When an Expert is not an Expert

This year when I went to get my annual check up, I called my Doctor - a guy who went to medical school, earned the degree, and then developed a successful medical practice as evidenced by the hundreds of clients that see him year after year. And many years ago when I remodeled my home on the Bench, I used the services of two licensed, and bonded contractors who had nearly eighty years of building experience between the two of them.

When I told people I had my annual physical no one said to me, “Hell, you shoulda called my neighbor. He runs marathons and reads lots of health magazines.” The same holds true when I remodeled my house: no one suggested that I would have been better off calling their cousin Elmer who almost earned an A in high school wood shop. But, when it comes to public policy, and more specifically the transit issue, people seem to have a difficult time discerning who the experts are in this debate.

I cannot count the times in the Trolley debate that someone has told me that I need to read Randall O’Toole. I was even recently chastised for not “keeping an open mind” because I don’t reference or pay attention to O’Toole. There is good reason for this: he is not a credible expert on transportation, or planning, the two subjects on which he speaks a great deal. Why do I say this?

It is not because I disagree with him. I disagree with Paul Krugman for the most part, but because Krugman has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, writes for a respectable publication (the New York Times), and earned a Nobel Prize for his work in economics, we must take him seriously.

I don’t disregard O’Toole because he is an affiliate of the CATO Institute. I have a great deal of esteem for CATO. I carry my CATO pocket Constitution in my briefcase. I think CATO criminal justice policy planner Radley Balko is spot on. So my rejection of O’Toole has nothing to do with politics.

And it also isn’t entirely because O’Toole simply has no training in planning or transportation that I disregard his work. His official bio indicates that he “studied forestry” at the University of Oregon. I don’t know what that means, but typically when someone asks me about my educational background, I say I earned a masters in applied historical research. Now it isn’t a requirement that an expert be educated or trained in the field they study. Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford are two of the most influential urbanists of our time, yet neither were classically trained in architecture, planning, or urbanism.

The ideas of Mumford and Jacobs matter though because they are relevant and have been found to be valid and reliable commentaries on urban life. The same cannot be said of O’Toole’s work. I can generalize with a couple of examples.

O’Toole has made a career on criticizing Portland’s world-wide acclaimed public transportation system. This is akin to making the claim that “baseball isn’t popular.” One could easily argue that over a hundred countries don’t have organized baseball at all, and billions of people will go without watching the World Series. But claiming that Portland’s rail system is a failure is ridiculous on its face. We should no more consider that argument than my senseless baseball argument.

The real issue for not reading his work is the fact that it simply brings nothing to the debate. Like when you ask your two year old if he wants mac and cheese or chicken nuggets for lunch and he blurts out “BWANNANO,” O’Toole’s answer to any transportation question is, “buy a car.” There simply is no rail plan that passes his muster, so why bother?

If you really want to understand the different classes of rail, the application of different transportation solutions to problems, how to plan for transit, etc., I’d suggest referencing the works of a real expert. Maybe a guy like Dr. Vukan Vucich, a professor of transportation engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. You might reference one of his books such as Urban Transit: Operations, Planning, and Economics, which happens to be one of the best selling transportation texts in the world. Or you might read one of the 120 peer-reviewed articles on transportation planning that he’s published over his 50 year career in transportation planning.

I am no expert in transportation planning, but I can differentiate between Vucich and O’Toole as sources on the subject, and realize when someone is just yelling “BWANNANO” in my face.

Streetcar funding update

Just got a note from Adam Park over in the Mayor’s office. There was in inaccuracy in my previous post about ongoing funding. As Adam pointed out funds from the LID cannot be used to pay for ongoing operations. The City and CCDC will contribute funds to run the streetcar system if it is built. I corrected the original post, and below is what Adam sent me. Thanks Adam and Cece for clarifying the situation for us.

