City Comforts, the blog

A friend was surprised that I support the monorail

Here's how I responded:

There is no perfect system.

Your point about the undesirability of elevators (security, smells, delay etc.) is a fair one.

But Seattle faces two very big problems -- topography (hills & water) and narrow rights-of-way -- which constrain every possible solution.

Once we decide we want to create a city/region-wide system we need speed -- no meandering trolleys -- and have to either go down below-grade by elevator or up above-grade by elevator. There are no other options.

Oh you could put a system on the street, but then you lose predictability, speed, safety and neighborhoods. You have to dedicate the curb-side surface lane to traffic and you eliminate the possibility of that arterial ever being a pedestrian-oriented street -- you are dedicating it to being an urban arterial.

There is no way out -- it's a trap with no exit -- which optimizes for every variable; you can only satisfice.

The monorail -- while not perfect -- is like democracy, the least bad way.

The sole remaining option is to choose the "no action alternative" -- which is in fact what we are doing -- but not by choice but by dithering indecisive default.

The weight of even liberal opinion is shifting to "Yes" on I-912

Seattle columnist gets it right, for a change -- Bus tunnel epitomizes transit screw-ups -- and I applaud him for his surprisngly good job. Though a true-blue liberal, usually with only the most conventional and banal opinions, here he seems to think on his own and he adds his own enormous weight to my own inclination to vote for gas-rollback ballot measure I-912.

Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds

Call me a hobgoblin; I respect consistency.

For example:

With the Seattle Monorail Project's future in doubt, many are wondering what will fill the vacuum in transit service to Ballard and West Seattle. City Council candidates are expressing great concern about the question...

Uh...Hello!  Excuse me?

One line of attack on the monorail -- repeated tirelessly by monophobes such as Seattle Councilmember Richard Conlin -- has been that there is no transportation problem in Ballard and West Seattle. The litany begins with "Why build a monorail from West Seattle to Ballard?" As if downtown -- through which the Green Line monorail route is proposed to run -- didn't exist. Now, with other fish to fry, the Council is starting to frame the debate in terms of serving the  "Ballard-to-downtown" and "downtown-to-West Seattle" corridors.

•••

Update: Councilmember Conlin has very graciously written in and points out that the full quote is "Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds" and that the source is Emerson. I thank him very much. And I will amend my request: "Call me a foolish hobgoblin."

What an epitaph!

M Scott Peck:

Latterly he suffered from impotence and Parkinson's Disease and devoted himself to Christian songwriting, at which he was not very good.

How would we fare in Seattle?

In Plans to Evacuate U.S. Cities, Chance for Havoc.

Seattle is isolated by the waters of Puget Sound to the west and the Cascade Mountains to the east. Across the mountains -- and I am talking about the entire Puget Sound lowland from Olympia to Bellingham, a distance of 150 miles -- there are only two all-weather passes: Stevens and Snoqualmie. Both passes are closed at least once each winter because of rockfalls and avalanches (The other passes -- Chinook, Cayuse, Washington -- are completely closed by snow mid-October to April.)

The only escape routes which do not funnel through mountain passes are north to Canada and south to Oregon along the I-5 corridor.

I suspect that -- except in cases of nuclear or biological terrorism -- the wisest thing to do is nothing. Be prepared to stay at home and then stay there.

The monorail proposal not perfect so vote against it

The Seattle P-I almost gets it right.

The real problem has never been with the project itself....Neither has the real problem been financing, per se...The real problem has been failed management and governance.

But then the P-I editors blow it and suggest (as I read them) that the phased project should be defeated at the polls.

But the project proposed instead is too little, too late.

I don't get it. Why does the timing matter? And the length of the line is set to be within the budget. With no one stepping forward to provide more money or even take an active part in seeking it out, isn't working within the budget just common sense? The Mayor, Council and SMP Board all look quite bad this week. So why should we the voters punish ourselves by tossing out a proposal because the management is weak? Why not simply get new management?

Raising New Orleans

American Heritage on raising Galveston — over one hundred years ago. If could be done then, it would seem that Rebuilding New Orleans by filling would be reasonable today.

•••

Another post on the posibility:

Timeless Lessons for Rebuilding New Orleans: 5 Point Strategy for Sustainable Rebuilding

1.) Raise the level of New Orleans wherever possible by adding fill and building on top of that. Calculate sea level rise caused by global warming over a few more decades and add another ten feet of fill. Now-days we subsidize car and oil companies by spending billions on freeways, wide arterials, parking lots and garages.

More national press

Sam Howe Verhovek of the LA Times writes that Seattle's 1-Track Mind Goes Off the Rail.

Though I gather that the reporter is based here in Seattle, his story on the monorail lacks the knowledge and nuance which one would expect from a local. For example, the Monorail Authority is described as "quasi-public." Wrong. It is entirely public. It's a small point but an important one; "quasi-public" implies that there is some private element which would add yet another dynamic. And quoting Knute Berger of The Weekly as a journalist -- rather than as a mad-dog monorail opponent unable to offer a perspective on the monorail devoid of bile -- indicates more, perhaps, about Verhovek's drinking buddies (?) than his ability to research the issue.

