines. The reasons, Kiley presumed, would be cost, technological obsolescence and lesser capability. This was the assumption.

Laurence Wylie was an electrical engineer devoted to clean, electric trains. Wylie was appointed by Kiley in 1948 to oversee to oversee the dismantling of all electric. Having worked with electric rail since 1919, Wylie balked. On his own volition, Wylie ordered comparative studies of electric trains versus diesel. His finding contradicted Kiley's theories. The old electric could outpull the new diesels and run cheaper, dollar for dollar. In fact, on one typical run to the West Coast, three diesels were shown to annually cost more than $104,000 extra. In mountainous terrain, diesels fared even worse. Newer electrics constructed by GE in the 1950's for the Soviet Union showed still better results. These powerful new GE electrics, nicknamed little Joes for Joeseph Stalin, were almost twice as economical and powerful as the GM diesels, especially on long runs.

For example, six Electro Motive Division F diesels were needed to haul 3,300 tons, and five electro motive division GP9s were required for about the same chore. But that same tonnage was easily pulled by just four old GE freight electrics. The electrics also beat the gas burning locomotives on flatter terrain. Kiley dismissed Wylie's findings and instead relied on his own engineering tests. in large measure provided by the Electro Motive Division. Whylie, who had worked his way up from a Montana trainmaster to a district superintendent, could not understand why the engineering reports did not jibe. In his campaign to replace electrics with GM diesels, Kiley was constantly butressed by GM's glowing engineering reports. Finally, Wylie realized the newest diesels were being compared not with the newest high speed electrics, but thirty year old electrics. Moreover, other data from General Motors Electro Motive Division was constantly being skewed in favor of Diesel.

Who was heading up GM's Electro Motive Divison efforts in the late 1940's? It was Dana Kettering, the son of Charles Kettering, and the same inventive genius who'd helped Gray and Davis Electrical Engineers develop the starter battery array that mysteriously undercut Thomas Edison's attempt to create an electric vehicle with Henry Ford. In that instance, the testing had also been challenged as disingenuous.

It's amazing what you can do when you don't have to carry around your own powerplant. It's also amazing how comparing apples and oranges continues to allow people to make decisions.

Of Montréal Electrification

Looks like Montreal could reap the benefits of electrification sooner than others.

Agence Métropolitaine de Transport and Hydro-Québec agreed on May 5 to invite proposals for a study to determine the feasibility of electrifying four of Montréal’s commuter rail routes totalling 250 km.

In Calgary they ride the wind. Here they could ride the wave.

Silo X: Single Project vs. Complete System

There's been a lot of talk over this study today. It comes at a perfect time for journalists to skim the abstract and form their own conclusions before actually digging in to the details. What the study does though is look into the life cycle costs of different transportation modes. As Jebediah states in his post:

What’s totally missing in their “complete” estimates for these various transportation modes are the virtuous effects of rail: creating denser communities where people tend to walk more, own fewer cars, live in smaller abodes, and spend less time stuck in traffic jams.

Where could we get such a look into that community? Why Portland of course where they began preliminary calculations of these things in a basic way for transportation and building emissions.

This can and has been replicated (pdf pg 53) in other places such as Over the Rhine in Cincinnati. Hopefully other places will look holistically at the benefits of the whole package instead of just these news hopping studies that continue silo thinking. It is certainly good to look over the life of projects, but as mentioned, it's only the life cycle of that individual transportation project and nothing else related.

Transportation Bills & Gas Taxes

Looks like the T4 folks have been making some serious headway. They've got the highway lobby all riled up which is a good thing.

“If the bill starts looking more negative on highways, then users that have been supportive of fuel tax increases would turn their back on it,” said Greg Cohen, chief executive of the American Highway Users Alliance. “There is potential that the whole bill could be slowed down here.”

The major sticking point is funding. If more trust fund money is directed to transit projects, then trucking and highway groups will complain about the fairness of using their fees to pay for rail projects. They especially reject a unified transportation trust fund that would pay for all surface transportation out of the same pot of money.

Fairness? You want to talk about fairness? How fair is it to have your mode of transportation subsidized to an uneven degree over the last 60 years. I think Ryan nails it in his Streetsblog post.

In the first place, gas tax revenue comes nowhere near paying for roads. Federal gasoline tax revenues cover barely half of the annual budget of the Federal Highway Administration. Add in diesel tax revenues and you’re still short. And that’s just the federal budget picture.

