American Dream

Nicholas Kristof writes in the New York Times about Hermiston, Oregon, where you can drive for miles on an Interstate freeway or city streets and have free, high-speed wireless access the entire time. Thanks to a federal grant, the city has installed it over a 600-square-mile area.

I am not thrilled about government subsidies for wireless. But think about it: how is smart growth's desire for density and centralization going to fight the movement to suburban and exurban areas when people can get wireless access in those areas? Increasing numbers of Americans have jobs that depend on computers and the Internet, and those people have decreasing reasons to stay in cities. Smart growth may actually accelerate the process of exurbanization by making cities more congested and less affordable.

Land Buying For Stadium Can Proceed
Court Denies Injunction To 3 Property Owners

By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 6, 2005; Page B01

Quotes:

A federal judge yesterday declined to issue an emergency 30-day injunction that would have stopped the District from purchasing or taking 33 properties it needs to build a baseball stadium in Southeast Washington.

U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts said the three property owners seeking the injunction failed to show that they would be irreparably harmed if the city was allowed to proceed in trying to buy the parcels required for the stadium project. He said the group also failed to convince him that it would prevail in its lawsuit, which alleges that the city's efforts to acquire the property are illegal.

"The loss of property is easily compensated by monetary damages," Roberts said. "Clearly, the city council has concluded a stadium is in the public interest. . . . The public interest is not served by blocking the city's effort to build the stadium."

The judge's decision means that the District can continue working to meet its deadline, under an agreement with Major League Baseball, to obtain the 33 properties by the end of the year. His ruling also suggested that it would be futile for the property owners to pursue the case.

But the judge also chided the District during yesterday's two-hour hearing, saying it had not explained to the owners the city's timetable for trying to obtain their property. The owners said they feared that they would get a city offer with no warning and have only 24 hours to accept it or face condemnation. If the city and an owner do not reach agreement on a purchase price, the city can take the land through eminent-domain proceedings.

'Meddling' in Metro's Messy Plans

Saturday, August 6, 2005; Page A18

Quotes:

The July 29 editorial "Metro's $1.5 Billion Carrot" characterized concerns about development around Metro stations as "meddling." However, building housing near Metro stations is supposed to encourage people to use mass transit and get cars off the road. Ironically, the development proposed for the Takoma Metro station will do the opposite.

Takoma Station is in the District adjacent to Takoma Park and serves both jurisdictions. It has a short-term parking lot, many bike lockers and nine bus bays with room for buses to lay over between runs.

To squeeze 95 townhouses onto this site, half of the parking spaces will have to be eliminated and space for bike lockers will be lost, just when the new Metropolitan Branch Trail will bring more bikes to the station.

The development plan also eliminates one of the two bus entrances, forcing all buses onto congested Carroll Street. This will cause backups and idling in the terminal, as well as increased bus traffic on Blair Road. The proposed development on Metro property is not the only opportunity for transit-oriented development in the area. Housing recently was built on two sides of the Metro property, and construction will begin soon on another a block away. Metro should have set aside enough space for future transit needs at the station and then determined how much of the site would be left for development. Instead, it is letting the market economics determine how much housing to build, and it wants to squeeze transit services into the leftover space. Transit-oriented development is a good concept, but not if it makes it more difficult for people to use Metro.

KATHY PORTER
Mayor
Takoma Park

The writer is a member of the Metropolitan Washington Transportation Planning Board.

What I find interesting in all of this is the contrast between Mayor Porter's letter above, and the stated enthusiasm that she and other Takoma Park elected officials and activists show for transit-oriented development in other parts of the Washington region (generally far from Takoma Park - for some reason).

I found online here some comments from Ben Ross, an articulate transit advocate who lives in Montgomery County, Maryland (but not in Takoma Park). A few of his thoguhts are relevant here:

A different type of NIMBY can be found in the suburban enclaves of post-sixties radicalism that have grown up around some cities. Communities like Santa Monica and Berkeley in California, and Takoma Park in the Washington, D.C., suburbs, are among the most stringent in limiting growth. In these hothouses of environmental activism, opposition to the automobile rarely extends so far as to support building anything new close to public transit. As these words are written, owners of restored Victorian houses in Takoma Park are righteously waging battle to prevent construction of townhouses on an empty lot next to the local subway station.