I just went to your blogpost regarding the Boise Streetcar. It’s a good blog, but I noticed there was some incorrect information. The local improvement district (LID), if approved by council, would be used to fund capital construction of the streetcar. By law, the LID cannot be used to cover operations. The breakdown of expenses currently being considered is as follows:

Capital Construction:
$40 million - Tiger Funding
$10 million - City of Boise/CCDC
$10 million - Local Improvement District

Operating Costs
$1.2 million/year - City of Boise/CCDC

I thought you should know so you can correct the paragraph early in the blog.

Thanks,

Adam

A Streetcar not Desired?

The proposed streetcar in downtown Boise has generated a lot of comment and controversy. But even with all the news coverage and discussion there still seems to be a number of questions. I try to get to the most important ones in a series of trolley FAQs:

Just where exactly is Boise getting the $60 million to pay for this thing?

Earlier this year President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law. As part of that Act, the U.S. Department of Transportation is making $1.5 billion available to state and local governments through the TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) Discretionary Grants Program. TIGER grants can be used for most any kind of transportation related project, but it must also achieve certain outcomes such as increasing livability, sustainability, economic competitiveness, and job creation. Grants will be announced as soon as possible after September 15, 2009, but not later than February 17, 2010.

If the City of Boise gets the grant those funds will partially cover the start-up costs. To generate the remaining monies needed they are considering the establishment of an LID or Local Improvement District. Under the LID, the City would levy an additional tax on businesses along the streetcar route. There is still no consensus among business owners as to whether there is support for the creation of an LID, but Idaho state law 50-2601 allows Idaho municipalities to create LIDs (or BIDs - Business Improvement Districts) with a simple majority vote of the Council. The Mayor and Council will then have to cobble together funds from the City’s general fund and CCDC to pay for ongoing operations.

Why do we need a trolley, anyway? What we need is better bus service, or congestion reduction on I-84 between Nampa and Boise.

The most important thing to consider in any policy debate is the objective of the policy. The Mayor/Council’s objectives are stated clearly on the Boise Streetcar website: “A streetcar would boost economic development in Boise’s downtown core, increase the “livability” of downtown, relieve traffic congestion and reduce the city’s collective carbon footprint.”

This is not a transportation project, it is an economic development project, and with regards to economic development and rail vs. buses, transportation planners are in general agreement on a couple points. First, the permanence of rails and the related infrastructure is what increases property values along transportation routes, not the mere existence of a route. Bus routes can change at any moment - it’s just a matter of moving a sign. A rail stop is more permanent, and generates higher property values for building owners and businesses. Second, in general, people prefer to ride rail transportation over buses.

As a transportation project, the goal of the streetcar is to move people from one end of the City to another in a convenient fashion. There are over 40,000 jobs in Boise’s downtown core and those workers run errands, go to lunch, and go to meetings throughout the day. The streetcar will enable more of that to take place and reduce car trips in the city.

This project is only part of a larger rail vision for the city and the Valley. Eventually, the streetcar would be expanded to run up Capital/Vista serving BSU and the Boise Depot. Additional westward routes would expand the line to the 30th and Main master planned area of Boise; eastward expansions would go out past MK Plaza and Park Center.

If Senator Crapo is able to get funding for the re-establishment of Amtrak’s Pioneer Line, we would then have a system that could carry people in from Nampa, drop them at the Depot, then take them to virtually any part of downtown from 30th street to Park Center. So that’s the vision.

We used to have a Trolley and it didn’t work. Why on earth would we do this again?!

Not true. Boise and the Valley had an extensive rail system that operated from 1891-1928, and it served the public quite well. Streetcar lines ran through all of downtown Boise, and the Interurban Lines ran out to Collister, Pierce Park, through Eagle, Star, Middleton, to Caldwell, Nampa, Meridian and back into Boise. Like many rail systems across the globe, however, the system ran into financial difficulties which led the owners to shut it down in 1928.

Photo courtesy of Adele Thomsen, Nick Casner and Valeri Kiesig

This of course coincided with the rise of the automobile. The car was not immediately well received, but soon gained favor as the rail infrastructure fell into disrepair. At this time too, the city planning profession was young and very preoccupied with relieving congestion in city centers. They saw providing more space to cars and wider roads as the way to make that happen. That is hardly the prevailing theory in planning practice today.

