If Sacramento Sprawled Like Portland

Sacramento Bee
To the Editor:

For all the Portland envy expressed in Mary Lynne Vellinga’s “A T ouch of Portland in Offing for Capital” (Bee, December 26, 2004), it is well to remember that if Sacramento sprawled like Portland, there would be 30,000 more acres of development. Moreover, traffic congestion, which used to be better in Portland, is now worse than in faster growing Sacramento. Portland is not nearly the Nirvana its proponents claim.

Sincerely,Wendell Cox
Principal Wendell Cox Consultancy, St. Louis
Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris
618 632 8507Mailing address: PO Box 841, Belleville, IL 62222

The Paycheck to Paycheck Apples to Oranges Report

A report funded by Freddie Mac and prepared by the National Association of Counties and the Center for Housing Policy addresses the important issue of housing affordability. But its principal measures are not comparable. The report provides information on the estimated household income required to buy the median priced home in a number of counties. It goes on to compare this number with the "typical" wage of various occupations, such as police officer or teacher. Many households have more than one wage earner, and therefore a comparison of household income to the wages of particular jobs is misleading, and invites the conclusion that the situation is much worse than it actually is.

Hallucinating About Transit in St. Louis

STL Post Dispatch Oped by Kathleen Henry & Michelle Tham
In which it is proposed that a better solution to a new Mississippi River Bridge in STL would be lower light rail fares and HOV lanes.

Response:
It is baseless rhetoric to suggest that transit or high-occupancy vehicle lanes are a substitute for a new bridge over the Mississippi. Neither alternative can take enough people where they are going to make a material difference iin trafficcongestioin. No believable computer models or plans say otherwise.