American Dream

As N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman puts it, much of New York is part of what he calls the "zoned zone." That would include the communities mentioned in this article.

With His Mate Wounded, George Tends the Nest
Female Eagle Rescued After Attack Near Wilson Bridge

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 7, 2006; B01

A grim drama is playing out at a longtime bald eagle nest near the Woodrow Wilson Bridge, with an uncertain ending for the chicks that are due to hatch there any day now.

A pair of eagles, nicknamed George and Martha by bridge construction workers, have set up housekeeping in Maryland within earshot of the bridge's traffic and construction cranes each year since 1999. Last month, the female laid at least two eggs, which the pair has taken turns incubating. If all goes well, the chicks will hatch this week.

But Martha was attacked in midair Wednesday by another eagle, probably a female seeking to take over her turf. The eagle population has boomed in the Chesapeake Bay region in recent years, and the competition for real estate has grown fierce as available habitat has dwindled.



The Woodrow Wilson Bridge Project is reconstructing this vital Interstate crossing between Virginia and Maryland on the south side of Washington, D.C. The current 6-lane span will be replaced by two six-lane bridges. Environmental groups opposed this project long and hard, claiming, among other things, that the project would damage the bald eagle population (see this for an example).

UTAH, Salt Lake City - Paul Mero, president of the Sutherland Institute, said he is not opposed to planning, but he is opposed to aggressive planning (advocated by Envision Utah) that adds bureaucratic delays and costs to developers that are eventually passed to homebuyers. "Government regulation is being used to plan communities as opposed to the marketplace," Mero said. "If government would just provide oversight for health and safety matters and then let the marketplace handle the distribution of our communities and how they are laid out and set up, I think Utah would continue to be a marvelous place to live. But the more we try to appease environmentalism, all in the name of being 'smart,' I think we are headed down a track where Utah is not going to be the unique, livable place that it is today."

CALIFORNIA, Escondido – Eleven years after being forced to sell its property under a threat of eminent domain, the Redding family will finally get its land back for $596,000. “I wrestled with this issue for weeks,” Mayor Lori Holt Pfeiler said. “This is not a legal issue. We are not obligated to sell the property back to the family.” County Supervisor Pam Slater-Price weighed in on the debate last week, urging the city to sell the land back at the original purchase price of $345,000 plus property tax, because it was “taken under eminent domain.”

Natural Resources Defense Council - Sprawling land development is gobbling up the American countryside at an alarming rate of 365 acres per hour. In most communities the amount of developed land is growing faster than the population! This pattern of growth forces us to be overly dependent on automobiles, increasing the pollution and damage they cause. It also destroys farmland and open spaces and pollutes more. At the same time it contributes to a range of serious social problems. In response to these trends government has begun to develop smart-growth solutions to revitalize our cities, promote more compact and transit-oriented development, and conserve open space.

TENNESSEE, Chattanooga - Tennessee’s housing prices are rising faster than the national average. This may be a result of housing shortages caused by the state’s 1998 Growth Policy Act which limits annexations and municipal incorporations, while requiring counties and cities to define future growth areas in an attempt to reduce urban sprawl. Smart growth and other restrictive land-use rules create housing shortages that force homebuyers to pay tens of thousands of dollars more for homes, according to a new report from the Tennessee Center for Policy Research.

Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) has filed notice that it will sue the city of Portland if the city does not come up with an extra $10 million or so to finish the aerial tram that is to connect OHSU's hospital with the South Waterfront (So What) district. The university says that the city is obligated to complete the tram under an agreement reached in 2003. The city says it is obligated to complete the tram only if someone else puts up the money.

Portland blogger Bill McDonald observes that OHSU, as a semi-public institution, has obtained a cushy deal from the legislature allowing it to escape any more than $100,000 liability in the event of malpractice. Recently, for example, the hospital admitted negligence in a case that led a young boy to suffer permanent brain damage, but only had to pay the boy's family $100,000 in compensation, which is far less than it is costing to care for him. McDonald suggests that the city pay OSHU no more than $100,000 to complete the tram. (Many transit agencies enjoy similar liability limits, so I suppose if the tram ever fails, it too will enjoy limited liability.)

OHSU's president earns a salary of $600,000 a year, making him one of if not the highest paid public employee in Oregon. He lives in a mansion provided for him by the state, meaning he pays no property taxes on it, so won't have to worry about the increased taxes other Portland property owners will have to pay to cover the tax waivers, tax-increment financing, and other subsidies to the So What District and its aerial tram.