I think this is an important point. All modes are subsidized, but to the extent that we can put transit on a more even footing we must. The trucking industry has gotten off too easily since the interstate highway system was completed. It was a major reason why rail shipping was killed to almost dead, since the railroads had to pay taxes on their ROW and trucks did not.

But I'm glad Secretary LaHood gets it. As least in words. And the fact that he has a somewhat more receptive president means that this is a totally different ball game. Though in some ways it's similar to that of the Bush and Clinton years that Norm Minetta was in town for:

We returned to the Oval Office, went through the presentation, and afterward President Bush said, "Norm, that's a tax increase. Get that out." So I then took all the unobligated surplus, left $1 billion in the highway trust fund, and used the balance to build a $267 billion surface transportation program that Congress finally passed in 2005. Not long after, the administration asked for an $8 billion infusion of general funds into the highway trust fund so it wouldn't be running a deficit by 2007.

McGovern Calls for Transit Spending

Former Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern is asking President Obama to think about halving the military budget and spending more of it on things like railways. Things are getting interesting out there.

Finally, I would like to see America build the fastest, safest and cleanest-powered railway system in the world. This nationwide system of passenger and freight rail service should be integrated with equally superior public transit facilities in our cities.

Very few Americans are in the market for a tank or aircraft carrier. There are many eager consumers for the world's best, fastest and safest rail and transit systems.

A recent study showed that public transit spending was much higher in returns on jobs than defense spending and other national priorities. I don't understand why we don't jump on this faster.

Not About Just Buildings, Cars

CNT has released another Affordability Index update that shows transportation emissions is 70% less in cities than in the suburbs. Why is this? Because people don't have to drive as much. You can see already the benefits and it isn't all about electric cars. Yet some in Southern California think that SB375, the landmark climate change bill can be addressed with electric cars alone. Sorry guys. It doesn't work like that.

Schuiling challenged the idea that land use changes are required to meet the state’s GHG reduction goals because the goal cannot be met by making cleaner vehicles, as the California Air Resources Board has suggested. “That is simply not true,” Schuiling said.

But its not just transportation, it's building as well, but we need to look at this as a complete system. This singular focus on one method is somewhat maddening. I know there are a lot of people who are hoping for a magic green car or a magic green building but we're also forgetting our water usage and population growth among other things. We can't keep building lanes on our roads and we certainly can't keep growing out over all the farmland in the Central Valley or Napa. The best thing we can do is look for solutions to all these things and I feel that is compact development and transit options.

Trends Favor Core

Funny, that's not what the folks at Reason, most of New Geography, or Cato tell me.

Most demographic and market indicators suggest that growth and development across the country are moving away from the suburban and exurban fringe and toward center-cities and close-in suburbs.

But why?

What's behind this shift? Empty-nesters don't need the big house and don't want to mow the big lawn. High gas prices are making long commutes less practical. The urban renaissance in big cities ranging from New York to Portland, Ore. — and the revival of charming, vibrant downtowns in small cities like Missoula, Mont. — is making the bedroom suburb and the strip mall seem positively dull.

Elections Do Matter

Even in the transit world...

But supporters of the Portland expansion as well as transit advocates nationally said that making the announcement so early in the new administration and allowing the Portland project to leap over other projects sends an unmistakable message of federal support for transit.
...

Wyden and DeFazio, both Democrats, were more direct.

"The real answer is, elections matter," Wyden said. "The priorities are different now, and they are very much more in tune with the needs of the people of Portland."

DeFazio agreed. "The Bush administration had set up a black box test that no streetcar proposal would have ever been able to pass," he said. "They were not following the law, and this administration is."

It's interesting to see how the cost-effectiveness measure will be used by the Obama FTA. Considering the problem is that there isn't enough money for all projects, there will have to be a way to figure out which projects deserve funding and which don't. Will it be now the lack of livability planning with transit?

Why Not the Gas Tax?

Why isn't raising the gas tax the answer? It's not like gas prices aren't going to go up $2 at some point. It's silly to say we're not going to raise gas taxes 10 cents when two dollars will happen in a summer. If there is such a pressing need for transportation money, this should be a viable alternative. The money is going to leave your pocket in either tolls or gas tax money or mileage tax money. Why not leave all options on the table?

Amercan Dream

Says Case of the infamous Case-Shilller home price index:

Case response when asked about the so-called "American Dream of Homeownership"?
"It's largely bulls---." He went on to say, "Rental is better for a lot of people (unless they bought during a boom)."

John King, urban design writer for the San Francisco Chronicle: What about all the starter-home suburbs? Case: I don't know. They're going to stagnate.

