American Dream

If you have not paid a visit to Wendell Cox's Urban Tours by Rental Car, I suggest you do. Many informative and entertaining rental car tours from around the globe.

Here's a report from his recent rental car tour of Warsaw, Poland:

The street sign says it all. The corner of Solidarity and Jean-Paul II. It would be fitting if the previous street names were Marx and Lenin. Even more fitting would be a corner of Thatcher and Reagan, but I did not see that. But Poland’s long night is over and the nation is now in the European Union and showing the kind of prosperity that free markets create.

And the brief itself, with some fine photographs:

WARSAW: RISING LIKE A PHOENIX OUT OF PLANNING
(Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 1.01 MB)

District moves to build $500M, 1,400-room hotel

Michael Neibauer, The Examiner
March 10, 2006 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON -

With the Washington Nationals stadium no longer a legislative issue, the District is moving forward with plans for another major economic development project that will require a massive investment and perhaps the use of eminent domain powers.

D.C. Council Chairman Linda Cropp, at the behest of Mayor Anthony Williams, introduced legislation this week that would launch construction of a new 1,400-room, $500 million hotel adjacent to the Convention Center. The bill calls for the city to issue $187 million in bonds to pay for the hotel as well as expanded convention center ballroom and meeting space.

[snipped]

The bill describes the hotel as a “municipal use” that is in the best interest of citizens — language necessary to facilitate the
use of eminent domain powers. But with only a few parcels still needed, the District hopes not to use them, Morris said.


Just one question, if I may. Why is the D.C. Government going in to the hotel business?

Northwest chain-store Fred Meyer, which invented the Supercenter concept long before Sam Walton got into retail, has been a strong supporter of Portland's anti-big box store policies. The reason is simple: Fred Meyer has two dozen big-box stores in the Portland area, while Wal-Mart has only two, neither of them Supercenters (meaning they don't sell groceries).

Now Fred Meyer has applied to build a new "one-stop-shopping-center" (which is what the late Mr. Meyer called his combinations of food and variety stores) in Beaverton. But planners turned it down, saying it was "not a good fit" with the area. According to planners, a large store surrounded by parking lots "would not encourage neighbors to congregate as a community."

I guess it isn't good enough to offer low prices and a huge variety of products (Fred Meyer advertises that its stores carry 225,000 different items). You also have to promote a sense of community. Of course, as every planner knows, the way to do that is to have your stores front on the sidewalk, not on a parking lot, because all real members of a community walk to their shopping. I wonder what fantasyland those planners live in.

Planners added that their goal for this particular site was to have a "town center" that would serve people in that neighborhood. The Fred Meyer proposal, they were afraid, would attract people from out of the area. Wal-Mart is already planning a regional store in the city, planners said, and they didn't think more than one would be needed. So Fred Meyer gets hung up by the planning rules it once supported.

2006.03.09
THE REDNECK THREAT
HR4881 - overseas investment in US infrastructure to be banned?

In the wake of the Dubai Ports fuss all kinds of bills are being tabled in the Congress restricting foreign ownership. Brian Chase of the Nossaman law firm thinks one at least could restrict international investment in highways - HR4881 titled the National Defense Critical Infrastructure Protection Act of 2006. It is sponsored by Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif). HR4881 would prevent non-US corporations from owning, operating or managing any system or asset included on a new national defense critical infrastructure list. The list would be developed by the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security.

See also:
Port Firm Says Sale Can't Hurt Security

Dubai Firm to Sell U.S. Port Operations

[Op-Ed] Burning Allies -- and Ourselves

[Opinion] Happy Now?

[Opinion] An ally bows out

DP World and U.S. Trade: A Zero-Sum Game

DP World's decision yesterday to transfer a handful of American port terminals, rather than chilling interest in investing in the United States, may actually have made it safer for foreigners by relieving some of the political pressure that was building up against them.

But as part of a pattern of other antiforeign actions in Washington, fears remain that the United States is becoming a less welcoming place for investment from overseas.

Metro Tightens Belt on Board Member Lunches

By Lena H. Sun
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 9, 2006; B02

Flame-seared salmon swimming in tarragon caper cream sauce. Grilled rosemary rubbed lamb chops. Mojo Memphis barbecue fillets.

