Transportation planner and economist. Founder, Siegman & Associates. Formerly Principal & Shareholder at Nelson\Nygaard. LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/5cekhrjh
Patrick Siegman
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"Piercy is one of almost 400 city fire and police department employees who earned six-figure overtime sums last year..."
Costly code provisions drive up rents. SJ firefighters can afford provisions that add costs without adding safety. Ordinary families can't. Fire officials need to remember that!
Cities seem to be endlessly creative in finding ways to pay for highways and parking – as long as it doesn’t involve directly charging the motorists who use them.
Personally, I think it was a big mistake to put fire marshals, who typically have zero training in traffic safety, in charge of critical street design decisions.
Did your city’s fire marshal go to the meeting of the International Code Council (ICC) where they adopted the fire code section that bans traffic calming, unless it’s approved by the fire marshal? Did he undermine your city’s traffic safety goals?
Guess what? You probably can’t even find out.
Research shows that some US building standards drive up housing costs without increasing safety. Yet San Jose's firefighters have fought all efforts to reform them.
Why? Perhaps it's because they make so much that they don't know what it's like for a family to struggle to pay the rent.
🎁link:
Patrick Siegman
"Fire engineer Spencer Piercy earned $437,337 in overtime in 2025, more than twice his base pay and nearly double Mayor Matt Mahan’s salary. That followed overtime earnings of more than $411,000 in 2024 and $287,000 in 2023."
Patrick Siegman
Patrick Siegman
Patrick Siegman
Buildings like this are not possible with off-street car parking requirements
Elizabeth Warren: “[S]ome state and local zoning rules needlessly drive up the cost of construction. [. . . R]ules like minimum lot sizes or mandatory parking requirements [...] raise the costs of building new housing and keep families from moving into areas with better career and school choices."
Patrick Siegman
Patrick Siegman
"Eliminating minimum parking requirements" does not mean "eliminating parking."
After Minneapolis removed parking minimums, citywide parking ratios dropped from 1.0 to 0.73 spaces per unit. Walkable areas often built little parking, while others built closer to prior levels.
In the United States, officials with absolutely no training in traffic safety are routinely placed in charge of crucial street design decisions. The results are bad.
Why do US cities and states put unqualified people in charge of key street design decisions?🧵
What a bizarre system to raise money: A VMT per SF by use tax paid through the water bill? I guess the property tax caps are really starting to bind Texas cities.
It incorporates many of the follies of parking requirements. Pass a bond guys or get voter approval for more taxes.
Jeannie Leverich
Patrick Siegman
In the long run, total development cost sets a floor on prices for new homes. Homebuilding is competitive. Builders typically earn a small profit margin (7-10%). If development cost is $157/sf, builders will add supply only if they think they'll be able to sell for $157 plus ~7% to 10%, or ~$172/sf.
A low-slung commercial building turns into 50 homes in Berkeley. (2019➡️2025)
Have questions about single-stair apartment buildings? @alexhrwtz.bsky.social & I will be presenting on this on May 14 at #CNU34. Come ask us!
Alex co-authored The Pew Charitable Trusts groundbreaking research on the safety of single-stair buildings in the US. Here's the session description:🧵
Mo Zhu
Nathaniel Barrett
Patrick Siegman
Patrick Siegman
M. Nolan Gray 🥑
There are huge differences in death rates from road injuries, even across high-income countries
