How Many Lies Are in These Documents?
Portland’s Metro has published an environmental impact statement (EIS) for a proposed streetcar line to Lake Oswego, the city’s wealthiest suburb. Why anyone thinks people in Lake Oswego would want to ride a streetcar to Portland is beyond the Antiplanner, but Metro’s goal is to spend money, not to transport people. The Antiplanner turned almost […]
Transit Unions: Victims or Bullies?
A Portland transit union leader says his members have been “victimized” by a free-market group that posted their salaries on line. But who is the real victim here: the people collecting the salaries or the people whose taxes pay the salaries even if they never ride transit? Back in June, a free-market group in New […]
Portland Urban Renewal Scam
The Antiplanner’s former hometown of Portland, Oregon, is proposing to create a new urban renewal district that is so gerrymandered that blogger Jack Bogdanski suspects it must cover at least 50 scams. Most of Portland’s previous urban renewal districts are pretty regular, following roughly rectangular boundaries. The proposed new district has fingers going in all […]
Getting Priorities Straight
Detroit is America’s eleventh-largest urban area and (unless you count the insipid people mover) the largest without rail transit. So, naturally, the city suffers from light-rail envy. In 2008, the mayor promised a Detroit-to-Ann Arbor commuter train by October 25, 2010–a promise that, since then, has been deferred indefinitely. The city also wants to build […]
Good Luck to Lake Oswego Streetcar Opponents
Residents of Lake Oswego, Portland’s wealthiest large suburb, have hired one of the state’s leading (and most liberal) political consultants to oppose a planned streetcar between downtown Portland and their community. Who has the bucks to hire Bergstein? One of the names mentioned is Elaine Franklin, wife of former U.S. Senator Bob Packwood. As Bojack […]
Living Lightly in Portland
The New York Times loves to tell stories of people who got off the “work-spend treadmill” by selling off all but about 100 personal items and moving into a 400-square-foot studio apartment in Portland. Even the Wall Street Journal has jumped on board by telling the heartwarming story of someone who bought and remodeled a […]
LA Rail Transit a Failure
Los Angeles’ rail transit system is now 20 years old, but the Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Tom Rubin, questions whether it should have been built at all. “The push for rail has forced transit ridership down,” says Rubin, who was the chief financial officer of L.A.’s transit agency when the rail lines were planned in the […]
Is Portland’s Plan Working?
A new census of downtown Portland employers reveals that, for the first time since the annual census began in 2001, the number of downtown workers taking transit to work exceeded the number driving in 2009. This isn’t because the number taking transit to work increased — it declined by 6 percent — but because the […]
New York Rediscovers the Bus
Tongues are wagging in New York City about a new transportation technology that doesn’t require you to descend into a dank tunnel smelling of urine, sweat, and lysol. The new technology is called a bus, and New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority used one to introduce a new bus-rapid transit line two years ago. Not only […]
Charlotte Light Rail a Big Flop
Let’s see: 100 percent cost overrun? Check. Anemic ridership? Check. Requires tax breaks, tax-increment financing, and other “public investments” to stimulate transit-oriented development? Check. Declared a great success by the transit agency desperate for tax increases to fund further rail projects? Check. Must be light rail. As Wikipedia points out, when planned in 2000, Charlotte’s […]
Honolulu’s Rail Plan
Yesterday, in response to the Antiplanner’s post about crony capitalism, Scrappy commented that Honolulu needs rail transit to “reduce our carbon footprint, save energy and get us off the maddening addiction to cars.” He added that, “the environmental community in Honolulu is strongly behind rail.” I appreciate Scrappy’s comment and don’t want to discourage him […]