A new restaurant in downtown Washington? No. This is what lunches used to be like in the second-floor Metro boardroom, where board members dine during executive sessions most Thursdays after their morning meetings.

The weekly lunches are for 15 people (12 board members and three senior staff members) and average $400 to $500, according to 2005
menus provided by Metro. The budgeted amount is $20,000 annually; last year, the lunches cost the agency just over $15,000.

The page below (brand-new in March, 2006) is devoted to a history of the Virginia Department of Transportation and the agencies that preceeded it. The year 2006 marks the 100th year of a state agency devoted to transportation in the Commonwealth (the State Highway Commission was formed on March 6, 1906).

Please note that this site is superb (many great photos) with broadband - but may not be as good on a dial-up link!

VDOT is celebrating 100 years of excellence.

For those that are interested in learning more about Virginia's transportation system (and that of nearby states), please visit Scott Kozel's thoroughly enjoyable Roads to the Future site.

Panel seeks eminent domain bill
Legislation came forth after justices allowed use for development

BY GREG EDWARDS
TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER

Mar 8, 2006

Two very different bills aimed at curbing the use of government condemnation power are headed for a General Assembly conference committee.

The eminent-domain bills, sponsored by two Virginia Beach Republicans, Sen. Kenneth W. Stolle and Del. Terrie L. Suit, started through the legislature as very different proposals.

Stolle's bill, only 15 lines long, said simply that the condemnation of private property for the "primary purpose" of economic development was not a public use allowed by the Virginia Constitution.

Suit's bill, which stretched to 79 lines, sought to limit condemnation while allowing its existing use for such things as blight removal and building utility lines and roads.

At MARC, a Snapshot of Post-9/11 Excess

By Marc Fisher
Sunday, February 26, 2006; C01

Preety Gadhoke isn't a famous artist. She's a graduate student in environmental health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. But she sees the world in ways she wants to express, and she's trying to do that through photography.

That's how she ran into the MARC police.

Gadhoke, 32, is taking the "Joy of Photography" course at the Smithsonian Resident Associate Program. One morning this month, after her teacher, Falls Church photographer Olive Rosen, assigned students to document a day in their lives, Gadhoke took her Nikon F10 to the Odenton MARC station near her home in Anne Arundel County. She took pictures of the starkly beautiful curved iron lampposts along the platform.

Ten minutes into her exercise, a police officer approached Gadhoke and asked what she was doing. She explained her assignment. The officer replied that three commuters and a train conductor had reported her for "suspicious activity." No one had said a word to Gadhoke.

See also this blog entry from Marc Fisher, author of the above words: Department of Photo Security--Redux.

Note that the police agencies mentioned in this story are not the same as the Maryland State Police (MSP), subject of my recent praise. Somehow, I don't believe that the MSP would normally want to spend their time investigating generally lawful activities such as photography.

ABC (that's the Australian Broadcasting Company) featured a debate between smart-growth planner Peter Newman and anti-planner Patrick Troy. Newman claims that people want to live in high densities and that is why we have to pass rules forcing them to do so. In fact, "80 percent of the population who live in houses want to stay in houses, and 85% of the population who live in flats want to live in houses," says Troy. "So the argument that there's a big demand there for people who want to live crushed up on top of one another is nonsense."

Newman argues that urban design will make people less "auto dependent" (he may have invented the term "auto dependency"). Troy responds that this is the "kind of basic physical determinism which went out with button boots."

Peter Newman is reputedly coming to the U.S. this spring to preach his anti-auto, anti-suburb message. This debate is a valuable introduction to his ideas and responses to them. The above link allows you to either listen to the debate or read a transcript.

The New York Times has a major feature on Harvard economist Edward Glaeser, whose work has shown that land-use regulation is responsible for high housing prices in California, Oregon, Florida, and other states that have used smart-growth planning. This is a great article that should be widely circulated.

Glaeser's work is featured on the American Dream Coalition's Guide to the American Dream CD, which, for just $5, offers hundreds of articles on housing, transportation, and land-use issues. But you don't have to spend $5 to read Glaeser's reports, because most of them are available on Professor Glaeser's web site.

