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Parking Space as Living Space
Elsa Brenner, New York Times
Generating both praise and criticism in a county with plenty of expensive housing but not much of the budget-friendly kind, a Department of Planning report urges towns and villages here to use land in existing office parks as sites for new housing, some of it for moderate-income families.

There are two big reasons that he believes the plan would work, Richard Hyman, an independent housing and planning consultant hired by the county for the study, says. To start with, office parks are typically created with more parking than they need, to meet standard zoning requirements. Additionally, the complexes are often built in campuslike settings, with room for more construction - in this case new residential buildings.

... Because the roads and utilities in existing office parks are already in place, the study asserts, further development of those properties would not be as costly for developers.

... Put another way, said Robert F. Weinberg, an Elmsford developer of mixed-use projects in Westchester: “Here we have already cut down all these trees, put in the sewer and water lines, so there’s no hole to be dug, no addition of parking lots and no extra runoff. It makes sense economically and environmentally.”
(11 May 2008)

Brentwood the poster child for housing bust
James Temple, San Francisco Chronicle
... This farming community on the eastern edge of the Bay Area absorbed an outsize portion of the region's growth during the prolonged housing and development boom, adding 40,000 residents in the past 16 years as subdivisions and strip malls overtook agricultural land. It regularly ranked among the state's fastest-growing cities. Now, Brentwood is suffering disproportionately from the bust.

Hundreds of families have lost their homes to foreclosure since the beginning of last year, and in a sign of more to come, at least 1 out of every 16 households has received default notices.

For the neighbors left behind, the dreams of the pretty, tight-knit community that lured many there in the first place have dissolved.

In new neighborhoods, "Foreclosure," "For sale" and "For rent" signs dot the streets, weeds sprout and newspapers pile up at empty homes as new residents cycle in and out. In projects halted by the downturn, handfuls of houses stand alone amid acres of dirt. Promised parks and community centers remain unfinished or fenced in.
(11 May 2008)

The eh team - We're Number One! (in car use)
Paul Krugman, The Conscience of a Liberal (New York Times blog)

(10 May 2008)
EB contributor
Hans Noeldner writes:
Krugman is referring to rather old data – i.e. 1995: page 30 here: onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr257.pdf
["Making Transit Work" by the National Research Council. Warning - big PDF]

No doubt Amerkans walk even less today. It would be interesting to see a graphic showing the correlation between vehicle size and walking over time. Anecdotally I hear a lot of evidence that big SUVs and pickups "frighten off" pedestrians.

Extreme commutes: More time on road means less time for family
Scott Jason, Merced Sun-Star (California)
Zack Guettinger's alarm sounds at 3:45 a.m., bringing with it a cruel reminder that he must drag himself out of bed for another three-hour drive to his job in San Ramon.

Most mornings, he's still half-asleep when he stops at a service station to fill his Toyota Scion with gasoline and his veins with coffee.

The sky's dark, few cars are on Highway 99 and his two sons and wife are still in bed.

On a typical day, he drives 200 miles there and back. It's not a short drive, but as he explained, it's what must be done.

"I struggle through every day with the drive so they can have somewhere nice to live," the 31-year-old Guettinger explained

... The census estimates that 2 percent of the American work force is made up of extreme commuters, which means they spend more than 90 minutes driving each way to their job.

The extra exhaust fumes pollute air, the tires wear down roads, the vehicles cause traffic jams and, behind the wheel, drivers slowly go mad.

Driving that long changes a commuter's life and inevitably the social fabric of society. It's another way for a community to become fragmented, as residents isolate themselves from friends and neighbors because of their jobs.
(10 May 2008)

Gas prices knock bicycle sales, repairs into higher gear
James Macpherson, Associated Press
Four-dollar-a-gallon gas is good for business -- if you run a bike shop. Commuters around the country are dusting off their old two-wheelers -- or buying new ones -- to cope with rising fuel prices, bicycle dealers say.

"Everyone that comes in the shop is talking about the gas prices," said Barry Dahl, who opened Barry's Bikes in Bismarck in April. He sold more than 50 bicycles in the first month, double the projections in his business plan.
(11 May 2008)

The Short View: Transportation stocks
John Authers, Financial Times via Yahoo!News
Transport companies run on oil, and lots of it. High oil prices are bad for them. But the market does not appear to believe this.

Since the Federal Reserve's emergency rate cut in January, the price of crude oil has gone up a remarkable 37.5 per cent.

... But, despite the huge impact this will have on their costs, MSCI's world index of transportation companies has risen almost 16 per cent over the same period.
(8 May 2008)
Also at Huffington Post. Contributor Joseph Neri writes:
Whoever thought muscle power would ever become an 'alternative form of energy'?