Yet the overall monorail story is a very rich one. Virtually no public official or media commentator looks very wise or astute at this point. The story offers a  glimpse into the good and bad about Seattle. Verhovek should dig more deeply into it.

Why do mono-phobes...

...(and that is a fair characterization)...find it impossible to understand that disappointment with the performance of the monorail Board (and almost everyone is disappointed) does not mean that the monorail plan and technology itself is a flawed one?

Is the plan which the Monorail Authority developed a good one? Yes. Even the Mayor says so and says so in public. The Mayor's issue (so he states) is that he has lost faith in the ability of the Board (he and the Council appoint 4 of its 9 members, btw). So why all the sturm und drang about killing the Plan?

Intelligent monorail commentary

One of our more intelligent participant/observers of Seattle politics, Peter Sherwin, is interviewed by one of our more intelligent journalists, C.R. Douglas.

It's a pretty interesting conversation. You can watch/listen to the show on-line by linking here.

We do look silly -- and there is going to be more

Crain's Cleveland Business asks Didn't this happen on the Simpsons?

In one of those moments where TV comedy meets real life, the good people of Seattle will be denied the right to vote on whether a new monorail line should be constructed, thus inciting what looks to be a heated clash between the city's mayor and the Seattle Monorail Project board. (Seriously, didn't they try this in fictional Springfield?)

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels contends the project faces deep financial woes that voters should consider before the project moves forward. The project's leaders say they can come up with alternate financing to cover the expense, according to this story in today Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"The Seattle Monorail Project has been scrambling to figure out how to pay for the line voters approved ever since the board rejected an $11 billion financing plan offered in June. Critics said that was much too expensive and that the 50 years it would take to pay off the debt was too long.

"Board member Cleve Stockmeyer said the agency is working against a 'natural deadline' to come up with a new financing plan by Dec. 15, when a proposed $1.6 billion design-construction contract with Cascadia Monorail will expire," the story says.

The financial woes (a consultant has said the 14-mile line could be built for $7 billion) are forcing the mayor to look for the project's demise, he said. In a statement, the mayor said: "The lack of understanding by the board of the depth of the project's financial problems and the absence of a commitment to give the voters a voice in deciding the monorail's future is deeply disappointing."

Eating their own

Monorail board approves ballot measure.

The City Council today, in supporting (Mayor) Nickel's denial of street-use permits for the project, expressed frustration and anger at SMP's handling of the situation...

The reporter's emphasis is not on the plan itself but on the blowback which the politicos fear,  mistakenly in my view.

One thing that interests me -- and the media has ignored it entirely -- is that the hostility evinced by the Mayor and Council to the Seattle Monorail Board is hostility to their own appointees i.e the Mayor and Council appoint 4 of 9 members (I think that is the number) of the Board and the former chair and the Mayor were best friends. It's fascinating that they Mayor and Council so easily abandon their own people and take no responsibility for the problems which beset the SMP -- and no one in the media even notices.

There is a story there. Will the Seattle media pick it up? I doubt it as most of it is too busy pushing its own agenda to have the time to inform.

Btw, what should the Monorail Board do?

As to what the SMP Board should actually do -- a little detail which I have blithely neglected to mention in my fascination with the politics around the project -- it seems to me that the Monorail Board should simply adjust the project to the funds available and build a shorter line.

If that means going back to the voters for approval, so be it; such a re-vote has been part of the compact with the voters from the outset. Unless I am missing something, I don't think there is a lot of choice. Not enough money to build the original plan? Then you have to adjust the plan.

The monorail is a suitable technology for Seattle and the alignment -- with a few quibbles -- is a good one. And it's more important to get started with some project than the ideal one. If the voters reject such a change and want to hold-out for the longer line, then you go on from there.

•••

One local columnist agrees:

....it's too soon to give up on the monorail. Mayor Greg Nickels and the City Council ought to give the monorail agency the rest of the year to work out a way to build it. The agency can't be dissolved until January anyway, when the Legislature convenes, so what's the harm? ... The mayor is absolutely correct when he says the agency doesn't have enough money. The choices are clear: Drastically shorten and simplify the line, or raise taxes. Either would require voter approval. Yet some monorail backers persist that all 14 miles can be built without going back to the voters. Now that is dreaming.

I'd wrap it up.

Mega-artists look next 'over the river'.

My initial reaction is that Christo and Jeanne-Claude should stop at the top of their game. I loved their Gates in CentralPark - flew to New York just to see them. I am a one of their fans from way back.

But what did Marx say?..."the first time drama, the second time farce." Now of course even The Gates was hardly the first time. But my gut right now is that they should leave the Arkansas River alone.

Hey! Randall!

Wasn't Randall O'Toole suggesting that the problem with New Orleans & Katrina was not enough cars? That if more people had had cars there would have been fewer fatalities? Has he ever considered road capacity? Huh?  Is it the same in Houston?

Heeding days of dire warnings about Hurricane Rita, as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

Or maybe he'll now claim that new urbanists have taken over Houston and are the reason for what are horrific and scary traffic jams.

Randall, have you never heard of system redundancy?

