Socialist Roads Scholars

I'm a huge fan of Alex Marshall. Sometimes he writes at Streetsblog and others in different magazines and journals. Today he's in Governing Magazine saying what everyone was thinking. The Libertarians and Conservatives who hate transit so much and are all about free markets become socialists when it comes to roads. Government intervention? Only for roads.

Given all this, I find it exceedingly strange that a group of conservative and libertarian-oriented think tanks — groups that argue for less government — have embraced highways and roads as a solution to traffic congestion and a general boon to living. In the same breath, they usually attack mass-transit spending, particularly on trains. They seem to see a highway as an expression of the free market and of American individualism, and a rail line as an example of government meddling and creeping socialism.

Among the most active of these groups is the Reason Foundation, a self-described libertarian nonprofit organization with a $7 million budget that has its own transportation wing. Some typical highway-oriented papers on Reason's Web site include "How to Build Our Way Out of Congestion" and "Private Tollways: How States Can Leverage Federal Highway Funds." Rail transit is taken on in papers with titles such as "Myths of Light Rail Transit," and "Rethinking Transit 'Dollars & Sense': Unearthing the True Cost of Public Transit." I didn't see any papers about unearthing the true cost of our public highway network.

Nope, in their minds, if you toll it, they will come. Don't get me wrong. I think congestion pricing has merits in certain instances, but wholesale tolling of roads is dumb. Depending on a single mode of transport is dumb too. Didn't anyone ever tell them when they were kids that they couldn't eat steak all the time but needed bread, milk, fruits, and vegetables?

H/T The Political Environment

Help Sacramento Enter the Transit Space Race

Update from comments: Brian also mentions that when the page comes up only scenario A comes up. Hopefully they will remedy this so that folks see all three scenarios from which to choose.

Sactown is looking at scenarios for future transit. In order to build out their network, they will need to build light rail, commuter rail, streetcar circulators and new BRT lines. I think a true network expansion is something that everyone can get behind. Well they are asking for folks opinions. So if you live in Sacramento, give them your ideas.

Scenario A - Limited Funding


Scenario B


Scenario C - Full Funding

Also, take a visit to the local transit blogs. RT Driver & RT Rider

Thanks to reader Brian Goldner for the heads up.

Steal an Opportunity for Our Children's Future, Fund Metro!

Senator Tom Coburn doesn't know that highways are subsidized just like transit. Why else would he make a comments like this:

But the Davis bill, as it is currently constructed, will likely never make its way past Coburn. “I’m happy to be a roadblock to that bill,” Coburn tells WTOP. “It’s $1.5 billion they want, we (the government) don’t have the money to pay for it, so where are we going to get the money?”Coburn doesn’t think one penny of funding for Metro should come from American taxpayers. “How dare us say we are going to steal opportunity from our children so that we can have a ride on the Metro. I think the vast majority of Americans would disagree with that.

Wha?! Is this guy serious? No Tom, they disagree with YOU. Even Republicans disagree with you which is why Tom Davis (R) is trying to get the funding through. I feel bad for progressives in Oklahoma, first the Global Warming denier Inhofe and now Transit denier Coburn. What is it with politicians from non-transit non-urban regions telling dense regions benefiting from transit what to do in terms of transportation policy? Get rid of these bums already. Like its not bad enough that $1.5 B is chump change in an Iraq day.

H/T Second Avenue Sagas

Smart Growth? No, Zev Growth!

Ah good 'ole Zev Y. in LA is up to no good again. For those who don't know, he is one of the good folks that brought us the Orange Line busway because of a law he created that said no subways or rail on that corridor. Well he's at it again saying that LA shouldn't grow denser. That smart growth thing is for sissies. But basically he is just playing politics with the frames. He's all about smart growth, just not density. He also wants to keep parking requirements...nothing says don't drive like an open parking space!

Urged on by some elected officials, city planners have decided that the "smart" and "elegant" way to grow the city's housing stock is to double the allowable size of new buildings,bust through established height limits and reduce parking-space requirements -- effectively rolling back more than two decades of neighborhood-protection laws.

What is it with these neighborhood protection folks that they actually want to stunt neighborhood evolution and affordability? It's actually not protection but rather a form of Nimbyism. What annoys me most about these clowns is that they just don't want any growth, it has nothing to do with Smart Growth at all. Here is a perfect example.

But it makes no sense to reflexively boost residential density and building size along every Metro Rapid bus route, as the city's version of the state's density-bonus law allows, when the streets that the buses travel often cross low-density, pedestrian-friendly commercial districts serving some of the city's most charming neighborhoods.

Let's not build more density near the high capacity pedestrian friendly transit. That'll make our transit work better! No one is going to go into the center of a single family neighborhood and build a high rise. All of this is just scare tactics to get elected. I for one hope he gets destroyed.

Extortion in Virginia

This is rich. Apparently Norfolk State University signed a deal a few years ago that would allow light rail to run through campus. A few years later new leadership has moved into the presidents mansion on campus and apparently doesn't like the idea. Instead of going with the original agreement, the University is resorting to extortion.

Norfolk State University wants the city to purchase its president’s home and build a parking deck near campus. The requests are part of a wish list submitted to the city in a letter dated March 26. They are some of the most expensive ideas offered by NSU to resolve an impasse with the city and Hampton Roads Transit over the light rail line under construction next to the campus. No price tags are available for the university’s proposals. However, city officials said the items are not in the project’s $232.1 million budget.