What are other places doing about rail?

The Mayor points to 10 cities that have a streetcar, and another 3 dozen or so that are considering building some sort of rail based circulator. The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) has written a couple of pieces poo-pooing the proposed Boise system because our conditions are not like those found in Little Rock, AR, a system Mayor Bieter points to as a success. The IFF makes some good points if we view the proposed streetcar as a transportation system. But 1) it’s too early in the build out of the system to judge whether the streetcar makes sense (of course it does in the wider scheme that I outlined above); and, 2) this is an economic development project. What the Mayor needs to demonstrate is that there will be a net positive return on investment for the city and the local landowners. Current academic literature shows extremely high rates of return on fixed-rail investments.

This is one reason regions are looking at rail transit. One of the most famous examples is Portland, OR, which has an international reputation for its rail transit operated by Metro (a regional governing body). I would posit that our neighbor to the south, Salt Lake City, will one day be much the same as Portland. But the ability of those cities and regions to raise finances for operations far exceeds Boise’s. Boise has no ability to create “local option taxes” to fund transportation. It is also not likely that though 50% of the state’s GDP comes from the Boise-Nampa MSA, that the state will ever invest in rail though that is exactly who pays for the rail line that runs from Sandy to Ogden (the Utah Transit Authority). That leaves us with a lot of work to do from a governance standpoint if we are ever to get any of this to happen.

Do I support the trolley/streetcar? Yes. I think that it is a good first step in developing transportation infrastructure for this region that we will need in the next 40 years. Can we do everything immediately? Nope. Have I seen evidence that property values will increase along the streetcar line more than enough to offset the taxes levied by an LID? No. There are still many questions and details to sort out. But I do commend the Mayor and Council for exercising LEADERSHIP on an issue that is critical to our future.

And what about simply funding Valley Regional Transit (VRT) to a greater extent so that we can have better bus service? The federal funds available through TIGER and other ARRA funds cannot be used for that and cities have no way to raise revenues to pay more for bus service. Cities facing reduced revenues are cutting back their payments to VRT which means bus service is going to get worse in the Valley long before it gets better.

The streetcar debate opens the door to so many policy questions - policy debates we need to have. So even if we don’t get the TIGER grant, I’m glad to see so many people talking about transit, taxes, governance, and our very future as America’s Most Livable City. It would be unfortunate to get to 2050 only to lament, “I (Boise) coulda been a contender.”

The Rhetoric of Rail

There’s often more fiction than fact in the articles on rail these days, and there’s almost NO real analysis in much of what passes for commentary. I posted the text below as a comment on the NewWest blog. It was actually long enough that it should be its own post. Here’s some thoughts I have about what we’ve been reading in the press lately about rail transit, specifically the possible reintroduction of the Amtrak Pioneer Line:

1) We need to be clear on the policy objective before we dismiss proposed solutions.

2) We need to be clear on the time horizon of the possible implementation of this policy.

3) We don’t know the “real” prices of most other transportation options.

4) We don’t have any comparative statistics against which to view the costs of the Amtrak Pioneer line.

There are any number of policy objectives that reopening the Pioneer line could accomplish: providing an alternative to air travel in the region; mitigating against future reductions in air service; mitigating against rising fuel costs; environmental protection; economic development; national competitiveness.

Senator Crapo says his objective with this policy is this: “A number of years ago (1997), Amtrak cut the Pioneer Route, which went through southern Idaho. That left many rural Americans in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming without convenient access to the nation’s passenger rail system.” So, this proposal does what he is looking for, but yes, at what price. That brings me to point #2.

The good Senator, from what I gather, would like to see one of the Pioneer options happen sooner rather than later. That probably isn’t likely, in my estimation. Again referring to that America2050 rail report, no one really expects the Pioneer line to come back online for quite some time. I think it is reasonable for most people to agree that sometime in the next 40 years, it makes sense to get this line going again. That’s my position.

