American Dream

Op-Ed Contributor
N.Y.: Moving Violations


By DEBORAH TANNEN
Published: July 1, 2006

Washington

RECENTLY, the New York City police arrested 13 men, saying they had groped or flashed women on the subway. Reading the press reports that followed, in which many women told of similar assaults, I was reminded of one of the first academic papers I published — an analysis of how Greek women talked about just such experiences.

I was also reminded of my own experience on the New York subway.

I was 15 and in my first year at Hunter College High School. Taking my usual route to school, I was riding a crowded express train to Manhattan from Cortelyou Road in Brooklyn. At the center of a crush of people holding onto a pole, I became aware — I thought — that my leather purse, which was hanging from my arm, had gotten jammed between my legs. I moved my arm to dislodge it and discovered, to my horror, that the purse moved, but the pressure remained. I stood frozen in fear. When the train pulled into the Prospect Park station, the pressure finally disappeared, and I saw a man in a suit look back at me as he stepped onto the platform.

That was the last time I took an express train to school. Instead I added a half-hour to my commute in order to catch the local, get a seat and keep it all the way to Manhattan. And forever after, I got a queasy feeling when the doors opened at the Prospect Park station. I think I expected that man to get back on.

Might this be where some of that epidemic of federal earmarks and pork comes from?

Sure seems like it!

Click here for a nice interactive table that shows how much was spent on the top lobbyist by municipal governments in each state.

Interestingly, Portland, Oregon spent $1,140,000 for lobbying.

Some quotes:

Since 1998, the number of public entities hiring private firms to represent them in Washington has nearly doubled to 1,421 from 763, as places like Treasure Island, population 7,514, have jumped onboard with behemoths like Miami that have long had lobbyists.

Most of these new clients had never sought earmarks — some had never even heard of them — before someone knocked on their door, essentially offering big pots for a pittance. Others had read in the newspaper about neighbors with lobbyists building bridges or beach walks and felt pressure to keep up with the municipal Joneses.

It is against the law to use federal money to hire lobbyists. Yet local officials' near-unanimous justification is that the lobbyists pay for themselves many times over through the infusion of federal funds.

Ronald D. Utt, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a frequent critic of earmarks, said he was most troubled at seeing firms solicit public clients with virtual guarantees that they could deliver "dollars for pennies" (or billions for millions).

"The mystery to me is the way they are able to promise returns," Mr. Utt said, pointing to the revolving door between Congressional appropriators' payrolls and lobby shops, as well as to lobbyists' generous campaign contributions. "It goes beyond mere influence peddling to just outright, classic third-world corruption."

Grease Guzzlers
These Folks Fuel Their Diesel Cars With Cooking Oil. Slick, Huh?

By Allan Lengel
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 1, 2006; Page B01

In these days of eye-popping gas prices, Mike Leahy gets fuel for his Volkswagen Beetle at the Barking Dog, a popular Bethesda pub. Shane Sellers fuels up at a Chinese restaurant in Frederick. And Ben Tonken heads to a Tex-Mex eatery in the District.

As a the owner of a vehicle that burns Diesel fuel, I can relate to this, but I am not going to be mixing my own BioDiesel anytime soon.

Scott Kozel's superb Roads to the Future is worth a visit at any time, but he's done an especially good job of documenting the progress of two major Beltway projects, the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (official site and Scott's Wilson Bridge pages (be sure to visit the Construction Photos)); and also the nearby Springfield Interchange reconstruction (official site and Scott's Springfield Interchange pages).

Dana Parsons of the L.A. Times describes being stuck in crash-related afternoon traffic congstion on I-405, the San Diego Freeway (please understand that as a native of (and resident of) the Eastern United States, I don't mind the word "freeway" in the least, but I just cannot say the 405, as is common practice in the Golden State).

Imagine the Capital Beltway called The 495; the Henry G. Shirley Memorial Highway spoken of as The 395; or the John Hanson Highway as The 50.