A Compelling Argument for Conservatives & Livability

After the passing of Paul Weyrich, I was wondering if there would be anyone to take up the mantle of conservatives and livable communities. While I'm not sure anyone would have the power or influence on the movement that Paul did, there are certain a few folks filling the void. This commentary by a former researcher at the Center for Neighborhood Technology tries to get at livable communities and their association to social conservatism. I think it puts together a lot of the things many of us in the movement believe in, whether on the left right or in the center. David Alpert expands the argument, and rightfully so to bikes as well. Check it out.

Collective Investment

San Francisco is a great place and a city known around the world. If only we could be so forward thinking that we could cut emissions by 40% like Amsterdam.

Mark Scott has a nice piece in BusinessWeek on Amsterdam's plan to become one of the world's premier green cities—and fast. Scarily fast. The city is hitching up with utilities and private companies to plunk down $1 billion over the next three years to do stuff like creating a citywide smart grid that better juggles electricity demand, replacing old garbage trucks with electric vehicles, powering bus stops with solar panels, improving the efficiency of homes, putting meters in homes to let people better monitor their own energy use, and so on… All told, Amsterdam hopes to cut its carbon emissions 40 percent by 2025.

This also got me to thinking, a billion dollars over three years is not a lot if you're going to do something extraordinary. Especially when what you're doing is lowering everyone's costs. I would think this would be the same for expanding the subway network here in San Francisco. Sure it might be a bit of an up front cost, but the more people that we can get to leave their cars, the more they will save. Huge benefits to collective investment.

Meeting Hints at Greater Transit Funding from Obama Administration

I was reading through an article on Mayor Ralph Becker snagging stimulus money for Salt Lake City and noticed a passage that stood out near the bottom:

Becker on Friday also huddled with Obama's Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, whom the mayor says suggested Salt Lake City's transit plans dovetail with the White House's so-called Livable Communities Initiative. There is "no question" that will translate to a bigger Beltway bankroll in the future for streetcars and a downtown TRAX circulator, Becker said.

Salt Lake City has a massive plan for expansion that includes five new transit lines and they have started recently talking about streetcars. I've seen a number of different livable communities initiatives in the past including an old FTA version and one from when Al Gore was Vice President but hadn't heard of a current one. Has anyone else heard of this initiative? I know LaHood mentioned it in his confirmation hearings but we haven't heard many more details except on the White House Urban Policy Page it states:

Build More Livable and Sustainable Communities: Our communities will better serve all of their residents if we are able to leave our cars to walk, bicycle and access other transportation alternatives. President Obama will re-evaluate the transportation funding process to ensure that smart growth considerations are taken into account.

If this is what the Obama administration is going to follow, we can see Mayor Becker's comments as a sign that they could be looking to act on it. Let's hope they do.

Taking or Easement?

Bernie at Orphan Road found an interesting article from Spokane. Seems as if the local government is looking to preserve right of way through zoning. Is there a way to preserve ROW that isn't a taking but doesn't cost the city money? I would have thought this qualified as an easement where the city can push for the land owners to allow the city to use the property for a specific use such as ROW, but the city has to get permission from the land owner.

In Portland, the Lake Oswego rapid streetcar would run on an existing easement that allows the rail line to run. If the current shoreline trolley stops operating, the easement reverts to the original landowners. This was discussed in recent comments at Portland Transport.

Big Cities That Are Going Bust

We've seen numerous stories about Dubai, a city that is rapidly losing people as they jump ship or man made sand island but what about American cities? It looks like we have the usual suspects with a few new friends. Cities that have been known as thriving metropolis' but also allowed real estate to run wild. The two big ones that would have probably been on my own list are Las Vegas, Atlanta, and Orlando. Other cities in the rust belt such as Detroit and Dayton are not a surpirse but what about Richmond Va? The best cities are Boston, New York, and Honolulu, areas with hefty real estate and living costs.

I'd love to see other statistics on these cities such as the types of growth patterns over the last 15 years and see if the disconnected nature has something to do with it. I'm not sure if that would show anything, but it would be something to think about. I also wonder about the soul of these cities. What are they known for. Obviously we know Vegas is entertainment but what are Atlanta and Orlando known for? Would having more of an identity make them more like a New York or Boston? Would it have precluded the real estate mess? I don't know the answers, but its always interesting to ask them.

