Alex Armlovich

The deadline to sign SB 79 and legalize more housing near transit in California is coming up. This is a hugely important bill both for ending the state's housing crisis and for securing its climate future. Please join me in urging @gavinnewsom.bsky.social to sign!

In the near-term this is a blight mitigation effort. In the medium-term it's proving out the CrossMod model in low-land-cost urban areas. In the long term, it's ensuring mixed incomes in neighborhoods that *could* become more expensive one day

NY is wisely leveraging factory-built manufactured housing for community development & affordable housing upstate

They're locking in deed-restricted affordable housing on vacant public Land Bank sites for the future—2 or 3 steps ahead of market-led redevelopment—for just $100k/unit of subsidy

Bright spots in US transit:

After opening its 3rd basic Bus Rapid Transit route for just $10M/mile, Albany didn't just exceed pre-pandemic ridership

They just set an all-time CDTA ridership record. Never been a better time for transit in Albany than now

BRT is the future

I'm amazed SIRR's setup has survived so long

It's ingenious: SIRR fleet & staffing is sized to serve the peak load point; anyone who crosses it is setting marginal opex & capex

But if you get on & off before Tompkinsville, you're inframarginal: ~free to carry, so faregates would just waste money

Only interesting version is the old 1955 Vickrey fare cordon around the CBD at the peak load point of each line, charging fares only for peak travel inside that zone

SIRR did this, with faregates only at Ferry & Tompkinsville. SRMC to serve a trip that doesn't cross the peak load point is ~$0

Genuinely excellent to have Stephen helping in the replies 👇

Again, NYC has not the war on zoning or costs yet—but we have demonstrated that summoning the labor & capital needed to double the number of units under construction, basically overnight, won't be a problem
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Metro NYC is not out of the woods, though!

City of Yes is nice but it only adds ~10k/year over the business cycle. The suburbs haven't reformed at all & JC is getting a NIMBY mayor. This wave will pass

The only good news is this wave proves supply chains *can* warp to 50k/yr instantly

Before housing is legal, construction costs don't set housing prices. After housing is legal, construction costs are EVERYTHING

We have a lot of zoning & cost reform left. But assembling the supply chain to double production overnight is already feasible. Don't let inputs distract you from upzoning

Everyone take a moment to gloat over the FinTwit folks who claimed labor & supply chains make quantum leaps in multifamily housing production impossible

"What about teh lumber", they said. "What about teh labor", they said

Then NYC simply exploded to completion levels unseen since 1965

Photos from a lively @yimbytown.bsky.social discussion on how data-driven research can shape effective policy with (L-R): @andersem.bsky.social, @david-garcia.upforgrowth.org, Arthur Gailes, @skarlinsky.bsky.social, @aarmlovi.bsky.social & @muhammadspeaks.bsky.social.

🏙️ Niskanen staff represented at YIMBYTOWN!

@aarmlovi.bsky.social, Andrew Justus, Kaj Gumbs, and Rohan Aras presented on a "Federal Policy Roundup" panel (alongside minority staffer Madeleine Marr of Senate Banking and David Garcia of Up For Growth).

An analysis by the Citizens Housing & Planning Council (CHPC) suggests that the 1989 revisions led to an immediate drop in the number of rezonings approved in the immediate aftermath of Charter changes: In fact, the CHPC analysis found that “[d]espite an increasing share of housing-related ULURP applications, the volume of rezoning applications completed per year has never recovered to pre-1989 levels: so far this decade, rezonings are being approved at 61% of the pace during the 1980s, and the recent peak of the 2000s was still just 80% of the pre-1989 rate.”55 These findings suggest that, all else equal, the 1989 reforms made zoning for more housing harder than it used to be. At the same time, the newly empowered City Council did not immediately develop the practice of “member deference” as it functions today. Instead, through the 1990s, land use decision- making was firmly controlled by then-Speaker of the City Council Peter Vallone, who supported multiple rezonings over the wishes of local councilmembers.56 As the New York Times put it: “There are many more participants than before [in the land use process]. Yet the Council is much more firmly under the control of one person,” [Council Speaker Vallone]. Around the turn of the millennium, the practice began to change, with members overruled fewer and fewer times. Some practitioners attribute this change to the introduction of Council term limits, to City Council rules reforms that may have weakened the Speaker’s ability to influence individual members, and to a change in general political attitudes toward new housing, as development pressures accelerated in the 2000s.

thx @aarmlovi.bsky.social for the link to this Charter Commission report (from this year)

it looks like NYC gaining aldermanic prerogative severely repressed the addition of more homes

www.nyc.gov/assets/chart...