Shudder.

STUTTGART: VILLAGE SPRAWL PROVIDES A GEOGAPHY LESSON (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 527 KB)

The Daily Telegraph (of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) reports that Steve Moneghetti, described as a "veteran marathon runner," beat a CityRail commuter train in the CitySnail Showdown.

The grand old man of Australian distance running set off from Summer Hill and beat the 8.14am all-stops to Stanmore.

He had to negotiate peak hour traffic and cross two arterial roads on his way but made it with enough time to board the train at Stanmore.

The 43-year-old's victory was made possible by inflated 30-second waiting times at stations that were injected into the ponderous new timetable when it was overhauled by RailCorp.

Under the previous schedule the Olympic veteran known as "Monner" would have had to set a world record time to keep up with the train.

The bloated schedule – which has added as much as 15 minutes to some metropolitan trips – has been branded a cynical attempt by the Iemma Government to get trains back on time.

Punctuality has improved to about 90 per cent as a consequence but commuters now complain of "agonising" trips on "dawdling" trains – especially on daytime and off-peak services.

Semi-retired Moneghetti clocked a creditable 7 minutes 7 seconds for the 2.5km run, managing to stay in front of the train as he strode past Lewisham and Petersham stations en route.

Previous posts on this subject here and here.

Washington Post columnist Colby King's not letting up on this, and has more details of even more D.C. ambulance screw-ups today in his column, D.C. Emergency Services Fails Another Test.

Wendell Cox over at From the Heartland on proposed "dedicated" funding sources for the transit system in the District of Columbia and its suburbs in Virginia and Maryland. Here's the part that I find especially relevant:

Further, dedicated taxes are the worst kind of taxes. Dedicated taxes send exactly the wrong message to the spending constituencies. Management spends more money on itself because there is no longer a competition for funding with other public services, such as education or social expenditures, The transit unions treat dedicated funding sources as “pots of gold” to fatten their wage and benefit packages (as only makes sense). In the end, little is left for more service, with the taxpayers left holding, and inevitably, the transit agency calls for even higher taxes down the road.

See also Wendell's op-ed from January, 2005 in the Washington Post: Better Money Management at Metro . . .

Maybe, just maybe, this is because motor fuel prices really are not all that high in real terms?

Law professor, Ilya Somin referenced this paper by Tim Sandefur of the Pacific Legal Foundation to point out that the political ignorance of the general public regarding eminent domain abuse and the relatively superior knowledge of the issue brought to the table by developers helps give politicians an incentive to pass "toothless" reforms purporting to curb eminent domain abuse. These "toothless" reforms are sufficient to cause the general public to believe that something substantial is being done to curb eminent domain abuse, when in fact nothing is being accomplished. The Institute for Justice points out that a lack of progress in curbing eminent domain abuse has, sadly, been matched by an increased tempo in the perpetration of such abuse.

Hollywood, CA - Actor Kevin Spacey plays the villain Lex Luthor in the new movie 'Superman Returns' and talks about his roll in this interview. "...Lex has been a character almost from the beginning who's always been a capitalist. And for him, it's always about land. It's always been about land..." In this movie, Luthor has the ULTIMATE plan to gain land.

North Carolina's oldest town, Bath, is a historic hamlet tucked up Bath Creek off the Pamlico River, a popular area for boating. But its undeveloped banks now place it where the waves of coastal development are crashing. Last month, town leaders called a timeout, approving a six-month moratorium on new subdivisions. "These subdivisions were just coming at us rapid fire," Mayor Jimmy Latham said. "We just wanted to make sure what we are doing is right for the area. When that development train leaves the station, it's not coming back." Bath, population 285, has only one full-time employee, and a local school principal doubles as a part-time town administrator. "We're not Raleigh, Charlotte or Winston-Salem," Latham said. "We don't have the infrastructure in place to handle 250 or 300 new homes."
But, John Baldwin, a Raleigh developer, said the moratorium was intended to stop him. Two of his waterfront subdivisions - Bridgewater North and South - received the town's approval three months ago."They inflicted the moratorium on us the same day (the State was) supposed to be approving our subdivisions," said Baldwin, who said the delays will cost him $137,000 in interest.

