Gee, the Clown College held a meeting and I missed it! Portland Addresses Housing Crisis By Making Housing More Expensive | The Antiplanner Unsurprisingly, they did something really stupid. Housing affordability is an issue in Portland, the solution is simple, allow land development. The Unafordability is driven by the lack of developable land due to the Urban Growth Boundary, and zoning practices. The corralling Portlandia City Counsel inanity can be an exercise in strategy:
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“Green” Millennials set New Standards in Wasteful Consumerism
These people are busy, they have video games to play, triple decker bikes to ride, and beards to trim. More after the fold. National Coalition Against Censorship Criticises the Portland Climate Book Ban
This outing comes as the ugly government censorship of education, converting schools into secular Madrassas of nescience. More below. Portland Metro: More Lies Per Capita | The Antiplanner
. . . which leads them to lie about every single thing involved in a new rail transit project. Read more below the fold! Metro sank into crisis despite decades of warnings
. . . nearly every other light rail, and heavy rail system is at or soon will be at the same place. More after the fold! Leftists Lose Their Lunch Over the Tubman 20
. . . progressive liberal wankers lose their minds, and throw a conniption fit! Crybabies the lot! Living here in uber progressive Portlandia, it is sometimes a Maddog habit to drop by the local Starbucks, sit with he old lady crowd, and drop little hate bombs like this just to watch the women recoil in horror. Harriet Tubman on the $20? What follows is a glorious emotional meltdown. Best then to ask how they feel about the Bern! The spittle and scenery chewing ramps up to high dudgeon. Odd thing is they always love me! Really. Heh! What progressive would like a poor black, gun toting, bible believing, conservative Republican woman? Exactly! Just remember before baiting the bear trap, once you trap a bear, all you have is a really angry trapped bear. Congrats Harriet, you go girl! Disregard the progressive plantation owners, they hate you for your independence, your morality, and they would do anything to steal your glory, anything. Millennial Home Ownership: Disappointment Ahead in Some Places? | Newgeography.com
This is listed as a Millennial issue, but the problem has been created by Boomers who want to keep their property values high by retaining destructive urban growth and/or services boundaries, and highly limiting zoning, and construction/development policies. "Millennial renters overwhelmingly plan on buying their own homes, though affording them could be far more challenging than they think." More after the fold! PSU Protesters Want to Ban THESE From Campus; They AREN'T Joking... . . . but watching the failure parade does make one feel better about one's own children. It's "Portland" State University, what can you expect? Here at the home of kaleidoscope eye progressivism, this rates as Monday. This level of ignorance permeates the entire community from the clown college they employ as City Council right on down to the PSU students. "It’s hard to even comprehend college students such as these Portland State University students can get even MORE stupid but they sure do try hard. From Campus Reform: Students at Portland State University (PSU) shut down a Board of Trustees meeting with accusations that the school perpetuates a “corrupt decadent white-supremacist capitalist patriarchy hetero-patriarchy.” [emphasis added]" Wait for it! You know it gets better, it's Portland! "'I’m a transwoman of color and for me to just walk across campus, like, that’s, I mean—I see you [points to a police officer standing in the room] and I think that’s great, like, that you’re, you know, um, like, you’re here, but, like, you know, like, what you represent to people like me is that, like, is violence, the threat of violence, and I hope you know that, and just, like, basically, I do not feel safe here. I’m pretty sure all of you do not feel safe here with, like, men with guns here, and mind you, Oregon was founded on white supremacist capitalist ideology,” she said to a round of applause from her fellow protesters." The sound of his, er, her, er, um, it's voice is so enjoyed by it, that it can't stop talking even when it has nothing to say, but jabberwocky. Sorry sweetie, I, like, don't, you know, like, um, er, like, um, you know, guns, you're, you know, like, threat, um, er, violence. Sweetie, perhaps you could hire someone who can string an entire sentence together to speak for you, because you are an idiot. Perhaps it was the ozone. The levels in the room must have been EPA ThreatCon I what with all those "well-educated" brains, smoking, sparking, and farting. The tragedy is these incoherent, mindless, fools believe they are educated. But a 5 minute conversation with one will prove otherwise. They speak only in platitudes, linked occasionally by "thinking words." Or, on really good days, you only get the platitudes sans conjunctions, or "thinking words." These conversations play like a wildly inappropriate platitude association game. You say a word, they list all the platitudes which can be used in response to that word. Brilliant. You ignorant troll, the only racists here are you, and your fellow travelers. If you are worried about armed white men in Portland, not cops mind you, your worries are completely misplaced. Whitey with a Concealed Handgun License is the least criminal cohort in the population, they are about as criminal as quadriplegic monks.
