It’s not enough for planners to control where people live. Now they want to control where people shop. British planner Mary Portas has unveiled a 28-point plan for saving High Street (the Britishism for what Americans would call downtown). The most important part of the plan would prevent anyone from building a suburban shopping center […]
READ MORELast Friday, December 9, the Detroit News published the Antiplanner’s critique of Detroit’s proposed Woodward light-rail line. On Tuesday, December 13, “the feds, the governor and the mayor” decided that bus-rapid transit makes more sense, so they killed the light-rail plan.
READ MORENumerous state highway programs have suffered cost overruns, say the Gannett papers (which include USA Today). What’s striking from the story, however, is how small and rare the cost overruns really are. The papers found overruns in 19 states, but they focused on projects that actually had overruns and did not reveal how many projects […]
READ MOREIn 1957, Nikita Khrushchev bragged that the Soviet Union would overtake the United States in production of steel and other important products within 15 years. Not to be outdone, Mao Zedong immediately decided that China’s own steel industry would overtake Britain’s–then the world’s second-leading manufacturing country (14). Thus began the Great Leap Forward, one of […]
READ MOREAt a recent meeting about Oregon’s land-use planning system, someone asked how much Agenda 21 has influenced Oregon’s laws and rules. The answer the Antiplanner gave was a big, fat zero. Agenda 21, after all, was written in 1992, while Oregon’s legislature passed the state’s land-use law in 1973. The most radical conception of that […]
READ MOREThe projected cost of the Denver-to-Longmont, or Northwest, rail line–one of six approved by Denver-area voters in 2004–has risen from the 2004 estimate of $462 million to $1.4 billion. For all that money, RTD won’t even get to own the rail line, but will merely rent it from BNSF. Moveover, most of the route from […]
READ MOREThe Voice of Orange County reports that opponents of California’s high-speed rail boondoggle are “moving in for the kill.” But the article presents no clear path for killing the train to nowhere. While there are lawsuits, opponents in Congress, and critics in the state Legislative Analyst’s Office, the final decision will be made by the […]
READ MORESelf-driving cars will transform mobility, says Sebastian Thrun, the engineer who led the development of the Volkswagen and Google self-driving cars. The fact that Thrun’s article is featured in the New York Times constitutes a major endorsement from America’s “newspaper of record.” This is the only major endorsement for driverless cars as represented by Thrun. […]
READ MOREArlington County, Virginia wants to spend $261 million building a streetcar line that, just four years ago, was expected to cost $100 million less. The streetcar’s costs are now expected to average $50 million a mile. That’s quite literally insane. When San Diego built the first modern light-rail line, which opened in 1981, it cost […]
READ MOREThe American dream of families owning their own homes has become a victim of class warfare, with the middle class attempting to suppress homeownership among the working class and other people they view as undesirable neighbors. That, at least, is one of the major themes of American Nightmare: How Government Undermines the Dream of Home […]
READ MORECalifornia’s Legislative Analyst’s Office announced this week that the state is about to waste $6 billion or more starting construction on a high-speed rail line that will never be completed. “The availability of funding to complete a usable segment is highly uncertain,” said the report, to which the Antiplanner responds, “Duh!” Yet some people aren’t […]
READ MOREPortland’s TriMet transit agency is spending more than $370,000 to install solar panels on a downtown building. This will initially save the agency less than $3,700 a year, and even if the savings increase over time, when interest is counted there will be something close to a 100-year payback period. Someone comments on the above […]
READ MOREDetroit’s plan to spend $550 million building a nine-mile light-rail line on Woodward Avenue would be laughable if it weren’t wasting so much money that could actually do something useful if spent on something else. Detroit leaders have convinced themselves that light rail is world-class transportation, that it will be the lynchpin of Detroit’s recovery, […]
READ MOREThanks to high housing prices and a poor economy (which is also partly due to high housing prices), more Americans are leaving California than are moving to the state. In the last decade, 1.5 million more people moved out than moved in from other states, and the poor economy is also reducing foreign immigration, leaving […]
READ MORESan Francisco Muni may have to pay $68 million to banks and insurers as a result of some “creative financing” done 8 and 9 years ago. As previously described in the Antiplanner, in the early 2000s the Federal Transit Administration encouraged transit agencies to sell their equipment to banks and then lease it back. The […]
READ MOREThe California High Speed Rail Authority has reason to be thankful this week as the U.S. Department of Transportation gave it another $900 million, keeping hopes alive for the state’s rail program. That means the feds have given the state a total of about $4.5 billion which, when matched with state bonds (which can only […]
READ MOREAmy Oliver Cooke, Director
Email: Amy@i2i.org
Phone: 303-279-6536, ext 107
Amy Oliver Cooke, Director
Email: Amy@i2i.org
Phone: 303-279-6536, ext 107
Foster and kinship children too often miss out on supplemental services and activities. A new breed of program called a Supplemental Educational Support Account (SESA) would provide a set amount of annual funding for each student that can be used for services such as tutoring, therapies, music lessons, specialized programs, transportation, and a wide variety
READ MOREWho knew it would be such a busy week? Before I head off to go play in the snow or jump in a pile of leaves or two — you never know with the weather here in Colorado — I thought you’d like to see the new results from the Association of American Educators nationwide […]
READ MOREAs explained by author Marya DeGrow, conflict between some Colorado public school districts and parents led to the adoption of a 1988 legislative bill that established guidelines for home education.
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