NORTH CAROLINA HOUSE - The House refused to consider a constitutional amendment that would ban the use of eminent domain for the sake of economic development. Just weeks after approving a bill on the exact same issue, 7 Democratic lawmakers flipped. In purely political manuver, they sent the Constitutional Amendment to the Rules Committee, to die a slow, silent death. Not to be out done, the Democratically lead Senate has also burried the original House bill in one of their own Senate Committees.
"No reason has yet to be given as to why people should not be protected in the constitution," said Rep. Paul Stam, a Wake County Republican and the architect of the constitutional amendment.

Over at From the Heartland, Wendell Cox has a write-up of the latest on the Las Vegas Monorail, Junk Bond Las Vegas Monorail Nears the Brink.

Please be sure to read Ron Utt's paragraphs on Earmark Reform in this brief, which are particularly good (at least in my opinion).

Third-Quarter Report Card for Congress: Improvement Needed

Edited by Brian M. Riedl, Ronald D. Utt. Ph.D., and Alison Acosta Fraser
Backgrounder #1947

June 27, 2006

There is no reason why Members of Congress cannot raise their performance measures
on key domestic policy issues, many of which have already made some progress
through the legislative process. Over the past few weeks, Members have
shown exceptional resolve on a number of controversial issues. If they maintain
this pace, they could easily complete the needed work.

To the right is an image of the latest in a series of ads run in certain zoned editions of the Washington Post by the Right Growth Policy Institute - for your amusement and enjoyment.

Thanks to Ken Reid for sharing the image!

Read more about the Right Growth Policy Institute in Leesburg2day here.

The subject of the ads, the Piedmont Environmental Council (PEC), headquartered in Warrenton, Virginia (in the heart of Virginia's fashionable and exclusive hunt country), is a major promoter of Smart Growth schemes (to be implemented as far from the manors, estates and horsefarms of its membership as possible) in other people's neighborhoods miles distant from Warrenton, including eastern Loudoun County, Virginia, the District of Columbia and even in Prince George's County, Maryland and the non-agricultural sectors of Montgomery County, Maryland - both under its own name, and through the use of PEC front groups such as this one.

Additionally, the PEC promotes policies that force families engaged in the sometimes gritty business of farming within its service area to sell-out and move someplace else.

Winston-Salem, NC - State transportation officials came to Winston-Salem yesterday to start a series of observances planned along Interstate 40 this week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the federal interstate highway system. Officials from the NC DOT used the occasion to celebrate the role that the 1,083 miles of interstate highway running through North Carolina has played in the state's growth and success. However, they also warned that large amounts of money are needed to maintain and improve the aging and heavily used system. Fifty years ago this week, on June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which provided the money to start building a 41,000-mile national system of interstate and defense highways, including 714 miles in North Carolina. The original routes were designated in 1947 and 1955. Since then, Congress has expanded the system to its current length of nearly 46,800 miles. The DOT decided to start the week's commemoration in Winston-Salem because the state's first section of interstate was built here. A three-mile section through downtown Winston-Salem - originally designated as I-40 and now as Business 40 - opened in 1958. I-40 is the third-longest interstate highway in the United States, running 2,554 miles between Wilmington, NC and Barstow, CA.

Your Town, USA - On the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Interstate System, the radio show "Living on Earth" takes a ride in a 1951 Hudson along I-95 chauffeured by Dan McNichol author of “The Roads that Built America: The Incredible Story of the U.S. Interstate System.” The Hudson was one of the first cars built for high-speed travel on superhighways, it gets about 20 miles to the gallon (like today's SUVs).

I thought that new home sales were supposed to be headed for some sort of a slump.

Maybe not?