NORTH CAROLINA — The Raleigh City Council wants to raise impact fees on construction by 72 percent. Cities charge “impact fees” on residential construction to pay for the increased costs of growth on city services. But the rationale behind impact fees focuses only on the negative impact of growth and ignores the obvious other half of the equation: growth’s benefits.“New homes lead to higher property-tax revenues,” Sanera, JLF research director and local government analyst, said. “Converting old farmland with low property values to a subdivision with lots of new homes raises property values exponentially. Land that used to produce low property-tax revenues for the city now yields relatively high property-tax revenues.”The impact-fee report commissioned by the city ignores those benefits, Sanera argues. The report prepared by Duncan & Associates neglects to consider Raleigh’s increased tax revenues from home construction and ownership.“What Raleigh needed was a comprehensive economic analysis of growth,” Sanera said. “What Raleigh paid for was an unbalanced, one-sided look at the impact of growth. How can you gauge something’s real impact if you don’t examine its benefits along with its cost?”

North Carolina has some of the weakest constitutional protections for property rights in the country. Basically North Carolina has punted to the federal Constitution and federal judiciary on the issue of property rights. The NC House Select Committee on Eminent Domain Powers, has yet to seriously discuss or propose major reforms. In fact, both co-chairs reportedly are opposed to a constitutional amendment.

Gas Prices Up Sharply Ahead of Peak Season

By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 4, 2006; A01

High gasoline prices have had only a modest impact on the driving habits of American motorists, who have done relatively little to moderate their gasoline consumption. Ever since oil prices soared in September after Hurricane Katrina, gasoline consumption has been within 1.5 percent of the previous year -- some months lower, some months higher, according to figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Gasoline deliveries in January, barely lower than a year earlier, ran 13.3 percent higher than January 1999, when crude oil prices were a fraction of current levels.

"People are wealthier, they've been enticed into buying homes further from work, and the auto industry has been enticing them into buying very inefficient vehicles," said Philip K. Verleger, an oil consultant. He estimates that it takes a 20 percent increase in price to trim consumption by 1 percent today while a 10 percent price increase in the 1970s would have an identical effect.


I am not sure I agree with the estimate in the last sentence above, but it's an interesting one anyway - I suppose we'll see what happens during the U.S. summer driving season to come. Of course, one thing that we are not seeing in the U.S. is long queues of people waiting their turn at the pump to fill up.

Amazing what (the lack of) government price regulations can do!

In the fine book by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner (Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything), quite a few pages are devoted to the activities of a gang selling crack cocaine on the south side of Chicago, Illinois.

Compared to the "job" of selling illegal narcotics on a Chicago streetcorner, a job at Wal-Mart is pretty darned appealing - and legal, too.

How Toxic Was My Valley
By Joel Schwartz 04 Apr 2006

Based on EPA's own estimates, air pollution even in the "most toxic" areas of the country poses a miniscule cancer risk. More importantly, EPA's cancer risk estimates are grossly inflated, because they depend on the false assumption that chemicals pose the same per-unit cancer risks at real-world trace exposures as they do at massive laboratory exposures.


Here's another area where some straight (and straightforward) talk would be helpful. Joel does a fine job of making sense out of a complex issue for the reader, and for that I commend him.

From the Baltimore Sun

Demand and supply

American businesses offer jobs, and illegal immigrants come

By Hanah Cho
Sun reporter

April 2, 2006

As Congress struggles with the politics of dealing with a flood of illegal immigrant workers, relatively little attention is being
paid to the issue at the heart of the problem: the fact that they are lured here by American businesses offering millions of jobs.

It is against the law to hire an unauthorized immigrant worker, but neither the employers nor the federal government has been
paying much attention to that fact.


This article has some of the best and straightest talk on immigration and jobs that I have seen in this whole debate.

I encourage readers of the blog to have a look at Hanna Cho's story.

The cost of building an aerial tram from Portland's "Pill Hill" hospital district to the South Waterfront or So What district has increased by another $1.6 million -- either to $51.6 million or $57.5 million, depending on who is counting. The tram is under construction but contractors expect to run out of money in a few weeks.

Portland's city council will vote on April 26 on whether to increase the city's share of funds by at least $10 million. By that time, however, so much will have been invested in construction that it would probably be cheaper to finish it than to tear down the parts that have already been built.