Hoist by its own petard because it ignored the people

A local pundit (such as we have them) is worried that Seattle has too much democracy.

While Seattle can stymie the monorail, it cannot disband Seattle Monorail Project (SMP), pay its debts, sell off property, stop collecting taxes, and send the staff off for cult deprogramming. The voters created it, and only the Legislature or SMP itself can put it down. Nickels couldn't give it the coup de grace because he doesn't have the power.

Uh....It's called democracy, my friend Knute. And had the City of Seattle internalized the spirit of democracy, the monorail project would have been inside the City of Seattle government as well and fully subject to the whims of the Mayor and Council. But City officials and bureaucracy were so hostile to it that proponents were forced to the initiative process, and then even further, to the formation of a new governmental entity.

So, Knute, your worry about the multitude of governmental authorities is admirable but misplaced. You should really be worrying about the sclerosis of existing government which is so inflexible that it cannot incorporate ideas except, on rare occasion, when they start from within.

Finally, some commonsense

November monorail vote unlikely:

...a proposed resolution gives the Seattle Monorail Project until Dec. 23 to write its own new plan for the Feb. 7 ballot, or the Council would refuse cooperation, and urge the 2006 Legislature to dissolve the SMP. (Italics added)

This report from the Seattle Times' respected reporter Mike Lindblom indicates to me that I am not the only one who observes the troublesome politics of the monorail:  the Seattle City Council simply does not want to intervene -- for some mixture of political and/or legal reasons -- in attempting to shut down the monorail.

• Part may be an elbow nudge to Mayor Nickels to remind him that the Council is not one of his Departments and doesn't take orders from him..
• Or it could be an acknowledgment that the Council simply doesn't want to enrage some unknown but very substantial part of Seattle's electorate.
• Or it could be that the Council has been advised by its attorneys that it simply doesn't have the legal authority to abolish a separate independent voter-authorized government.
• Or it could even be the principled position that while the SMP Board may be a bit weak, that's insufficient reason, as well as being absurdly premature, to attempt to stop a sound project authorized by the voters, especially when the outcome is likely to be litigation.

I have no idea the precise reasons, of course, but it's obvious that the Council would like to distance itself from either helping or hurting the monorail and is hoping that the State Legislature will do the dirty work.

Of course, with that said -- and no doubt the Legislature can hear it -- why should the Legislature get involved? What is the political payoff for a legislator from outside Seattle to try to kill a project approved by and paid for Seattle voters? Bear in mind that the only people who pay the monorail tax are residents of Seattle and they voted to tax themselves, Maybe they were foolish. Maybe not. And bear in mind that what comes around, goes around and if you mess gratuitously with a Seattle project you may very well get a return letter.

So overall I am increasingly dubious that the State Legislature will go where the local Council declines to tread. Would you?

Very relevant indeed

Dutch Sustainable Waterfronts - Sustainable development of the waterfront using environmental technologies.

After the devastation left behind in New Orleans and the Gulf region by hurricane Katrina we received numerous requests and inquiries if we would include presentations on this subject. We therefore decided to extend the program with presentations and a panel discussion about the Dutch expertise on water management and urban planning and if this could be of use in the rebuilding of New Orleans.

Just shut it down?

So say people who have never liked the monorail. A commenter on the Monorail election results used the phrase (and assumed it possible) "...inexperienced SMP disbanded by the legislature or City Council."

Many people assume that the State Legislature, the Governor, The Mayor or the City Council can just swoop down as an avenging angel -- and with the wave of pen -- just abolish the monorail agency. I'd suggest that both legally and politically it is not quite that easy. In fact it would be rather messy.

Just as a preface, two of the member of the SMP were elected and the balance were appointed by the Mayor and City Council so it will be a bit difficult (but hardly impossible) for Mayor and Council to turn on their own folks (some of whom came on the Board as skeptics, btw) and portray them as wild-eyed dreamers.

Other points:

1. The SMP charter gives authority for disbanding to the people of the City through initiative. On what basis would the State legislature or City Council attempt to intervene and shut down the SMP? Policy differences? That's hardly enough legally (and per item #2) any such attempt will end in Court.

2. The SMP has a stream of income and can defend itself in court for many years. In fact I'd suggest that it is the legal and moral duty of the SMP Board to fight with every means at its disposal to maintain its existence (as a means to pursue the voter-mandated goal of building the monorail.) The Board might legitimately disband itself if it found the project impracticable etc etc. But no Court (assuming the Legislature or Council went that far) would order disbandment this point or for years to come.

3. Politically there is no pressure for the Legislature or Council to attempt to disband it and I don't think even they would want to go there as it is far too dangerous a precedent. The idea that a superior level of government can pick and choose and determine which independently-authorized local government is to continue is not a power that they will want to take up without a showing of fraud or corruption etc etc...If any group of tax-payers wants to do something ill-advised  -- but clearly not illegal or against public policy -- then I don't think that a superior level is going to want to intervene.

