Libertarians bash D.C.’s successful bikeshare for serving wealthy whites, and miss the point of public transport

Why should Washington, D.C., subsidize its bikeshare system if it’s mostly used by white people with college degrees? That’s the question ReasonTV posed yesterday, and it’s a good one to think about.

But let’s take the reporter at her word…
By this logic, we shouldn’t be funding any parks in neighborhoods where most of the residents have money, white faces or college degrees. We should only have city-sponsored street fairs in the poorer parts of town. Public pools? Baseball fields? Waterfront esplanades? If the people using them are mostly white, moneyed or college-educated, then they don’t deserve government support.

It’s an argument that’s carefully calculated to befuddle people who are used to arguing against inequality, and who typically rage against the idea of government handouts for the well-off. Suddenly, bikeshare users are being asked to justify a publicly funded system that’s not used by everybody equally.

Except that we don’t have to justify it, because it’s public transportation.

read more: salon, 21.06.12.

Students, parents, and faculty of Sunset Elementary School in San Francisco, Calif., participating in the second annual Bike to School Day as they ride up 41st Ave. in the Sunset on Thursday, April 15, 2010. Students at more than 30 San Francisco.
photo: Liz Hafalia

The U.S. House of Representatives Transportation Committee voted Feb. 2 to eliminate all dedicated federal funding for the Safe Routes to School program and other initiatives that promote biking and walking. The House and Senate are both poised to act on similar pieces of legislation this week..

In 1969, 41 percent of kids walked or biked to school. By 2001, only 13 percent did. Research shows that children who walk or bicycle to school have better fitness levels, are more active, and do better in school. It’s a great way to get families and communities involved in the health of our kids — and it’s fun.

sfgate, 13.02.12.

Pay commission acknowledges its proposal is likely DOA

The city’s Salary Setting Commission — a seven-member panel required to recommend pay changes for the City Council and mayor — voted unanimously Wednesday to boost salaries for council members from about $75,000 to $175,000 annually. The mayor’s yearly pay would increase from about $100,000 to $235,000 under the plan.

The council has the final say on any potential increase.

“It’s not to give them a raise,” said Bob Ottilie, the commission’s president. “It’s to make an adjustment to the pay to improve the quality of the pool of candidates.”

The idea of such a large increase in pay at a time when the city still struggles with budget deficits was deemed laughable by those within City Hall.

sd u-t, 02.02.12.

On Atlantic Cities, Nate Berg reports that an analysis by Wendell Cox and Hugh Pavletich for Demographia on affordable housing is incomplete. I would go further and say that the analysis is flat-out wrong…

That connection between appeal and higher costs can be mitigated in at least two ways, aside from direct subsidies for affordable housing. One idea is to recognize that the most important barrier to new development is not regulations per se, but the speed at which the regulatory process moves. That crucial distinction is completely missed by Demographia. Most US municipalities rely on the same regulatory tools — but move through the process at greatly varied speeds. Some cities and towns allow endless delays and appeals — raising costs for development and keeping a lid on supply.

One strategy a city or town can employ to promote affordable, sustainable development is to align land use regulations with what citizens want, and then speed up the process for developers who meet those criteria.

A second strategy is to tie land-use with transportation, particularly public transit. Walkable, mixed-use development with access to public transit lowers household transportation costs, which are nearly as large a line item as mortgage payments or rent. Some development — sprawl in particular — tends to raise family transportation expenditures substantially. Other development — the mixed-use, transit-oriented kind — lowers these costs…

bettercities, 24.01.12.

SF listed as the second most expensive city for housing, by house-price-to-income ratio.

In the 1990s, the Gingrich Congress tried to shut down the Department of Energy (DOE), slash all clean energy research, stop the joint government-industry effort to develop a super-efficient hybrid car, and zero out all programs aimed specifically at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating technology deployment…

Last year, Newt proposed replacing the EPA with an “Environmental Solutions Agency.” It’s no surprise that Newt is unaware we already have an Environmental Solutions Agency that develops innovative new technology — it’s called the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which I helped run in the mid-1990s. Gingrich tried to kill it when he became speaker in 1995. He probably thinks he succeeded…

Why is California’s air — and the country’s water — better than it was 30 years ago? Gingrich disingenuously implied the answer is “very advanced technological solutions that dramatically improve life,” but, in fact, the answer is very tough government regulations — indeed, California is allowed tougher air regulations than the rest of the country, as Newt must know since he is so damn smart.

what is with the never-ending crew of idiot politicians