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Must Read: The Demand Curve for Sprawl Slopes Downward

Sandy Ikeda’s latest article at FEE’s “The Freeman” is a great summary of the libertarian sprawl debate. There has been a lot of Internet chatter lately about what libertarians ought to think about urban sprawl and its causes, including pieces by Kevin Carson, Austin Bramwell, Randal O’Toole, and Matthew Yglesias. The title of Ben Adler’s post basically sums it up: “If You Love the Free Market, You Should Hate Mandated Suburban Sprawl.” Sandy includes a mention of the ongoing minimum parking debate. Sandy concludes that the more the government subsidizes items related to low-density development, the more low-density development we’ll get. But the bottom line is that the law of demand still holds – other things equal, the cheaper you make something the more of it people will want to buy, and that includes low-density development. You’ll get more of that, too, if those direct and indirect subsidies make it cheaper for people to get it. Government intervention has done just that, and it’s hard to understand how you can argue, whether you’re a proponent or (especially) an opponent of Smart Growth, that the free market alone is responsible for the amount of sprawl that we actually have. This doesn’t mean, of course, that Smart Growth regulations are the place to begin. Instead, if you think sprawl is a bad thing, it would seem logical to first remove the vast array of interventions that over the decades have pushed it along. On this, I would have thought all market urbanists could agree. Well said!

Private buses make a comeback in NYC

by Stephen Smith Transit activists have been bemoaning recent cuts in the MTA’s bus routes throughout New York City, but the cuts may have a silver lining, in particular for market urbanists: they may usher in the return of private buses to the streets of New York City. Private buses (and subways, and streetcars) were once the only transit options available to New Yorkers, but since the early 20th century, and especially after World War II, virtually all intracity routes have been subsumed by various levels of government, and the network has barely grown at all since nationalization (not withstanding the Second Avenue Subway, conceived eighty years ago by a private company). Now that’s not to say that private operators haven’t tried to compete – the outer boroughs’ immigrant communities have had robust networks of informal private vans (known in NYC as “dollar vans”), which operate illegally but have been hard to prosecute, likely due to the fact that they are used mostly by linguistically-distinct immigrant communities. The recent cuts even propelled the bootleg bus phenomenon out of its immigrant ghetto, when a brave bus operator named Joel Azumah made headlines by operating a bootleg bus route along routes cut in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn. This experiment was quickly quashed by an unrelenting bureaucracy, but at least it demonstrated the mutual desire on the part of riders and entrepreneurs for private service. The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission appears to have headed that call, and under the direction of chairman David Yassky is trying to replace at least some of the old bus routes with private buses. Unlike the city’s much-abused private van service, where operators are technically not allowed to pick up riders off the street who haven’t called ahead of time, the buses would operate with many of […]

NYC’s lingering obsession with parking minimums may come to an end

by Stephen Smith Back in February Streetsblog had a good three–part series on planning changes in New York City since the beginning of Michael Bloomberg’s term, and while they had a lot of praise for upzonings that have occurred throughout much of the four urban boroughs, they highlighted minimum parking regulations as the biggest impediment to walkable, transit-oriented development. The series ran a few months ago, but I was reminded of it because of Tyler Cowen’s article in the New York Times a few days ago, in which he made the same general Donald Shoup-esque arguments about parking that readers of Market Urbanism are familiar with. But back to the Streetsblog series – the second part is mostly about parking minimums in NYC, which haven’t been lowered despite the upzonings and other policies that emphasize mass transit over cars. The article has a great map which shows that, outside of areas south of Central Park, parking minimums are barely relaxed at all in areas of all five boroughs with the best transit access, and this paragraph sums up the paradox of New York’s planning regulations pretty well: Perversely, because you can build more densely near transit, parking minimums per square foot of land are actually higher where transit options are most robust. So even as the planning department tries to concentrate growth near transit lines, it is simultaneously filling that valuable real estate with unnecessary parking. As one commenter points out, the Department of City Planning probably isn’t intentionally sabotaging its walkability goals – many current residents own cars and want to continue to use them, and a development’s car-less residents from the hypothetical future don’t get a say in local politics. Fast-forward a few months, though, and it looks as though the City Planning Department may be reconsidering its […]

