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Category privatization

Ikea Provides Private Transportation, Santiago-Style

[photo: flickr: moriah] In a perfect tie-in to yesterday’s EconTalk podcast on public transportation, Ikea’s new Brooklyn store provides free bus and ferry service to locations in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Not only is it free, but it’s nicer than the $2/ride public alternative. Most interestingly, neighbors of the new store in the Red Hook neighborhood are using the buses to commute to work and get around town. When I first heard of this I thought riders would have to show a receipt or prove they are a customer, but Ikea is happy to provide this service to anyone! What a great neighbor… New York Daily News – Commuters using Ikea shuttle bus to bypass MTA routes The posh, coach-style shuttle buses, equipped with footrests, reading lights and music, are quickly becoming popular with travelers tired of shelling out $2 for overcrowded – and, by comparison, uncomfortable – city buses. “It’s like a free car service,” said Bianca Colon, 19, who works at a summer program at Public School 27 on Huntington St. in Red Hook, and takes the bus from downtown Brooklyn near her home. “It takes us straight downtown and I don’t have to wait for the bus to stop every block to let people on and off.” “It’s such a nice ride, I’d almost be happy to pay for it,” said Steve Riley, 40, who lives in Park Slope, takes the Ikea bus and then transfers to the Ikea water taxi for his job in SoHo. “It was so very different from the miserable experience of the subway and I got to see all four of the waterfalls.” Brooklyn News found last week that only eight of 19 passengers on the first shuttle ride entered Ikea – and two of them were employees. “I’d say before one o’clock, […]

EconTalk Podcast on Public Transportation

I regularly listen to Russel Robert’s EconTalk podcasts. This week’s podcast with Michael Munger from Duke University is particularly interesting, and possibly my favorite, along with the Milton Friedman interview. Photo by Flikr user Silvia Sugasti Professor Munger had just returned from Santiago, Chile with some great insight into their transportation system. Up until a few years ago, Santiago had a completely private systems of transit and buses. He claimed that there were 3,000 different private companies operating transportation. The unsubsidized system worked very well and was profitable, until the city took over the transportation industry and forbade private companies from providing any transportation services. At the time the City took over, the planners thought they could improve the system by directing people to the subway system. It didn’t work, and now it’s a mess. photo of crowds cramming into a subway station by flickr user Thokrates I highly recommend taking an hour during your next commute to listen to the podcast. EconTalk Podcast – Munger on the Political Economy of Public Transportation Michael Munger of Duke University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about Munger’s recent trip to Chile and the changes Chile has made to Santiago’s bus system. What was once a private decentralized system with differing levels of quality and price has been transformed into a system of uniform quality designed from the top down. How has the new system fared? Not particularly well according to Munger. Commuting times are up and the President of Chile has apologized to the Chilean people for the failures of the new system. Munger talks about why such changes take place and why they persist even when they seem inferior to the original system that was replaced.

Should Government Own Wilderness?

I found a link to a great article at FreeColorado.com. It doesn’t apply to urbanism specifically, but conceptually deals with privatization of publicly owned land. Free Colorado – Should Government Own Wilderness? The original article was from Grand Junction Free Press – Armstrong Column: Should the government own, manage wilderness? here’s a few quotes I enjoyed: Just how far do we want to push our free-market agenda? The short answer is all the way. A free market means that people’s rights to control their resources and associate with others voluntarily, so long as they don’t violate the rights of others, are consistently protected. It means that the initiation of force is outlawed. The alternative is coercion: taking people’s resources by force and and threatening them with jail for not doing what you want. We refuse to sanction the mixed economy, the current blend of some liberty and some socialist controls. We advocate liberty, all the time, without exception. Politically, of course, it’s usually easier to stop the government takeover of something new (such as a recreation facility) than to restore a government-controlled entity to the free market. Even though there’s no reason whatever for the national government to run trains or deliver the mail, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) and the United States Post Office have resisted market reforms. Trains and mail remain largely socialized industries. It seems that organizations like the Sierra Club complain most loudly about federal wilderness management. Therefore, we suggest simply giving many federal lands to the Sierra Club or similar groups. We’re confident they would do a good job managing the land, and they’d be more open to charging fees for use and even drilling to pay for land management. The rest could be transferred to a privatized Forest Service or sold, with the […]

Could a Private Street Look Like This?

photo at Brooklyn Paper was attributed to Montague Street Business Improvement District Stephen at rationalitate occasionally brings up that truly privatized streets could be converted to other uses. I think it would be inevitable that on streets with many shops and cafes, such as Montague Street in Brooklyn, the shops may get together to form some sort of association to own the street. Perhaps on weekdays, the association who own the street would allow commercial traffic which benefits their businesses, and on nights and weekends close off the street for seating and pedestrians. I guess we’ll never know until some city is bold enough to try it. Brooklyn Paper – Montague on grass! The grassy plazas would not cut off traffic on the busy side streets. As such, the bike advocacy group Transportation Alternatives said that the plan would not wreck havoc on car traffic. In fact, it would bring more people to the street, mostly by subway, foot or bike. “It will also encourage Sunday sales for our merchants,” said BID Executive Director Chelsea Mauldin. “People can come out, pick up a coffee, read the paper, and enjoy the sunshine.”