The National Association of Realtors has issued a series of "anti-bubble reports" that provide talking points to realtors across the country who want to convince homebuyers that their investments are safe and sound. Individual reports are written for each metropolitan area in the country.

This wouldn't be so bad if the reports took a realistic look at each area, but instead they are almost carbon copies of one another. The report for Houston, which certainly has no bubble, is word-for-word nearly identical to the one for San Francisco, which has a huge bubble.

The reports both say that "the mortgage servicing cost relative to income" is "at a very manageable level." This is true for Houston, the report for which says that a median-income family could pay off a thirty-year mortgage on a median-priced home by dedicating just 10 percent of its income to the mortgage. But a family in the San Francisco metro area (which includes Marin and San Mateo counties) must spend 37 percent of its income on its mortgage. That is manageable?

The San Francisco report adds that home price appreciation was "weak" in the 1990s so recent price increases of 14 percent per year do not indicate a bubble; prices are just "catching up." Yet San Francisco prices are three times the national average, so what are they catching up to?

The biggest howler is the claim that "home price declines are very rare." Hardly. The FDIC has identified numerous housing busts across the country in the last few decades. One of the biggest ones was in San Francisco, which saw prices fall by about 20 percent from 1989 to 1994. (That's what the realtor association means by "weak" price appreciation.)

It is considered unethical if not illegal for stock brokers to advise clients that prices are going up and they should buy when the brokers know prices are more likely to fall. It should be the same for realtors. Reputable analysts such as PMI and HSBC Bank say there is a high probability that housing prices in places like Boston and San Francisco will fall in the near future. Yet the realtor association writes that "there is little danger of this" and goes on to claim that "the local housing market is in excellent shape with a
potential for significant housing equity gains."

Instead of acting like bubble deniers, the National Association of Realtors should figure out what is causing the bubbles -- government regulation -- and fight it. For more about this, see the article on Edward Glaeser above.

There may be an obesity epidemic, but those who think it is caused by the suburbs need to explain a couple of things. First, why is the U.S. suffering such an epidemic now, decades after we suburbanized? And second, why are countries in Central and South America also suffering such an epidemic now, well before they have suburbanized?

A new report on childhood obesity estimates that a third of the children in both North and South America are obese. Like previous reports, however, this report is more alarmist than realistic. It does not introduce any new data but makes projections that obesity rates will exceed 50 percent by 2010. The people who wrote the report simply looked at historic estimates of obesity rates and made a straight-line projection into the future.

Part of the problem with this is that the historic estimates themselves were alarmist. The obesity industry consists of researchers and activists who get federal funding to deal with obesity, and it is in this industry's interest to claim that rates are increasing. The claims are based on telephone surveys and other flimsy data.

To the extent that there has been an increase in childhood obesity, it is probably due to some one-time social change and so is not a trend that can be projected into the future. I suspect that children simply are not exercising as much as they used to, partly because many elementary and high schools no longer require gym classes and partly because helicopter moms won't let their children out of their sight.

Personnel from Aviation Command of the Maryland State Police pulled off a spectacular rescue this past weekend in Moundsville, West Virginia.

Baltimore Sun: From 1,000 feet high, only way down was up - State police copter plucks 3 from fiery smokestack

Maryland State Police Aviation Command on the Web

In all seriousness, we frequently hear demands for dedicated [taxpayer] funding to pay for this and that. In Maryland, Aviation Command is funded by a fee that's paid every time that motorists renew vehicle registrations - in other words, a dedicated tax. Since many of the people that get treated by Maryland State Police flight medics and transported by the MSP helicopters are victims of highway crashes, this is a direct benefit to users of the highway system - notwithstanding the non-highway rescues (such as this one!) that they also perform.

And for the record, I live in Maryland, but I've never worked for the MSP.

From the Los Angeles Times

A Battle for the High Ground

In the hills of northeast L.A., debate flares over property rights and preserving open space.

By Jim Newton
Times Staff Writer

March 7, 2006

The hills north and east of downtown Los Angeles are a mishmash of small homes, narrow streets, hidden valleys and long views. A few have streetlights; others go dark at night, quiet swatches of countryside less than 10 miles from City Hall. Some of the city's last big undeveloped parcels — places like Flat-Top, Mt. Olympus, Rose Hill, Paradise Hill — frame the horizon.

