Transit Election Central 2010

Hey everyone. This post is going to be a liveblog this evening when the results are coming in. Key things around the country include Tampa Light Rail and Governors races that could make or break HSR. If you want a preview, check CFTE. We did this in 2008 and had a blast. Join us later this evening.

Check below for a local transport issue

6:58pm PT - O'Malley Wins Maryland Governorship, Purple line safe
7:49pm PT - John Hickenlooper wins Colorado, Good for transit
7:52pm PT - Scott Walker wins Wisconsin, good thing feds signed HSR agreements
8:17pm PT - Pretty official, Tampa Light Rail dies almost 60-40
8:53pm PT - Tenafly non-binding rail measure loses
9:18pm PT - Clayton County non-binding resolution for MARTA will pass
12:34am PT - Jerry Brown wins governors race, HSR is a go

I'll fill in more of these tomorrow as I get time, kind of a disappointing day but there will be other big wins in the future.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
California --

Prop 22 - Keeps the state from raiding local taxes including transportation

36% Reporting - 63% For 37% Against

________________
Lots of $10 registration fees, covering high transit percentage only

San Francisco Prop AA - $10 registration fee for roads, transit and ped improvements

60% Yes 40% No
________________
San Mateo Measure M - $10 registration fee for roads, transit, safe routes to school


________________
Sonoma Measure W - $10 registration fee, 60% for transit service

________________

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Florida --

Polk County - (Loss) Half Cent Sales Tax for Transit

87% Reporting - 38% Yes 62% No
92% Reporting - 38% Yes 62% No
95% Reporting - 38% Yes 62% No
97% Reporting - 38% Yes 62% No
________________

Hillsboro County (Loss) - Half Cent Sales Tax for Light Rail, Roads

43% Reporting - 40% For 60% Against
68% Reporting - 41% For 59% Against
82% Reporting - 41% For 59% Against
86% Reporting - 41% For 59% Against
94% Reporting - 41% For 59% Against
________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clayton County GA (Win) - Nonbinding - Asking if Voters Want to Join MARTA

46% Reporting - 67% Yes 33% No
67% Reporting - 68.6% Yes 31.4% No
77% Reporting - 69% Yes 31% No
93% Reporting - 70% Yes 30% No
100% Reporting - 70% Yes 30% No

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oahu Hawaii - Question 1 - Would establish a transit agency to oversee rail construction



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tenefly, NJ (Loss) - Nonbinding Question #1 Should Tenefly Rail Service be Restored

Rejected - local news reports many upset that it would not provide a one seat ride to Manhattan thus voted against the line
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toledo, Ohio - (Win) Property Tax Renewal to Support Transit

1% Reporting - 54% For 46% Against
30% Reporting -54% For 46% Against
75% Reporting - 54% For 46% Against
84% Reporting - 54% For 46% Against

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Portland, Oregon - $125M in bonding ability for Tri-Met

55% Reporting - 46% Yes 54% No

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Texas

Austin - Prop 1, $90M in infrastructure

10% Reporting 56% Yes 44% No
37% Reporting 56% Yes 44% No
68% Reporting 56.6% Yes 43.4% No
92% Reporting 57% Yes 43% No

________________

Richland Hills - (Loss?) Asking voters if they want to leave the Fort Worth Transit Authority

Early Voting - 59% For 41% Against
12% Reporting - 61% For 39% Against
38% Reporting - 61% For 39% Against
100% Reporting 61.7 % For 31.3% Against
________________
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wisconsin

Dane County/Madison Asking for a half cent sales tax to fund a Dane County RTA

Note- Really hard to decipher results here given only advisory vote.

Tight Spaces

I think it might be a bit tough to live in such a small space, but if you had to, this is quite an interesting way to go. via Americablog

Music Friday - Take the Light Rail

"If your cars too spendy and your bike is too slow, it will take you anywhere you want to go"

Why Not Rent?

