Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Agenda: Dynamic congestion pricing for autonomous vehicles
Autonomous vehicles will cause a congestion apocalypse on downtown streets unless we price their use of the roads.
Tag congestion
Rothbard The Urbanist Part 7: Pricing Highways
Surprise!! I’ve had the intent to wrap-up the Rothbard The Urbanist series for a long time, and it’s been sitting on my todo list for over 6 years. I want to thank Jeffrey Tucker, then at mises.org, and now at FEE.org and liberty.me for enthusiastically granting permission to reprint excerpts from For A New Liberty. Murray Rothbard’s 1973 classic can be downloaded free from Mises.org as pdf, and audio book read by Jeff Riggenbach. This chapter is also discussed by Bryan Caplan as part of an econlog book club series on For A New Liberty. It’s been a while, so you may want to catch up on the first six 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 Rothbard The Urbanist Part 6: Traffic Control We pick up in the heart of chapter 11: “The Public Sector, II: Streets and Roads” to expand on a subject core to Market Urbanism: the pricing of highways, and the consequences of a system where politics, special interests, and top-down planning have incarnated a dysfunctional system severely disconnected with bottom-up pricing signals necessary to be sustainable. Tragically, Rothbard’s insights on these subjects have been mostly neglected for over 30 years, while apologists for sprawl and automobile dominance have nearly monopolized the conversation among free-market advocates. We begin the section with Professor Rothbard’s acknowledgement of what sprawl apologists turn a blind eye to, yet urbanists on the left are keenly aware. Government intervention, fueled by special interests and old-fashioned progressive ideology, massively subsidized the highway system and crowded-out otherwise viable railroads. As a result, we have an overbuilt highway system, urban neighborhoods were eviscerated, suburbs spread far-and-wide, privately […]
Urban[ism] Legend: Transportation is a Public Good
In a recent post, commenter Jeremy H. helped point out that the use of the term “public good” is grossly abused in the case of transportation. Even Nobel economists refer to roads as “important examples of production of public goods,” ( Samuelson and Nordhaus 1985: 48-49). I’d like to spend a little more time dispensing of this myth, or as I label it, an “Urban[ism] Legend.” As Tyler Cowen wrote the entry on Public Goods at The Concise Library of Economics: Public goods have two distinct aspects: nonexcludability and nonrivalrous consumption. “Nonexcludability” means that the cost of keeping nonpayers from enjoying the benefits of the good or service is prohibitive. And nonrivalrous consumption means that one consumer’s use does not inhibit the consumption by others. A clear example being that when I look at a star, it doesn’t prevent others from seeing the same star. Back when I took Microeconomics at a respectable university in preparation for grad school, I was taught that in some cases roads are public goods. We used Greg Mankiw’s book, “Principles of Economics” which states the following on page 234: If a road is not congested, then one person’s use does not effect anyone else. In this case, use is not rival in consumption, and the road is a public good. Yet if a road is congested, then use of that road yields a negative externality. When one person drives on the road, it becomes more crowded, and other people must drive more slowly. In this case, the road is a common resource. This explanation made sense, but I was skeptical – something didn’t sit right with me. Let’s take a closer look. First, Mankiw uses his assertion as an example of rivalrous vs nonrivalrous consumption, while not addressing the question of excludability. Roads are easily excludable through gates […]
Links
1. Laneway housing, Vancouver vs. Toronto. 2. New York state lawmakers want to ban using a phone or listening to headphones while crossing streets. Unfortunately for us pedestrians, there are very few limited access, grade-separated walkways, so in essence this would criminalize listening to an iPod while walking. 3. An interesting article about transportation in Singapore, with an emphasis on congestion pricing and other ways of recouping the enormous opportunity costs of urban roads. 4. I’ve been aware of this for a while, but it still shocks me every time (emphasis mine): We know New Yorkers are being injured and killed just about every day. (Like the 35-year-old woman who was run over by a dump truck on the Upper East Side Monday while legally crossing the street. Did you hear about that one? The dump truck driver stayed at the scene and wasn’t drunk, so it was basically a freebie for him — a clean, legal kill as far as the NYPD is concerned. Can you imagine if she were your wife or sister or colleague? Anyway… back to those damned bikes, right?…) 5. Yet another example of why I don’t think the Texas Transportation Institute’s congestion metrics are useful. 6. As if we needed any more proof: Big cities are inherently green.
