The Perils of 'Shovel-Ready' Projects
"I fear that 'shovel ready' means boondoggles like the E- 470 beltway, a six-lane, 46-mile arc through empty high-desert grasslands dotted with new subdivisions east of Denver. Cars cruise the wide-open toll road at 80 miles per hour.
Touted as essential to the metro area's growth, this land developers' delight hasn't lightened loads on more centrally located highways. It's just rearranged growth patterns, scattering splotches of development over an unimaginably large landscape. New residents depend on long beltway commutes by car.
We can't do better now, the lobbying legions say, we need to start the bulldozers fast. Translation: No bridge to nowhere will be left behind.
What's wrong with America's way of building transportation has long been known. We segregate roads, mass transit, railways and air. Each has its own pot of money. It's no one's job to assemble a transportation system that offers the right travel mode for the task at hand."
Topics
- A Comedian's Brutal Takedown of Public Transportation's Failures
- The Dark Side of the Rust Belt Revival
- Atlanta Pedestrian Bridge—Not a Good Example of Public Dollars Well Spent
- A New Kind of Planning Controversy: the Emoji House
- Mobility Data: How Your Travel Patterns Could Inform Policy
- As Cities Densify, New Building Design Strategies Keep Them Livable
- New Paper: Exclusionary Is a National Problem in Need of Federal Action
- New D.C. Development Guidelines Require More Consideration of Walkability
- Train Travel Gains Popularity as 'Flight Shame' Trends in Europe
- 'Housing Twitter' and the Great Debate
- Three Ways Cities Can Combat Extreme Heat
- Automakers Required to Increase EV Sales in Colorado
- Texas Program Pays Landowners to Leave Coastal Lands Untouched
- Another Automaker Shows Interest in California Deal on Auto Emissions
- An Affordable Housing Investment Guide for Nonprofit Hospitals and Health Systems
- In the Housing Market, a Few Decades Makes a Huge Difference
- Former L.A. Planning Director Admits to Ethics Violation
- The 'War on Cars' Is a Bad Joke
- Demystifying Mass Timber
- On Public Transit, Some of the World’s Best Sightseeing