Destroying What You're Trying to Protect

The divide in understanding transportation's value to working families is rather disheartening. At one time, automobiles were seen as the great equalizer, allowing upward mobility for the masses. Sometime along the way, they went from being a benefit to being a burden. Costs of ownership increased as land use patterns led Americans to drive even further away from their workplaces in search of an inexpensive place to raise a family that had a yard for the dog. But that house was in a place where the family had to buy two or even three cars to keep mobile.

But that push through subsidy towards the suburban ideal, has left us with lopsided policy that spends more money than we need to on urban development and mobility. It also leads people to believe that transit is a tool of the poor alone, not seeing the possible benefits to them personally. A recent New York Review of Books (via T4A) article notes that the poor are a large part of the transit constituency and that the regressive effects of a carbon tax should be offset by building more buses.

Investment in the infrastructure of a post-auto-industrial society would provide some compensation for the regressive effects of a carbon tax (or of the increase in prices that would result from a "cap and trade" scheme, as industries passed on the costs of compliance to consumers). It would be an investment in the technologies that are used by poor people, including buses, bus stops, and information about the departures of buses and transit vans.

But what about the middle class? They are squeezed as well with rising costs of automobiling and rising home costs in cities. An answer that has become more palatable is increasing transit funding and moving towards better land use patterns and policies that would increase housing in the core. This change would allow people to save money, and allow them to live within their means by saving money on transportation costs.

But others don't see it that way. Some conservatives and especially libertarians would have you think that freedom is the automobile and that everyone wants to live in a big house with three cars. They believe so much so in this that anything else is forced upon those who we know are actually self selecting. Here is Milwaukee uber conservative Patrick McIlheran:

What's more, people can and do live transit-oriented lives along these Milwaukee streets and others. While Bernstein argued that people here are made poorer by having to drive a lot, the fact is that there's a lot of reasonable real estate next to scheduled transit, should you want it.

...

Dense, transit-oriented living is good and useful for those who seek it. Where its enthusiasts err is in feeling that many more people, maybe all, should be seeking it and that spending lots of tax money will make that happen.

Yeah, TOD isn't going to be everyone's choice, rational thinkers know that, but the problem here is that we're spending lots of tax money to make automobiling happen and not investing in the other pieces of the transportation spectrum or sustainable development. But the mistake he makes here is the idea that buses are for the poor or people who want that lifestyle, but they don't deserve better service that might increase the demand.

Sure people could choose to live a transit oriented lifestyle on the existing bus system, but last time I heard, Milwaukee conservatives have been starving it to death, creating a situation where its not really an option. They don't just have a thing against trains, they have a thing against quality transit. And that is too bad because they are punishing those who they think they are trying to help. Since when did the idea of pooling money for an outcome that is a common good become a bad idea? The savings would be incredible and its unfortunate that the disconnect is even there.

The thing that Patrick is railing against is actually what he's advocating on the other end. It's hypocrisy at its greatest, pushing away from what the market is actually working towards and artificially going the other way. One would hope that if he really wanted to save taxpayer money, he would advocate for the most efficient land use patterns and push for less tax revenue going to large road projects and into projects that could save a lot of people money. In essence, he's pushing for people to spend thousands more so they can save hundreds. This never made sense to me.

Sprawl Is Dead! Long Live Sprawl!

What does sprawl mean anymore to anyone? In one day President Obama discusses how important it is to build an interchange and how sprawl is dead. Are those two reconcilable? Only if we define what sprawl is and how it's created. Some on the other side consider streetcar suburbs from the end of the 19th century and early 20th century to be sprawl. They would consider the the Roman Empire to be sprawl.

But we seem to forget that those neighborhoods were made for walking, and recent studies have suggested that the interconnected road networks built by streetcars and before are safer than those built just for cars. This isn't just an issue of the environment, its an issue of public health and safety. But does that lead to a simple definition of the detrimental effects of sprawl?

So what is sprawl? Is it like Larry Flint's magazines? Do you know it when you see it? To my own understanding, sprawl is development that acts as a leach, taking tax base away from central cities and spending it sooner than it can be raised. It doesn't necessarily mean low density alone because that is a part of the market, just not 80% of it. The Fresno Bee also had a story about a study done on farmland preservation in California's central valley. We're losing land fast to endless unsustainable development. But how do we get to sustainable? What is the goal there? 0% net energy usage? Then there is this dependence on oil thing.

Sinn-Frei via Steven B.

But is it sprawl if your house is close to your job, even if you live out the suburbs? I've tried to think of what it is and what it isn't, but I can't seem to pin it down. So if we can't define it, how do we kill it?