Early-bird blogger Tom Kirkendall points out that Mayor White’s $AFEclear program has now made the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
The article is subscription-only, and really does not break any new ground over what has been covered already by local talk radio, blogs, and traditional media. Its author, Thaddeus Herrick, does include a quote on Mayor White from Bob Stein, who at least is identified properly:
“This is the first time he’s stumbled,” says Robert Stein a professor of political science at Rice University, who helped create Safe Clear.
There’s also a quote from Stephen Klineberg, apparently just for the sake of including it:
That the experiment is playing out in Houston is curious. “A city built by developers on behalf of the automobile,” says Stephen Klineberg, a sociologist at Rice University, Houston is the nation’s largest city without zoning — and a monument to unfettered growth. The metro area, with a population of more than four million, now rivals Los Angeles for the worst air and has legendary traffic jams.
The article quotes KTRH-740 talker Chris Baker, who helped lead the talk-radio charge in winning improvements to the original draconian program:
“For the government to come in and take your car at gunpoint is wrong,” says Chris Baker, a radio talk-show host on KTRH, a local AM station. “It’s ugly and corrupt.”
The one significant weakness of the article is that it does not directly mention the revenues generated by the $AFEclear program for the city — $1 million in franchise fees collected by establishing exclusive $AFEClear zones — making unclear the reference at the end of the article to possible state legislative action to curb Houston’s ability to use freeways as a revenue source. That’s a significant omission for a story that’s this old and this developed.
UPDATE (02-10-2005): Today, the New York Times picks up the story.