Where Chevy Chase projects an aristocratic image--columnist George Will lives next door to one of the homeowner leaders--the style of Takoma Park is funk. But both types of NIMBYs share the same objective, that of protecting distinctions that allow them to feel superior to outsiders. For not a few Takoma Park leftists, their walkable enclave is less an example to be copied than a badge of nobility that distinguishes its residents from ordinary suburbanites. The critique of a society that creates ticky-tacky boxes has mutated into a feeling of superiority over the people who live in the boxes.

Metro's $1.5 Billion Carrot

Friday, July 29, 2005; Page A22

Quotes:

A FEW MONTHS ago, a panel that studied how to continue paying for Metro urged that the region provide the transit system with a dedicated funding source -- money set aside and safe from competing priorities. The panel was ignored. Now comes Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) with a like-minded -- but unignorable -- proposal. Mr. Davis has managed to make local officials take notice by dangling a plump carrot in front of them: $1.5 billion in federal funding. That should be enough to force a serious reckoning of Metro's long-term financial health -- one that officials in Virginia, Maryland and the District have been avoiding for years.

Mr. Davis's commendable idea, contained in a bill offered yesterday in his House Government Reform Committee, would represent a critical new federal commitment to Metro, which faces daunting problems of management, funding and decay. In addition to the key goal of forcing a dedicated local funding source, the bill contains several constructive elements at the price of one very parochial one.

The constructive elements include the addition of two seats for federal representatives on Metro's board of directors, a change that would acknowledge Metro's crucial importance to the federal government's smooth operation.

The silly part of Mr. Davis's bill is his insistence on blocking a key component of a new residential and commercial neighborhood planned next to the Vienna Metro station, a position at odds with his record as a sensible advocate of dense development around Metro stations. Democratic Reps. Chris Van Hollen and Albert R. Wynn of Maryland have inserted their own meddling provisions that seek to dictate terms for development around the Takoma and Largo Town Center stations.

The focus should be on a dedicated revenue source. Lawmakers in Virginia and Maryland have tried to establish a set-aside for Metro from sales taxes and other sources, but they've failed; those political hurdles will not fall easily. Now, facing skyrocketing annual budget increases, there is simply no choice but to carve out dedicated money for Metro in excess of current levels. Mr. Davis's $1.5 billion carrot -- designed to pay for new trains, buses and other capital expenses for a decade -- should do that and more.

The words above ought to serve as a warning to other cities and metropolitan areas around the nation that believe that building a taxpayer-funded rail transit system will somehow "save money" once the system is complete.

Alabama claims to be the first state to pass legislation to protect properties from being taken by eminent domain for private purposes. But don't get too excited: the law contains a loophole. If planners declare your property or neighborhood is "blighted," they can still take your property and give it to a private developer.

The Kelo decision wasn't about blight, but most other takings by eminent domain for private purposes have been in areas considered blighted. In California, one municipality found an undeveloped desert to be blighted so they could take it and give it to someone to turn into a race track.

So we will have to wait for some other state to take the lead and pass a real eminent domain bill.

Intermodal Transportation: Potential Strategies Would Redefine Federal Role in Developing Airport Intermodal Capabilities, GAO-05-727

Abstract (HTML, see below)
Highlights (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 80KB)
Full report (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 1.68 MB)

With the number of airplane passengers using U.S. airports expected to grow to almost 1 billion by the year 2015, ground access to U.S. airports has become an important factor in the development of our nation's transportation networks. Increases in the number of passengers traveling to and from airports will place greater strains on our nation's airport access roads and airport capacity, which can have a number of negative economic and social effects. U.S. transportation policy has generally addressed these negative economic and social effects from the standpoint of individual transportation modes and local government involvement. However, European transportation policy is increasingly focusing on intermodal transportation as a possible means to address congestion without sacrificing economic growth. This report addresses the development of intermodal capabilities at U.S. airports, including (1) the roles of different levels of government and the private sector; (2) the extent such facilities have been developed; (3) benefits, costs, and barriers to such development; and (4) strategies to improve these capabilities. GAO provided a draft of this report to the Department of Transportation (DOT) and Amtrak. DOT generally concurred with the report, and Amtrak had no comments.

