The Antiplanner

Rail transit construction is so farking expensive that the people overseeing lose all sense of proportion. Take Denver’s FasTracks program, which is supposed to build about 119 miles of rail transit over eight years for $6.2 billion. That’s more than $2 million a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year.

So its not surprising that Denver’s transit agency, RTD, would casually spend $15 million on land it doesn’t need. That’s $50,000 an acre for land that is pretty similar to other land in the area that normally sells for $10,000 to $15,000 an acre.

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Before the weekend, Hillary Clinton was expected to win Indiana by 5 percent and lose North Carolina to Barack Obama by only about 8 percent. Then, on Sunday before the election, Hillary made the mistake of offending a group of people who she thought were irrelevant.

You know the rest: Hillary barely won 1 percent more votes than Obama in Indiana and lost North Carolina by more than 14 percent.

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High gas prices burst the housing bubble, says an economist from Oregon. The economist’s detailed report goes much further than this, saying that high gas prices have led to “a tectonic shift in housing demand,” namely that suburban homes are now worth less while central city homes are worth more.

Based on this claim, the economist concludes that cities that promote more compact development will be more “successful than places that continue to follow sprawling development.” He urges cities to “promote land use patterns that enable mixed-use development and provide more bikeable, walkable neighborhoods served by transit”

This is, of course, a repeat of James Kunstler’s “the suburbs are doomed” argument. “Vehicle miles traveled—a key driver of energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions—are
down,” says the report breathlessly, “reversing a 20-year upward trend.”

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After writing a paper showing that rail transit is a waste of energy, the Antiplanner discovered that UC Irvine economist Charles Lave had written a similar paper for The Atlantic Monthly way back in 1979. So I’ve been quoting him as often as possible. Now comes the sad news that he has passed away. From his vita I infer that he was about 69.

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Another Tuesday, another primary that won’t resolve the Democratic nomination. For the first time since 1972, my home state’s primary is likely to take place before all the decisions are made. While Oregon’s votes won’t be counted for two more weeks, our mail-in ballots are already in hand. To date, the Antiplanner has only skirted the presidential campaign, but since I am about to vote, it seems worthwhile going over my reasoning.

For me, the biggest issue today is the war in Iraq. This war was a mistake in almost every possible way. It reduced our standing in the international community, made no sense at all as a part of the war on terror, ignored the Powell Doctrine of when and how we should go to war, and probably made life worse for most residents of Iraq (though better for the Kurdish minority). Domestically, the war’s high cost has dramatically reduced the value of the dollar, from 1.10 euros in 2002 to 0.64 euros today. You can yak about peak oil and Chinese demands for energy, but it was this devaluation more than anything else that has been responsible for the run up in fuel prices.

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I once met a government-employed economist who believed that, because democracy is the most perfect form of government, any decision made by a democracy is automatically the best possible decision. Apparently, some people still believe that, or George Mason University economist Brian Caplan would not have had to write The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

Winston Churchill once said, “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.” Henry David Thoreau was even more skeptical, saying, “A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men.”

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Wendell Cox, one of the Antiplanner’s faithful allies, argues in a new paper that “smart growth exacerbated the international financial crisis.” Of course, the Antiplanner has said this at least since last December (and The Best-Laid Plans predicts such an outcome), while some of the Antiplanner’s loyal opposition remains skeptical.

Skeptics probably won’t be persuaded by Cox, simply because his arguments are similar to those previously made here. “Excessive land-use regulation,” says Cox, led to artificial housing scarcities. This drove up prices and led people who would otherwise have been able to afford a mortgage at prime rates to turn to subprime loans. Of course, the loosening of the credit market contributed, but without smart growth, we would currently have a “subprime mortgage problem” rather than a full-blown international economic crisis.

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This morning, the Seattle Times published the Antiplanner’s op ed about rail transit, energy, and greenhouse gases. But where did they get that deer-caught-in-the-headlights photo?

The Oregonian published an abbreviated version of the same op ed (san photo) last week.

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Vying to become the new Don Young (he of the bridge to nowhere), House Transportation Committee chair James Oberstar promises that the next transportation reauthorization will cost $450 billion over six years. Don Young wanted to spend $350 billion in the 2005 reauthorization, but hardliners in the Bush Administration forced him to keep it to $286 billion.

“We’re not going to do a wimpy bill” like in 2005, Oberstar promised. Notably, he was not talking to transportation users, but to U.S. steel makers, and he pointedly added that, “We’re talking about a lot of steel.”

Increasing spending to $450 billion will require either about a 9-cent-per-gallon increase in the gas tax or deficit spending at a level never before contemplated in federal transportation measures. We know from previous statements that Oberstar supports at least a 5-cent increase in federal gas taxes.

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A plan to spend $5.5 million to build a bike/pedestrian bridge in Portland that will probably carry only a few hundred people a day have generated a major controversy. Portland’s mayor has come out against the plan, local businesses have invested in studies challenging the plan, and the whole idea has become a major subject for talk radio and letters to the editor.

The new and old Sauvie Island bridges.
Flickr photo by Tokenhippygirl.

The plan was conceived when the Sauvie Island Bridge, north of Portland, was being replaced. Someone said, “Why don’t we take the old bridge and use it as a pedestrian/bicycle bridge across the I-405 freeway in downtown Portland?” City commissioner and mayoral candidate Sam Adams, who never met an alternative transportation project he didn’t like, immediately jumped on the idea.

UPDATE: Bojack presents an interesting analysis of the safety aspects of the proposed viaduct using Google street view photos.

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