Sunday reading 1 February 2015

Every week we read more than we can write about on the blog. To avoid letting good commentary and research fall by the wayside, we’re going to publish weekly excerpts from what we’ve been reading.

Lloyd Alter, “The whole city of Florence can fit in one Atlanta cloverleaf“, Treehugger. This picture is worth a thousand words – Florence is a city of around 380,000 people:

I have thought that Jim Kunstler was being his usual over-the-top self when he called the American suburban experiment “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” But when you compare that photo of Atlanta to Florence, you can see that he was right.

Andrew Geddis, “How high can you go?“, Pundit

David Farrar, unsurprisingly, welcomed Nick Smith’s announcement of proposed changes, albeit with a caveat:

The question will be whether they will do enough. The greater weight to property rights and prioritisation of housing affordability look the most promising.

Right – people should be able to use their land as they see fit and loosing the market will create new housing supply to meet demand and thus make houses “more affordable” (more on what that might mean in a moment). Bog-standard orthodox, small-l liberal reasoning.

So, for example, if you look at the MOTU Consulting report that Nick Smith released as evidence of the need to change the RMA (more on this report in a moment), you’ll see that it estimates that “Building Height Limits” add some $18,000 – $32,000 to the cost of new apartments. So, remove the restrictions on how high developers can build on their land (as well as other constraints on building design) and you’ll get more and cheaper apartments, which is what John Key says first home buyers should now be considering instead of “proper” houses. Hooray!

But this is where things start to get a bit weird. Because under the proposed Unitary Plan for Auckland first released back in 2013, a document that was created under the auspices of the dreaded RMA, restrictions on building heights were going to be (marginally) relaxed in various parts of Auckland to allow more high-density housing to be built. What a good thing to have happen, right?

Jarrett Walker, “Basics: should I vote for a transit tax?“, Human Transit:

.  In growing urban areas, transit needs grow faster than tax revenues.

This problem is mathematically inevitable.

As cities grow, and especially as they grow denser, the need for transit generally rises faster than population, at least in the range of densities that is common in North America.  This is completely obvious if you think about it, and I stepped through it in more detail in Chapter 10 of Human Transit.  In brief: Suppose a particular square mile of the city doubles in population.  Transit demand would double because there are twice as many people for whom transit is competing.  But independently of that, if density is higher, each person is likely to find transit more useful, because (a) density creates more disincentives to driving and car ownership while (b) density makes it easier for transit agencies to provide abundant and useful service.   Those two separate impacts of density on transit, multiplied together, mean that transit demand is rising faster than population. […]

So if the city is growing denser, transit needs are growing faster than transit revenues.  This is nobody’s fault.  It’s a mathematical fact about the geometry of transit and density.

Alan Davies, “Future transport: What can we learn from New Zealand?“, Crikey

There are a number of things Australian urban policy makers and managers could learn from the New Zealand Ministry of Transport’s Future Demand project, which addresses the question of how the nation’s transport system should evolve to support mobility in the future.

Importantly, Future Transport recognises that the decline in travel in developed countries over the last ten years, particularly by car, is extraordinarily important and puts it front and centre as the key issue; it’s supported by a number of specialist technical reports.

Stacey Kirk, “Cycleway plan drops into a lower gear“, Stuff:

The Government is ignoring official advice and opting to spend less than half what was recommended to improve urban cycleways.

Ministerial briefings and a draft Cabinet paper, prepared for former transport minister Gerry Brownlee, show the Ministry of Transport advised spending $450 million to develop urban cycleways to a level that would be safe and convenient for commuters and children riding to school.

Of the $450m, $260m spread over five years would have been funded by the Government, with local councils picking up a $70m tab, and the remainder coming from the Land Transport Fund. […]

Green Party transport spokeswoman Julie Anne Genter said the Government was missing a prime opportunity.

“It’s a little bit difficult to understand why they aren’t taking the advice that they are being given because, in the context of the entire transport budget, it’s actually a very small amount of money and it has enormous benefits.”

This article also has some great stats on Wellington’s current cycling boom:

The census showed commuter cyclists had increased by 16 per cent since 2006. In Wellington, between 2007 and 2012, the number of cyclists counted during peak hours grew by 40 per cent.

New Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller is pushing the idea of a road tunnel under the Kaimai’s.

A vehicle tunnel under the Kaimai Range needs to be considered with the same weight as a second harbour crossing in Auckland was given, Bay of Plenty MP Todd Muller says.

Mr Muller revealed his plan to about 35 people at yesterday’s Welcome Bay community breakfast. He later told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend it was a top priority during his first term in parliament and promised to work with the NZ Transport Agency to investigate the feasibility of the idea.

“I’ve always had a strong belief that Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty will form part of the economic horsepower part of the country, which is Auckland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty.”

Mr Muller said the tunnel would be a huge driver of economic growth in the area and hoped he would see it come to fruition in his lifetime.

We’ve talked about this idea before as it’s something the trucking lobby bring up from time to time. About the only comparison that can be made between the project and an additional Waitemata Harbour Crossing is that it would make the AWHC’s BCR of 0.3 look fantastic. NZTA data shows that on average only around 9300 people use SH29 over the Kaimai’s and is likely just one of the reasons the NZTA say it doesn’t make sense.

Eric Jaffe: The Remarkable Turnaround of Atlanta Public Transit, CityLab

So Parker, who’d overseen transit agencies in San Antonio and Charlotte, drew up a rescue plan. MARTA would cut unfilled positions but retain existing staff and launch a transit-oriented development program. He brought more work in-house: the agency developed a real-time transit information system itself for $50,000, he says, while outside firms wanted more than $1 million. And he convinced Wall Street to upgrade the agency’s credit rating.

Then he reinvested the savings. MARTA increased service and high-frequency hours, upgraded its bus fleet to natural gas, and—most importantly in Parker’s eyes—kept fares flat. As of October 2014 ridership was up for the year. In November, Clayton County voters overwhelmingly approved a penny sales tax to join the MARTA network, the first expansion since the agency formed in 1971.

Charles V. Bagli: Times Square’s Crushing Success Raises Questions About Its Future, New York Times

The Crossroads of the World has never been more popular. And that is becoming a problem.

More people than ever are packing into Times Square — from across the world, the country and the rest of New York City.

Eager to dip into such a bounty of wallets, international retailers are jostling for space, paying rents that are second only to Fifth Avenue. Pulsing, color-splashed digital billboards have grown from the size of basketball courts to football-field proportions. Attendance at Broadway shows topped 13 million last year for the first time.

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