Friday, September 02, 2005
Should government regulate starter castles?
In a suburb of Salt Lake City, someone who owns a 5,765-square-foot home is angry because their neighbor is building an 11,258-square-foot home that is just ten feet from their property boundary. The homes are on lots of about two-thirds of an acre.
In response, the city in which they live has passed an ordinance requiring that starter castles have graduated heights. At ten feet from a property boundary, the home can be no more than 15 feet tall. The second story must be recessed back from that by ten more feet (I'm guessing; the article doesn't say).
Why can't everyone be happy living in a 700-square-foot apartment on a transit line?
In response, the city in which they live has passed an ordinance requiring that starter castles have graduated heights. At ten feet from a property boundary, the home can be no more than 15 feet tall. The second story must be recessed back from that by ten more feet (I'm guessing; the article doesn't say).
Why can't everyone be happy living in a 700-square-foot apartment on a transit line?
New Orleans disaster due to lack of automobiles
Why do natural disasters cause such serious problems in developing countries when those problems tend to be relatively minor in developed countries? And why is New Orleans suffering so badly when it is in a developed country? The simple answer to both these questions is automobility.
Automobiles allow people to quickly evacuate prior to a disaster given minimal warning. After the event, auto owners in damaged areas can retreat to other areas that have sanitation and other support. But those lacking automobiles have a difficult time getting away from the disaster area.
New Orleans has a higher percentage of people who don't own automobiles than most U.S. urban areas. Moreover, as the above link to Census Bureau data shows, these are disproportionately black. Nearly two thirds of auto-less households in New Orleans are black, while less than a third are white. (Other races make up about 5 percent.)
Nearly a quarter of black households in the New Orleans urban area do not own an automobile. These are the ones who were left behind to fend for themselves. By comparison, more than 90 percent of white households own at least one automobile and were easily able to evacuate prior to the hurricane.
As I have pointed out in public debates, it would be less expensive (and more useful) to give every poor family a free automobile than it is to build rail transit in an urban area. I shudder when I think that the usual response from rail advocates is, "We can't let poor people have cars. That would cause too much congestion." As the soviets knew, the solution to congestion is poverty. And if they don't care what happens to poor people, then what is happening in New Orleans shouldn't bother smart-growth advocates.
Automobiles allow people to quickly evacuate prior to a disaster given minimal warning. After the event, auto owners in damaged areas can retreat to other areas that have sanitation and other support. But those lacking automobiles have a difficult time getting away from the disaster area.
New Orleans has a higher percentage of people who don't own automobiles than most U.S. urban areas. Moreover, as the above link to Census Bureau data shows, these are disproportionately black. Nearly two thirds of auto-less households in New Orleans are black, while less than a third are white. (Other races make up about 5 percent.)
Nearly a quarter of black households in the New Orleans urban area do not own an automobile. These are the ones who were left behind to fend for themselves. By comparison, more than 90 percent of white households own at least one automobile and were easily able to evacuate prior to the hurricane.
As I have pointed out in public debates, it would be less expensive (and more useful) to give every poor family a free automobile than it is to build rail transit in an urban area. I shudder when I think that the usual response from rail advocates is, "We can't let poor people have cars. That would cause too much congestion." As the soviets knew, the solution to congestion is poverty. And if they don't care what happens to poor people, then what is happening in New Orleans shouldn't bother smart-growth advocates.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Local builder benefits from UGB
A local home builder says Portland's urban-growth boundary "has really been our friend." The boundary has reduced competition for home construction by keeping out major home building companies that compete in other regions.
Nor is the builder worried about a housing bubble. "The fact that we have an urban growth boundary limits the supply of housing," he says, so prices aren't likely to fall much when interest rates rise. That's his opinion: the owner of another home building company says "we are slowing down" because he expects the bubble to begin deflating any day now.
Of course, no one interviewed any consumers to see whether they are happy with the high housing prices created by the urban-growth boundary.
Nor is the builder worried about a housing bubble. "The fact that we have an urban growth boundary limits the supply of housing," he says, so prices aren't likely to fall much when interest rates rise. That's his opinion: the owner of another home building company says "we are slowing down" because he expects the bubble to begin deflating any day now.