We should also be fortunate that we *know* the real costs of reopening the line. What does an airline ticket *really* cost? Who knows? $9 billion in taxes support TSA, and $14.6 the FAA. Add that to the cost of your plane ticket to SLC or anywhere else, and that is just the tip of the iceberg of hidden costs for just that one form of travel.

And so there is a $260 per passenger subsidy in some economic models for the Pioneer. Is that a lot? Who knows? What does it cost to run passenger or HSR in the Northeast? Japan? Europe? Would this represent a bigger per-capita subsidy (subsidy = public investment) than do our roads, and airlines? These are all questions that we need to answer.

I do want to throw out there too that at least there is SOME collection of non-public revenues for this system. What non-public revenue does I-84 collect? Zero. In fact, I-84 improvements are being paid for with Grant Anticipation Revenue Bonds which means your kids are paying for I-84 improvements.

Anyway - introductory economics tells us that at some cost and certain conditions, this policy proposal makes sense. I do not know if that is *now* or not; I still have questions. But, as I said, I think it is reasonable to be planning for the redeployment of this line sometime before the middle of the century. But as policy and bureaucracy moves so slowly, this is probably the time that we have to start talking about it if we want to make this happen at all.

David v. Goliath III: Blanchard v. Glaeser “No one lives in the West”

The road less travelled

According to his bio, “Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992 and has been at Harvard since then.” An obviously brilliant and esteemed urban economist, you’ll see why I find his article “Put Transit Where the People Are” so bizarre. From the article:

MASS TRANSIT needs mass to work: enough people must live and work near train stations and bus stops. Densely populated Eastern Massachusetts should therefore be a prime location for public transportation. . . Despite the difficulties trains face in urban Boston, the Obama administration is pushing a new transportation agenda that promises high-speed rail in unlikely spots like Alabama and Oklahoma.

Dr. Glaeser continues:

So far the Obama administration’s transportation spending has gone overwhelmingly to highways in states with plenty of roads relative to people. Per capita federal transportation spending in the 10 densest states, which include Massachusetts, is less than half of spending in the 10 least-dense states. This policy follows an established formula, but it makes little sense. Congestion problems are most severe in the dense areas that get less funding.

Ok - that sounds plausible. Cities that are more dense should get more funding. But here he comes again with his misreading of the west:

Now the administration wants Americans to envision high-speed rail lines in the wide-open spaces of Texas.

Ok. So I think we get it. He is convinced that there is no one in the west, and that there isn’t sufficient density in the west to build rail. That’s his first argument. So let’s dissect that.

Unless legendary urban historian Carl Abbott is wrong, here is the reality: the west is plenty dense. In his latest book, How Cities Won the West: Four Centuries of Urban Change in Western North America, Abbott writes:

“Densities of western cities are surprisingly high. It remains surprising to many people that Los Angeles is more densely populated than Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh. There were forty-nine metro areas in the United States with one million or more people in 2000. Ten of the twelve most densely populated were western - Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Phoenix, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, and Salt Lake City.” Pg 229-230.

So we’ve busted Harvard/East Coast myth number one. But then there’s Glaeser’s contention that cars and planes are preferred over public transportation choices out west:

There is a reason why 48 percent of Amtrak’s passengers travel on only two routes: the Northeast Corridor and the Los Angeles-San Diego line. For travelers in the less-dense areas between the coasts, cars beat trains for modest distances and planes win over long hauls.

