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Tag dc

When are user fees just redirected sales taxes?

Ben Ross at Greater Greater Washington has an excellent post about the pernicious habit of states (and maybe the federal government?) mislabeling sales taxes as user fees. Sorry for pulling such a long bit, but it’s good: Maryland is considering raising its gas tax. This long-overdue measure would allow some of the general revenues now subsidizing highways to go to the Purple Line, the Baltimore Red Line, and MARC expansion instead. This need has unfortunately gotten mixed up with a proposal, originating mostly from the highway lobby and its supporters, to put transportation money into a “lockbox.” The concept is to amend the state constitution to forbid transfers from the trust fund into the general fund. However, there’s a big hole in the bottom of the “lockbox.” Contrary to what some say, the money in the transportation trust fund mostly come from revenue sources that would have otherwise have gone into the state’s general fund, where it wouldn’t be locked. If I buy a bicycle in Maryland, I pay 6% sales tax and the money goes into the general fund where it pays for education, public safety, the governor’s salary, and other state expenses. Cars and gasoline are exempt from the sales tax. Instead, if I buy a car, I pay the same 6%. but it’s called “titling tax” and the money goes into a separate trust fund that is used only for transportation. It’s essentially the same when I buy gasoline, where the tax rate of 23½ cents a gallon comes to a little over 8% of the pretax price. […] The idea behind the lockbox amendment is that drivers pay for the roads they drive on. This idea is mistaken, but it’s widely held, and it’s an enormous obstacle to sensible transportation planning. The danger lurking in the […]

Virginia land use law: Marc Scribner from CEI responds

After I put up the post this weekend about a Virginia Tea Party group’s opposition to a state law forcing counties to upzone enough land for medium-density development, I sent an email to Marc Scribner at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian group, asking his opinion on the law. He was kind enough to give us his thoughts, and here they are: While I would like to see a lot more upzoning and would support state-wide legislation that would limit local exclusionary zoning (or ideally prohibit it!), subsection (1)(B) provision (6) seems problematic. Basically, legislatures should restrict exclusion, rather than force inclusion by establishing UDAs and specifying design and form aspects, if they are to pursue land-use liberalization at the state level. Also, the lack of a provision limiting property condemnations within UDAs could spur more eminent domain abuse, which has been a nasty side effect of poorly structured upzoning that results in things such as access to transit and new sanitation capacity being prioritized over property rights. David Alpert might not agree, but I consider the government robbing private property owners of their land to be a far greater offense than prohibiting multi-unit housing or mixed-use development, as much as I dislike these regulatory takings. (Although I believe Virginia has an interesting requirement that jurors in an eminent domain case be property owners.) The reason why one might see more ED abuse within upzoned areas is that going from less intense development to more intense generally calls for more public infrastructure investment (or worse, grandiose PPP projects). This is particularly true in more residential areas, as commercial and industrial zones typically have near-adequate or overbuilt sanitation facilities, etc., that can accommodate more growth. Not saying that dev is bad, but any time comprehensive redevelopment becomes more likely, people need […]

David Alpert calls out Virginia Tea Party group as land use statists

David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington has been on top of a story out of Virginia about a Virginia Tea Party group and its bizarre and seemingly anti-free market opposition to a state law forcing local governments to make room for dense growth. The law – which was passed a few years ago by Republicans, as David notes – included a few provisions, but the one in question, which a longtime Northern Virginia Republican is seeking to overturn, required each locality to designate an “urban development area” in which it would allow medium density development. It appears that the original plan was to have an urban growth boundary too, outside of which development would be much harder, but I’m not sure that was included in the version that passed. But whatever the rest of the law contained, Del. Robert G. Marshall and Virginia’s Campaign for Liberty are only opposing the provision that forces localities to provide upzoned land “sufficient to meet projected residential and commercial growth” for the next decade or two. I’ve read the bill (it’s relatively short), and the provision in question doesn’t even put a floor on density in the zoning area or cap the amount of parking allowed – all it does is force local governments to allow developers to build at higher densities. Here is, as far as I can tell, the strictest condition on the UDAs, which also have to allow mixed uses and smaller lot set-backs: The comprehensive plan of a locality having a population of 130,000 or more persons shall provide for urban development areas that are appropriate for development at a density on the developable acreage of at least eight single-family residences, 12 townhouses, or 24 apartments, condominium units, or cooperative units per acre, and an authorized floor area ratio of at least 0.8 […]