State and local government agencies have primary responsibility for developing intermodal capabilities at U.S. airports. Generally airports and local transit agencies are heavily involved, especially if these projects are part of a local transit system. The federal government has not established specific goals or funding programs to develop intermodal capabilities at airports. However, it provides funding for projects fitting the criteria of other programs. The private sector may undertake a variety of roles. Most major U.S. airports have direct connections to local transit systems rather than to nationwide rail or bus systems. For example, 64 out of 72 airports have connections to local bus systems, and 27 airports have connections to local rail systems. At the same time, only 19 airports have connections to nationwide rail or bus systems. A number of airports have plans to enhance their connections to local rail and bus systems. U.S. and European transportation officials and experts cited the benefits for intermodal capabilities at airports to include increased transportation options, reduced road congestion, and reduced short-haul flights. The costs of intermodal projects using rail are typically significant. Barriers cited include the difficulty of securing needed funding, disincentives for airport support such as potential reductions in airport parking revenue, geographical and physical land constraints, limitations of the existing nationwide rail network, and inconveniences in comparison to using cars that limit consumer demand. Two differing strategies developed from our prior work would help public decision makers improve intermodal capabilities at airports. The first strategy would increase flexibility within current federal transportation programs to encourage a more systemwide approach to transportation planning and development. The second strategy would involve a fundamental shift in federal transportation policy's focus on local decision making by increasing the role of the federal government in order to develop more integrated air and rail networks and would be closer to the strategy followed in Europe. While the first strategy would most likely lead to a continued focus on the development of intermodal connections to local transit systems, the second strategy could develop more integrated air and rail networks, either nationwide or along particularly congested corridors. The second strategy would be costly, and high benefits, which would be difficult to achieve, would be needed to justify this investment.

$10.8 million in Congress bill goes to Beach link

By TOM HOLDEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© August 5, 2005

Quotes:

Rep. Thelma Drake said Thursday that she supports putting $10.8 million into a new interchange along Interstate 64 – in spite of the fact that the connector hasn’t been a priority for state and regional road planners – because she believes it’s a project that can quickly ease congestion.

In a region brimming with transportation needs totaling billions of dollars, putting the federal tax money into a small interchange that could help a planned development and reduce strain on nearby roads was an easy call, she said.

The $286 billion transportation spending bill approved by Congress last week contains money for a new interchange between Greenbrier Parkway in Chesapeake and Indian River Road in Virginia Beach. The interchange would feed traffic into a development planned by the Christian Broadcasting Network, headed by Pat Robertson.

“This is a project that can be built and will be done quickly,” said Drake, R-2nd District, whose district includes CBN. “It’s going to happen. I don’t know they can do it in two or three years, but I feel confident they can do it in less than five.”

The interchange is not on the region’s list of priority interstate projects, nor is it in the Virginia Department of Transportation’s six-year spending plan. No road exists that would connect to the interchange, though a development executive hired by CBN has said plans call for building one with private money. That road would cut through the development to Centerville Turnpike.

CBN also is waiting on results of a study into whether federal highway safety guidelines would allow the interchange. The Federal Highway Administration is among regulators and planning agencies that would have to approve the project.

The interchange appeared as a $1 million line item in a version of the transportation bill approved earlier this year by the House of Representatives.

By the time it emerged from a House-Senate conference committee early last week, the amount had risen to $10.8 million.

“I can’t explain how it got to be $10.8 million,” Drake said. She said she had no role in the increase.

See also this editorial in The Virginian-Pilot :
GOP pays tribute to Pat Robertson

Crash Renews Focus on Runways
Pilots Criticize Toronto Airport's Lack of Arresting System

By Sara Kehaulani Goo
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 5, 2005; Page D01

Quotes:

TORONTO, Aug. 4 -- The Air France jet that overshot a runway on Tuesday barreled off the pavement at 90 miles per hour, a dangerously high speed that led to renewed calls yesterday to make runways safer.

All 309 people on board managed to escape, but some aviation experts said the crash could have been avoided if the Toronto airport had installed a new kind of concrete at the end of its runways. The Air Line Pilots Association last night said the accident demonstrated the dangers of inadequate runway safety areas. "The crash of Air France Flt. 358 in Toronto occurred at an international airport that, unfortunately, does not meet international standards," the association said in a written statement.

Officials at Toronto Pearson International Airport yesterday said they think the runways are safe.

Safety officials also said the crash provided new insight into the flammability of materials on newer airplanes. The fire-retardant material now required in aircraft cabins may have helped slow the spread of flames and smoke, enabling all crew members and passengers to escape. Forty-three people sustained minor injuries.

Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the accident. Yesterday, they disclosed that the crew did not declare an emergency to air traffic controllers as the plane landed.

To reduce the likelihood of runaway jets, 14 airports in the United States have installed a crushable concrete material at the end of runways. The material is a mixture of water, foam and concrete and is designed to collapse under a plane's weight, to make the plane sink into the surface to come to an immediate stop.

It is unclear whether the Engineered Material Arresting System, could have stopped the Airbus A340-300 involved in Tuesday's accident. But the technology has helped to stop three planes at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport, including a 747 cargo plane flown by Polar Air earlier this year.

washingtonpost.com
A Not-So-Happy Anniversary
Pressure From Builders Mounts as Ag Reserve Reaches Its 25th Year

By Nancy Trejos
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 4, 2005; GZ16

Quotes:

Montgomery County's agricultural reserve is home to 577 farms and 350 horticultural enterprises, 12,000 horses and 2,201 head of cattle. Its rolling hills, rustic roads and pockets of open space make up one-third of the county's land area.

So when Barnesville illustrator Tina Thieme Brown embarked on a year-long project to create a map of the county's 93,000-acre expanse -- where development is restricted to one housing unit per 25 acres -- she knew it wouldn't be easy.

With input from naturalists, farmers and county officials, Brown created a map that depicts the roads that link the
more developed, suburban "downcounty" to the less built-out, rural "upcounty." The map shows the reserve's reservoirs and rivers, its farms and nurseries, its historical sites, and its flora and fauna.

"What I'm hoping is that we have created enough of a pictorial history . . ." she said. "The hope is that people will get out here and dig a little deeper."

That's the goal of county officials as they observe the 25th anniversary of the agricultural reserve, the most prominent of land-preservation efforts in the metropolitan region. Through such events as farm tours, lectures, and hikes, officials said, the county will step up efforts to educate downcounty residents about the merits of the agricultural reserve. County officials estimate that the reserve contributes about $250 million annually to the county's economy.

Since 1980, the county has offered farmers incentives to not sell their land to developers. One incentive program allows landowners to sell builders transferable development rights that can be used to construct housing units in other, more urban areas of the county rather than within the reserve. Officials have also restricted development in communities buffering the reserve, creating such areas as rural cluster zones, where housing is restricted to one unit per five acres.

As she conducted a tour of the sanctuary on a recent day, Cummings compared Montgomery's upcounty skyline with that of Loudoun County's across the Potomac River.

"There's a lot of history here," she told the small group of downcounty residents who also visited several farms and orchards. Then she pointed to the view across the river. "Unfortunately, now we have to look at those high-rises."

Perry Kapsch, second vice president of the Historic Medley District, a nonprofit group that focuses on preserving open
space in western Montgomery County, said part of the problem is that many county residents do not know of the reserve's existence or of its goals.

It's not just churches that are taking up space in the reserve. Some large homes have been built on big lots, making it difficult to have contiguous farmland.

Also, talk of a "techway" bridge linking Montgomery to Northern Virginia through the reserve has never completely gone away. The decision by the state to build the Intercounty Connector from Gaithersburg to Laurel through the eastern part of the county has intensified some northern Montgomery residents' fears of an outer Beltway, even though county officials have rejected such proposals in the past and say they have no plans to change their stance.

Then there's the farming industry itself. Though one of the goals of the reserve is to conserve land for food and fiber production, traditional farming has become less viable. As a result, horticultural businesses and farms that produce hay for the growing equine industry are taking up more space in the reserve, officials said.

Criss said the county is trying to embrace nontraditional forms of farming because they contribute to the economy, but zoning laws require such businesses to apply for special permission to operate in the reserve. "It's a process that is very expensive, very [time-consuming] and highly uncertain," he said.

As a result, county officials have worked to ease restrictions on such enterprises as equestrian facilities and horticultural businesses.

The other images on the map -- a horse nuzzling the ground, a farmer on a green tractor, two sheep taking a stroll -- all came from real people and animals she spotted as she rode her bike around the reserve, her home for about six years.

"Everyone who lives here, and a lot who don't, understand what we have here," she said. "It's a legacy."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Map of Montgomery County Ag Preserve (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 4.3 MB)

[From Jim Karlock's posting in the P-A-D Yahoo! group. Jim, thanks for sharing this!

Thanks also to Richard Page and John Charles of Cascade Policy Institute for doing this analysis.]