The hospital that will form one terminus of the tram and the developers at the other terminus have each agreed to put up more money to finish the tram -- although in the case of the developers most of the money they "put up" is tax-increment financing that would otherwise go to schools and other urban services. The hospital says it has to have the tram so that doctor's offices will be within fifteen minutes of the hospital -- though it adds that if the tram is not built, it will move those offices to Hillsboro, well over thirty minutes away.

In an editorial today, the Oregonian admits that the city and other parties to the deal all knew "or should have known" the project was going to be far more expensive than the original $15 million estimate. But the paper says the tram should be finished anyway. But most Portlanders know that the editor of the editorial page is married to the hospital's chief public relations officer, so what the paper says no longer has any credibility.

ILLINOIS - When people think about affordable housing in DuPage County, they don't necessarily think about firefighters, teachers and nurses — but they are the people having a hard time finding a place to live in the area. According to the DuPage Housing Action Coalition, the median price for a single-family house in DuPage in 2005 was $334,900, which is 59 percent higher than the median price statewide. Former Attorney General Jim Ryan talked about equality of opportunity saying, "We believe that everyone who works hard ought to have a shot at the American dream, and part of that American dream is owning your own house."

New York City Losing Blacks, Census Shows

By SAM ROBERTS
Published: April 3, 2006

An accelerating exodus of American-born blacks, coupled with slight declines in birthrates and a slowing influx of Caribbean and African immigrants, have produced a decline in New York City's black population for the first time since the draft riots during the Civil War, according to preliminary census estimates.

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, North Carolina - The NC Turnpike Authority says toll financing would make it possible to open 3 Triangle freeways 15 years sooner than the state's most optimistic timetables using traditional tax funding. This article has a nice Q&A Section for the layperson which explains the basic concepts of tolls roads.

Planners Imagine a More Walkable Montgomery

I have lived in Montgomery County since 1960, and watched numerous efforts (usually started by the County Council) to densify targeted areas of the county for an assortment of reasons, I have to wonder where this latest effort is going to lead.

One thing is clear - none of this has had much favorable impact on traffic congestion, nor has it helped housing affordability.

Framework For Planning In The Future
(Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 110 KB)

Nope, you can't ride the Rail Runner -- yet

Nine stations across over 50 miles of track - though I did not see much in the way of Smart Growth claims for this project, at least not after a quick look around the Web site for the project.

Consider this Washington Post article about a large garden apartment complex in Oxon Hill, Prince George's County, Maryland:

Md.: For Tenants, Threats Lurk in The Unknown

Then consider that the Campaign to Re-Invest in the Heart of Oxon Hill asserts that more density in Oxon Hill around the Southview Apartments will somehow obviate the need for more highway capacity to the south of this area, and will "induce" demand for a Metrorail heavy rail transit line.

Then consider this from 2001.

Then consider:

(1) This - the Sierra Club's effort to stop the reconstruction and widening of the nearby Woodrow Wilson Bridge in 1999; and
(2) Sierra's effort to "save" Eagle Cove on the Potomac River (a mined-out sand-and-gravel pit) from the developers of the new upscale National Harbor project - while also demanding more density around the Southview Apartments.

And the according to this Washington Post article from 2005, the eagles are doing quite well in spite of the noise, dust and the mud of Wilson Bridge reconstruction project - and the massive queues of traffic that form at this narrow six-lane Capital Beltway crossing of the Potomac River on almost a daily basis. Scott Kozel's excellent Roads to the Future site also has a page about the Wilson Bridge that he updates frequently here (including nice photos of the construction effort).

Getting back to the Post story above about Southview, why is it that so few want to talk about crime, criminal activity and residential density? Land use and how it relates to transportation modes is something we hear about all the time, but land use and crime, almost never.

From the Los Angeles Times

2 Indicted in Placentia Rail Project

The former public works chief, who won a lucrative consultancy, and the former city manager are accused of conflicts of interest.


By Dan Weikel and David Reyes
Times Staff Writers

March 30, 2006

Two former Placentia officials were indicted Wednesday on felony conflict-of-interest charges stemming from a controversial rail project that pushed the north Orange County city to the edge of bankruptcy.

After an 18-month investigation, the Orange County district attorney's office obtained grand jury indictments against former Public Works Director Christopher Becker, 46, of Rancho Santa Margarita and retired City Manager Robert D'Amato, 69, of Placentia.