The Texas Transportation Institute’s funny definition of “congestion”
As if anybody didn’t realize it before, it’s now obvious that the Texas Transportation Institute, despite its prestige, is intellectually bankrupt. David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington says it better than I could: The Texas Transportation Institute today released the final version of their report on congestion, which ranks the DC area tied for first with Chicago in hours wasted in traffic. Unfortunately, the report’s methodology completely misleads as to the seriousness of traffic, and TTI is pushing the wrong policy solutions. The TTI report narrowly looks at only one factor: how fast traffic moves. Consider two hypothetical cities. In Denseopolis, people live within 2 miles of work on average, but the roads are fairly clogged and drivers can only go about 20 miles per hour. However, it only takes an average of 6 minutes to get to work, which isn’t bad. On the other hand, in Sprawlville, people live about 30 miles from work on average, but there are lots and lots of fast-moving freeways, so people can drive 60 mph. That means it takes 30 minutes to get to work. Which city is more congested? By TTI’s methods, it’s Denseopolis. But it’s the people of Sprawlville who spend more time commuting, and thus have less time to be with their families and for recreation. Sadly, despite CEOs for Cities pointing out these methodological problems last year, TTI went ahead and finalized its report without fixing them (PDFs). TTI ranks Portland as worse than Nashville, with a Travel Time Index (TTI) of 1.23 for Nashville and worse TTI of 1.15 for Portland. However, because of greater sprawl, Nashville commuters spend an average of 268 hours per year commuting, while the average Portland commuter spends 193 hours per year. What does this mean for public policy and the Washington region? […]
More urban planning mismeasurement
Apparently I’m not the only one thinking about urban mismeasurement, because the planning blogosphere is lighting up with examples. In addition to my critique of per passenger-mile measurements and the aforelinked critique of average density (and the great follow-up post here), I’ve noticed two other discussions about mismeasurement in urban planning: 1. A report funded by the Rockefeller Foundation criticizes the standard measures of congestion used by the Texas Transportation Institute’s “industry standard” Urban Mobility Report. It cites the Travel Time Index in particular, or the ratio of average peak travel times to non-peak travel times (it’s unclear but I believe they’re only talking about cars), as being particular pro-sprawl, in that it rewards cities where it’s hard to get around to begin with. While measuring total time spent in peak hour traffic, apparently dense metro areas like Chicago, Portland, and Sacramento have the lowest peak travel times, with Nashville holding up the rear with the longest average time spent in rush-hour traffic. 2. Angie Schmitt at Streetsblog gives an excellent example of both mismeasurement and environmentalism vs. density: This summer I worked in the air quality division of the metropolitan planning agency in Northeast Ohio — known as NOACA. NOACA is the local agency responsible for disbursing federal highway dollars. To a certain extent, its actions are governed by a series of federal directives. While I was at NOACA, we hired an “air quality planner” whose main responsibility was to perform an analysis mandated by the feds to measure the air quality impacts of every proposed road project. The problem was, the analysis inevitably concluded — without fail! — that expanding a road would reduce air pollution. That’s because the formula only accounted for short-term air quality impacts. Any given road project was likely to reduce congestion in the […]
Urban[ism] Legend: Traffic Planning
Mathieu Helie at Emergent Urbanism posted a link to a interesting game created at the University of Minnesota. Mathieu explains it better than I can: The game begins in the Stalinian Central Bureau of Traffic Control, where a wrinkly old man pulls you out of your job at the mail room to come save the traffic control system. You are brought to a space command-like control room and put to work setting traffic lights to stop and go. Meanwhile frustrated drivers stuck in the gridlock you create blare their car horns to get your attention, and if their “frustration level” rises too high you fail out of the level. As the road network gets as complicated as four intersections on a square grid, the traffic becomes completely overwhelming and failure is inevitable, but the old man reassures you that they too have failed anyway. OK, you’ve played the game? If not, don’t go further until you have. Now that you’ve played the game and failed to control traffic, compare that top-down system with this amazing video a friend sent to me from Cambodia. You’ve gotta see this: Man, I love this video! I must have watched it a couple dozen times. I keep expecting a crash, in what to me (only being familiar with top-down planned traffic systems) looks like complete chaos. Yet pedestrians, bikes, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, and cars all make it to their destinations safely, and probably quicker than in the system in the game above. It must be similar to how capitalism must seem chaotic to people who have always lived in planned economies. 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 […]
