American Dream

Young and restless? Portland wants you here

Metropolitan Data: 1900-2003: Alphabetical
Metropolitan Data: 1900-2003: Ranked by Population

These tables contain population data for each census beginning with 1900 for the present areas of US consolidated, metropolitan and micropolitan (talk about a pitiful term) areas --- all 729.

Central City Comeback Dwarfed by Suburban Growth
Data: 53 Metropolitan Areas Over 1,000,000

So, metropolitan growth continues not too differently than before. Thanks to Mayor Giuliani and others who recognize the importance of controlling crime, the cities are much nicer places to live than they used to be. Unfortunately, they have not become materially nicer places to learn, which is why whoever has kids avoids them unless the family budget permits a private education. But in the best of worlds, the core cities would have difficulties, not the least of which is that as people become more affluent they seem inclined to spend their new found wealth. On cars, larger houses, for instance. And, in a world where most of us seek a better rather than worse life, this is as it should be.

Mixed Signals: Officials try to undo snarls along rail line

The new Hiawatha rail line is causing MAJOR traffic problems on Highway 55 - more than doubling commute times for drivers. The problem is that Hiawatha preempts traffic signals. The other day it took me 15 minutes to make a left turn on to Highway 55.

Despite multiple voter rejections, Portland has plenty of money to build little-used light-rail lines. But one of Portland's vital bridges across the Willamette River is falling apart, so officials are banning all traffic weighing more than ten tons. This means fire trucks, freight trucks, and others will have to look for alternate routes.

Vancouver, Washington, remains the fastest-growing city in the Portland area. In fact, it is the fastest growing city in the entire Northwest. Could it possibly be because people who have jobs in the Portland area are escaping Portland's land-use planning laws and high housing prices? The article says "younger families are attracted by cheaper housing prices in Vancouver, compared with the Portland area."

Light-Rail is a Slow Expensive Loser The CEO of Cypress Semiconductor writes an excellent opinion article

When the Church of Latter Day Saints proposed a new meeting house in Portland suburb West Linn, the city denied the permit saying it would cause too much traffic and that there were inadequate buffers between the church and the adjacent residential area. The church appealed to Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals, which sided with the church.

But West Linn appealed to Oregon's Court of Appeals, which upheld the city's ruling. The court cited a federal court that said land-use regulations of churches were okay so long as they did not render religious exercise "effectively impracticable." I guess not being able to have a church doesn't mean you can't exercise your religion.

According to an earlier story, this is the first time a city has challenged the Religious Land Use Act, which Congress passed in 2000 and which was supposed to protect churches from such land-use regulation.

Sorry for the delay; the Oregon Court of Appeals reached its decision last March, but this is the first I heard of it. A similar debate is going on in Albany, Oregon. I wonder how much of this is due to prejudice against the Latter Day Saints; if the Unitarians wanted to build a church, would neighbors oppose it? (In my experience, Unitarians are considerably more raucus neighbors than Mormons.)

Performance of State Highway Systems, 1984-2002

Overview:
US road conditions worsened from 2001 to 2002, for the first time since the mid 1990’s, even though the federal government and the states substantially increased their dollars, according to the latest annual review of state road performance prepared by Professor David T. Hartgen at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Review of the Report by The John Locke Foundation
state_highway_report_2004.pdf

The Reason Foundation issued a report saying that a proposed $398 million rail line in Raleigh costs too much and does too little. The above link goes to a press release. You can download the full study (908KB), a summary (315KB), or take a look at a local press report about it.

Once a rail line is built, it is there forever, right? Apparently, not in Pittsburgh, which just spent $386 million to "modernize" 5.2 miles of light-rail line that opened today.

At $74 million a mile, that's more than most lines cost new. Denver, Portland, San Jose, and other cities can expect the bill for such "modernization" to come due about 30 years after their first lines opened for business.

San Jose's transit agency, the Valley Transit Authority, doesn't have enough money to run its existing transit routes and has lost 35 percent of its ridership due to cutbacks. But it had enough money to blow $435 million building a new six-mile rail line, which opened today. That's $72 million per mile which would have gone a long way towards meeting VTA's operating shortfall.

Hawaiian Mayors, Hot Air and Transit

Before the Hawaiian mayors spend too much money on terminal transit projects and waste too much time allowing traffic to outstrip highway supply, they should perhaps take a tour of the places where their vision works. It will need to be a world tour, because there are no examples in the United States. No US urban area has a transit system that provides automobile competitive mobility except for a small percentage of trips, all to the core or within the core. And, as for providing jobs near houses, I wonder if Mayor Kim works at any of the employment locations closest to his house --- say the local gas station or video rental store? Same problem everywhere. There are a whole lot of reasons people live a long way from work, and the lack of closeby work is not one of them.

New Light-Rail to open in San Jose Ridership a big guess. The Mountain View extension dropped from 6,000 to 2,000 riders a day.

No-growth and smart-growth advocate Eban Fodor, author of "Bigger, Not Better" and advocate of compact development, opposes an infill development in his neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon. Development has been proposed on a two-acre parcel of undeveloped land, but local residents have named it "Madison Street Meadow" and are trying to raise funds to buy it and "preserve it."

The owner of the property is willing to sell to them if they can raise the money, but says, "It's not like this is some pristine oak savanna or woodland. It's just this old, leftover chunk of semirural farmland. Half of it was completely bulldozed over at some point."

But Fodor says, "We have lots of poorly constructed buildings all over town," apparently implying that any buildings built here would also be poorly constructed. "This is one that is already open space, and it has an established value within the community. People recognize it's important to them as open space."

"Ensuring that residents don't have to use their cars just to get to a grocery store or a movie would do more to ease traffic congestion than building more roads or widening highways, island mayors said yesterday." The reality is that this has been disproven by Portland (which has focused on smart growth and had the nation's second-fastest growing congestion) and Houston (which built more roads and had the slowest-growing congestion of the nation's fifty largest urban areas). Of course, reality is not mentioned in the article.

Houston's light-rail line has had its 46th accident since testing began last fall. A pick-up truck suffered minor damage. The accident happened just 24 hours after a train wrecked the entire driver's side of a Jaguar. You can keep track of Houston's rail safety record at the Wham-Bam-Tram Ram Counter, which notes that Houston's rail line has had accidents every 3.9 days since it opened.

A lot is riding on light rail's opening days
Now to see what develops along the line
Hiawatha rail: End of the line?
Price tag still a matter of debate
What goes around ... a look back at streetcars
Light rail of yesteryear

The Hiawatha light rail line officially opened on Saturday - here's links to several articles that appeared over the weekend in the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press.

Quebec De-Merger Election Results The Public Purpose Commentary

So, it was surprising when 89 former municipalities were able to produce the required 10 percent of eligible voter signatures in just five days. What is even more surprising is that 32 of the 89 municipalities were able to produce majorities in today’s election so large that the 35 percent of eligible voter threshold required for de-merger was reached. So, with the scales so weighted against democracy that Proposition 13 could never have qualified for the ballot in California and an American president could not have been elected, citizens of Quebec cared enough to produce a clear victory for local control in more than one-third of the cases. Among the soon to be reborn municipalities (pending the pleasure of the government), the average margin of victory was nearly 60 percentage points --- 79.5 percent for de-merger and 20.5 percent against.