The practical politics is important. Suppose a group of Eastern Washington farmers organize in their county to create an irrigation district and such new District is legal under long-standing State law and public policy...as is the case. Then suppose a group of State legislators decide  that the district (after a year or two of operation) should be shut down because...well yes...because why?... but let's assume that it is attempting to establish a water-conserving type of fire-fighting and that the Legislature doesn't like that sort of approach...doesn't believe in the technology. Well I am sure you can start to see the issue. Once the Legislature starts to mess with local authorities on a policy basis, where does it stop? What is the political payoff? Long and messy lawsuits? (Per # 2.)

Does anyone think that the SMP will simply roll over and disband because the Legislature tells them to do so? Guess again. Such an action would be the greatest energizing force for the SMP etc etc..

No folks, I don't think it is quite that simple and I don't think there are either legal or political grounds to justify the Legislature, the Council or the Courts from stepping in. Please do remember that at the last binding vote on this -- less than a year ago -- the voters ratified the Monorail with 63%!

Does that mean that the SMP Board has done a great job? No way. But I don't want to punish myself when the simple solution is a better Board and some assistance -- rather than bullying -- from the Mayor and City Council.

World's stupidest list?

Why promote (what strikes me as) a supremely dumb question from the get-go -- Who are the world's top intellectuals? -- which is seeded with tellingly stupid answers such as Rem Koolhaas (tell me the last time you heard anyone offer " Well, Rem said...") and Larry Summers (a bright guy no doubt but with what "ideas" would you associate him except oustanding career success?) and yet ignores Andres Duany much less Jane Jacobs? Clearly the list includes some outstanding minds but the whole endeavor is so non-intellectual that it makes a good conceit for a comic novel and at least some of the names -- Naomi Klein and Thomas Friedman, two other examples -- are comical by their presence.

Did they really?

Seattle voters turned against the proposed monorail on primary election night, Tuesday, Sept. 20...,

So writes George Howland. But did the voters really turn against the monorail? I suppose that if George (who is frank in his dislike for the monorail) wants badly-enough to get a certain result, he can use any set of numbers to persuade himself. (Or no numbers at all, since he knows where he wants to end up.)

But here are the official results as of this morning:

These votes prove nothing about decline in support for the monorail if you aggregate the pros -- which is the only realistic way to do it -- and contrary to George's suggestion.

But do the arithmetic yourself and see if you are convinced.

Position 8: The two pro-monorail candidates Laws (31%) and Lippmann (19%) receive 50% and outpoll Goldberg (47%).

Position 9: The two pro-monorail candidates Falkenbury (24%) and Stockmeyer (34%) receive  58% and demolish Nobles (40%),

Such results are totally inline with past elections. Clearly -- and this is no secret -- Seattle is very divided about the monorail. And clearly the financing plan -- which the SMP Board rejected immediately upon the staff's presenting it -- was a bad one and people are concerned and for good reason. I am concerb=ned and I am a pretty-firm supporter -- but that doesn't mean I have left my objectivity at the door nor that I am ready to play chicken-little and agree that the monorail cannot be built.

One could reasonably argue in fact that these election results are in fact an endorsement for the monorail...so much support in the face of admittedly weak SMP management etc etc. (I won't mention Ms. Laws' verbal stupidity at a recent public meeting which surely eroded her support.)

Letting one's own preferences interfere so obviously with fair-handed analysis makes one into little more than a shifty shill.

Rebuild New Orleans but 'Floodproof" it first by filling.

Here's one approach to "flood-proofing" New Orleans: 

Raise New Orleans above sea level by filling.

Fill the low-lying parts of New Orleans with "structural" fill...i.e. something you can build on. Not cheap but nothing is cheap when building by the water. But it seems pointless and even unethical to encourage people to move back into a city which could flood until the time we have flood-proofed it.

Suppose we figured we were inspired by the walkability of New Orleans (or at least so I am told) and wanted to re-create a fairly compact city. We don't have to fill approximately 20% of it i.e. the area which includes the French Quarter and which was not flooded. This area makes up about 20% of Old New Orleans, I have read. So let's just say we want a flood-proof New Orleans of about 3 miles by 3 miles -- you can walk across it in an hour. Now that's not a big city by any North American standard but as a pedestrian-oriented city of 9 square miles -- three miles in either direction -- it is not too shabby.

So two, immediate questions are

1. What would it cost to bring New Orleans up-to and above sea-level grade with a suitable structural fill?

2. Would/could such a fill be stable?

I'll dispense with the second question -- I simply have no remote idea -- and leave that to the geologists and engineers to tell us if such a massive fill could be stable for the next few centuries.

I have no idea what sand/gravel/aggregate costs in southern Louisiana. I suspect that the nearest source would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away. But let's guess (based on wild extrapolation from Seattle costs for a 10 yard truckload) that structural fill could be placed/compacted etc in New Orleans (I assume it is delivered from upriver by barge) for $15/cubic yard. Assume an area to be filled of 3 miles by 3 miles (9 square miles total.) Assume a fill of 25 feet on average. Multiply it out and you get a number just shy of $4 billion. Not too bad, all things considered? And just to make sure no one misunderstands, I am talking of filling only those parts of New Orleans which are below sea level and which were destroyed by Katrina, which I understand would exclude the French Quarter etc.