This from @aarmlovi.bsky.social is the best path forward with AVs. It's also @johnericson.me thought iirc.

Labor, congestion, vehicle utilization, and safety are all constraints on mobility (and hence growth). Let's use automation to tackle all and enhance our transit systems.

I'm talking about the FTA "STOPS" model. It's able to incorporate proxies for walkability (like intersection density), but they don't mandate it

If walkability can't be measured well enough to be fed into STOPS, then it shouldn't be an ad hoc CIG scoring variable either

Is it walkable? As much as it matters, it'll show up in a good ridership model

Does the project increase accessibility to jobs & essential activities compared to baseline? =>ridership

Is existing land use supportive? =>ridership

Does it equitably serve lower-income, car-free people? =>ridership

We have a big opportunity with Mr. Molinaro to refresh CIG

I'm increasingly convinced the STOPS ridership model should be upgraded to capture most of the extra scoring variables people care about

Ridership is the ultimate principal component of walkability, land use, mode integration, etc etc

Ah yes I'll be sure to mention that in my next Hill meeting on the surface transport reauth.

Shouting ideological epithets is not the way to get a Republican trifecta to fund Amtrak, I'm afraid. I'm shocked you think otherwise

It turns out the tilting feature on the new Acelas hasn't passed safety testing yet, so they have to take curves *slower* than the legacy fleet with authorized tilting

That's the other reason they're running so slow at first 😔

It'll get better eventually. But still a bummer

An Amtrak that can fund itself is:

-Less politically vulnerable in the first place

-Generating undebatable user value that people demonstrate by voting with their wallets

-More ideologically attractive to Republicans

-Easier to justify more capital upgrades, knowing ops are self-funding

Train YIMBYism means the price decline will be in the regionals the capacity increase is actually much larger than 23% as they end up running far more service than right now. Remember regional ridership is up substantially from 2019, Acela ridership is flat due to capacity.

The trains will be full—that's what dynamic pricing does, 'gouging' on peak trains and discounting off-peak trains to get more butts in seats—but we will see at what prices they fill up!

They will absolutely have takers but the clearing price is like an auction. Exciting to watch

It's a big capacity increase (phasing in gradually, month by month). At the very least it'll take pressure off the Regionals

With record ridership we've had sold-out peak time Regionals, bidding Regional prices up into Acela territory. That should start to calm back down
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If the amenities + novelty + travel time reliability stimulate demand, peak prices could even rise in the dynamic algo!

But I suspect off-peak trips don't have as much latent demand at constant prices?

On any run with empty seats the dynamic algo cuts prices. We will see!
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Today's Acela launch will drive Amtrak NEC profitability, even as the 27% capacity boost cuts dynamically priced fares

At first it seems they'll use the faster trains to "pad" existing schedules, boosting on-time performance

After observation they should be speeding up the official schedules!

New: Niskanen Housing's writeup of the Senate Banking megabill 👇

Chair Scott & Ranking Member Warren assembled the biggest bipartisan federal housing package in living memory, with proposals from the whole committee—a real first step to buttress growing state & local action on the housing crisis

Thanks again to the whole Chicago crew. Great to meet you all and look forward to helping next session!

Meetup tonight at Off Color Brewing, 1460 N Kingsbury St

5 pm

Coming to Chicago today through early Wednesday morning 🌭🍕

If any Chicago housing or transit accounts want to meet I'll be around!

@stevevance.net @danielkayhertz.bsky.social @mclean.bsky.social @danielcomeaux.bsky.social

He's the worst all-around but Bass is so bad on housing & transit specifically that it depends on how you weight the issue-specific vectors

BJ is probably worse, bc SB79 is technically outside of Karen's direct control. But it's still really really bad