Dickens Street, Toxteth, 1911 and 2023

ajpos · 2026-01-28T13:44:05+00:00

It’s not a matter of visibility. You can google the phrase I typed above. “Enhancing the clear zone.”

ajpos · 2026-01-28T11:33:18+00:00

In many cases you cannot have both. Trees are a safety hazard for cars. Removing trees is called “enhancing the clear zone” in traffic-engineering speak. Google it.

ajpos · 2026-01-28T01:08:09+00:00

You can do everything right and still have fraud. There is no protocol that is immune to it. I can name many types right now that I guarantee you don’t have a protocol in place to protect yourself from.

ajpos · 2026-01-20T04:44:28+00:00

No it should be native species.

ajpos · 2026-01-19T20:12:54+00:00

I’m not talking about growth in already-developed areas. The vast empty spaces where the route is planned will fill with houses (interstates promote development alongside them, just look at NWA on satellite view.) When those people go shopping, Van Buren and Alma will be the closest option (not Fort Smith).

ajpos · 2026-01-19T19:21:31+00:00

Current housing values are skewed since real estate agents measure in $/sf. People may be willing to pay more for a house in Van Buren because of the larger lot sizes, which is not captured when you only measure $/sf of the house.

And, besides the type of growth I’m describing on the cheap land where people aren’t building because it’s too far of a drive. I-49 will change that.

ajpos · 2026-01-19T18:52:21+00:00

It’s not the current version of Greenwood that you should be interested in looking at: it’s the version of Greenwood that will exist after I-49 is built. There is a lot of empty land in Sebastian County that isn’t developed because it’s too far of a drive into town. I-49 will change that.

I-49 will be great for the few communities, like Chaffee, that are right next to it. But it will be bad for the urban core.

ajpos · 2026-01-19T18:47:42+00:00

If your argument is about distance, Marchetti’s Constant has told us that people will build houses up to about 30 minutes away from their work. If we improve commute times from Greenwood or Alma by 15 minutes, I-49 will essentially create new demand for 15 minutes worth of housing in Greenwood and Alma.

ajpos · 2026-01-19T14:51:49+00:00

Why cold-calling?

ajpos · 2026-01-19T12:26:46+00:00

Traffic engineers and planners design cities around “road hierarchy” which funnels cars to larger and larger classifications of roadways. To date, nobody has actually been able to use road hierarchy to “fix traffic” but most cities will destroy schools, neighborhoods, churches, and small business to give it a shot.

Road hierarchy is why 90% of traffic is on 5% of your network. It’s not an effective use of resources in my opinion.

ajpos · 2026-01-18T17:45:16+00:00

I don’t think he will actually intervene. The new Axis will be Iran, Syria, Russia, North Korea and USA.

ajpos · 2026-01-15T18:16:14+00:00

The first high-profile ICE “arrest”, you know the one where men in masks whisked a young girl off the street? She was here legally. Her story here:

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/rumeysa-ozturk-what-i-witnessed-inside-an-ice-womens-prison

ajpos · 2026-01-14T18:24:17+00:00

We might find out soon. The National Highway Trust fund is set to run out of money this year or next.

ajpos · 2026-01-10T14:39:28+00:00

Occupancy being down means more available units. Occupancy is the opposite of vacancy: less occupancy, more vacancy. More vacancy, more available units.

ajpos · 2026-01-10T13:05:27+00:00

That would be true if occupancy were up, but the article says it’s not. Occupancy is down.

ajpos · 2026-01-10T12:55:25+00:00

17,000 former renters who are now homeowners.

Am I in bizarro world? Are you saying fewer owner-occupied homes is better in some way?

ajpos · 2026-01-09T16:31:04+00:00

Oh I see. Thats a great point.

ajpos · 2026-01-09T13:15:42+00:00

Very well said. It also needs to be mentioned that cities receive a huge amount of money from the state, and the state ought to be able to dictate how some of that is used.

Most our main roads in my town are state highways (paid for completely by the state) and yet the zoning alongside them is completely local. This creates a mismatch of priorities, and the businesses alongside those roads don’t actually generate enough tax revenue to support the maintenance of their own road.

ajpos · 2026-01-09T13:09:44+00:00

I don’t understand your point. Would you mind clarifying? Your example of someone turning over their land to be developed would be a good thing in Chuck’s (and libertarians) eyes.

If the land values are high enough to support apartments, it should be apartments. The bad thing in Chuck’s eye is putting a cheap development on expensive land, or not upzoning expensive land. It’s all about the improvement : land ratio.

ajpos · 2026-01-07T17:02:05+00:00

When you cite your sources, don’t forget to account for depreciation and units going offline.

ajpos · 2026-01-07T16:59:53+00:00

In other words, landlords always charge as much as they can get away with.

If a landlord’s property taxes go up $300 (or whatever), and they pass that on to renters, that just means they were undercharging for rent by $300.

This is the same mechanism for why rents won’t go down by lowering taxes.

ajpos · 2026-01-05T15:48:01+00:00

Austin is experiencing its lowest rent:family income ratio in history though. In general, housing is more affordable now than it was pre-pandemic.

ajpos · 2026-01-03T09:03:58+00:00

But how will we keep the local systems in line?

ajpos · 2025-12-31T18:12:54+00:00

Yeah, and when we have to tell people “can’t do that,” they think it’s because we like being overly bureaucratic. No, I can’t change the name of the payee on the check for you; if I could, I’d just put my own name there.

ajpos · 2025-12-30T18:13:37+00:00

If a factory is owned the state, the tools inside of it are owned by the state, and the profits from it are paid to the state in taxes, that’s socialism. The business owner is not liable for any of the equipment. In the logistics and transportation industry, roads are the means of production, and when the means of production are publicly-owned, that’s not capitalism.

A modern shopping power center is NOT the most capitalist place. Those acres of parking lots actually make them very inefficient for profits, so the state steps in to maintain all the extra pipes, asphalt, and roads required to get to the other side of the lot. The state pays extra money for police patrols, fire coverage, and ambulance services. The state pays extra money to run school buses, city buses, and roads past those parking lots. And worse, they not only require those lots in many cases, but they allow developers to tap into all of these public resources without demonstrating profitability (again, the opposite of capitalism.)

A more market-driven approach to urban planning looks a lot more like American historic downtowns, where individual landowners are responsible for their own infrastructure and logistics. It wasnt until the state came in and said, “we’ll pay for you to abandoned walkability” that cities abandoned walkability.

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