Food for discussion, at any rate.

•••

Btw, my calculation is that at a low-rise density of 40 units per acres -- quite common and by no means "high" density -- upwards of 200 thousand people could live in this nine square miles.

•••

Thanks, Laurence, for pointing out How do they rebuild a city? I will be curious to read the (I hope inevitable) analyses. I wonder if in fact, with a commitment to finish the job from the Corps of Engineers, you couldn't create some liquidity for New Orleans property owners whose property is now practically worthless.

"Such worry warts" is what people might have said 3 weeks ago.

Hurricane watch issued for Florida Keys,  mandatory evacuations of non-residents south of the Seven Mile Bridge in the lower Keys began at noon Sunday, September 18

I suspect that few will actually demur now, however.

Deep water, shallow thinking

According to the The Independent, the author of this article, Katrina Conservatism, Irwin M. Stelzer, is a pal of Rupert Murdoch.

...we should be thankful that real estate developers are already looking for cheap land, changes in zoning regulations, and tax relief in New Orleans. Or so I am told by White House officials. Now, if the government doesn't tie them up in red tape, and commission multi-year studies to decide whether portions of what was New Orleans should be turned into wetlands, as some environmentalists are already proposing...

What kind of capitalists are theses guys who can't do without tax relief? Or are willing to build on flood-prone lands? (So long as the public will pay for  levees to protect their investments.) Sometimes I think Jim Kunstler and Pat Robertson are correct and the corruption which abounds around us will be our certain undoing.

Reminds me that terms limits have a downside

Bill Clinton

...revealed new "greener-than-thou" environmentalist credentials last week, privately suggesting to heads of government and industry leaders at his world forum in New York that they should celebrate the recent spike in oil prices as the best opportunity to begin weaning their nations from fossil-fuel dependency.

Here's the deal: Use less (per capita output) on our terms or on theirs. (And it's better for them, too, if we can do it voluntarily.)

Now that is a full & rich life

FU, Cheney: See Movie, Buy Shirt.

In the past two weeks, Dr. Ben Marble of Gulfport, Mississippi, lost his house, saw his wife give birth by flashlight and became an instant celebrity for telling Vice President Dick Cheney to go fuck himself.

•••

Thanks, Tommer.

Raising a whole city has been done before

Raising Galveston, Texas in the wake of the 1900 storm:

The feat of raising an entire city began with three engineers hired by the city in 1901 to design a means of keeping the gulf in its place. Along with building a seawall, Alfred Noble, Henry M. Robert and H.C. Ripley recommended the city be raised 17 feet at the seawall and sloped downward at a pitch of one foot for every 1,500 feet to the bay.

The first task required to translate their vision into a working system was a means of getting more than 16 million cubic yards of sand - enough to fill more than a million dump trucks - to the island, according to McComb. The solution was to dredge the sand from Galveston's ship channel and pump it as liquid slurry through pipes into quarter-square-mile sections of the city that were walled off with dikes. Their theory was that as the water drained away the sand would remain.

Before the pumping could begin, all the structures in the area had to be raised with jackscrews. Meanwhile, all the sewer, water and gas lines had to be raised. McComb wrote that some people even raised gravestones and some tried to save trees, but most of the trees died. In the old city cemeteries along Broadway, some of the graves are three deep because of the grade raising.

The city paid to move the utilities and for the actual grade raising, but each homeowner had to pay to have the house raised. By 1911, McComb wrote, 500 city blocks had been raised, some by just a few inches and others by as much as 11 feet.

Makes the task of raising New Orleans look plausible.

Here is something about which I'd like to know more

In an article on Judge Roberts, right to privacy etc etc I found this Italics added:

Forrest McDonald, a  constitutional historian who retired two years ago from the University of Alabama, noted that privacy has been a "vexed question" from the earliest days of the republic. The framers believed in protection of home and hearth from government intrusion, but also granted "police powers that were pretty broad, and pretty extreme."

"In 1789, they didn't have such things, but the people of Connecticut would have felt perfectly free to regulate the use of contraceptives as immoral behavior," he added. "Our whole standards and our sexual attitudes have changed." And therein lies the problem in adapting an 18th-century document and concepts of freedom to the 21st century."

"My leanings are toward the so-called originalist positions in constitutional interpretation," Professor McDonald said, "but you can't really be an originalist if you know what it originally was." He said, given his field of study, that he had "lived in the 18th century most of my adult life." And he added: "I love these guys. But there were an awful lot of things they took for granted that I just couldn't live with. I own 20 acres of land, and I'm sitting right in the middle of it. In the 18th century, my neighbors would have had the right to cross it to gather wood, let their hogs and cows run across it, cross it to get somewhere else."

Fascinating and obviously of enormous import in discussions of land use regulation from both the psychological and legal perspective.

What I find puzzling about the Mayor's ultimatum...

...is the timing.

Why is the Mayor picking a fight when he doesn't need to? The Monorail Authority has no financial plan and is not close to signing a contract. So why this, now?

In another blow to Seattle's monorail project, a once-supportive Mayor Greg Nickels on Friday withdrew the city's support for the proposal, saying he was no longer convinced it was financially viable.