HSR crowding out local transportation projects

by Stephen Smith Yet another way in which Obama’s high-speed rail plans are derailing actual progress in getting Americans out of their cars: BUENA PARK, Calif. — Mayor Art Brown spent years pushing for a commuter train station combined with nearby housing in his community. But as townhouses are being finished around the $14 million Metrolink station, he’s facing the prospect that California’s high-speed rail line may plow right through his beloved project. “The only option they presented to us was either losing the condo units or losing our train station,” Brown said of an engineering presentation to city leaders last year. That a successful effort to get car-dependent Californians to embrace mass transit could be derailed by another transportation project may strike some as ironic. But it’s also one of the hidden costs — and a potential harbinger of delay — in the ambitious plan that would enable passengers to speed the 430 miles between Los Angeles and San Francisco in just 2 1/2 hours. By the way, the projected cost of a one-way ticket on the high-speed rail line from LA to SF has risen from $55 to $105. Despite the fact that intraurban trips account for the vast majority of transportation use in America, the Obama administration and other politicians prefer to focus on expensive boondoggles like high-speed rail, often at the expense of more mundane, but much more important local projects like the Buena Park Metrolink station. Originally posted on my blog.

LA’s partial parking privatization

by Stephen Smith The LA Times reports that Los Angeles is considering “privatizing” ten public parking garages to fill a budget shortfall. The story is, unfortunately, a reminder of how infrastructure “privatization” is often little better than the status quo, and how media reporting of the issue can doom real reform. Whereas pure privatization would mean selling the buildings and underlying land to anyone for any use, this scheme is actually a 50-year outsourcing of the garages’ management (mostly, at least) and profits (again, mostly). The new “owners” could only use the structures to park cars, and using them to house people and businesses that would increase the walkability of the areas where the garages are located is out of the question. True privatization would also bring in more money for the city, which is the stated goal of the privatization. The garages would be worth more if they were being sold with complete development rights, and the tax revenues from whatever’s built on them (not to mention possible increases in adjacent properties’ values) would probably exceed the “small negotiated share of future proceeds” that the city “could retain.” The only possible benefit I can see to this plan is that parking rates will move upwards towards the true market price. But even that would be too much for the city to stomach, as the city would “retain authority over parking rates at the garages” – and who wants to guess which way they’ll be pressured to push prices? The potential downfall of this plan, however, is that the public may forever associate privatization with this pseudo-corporatism, as happened in Russia in the early 1990’s and Chicago’s parking meter privatization scheme last year, which could impede future, more truly libertarian urban reforms. Originally posted on my blog.

Amtrak’s utter incompetence

by Stephen Smith There’s a lot to be said for Amtrak’s mismanagement, but a lot of it is technical and inaccessible to the layman. This, however, is unconscionable: Amtrak still does not offer wireless internet – either free or paid – on any of its trains. Megabus and Bolt Bus (whose tickets between DC and NYC are about $20), however, have had wireless for about two years, and I’m pretty sure some Chinatown buses have had it for longer. Amtrak’s normal tickets on the Northeast Corridor are about four times the cost of tickets on Bolt Bus and Megabus. Tickets on the Acela are about eight times the cost of bus tickets, and the service is heavily marketed towards business travelers who put a high price on their time. But no internet. It’s apparently coming to Acela in about six months and the rest of the Northeast Corridor by the end of 2010. Had intercity buses and airlines not introduced wireless internet, I seriously doubt Amtrak would have ever had the business sense to do it. Originally posted on my blog.

Obama’s genius high-speed rail plan

by Stephen Smith Just in case you were under the impression that Obama’s high-speed rail commitment was genuine, the Boston Globe would like to disabuse you of that notion: The railroad tracks from Boston to Washington – the busiest rail artery in the nation, and one that also carries America’s only high-speed train, the Acela – have been virtually shut out of $8 billion worth of federal stimulus money set aside for high-speed rail projects because of a strict environmental review required by the Obama administration. Because such a review would take years, states along the Northeast rail corridor are not able to pursue stimulus money for a variety of crucial upgrades. Instead, the $8 billion is going to be split up to ten ways amongst other regions, such as California, the Gulf Coast, and the “Chicago Hub.” I love the irony of environmental standards stopping the Obama administration from making the one high-speed rail investment that has any chance of getting people out of their cars. Originally posted on my blog.