Of course, no one interviewed any consumers to see whether they are happy with the high housing prices created by the urban-growth boundary.
More funding for "open space"?
A decade ago, Metro (Portland's regional planning agency) convinced voters to raise their property taxes to buy "parks and greenspaces." What they got for their money was a bunch of undeveloped land outside the urban-growth boundary aimed at helping to contain development. Most of the "parks" bought with the $135 million are unmarked and inaccessible.
Now Metro wants to extend the property tax another ten years. It says doing so will allow it to develop those parks. In fact, it will spend most of the funds buying new unmarked, inaccessible parks. Aside from whether Metro is really being honest with voters, it is immoral for planners to reduce people's property values by downzoning them and then to buy the land at reduced prices.
Now Metro wants to extend the property tax another ten years. It says doing so will allow it to develop those parks. In fact, it will spend most of the funds buying new unmarked, inaccessible parks. Aside from whether Metro is really being honest with voters, it is immoral for planners to reduce people's property values by downzoning them and then to buy the land at reduced prices.
Oregon DOT proposes toll roads
Except for a few bridges, Oregon hasn't had a toll road in more than a century. Now the Oregon Department of Transportation is proposing three public-private partnerships for new highway construction. One is for a bypass highway around the heavily congested communities of Newberg and Dundee in Oregon's wine-growing country. A second is for a new highway serving Damascus, currently a sleepy, pastoral area of very-low density development that Portland planners want to turn into a city of 75,000. The third proposal is for adding new lanes onto an existing freeway in the Portland area.
Oregon's constitution limits the use of gas taxes exclusively for highways, roads, and streets. But anti-auto transportation officials fritter much of the money away on useless studies and harmful traffic-calming (congestion-building) projects. Dissatisfied voters have rejected proposals to increase gas taxes, so tolls are needed to build new highways. Oregon drivers will probably accept tolls for new roads. However, if the state ends up diverting some of the tolls to inane rail transit or other wasteful projects, that acceptance will rapidly decline.
The state received two proposals on the Newberg-Dundee road, one from Bechtel and one from an Australian toll roads company known as the Macquarie Group (which also recently bought the Dulles toll road, as indicated elsewhere on this news page). Macquarie also submitted a proposal on the other two roads. The proposals will be accepted or rejected in October.
Oregon's constitution limits the use of gas taxes exclusively for highways, roads, and streets. But anti-auto transportation officials fritter much of the money away on useless studies and harmful traffic-calming (congestion-building) projects. Dissatisfied voters have rejected proposals to increase gas taxes, so tolls are needed to build new highways. Oregon drivers will probably accept tolls for new roads. However, if the state ends up diverting some of the tolls to inane rail transit or other wasteful projects, that acceptance will rapidly decline.
The state received two proposals on the Newberg-Dundee road, one from Bechtel and one from an Australian toll roads company known as the Macquarie Group (which also recently bought the Dulles toll road, as indicated elsewhere on this news page). Macquarie also submitted a proposal on the other two roads. The proposals will be accepted or rejected in October.
Sunday, August 28, 2005
Urban sprawl is a hoax
Worries about urban sprawl are a "valiant marketing effort," says writer Christopher Falvey, but "humans still take up a minuscule amount of the planet." Even if our population grew to fifteen times its current size, it would still be "basically infinitesimal."
Falvey has a web site that endorses, among other things, free-market environmentalism. But his article on urban sprawl was picked up in the August 28th Sunday Oregonian, which is pretty amazing since the paper usually endorses the war on sprawl. In fact, it gave the article the entire top half of section B, Commentary.
Curiously, the Oregonian did not see fit to post the article on its web site. Instead, the site just mentioned that Falvey was reviewing a "new book, 'One Planet Many People,' with stunning satellite images showing 'before' and 'after' photos of man's impact on the world -- logging, farming, cities -- (that) is sadly revealing. Writer Christopher J. Falvey says environmentalists dwell on the miniscule rather than take a global view" (scroll down to "Commentary").
