Monthly Archives: March 2014

Golly, I Wish I Had a Smaller House

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Jessop House by Landfab, Vancouver

Jessop House by Landfab, Vancouver

by Gracen Johnson

I’m pretty set on adopting a dog. I check the SPCA website every week and fantasize about after-dinner walks and a happily wagging tail. The main roadblock right now is that my apartment is not dog-friendly. It’s also way too big for my partner and I who have an aversion to acquiring what just ends up as “stuff.”

So that’s what got us on the apartment hunting circuit. And boy, is it a bummer. Anyone who has looked for an apartment, let alone a pet-friendly one, will attest how onerous the process can be. A few times, we have become so discouraged with the rental options that we’ve considered buying. Even when we play make-believe and ignore the pricetag, this has presented its own challenges. We cannot find a high-quality (as in you get what you pay for, not a bunch of particle board trying to pass as solid wood) home in a walkable area that is small enough for our liking.

I’m not talking uber small like the tiny house pictures you have likely seen shared online (Exhibit A: Pinterest). I just mean under 1000 sf. We don’t need more than that and with a smaller square footage, we could afford to invest in higher quality build and some solar panels.

In North American cities where land is not the limiting factor, developers build such that more money gets you more space. But increasingly, a large segment of the population would rather pay more money for more place. If we’ve got parks, restaurants, plazas, and workspace we can walk to, why would we need to build those amenities into our homes? In my city, our downtown has the place aspects that we’re looking for, but the housing options leave much to be desired. Continue reading →

Hamilton Crossings: Looking into the Crystal Ball

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crash

A pair of trucks crashed, trapping one driver in his cab, last month on West Saucon Valley Road near Center Valley Parkway in Upper Saucon Township, a collision one area driver says is indicative of traffic problems in the area. (APRIL BARTHOLOMEW, THE MORNING CALL)

Ron Beitler

Recently, the Morning Call outlined what I see as a wake-up call for Lower Macungie. Basically, it amounts to a Crystal Ball moment. Re-read the article about Upper Saucon’s traffic issues at 309 and Center Valley Parkway and substitute the bypass for 309 and Lower Macungie for Saucon Valley. Sound eerily familiar?

Officials in Saucon are currently asking employers to stagger work hours in an attempt to deal with traffic plaguing the area. Similar to the Hamilton Crossings proposal in Lower Macungie, in 2006 developers with projects in the area contributed one-time funds for quick-fix improvements to get projects approved. This included additional lanes and signal upgrades. (Again, sound familiar?) Continue reading →

Transit Ridership — Debunking the Debunkers (Sort of)

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TransitRidershipby Michael Lewyn

After the American Public Transit Association announced that public transit ridership reached an all-time high of over 10 billion riders, a variety of commentators sought to minimize the importance of this news, using a wide variety of arguments. Transit critics seek to deny news of ridership increases to encourage politicians to reduce transit service, while transit supporters do the same to prevent their allies from becoming complacent. But all of these arguments share one thing in common: a claim that whatever transit agencies do right, it just isn’t good enough. To name a few examples:

1. The “Only in New York” Strategy: Transit critic Randall O’Toole chose a strategy of total denial, claiming that all of the increase happened in New York City. However, a look at the APTA ridership page shows that bus ridership rose in 20 of the 37 largest bus systems, heavy rail ridership rose in 8 out of 15 systems, and light rail ridership rose in 17 out of 27 transit systems. On balance, ridership seems to have risen more often than not.

2. The “Not As Fast As Population” Strategy: A Washington Post op-ed by several professors points out that per capita ridership is lower than in 2008. However, transit ridership reached another all-time high in 2008 due to exploding gas prices, so comparing 2008 and 2013 shows only that per capita ridership is not at an all-time high. One might as well claim that the Democratic Party is in terminal decline because the current President did not carry 48 out of 50 states (as Franklin Roosevelt did in 1936). Continue reading →

Day 5: A World Class Transportation System

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by Charles Marohn

The advocacy coalition Move MN is proposing a tax on wholesale gasoline as a stealth way to put a little bit more money into extending Minnesota’s current approach to funding transportation. That approach is not viable over the long term and so the Move MN proposal simply puts off – and worsens – the adjustment we need to make from an expansion model to a maintenance/value-capture model. We’ve overbuilt our transportation infrastructure and now we need a new set of policies and approaches to get a better return on those investments.