Now those inviting green spaces have become the staging ground in a bitter, protracted dispute, with distinct class and racial overtones, that is a microcosm of the exploding development struggles across Los Angeles.

Each side has its devoted advocates. There is Clare Marter Kenyon, a librarian with a soft British accent and a keen determination to protect plants and wildlife from encroaching development; when she drives around El Sereno, she sees the stumps of felled California black walnuts and winces. There is James Rojas, an urban planner who lives downtown but covets the relief of the open spaces and is closely allied with Kenyon. "West L.A.," he said, "has their ocean. We have our hillsides." And there is Tomas Osinski, a Polish emigre and architect with a critical eye, an adamant belief in the rights of property owners and an intolerance for government hypocrisy.

The specifics of their fight are the hillside and building regulations of northeast Los Angeles. Some want emergency rules to slow development while the neighborhoods devise long-term guidelines for growth. Others contend those proposed rules represent a vast overreaction and threaten to rob homeowners of their investments for no good reason.

[snipped]

When he learned of the interim control ordinance, Osinski was infuriated by its sweep, by its strict limits on floor space and grading, by the proliferation of well-intentioned but clunky design rules. Those rules, he says, discourage innovative architecture and substitute the aesthetic preferences of City Hall politicians and bureaucrats for homeowners who invest in their land and property. City rules regulate retaining walls, setbacks and building height in ways that discourage some excesses but also limit creative design, he noted. Height limits, for instance, regulate the overall distance between the peak and foot of a home. That prevents the construction of buildings that block neighbors' views but
also discourages modest terracing by limiting how far down a hillside a home may extend.

"We are mandated to design ugly buildings," he said.

Hey, I don't like to bash the idea of public transit, but the anti-auto people want everyone to sell their cars (or at least some of them) and become transit dependent. So far in the last few years we have seen New York, Los Angeles, and Minneapolis transit systems go on strike, to name a few, stranding numerous transit-dependent people.

Let's say Portland and other cities convince 10 percent of their suburban commuters to ride transit (unlikely, since the only urban transit system that has that kind of market share is New York's, and no where else in the U.S. has Manhattan's job concentrations), and stop building roads for auto drivers. Then the transit systems go on strike. If everyone has a spare car, they will jam the roads as badly as the people trying to escape from Hurricane Rita.

It makes more sense to build enough roads for the cars people are going to inevitably drive and design our transit systems to serve people who are truly transit dependent and people who would prefer transit and are willing to live in dense inner cities to enjoy that preference. That means lots of inner-city buses and a few suburban bus routes, not expensive rail transit lines that will run empty most of the day.

Automotive Help wanted!
Richmond Times-Dispatch
Tuesday, March 7, 2006

A survey in January by Automotive Retailing Today, an auto-dealer trade association, found 37,329 service jobs open in the United States, 8,461 of them in the Southeast.

And that's just at auto dealerships, said Denise Patton-Pace, the association's director. Many more jobs are open at independent auto-repair shops and with companies operating fleets of cars and trucks.

Lobbyists, Earmarks, and Congressional Reform
by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D.
WebMemo #1008

Because of the regrettable actions of a few, Congress is now considering significant reforms that would curb the influence of lobbyists and discourage the use of wasteful earmarks. Several Members of Congress have introduced legislation, but most of it would make only cosmetic changes to the earmarking process and would leave the lobbying community untouched.

Two notable exceptions are pieces of legislation introduced by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) that would require extensive reporting and
transparency of the entire lobbying/earmark process and provide a remedy against some of the more wasteful earmarks included in appropriations bills. Enactment of these two bills would deter some of the more outrageous lobbying and legislative practices related to earmarks.

Washington Post: Va. House Panel Rejects Metro Funding Bill

Washington Times: Virginia kills Metro funding

Falls Church News-Press: Snyder Lashes Out at House Committee 'Travesty' in Quashing Metro Tax Plan

As if Portland's bicyclist-killing, er, traffic-calming programs weren't enough, Portland's transit agency, Tri-Met, wants to put light rail through the downtown transit mall in spite of claims that it will make the mall far more dangerous to pedestrians.

