Comments by Peter Rudd Subscribe

On Government subsidies: planes, trains and automobiles

Here are a couple of quotes / sources.  You may want to look closer than I have at more from these researchers:  

Between 1981 and 1995 the spending on federal highways in the US grew from $9 to $19 billion whilst transit stayed at $4 billion.

-Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy

In the current tax and fee payments to the government by motor-vehicle users fall short of government expenditures related to motor vehicle use by approximately 20 to 70 cents per gallon of all motor fuel.

-Aaron Naparstek, UC Davis Institute for Transportation Studies

A comparison of the relative efficiencies and costs of road and rail: 

A standard twin track railway has a typical capacity 13% greater than a 6 lane highway (3 lanes each way), while requiring only 40% of the land. -Highway Capacity Manual

A basic formula of traffic engineering states that one lane of limited access highway can accommodate 2300 cars per hous, while one lane of light rail can accommodate 40,000 passengers per hour.  -J.M. Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere

Here's some info on the cost of a road:- 

A mile of new motorway costs on average £30m, according to the Highways Agency. As a rule of thumb, an elevated road costs 10 times more than one on the flat, says French.

/…/

The most expensive road per mile is the Limehouse Link. The 1.1 mile (1.8 km) tunnel in London’s Docklands opened in 1993 at a cost £293m. Adjusted for one measure of inflation that would be £445m or £230,000 per yard (£250,000 per metre). It was designed and built in seven years and at the time was the second biggest engineering project in Europe after the Channel Tunnel.

From 

The UK’s last, great, expensive, short roads, Tom de Castella

Here's a short history of the road lobby:

‘National Highway Users Conference’, pioneered by General Motors’ Alfred Sloan which, in 1932, brought together automobile, oil and other highway interests to lobby for road funds and an end to mass transit funding. The result was the U.S. Highway Trust Fund through which the U.S. government spent $1,845 million on highways between 1952 and 1970, while rail systems received only $232 million.

http://betacity.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/a-short-history-of-the-road-lobby/

On City Rankings: More Harm than Help?

Thanks for a great post.  I think ranking cities can lead to petty competitiveness and even to inequity.  But I also believe that establishing criteria for making urban environments better is critical for the simple reason that it increases transparency and clarity around issues of living well.  If we don't bother to make benchmarks and goals, we may very well fall into delusion about our environments.  Toronto - among many North American cities - is a good example of this (full disclosure I lived in Toronto for 8 years).  If Torontonians et al go on saying they live in the best place, and there are many important areas where improvement could happen, then delusion trumps change.  This self satisfaction is a strong reality in Toronto - common to many cities - which is maybe the prime reason why the city isn't better after years of development.

On another topic, I think our criteria are generally written by people with enormous biases - no surprise there.  The Economist's benchmarks, in my opinion, are full of gaps when it comes to making urban life better.  LEED has had to drastically back pedal when it was found they had biases that weren't necessarily compatible with environmental and urban sustainability.  

Will a definitive criterion emerge from all of the competing interests to help us to define how to make our cities better?  Or, on another model, will all of the competing criteria nudge us there?  I for one am excited about the coming new social interest in a thing as beautiful and great as the city. 

My blog - http://betacity.wordpress.com/