Glaeser of course leaves out the fact that many Amtrak lines in the west aren’t in operation any longer (could this be a reason the other lines get all the traffic?). A particular noteworthy example is the Pioneer Line that formerly ran from Seattle, through Portland, Boise, Salt Lake, Denver, Omaha, and Chicago. So the issue of the availability of western rail lines aside, Carl Abbott once again can enlighten us on the transportation preferences issue:

“Sacramento, Los Angeles, Denver, Dallas, Salt Lake City, and Phoenix built more limited rail systems after 1990, although some of them continue to expand (as in Denver and Phoenix). One consequence is that four cities of the western U.S. ranked in the nation’s top ten for percentage of journey-to-work trips made by public transit, with San Francisco/Oakland comparable to Washington D.C., Honolulu comparable to Philadelphia, and Seattle and Portland comparable to Pittsburgh.” pg 225

So I think we’ve scuttled that argument. Funny, though, Glaeser wasn’t the only Harvard guy recently to write such an article. Robert Samuelson wrote one very similar not long after, decrying the proposed building of a rail corridor from Houston to New Orleans where no one lives (Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States, and the “Texas Triangle” of Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio accounts for 7% of U.S. GDP). But recall that only a minuscule percentage of Harvard grads ever take jobs out west, so perhaps these fellas have never been out here amongst the cowboys, Indians, and sagebrush.

There are so many issues one could cover here. Glaeser admits that more spending won’t relieve congestion in the Eastern corridors, yet calls for more spending in those corridors. Samuelson also claims that there is no economic gain to be had from building rail which is completely unbelievable because U.S. history since the 1850’s cannot even be understood without contemplating the development of the railroad.

But just so all you Harvard guys are clear: yes - there are folks out west. Really. To close with a last fact from Carl Abbott:

“In the 2000 census of the United States, western metropolitan areas took eight of the top twenty slots. These eight super-cities - Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay metropolis, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Seattle, Phoenix, San Antonio and Denver - all had more than two million residents.” pg 9

And that, my dear Harvard friends, is like your own motto says, “veritas.”

Where in the Treasure Valley . . . are all the bike lanes?

I’ve been commuting via bicycle for the last year-and-a-half, and I have people say to me all the time something to the effect of, “I don’t know what the hell you cyclists are complaining about, there are bike lanes ALL OVER downtown and the rest of Boise.” As my recent twitpic tirade showed, however, that is not the case:

No bike lanes on Broadway

No bike lanes on Idaho Street in downtown Boise

No bike lanes on University Drive

So if there’s no bike lanes on the main east-west thoroughfare in downtown Boise, and none on the major streets near the University where HUNDREDS of students use bicycles to commute, just where the heck are they?

Well, they are currently few and far between, but ACHD is actually working to rectify that with a nearly 300 page plan to better prepare Ada County to truly be a safe and decent place to cycle (instead of just paying lip service to safe cycling as we have done in the past):

The new plan, if/when enacted, will finally resolve the issue of really having no bike lanes downtown. Below is the map showing current bike lanes in the downtown core:

Not a pretty picture. All we have now is bike lanes on portions of Main, and Ninth. The rest of downtown is a crap shoot. It doesn’t help also that 1) The city of Boise controls NONE of this; and, 2) that CCDC actually owns Eighth Street. Throw ACHD into the mix and you have a few too many cooks in the road building kitchen. The proposed bicycle lanes for downtown looks a little better:

The ACHD proposal adds lanes on Eighth and Tenth. This is a good start, but I still think we need to continue talking about our transportation system and what exactly we want it to accomplish.

For my part, I don’t want traffic moving quickly through downtown - that is only one vision of what our streets should do. My sympathies don’t lie with the guy who works downtown and lives in Meridian, who just wants to get his SUV out of here, up the Connector, and into his three car garage in a non-descript subdivision where he knows none of his neighbors.

Vision #2 is different: People staying downtown spending money, socializing, networking, and coming up with new ideas. A downtown that is cool, clean, diverse, and SAFE for people to wander, ride, sit, contemplate, enjoy.

These are our streets. The engineers we employ at ACHD build our transportation grid based upon what kind of downtown, city, and region we choose to live in. The new bicycle plan is a great start on implementing vision #2. Let’s keep it up.

David v. Goliath II: Blanchard v. Nelson on growth along the Snake River Plain

At the NewWest.net planning conference in June of this year, Professor Arthur (Chris) Nelson of the University of Utah raised some eyebrows when he outlined his predictions for the U.S. housing market over the coming decades, and his thoughts on what that meant for Idaho.

