Month: February 2009

Live audio stream

Want to listen in to the discussion on whether N.C. is the Good Growth state?

The Emerging Issues Forum has both a live audio stream – here – and will have a virtual workshop 2-3 p.m. today. Also on the web site.

Right now CATS chief Keith Parker is introducing London ex-Mayor Ken Livingstone – Mr. Congestion Pricing Guru.

Lots of Big Names here: Ex State School Board Chairman and ex-Chapel Hill mayor Howard Lee just sat down next to me. He left though. Probably didn’t want to be next to a blogger, and can’t say as I blame him.

What, exactly, should US be stimulating?

Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., at the N.C. State Emerging Issues Forum made cogent arguments for not just aiming for “shovel-ready” projects but “future ready” projects. He also pointed out (as if you hadn’t heard) that the nation’s infrastructure got graded mostly a D by the American Society of Civil Engineers. Where’s the leadership for transformative projects, he asked, akin to the Erie Canal or the first transcontinental railroad, rural electrification or the interstate highway system?

For North Carolinians, two key points: He lavishly and extensively praised Charlotte’s transit system, especially the way the city created incentives for transit-oriented development.

AND, he mentioned an idea from a Connecticut constituent: Build a high-speed transcontinental rail corridor from Long Beach, Calif., to Wilmington, N.C. That certainly got the attention of the North Carolinians in this room!

He pitched a major rail initiative – connecting the nation’s major urban areas with high- or higher-speed rail – and let Detroit build the rail cars and buses the nation will need to refocus its transportation system to a more inclusive one – i.e., not just highways.

He pitched a National Infrastructure Bank, to create a new funding stream and competitive process. As it is, transportation in America is basically carried out by 50 states with 50 different plans.

In 2007, 10 billion trips were made on public transit. Yet the U.S. DOT pays for some 80 percent of new highway construction while less than half for new transit projects, and getting approval for new transit projects is “brutally different.”

North Carolina: The Good Growth State?

Live from the Raleigh convention center: A two day forum sponsored by N.C. State about how North Carolina is dealing with growth.

First fun fact of the day: If they held another conference of this sort on Friday, in the same gigantic auditorium at the Raleigh Convention Center, and only let in people moved to the state this week, you could fill the room. (Assuming they wanted to attend, of course.)

Second fun fact of the day: They have these gizmos where you can vote and get instant results, and of the people here, a big plurality said they think North Carolina is on the right track for the future. Hmmmm. I voted no. Too pessimistic? Too much time spent in Charlotte and not enough elsewhere? Not enough caffeine yet?

Next up is Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who’ll talk about the national infrastructure and – presumably – how much help it needs. Sen. Kay Hagan is introducing him – did you know he has 3- and 7-year-old kids at home? And does Hagan already have more visits back to NC than Elizabeth Dole did? (Oops, slipped into extreme snark mode.)

Granny flats, and granddaddy apartments

Here’s a short bit, referring you to an article on the value of accessory apartments — you know, those mother-in-law apartments, or garage apartments, or granny flats or carriage houses or whatever you want to call them.

A number of municipalities have relaxed their zoning rules to allow them as a way to get more affordable places to live tucked into existing neighborhoods. Since the single-family-home owner owns them, he or she can rent to whomever he wants. The rent helps the homeowner pay the mortgage, too.

Allowing more accessory apartments isn’t a silver bullet for affordable housing, but every little bit helps.

Long ago, when I was a kid and we were living for several years in Lakeland, Fla., my parents rented a house with a garage apartment in the back. For a time a young teacher lived there. She belonged to a religious group that didn’t believe in makeup. She had very long red hair and I remember thinking she was very very pale.

But most of the time my growing-senile grandfather lived in the apartment, before he decided he didn’t want to live in a state that refused to let him renew his driver’s license. So Granddaddy returned to his hometown of Wynne, Ark., where he knew everyone at the courthouse, and they gave him a license. It was a small town, and everyone in town knew that if old Mr. Newsom was out driving, just get off the road.