Links

1. A report on (Western) European parking policies. Abstract of the abstract: Big on charging market rates for on-street parking, but also big on capping private developer’s ability to build parking. I’d be interested to see an analysis like this done to see if the caps are actually set lower than the market equilibrium. Streetsblog also has a good summary. 2. It’s unfortunate that this developer chose to express himself in such an unsympathetic way (someone should teach him the meaning of the word “corruption,” in particular), but his analysis of NYC’s recent property tax assessment hikes is consistent with what we’ve seen before: people who live in apartments are taxed at higher rates than people who live in single-family homes. 3. Urbanists are trying to change Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and HUD’s policies of not funding small mixed use projects. From what I understand, the GSEs’ role in financing American mortgages has actually increased in the wake of the financial crisis, so the federal bias against mixed use may actually be stronger than it was before the recession. 4. Washington, DC may speed through zoning changes that require parking to not be out front. I’m not sure, but I think that DC currently has some laws mandating that it be out front, which means this would be yet another example of zoning codes going from density-forbidding to density-forcing without any intermediate stop. 5. Remember yesterday when I said that Gallaudet was a bigger drag on its neighborhood than the industrial-looking blight nearby? DC lawmakers may try to one-up Gallaudet by replacing the buildings with a soccer stadium.

Why are universities so bad at managing their land?

I’ve lived near a lot of schools in my life. Growing up on the Main Line I could walk to (at least?) five institutions of high learning, I went to school in Georgetown, and just a few weeks ago I’ve moved across the street from Gallaudet University in DC. And I’ve noticed a common thread among the schools: they make horrible land use decisions. I was inspired to write this by this post in Greater Greater Washington by Ken Archer about the housing situation at Georgetown, which is pretty bad. Though the university houses a lot of its students, it’s not great and a lot of people are forced out into the surrounding neighborhoods of Burleith and West Georgetown. The prices range from about $900/bedroom/month at the low end in Burleith to over $2000/bedroom/month in West Georgetown, and the campus housing could get as pricey as $2000/room/month without dedicated kitchens and bathrooms (!) for freshmen sharing dorms. Much of this is no doubt due to the neighbors’ refusal to allow affordable, dense housing in their communities for students, but at least half of the problem is universities simply making poor use of their existing space. GGW post does a good job of describing Georgetown’s failures. There is no shortage of short, architecturally-insignificant buildings on Georgetown’s campus that could be densified, and yet the university doesn’t take advantage of it. My first choices for infill projects would be New South and the awful concrete plaza next to Harbin, and I’m not sure many people would complain if the brutalist buildings were razed and replaced with something glassy and denser. And unlike, say, Villanova, there is no existing constituency of student drivers to cater to, so that can’t be it. And it’s not just Georgetown. In fact, likely due to the extreme […]

Midnight link list

1. “Gen Y/Millennials” want density. Ha! Sucks for them. 2. Mini-bleg: Does anyone know what “building regulations” are preventing this proposed Jackson Heights building from having windows on one side? 3. Southwest DC, before and after highways/urban renewal, in pictures. 4. Overplanning in China. 5. Palm Beach County wants to allow private developers to build along West Palm Beach’s train line and bus stops, but Mayor Lois Frankel wants a sports stadium. 6. St. Louis got money from Obama’s stimulus to hire consulting firms to upzone the city’s dense neighborhoods.

Yet another town moves from parking minimums to maximums with no stop in between

Despite its ridiculously biased opening sentence (“Fairfax County residents will have a harder time finding a free parking space in some neighborhoods if transportation planners get their way”), the Washington Post actually has a relatively informative article on potential new parking maximums in Fairfax County, Virginia. Essentially they want to do what a lot of smart growth-enthralled planners want to do: replace their parking minimums with maximums. Under current ordinances, new townhouses must have at least 2.75 parking spaces per dwelling. Under the draft recommendations, parking would be limited to 1.75 spaces per dwelling in a townhouse development less than a quarter-mile from a Metro station or 2.5 spaces per dwelling if the townhouse were located one-fourth of a mile to a half-mile from the station. Parking at commercial developments would be reduced from 2.6 parking spaces per 125,000 square feet of space to 2.1 if less than a quarter-mile from the Metro and to two spaces less than a half-mile away. Ignoring that last sentence, which I’ll get back to in a minute, this is pretty much the standard planner’s bias – move directly from parking minimums to parking maximums, without, oh, I don’t know, maybe just eliminating the centrally-planned parking regulations altogether?? This is one of the reasons that it’s very hard for libertarians and conservatives to get onboard with recent planning trends: the planners go from car-forcing to car-forbidding, skipping over entirely the obvious intermediate step of just letting people choose for themselves how car- or transit-oriented they want their lives to be. There was also this interesting fact: Yet the number of jurisdictions in the United States that impose parking maximums on developers is still perhaps fewer than 50, Rathbone said. For all the anti-smart growth rhetoric we hear about the planners coming to take away our […]