From: Jim Karlock < >
Date: Thu Aug 4, 2005 6:45 pm
Subject: Portland's Global Warming mistake

Cascade Policy Institute looked at the Portland Office of Sustainability's report on reducing co2 emissions, Global Warming Progress Report, and found serious flaws in the report.

Further the writer admitted a serious error in the data.

Here are the web links:
letter OSD sent admitting their error (Adobe Acrobat .pdf format, 410 KB)
Cascade Policy's analysis of their methodology (MS Word .doc format, 27 KB)

Thanks
JK

The last time light rail was on the ballot in Portland, every single suburb of Portland voted against it except one: Lake Oswego, possibly the wealthiest suburb in the region. Curiously, transit planners had no plans for running a rail line into Lake Oswego. It is almost as if suburbanites were saying, "Rail is okay for someone else, but not for me."

This isn't as strange as it sounds. When planning the downtown rail route, downtown businesses all said they want rail but NOT on their streets. Numerous businesses said, "If you build rail on our street, we will move out of downtown." Why? Because experience had shown that their business dries up during construction and, because they lose parking, it doesn't come back afterwards.

Now planners are looking at extending a streetcar line into Lake Oswego. Traffic on the route between Portland and Lake Oswego is expected to increase by 25 percent in the next twenty years. No one who lives in the real world could possibly imagine that a 15-mile-per-hour trolley line would make a dent in that 25 percent, but Portland rail planners don't live in the real world.

Yet they have hit a snag: Lake Oswego residents are not thrilled about the idea of a rail line in their backyards. The route is right along the Willamette River. While the rails have never been torn up, it has seen no trains for the past thirty years other than a three-times-a-day vintage trolley (powered by Diesel) from May through October. People accustomed to thinking of their homes as "riverfront property" don't like the idea of drug dealers, burglers seeking funds for meth, and other typical rail travelers passing through their yards every fifteen minutes all day and all evening long.

Maybe they should have thought of that before they voted for rail transit.

NYTimes.COM

August 3, 2005
$100 Million for a Tunnel. What Tunnel?
By SEWELL CHAN

Quotes:

Hours after the House of Representatives approved a big transportation bill on Friday morning, Representative Jerrold L. Nadler informed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey that it would get a $100 million federal grant to design and engineer a freight tunnel under New York Harbor.

Usually, news of such largesse would be cause for celebration. But the Port Authority did not ask for the $100 million, says it did not know about the grant, and is not very interested in the project.

"For us to say that we're committed at this point in time and can commit any funds to it would be premature," the authority's executive director, Kenneth J. Ringler Jr., said this week.

The unusual circumstances surrounding the $100 million grant - which dwarfs all other individual appropriations for New York - reveal much about the peculiarities of federal transportation spending, in which huge appropriations are approved every few years in a manner that some deride as a pork opportunity for individual lawmakers.

In contrast to other projects in the $286.4 billion transportation spending bill, the cross-harbor tunnel is viewed by many planners as a worthy endeavor that could sharply reduce traffic congestion, reduce air pollution and improve the movement of goods throughout the region.

But no agency has agreed to build the tunnel, which could cost $4.8 billion to $7.4 billion, depending on its width. Under the most optimistic estimates, construction would begin in 2009 and last at least four years.

To complicate matters, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, in a sharp reversal, has come out against the project, citing the objections of residents in and around Maspeth, Queens, where a freight terminal would be built.

The tunnel has been the dream of Mr. Nadler, one of the most prominent Democrats on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and it would run from Jersey City, N.J., to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. From there, trains would continue on to Queens using existing tracks that connect with the Long Island Rail Road and CSX, the giant freight railroad.

NYTimes.com

August 3, 2005
California Air Is Cleaner, but Troubles Remain
By FELICITY BARRINGER

Quotes:

TOPANGA STATE PARK, Calif. - On many days, a hiker on the Temescal Ridge trail above the Pacific Ocean, 30 to 50 miles west of the San Gabriel Mountains, can trace the snowy ridges and the thin, brown lines of canyons with the naked eye. Three decades ago, an entire summer could pass before homeowners just five miles from the mountains could see the peaks.

Kyle Eden, a varsity tennis player in Glendora High School below the San Gabriels, has never had a match called for smog, as his father, Rudy, did in the 1970's.

Bob Wyman, a lawyer, no longer pants for air after running as he did in his childhood.

