Still time to reserve a spot for Randal O’Toole’s visit to Charlotte next Wednesday for a luncheon talk. Details here.
O’Toole has been on a relentless tear on his blog recently, zeroing in on Smart Growthers:
It’s well known that the New Urban lifestyle of high-density living in mixed-use developments is most attractive to young singles, childless couples, and gays. I firmly believe that any zoning codes or other regulations that prevent developers from meeting the market demand for this lifestyle should be eliminated.
What Portland has done, however, is to increase the regulatory cost of building low-density housing while it has subsidized high-density housing. This has led to a dramatic sorting of te region’s population: families with children have moved to the suburbs while Portland itself has gotten younger and more child free. Although Portland’s population has doubled since 1925, its schools educate fewer children than it did then.
People have a tendancy to think that everyone in the world shares the same tastes as their close friends and associated. The problem with having a city that is run by gays and other childless people is that they may not realize that not everyone wants to live in high-density mixed-use developments.
Sam Adams, who is considered the leading candidate for mayor, recently proposed that all new housing in Portland be high-density housing along streetcar lines or near light-rail stations. What’s good enough for him is apparently good enough for everyone else. Of course, people can still buy an existing home on a 50×100 lot, but those houses will get more expensive than they already are as demand rises and supply stays declines as some of the remaining single-family houses are torn down and replaced with rowhouses or “skinny houses” on 25×100 lots.
And even more directly relevant to what Charlotte now faces, O’Toole notes that all of Portland’s spending on light rail has not been cost-effective or led to a meaningful reduction in congestion in that city:
Yes, transit ridership has grown since 1986, but it still hasn’t recovered the market share it had in 1980. Then, transit carried well over 2.6 percent of regional travel and 9.8 percent of commuters to work. Today, it carries 2.2 percent of all travel and 7.6 percent of commuters. That is hardly a success story. Portland transit riders would have been much better off if TriMet had continued to steadily improve bus service throughout the region rather than spend billions of dollars on rail service to a few narrow corridors.
My analysis also points out that the high cost of rail, including the cost of operating the new streetcar lines, resulted in deteriorating service and declining ridership in the early 2000s. …
Even if Portland’s transit ridership has grown since 1986, it has had an insignificant effect on congestion and overall travel because it was so small to begin with. At its maximum, light rail has never carried as much as 1 percent of Portland-area passenger travel. In 1986, rail and bus together carried 1.8 percent of regional travel; today it is 2.2 percent. Do you really think that auto drivers feel the difference in congestion?
See? Makes the mindless train-boosters very uncomfortable.
Bonus Observation: Charlotte is about to get run over by train-boosters. The American Public Transit Association is holding its annual meeting in Charlotte starting Sunday and running thru Wednesday. We all know that they are here because the South Blvd. light rail line was supposed to start running over a year ago. (Transit bigwigs will get free rides nonetheless, you watch.)
Oh, and check out the sponsors of the event, here in this massive 92-page final agenda. It is a who’s who of companies that get tax dollars from governments when they build train systems — outfits like Siemens, which is providing CATS with 16 light-rail cars. Price tag: $53 million.
You’d sponsor a conference or two too with $53 million.
CATS officials dot the agenda, as do CATS song-and-dance numbers. Like this tour of South Blvd. billed as, “See the project that is creating a buzz across the country. The CATS LYNX Blue Line project has closed the gap of integrating land usewith transit and the benefits are blossoming up and down the alignment.”
And check out who will join the panel on Understanding How to Motivate Communities to Support Public Transportation, Brian Rasmussen of R&R Partners, the firm hired by Charlotte’s pro-transit tax campaign to stop the tax repeal. Think there will be a lot of note taking at that one?
Prepare for days, upon days of pro-train propaganda.