Another reason to cheer and laugh out loud is how the US media landscape tried to make sense out of the deal. Railroads are generally ignored unless there is a major accident or spill of some kind. And so, as articles have been written all over the country from newspapers to magazines, it is comical to watch as reporters try to make sense of why the ultimate savvy investor Warren Buffet bought the second largest railroad when most people think railroads are irrelevant and outdated. Articles, like the link to the ones below from the LATimes and the NYTimes, have been written explaining how railroads are suddenly a growth business again and how they are retaking market share from trucks because they are more fuel efficient, amongst other reasons. What’s amusing is that as far as these writers are concerned, this all just happened yesterday. But thats ok. Because the education of the public and the press about the importance of railroads in our national freight transportation system desperately needed to happen. And so, if all it took was Warren’s stamp of approval, its just too bad it took so long to happen. A point by the way, that was not lost on Buffet: Buffett has said he realized a few years late that railroads had become an appealing investment.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-rail3-2010jan03,0,27378.story

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/business/04deal.html

Given all of this, changing zoning is always fraught with controversy. Zoning is a such a powerful tool, especially in already developed big cities like NYC, that often the status quo is better than big change. So it makes it all the more remarkable that as 2010 starts, NYC is implementing the 100th rezoning since Mike Bloomberg came into office. People unfamilar with the way NYC works and how zoning is changed understand how impressive that is. For those who dont, it is really amazing. Because in order to get rezonings passed, enormous amounts of work have to be completed by the Department of Planning and the City Council. Dozens of plans, hearings, reports have to be completed. And everything has to pass the City Council in the end, no small feat.

All of these rezonings were greatly needed, in the sense that for NYC to be a great city today and in the future the city needs to be a place that can change. As employment patterns, neighborhood uses, and transportation systems changed, planning needs to change to incorporate those changes. And these rezonings are being done both to increase and decrease density. This isnt just a plan to gentrify and hand away development rights to developers. These are all small parts of a greater plan to make the city more livable and dynamic. Some places need new protections to defend from giant mcmansions and small multi family units coming into areas of single family homes. Other neighborhoods are being re-purposed from light industry to residential (Williamsburg and Greenpoint just to name two).

The real credit here goes to two individuals: The Mayor and Amanda Burden, the head of the City planning Department. Especially Ms. Burden, the head of the City planning since Bloomberg came into office. Her foresight and expertise are remarkable. And she is a fellow Columbia U Planning alumni. Planners take note: This is a world class planner playing in the greatest urban laboratory in America.

http://www.observer.com/2009/zoning-sustainable-city

The good news here is that people have finally woken up to the fact that the urban interstate was never a good idea to begin with. The problem, of course, is that at this point the highways are full of cars and people, and spatial patterns have grown up around these highways. So just demolishing them is often impossible politically. There have been exceptions, like in San Francisco when the Embarcadero waterfront highway was demolished in 1991, when a urban highway was allowed to be torn down without a replacement built, but those have been few and far between.

So transportation planners around the US have begun to realize that the only way to fix these problem highways is to bury them or move them. Boston, with the much derided Big Dig, was the poster child for tunnels, although Seattle is heading that way as well. And despite the cost, the Big Dig has been quite a success. Now other cities are getting into the act. Providence, RI is moving its east-west urban freeway, Interstate 195, from the waterfront to a point much farther out of town and to the south. This is going to open up the waterfront, as well as acres of land that was formerly occupied by the elevated freeway, right in the heart of the city. Like in Boston, this is creating an enormous redevelopment opportunity, and one that is being greatly anticipated by the residents and institutions of Providence. New parks, mixed use developments and educations institutions are all planned.

One can only hope that more cities will examine this, as well as other urban freeway relocations, and plan their own. (St Louis, I am talking to you here!)

The New York Times reports below on the redevelopment possibilites in Providence:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/realestate/commercial/11iway.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

So what to do?