USC Professor Richard Green openly disagreed with Nelson’s projections as did BoDo developer Mark Rivers. The Calculated Risk blog also had some critiques, but nothing major.

Nelson’s analysis indicated that Idaho’s population would fill in along the Snake River Plain from it’s western edge in Ontario, OR, over to the eastern side of Idaho ending at Rexburg. For me it’s not how many people will move here, but where they will actually settle. Though Nelson believes growth will fill in along the I-84 corridor, evidence seems to contradict him indicating that growth will instead occur between the Wasatch Front, and move north to Rexburg - skipping the Boise Valley all together. There are good reasons for this.

Wealth is already leaving the Boise Valley for eastern Idaho and the Wasatch Front.

IRS data from 2006 and 2007 show positive migration to Ada County within Idaho. However, those migrating to Ada County from other parts of the state had average adjusted gross incomes of $33,337 annually, while those leaving Ada County for other parts of the state had annual incomes of $40,582. In total, residents worth $139 million moved to Ada County, and residents worth a total of $154 million moved out. That is a loss of $15 million in gross income for Ada County, to other parts of Idaho.

Additionally, in that same period, half of the top ten cities to which Boiseans moved were along the I-15 corridor with Provo, UT ranking first; Salt Lake City (2); Idaho Falls (5); Ogden, UT (7); and Pocatello (8). The more stable economic climate of eastern Idaho and Utah is but one reason why Boiseans are leaving.

There are strong sociocultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah.

It used to be said that Idaho had two capitals: Spokane, and Salt Lake City. Indeed, Coeur D’ Alene, ID is part of a two-state metropolitan statistical area (MSA) that includes Spokane and Coeur D’ Alene, and the Logan, UT MSA includes counties in southern Idaho. But physical proximity is not the only connection. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints exudes a strong cultural presence along the Wasatch Front and Eastern Idaho. With the presence of the new Temple in Rexburg and a growing BYU-Idaho campus there as well, the cultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah are only getting stronger.

Gaps in the transportation system separate the Boise Valley from eastern Idaho, and eastern Idaho from Utah. The gap between Utah and eastern Idaho, however, is shrinking more quickly.

Traffic patterns along Idaho’s highway system (seen below) show a consistent level of traffic between Ontario, OR and Heyburn, ID. Traffic drops off significantly, though, between Heyburn and American Falls. Traffic flows again pick up significantly between American Falls and Rexburg.

Lower traffic counts also show up on I-84 heading south out of Heyburn, and on I-15 heading south out of Pocatello, much like the reduced counts between Heyburn and American Falls. In this day and age of regional employment exchange will eastern Idaho ultimately align itself along I-84, or I-15?

If America’s foremost planners with the America2050 project have their way, the Pioneer rail line - which runs from Seattle to Chicago by way of Boise and Salt Lake City - will one day run again. But that line also contains another important spur: the link from Salt Lake City to Pocatello. As gas prices rise, airlines will offer fewer flights meaning Boise will inevitably end up with less air service in favor of airlines servicing larger airports such as Salt Lake and Denver. The rail link between Salt Lake and Pocatello, which also mirrors the west coast’s chief north-south land route between Mexico and Canada (CANAMEX) will exert strong pressure on the region to further develop in a north-south manner, and not throughout the Snake River Plain.

With white-collar job growth flat or shrinking in the Boise Valley and the economy in eastern Idaho more stable, strong sociocultural linkages between eastern Idaho and Utah, and a developing transportation network between eastern Idaho and Utah, evidence seems to suggest that the north-south corridor along I-15, rather than the east-west corridor along I-84 seems better poised for long-term economic and population growth. Alas, only time will tell.

What if gas was $20 a gallon?

On the Today Show this morning I saw author Christopher Steiner talking to Matt Lauer about his new book “$20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better.” I have to admit as a guy who rides his bike 3 miles to work every day, even when gas hit $4.00 I never even thought twice about it. But $20 a gallon?

