Planning for Kids

Our friends at Planetizen (Tim "Treasure Hunt" Halbur and Chris Steins) have put together a kids book on planning as a way to engage kids early on as to what planning is and how it works. Check it out.

Marsha Marsha Marsha

It's a sad sad story when transit gets first dibs:

"Why do the buses get the privilege?" asks Mary Rheaume, who lives a few blocks from Cedar Avenue and is unimpressed with the new signal. "Why can't they take the loop like everybody else?"

TAR Gets a Bit Feathered

I'm sure many of you are familiar with Thomas A. Rubin or TAR, famed anti-rail consultant and ten page commenter to blogs and listserves. Today he released a study funded by his corporate libertarian overlords that contradicted his findings for a local Milwaukee business group earlier in the year.

A new study by a libertarian think tank claims the projected economic benefits of a proposed Milwaukee-to-Kenosha commuter rail line have been inflated and questions its ridership estimates.

But a business leader noted that the author of the study, Los Angeles-based transit consultant Tom Rubin, took a far more positive view of the $200 million project in June, when pro-transit business leaders were pushing the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority to hire him as the authority's consultant. And a regional planner said the commuter rail projections were sound.

Who knew he was going to come back on that earlier decision? Well perhaps everyone who's ever encountered one of his writings. He did state that he felt buses were a better option, such as he usually does as long as it doesn't have its own ROW. The quote of the story:

Pete Beitzel, a vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, suggested Rubin's opinions depended on who was paying him. "The think tank guys got real mad at him when he said it (the KRM line) was a good idea," Beitzel said. "Apparently, they hired him to change his mind."

H/T Political Environment

Mental Block Hop

On a loop around from our post on transit and energy usage, Matt discusses the issues of fares and the thought that transit should have little or no cost to use, just like empty roads. BUT, only if they are not crowded. That is time for congestion pricing. Empty buses, as that study showed do us no good. Heck I wouldn't mind if Muni were free during off periods. I was talking to a friend today who mentioned when he has his Muni pass, it makes him take transit more, because all he has to do is hop on. I would do the same thing, not worrying about getting quarters out of my bag. As he said, it's just enough of a mental block to discourage it, just like losing my parking spot discourages me from driving.

Streetsblog San Francisco

Coming soon to a browser near you.

Two Percenters

Stop it. Just cut it out. Joel Kotkin, the newest of the O'Toole/Coxies is the latest offender.

Spending on upkeep of transit systems in older centralized cities such as New York, Washington and Chicago also seems logical. But with few exceptions -- the heavily traveled corridor between downtown Houston and the Texas Medical Center, for instance -- ridership on most new rail systems outside the traditional cities has remained paltry, accounting for barely 1 or 2 percent of all commuters.

This 2% bullshit needs to stop. Stop comparing a single transit corridor or a poorly funded transit network to all roads in a region. Let's compare a single road project to the whole region next time. The next interchange, i'm going to be all about comparing the number of trips. Heck the big dig only takes 2% of trips. Stop it. Wendell Cox or Robert Poole say all the time we should spend money depending on existing trip percentages. That doesn't do us any good and only enforces the current shares. We should be spending more money on livability infrastructure.

Another interesting thing about Kotkin's screed is that he praises Houston's light rail line, which he and his followers bashed in the past. So what's it going to be Joel? There's a whole lot more wrong with his ideas on the stimulus, but I'll leave that to others.

Absorbing Growth

If you have a robust transit system, it can absorb new travel.

Transportation officials say a new study shows a surprising trend: As New York City's population and job base grew during the recent boom, traffic didn't.

Instead, a report due for release Monday finds the transit system absorbed the influx of residents and commuters between 2003 and 2007.

City deputy transportation commissioner Bruce Schaller says that's a first for at least the years since World War II. Schaller wrote the study. He says improvements to the subway, bus and commuter rail network helped it handle the demand from 130,000 new residents and 200,000 more jobs.

Name Him Acela?

Joe Biden got a new puppy. It was suggested he be named Amtrak because Joe isn't going to be taking the train anymore. How about Acela? Ideas?

Streetcar Weekend

Quite a few streetcar articles over the weekend if you want to read about these 19th century monstrosities with horrid visual pollution and gentrification causing awfulness.

Lexington
Hartford
Waco
Patrick Condon in the Globe and Mail

Illegal in Tulsa

During a planning session in Tulsa, many people played the usual game of looking at maps and discussing what they thought the future should look like. The problem? Most of what they wanted is illegal, meaning the zoning won't allow it.

"What we got out of that (the citywide workshops) is a pretty different view of Tulsa than the forecast we've seen for Tulsa," Fregonese said. "In fact, what was put on the maps is in many cases illegal; in fact, most of it is illegal, most of it is not permitted, let alone not planned for and not anticipated and not desired."

As Ryan mentions, in order to optimize these changes people want, we need to make the institutional changes to the zoning codes and planning that backs up our infrastructure spending.