COMMERCIAL AVIATION: Costs and Major Factors Influencing Infrastructure Changes at U.S. Airports to Accommodate the New A380 Aircraft, GAO-06-571, May 19, 2006

Abstract (HTML, small)

Highlights of report (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 90 KB)

Full report (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 6 MB)

From the abstract:

Airbus S.A.S (Airbus), a European aircraft manufacturer, introduced a new aircraft, the A380 that will be the largest passenger aircraft in the world with expected delivery to its first customers in late 2006. The A380 has a double deck and is expected to seat between 555 and 853 passengers. The A380 is much larger than its competitors with a wingspan of 262 feet, a tail fin about 80 feet high, and a maximum takeoff weight of over 1.2 million pounds. A freight version of the A380 is scheduled for delivery in 2008. Because of the size of the A380, U.S. airports have to make changes to accommodate the aircraft.

(...)

Airport officials reported using several sources to finance the infrastructure changes. About 50 percent of the costs would be financed though federal grants under the Airport Improvement Program, they said. Passenger facility charges were identified as the source of financing for about 21 percent of the costs, with 29 percent from airport revenues, bonds, and other sources. FAA's design standards and market considerations have been two major factors influencing the A380 changes at airports.

(...)

Airports are also making changes based on the market they serve. For example, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco are major gateway airports that had little choice but to make changes to receive the A380 if they were to maintain their competitive status.

The NTSB finalized its conclusions in March, 2006 (see blog entry here), but the final written report was not available at that time.

It is now.

National Transportation Safety Board. 2006. Collision Between Two Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority Trains at the Woodley Park-Zoo/Adams Morgan Station in Washington, D.C., November 3, 2004. Railroad Accident Report NTSB/RAR-06/01. (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 2.91 MB)

Charlotte, NC - Federal support for Charlotte's south corridor light-rail project has been named one of the 50 most egregious examples of questionable congressional spending by a Virginia-based group that favors limited government (Americans for Prosperity Foundation). The group believes the rail funding should be discussed in open sessions, not secretly slipped in, via earmarking. The increasingly controversial congressional practice of "earmarking," which fund special projects outside standard budget proceedings, was used during a closed-door conference committee last year which never came up for public debate, to fund this rail project. Earmarks have jumped to 15,877 in 2005 from 958 in 1996, according to the Congressional Research Service. Most earmarks involve unnecessary spending that contribute to the soaring federal budget deficit. Currently members of Congress can privately include projects without being identified, thereby avoiding potential negative publicity.

Feel like no-one is listening? Why not go to the television poll site (linked above) and give your input on the following question - "Do you believe residents who are targeted for involuntary annexation should have a vote on the annexation?"

Thanks to our friends at the law firm of Poyner & Spruill, the following are some of the basic legal guidelines currently in play regarding Annexation -

The Area to be Annexed must meet the following standards:
The area must be adjacent or contiguous to the municipality's boundaries at the time the annexation proceeding is begun.
At least one-eighth of the aggregate external boundaries of the area must coincide with the municipal boundary.
No part of the area shall be included within the boundary of another incorporated municipality.
The entire area must be developed for "urban purposes" at the time of approval of the Annexation Report.
All tracts in the area to be annexed are used for commercial, industrial, institutional or governmental purposes.

Public Informational Meeting:
The Annexation Report must be made available at least 30 days prior to the public informational meeting.
A map of the area and a list of the freehold owners must be posted in the municipal clerk's office at least 30 days prior to the public informational meeting.
At the public informational meeting, a municipal representative shall explain the Annexation Report. Thereafter, all property owners in the area to be annexed and all residents of the municipality must be given the opportunity to ask questions and receive answers about the proposed annexation.

Public Hearing:
At the public hearing, a representative of the municipality shall explain the Annexation Report.
Thereafter, all property owners in the area to be annexed and all residents of the municipality "shall be given an opportunity to be heard."

