American Dream

San Jose eases rules to speed condo construction A study by Edward Stringham of SJSU pointed out that inclusionary requirements reduce the total housing production.

The article mentioned by Craig below points out that the original zoning for Cascade Station attempted to incredibly micromanage the development. The vacant land will be developed, say the developers who have a 99-year lease on the land, only if the city relaxes zoning and allows them to include more and larger retailers.

The largest store allowed by the current zoning is 60,000 square feet, but the developers want to increase this to 100,000 square feet. This would allow a Costco, Target, or even -- they claim -- Ikea. (Ikea's nearest store to Portland has nearly 400,000 square feet, so this is unlikely.)

Cascade Station was the first stop on the tour during the Preserving the American Dream conference in April. Located on the light-rail line, with two stops, the land remains vacant three years after the rail line opened. Conference goers were amused to note that the light-rail cars stopped at both stations even though there was no reason for anyone to get on or off and one of the stations was prominantly marked with "closed" signs.

In any case, John Charles' comment was that the site was crying for a big-box store, but Portland planners consider such stores evil so the site remains vacant. It looks like the developers agree, though the 100,000-square-foot size they seek is marginal for a big-box store. Costcos range from 70,000 to 160,000 square feet; Wal-Marts are roughly similar, though Wal-Mart Supercenters, which Portland planners would like to keep out of Portland, are generally 200,000 square feet.

A second wind for deserted complex? Cascade Station was traded to Bechtel in a 99 year $0.00 cost lease in exchange for building about 1 mile and being paid to build the rest of the 5 1/2 mile max line to the Portland airport. The contract was awarded with out a public bid process.
This 4 year old empty development has been stalled by planners and the city not allowing parking and big box stores. Taxpayers gave $14 million dollars in loans to help develop this 4 year old vacant project !

The "Wham-Bam Tram" had its 51st collision yesterday (July 22), but Metro, Houston's transit agency, is counting it as only number 50. That's because police have decided that the pedestrian hit in collision number 49 was attempting to commit suicide. Apparently, if someone tries to commit suicide by rail transit you don't have to count it as a collision. (Actually, the FTA counts suicides as collisions.)

Metro, of course, says that all but one of the collisions were someone else's fault. They won't admit that the fact that their line has twenty times as many collisions as the national average for light rail suggests that it was poorly designed. Of course, light rail has nearly three times as many fatalities as buses, but transit officials won't admit that this difference is also due to flaws in the basic concept of light rail. Commuter rail has about twice as many fatalities as buses; only subways are safer than buses.

Misguided aim: 'Smart-growth' proponents target not developers but families who can't afford pricey digs

Columnist Jeffry Gardner from the Albuquerque Tribune points out the elitist nature of the "Smart Growth" movement

Article on FAST Lanes in the Christian Science Monitor

The Tacoma News Tribune reports that Tacoma's light-rail ridership is ahead of projections. But, the newspaper adds, readers should "Take it with a grain of salt: Link's actual ridership is part head count and part guesswork."

Tacoma's rail line is really more of a streetcar, running in the streets through downtown. Fares are $0.00 and it connects downtown with a free parking lot, which both help explain its "success." The paper adds that the original projections were "deliberately on the conservative side," no doubt so that the transit agency could claim a big triumph.

Two years ago, Seattle voted (by a scant 877 votes) to spend $1.75 billion on a 14-mile monorail. Since then, a fire in the existing tourist monorail and controversies over costs and engineering have led to increasing questions about the plan. Opponents gathered enough signatures to put it back on the ballot this November. If it survives a challenge from rail proponents, voters will get a chance to kill it.

Huge fire in Fairfax County reveals a little-known danger about smart growth: houses built too closely together are likely to ignite from fires in nearby homes. While conventional suburban design keeps homes 20 feet or more apart, smart growth seeks multi-family housing or single-family homes ten feet or less apart.

San Jose and Greenline
After 25 years San Jose is planning for development of one half of Coyote Valley. The land is to be divided by a greenline seperating what is to be developed and what is not. The balance of land owners will have to wait another 25 years. San Jose home prices have gone up 9 times in the last 25 years.