"It's just too dangerous," says Pete Taylor, who trains Tri-Met bus drivers. "It sets up my operators for accidents." But Tri-Met and the city have ignored a recommendation to do a detailed study of pedestrian safety.

Tri-Met's solution is to "control" pedestrian movements with fences, flashing lights, and other tools to "channel" people in certain directions. It also has plans to blame all accidents on the pedestrians.

But that won't stop collisions between light-rail cars and buses, each of which will have to weave in and out among the light-rail vehicles more than a dozen times each time they travel through the mall. A single collision could shut down the mall for both buses and light rail, leading to delays throughout the transit system.

Tri-Met is comfortably ignoring all these concerns. It knows that the real purpose of transit in Portland is not to serve the transit riders but to provide juicy contracts for engineering and construction firms that make contributions to all the right political campaigns.

Long-time Portland political writer Phil Stanford points out that there is a power struggle going on in Portland between the Neil Goldschmidt crowd, which has arranged and benefitted from all of these transit projects and associated real-estate deals, and a new group consisting largely of public employee unions. It does not sound like the taxpayers are going to win either way, but it appears that the bus drivers' union, at least, has a better sense of safety than the Goldschmidt minions who run Tri-Met.

City appeals ruling requiring BDC to go public
Court decision in Jan. found that agency subject to open-government laws
By John Fritze
Sun Reporter
Originally published March 6, 2006, 4:32 PM EST

In an effort to shield city development deals from the state's open meetings and public records laws, Baltimore attorneys appealed a decision today that would have required the Baltimore Development Corp. to open its books to the public.

City attorneys asked Maryland's Court of Appeals to overturn the decision of a lower court, made in January, that required the city development corporation to be treated as a public entity, subject to open-government laws.

The case could have a broad effect on how the development entity conducts its business. Last year, the agency negotiated the building of a $305 million convention hotel -- paid for with city bonds -- largely in secret.

In a decision filed Jan. 24, the Court of Special Appeals found that the connection between City Hall and corporation's board was too close to suggest that BDC is a separate entity. And in debatable cases, the decision said, the law requires government to err on the side of openness.

2006.03.03
PENNSYLVANIA
Mon-Fayette & Southern Beltway PA might be built with concessions

America's most expensive tollroad development - the MonFayette Expressway and Southern Beltway in southwest Pennsylvania - might be completed through investor toll concessions. Joe Brimmeier chief executive of the Pennsylvania Turnpike confirmed a Pittsburgh Post Gazette report that he has had discussions with Macquarie about the feasibility of completing the projects as a toll concession.

Brimmeier is quoted this morning: "Yes, in light of public funding drying up, we are researching ways to fund unfinished portions of the roads."

The meeting Jan 18 at the Turnpike offices in Harrisburg clearly was exploratory.

It was initiated by Macquarie, and have now been terminated by Brimmeier. The matter has not been discussed by the Turnpike Commission, the governing board.

In One Ear, Out the Other for D.C. Drivers
Thousands Ticketed for Cell Phone Use, but Many Still Ignore Law

By Sue Anne Pressley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 3, 2006; A01

It's the law that nearly everyone supports -- and nearly everyone ignores. In the year and a half since the District began restricting drivers' cell phone use, police say they have issued thousands of tickets to violators. But for every driver silenced with a $100 fine, many others are still out there talking on hand-held phones, casually disregarding the law.

From the Washington Post

Sunday, March 5, 2006; A01

Selected quotes:

- One woman's oxygen tank ran out because she waited so long.

- A blind man's ride for a crucial medical appointment never came.

- A mentally disabled young man was left standing in the cold outside his locked day center for 20 minutes.

- The public transportation system that serves thousands of disabled and elderly people in the Washington region is the subject of a record number of complaints from riders, public hearings and a federal lawsuit.

- For the able-bodied, the repercussions of the service problems may be hard to imagine. But for the people who rely on the MetroAccess service to reach medical care, jobs, school and grocery stores, the stakes are extraordinary. Eighty-three percent of the trips are for medical appointments. What happens when a disabled person can't reach the doctor?

Light rail for Missoula area up for discussion in June

MISSOULA The possibility of a light rail system for the Missoula area will be discussed in the city this June, by a rail specialist from California.