In parts 3 and 4 of this series, I outlined the principles behind a new approach and then, with a significant amount of detail, gave specific policy recommendations consistent with those principles. I promised to finish the series by reviewing who the winners and losers would be.

My new book, Moneyhall, is almost completed and about to enter into the final editing phase. You can reserve your copy today and get more information on my other works by going to MoneyHall.org. So excited to share this one with you.

Mn/DOT (WINNER): While Mn/DOT would have to change its mode of operation, it would be a welcome change for most of their staff. No longer would they be cajoled to build stuff they know makes little sense while they tried to patch together parts of the system they know to be critical. Instead, it would be very clear when an improvement was needed and where the money was to come from. Mn/DOT would need to become skilled at deploying a value capture technique – something they have no clue about today – and those on their staff that obsessively believe that building more is always good will be somewhat disillusioned. Even so, Mn/DOT would have more money from funds redirected from the State Aid system – which I proposed to scrap – which would make things somewhat easier in the short term. Continue reading →

Apartment and Home Construction Growing in Utah

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Utah_apartmentsby Jim Dalrymple

My colleague at the Tribune Tony Semerad had an interesting piece last week on the rapidly growing housing market in Utah. Basically, a lot of people are banking on new single family home construction, while a lot of others think the future is in apartments. On apartment vacancies, he writes,

Apartment developers already are bringing a record number of new dwellings to market in and around Salt Lake City in a kind of boom in multifamily units, particularly downtown.

They’ve been spurred by falling vacancy rates for apartments, which, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, closed 2013 at around 6.7 percent statewide, down from 8.3 percent just five years ago. Local analysts say the number has dipped as low as 5 percent in recent months.

So what does all this mean?

I think it shows that we’re at a pivotal moment right now in Utah, where we have the opportunity to channel a lot of demand into better city building. We can either opt for sustainable, transit-oriented places. Or we can keep building sprawl.

Sarles Makes Pitch for Metro Subsidies

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Richard Sarles. Photo credit:flickr/erin_m.

by James A. Bacon

Last Wednesday Richard Sarles, chief executive officer of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), appeared in Richmond to brief the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) on the transit authority’s plans to meet the transportation needs of the fast-growing Washington region, including Northern Virginia, through 2025.

Sarles did not provide a specific figure that WMATA will be asking of Virginia and the localities served by the Metro and bus lines but he indicated that system-wide, the Momentum plan calls for boosting capital spending by $400 million to $500 million yearly above the $900 million a year it already spends. That sum would be divvied up between Maryland, Washington, D.C., and the federal government.

The pitch was pure economic development. “We’ve looked at what we need to do to provide for growth over the next 15 to 20 years — it’s the equivalent of the City of Houston moving to the region,” Sarles said. “If we did nothing, the area would become so congested that economic development would stagnate.” Continue reading →

Promoting the AMP by Digging up Dirt

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Rick Williams

by Rod Williams

It seems The Tennessean is trying to promote the AMP by digging up dirt on Rick Williams, one of the leaders of the anti-AMP movement. I like Rick Williams. (No, we are not cousins.) I liked Rick when he was a Democrat and was pleased when he left the dark side and became a Republican. I appreciate his leadership in the effort to save the fairgrounds, oppose Metro’s livery price-fixing, and his effort to stop the AMP.

I don’t know the facts behind the dispute involving an unpaid  bill from a  painter for a paint job on his parents house. I know lots of people have conflicts over construction projects. Last year I had a roof put on my house by an out-of-state, door-to-door, storm-chaser roofer who tried to up the contract price by $,6000, claiming almost all my decking was discovered to be bad and they had had to replace it. I refused to pay and finally the scam artist dropped the additional charges. Had he not dropped the charges, we would have gone to court. Continue reading →