Monthly Archives: August 2005

CAFE versus gas taxes – which works?

Posted on August 31, 2005 | 3 Comments

Kevin Drum likes CAFE. He believes that gas taxes are highly regressive. He’s wrong. But which one ‘works’ better? His argument rests on the last 5 years of generally rising fuel prices versus vehicle sales.
The problem is that the rise in fuel prices recently has been seen by most Americans as the result of gouging, or the result of storms, or hippie environmentalists or <insert other crazy reason>. Key here is that all of those things are temporary. Now, if you’re one of the few people who follows the real oil situation you know that we’re probably in for a period of ever-higher spikes and plateaus (with intervening drops due to recessions, perhaps), but most people don’t know this stuff.
If you think the last couple of years are an anomaly, it doesn’t make sense to invest in a fuel-efficient car. Therefore, using that period as an example of how higher fuel prices don’t affect vehicle choice as much as CAFE did is foolish. Better to look at Europe, where CAFE-like standards don’t really exist; but at the time of vehicle purchase, it is understood that gas taxes are very high and likely to stay that way.
Anyways, CAFE doesn’t work half as well as a high baseline for gas prices does. The real reason? Once you buy your car, if gas prices/taxes are low, there’s no real incentive to leave it in the driveway on any given day. With higher gas prices/taxes, however, there is an incentive to leave it at home and take the bus, or carpool, or whatever.
Addressed as a quickie since so many people around the interweb keep repeating this canard.

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Posted in Funding of Transportation, I Told You So, metablog, PS: I am not a crackpot, Republicans Hate Poor People, Republicans Hate Public Transportation, Republicans Hate The Environment, Texas Republicans Hate Cities

Blandburbs and ‘choice’

Posted on August 27, 2005 | Comments Off

Continuing my recent theme of pointing to other works that explain my thinking, here’s a quite good explanation of why suburban sprawl isn’t natural; isn’t the result of consumer ‘choice’; and isn’t healthy. Highly recommended. The only thing I’d add is the role of irresponsible inner city neighborhoods in preventing cities from doing responsible things to promote infill.
The idea that suburban sprawl is just a natural ‘choice’ ignores the reality that without the massive subsidies and regulatory restrictions which prevent anything ELSE from being built, a large minority of current suburbanites would actually live in neighborhoods like mine. All you need to do is see how cities developed before WWII, i.e., before the advent of both zoning and automobile subsidies (when there were plenty of cars, just not massive subsidies for their use by suburbanites).
I promise I’ll get to my Pfluger Bridge stuff next week.

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Posted in Funding of Transportation, I Told You So, metablog, Politics (Outside Austin), Urban Design, When Neighborhoods Go Bad

The Casbjorksen Has Landed

Posted on August 27, 2005 | Comments Off

Steve Casburn is finally online in Portland and is telling a familiar story – the bad bicyclist tale of woe. What I hear on the libertarian sites that I spend an unhealthy amount of time on is that Portland is a hellhole on the verge of collapse. Hopefully Steve, (who somehow got deluded by the liberal media into moving there without even having a job in advance) will survive the post-apocalyptic urban-planning wasteland. At least there’s fewer fat people there.

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Posted in metablog, Personal, Politics (Outside Austin), Urban Design

False balance

Posted on August 27, 2005 | Comments Off

I can’t stress the point of this editorial enough. In issues from global climate change to evolution education, the Republicans are abusing the “report both sides” mentality of the media to present crackpot crap on an equal footing with real science, and it needs to stop. Now.

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Posted in Politics (Outside Austin), Republicans Hate Public Transportation, Republicans Hate The Environment

Why I never voted for Clinton

Posted on August 22, 2005 | 2 Comments

Even though he turned out to be the best possible president for that period in time (he and the Congress restrained each others’ worst impulses): drug law hypocrisy.

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Posted in Politics (Outside Austin)

Pastafarians unite!

Posted on August 19, 2005 | 2 Comments

I’ve never talked about religion on this blog, and haven’t said much about personal matters in general. Today, however, I am filled with the holy impulse to tell you about the real story behind the creation of the Earth. Please share and make sure that this correct version of our origin is discussed in schools alongside the so-called “Intelligent Design”.
Other links:

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Posted in Personal, Politics (Outside Austin), PS: I am not a crackpot

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Shuttle Buses

Posted on August 17, 2005 | 1 Comment

Here’s what those of us who live or work in Central Austin are getting out of commuter rail. Stations in far east Austin and the Convention Center, with a handy transfer to a slow, stuck-in-traffic shuttle-bus to get you to where you might actually want to go. Image below is from one of two new documents up at the Future Connections Study site:

Capital Metro is starting rail service here in Austin in a couple of years NOT by doing what success stories like Portland and Dallas did (light rail straight through and to the densest parts of town) but what South Florida did (commuter rail where tracks already exist, requiring transfers to shuttle buses to actually get anywhere). Fifteen years later, Tri-Rail in South Florida is an unmitigated disaster: no choice commuters despite heavy promotion by an enthusiastic community, no transit-oriented development despite heavy subsidization (below-market attempts at land sales around stations and the like). Unlike in Dallas and Portland (and Minneapolis and Houston and Denver and Salt Lake…), drivers in South Florida aren’t trying Tri-Rail because they know that transferring to shuttle buses every day for your commute overwhelms any speed advantage the train might have bought you up to that point.
In short, commuter rail as your starter line just plain doesn’t work. And the picture ought to make it clear why – even the nominally downtown station is too far from the 6th/Congress intersection for most people to walk, and all other major activity centers in our area will require people to say hey, I’ll drive to the park-and-ride, board a train, get off the train, get on a bus, wait in traffic with all the other cars, get off the bus, and walk to my office. Even promotional images used in the pro-commuter-rail campaign show that they expect downtown workers to have to transfer to shuttle buses, as seen below.

Notice in the handouts that they’re still pretending that all options are on the table. But believe me, there is zero chance that light rail will end up as the circulator, and near-zero chance that streetcars will make it, not that streetcars would work anyways. It’s going to be shuttle-buses in mixed-traffic. Mark my words.

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Posted in Austin, Don't Hurt Us Mr. Krusee, We'll Do Whatever You Want, I Told You So, Republicans Hate Poor People, Republicans Hate Public Transportation, Republicans Hate The Environment, Texas Republicans Hate Cities, Transit in Austin, Urban Design

The Wrong Direction

Posted on August 16, 2005 | 2 Comments

I can’t believe anybody, including the current batch of Republicans, honestly thinks this is a good idea, but my standard for surprise keeps getting reset.

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Posted in Funding of Transportation, I Told You So, Politics (Outside Austin), Republicans Hate The Environment

Commuting To Riata

Posted on August 13, 2005 | Comments Off

I had a nice conversation with Jonathan from Another Pointless Dotcom while doing some work last night, and it came to light that he works in the same complex I did for about a year and a half. This reminded me to share with him my old slideshow of that commute, which I’ve probably never mentioned on the blog. I also then chatted about it this morning with my current cow orker who has a lot of experience in the area. Since this might be of general interest to people who work in the area, I’ll initiate this new Bicycle Commuting category with this oldie-but-goodie.

Riata is a cautionary tale of any number of my hot buttons, including the problems that frontage roads cause transit and pedestrians, neighborhoods being irresponsible, developers getting to claim credit for being ‘near’ transit when it’s not feasible to actually use, high tech offices and apartment complexes metastasizing along sprawl corridors rather than being downtown where they ought to be, etc. There’s at least a few thousand employees of various companies in there now – probably still down from the pre-bust peak.
The key things to remember about commuting to Riata, which is halfway between Duval and Oak Knoll on the north/east side of US 183 are:

  1. Use Jollyville. Now with bike lanes!
  2. When transitioning to Riata Trace Parkway, your choices are to go all the way up to Oak Knoll and come in the back way, or go over on Duval to the 183 frontage, and go in that way. In the morning, the northbound 183 frontage is very civilized and not a problem.
  3. When going home in the afternoon, you’ll want to use the TI/Oak Knoll back way. Don’t mess with 183 then.
  4. Think about using the bus for a boost uphill in some mornings, if you’re like the (old) me and commuting from central Austin.
  5. Decide whether you want to cross Mopac on Spicewood or Steck. My current cow orker prefers Steck all the time; I prefer Steck uphill and Spicewood downhill. Depends on your tolerance for the stress of the crossing at Mopac/Spicewood versus the speed you’ll give up at the 4-way stop on Steck.

(Technical details: I wrote the crappy slideshow script which reads pseudo-XML a long time ago and have never touched it since; it BARELY works; don’t look at it cross-eyed or you might break the internet).

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Posted in Austin, Bicycle Commuting, Bicycling in Austin, Republicans Hate Poor People, Republicans Hate Public Transportation, Texas Republicans Hate Cities, Transit in Austin, Urban Design, When Neighborhoods Go Bad

Pfluger Bridge Background

Posted on August 8, 2005 | Comments Off

history on Pfluger Bridge – why planned, why only half built, original plan – find drawings, take up to beginning of Seaholm process

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Posted in Uncategorized