Well the easy answer is to raise the gas tax. Overall, this is the best idea both because it raises the revenue, and taxes a fuel that causes global warming. But there are even more reasons to want to raise the gas tax. Because it taxes behavior that causes sprawl and bad planning. So its an all around win. Except for that group of the population that believes that they should be able to continue to get better infrastructure and more government services without paying higher taxes. They are called Republicans. And they have so scared the democrats regarding taxes that the democrats are now completely scared of offering any new taxes, even when, like the gas tax, it is so obvious that it needs to be raised.

During the eight years of the Bush administration spending was increased while taxes were kept flat, a familiar strategy. So, of course, now the highway trust fund is out of money. Its a damn shame that it finally ran out when it did and not three years earlier when Bush would have been forced to act. Instead, now it has to be done sometime in the next year. So its the democrats problem. And the democrats do not want to raise taxes. Stalemate. What next?

Congress could see the writing on the wall about the lack of revenue for highway programs years ago, and so multiple blue ribbons panels were convened to look into how to raise more revenue. They all came up with the same set of answers. 1. Raise the gas tax in the short term. 2. Move to a distance traveled based revenue system. 3. public private partnerships (to be dealt with in a future post).

What is that you ask? Well it is a way to charge people for the miles they actually travel, and eventually charge based on time of day, type of vehicle and type of road. The ultimate solution to the gas tax question. To do this you need basically an ezpass type device in every car. As you can imagine, this brings up all sorts of privacy and technology issues. But it is clearly the right way to go, and ultimately the only fair way.

Up until recently there were limited systems around the world, but now the Dutch are moving in that direction in a big way.
They are now installing a system across the whole country to do just that. Ahhhh….. The Netherlands, home of so many good things. Check out the article below, where the whole system is described in detail. Basically, public transit and taxis are exempt, and then everyone else pays based on kilometers traveled, with prices varying based on the type of vehicle. And once the system is in place, it will be easy to switch to charging based on the time of day that you drive, type of road, etc. The possibilities are endless. And that is great news, because the only way to drive good planning (no pun intended) is to hit people in their pocketbook.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ggzUbQMWph8GplMdWzjDEnKD7ZJQD9BVD87O1

london: the price of traffic – No surprise here, how London got congestion pricing. -http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/307_london_the_price_of_traffic_trailer.html

paris: velo libre – My favorite so far, all about the Paris bikeshare system: how it works, who designed and how it is maintained. Amongst the great nuggets of info in this one is that the maintenance facility is a floating barge on the Seine that travels up and down the river all day picking up broken bikes and dropping off repaired ones and doing the repairs between stops. Brilliant! – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/308_paris_velo_liberte_trailer.html

food miles – I topic I am personally less excited about, but interesting none the less. How everyone’s food comes from far away, and how that is bad across the board.- http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/309_food_miles_trailer.html

seoul: the stream of consciousness – An interesting story about Seoul, SK demolishing an urban highway in a city obsessed with dense modernity. – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/310_seoul_the_stream_of_consciousness_trailer.html

portland: a sense of place – Pure transit and TOD porn here. Love it. – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/311_portland_a_sense_of_place_trailer.html

aviation: the limited sky – frankly, the most depressing of them all. all about how modern aviation as we know it is unsustainable. that does not make me happy. i like traveling. – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/312_aviation_the_limited_sky_trailer.html

Unfortunately I cant post the whole shows, just the trailers. But break out that DVR remote and record these for free on PBS! Or you can buy them at the apple store or on DVD from PBS. Seriously, they are worth it.

The FRA announced guidance that earlier this year that there would be two sets of awards, one for small ready to go projects sooner and one for major corridors and longer term projects second. However the FRA recently changed its mind and said that they two rounds would be announced at the same time to insure continuity between the phases amongst other reasons. That may be. But it is clear that the FRA has been overwhelmed. For a program that has never funded a dollar, there were $50 billion in long term and corridor work requests and $7 billion in shovel ready project requests.