Steiner doesn’t start there, however. He first starts with gas at $6 a gallon, and says it means this:

The death of the SUV
Crumbling road infrastructure
Healthier Americans

Most of this is pretty self-explanatory. No one will be able to afford SUV’s, and with more people switiching to smaller more fuel efficient cars and other forms of transportation gas tax revenues will drop. The interesting thing to note here is that Americans get healthier: according to University of North Carolina professor Charles Courtemanche for every $1 per gallon that gas increases, obesity drops 10%. The 10% drop in obesity equates to $11 billion savings in the health care system

When gasoline hits $8.00 per gallon, the situation gets far worse:

• Major airlines fold
• Vegas resorts and Disney World close
• Families live closer together

When gas hits $8 per gallon

Not having read the book yet, I am not sure how Steiner comes to this conclusion, but from the interview it sounds as if the cost of running an airline will prohibit many of them from continuing operations when gas hit this price. No wonder Vegas wants a bullet train from So Cal right to its very door.

$14 per gallon brings some interesting news too:

• Walmart dies
• More mom-and-pop stores
• Factories return to the U.S.

Steiner notes that Walmart has 6,000 suppliers 80% of which are in China. They rely on a fleet of 7,000 trucks to move good from ports inland to 4,000 stores. That will no longer be cost competitive when gas hits $14 a gallon.

Finally at $20 per gallon:

• 90% of Americans will live in cities
• 70% of Americans will never own a car
• Nuclear reactors will power everything

All of us have heard the “peak-oil” pronouncements over the last 30 years so those with a sense of history will probably look at this book and say “huh.” I haven’t spent enough time thinking about this to form a real opinion. Still it’s fascinating to consider the implications of gas prices, which if they were actually controlled by the invisible hand, should be rising as world-wide demand has never been higher.

World’s Top 20 Places to Live? Not in the U.S.

Forbes.com just caught on, but Mercer Consulting’s annual report on the world’s top places to live hit news desks in late April. Short story: no American City makes the list; European cities dominate the list.

Mercer’s survey is based upon an index score of 100, with New York City the base city. The following factors go in to creating an overall score for world cities:

• Political and social environment (political stability, crime, law enforcement)
• Economic environment (currency exchange regulations, banking services)
• Socio-cultural environment (censorship, limitations on personal freedom)
• Health and sanitation (medical supplies and services, infectious diseases, sewage, waste disposal, air pollution)
• Schools and education (standard and availability of international schools)
• Public services and transportation (electricity, water, public transport, traffic congestion)
• Recreation (restaurants, theatres, cinemas, sports and leisure
• Consumer goods (availability of food/daily consumption items, cars
• Housing (housing, household appliances, furniture, maintenance services)
• Natural environment (climate, record of natural disasters)

For overall quality of life based upon these factors, Mercer calls these the top 10 cities:

Top 10 cities: Quality of living

Base City: New York, US (=100)

In North America, Vancouver B.C. gets the highest marks in the region, placing fourth. Other American cities in the top 50 include, Honolulu (29), San Francisco (30), Boston (35), Portland, OR (42), Washington D.C. (44-tie), Chicago (44-tie), New York City (49), and Seattle (50). Conspicuous for it absence is Los Angeles; conspicuous for its high rankings is the Cascadia Region (from Vancouver to Portland).

Cities in America generally score low on this report for one reason: infrastructure. The Forbes.com article notes:

For the first time, Mercer also evaluated cities on the basis of their infrastructure, including electricity supply, water availability, telephone and mail services, public transportation, traffic congestion and the range of international flights from local airports.

Infrastructure was a category that propelled many German cities toward the top of the table. After Munich, which notched the two spot, Düsseldorf finished sixth and Frankfurt eighth, followed by Berlin at No. 16.

In the report, Slagin Parakatil, senior researcher at Mercer, said simply, “German city infrastructure is among the best in the world” and held particular praise for the fast connections available to international destinations.