In other words, the web page obscured and almost completely turned around Falvey's message. But at least the print version is out there.
Falvey has a web site that endorses, among other things, free-market environmentalism. But his article on urban sprawl was picked up in the August 28th Sunday Oregonian, which is pretty amazing since the paper usually endorses the war on sprawl. In fact, it gave the article the entire top half of section B, Commentary.
Curiously, the Oregonian did not see fit to post the article on its web site. Instead, the site just mentioned that Falvey was reviewing a "new book, 'One Planet Many People,' with stunning satellite images showing 'before' and 'after' photos of man's impact on the world -- logging, farming, cities -- (that) is sadly revealing. Writer Christopher J. Falvey says environmentalists dwell on the miniscule rather than take a global view" (scroll down to "Commentary").
In other words, the web page obscured and almost completely turned around Falvey's message. But at least the print version is out there.
TOLLROADSnews: S&P continues critique of forecasts - update finds further faults
2005.08.25
FORECASTING
S&P continues critique of forecasts - update finds further faults
First few paragraphs:
[see URL above for more]
FORECASTING
S&P continues critique of forecasts - update finds further faults
First few paragraphs:
Bond rater Standard & Poors (S&P) continue to find serious fault in the forecasts for new pikes. A report on an extension of their database of forecasts shows no sign of improvement and casts doubt on the notion that forecasts improve significantly a few years out from startup.
"Optimism bias - overforecasting asset use - and error remain prevalent," they conclude.
The average outcome for first year traffic in S&P's sample of 104 projects is 0.77 of forecast. That is: a prudent reader of forecasts will on average get a better view of prospective traffic by immediately multiplying any forecaster's figures by 0.77 - discounting 23% of the traffic number.
This is the basis for S&P's harsh conclusion that forecasting presently has a "systemic tendency toward optimism bias."
And the standard deviation is quite large at 0.26 - the same as a year ago - so great uncertainty will remain about any particular forecast after correcting for systemic bias.
Not just ramp-up problem
The past few years have seen forecasters saying they think the problem has been misestimation of 'ramp up'. The implication has been that although the first year traffic forecast is uncertain the forecasts improve for subsequent years - once the facility has matured and had time to develop a clientele the forecasts look better. (We've subscribed to that view.)
It was true, near here, of the Dulles Greenway Dulles-Leesburg VA. It was woefully off forecast in its first 2 to 3 years but came
good and now 10 years later is very much on the track of the original Vollmer forecasts. That forecast was characterized as a 'ramp-up' estimation problem.
However if ramp-up is the most troublesome aspect of forecasting, then forecasts should on average look better as the years pass.
There's a tiny hint of this in the S&P data. The average traffic/forecast ratio rises just a little for each year: Yr1 0.77, Yr2 0.78, Yr3 0.79, Yr 4 0.80, Yr5 0.79. But the improvement is small and S&P analysts dismiss it as statistically insignificant.
Looking at the graphs of traffic/forecast for a bunch of projects there does seem to be a generally rising trend for all but a handful. Those handful drop precipitately after exceeding year 1 forecast and are enough to virtually wipe out the gains of the larger number of forecasts showing an improving performance over 5 years.
S&P report however: "If actual traffic performance had systematically improved over time (in comparison with their respective forecasts) a general upward trend in the ratio of actual to forecast traffic to more than 1.0 would be observed over time. It is not. Instead, a mixed picture emerges, with a number of case studies failing to match their forecasts by Year 5 or, in some cases, beyond. Clearly some caution is required at this stage, because our sample size prohibits the drawing of definitive conclusions. This preliminary analysis, however, suggests that there is no automatic improvement in traffic forecasting accuracy after Year 1. The extent of optimism bias and error in the case study traffic forecasts from Years 2 to 5 is similar to that observed for Year 1 data... (N)either the mean of the distribution nor its standard deviation alter significantly during the first five years of operations."
Their data for the out years are pretty limited. Of the 104 case studies only 41 go back 5 years or more, and 71 back 4 years or more. So in our view they have not entirely demolished the notion that a good bit of the forecasting error is in the ramp-up period.
[see URL above for more]