Previous to the stimulus bill the FRA has run grant programs that ran into the millions not billions, and had been primarily a regulatory agency. Suddenly they are front and center with the largest new Federal transportation funding program in the recent past. And the agency is facing all of the classic challenges of how to create support for the program across the country and the political spectrum while at the same time insuring that something gets built, preferably as soon as possible given the employment situation in the US. And finally it has to address a fundamental question: what kind of high speed rail does america need? totally new systems, or gradual upgrades to corridors across the country?

The good news here is that these are the issues that are being discussed. What a difference a year makes! Remember during the Bush administration Amtrak skirted close to bankruptcy twice, with the encouragement of the White House. Clearly we should build a new build system in California, and the FRA will definitely fund it with the biggest dollars of any other project. And the existing Acela corridor will get major upgrades. After that I think the awards will go more the direction of what the FTA wants to promote. The Midwest seems like a good shot. And although Florida is pitching a new build system that looks good, the state has been so anti transit and so pro car for so long I am skeptical of their bid.

http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2009/10/22/22greenwire-high-speed-rail-effort-proceeds-with-caution-77408.html

There will always be people who need cars, and for huge swaths of America transit will be few and far between for a long time into the future. But there are now lots of people who dont own any car at all, and as boomers move from the suburbs into the cities, households are downsizing from 3 cars to one or none. This is great news for America, and the more that the government can encourage cities and towns to build smarter, denser and with more walking and transit opportunites, the better off everyone will be. However the changes are proving to be painful for the automakers.

Earlier this decade, Americans were purchasing in some years over 17 million cars a year. The head of GM recently said that he though purchases would peak at 13 to 14 million per year, and its not clear that 17 million a year will be reached anytime in near future. Its a very different world for the carmakers. And its astonishing considering that the population of America has been growing while these hugh decreases are taking place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/automobiles/autospecial2/22CHANGE.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

This is a great series both to highlight great towns and cities and point out what makes them great: planning. (remember this is coming from the planning association, so the answer is always planning).

http://www.planning.org/greatplaces/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/realestate/commercial/14rail.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

A fascinating idea, and one that deserves a further look. Personally, I dont see why you need to close the street to cars, because light rail and streets with traffic co-exist all over the world, including in plenty of cities in the US. Regardless, light rail for cross town travel in Manhattan seems like a fabulous idea. The real challenge here is that if it was any other street besides 42nd Street Mayor Bloomberg and Ms. Khan would likely be supportive. However, since 42nd Street is also home, underground, to the number 7 subway, things are more complicated. As part of the West Sides Yards development project, the City is paying for the MTA to expand the number 7 subway from its existing terminus at Times Square west and south to a new station by the convention center and at the front door of what one day may be the entrance to the West Side Yards development (http://www.mta.info/capconstr/7ext/index.html). However, in the meantime, there is no development occurring at the West Side Yards at all given the economic situation. And since it may take a while to get this project going, there is some danger of opening a new $2 billion dollar subway expansion that no one uses. However that is actually OK. The US has spent so long building infrastructure after development has already arrived, it seems counter-productive to criticize the rare case where the infrastructure is going in first. Regardless it means that light rail isnt likely to arrive anytime soon on 42nd. But I think the focus just needs to shift to anyone of a number of other cross town routes, like 34th street, 14th street or 86th street, and the project would be a no-brainer.

The idea here is that instead of keeping them at the existing level of allowed traffic and speed, they would be converted into zones for low speed electric cars, bikes and pedestrian lanes. Not that cars wouldnt be allowed, but everyone would have to stay under 35mph. Using the highly successful rails to trails program as a model, the idea is to create a network of green highways all over the country, and along the way hopefully bring more traffic into all of those towns that were bypassed by the interstates.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1928997,00.html#WordPress

Fantastic idea, I hope it happens all over the country. But this idea is one that is going to take a while to get traction. In order to really enforce the slower speeds and network connectivity benefits of a comprehensive system, there will have to be standards, which means the best we can hope is a federal program offering matching funds, something that would be great to see in the next federal transportation authorization bill.