Credit the high priority German cities place on urban mobility, especially trains, which are seen as instrumental to attracting and developing business in Europe’s largest economy. Maria Krautzberger, permanent secretary of the Berlin Senate Department for Urban Development, told Forbes that the ability for companies to connect to global business networks of suppliers and customers makes infrastructure an essential competitive advantage for cities.

Infrastructure improvement, particularly in high-speed rail, has also been a priority of the Obama administration, which allocated $8 billion of the $787 billion stimulus package to the cause of six possible high-speed corridors around the nation.

But the U.S. is a bit behind the curve. Germany, for example, has had high-speed rail since 1991. In Japan, the Shinkansen, the country’s high-speed network, has been operational since 1964.

While the Obama administration has focused its support for such networks through the creation of jobs and easing of congestion, the long-term competitive advantage that cities gain as the result of such linkages has the potential to be its longest-term benefit.

The world’s top 10 cities based on infrastructure according to Mercer, are:

Top 10 rankings - City infrastructure

* City Infrastructure Ranking 2009 includes the following criteria:
electricity, water availability, telephone, mail, public transport, traffic
congestion and airport.

In North America, Vancouver again places sixth. Atlanta is the first America city appearing on the list at 15. Others include Washington D.C. (24), Chicago (28), New York (32), Boston (33), Honolulu (41), Miami (47), and Houston and Seattle (tie-49).

It would be interesting to see why Portland, OR fell off this list since the city is world renowned for its rail service. My guess is that the Airport does not feature the number of international connections that Mercer probably rates highly (and why Atlanta rates so highly on the infrastructure list). And having lived in Seattle for a good bit of my life I am surprised that the traffic congestion and lack of rail support from the airport didn’t impact that city’s rankings in a more negative way.

At any rate, from an international business perspective infrastructure is a critical component for businesses seeking to locate plants, property, equipment and people.

What an engaged government looks like: Case study - Rail in California and Nevada

With the lack of participation by Idaho’s state level elected officials in many of the conversations that the community is having about transportation, planning, growth, sustainability, transit, etc., an article and a few photos from the western press really drove home the importance of an engaged legislature.

Last month, the Urban Land Institute and Boise State University convened a half-day conference on transit in the Boise Valley. One legislator attended.

The issue being discussed was how to get the rail line, which runs from the City of Nampa to the Micron plant in East Boise, operational for regional passenger service. We’re talking about one tiny little move toward rail transit - and we can’t seem to assemble any political leadership in the room.

There was no representation there from the Governor’s office. Neither the legislature nor the Governor have shown any interest in local option or other funding mechanisms to help the region get some kind of rail transit happening. Meanwhile, our federal officials are heading in the opposite direction and trying to get Amtrak to restore service to the Boise Depot. Our political leaders are all over the map.

So what’s going on in other parts of the country? Everyone else is experiencing the same confusion/apathy, right? Not exactly. Here, in images is what is happening in California:

The proposed high-speed rail network in California

Proposed high-speed rail line from Anaheim to Las Vegas

In case that is unclear, what is happening in California is that the state - through a combination of federal, state, local, and private money - is building a $45 billion, high speed rail network to connect the state. Because California is so organized, they are likely to get the lion’s share of the $8 billion that President Obama made available for regional rail projects.

This in turn spawned the proposal by Nevada to build a high-speed rail connection from Las Vegas to Anaheim. So while the all these grand plans are going on, we’re still sitting around here asking questions like “who’s gonna ride the thing?” Well, they asked that in Nevada too, and the poll below shows that 69% of people said they would ride the Vegas high-speed line if it were built.

A recent poll from the Las Vegas Sun-Times

The California system would link San Francisco with Los Angeles with train service in under three hours. How is it that a project spanning 800 miles and dozens of local governments and special districts, can get off the ground but Idaho can’t even get train service happening from Boise to Micron? Vice President Joe Biden sums it up:

“The reason why California is looked at so closely — it’s been a priority of your governor, it’s been a priority of your Legislature, they’ve talked about it, a lot of planning has been done,” Biden said.