Gramercy Park: Private Open Space

photo by flickr user wallyg Back in the days in the Wild Wild East of private land ownership and limited land-use restrictions, parks were actually created by market forces. The same forces that created and preserved Gramercy Park could easily be used to preserve Historic Landmarks and low density “neighborhood character”. NY Times – The Guardian of Gramercy Park Indeed, while a key to Gramercy Park — or, more precisely, an address that entitles one to such a key — is among the most coveted items of New York real estate, under Ms. Harrison’s stewardship, the park has become perhaps the least-used patch of open space in the city. Most days, in nice weather, one would be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of people in the park at once, and few linger. Gramercy is one of two private parks in New York City (the other, in Queens, is Sunnyside Gardens Park), and a key is required not only to enter, but to leave through a gate in its wraparound wrought-iron fence. Each of the 63 lots on which the current 39 buildings sit gets two keys, which residents (and guests at the Gramercy Park Hotel) may borrow from their doormen. In addition, residents of those buildings — but only those — may purchase keys for $350 per year; the keys are all but impossible to copy and cost $1,000 to replace. About 400 people now have keys, but many of them apparently sit unused in junk drawers in the grand foyers in the apartments overlooking the park. One sunny morning last week, as Ms. Harrison chatted with the Rev. Thomas F. Pike, rector of Calvary-St. George’s Church, there were three others in the park: a woman checking her BlackBerry, a custodial worker and a jogger. On a Saturday […]

CATO Podcast: Transportation

Today, I was listening to CATO’s Daily Podcast about transportation with Samuel Staley of the Reason Foundation. I started listening to him talk about the best ways to plan highway systems and said to myself, “Oh boy, here we go again another so-called “free-market” person talking about how the government can ‘pave our way out of congestion’.” “We’ve got the space, and we’ve got the land, and we’ve got the wealth” to pave away congestion. That’s a very collective “we” for a supposed free-market person to use. But, after about 5 minutes of that, he goes into how we now have the technology to privatize highway use and are 15 years away from the technology to privatize even local roads. Now we’re talking. We need to actually begin to tie those traditional market mechanism to the products that are being developed and implemented at the local level, and that’s something we’ve never been able to achieve before. It’s an exciting time for transportation policy. If, transaction costs are no longer the obstacle to privatization, society needs to start shattering these bureaucracies and selling the roads to the private sector. I think the biggest hurdles to privatization are peoples’ perception/biases and politics. People never paid for roads before, so it’ll take effort to convince them it is not as free as the air we breath… download mp3

$12.8b Bid for PA Turnpike

From Toll Road News: With a bid of $12.8 billion an Abertis/Citi team has been selected as the concessionaire in a 75 year lease of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The bids were received in a second round of best-&-final offer bids last Friday (May 16). #2 bidder was Transurban/Goldman Sachs at $12.1b. With this kind of cash, it’s going to be very tempting for more states to privatize to keep budgets afloat. I worry about how much wasteful spending today’s politicians plan to do after they get this windfall. It’s also a shame it’s a 75 year lease not a sale. This gives the state some authority to maintain some patronage, cap toll increases, and keep unions happy.

Private Streets in Brooklyn?

This isn’t some crazy proposal, they have been private since the 20’s and 30’s. It seems there are advantages and disadvantages. You don’t have to worry about street parking when you own the street, but you have to hire your own contractor to make repairs. My main concern is that those homeowners are still paying taxes, but not benefiting from public services. From the Brooklyn Daily Eagle – Community Board 10 Meeting Sparks New Effort to Solve Cul-de-sac Problems: The 19 private unmapped streets in Bay Ridge are now a public matter as nearly a hundred residents of these cul-de-sac havens came together at a Community Board 10 meeting to learn how they can get city services that they pay for in taxes but don’t get. It would be interesting to see what would happen with more private streets.

Was it the name that killed “congestion pricing”?

Congestion pricing links: portfolio.com: Why Congestion Pricing Died wsj poll suggests “clearway”, “freeflow”, and others: Why Not ‘FreeFlow’? A Buzzwatch Makeover for NYC’s Failed Traffic Plan Trendczar: Congested Thinking knowledgeproblem.com: EZ-Zone? FreeFlow? Would congestion pricing by another name, smell sweeter? streetsblog Take the poll.

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