Visitors like Leon Billings, who shaped the Clean Air Act as a senior Senate staff member, do not have to pull off the freeways and wait for their eyes to stop tearing.

"Smog had a palpable impact on our daily lives," Mr. Wyman said. "I'm 51. I'm not sure how conscious most people are of this."

In the last half-century, the urgent need to scrub clean the filthiest air in the country has reshaped the region's politics, turned obscure agencies into regulatory behemoths and made Los Angeles an international leader in its hard-won expertise.

But for all this achievement, success - consistently healthy air for all 16 million Southern Californians - remains out of reach.

washingtonpost.com
Va. Rail Plan Exempted From New Guideline
Language in Federal Bill Benefits Tysons Project

By Peter Whoriskey
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 2, 2005; B01

Quotes:

The project to extend Metrorail through Tysons Corner would be exempt from new federal cost standards under the transportation bill Congress passed last week, effectively removing a key guideline it would have flunked.

The exemption, tucked into the 321-page legislation, allows the controversial project to win federal funding despite scoring
only a "medium low" rating for cost-effectiveness. A recent change in federal standards called for projects to receive a cost-effectiveness rating of "medium" or better.

"It means we don't have to meet the new criteria," said Marcia McAllister, a spokeswoman for the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project, an arm of the state government. "The same rules for cost-effectiveness that we were subject to last year continue to apply."

Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.) inserted the provision. "This is not an exemption to cost-effectiveness standards," said his spokesman, John Ullyot. "Senator Warner wanted to make sure that the rules were not changed on us in the home stretch."

Three other rail projects, in Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Oregon, won the same exemption.

Critics of the project, now estimated to cost as much as $2.4 billion, said the exemption allows an unworthy project to win federal money.

As one of the most expensive proposed rail lines in the country, the Tysons project has been the focus of an almost philosophical battle over the competing virtues of road and rail projects.

"It's outrageous," said William Vincent, who supports a bus rapid transit connection over rail. "Those cost-effectiveness standards are in place to protect the taxpayers from waste and abuse. The exemption is an admission that this project is wasteful."

Please see the NoTollIncrease.com Web site for more details pertaining to the Dulles Rail project and related toll increases.

In a 40 to 19 vote, the Oregon House of Representatives agreed to protect private property from the use of eminent domain for private economic development. Oregonians in Action, the group that put measure 37 on the ballot last year, said it would petition to put this measure on the ballot next year if the legislature didn't pass it.

The measure will not have as much of an effect in Oregon as in California or other states, as Oregon cities and counties have not been as aggressive with eminent domain as other places. Instead, they prefer to use high-restrictive zoning and subsidies to obtain the kind of development planners prefer. Still, it shows the growth in support for property rights stemming from the Kelo decision, as the Oregon legislature would never previously have passed such a measure by such a wide margin.

A last-minute insertion into the federal transportation reauthorization bill exempts four loser rail transit projects from Federal Transit Administration cost-effectiveness criteria. Earlier this year, the Federal Transit Administration proposed to give a "not recommended" rating to any transit project that received less than a "medium" cost-effectiveness rating. In effect, this meant that no funding would be available for projects that cost a lot of money for each new transit rider they gained.

Many projects were threatened by this decision, but Congress decided to exempt only four:

• Dulles rail;
• San Francisco Third Avenue light rail;
• San Jose Silicon Valley light rail; and
• Portland's Wilsonville-to-Beaverton commuter rail.

Of course, these are all big losers:

• The Dulles extension of DC's Metro Rail received a "recommended" rating from FTA when it was expected to cost $1.5 billion and gain 15,000 new daily riders, but huge cost overruns led to a fall-off in performance;
• San Francisco is proposing to spend nearly $1 billion on a line that is a mere 1.7 miles long;
• The agency building the Silicon Valley light rail is nearly broke and doesn't even have the funds to run this billion-dollar rail line;
• The Portland commuter-rail line has a low cost-effectiveness rating because it is expected to attract only 1,900 new riders per day.

Ironically, the FTA introduced this new criterion after the House Appropriations Committee criticized the agency in late 2004 for its lousy cost-effectiveness rating system. Of course, the members of Congress who inserted these exemptions--and we can only guess who they are--were probably not among the majority of the committee that made this criticism.

The above link goes to a PDF document that contains a portion of the federal legislation. The exemptions are on the bottom of page 123 ("(f) Adjustments") to the top of page 124.