Blogs

On election day, the voters of Hillsborough County, Florida (Tampa) will vote on a one-cent sales tax that would fund transit (75%) and roads (25%). Part of the funding would be used to build a new light rail line, which is the focus of campaigns on both sides.

The proponents are the usual well financed coalition of business, rail construction companies and consulting engineers, who could well profit from the program going forward.  read more »

The former Olympic athlete's village in Vancouver is in the news again, but this time no one is celebrating. The billion dollar plus development, originally built to house athletes then converted to a residential housing development, was primarily financed by a loan from the city of Vancouver. Millennium Development Corp., developer of the project, currently owes the city $731 million. Millennium was scheduled to pay back the first $200 million by August 31st, but came up $8 million short.  read more »

Is it any wonder why California’s economy has been so sluggish during the recession?  read more »

California, now in the midst of a heated debate on high-speed rail, could learn a thing or two from a few small villages in England about consolidating their opposition. Residents from five villages in Oxfordshire created the Villages of Oxfordshire Opposing HS2 (High-Speed Rail 2) action group to voice their concerns about the proposed project.  read more »

The Age (Melbourne) headlined a story "CBA Accused of Choosing its Facts." CBA is the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, while UBS is the Swiss investment house. Commonwealth produced a report comparing housing affordability in Australian metropolitan areas to international metropolitan areas (Australian Housing and Mortgages: CBA Mortgage Book Secure).  read more »

The Transit Equity Network has just published a study called More Transit - More Jobs in which it suggests switching 50% of highway funding to transit in 20 metropolitan areas to create an additional 180,000 jobs over the next five years. Their basic thesis is that each kajillion in spending can produce more jobs in transit than in highways.  read more »

American and European planners have long sought to improve the "jobs-housing" balance, seeking to place residents and jobs within walking or cycling distance. Of course, planners don't place people anywhere. Not surprisingly, their efforts have largely failed, from the new towns of the London area, where people travel about as far to work as anywhere else, to fabled failures of Stockholm, where high rise housing close to suburban employment centers now houses migrants who tend to have far lower incomes than native Swedes.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal notes that the London Underground (metro or subway) is on strike and that transit riders are having to find alternate ways to get around. This is of course, not good news, and the transit strikes that happen often in places like Paris and periodically in places like Los Angeles and Philadelphia are a serious impediment to transit's growth (along with spending on extravagant projects and excessive and rising operating costs).  read more »

Chicago’s Mayor Daley has decided to end his political career. Chicago’s Mayor since 1989, in December he will break his father’s record as Chicago’s longest serving Chief Executive. No one knows the real reason Daley chose to hang it up, whether it’s his wife’s health or his low polling numbers.  read more »

Despite its smart growth policies, the city of Austin has approved a new development on the urban fringe that will include new detached housing starting at $115,000.

Austin is the third fastest growing metropolitan area with more than 1,000,000 residents in the United States, following Raleigh, North Carolina and Las Vegas. The city of Austin accounted for 53% (672,000) of the metropolitan area's 1.27 million population in 2000, but has seen more than 70% of the growth since that time go to the suburbs. Now the metropolitan area has 1.65 million people, and the city has 785,000.  read more »