Friday link list

Expect a lot more of these… 1. Beijing tries to relieve congestion by…building a quarter-million parking new spaces and 125 miles of new downtown streets?! But don’t worry – bike sharing! 2. Seattle inches closer to a Shoupian on-street parking policy, and Austin ponders charging for on-street parking after dark and on Saturdays. My favorite comment from the Seattle story is this one: “Get rid of the illegal aliens and we will have LOTS of room to park! And plenty money! Sanctuary idiots!” I guess that was one positive aspect of the Holocaust: more parking! (Oops, did I just Godwin this blog?) 3. East (a.k.a. Spanish) Harlem wants to develop its transit-accessible parking lots and fill them with “low- and middle-income residents” to aid in its “struggl[e] to maintain its affordable housing stock,” but of course “they want to prevent the construction of large apartment towers.” Sorry, East Harlem – you can’t have your cake and eat it too. 4. As if we needed any more evidence that diverting police officers for voluntary bag searches in the DC Metro was an absurd idea. 5. A Green candidate for London mayor has proposed expanding the area that the congestion charge covers, build tiers in, and raise prices to the point where entering the innermost part of London would cost drivers £50/day (!!). As long as we don’t end up on the right-hand side of the Laffer curve – that is, as long as the city can raise more revenue at £50/day than it could at any lower price – I think this would be a step in the direction of market urbanism, since it would emulate the behavior of a profit-seeking road firm. (One way of testing that is to raise the charge gradually and to stop once total revenue starts […]

DC link list

I didn’t mean for these all (except the last one) to be about DC, but it looks like it turned out that way… 1. Matt Yglesias on lot occupancy rules in DC. I have a feeling, though, that these are more or less irrelevant in the face of other, stricter limits on density. 2. The feds, along with the Committee of 100 (surprise, surprise), are having a hissy fit over overhead wires on proposed streetcar lines. Regarding San Francisco: “But then you see these wires in the center. It’s like: Oh, great.” 3. WAMU manages to do a whole segment about DC’s historical streetcars without once mentioning that they were built and operated (at least for most of their history) by private industry. 4. WMATA institutes random bag checks on the Metro – an anti-terror strategy that has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. 5. Washington authorities might purposely make the Dulles Metro station inconvenient, to avoid “dual” terrorist threat. “We are not just looking at this (project) from a cost perspective.” 6. The price of gas in Iran skyrockets from 10¢ to 40¢ a liter, and China raises its fuel prices much more slightly, as governments feel the pinch of subsidized gasoline.

Weekend links

1. Lydia DePillis responds. I’m all for upzoning only(/mostly) poor neighborhoods if that’s all the extra density we can get (though here at Market Urbanism we’re kind of utopians – we don’t care much about political feasibility), but I’m not nearly as optimistic about inclusionary zoning as she is. At its worst it’s a tool for anti-growth suburbanites to kill new dense development while seeming like they care about the poor, and at it best it’s a misguided tax on developers of multifamily units that helps only those resourceful and connected enough to get themselves a rent controlled apartment, which is then subsidized by the neighbors who didn’t manage to get one. 2. Philadelphia eases up on the parking minimums, but parts of Center City and (all of??) Old City, both of which have incredible transit access, will still require 1 off-street space for every three units of new construction, which seems like a lot more than they have now. 3. Vancouver contemplates raising its height limits. Of course, all new towers will have to meet higher-than-LEED Gold standards – god forbid anyone should acknowledge that density is, in and of itself, good for the environment. 4. Jersey City looks like it will get its High Line, but the question now is, how much development will be allowed around it? 5. One NYC councilman wants to impose rent controls on commercial landlords. The “Small Business Survival Act,” he likes to call it. 6. Tysons Corner scores a huge new development with a 33-story tower and a “European styled esplanade” in front of the new Tysons Central Metro station, while the Lower East Side debates kinda sorta maybe thinking about developing seven acres of parking lots near the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge. 7. Hipster Runoff, the hipster blog of record, […]

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