Passage of the Annexation Ordinance:
The annexation ordinance may be enacted at a regular or special meeting held no sooner than 10 days and no later than 90 days after the public hearing. The ordinance can incorporate all or part of the area set forth in the notice of public hearing.

Suburbia Catches Up With Unger, W.Va.
Those Who Fled Sprawl Fight Development With Outhouse Protest

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 26, 2006; Page B01

UNGER, W.Va. -- Twenty-two years ago, burned-out Washington lawyer George Farnham hauled his 1955 jukebox around Sleepy Creek Mountain and moved into an old farmhouse here where he found peace and understanding and got into collectibles.

Then, one day recently, Farnham discovered something scary. Test holes were being drilled in a field across from his house. And he knew: All that he had fled years before had found him once again. A housing development was coming to paradise.

Bummer.

In the weeks since, Farnham, 52, and others who migrated to Morgan County to escape urban insanity and suburban sprawl have launched an old-fashioned '60s-style anti-development campaign.

Part 1: Baltimore, Md: A neighborhood abandoned and a Macromedia Flash presentation (worth watching if you have broadband) which accompanies the story.

One quote from the first installment of this series is revealing:

To live in a better neighborhood would cost them more, which wouldn't leave enough for items such as the two bicycles -- one pink, the other black and orange -- that were their kids' Christmas presents. It's hard putting any money away, but what they manage to save they intend to use to pay off debts and, with luck, to buy a car.

Part 2: Building on fragile hope
Related story: Investment, but then a displacement

In 1973, two events occurred at the American Brewery that would have a long-term impact on the surrounding neighborhood.

The first was the closing of the plant. Beer had been produced at the site since the Civil War, when John Frederick Wiessner, a Bavarian immigrant, built a brewery on what was then the northern edge of the city. The brew house's closing was part of a wider trend of vanishing manufacturing jobs around the city. Also, it left empty the grandest structure in the neighborhood.

The second occurrence was the brewery's addition to the National Register of Historic Places. While commemorating the building's eclectic industrial design and making it eligible for federal preservation grants and tax credits, the designation prohibited razing or significantly altering the structure, which limited the options for redevelopment of the property.

Whatever renewal might happen to the neighborhood, the one immutable factor was the presence of the American Brewery. Given to the city in 1977, it would continue to tower over the neighborhood as it would loom over the planning by one city administration and then another. Officials could not help but regard the brewery as a puzzle that, if solved, would trigger a rebirth in the vicinity.

These unsolved murders are intertwined with the highway infrastructure of the District of Columbia and nearby Prince George's County, Maryland.

Video (broadband suggested).

ISTANBUL: 100-MILE CITY (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 1.22 MB)

CAIRO: URBAN PLANNING MODEL (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 1.27 MB)

THE KANSAS CITY ADVANTAGE: LIVABILITY (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 1.37 MB)

NEW ORLEANS: DESTROYED BY GOVERNMENT FLOODS - With a Side Trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 3.85 MB)

While not a Rental Car Tour, a recent column by Wendell in Québec's Montreal Gazette entitled The upside of sprawl: Suburbs and roads lower housing costs and boost development should be of interest.

And Wendell did do a Rental Car Tour in 2003: THE MONTREAL REGION: PLANNING AT PEACE WITH THE FUTURE (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 1013 KB)

Quotes from our own Randal O'Toole on urban planning in Toronto's Globe and Mail:

This week's World Urban Forum in Vancouver notes that the world's cities and slums are growing fast so "the need for a focused set of objectives has never been greater" - meaning more and more planning by more and more bureaucracies. So we should be wary when the United Nations' World's Cities report, which was released on Monday, says the world's poorest slums will need $20- billion (U.S.) a year to improve services.

Rail transit, for example, is a simplification that limits, rather than expands, mobility, giving planners more control over people's lives. So planners in Portland, San Francisco and others eagerly propose to spend 60 per cent to 70 per cent of their regions' transportation funds on transit systems that carry only 1 per cent to 4 per cent of passenger travel. Recent scandals in Portland revealed that the main beneficiaries of these rail lines and high-density developments have been a few politically connected contractors and developers.

