I often hear from libertarian-inclined defenders of the suburban status quo that the fact that American is so overwhelmingly suburban is proof that it's what Americans want. Economists call this "revealed preference," but it could also be understood as voting with your feet and wallet. People have … [Read more...]
NYC to raise on-street parking rates, local news freaks out
New York City has some of the most underpriced parking in the nation, and while there have been a few pilot programs (in the UES, the West Village, and Park Slope) to raise rates during peak hours, it looks like Bloomberg is finally pushing to implement Park Smart citywide. Residential metered … [Read more...]
Quote of the day
From Matt Yglesias: I never like to visit a place without checking out its local parking regulations. Whoa, and I thought I was bad! (He is, of course, talking about minimum parking requirements for developers, not day-to-day rules for people looking to park their cars.)If you're feeling … [Read more...]
Happy 250th post!
...okay, so it's not really the 250th post – that passed a few weeks ago, uneventfully. But we did recently pass 100,000 total page views (at least, so says Sitemeter...WordPress seems to think it's more), so I thought it would be a good time to introduce myself and maybe ask you guys for a … [Read more...]
NJ, the far West Side, and LIC should pay for the No. 7 subway expansion
The transit blogosphere has been falling over itself with excitement since yesterday about Bloomberg's proposal to extend the No. 7 train into New Jersey, and I have to agree that it sounds like a very good plan. It would be much cheaper than the recently-axed ARC project and wouldn't involve a … [Read more...]
Making-driving-more-expensive link minilist
These seemed not quite fleshed-out enough for their own post, but too important to be buried along with other links.1. San Francisco is considering a congestion charge plan that would either cover the whole city during rush hour, or just the northeastern quadrant (or possibly a mix of the two), … [Read more...]
Sobyanin’s horrific plan for Moscow
It's been a few months since longtime Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov was fired, so I figured it would be a good time to check in on the city. In spite of Moscow's infamous traffic and "perversely-sloped" population density gradient, the former mayor's plan to build 100 km of new metro tracks and over … [Read more...]
Environmentalism vs. density, federal style
Coatesville is a town about 45 miles east of Philadelphia, and they want to refurbish their train station and build some transit-oriented development around it. The town really took off around the turn of the last century with the Lukens Steel Company, and because the train line was the town's … [Read more...]