crimeresearch.org: Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States On the other hand, blacks and muslims are dangerous folks. "Black on white crime is higher and more prevalent than white on black crime. Apparently this chick hasn’t taken a stats class or bothered to look at Black Criminals, White Victims, and White Guilt." Portland Christmas tree bomber gets 30 years as questions about arrest linger. Notice how "white" he looks? Me neither. In fact, he looks amazingly like the chick here, well, thinner. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us." What you should be concerned about is female genital mutilation. Female Genital Mutilation Is A U.S. Problem, Too. It is time to simply cut the cord completely on state funding of higher education. This is no longer a productive enterprise. Until a more reasonable alternative exists, I would be very careful about hiring one of these "educated" idiots. You Want to Spend How Much on a Low-Capacity Rail Tunnel? | The Antiplanner
Sigh! This really is not difficult, but we make it impossible by allowing yammerheads to have control over public funds. Public rail transit was a great idea during the 19th century. It remained a good idea during the first few decades of the 20th century, but it ran its course well before mid-century. Its revival today is like a bad joke, funny but ridiculous. Rail uses up lots of land, costs a gargantuan amount of money, moves few people, but is retro-steam-punk-cool! So, we buy it. Then we have to cannibalize the functioning bus system to pay for the retro-steam-punk-cool crap. This hurts the poor the most, and "helps" the upper middle class the most. Why would any sane society subsidize its upper middle class transportation? Here in Portlandia, the urban, and transit planners are incapable of seeing or understanding changes like the self drive auto. They live in a linear, zero sum world. This mindset is very difficult to understand since it is seldom replicated in nature. It seems to be a function of government employment, and is likely driven by the zero sum nature of government budgeting. Portlandia just finished a $1.4 billion, 7 mile long light rail line, which will never move more than an insignificant number of people. Burned money, doesn't move people - win/win! The lede comes from the first comment. BART Is Falling Apart Too | The Antiplanner
. . . too few riders, too high costs, and no interest in maintenance. "As if it were jealous of all of the attention that has been focused on the DC Metrorail system, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system is having its own maintenance problems. Its railcars are old and need to be replaced; last week a series of mysterious power surges disrupted trains; and the agency recently admitted that many of the security cameras on its trains are either fake or broken. In response to these problems, BART sent out a series of less-than-apologetic tweets to its customers listing a variety of excuses for its failings. “Planners in 1996 had no way of predicting the tech boom – track redundancy, new tunnels & transbay tubes are decades-long projects,” says one. “BART was built to transport far fewer people, and much of our system has reached the end of its useful life. This is our reality,” adds another." This is the same problem we see cropping up in Portlandia, and many other cities. Rail transit became the rage back in the 70's and 80's, and the construction done then is at or past its replacement date. The problem is the federal government was willing to pay for the vast majority of the initial construction costs of these projects, but now that the projects need capital maintenance, the federal government will not pay for this. The cost of this new, and massive maintenance is nearly always equal to the original capital cost to build out the original project. Unlike private enterprise which sets aside money for these known costs, these public entities simply act like these costs will never come due. They whistle past the graveyard for years until, the maintenance cannot be deferred any longer, and even then they only budget for small maintenance projects, hoping beyond hope that this will be all that is necessary. And so BART trains burn, Portlandia train crash, and DC Metrorail is a disaster closing the system during normal operating times just to attempt to figure out what is wrong. The ultimate problem is that if the fare for these outlandishly expensive rail transit projects was fully charged, the per ticket price would be commonly far north of $15 or $20 per trip, and in many cases much more. Instead, the initial capital costs are never amortized, nor are the 40 year capital maintenance costs ever amortized, or acknowledged. Even the fare box revenues generally only account for about 20-30% of the operating costs, and routine maintenance. So, for Portlandia which comes in right at these figures, the actual cost per ride should be $10 per ride, plus the cost of amortizing the original capital construction costs, and perhaps one half of the capital maintenance costs which occurs at the end of 40 years of operations. For the Portlandia MAX Eastside light rail line, this would mean about $450 million in original capital costs, and $250 million in capital maintenance costs should have been amortized since the line first began operating. This $700 million was never captured, and so TriMet does not have the funds to perform the necessary capital maintenance, expand lines, or build new lines. In modern parlance, this is known as "sustainable." "The Washington Post‘s “Dr. Gridlock” asks why last week’s Metro shutdown didn’t lead to worse congestion. “Metrorail carries people on more than 700,000 trips” per weekday, he said. “It’s role can’t be overstated,” he added, overstating its role. According to 2014 data from the American Community Survey, only 248,000 people out of 2.6 million employed workers in the DC urban area commute by Metrorail, and that number has probably declined since then. At least, Metrorail ridership has declined, as the system carried more than 900,000 trips per weekday in 2014, which itself is down from nearly a million weekday trips in 2009. In any case, at least 200,000 of Metrorail’s daily riders aren’t commuters, so they probably travel during less-busy times of the day. While even 248,000 commuters sounds like a big number, it’s not. With 2.6 million employed workers in the DC urban area, Metro rail carries less than 10 percent of DC-area workers, and (since some people work at home) slightly more than 10 percent of DC-area commuters." And many local areas have even a smaller percentage of total commuters. Portlandia's TriMet, both bus, and rail, carries about 7.3% of total commuters. This number is so small that total disruption would do little to change commuter travel in Portlandia. Daily trips in the metro area are even lower, with TriMet only handling 2.3%, truly de minimus. "Dr. Gridlock is correct that the effects of the shutdown weren’t as bad as some expected because people adjusted: they worked at home or found alternate means of getting to work. But a planner he quotes is probably wrong in saying, “We can’t live with this sort of experience on a regular basis.” In fact, DC can probably live without Metrorail easier than it could live with the higher taxes that would be needed to keep the system fully functional." The Antiplanner is correct. The tax burden, ridership cost escalation, and further decimation of the bus lines would fall hardest on the poor, the people we are putatively attempting to help with public transit. Somewhere during the past 20 years, transit went from an antipoverty device to a green device, with the goal switching to saving the planet from carbon. This is perhaps the most absurd idea ever. Transit in Portlandia is considered to be great, yet when Maddog helped Maddogsson with a school project analyzing the fuel use, pollution, and carbon footprint of public transit versus the private automobile, he found that transit in Portlandia used more fuel, polluted more, and produced more carbon than the average car, even with nearly half of the riders using electric rail transit. What he found was that the average Portlandia transit rider was creating about as much pollution, and carbon as a Chevy Suburban SUV. Brilliant! A transit system which is rigidly unmovable, massively expensive, and which uses more fuel, pollutes, and has a greater carbon footprint than the cars they are allegedly replacing! All the bad, none of the good, at more than 10 times the cost! Woo hoo! |
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