Video: Sandy Ikeda on The Unintended Consequences of “Smart Growth”

I came across this video interview of economist Sandy Ikeda by the Mackinac Center. Sandy currently blogs at thinkmarkets and has contributed guest posts to Market Urbanism. I thought Sandy did a great job discussing many of the topics we cover in this site. Sandy is particularly insightful when it comes to the “dynamics of intervention” as it relates to how the planning philosophy in the early days of the automobile created living patterns now disdained by modern planners. Today, Smart Growth planners want to use top-down coercive methods to correct the wrongs of past planners top-down follies, but will they get it right this time? Check it out: The Unintended Consequences of “Smart Growth” from Mackinac Center on Vimeo. Update: Here’s what Sandy has to say at thinkmarkets…

Rothbard The Urbanist Part 6: Traffic Control

Maybe the delay in posts led you to believe the Rothbard Series was complete.  The good news is that there are a few more posts to go, and the ones coming up next should be the most interesting to urbanists. If you haven’t kept up with our discussion, Murray Rothbard’s classic For A New Liberty can be downloaded free from Mises.org as pdf, web page, and audio book read by Jeff Riggenbach, and you can read the first five posts: Rothbard the Urbanist Part 1: Public Education’s Role in Sprawl and Exclusion Rothbard the Urbanist Part 2: Safe Streets Rothbard the Urbanist Part 3: Prevention of Blockades Rothbard the Urbanist Part 4: Policing Rothbard the Urbanist Part 5: Diversity and Discrimination Not long ago, I posted a video from a friend showing one traffic intersection in Cambodia that appears to function well without any signaling.  Here are some other resources on the emergent order of traffic without signals: Econtalk podcast with Mike Munger on Cultural Norms Cafe Hayek: The arc of emergent order and Traffic without Traffic Signals. Kids Prefer Cheese:  Movie from atop the Arc Tom Vanderbilt: News for Traffic Signal Manufacturers Infrastructurist on the Dutch City of Drachten I caught some flak from a commenter who considered it “disingenuous” to present the video of the intersection as evidence “of a workable intersection.”  Of course I had to remind the commenter that I don’t consider these types of intersection something that I advocate as a “free market” solution: Don’t mistake me as an advocate of a world without traffic signals. I am quite certain that some sort of traffic signaling would likely emerge from a free-market street system. But, my bigger point is that when information is dispersed widely among decision-makers without government monopoly, sustainable solutions emerge from the […]

Correction, Reason.org’s Plug, and Glaeser on Jacobs

In the comments of my most recent post, insightful commenter, OldUrbanism pointed out some items that need attention: The last two factors, legal costs associated with eminent domain and opportunity costs of land, are in fact often included in typical project cost estimates for both public and private projects. The former is fairly straightforward, as it is a project-related cost. The latter, opportunity cost of land, is simply the purchase price of land. In the case of this example, where land acquisition costs are assumed as part of the project cost, OldUrbanism is exactly correct. I’m truly embarrassed for being sloppy in that statement and will correct it. Of course, I still stand by my exposure of the ignorance of land opportunity cost by those who assert that existing highways “pay for themselves.” I invite you to check out the discussion of that matter (and other items) with OldUrbanism in the comments of the post. ————— The other day, Reason Foundation’s Samuel Staley had some very generous things to say about Market Urbanism: I just ran across the Market Urbanism web site, and it has a lot of really good analysis and resources available for anyone following urban policy issues. The sub-title of the web site is “Urbanism for Capitalists/Capitalism for Urbanists”. The blog includes lots of references to F.A. Hayek, free markets, and even takes the Cato Institute to task for advocating “socialism for roads.” and This site is well organized and designed. I think it’s a great addition to the debate and discussion, and its refreshing to see a new voice enter into the fray. Thanks Samuel!! I share Reason’s objective of “Free Minds and Free Markets.” I just have to admit I found it a little ironic that he had such nice things to say after I […]

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