However, a study from the University of Chicago found that homes in low-income neighborhoods face tax assessments that are, as a proportion of actual value, “twice as high as that faced by homes in the top decile.” The reason is that assessors typical base their assessments on the size and other external features of the homes and so miss the lower quality of construction and poor maintenance that. [...] Studies published by the University of Minnesota Accessibility Observatory show that typical residents of the 50 largest urban areas in the United States can reach almost twice as many jobs in a 20-minute auto drive as in a 60-minute transit ride, and more than 11 times as many jobs in an auto drive of any number of minutes (up to 60) as in a transit ride in the same number of minutes. [...] In 1996, ten years after Portland opened its first light-rail line and rezoned all of the stations areas along the line for redevelopment, city planners ruefully reported to the Portland city council that “we have not seen any of the kind of development—of a mid-rise, higher-density, mixed- use, mixed-income type—that we would’ve liked to have seen” on the light-rail route.79 “We are in the hottes. [...] In the same way, rail transit leads to insignificant increases in the total value of property or the total amount of property tax revenues in the urban area as a whole, namely because rail transit carries such a small amount of passenger travel, and virtually no freight, in the urban area. [...] Costs quickly rose to $2.85 billion and due to that increase the province froze any further spending on the project in 2018.108 However, the project was revived in 2021 by which time 34 F R O N T I E R C E N T R E F O R P U B L I C P O L I C Y the projected cost had increased to $3.4 billion or $283 million per kilometer.109 Hamilton had begun planning the project in 2007 and hopes to complete it.
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