But good for the Mayor, he's not buying it.

Norfolk Mayor Paul Fraim said he wouldn’t support the request under any circumstances. “I don’t think we could use public dollars for that purpose,” he said.

It seems recently that there have been a lot of anti-transit campus sentiment. The purple line in Maryland comes to mind, worried about vibrations through campus from light rail and most recently the dumbfounding move by the University of Minnesota who didn't get their tunnel through campus due to our favorite cost effectiveness measure. Now they want a rerouting that would kill the line's federal funding. Something tells me that these folks know nothing about the benefits of a line through campus for students. All over the country there are college campuses that thrive on transit connections. Unfortunately these situations above will have to be forced.

Overheard in Oakland

A real conversation I overheard today:

Girl #1: Have you learned the bus routes yet?
Girl #2: No I have only used BART.
Guy #1: BART is much better than the bus
Girl #1: I use the 51 sometimes, it comes all the time, but I can't read on it.
Guy #1: I can't either, I feel like I have no room for my arms on the bus and it bounces all over the place
Girl #1: Yeah.
Girl #2: Well I'll figure it out.
Girl #1: Just take BART if you have a choice.

I seem to run into planning related conversations in the background wherever I go. The other night I was eating sushi with a friend and one lady in front of me loudly said: "Urban Planners don't know what they are doing, they just build those roads everywhere" and made a circular motion with her hand. I didn't say anything, but I was thinking "that's the highway engineers lady."

The Affordability Index is Online

The affordability index is a different way to look at housing affordability. Since housing has been going down the tubes lately, its not surprising that the crises is hitting the suburbs of major metropolitan areas the hardest. Why? Because they are out in the middle of nowhere and its getting expensive to move around by car alone. Well folks are now starting to measure the housing + transportation costs of families and individuals showing that true affordability isn't a cheap home in the suburbs, but rather the sum of these two costs.

Take a look at the costs of different neighborhoods. In a transit rich neighborhood with all housing being equal, your cost of would be 41%. But if you had to drive everywhere, your costs would be 57%. That's quite a lot of savings by living near transit. See for yourself if you live in a transit rich or auto dependent neighborhood.

H/T Carless in Seattle.

True Patriotism

Streetsblog posted this video earlier today. I never saw it on TV, but it mentions sticking it to OPEC. Be patriotic, drink some beers and ride some bikes (or transit).

Thoughts on Transit and New Urbanism

I am a member of the CNU. I've been going to congresses over the last 4 years but have noticed that a lot of other members don't really get transit or that transit should be an integral part of NU. In a session last weekend about value capture strategies, Scott Polikov showed some diagrams of communities he helped code south of San Antonio and in Leander at the end of Capital Metro's commuter rail line. While they were nice and could probably promote more walking internal of the neighborhood, he showed boutique retail and limited transit access and circulation for both projects. G.B. Arrington, former transit and TOD planner at Tri-Met in Portland who heads Parsons Brinkerhoff's place making division, raised his hand and asked a very pointed question.

"Isn't this just walkable sprawl?"

And therein lies the problem. Much of what the new urbanism is known for is their walkable sprawl which includes the Kentlands and Seaside as the projects most representative of New Urbanism from an outsiders perspective. At the end of the day all of the jobs are somewhere else and without alternative connections to those jobs and a location on the far reaches of a region, the same VMT and overall degradation of the environment will continue.

New Urbanism in principle says the right things in the Charter, but right now we're mostly neglecting the transit and mobility. This includes the understanding of bikes. I heard that Liz Moule of Moule Polyzoides who designed the Del Mar TOD stated that its silly to have showers at every place of employment to support cycling. This angered some of my colleagues who want to make the trip between neighborhoods and work accessible by bike.

If we aren't able to build places by reducing VMT, then whats the point? Building good looking internally walkable places is nice but really at the end of the day there is a reason for building it if you have to drive to get anywhere outside of the community? Without metrics or final purpose, we don't know what we're doing. Some like Andres Duany say that its all about providing happiness. But in reality there are many people out there who are happy with their freeways and huge gas guzzling SUVs.

Jan Gehl, who was responsible for bike and pedestrian renaissances in Melbourne and Copenhagen has a simple metric that destroys any argument against his improvements. Pedestrian counts. In fact he rebuked some store owners who said that they were slowly fading due to reduced auto access. He was able to prove that they were getting much increased pedestrian activity in front of the store by before and after counts.

So if we are going to build transit and build communities that reduce the autocentricity that begets sprawl, then we need to measure the effects. Else we are no better than other ideologues that state their ideas are right, without proof to back it up. I believe that we need to measure New Urbanism to make sure its working, and by working I mean reducing VMT because if we can't do that, its just walkable sprawl.

Congestion Pricing Dies on the Vine

I have to say that even though I wanted this plan because it would have proven the benefits of transit over cars, there is a very small piece of me that is glad that Mary Peters got the shaft. This money came off the backs small bus agencies around the country and that should not be tolerated. People that depend on transit the most were paying for these pilot projects. Not that the idea didn't have merit, but if you're going to play with money, why not take it out of the ginormous highway fund instead of the bus fund.

Eric says it best, New York just approved a citywide parking lot.