How Pricing Tolls Right Eliminates Congestion
Chris Bradford over at Austin Contrarian has been making some solid points in favor of congestion pricing. (here, here, here and here) Chris’s core argument in favor of congestion tolling is that: congestion pricing does more than relieve congestion. Congestion pricing tells us when a road needs more capacity. Additional capacity costs money, and drivers are willing to pay only so much for it. That “so much” is exactly equal to the price they are willing to pay to avoid congestion. The idea that toll profits send a signal to road operators to produce additional capacity is often neglected in discussions of the benefits of congestion pricing. Without pricing, the only signal is the manifestation of congestion itself. This is problematic, as the only solution is to build more roads when congestion is observed. Actually if done right, years before congestion occurs with the help of foresight and luck on the part of transportation planners and agencies. This problem feeds the dangerous new highway –> sprawl –> congestion –> highway expansion –> sprawl, etc., etc. positive feedback loop. This feedback loop is quite a powerful mechanism that helps drive the unhealthy types of sprawl. Chris is on the right track, but sets a sub-ideal objective (in my opinion) when he says: The optimal congestion toll should be set just high enough to achieve free-flow (45 mph) traffic. Since the goal should not only be to avoid congestion, but to get the highest number of commuters through the system as possible, I would restate that as: The optimal congestion toll should be set at exactly the price that maximizes traffic flow. As Chris said, “Congestion pricing is hard.” Although it seems complicated, you might be shocked at how easy it is, in concept, to price roads optimally. That’s because it’s somewhat […]
20/20 Segment on Private Roads (& Some things to ponder while in traffic)
Some other things to ponder for the next time you are sitting on a congested highway… When I talk to people about tolling roads, most people immediately reject the idea entirely. I like to ask them to think about it next time they are in a traffic jam. Hey, if you sit in traffic, you probably spend a lot of time thinking… So, next time you are waiting for the car ahead of them to move, think of what dollar amount you would be willing to pay to avoid the traffic jam in order to get to your destination. Then, think of waiting in a long bread line, as if the only source of food were free government bread. Obviously, the bread is underpriced. How much would you be willing to pay for a loaf of bread to avoid the line? Recall the price you were willing to pay to avoid traffic and ask yourself whether roads are priced correctly. Interestingly, almost all people are fully willing to pay for bread, a staple of life, while we tend to think of roads as “too important to leave to private companies.” So from now on, think of a bread line every time you are sitting in traffic. After a few commutes, you might be ready for some more thinking on the subject. Once you’ve learned to recognize the socialism of the highways, think about how tolled roads might affect where you decide to live. Would you live further away from your destination, and gladly pay for a congestion-free commute? Or would you choose to live closer to work, to pay less in tolls? Now, keeping in mind that most highways are congestion-free when they are originally built, ponder how socialized roads effect living patterns. Had roads been priced properly, would the […]
Parking Minimums Hamper Development and Affordability
Thanks to Dan and Benjamin for separately tipping me off to this link: AP: Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking standards Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor’s office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don’t count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway. Parking requirements — known to planners as “parking minimums” — have been around since the 1950s. The theory is that if buildings don’t provide their own parking, too many drivers will try to park on neighborhood streets. In practice, critics say, the requirements create an excess supply of parking, making it artificially cheap. That, the argument goes, encourages unnecessary driving and makes congestion worse. The standards also encourage people to build unsightly surface lots and garages instead of inviting storefronts and residential facades, they say. Walkers must dodge cars pulling in and out of driveways, and curb cuts eat up space that could otherwise be used for trees. “Half the great buildings in America’s great cities would not be legal to build today under current land use codes,” said Jeff Speck, a planning consultant. “Every house on my block is illegal by current standards, particularly parking standards.” Opponents also say the standards force developers to devote valuable land to parking, making housing more expensive. “We’re forcing people to invest in spaces for automobiles rather than in spaces for people,” she said. “There’s no way to recover that use.”
