Was out in the suburbs of Copenhagen today for a bit, and they look, well, a lot like American suburbs except with smaller-than-average houses. But if you go visit an American suburb with smaller-than-average houses—usually an older one—then you’ll very much have the right idea. What was quite different, however, was the transportation from the suburbs into the central city. Copenhagen’s suburbs are organized around the “finger plan” illustrated in the map on the right. Each finger is, as you would do in the United States, built around an arterial road. But the roads have fewer lanes than an American arterial would have. But running alongside them (or at least running alongside the one our bus was driving on) are very nice, very wide bike paths. And roughly parallel to the roadways are the S-Tog commuter rail lines.

Consequently, there are fewer people driving on the road than you would have in the US and there are more people biking and taking the train.

It’s worth noting that this sort of thing leaves overall automobile congestion neither better nor worse than an alternative strategy of fewer options and wider roads would. Insofar as you build road capacity, drivers will fill that capacity up. You get a choice of what level of automobile traffic you want to see the congestion at. But if you actually want uncrowded rush hour roads then you have basically only two choices. One is that you can build “road to nowhere” type projects where the economic rationale for infrastructure development is so poor that people don’t really want to drive on your shiny new highway. The other is that you can do congestion-pricing. But absent congestion-pricing, even the really admirable provision of alternative modes has limited impact. When valuable goods are given away for free, you get shortages. Copenhagen is apparently considering following Stockholm and Oslo and implementing a congestion fee, but they haven’t done it yet.

Still the moral of the story is, I think, pretty clear. When you build infrastructure to facilitate commuting from suburbs to central cities, lots of people will avail themselves of the opportunity to move to the new suburbs. But how they actually get to the central city depends on what kind of infrastructure you build. If you build giant highways, they’ll drive. If you build smaller roads and also some trains, then some people will drive and some will take the train.

For the sake of comparison, note that Copenhagen is a pretty small city. There are 521,000 people in the city proper and 1.8 million in the metro area. That would make it the 30th largest metro area in the United States, slightly bigger than the Las Vegas MSA and slightly smaller than the Kansas City MSA. All told, about 129 million Americans live in metropolitan areas that are bigger than metro Copenhagen. About a third of Danish people live in Greater Copenhagen, whereas over 40 percent of Americans live in metro areas that are bigger than Greater Copenhagen.

Isi Liebler offers a modest proposal in the Jerusalem Post:

The exploitation of Judge Goldstone’s Jewish background by our enemies intensifies our obligation to confront the enemy within – renegade Jews – including Israelis who stand at the vanguard of global efforts to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state. Such odious Jews can be traced back to apostates during the Middle Ages who fabricated blood libels and vile distortions of Jewish religious practice for Christian anti-Semites to incite hatred which culminated in massacres. It was in response to these renegades that the herem (excommunication) was introduced.

Who are these modern-day blood libelers?

The rot has extended to the Diaspora, especially Europe and has also affected the United States. Highly vocal Jewish groups like the recently created J Street describe themselves as ‘Zionist’ but their prime objective is to pressure the US government to use “tough love” against Israel – a euphemism for demanding that the Jewish state make further unilateral concessions to neighbors pledged to its annihilation.

This kind of thing is, shall we say, disappointing to read.

So how’s New York City’s new law requiring chain restaurants to disclose nutritional information working out? Kevin Drum reports not so well:

The full study is here. Results are below. The researchers chose 14 fast-food outlets in low-income NYC neighborhoods (Newark was a control group) and interviewed a few hundred people both before and after the calorie labeling law went into effect, asking them if they’d noticed the calorie countsand if they’d changed their selection because of it. Then they got receipts from each respondent so they could find out what they’d actually purchased.

The results were pretty dismal: only about half the respondents even noticed the calorie counts and only 15% said they influenced their choice. But the receipts told an even more dismal story: overall, people actually purchased more calories after the law went into effect. The results aren’t statistically significant, though, so basically all the researchers can really say is that the law (so far) hasn’t had any effect. The only glimmer of good news is that among people under 35, respondents who noticed the labeling did seem to cut back a bit. No other subgroup showed any effect. So who knows? Young people probably respond to this kind of thing more quickly than older people, so maybe it’s just going to take some more time before all this stuff sinks in.

The fact that half the people don’t even notice the information is a bad sign. Obviously the point of having this stuff displayed is for people to read it. Especially given how few people so much as saw the signs, I don’t think it should be hugely surprising that the actual results here are less than stellar. When you think about it, a calorie labeling rule would probably have more impact among middle class or rich customers (yes, there are rich people eating fast food) than in a low-income neighborhood. If you introduce nutritional information to a population that’s acculturated to spending a lot of time worrying about losing weight, then you can see where the impact would come in. But if you’re talking about a low-income community where people are worrying about other things, then what difference is information going to make?

At any rate, more research required, says I.

I haven’t been following the New Jersey governor’s race very closely, but GOP contender Chris Christie’s recent slide in the polls certainly seems noteworthy. If incumbent John Corzine can somehow pull this out, that would be a real sign of what lousy shape the GOP is in politically.

After all, when you’ve got an opposition incumbent as unpopular as Corzine running amidst an economic catastrophe, those are the races you’re supposed to win. If you can’t hold on to a lead in the polls that just goes to show that your party’s brand has become totally toxic in the state in question. Twenty years ago, New Jersey was a solidly conservative state. Mike Dukakis got 42 percent of the vote there, less than Obama got in South Carolina.

A related issue will be the Delaware Senate race. Republicans have persuaded Mike Castle, probably the least-conservative member of the House GOP caucus, to challenge Beau Biden for the seat. Castle is super-popular in Delaware and stands a good chance of winning. But obviously the Republican leadership as a whole is very much not popular in Delaware. Will Castle be able to persuade people that he won’t just be a lockstep obstructionist? If he wins, will he deliver on that promise and build a more robust moderate wing of his party’s caucus? Or will his popularity melt away in the cold light of a campaign?

Obviously, it’s crucial that we not build anymore walkable, transit-oriented communities:

While many metropolitan markets around the country are enduring steep increases in vacancies in their office and retail sectors, the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington is an oasis of stability — and even of prosperity.

ved by five Metro subway stops within four miles, the corridor continues to attract new tenants, buyers and developers in the face of the deepest recession since the Great Depression. “It’s really an anomaly, considering the tough economy we’ve been in since December 2007,” said Sigrid G. Zialcita, managing research director for Cushman & Wakefield, a global real estate services firm. [...]

While Wilson Boulevard, a main artery, helps define the corridor, the key element in its success has been the subway. Planners had wanted to place it in the median of Interstate 66, on a more northerly alignment. But Arlington officials fought to have it run underground in the corridor to spur development.

It costs money to build a proper grade-separated heavy rail line with closely-packed stations. A lot of money. And consequently, it takes time for the benefits to be fully reaped. But the benefits are large. Nobody walks around London or Paris or New York and says “it’s too bad they wasted all this money building subways.” And nobody walks the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor and says it’s too bad they didn’t build park-and-ride stations and surface tracks in a highway median.