(Once again, a guest post from Ed, kindly invited by notorious density lobbyist P. Trolleypole.)

Despite the collapse of the housing market, homeownership is still out of reach for many Greater Boston residents, according to a new study by the Urban Land Institute.

So begins an article from Saturday's Boston Herald. The article spends a lot of time tossing around median home prices in Greater Boston and discussing how out of reach they are for working class households, and then talks a little about an affordable housing program that is on the MA ballot in November. The option of renting never comes up, nor is there any talk about how to make or keep rents affordable.

I'm not opposed to worrying about rising costs of shelter in cities, but the outsized focus on homeownership drives me a little crazy. This fetishization is why we have tons of awful policy in this country:

- Mortgage interest tax deductions, which distort the home market, and the benefits of which go largely to the wealthy:

The deduction is wildly regressive. The tax savings for households earning more than $250,000 is 10 times the tax savings for households earning between $40,000 and $75,000 a year, according to recent research by James Poterba and Todd Sinai.

- Fannie and Freddie, which, for example, had the US taxpayer implicitly (de facto, at this point) guarantee 95% of new mortgages in 2009, and which have a heavy single-family bias, giving sprawl a helping hand

- FHA-subsidized loans, which explicitly put every taxpayer on the hook for tons of mortgages with only 3% down (and low downpayments are a strong predictor of default, especially when prices are falling)

The list goes on.

Meanwhile, this is all in support of a system that encourages households to (1) take on massive debts in order to (2) make a huge and completely undiversified investment in (3) a highly volatile asset. So, when bubbles pop and prices drop 20, 30, 40 percent, you have made sure that a large portion of your population has seen its wealth evaporate. On top of that, being so highly indebted makes households less mobile, and less able to find new opportunities - which is why you see higher unemployment in places with more homeownership - we've encouraged people to weld their escape hatches shut.

All of which is to say - maybe it's time to rethink how we house people. Should one's shelter really be tied to one's investments? Should we be paying more attention to affordable housing policies that help renters? Should we start dismantling all these subsidies, and maybe turning some of that money to causes that help low-income renters? This aspiring density lobbyist thinks so.

Giving Up and Release Valves

So it seems as if the Port Authority in Pittsburgh is giving up on a rail trip between the two largest employment centers in the region. Perhaps they'll get real BRT but given that opposition always goes to the lowest common denominator such as in Berkeley, you can bet there will be a fight over dedicating the lanes.

I'm disappointed because I feel like this is a travel corridor that could benefit from a direct link from the existing light rail system. However no one wants to actually invest in transit infrastructure these days. I can hardly blame them, once it gets built they have to fight for every penny to operate the thing. If we're ever going to get a real mode share out of transit, we're going to have to start investing in something real. Not necessarily in big projects, but real headways and dedicated lanes for places that will never have rail.

~~~
I guess I'm in a pessimistic mood tonight. New Jersey is thinking about stopping the ARC tunnel for road projects (blech) and the Twin Cities is thinking about how they are going to serve the suburbs of tomorrow when people can't drive. Newsflash! Peak oil isn't our only problem people. What about those folks who can't drive because they are too old! Paratransit is expensive.

~~~
This article irked me for some reason. In it Mary misses the major point about development and land value around transit and even "urban renewal" lessons. She complains about the high rises around transit close to single family neighborhoods.

That, of course, is precisely the problem with Charlotte's love affair with too-tall transit-oriented development zoning smack next to low-scale, historic Dilworth or - this will come - NoDa. Even if nothing's demolished, making land values so high so swiftly via zoning encourages large, expensive projects that will drive out small-scale enterprises.

You want to know why that property becomes so valuable? Because it is scarce! Contrary to popular belief, there is not enough supply of urban housing to meet the demand, so the speculators come in and jack up the prices. I bet you wouldn't have this problem if transit was built out such that neighborhoods didn't gentrify because people wanted the quality locations and access. In places like New York City or Chicago that have extensive transit systems to all kinds of neighborhoods, you see that transit stations are the more diverse income places than the region as a whole.