But since there is no finance plan on the table -- the Board soundly rejected the staff's proposal months ago -- why would he chose this time to desert the project? There is no objective danger to the taxpayers. Why is he presenting himself as the monorail killer? Remember, 58% of the voters reaffirmed it not much more than a year ago.

Good question: A right-out-there solution to prevent future floods in New Orleans by bringing it up and above sea level. Feasible?

I have no idea.

Victory!

Others have noted and roundly hooted at the NYT's new TimesSelect pay service. After all, they ask, and I agree, why would you pay to read Paul Krugman when you can read    Brad deLong or Tyler Cowen for free? (Or any op-ed columnist for that matter. The blogosphere is going to destroy the professional opinion-making field.) Makes no sense. I am not one of those who dislike Paul Krugman. Quite the contrary -- now and then I even agree with him. But I don't think he is any greater seer or so much more insightful than the two bloggers I just mentioned. There are hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of well-informed people who have opinions worth reading -- no paper, magazine etc etc has a monopoly on them.

That said, TimesSelect has at least one feature which I think is a bargain: 100 articles per month from the archives. Even at the regular price of $50/year (introductory price now $40/year) that is 5 cents per article. That's where it should be priced.

Next step is to open it up on a non-subscription basis using digi-cash etc etc.

"To every action there is an equal and opposite..."

Nickels Pulls Plug On Monorail Before Public Gets A Chance to Vote

So, if the city is pulling the plug—Nickels is canceling the project's Transit Way Agreement—what exactly are the people deciding? Well, Nickels—having killed the transit way agreement—is asking the council to send an advisory measure to the people asking them if the city should stop supporting the monorail. It's like taking the wheels off a car and asking people if they still want to buy it.

I still don't understand the politics and why the Mayor feels compelled to take such a bold and yet totally unnecessary action but I do remember what Deep Throat said: "Follow the money."

So what is the (correct) libertarian line on cleaning up past mistakes?

Katrina lays bare Superfund woes.

Among the concerns: That natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes haven't been adequately considered in fashioning safe and secure remedies; that areas tainted by toxic waste, such as rivers in the East and old mines in the West, are becoming larger and more complex; that many newly closed military bases will require considerable cleanup before they're ready for private or local government use; and that federal funding is falling behind the need.

I plan to vote for repeal

Gregoire vows to set deadline for viaduct

Initiative 912, put on the ballot with 450,000 petition signatures, would repeal the three-phase, 9.5-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase enacted last spring by the Legislature -- and with it nearly two thirds of the $8.5 billion provided for new projects around the state. A lot of the money goes to bridges -- $2 billion to the viaduct, $500 million to state Route 520 (the Evergreen Point  Bridge), and $341 million to replace and repair bridges that could not currently withstand a major earthquake.

I wish I could believe the experts but when they have such a built-in bias to doing the expensive spectacular, I lose faith...especially after the technically-questionable but politically-convenient calls to spend a billion dollars on rebuilding the seawall.

The Governor is correct to call for the Mayor to give up on his tunnel dream and deal with what is claimed to be an emergency.

Some emergency. If the Viaduct were in really serious trouble -- from collapse in an earthquake -- the WSDOT would have taken steps immediately to
1. limit traffic and
2. develop a real emergency plan.

They haven't done the former at all nor the latter (in a timely manner) and in my world actions speak louder than words. The Viaduct problem is probably overblown and being used as an excuse to cajole the public into providing another source of money for political patronage.

Too bad we in the USA don't have a "shadow government" tradition

Forget the U.N.: Clinton Has a League of His Own.

So there he was, on a hotel ballroom stage that had been made over to look something like the set of a daytime talk show, with deep-cushioned chairs that he and his guests - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and King Abdullah II of Jordan - could sink into. As the host, Mr. Clinton concentrated on the four topics of the Clinton Global Initiative, as the conference was called: poverty, religious conflict, climate change and governing.

Notice the political punch-line in the last sentence (of the quote)

Water Lifts Its Awful Veil on Landscape of Destruction.

It is unclear whether the neighborhood and others like it will ever house people again, whether they can ever be properly protected by a system of walls and levees and pumps that failed so spectacularly three weeks ago. Like so much of New Orleans, the Ninth Ward is unnatural. Its houses were erected over marsh stiffened by landfill.

"Can the Ninth Ward be protected - or can it ever be protected - by the levee system?" asked Lionel C. McIntyre, an associate professor in Columbia University's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation who grew up in New Orleans....

Dr. Colten said the city should not attempt to rebuild in the most vulnerable areas. "The ideal use of those lowest areas would allow them to serve as flood-retention basins, so when the next flood comes, the water can collect in places where it won't harm people and property," he said. "We need to think very carefully about helping people relocate from those areas, transplant themselves and their communities into new locales that are less vulnerable."

Many others, including local politicians and neighborhood leaders, strongly disagree and have vowed to restart a community here.