The promises that planners make are simply impossible to keep.

Those who wish to see their regions become like Los Angeles - congested, expensive and highly taxed - should welcome urban planning. The rest of us should work to resolve urban problems by giving people the freedom to choose their lifestyles and to pay for what they want instead of what planners want.

More about the World Urban Forum III from the BBC:

Experts meet over urban growth

Key speaker lambasts urban forum

The Real Sim City

Forum ends with urban poor focus

How much more tax money is Virginia's Dulles Rail project going to cost? The answer to that is not entirely clear, but it seems that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Department of Transportation is taking an interest in that question (and maybe some others).

Read the memo from the OIG here (Adobe Acrobat .pdf, 81 KB).

The Washington Post ran an article by Alec MacGillis on that subject today (click heading for the whole thing).

The first four paragraphs:

The U.S. Department of Transportation's inspector general is launching an audit of Virginia's proposed extension of Metrorail to Dulles International Airport, further heightening the already close scrutiny of the $4 billion project.

Although it is not unusual for the inspector general to audit large rail or highway projects, it is less common for the office to start monitoring a project so early, before construction has begun and with major design questions unanswered, federal transportation officials said.

In a letter sent last week to the Federal Transit Administration, the inspector general's office said such a "major project monitoring effort" was needed in this case because of the large amount of federal money expected to be spent on it: roughly $900 million.

Also justifying extra scrutiny, the letter stated, was Virginia's transferal of control of the project to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. Because the authority leases its airports from the federal government, the letter states, the authority's role in the rail project gives further reason for the federal government to have a "vested interest in ensuring that the Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project is completed efficiently and effectively."

HAWAII - The planning and project development process for the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project is based in part on requirements by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Transit Administration (FTA), because FTA funds will be used for this project. The project is currently in the planning phase. The purpose of this phase is to select a “Locally Preferred Alternative ” (LPA) and complete a draft environmental impact statement (EIS). After this phase is completed, the City will request approval from FTA to begin the preliminary engineering phase on the LPA.

If you'd like to tell them what you think of the FTA, LPA, and EIA in person, please attend the following meetings -
Monday, June 26, 2006Honolulu Hale – Mission Memorial Auditorium 5:30p.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Wednesday, June 28, 2006Aliamanu Middle School Cafeteria 6:00p.m. – 7:30p.m.

If you'd like to tell them what you think of their project proposal in writing, please go the following link - http://www.honolulutransit.org/get_involved/

HAWAII - To pass above H-1 Freeway at University Avenue, the rail structure would be elevated as much as 60 feet, according to city officials. This is how a mass-transit proposal envisions a fixed guideway serving riders traveling to and from the Pearlridge Center. A new rail transit system from Kapolei to Manoa would cost more than $3 billion to build. The new cost estimate is at least $200 million more than previous estimates, but Mayor Mufi Hannemann said that does not necessarily mean more taxes will be needed, citing the possibility of public-private partnerships. The new information is the most detailed glimpse yet at the city's mass-transit analysis and it comes at the midway point in a yearlong effort to determine the best mass transportation alternative for O'ahu.

I am not a fan of taxpayer-financed stadiums for any pro sport, including Major League Baseball (even though I consider myself a fan of the sport). But a new baseball stadium in the District of Columbia, funded by persons other than the new owner of the franchise, using D.C. taxing powers to raise the money, for the Washington Nationals appears to be a done deal.

Having said that, the transportation assumptions that have been used for how Nationals fans will get to that new ballpark seem to be an example of wishful thinking (or even better, faith-based transportation planning).

Our very own Ken Reid has some good thoughts about this subject in a Close-to-Home op-ed that ran in the Washington Post today, entitled Don't Drive Away Nats Fans.