This is the problem with our thinking here. We complain about the results of our actions but don't think about the underlying actions themselves. Given that Charlotte is building its system line by line, you'll see development speculation and value increases acting as a release valve on the downtown market. If you built all the lines at once, that pressure gets relieved five or six ways instead of one way.

Right now this is just my theory, but when Denver and Houston open up their lines at relatively the same time, I am going to say that you are going to get a more diverse housing type in new stations than we've seen along corridors that are a first big transit investment in a city. The reason being is that they will meet the actual demand, instead of be a small rock in the pond.

So if regions are feeling for local businesses and the skyrocket land values around transit, the escape valve that creates greater opportunities in places that want to change is to build greater transit networks. More escape valves means greater distribution of different development and less pressure and speculation.

The Final Countdown!

Magic from jrk on Vimeo.

T4 has awesomely put the source code for their transportation bill countdown clock on their website for share. Folks who are interested should pull it down. This is something that shows how lax our government has been on actually doing something they are supposed to do every 6 years. Instead they just put it off. Oh we have too much to do or there is an election coming up are always the big excuses. This is what we pay you for!

Hiroshima Trams

Apparently my friends think of taking pictures of trains/transit for The Overhead Wire when they are abroad. That's pretty awesome. Here's one tiled tram from Hiroshima last week that my friend and newest international correspondent @spicer took. You can check out his blog for more on his trip to Japan and a pretty stunning photo of the city after the bomb was detonated.

Music Monday - I'll Take My Board

You take your car to work, I'll take my board. And when you're out of fuel, I'm still afloat - Weezer

Thursday Night Notes: Fake Trolleys and Blown Up Ridership Estimates

These articles are from a few days ago but I wanted to clear my tabs and get some opinions.

Ogden is going to spend some money on buses that they hope will stimulate streetcar ridership. While I've been impressed with the Broadway Shuttle in Oakland that recently started running given the short headways and fast access to Specialties bakery and Bakesale Betty from City Center, I have to wonder if people honestly think they are going to get a real estimate from these faux trolleys. (Calling them trolleys is a whole other can of worms I could get into in another post) It's understandable to want to know what is going to happen and spending less money to do it. But I'm convinced that given the completely different experience, you're almost dooming any streetcar to death by running the fake trolleys, especially if the headways are limited. Would like to hear more on this from others though.
~~~
I know we have to make ridership estimates for capital projects. Until recently ridership estimates made or broke your ability to build projects. So color me annoyed that Denver finally gets around to updating the regional land use estimates that boost ridership for the Fastracks plan. Should we think this estimate is correct? No. Ridership estimates will always be horrific when done using software built for estimating auto trips. Should Denver have gotten more federal money for the program? Yes. Given they are already underwater paying for it, why didn't they try to fix this earlier and get more than 20% from the Feds? Were they just lazy?

Regions that are doing these massive projects like LA, Seattle, Denver, Houston, and Salt Lake City should get more help from the feds. They have a plan and are moving forward with it. It's likely that these types of network expansions that make up the Transit Space Race will give more bang for the buck than one off single line expansions.
~~~
Here's an interesting article sent in by reader David. I'm always amazed at the different issues that places like Vancouver are dealing with than the majority of the United States in terms of ridership and development pressure along transit lines.
~~~
Finally, there are tons of academic journals out there. They make you pay for their products and don't really care if only a few academics read them. But there's always interesting things to be found. Here are some links to Elsivier journals with a barrel of research on transport issues you all might care about. If you're RSS junkies like me, put them in your reader.

11:30 PM Tuesday Night Times Square

A few photos from my recent trip to NYC:

It's so busy, nobody ever goes there anymore...



Don't forget in the daytime



Apartments for cars near the Streetsblog offices



Your friendly bike lane taker uppers



Reminds me of the Netherlands. Needs less fire escape