And to whom will an "apres-moi-le deluge" President who is mindless of the future (except insofar as it might view him as a "heroic leader") pay most attention? Irony of ironies it will be "the local community."  Can't he ever get anything correct? Has he perfect pitch imperfectly tuned? Oh for a measured conservative not constantly trying-on costumes.

It's breathtaking

Monorail talks go on after deadline missed.

The Seattle Monorail Project has run out of time to come up with a detailed survival plan to meet today's deadline set by Mayor Greg Nickels. But the mayor has given project leaders one more day before he decides whether to oppose the project. (italics added)

1. Why should the Mayor's deadline be taken as anything but advisory -- the Monorail Authority is a political entity separate from the City of Seattle?
2. The monorail was affirmed by the voters of the Seattle by some 58% just a year ago. Does the Mayor's attempt to kill it make political sense? I don't get it.

NPR on NO

Generally, I have been impressed by the high level of public discussion about the timing, manner, and extent of the rebuilding of New Orleans. I thought Rebuilding, and Redesigning, New Orleans a thoughtful show. I will get to How the Dutch Mastered the North Sea

Maybe not indeed

Maybe a Mall isn't a Public Use

Dollars to donuts...

...that the result of a fair-handed analysis on monorail alternatives for a portion of Seattle (which would be served by the monorail should it in fact be built) will be...a monorail.

The amendment, which will come to the full council for consideration Monday, calls for analysis of transit technologies other than monorail and recommendations for the most effective one. Conlin said the study is critical as the city plans for replacement of the Alaskan Way Viaduct, which will force thousands of vehicles onto side streets.

Bearing in mind Seattle's varied topography of hills and water, some sort of elevated (as well, to minimize impact on our already-congested streets) and rubber-tired (to minimize noise) is the logical solution. Whether monorail opponents such as Councilmember Conlin will be able to consider the situation without fatal prejudice is dubious but I will be happy to have them prove me wrong. I challenge Councilmember Conlin to publicly commit to a fair process which weighs all technologies according to explicit standards consistent with not only the City's own internal planning process but also with the values and sentiments expressed through public votes over the past 5 years.

Reviving a City

The Design Perspective:

Even as the federal government and local developers push to resurrect New Orleans as quickly as possible in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, some architects and urban planners are contemplating the larger question of what form the city should take - whether restored, reimagined or something in between.

Things change

And if you disliked any of my questions about the future of New Orleans then you will really hate this article:

A Sad Truth: Cities Aren't Forever

The city of New Orleans is not going to be rebuilt.

The tourist neighborhoods? The ancient parts from the French Quarter to the Garden District on that slim crescent of relatively high ground near the river? Yes, they will be restored. The airport and the convention center? Yes, those, too.

But the far larger swath -- the real New Orleans where the tourists don't go, the part that Katrina turned into a toxic soup bowl, its population of 400,000 scattered to the waves? Not so much.

Read the whole thing.

Seems so to me, too

Fresh Bilge.

Something fundamental has gone wrong with the public sector in the US. The more it fattens on the revenues extracted from productive activity, the less competent it seems to perform basic functions of government, and the more eager it becomes to micromanage every aspect of life.

I wouldn't put it quite that way but the basic sentiment is a fair one. The problem, as I see it, is that many local governments takes the notion of a "comprehensive plan" far too seriously. Rather than focusing on the few critical elements -- and I am speaking here of zoning in particular -- which determine the feel of a city, our codes (in Seattle, anyway) try to speak to every possible condition.

Sometimes trying too hard or to do too much is the source of the problem. A little self-restraint and modest might be just the ticket. For example, with disaster relief it might be & is refreshing for government to frontally admit that it cannot do everything and that people must be prepared to take care of themselves for some period of time after a natural or man-made catastrophe. But contemporary liberalism in Seattle seems to me to discourage people -- look particularly at the de-emphasis of the Local Improvement District -- from doing things themselves.

Certainly pleasant...but a work of art?

This is where I am tonight, a Frank Lloyd Wright cottage perched on the edge of a heavily wooded bluff overlooking Wisconsin's Mirror Lake.

Someone has described the cottage as “...more architecture per square foot than any other building (he) ever designed.” And yet no particular comment from Terry beyond his location. Damning by silence? Just too tired to opine? I have no idea.

It seems a nice little cabin though the stone floor looks awfully uncomfortable.

Hunt is on for world's best painting.

Hunt for world's stupidest idea should be next.

Do you think he overpaid?

I happen to think this is wonderful and amazing:

I have just moved into a new flat. As I am now living alone, and in my last arrangement I was not, I find that there are a lot of basic odds and ends that I need but which I don’t have already. I particularly need items for the kitchen.

One thing I needed was a microwave oven. While I did technically own a microwave oven already, that one is in Australia. So I went my local large Asda store, and looked for microwaves. They had a good, basic model of microwave oven on sale for � 24.41. That is right, �24.41. (Excluding the VAT tax imposed by the British government, the price is even less - �20.77. That is well under 40 dollars). The prices of a great many electrical and electronic goods have collapsed over the last four or five years, but I still find it amazing. I can only have a modest meal in a London restaurant for that price, but somehow it is possible to make a microwave oven in China, ship it halfway round the world, bring it into a large London store, and sell it to me, while still making a profit, for such a miniscule price. The microwave oven I own that is still in Australia and that I bought in 1999 cost me more than three times as much. And through lower prices I am therefore more than $100 better off than I was in 1999, just through that one purchase.