The Indianapolis Regional Transportation Council has voted to study a rail line in the region's most congested corridor. It sounds like the "study" will be based on the usual faith-based transportation planning.

"We have to accept that mass transit is the way to travel," says a suburban mayor. How about accepting that people won't use mass transit for more than 2 or 3 percent of their travel even if you gold plate it? Once we accept that, we can plan some cost-effective transit measures and then get to the real work of curing congestion for the other 97 to 98 percent of travel.

Portland is known as a rainy city, yet its residents pay the second-highest water bills in the nation (similarly wet Seattle is number one). Part of the reason is that the city skims a percentage off the water bill as "franchise fee" (even though the city is the franchise) and uses the money for, among other things, "bailing out Pearl District developers."

The Pearl District, of course, is Portland's downtown high-density, mixed-use development that has already received some $180 million in subsidies. It is highly praised by urban planners from all over the country, but if it is so successful, why does it need to be bailed out by water users from the rest of the city?

A church in rural Mollala, Oregon (a Portland exurb), needs to expand. Before spending lots of money drawing up building plans, it wanted to know if it would be granted a permit to build on its own rural land. Under the Religious Land-Use Act of 2000, local governments are not supposed to use land-use laws to regulate religious activities.

So the church asked local planners if the law applied. The planners said no, they couldn't build the church. The church then went to the county commission, which said yes, they could build the church with a building permit. But before they could get a permit, 1000 Friends of Oregon appealed to the Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals, which said no, the church couldn't build.

The church then went to the Oregon Court of Appeals, which said it couldn't make a decision on a "hypothetical event" because the church hadn't applied for a permit yet.

And you wonder why Inc. Magazine declared Portland to be the nation's eighth worst city to do business in. You can't even do the Lord's business here!

(Note: In an earlier case, land-use officials told another Portland church that it could only allow seventy people to worship at one time in its 400-seat sanctuary. Another Oregon church was denied a permit to build unless it agreed to have no more than five weddings or funerals a year.)

Oregon bridges and highways are crumbling, which is costing people hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars as freight traffic must often take long detours to avoid bridges that are no longer capable of bearing heavy loads.

So what is the solution? Build more light rail, of course.

Hood River, Oregon, has successfully stopped Wal-Mart from building a supercenter, thus assuring that its residents will continue to pay higher prices for groceries and other goods. Wal-Mart already has a regular store in the area, but the city said that a supercenter, which would be twice the original store's size, was "incompatible with other buildings" in Hood River. The Oregon Land Use Board of Appeals agrees.

This decision is a clear victory for Safeway and several independent grocery stores in Hood River, which now can continue to charge customers higher prices and don't have to innovate in order to compete with Wal-Mart. Of course, it would be silly to let consumers decide for themselves whether they want to shop at a huge, low-cost store or smaller stores that may provide goods and services you can't get at a Wal-Mart.

The Beaverton Round faces bankruptcy again
It has been said that history repeats itself. We have been told by Metro's Planners that the Beaverton Round is the Model for mixed-use development along Portland west side max line. Taxpayers have poured millions of dollars to this project that went bankrupt once before and appears ready to go broke again. So much for Smart growth and sustainability.

Rather than raise fuel taxes, Britain's Minister of Transport has proposed an electronic tolling system that would vary by time, distance, and location. Implementing this system, he said, would be "a massive and complex task," but it would reduce congestion and save people $20 billion per year.

When BART was built, it planned to depreciate its track, stations, and other equipment over 80 years. Now it is just 34 years old, but it is asking voters to approve a $900 million bond measure to rebuild much of its track and stations.

This article describes this and many other ways that transit agencies mishandle depreciation. The problem is most acute for rail transit. For the most part, the agencies simply ignore depreciation as a cost. Then, when it comes time to rebuild the lines -- generally after 30 to 35 years -- they ask for capital grants from the feds or more taxes from the taxpayers.

No solution anytime soon to LRT traffic tie-ups

For months officials have claimed that the massive traffic tie-ups caused by Hiawatha LRT signal preemption would be fixed (see "Light Rail Trains Run; Motorists Seethe"). Now they finally admit that nothing can be done about it!