Land conservation: Recession brings opportunity

“Every golf shot makes somebody happy.”

Dave Cable, executive director of the Catawba Lands Conservancy, noted Wednesday that this recession that’s whipsawing real estate development has a small bright side. The so-called highest and best use of a lot of land around here has gone from residential development to speculative land holding. And no one knows when the market is coming back. So some developers decide they need to sell the land, fast.

“We literally have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for land conservation,” he said.

Cable’s remarks came at a Wednesday breakfast for corporate, foundation and government partners. The nonprofit, nonadvocacy land preservation group has preserved more than 8,000 acres from development in the Charlotte region.
“I get calls all the time from developers now,” he said after the meeting. Potential conservation sites are being eyed in Union, Gaston and Mecklenburg County, he said. Not all offers are, or should be, accepted, of course. But the group has some 1,600 acres in the pipeline for possible conservation in 2009.

S.C: What NOT to do with stimulus $$

Want to know what not to do with your state’s stimulus money request?

Friends of the Earth, with data from the Transportation for America Coalition has analyzed the requests from 19 states. While praising Georgia, Massachusetts and California, the report rips South Carolina:

“South Carolina’s DOT wish list is a perfect example of how not to spend stimulus money. The state has requested $3.24 billion from the stimulus package, with 99 percent designated for roads, 80 percent of which is allotted for new road construction. This despite the fact that South Carolina has an abnormally high percentage of bridges that are structurally deficient: 14 percent. And, although eight percent of South Carolinians use public transportation, which is relatively high, less than one percent of the state’s stimulus ask is designated for public transportation.”

North Carolina doesn’t come in for specific praise or criticism. But look at the last page, and compare its request to Massachusetts’. In Massachusetts, 47 percent of the request would go to public transportation. Its request for bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, 2.9 percent, was highest of all public DOT requests. Only 29.7 percent of Massachusetts’ request is designated to roads and of that, 100 percent is for repair and maintenance (12 percent of bridges in the state are structurally deficient).

North Carolina, by contrast, would put 83 percent of its request into roads, only 34 percent of that for repairs. Only 10 percent of its request would go to transit and an embarrassingly small 0.4 percent for bike/pedestrian transportation.

In terms of greenhouse gas emissions, the report notes, “building 10 miles of four-lane highway is like putting 46,700 Hummers on the road.”

Another interesting fact: By eliminating one car and taking public transportation instead of driving, a typical two-adult, two-car household can reduce its global warming emissions by 30 percent. That comes from the American Public Transportation Association’s testimony to Congress.

Charlotte’s pavement worsens

Among the topics at its retreat on Thursday and Friday, the City Council is expected to hear a report about the condition of the city’s pavement.

If you’ve driven on city streets you’ll probably not be aghast to read that the pavement’s getting worse. And the cost of repairs is rising. The City Council, in its wisdom and its zeal never ever to raise taxes for anything, including police officers, for years has skimped on street repair money, and it’s coming back to haunt the city as the maintenance backlog just gets higher.

Further, as people drove less due to higher gasoline prices, the state’s gas tax revenues went down and thus, the state money given to the city for its care of state-owned roads (e.g. Providence Road) went down.

The link above is to a PowerPoint presentation, so it’s a bit terse in its descriptions. But note the slide about the cost of annexation versus the revenue from annexations. Worth pondering.
I think the city’s been wise to continue annexing, because cities that can’t annex become financially and geographically strangled. But the revenue figures do set you to thinking about the degree to which sprawling conventional subdivisions simply don’t pay their full weight in property tax revenue — especially when so many of the new subdivisions in the past decade were low-end starter-homes.
Let me just note that higher-density and mixed use developments bring in higher tax revenues than the 3-per-acre autopilot subdivision growth which the city essentially waved into existence for decades.
The bottom line is that if you want to develop land, you can automatically do precisely the stuff that doesn’t bring the city enough revenue to pay for itself — single-family conventional subdivisions. But if you want to do something that might bring in more tax revenue, you gotta jump through a bunch of hoops.