I have experienced the very same thing as has Jennings. And also been astonished at the low price. "It's how much?"

Now I am waiting for the time when the stores will pay me to take away the merchandise.

Uh-oh. Is Seattle not ready either?

(Seattle) City Council is livid after (Seattle) Mayor Nickels cancels briefing

A Nickels spokesman, Martin McOmber, said it was a busy time and two days wasn't enough notice to prepare. He added that Licata hadn't gone through the proper channels to schedule the briefing.
....
"We are happy to sit down with the council, we told them that," McOmber added. "It's a better use of our time now to be working on our response to Katrina."

(Seattle is over 2000 miles from the Gulf Coast.)

I am livid, too. And surprised, even more so,  by the political ineptness of the Mayor's office. At the very time that Seattleites would like a little reassurance and leadership, his people signal a problem: they clam-up and refuse to apperar in public. What do they have to hide?

Part of the problem of course is that we have gotten ourselves into such a nanny-state mentality in Seattle that we expect (and public officials also expect) the government to be able to do everything. So naturally an official is loathe to get up and say "Well, that is beyond our capability and people need to be prepared etc etc." Telling people to be self-reliant and  prepared do something on their own (and this goes for other non-emergency urban planning issues as well such as our refusal to use the Local Improvement District process) undercuts the liberal tendency to look to government to solve every problem. Andwho would want to raise doubts about one's core values?

Tough Question

Time for a Tough Question: Why Rebuild?

It is time to swim against the tide. The direction of public discourse in the wake of Katrina goes like this: First we save lives and provide some basic assistance to the victims. Then we clean up New Orleans. And then we rebuild the city. Most will rightly agree on the first two. But should we rebuild New Orleans, 10 feet below sea level, just so it can be wiped out again?

The key question is in the italics: "But should we rebuild New Orleans, 10 feet below sea level, just so it can be wiped out again?" I have offered my own suggestion here: "Floodproof New Orleans" by filling parts of it?

Btw, for those who don't get to the comments to this post let me emphasize that I have no clear answer to the questions posed above. In prior posts I have suggested some principles and options (i.e. filling the low-lying parts) and I have made it clear that I have no desire to prevent New Orleans from being rebuilt. But the timing, extent and manner of the reconstruction is not obvious and appears to involve, at a minimum, the rebuilding of the wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi, which is no easy or small task. The relationship of the timing of that wetlands re-creation and the rebuilding of houses, shops etc within the city provide a substantial problem.

Comment left at

Butterflies & Wheels.

Blame-game aside, does anyone think it is wise to have had (and now rebuild?) a city which is substantially below sea level? and sinking? New Orleans seems to me to be one of those geographic errors compounded by massive Federal subsidies through the Corps of Engineers over the past 70 years.

Problem: Do we encourage people to move back into New Orleans prior to flood-proofing it?

Yes, this is a trick question as by all accounts it will take a decade or so at least to rebuild the wetlands at the mouth of the Mississippi and/or to redesign/rebuild the levees. So what do we do in the meantime? Do we allow people to move back in and again be vulnerable to fatal floods?

Of course if you keep people from moving back in for years (or even months, I'd bet) you force people to put down roots wherever they landed -- and so who are we rebuilding it for? Some real issues here on timing as well as what should be done physically.

I hope we can get over the blame-game ASAP (and I don't mean by allowing incompetence and worse to go unnoticed/unpunished) so that we can think about what really should we do about New Orleans. But alas, knowing the current administration's poor judgment it will probably run scared and simply throw money at New Orleans as-it-was and without requiring any real change to the city itself or the management of the river.

I doubt if we will rebuild New Orleans, but it will be by default, not by decision

The case against rebuilding the sunken city of New Orleans..

Respect for chain-of-command...

...has its limits:  Navy Pilots Who Rescued Victims Are Reprimanded.

I would have stopped by for a beer

Debate: Are Chain Stores and Big Box Retailers Hurting New York City?.

Valid question. But most usually the discussants have no geographic/spatial sense and so conflate the spatial form of a big-box with its economic impact, thus making the conversation a somewhat frustrating one.

UPDATE: Don't miss Benjamin Hemric's comment to this post.

Judge Posner judges correctly

Katrina, Cost-Benefit Analysis, and Terrorism

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, got into trouble, and had to apologize, for suggesting that maybe New Orleans should be abandoned rather than rebuilt. He raised a valid issue; that he got into trouble for doing so just proves the adage that, in politics, the phrase "to tell the truth" is synonymous with "to blunder."

Not that it can yet be said that New Orleans should be abandoned; that conclusion could emerge only from a complex analysis. The point is rather that the analysis should be undertaken. The broader issue is the role of cost-benefit analysis in the analysis of disaster risk.

Read the whole thing.

Another possible principle:

Murph, in comments to the prior post, suggests another principle which might be adopted in "rebuilding New Orlean