A lot of fuss has been made by urbanists about how important the ARC transit tunnel under the Hudson is to curbing sprawl in North Jersey, but frankly I'm not convinced that more commuter rail into Manhattan is the cure for what ails New Jersey. The state's fundamental problem is its reliance on … [Read more...]
Sunday links
1. Planners in the Twin Cities have decided to "back away from the age-old compact in which the state tries to keep pace with suburban expansion" (i.e., they're canceling new outer road projects) and add toll/bus lanes to highways in the inner metro area. Republican governor and business on one … [Read more...]
A comment on NYU’s proposed superblocks
Benjamin Hemric left an interesting comment about my remark about NYU's expansion plans in Greenwich Village. First of all, I should admit that I was lazy and got NYU's plans totally wrong – they are going to add towers to the three that I. M. Pei already built, not tear them down, and they're … [Read more...]
New York City links
There are a couple of NYC-related links that I've been saving up, so here they are:1. Stephen Goldsmith, former mayor of Indiannapolis and NYC's new deputy mayor, appears to be interested in privatizing New York City's parking meters in order to balance the city's budget. We're more interested … [Read more...]
Zoning blighted Manhattanville before Columbia did
Something that always annoyed me about discussions of the state of Manhattanville and Columbia's blight study is the fact that they usually leave out restrictive zoning as the original sin. We're certainly no fans of eminent domain or Columbia's plans for the West Harlem neighborhood, and while … [Read more...]
More links!
Why didn't I catch onto this whole linking thing earlier? Are these link lists boring for you guys?1. Human Transit has a great post on "density" and all the different ways to measure it, with a cool picture of sprawling apartment buildings that illustrates why transit use in the Las Vegas … [Read more...]
North Jersey jitneys take off
by Stephen SmithIn the past few years, a relatively new phenomenon seems to be taking hold in cities across North Jersey: the jitney. Similar to the dollar vans that ply the streets of Brooklyn and Queens, jitneys carry more than a taxi but less than a full-sized bus, and run semi-regular … [Read more...]
Internalizing positive transit externalities
by Stephen SmithThe Wall Street Journal ran an article a few days ago claiming that the MTA's recent NYC transit cuts have lowered real estate prices along train and bus lines that have been axed. While it's not a quantitative study, the anecdotes are compelling: "The buyer who buys in Astoria … [Read more...]