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Tag Transportation

Yglesias Has My Head Spinning…

In his last two urbanism-related posts, Matthew Yglesias makes great points only to dissolve them in a vat of unrelated statements posed as conclusions.  His logical inconsistency seems to invalidate his otherwise pretty good blogging on urbanism. A couple days ago, Matthew blogged about regulation of neighborhood retail, quoting a DC blog: “In DC, zoning laws make that idea [mixed-use retail] prohibitive, and what the zoning laws don’t cover ANC and neighborhood groups do in their zealousness to protect residents from interspersing residences with commercial activity.” …. I really and truly wish libertarians would spend more time working on this kind of issue. And I also wish that ordinary people would think harder about these kind of regulations. Yes!  More, please?   But then, the next sentence leaves me saying, “huh?”: I’m a big government liberal. I believe business regulations are often needed. But still, there ought to be a presumption that people can do what they want. So, I really don’t understand what this post has to do with libertarians anymore – why even mention them. It seems logically inconsistent to presume people can do what they want, while presuming a big government can regulate their economic choices. Now, on to today’s post: Randall O’Toole is a relentless advocate for highways and automobile dependency in the United States. Consequently, I don’t agree with him about very much.  But the thing I consistently find most bizarre about him, is that the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have both agreed to agree with O’Toole that his support for highways and automobile dependency is a species of libertarianism. then… Central planning, of course, is the reverse of libertarianism. So if promoting alternative transportation is central planning, then building highways everywhere must be freedom! But of course in the real world building highways […]

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 […]

The Nation’s mass transit hypocrisy

by Stephen Smith I was heartened to see an article about the need for mass transit in the pages of The Nation, though I was severely disappointed by the magazine’s own hypocrisy and historical blindness. The article is in all ways a standard left-liberal screed against the car and for mass transit, which is a topic close to my heart, though I’d prefer a more libertarian approach to returning America to its mass transit roots as opposed to the publicly-funded version that The Nation advocates. The first bit of historical blindness comes at the end of the second paragraph, when The Nation argues for government investment in mass transit on the grounds that it will “strengthen labor, providing a larger base of unionized construction and maintenance jobs.” But don’t they realize that the demands of organized labor were one of the straws that broke the privately-owned mass transit camel’s back during the first half of the twentieth century? Joseph Ragen wrote an excellent essay about how unions in San Francisco demanded that mass transit companies employ two workers per streetcar instead of one, codifying their wishes through a series of legislative acts and even a referendum. Saddled with these additional costs, the streetcar companies could not make a profit, and eventually the lines were paved over to make way for the automobile. Mass transit companies, whether publicly- or privately-owned, cannot shoulder the burden of paying above-market wages and still hope to pose any serious threat to the automobile’s dominance. The second, and perhaps more egregious error, comes a little later, when The Nation lays the blame on every group but itself for the deteriorating state of mass transit in America: Nonetheless, smart growth and transportation activists still have high hopes that the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress will revitalize […]

Uncomfortable truths about the progressive legacy

by Stephen Smith Yesterday I was listening to the pre-inaugural concert at the Lincoln Memorial on the radio, and one of the speakers said something that struck me as emblematic of the challenges that Barack Obama faces, though I doubt she realized the ironic significance. She was praising Theodore Roosevelt’s conservationist legacy as a model for Obama, with some quotes from him at the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or some other celebrated national park, though she only touched on a small sliver of Roosevelt’s environmental legacy. He definitely did cherish the environment; a timeline of his life shows that in early April 1903 he “commune[d] with deer while writing letters in Yellowstone, WY.” He was indeed a conservationist, as were many progressives at the time. But the progressives were also something else – something that today’s progressives would do well to remember: ardent planners whose plans often had grave unforeseen consequences. Just after his time communing with the deer at Yellowstone, Roosevelt traveled to St. Louis to address the 1903 Good Roads Convention. The “good roads” movement dated back to before the automobile rose to prominence, and was formed to agitate for improved roads for bicyclists and farmers. But around the time of Roosevelt’s speech, the movement was hijacked by the budding auto-industrial complex. Unwilling or unable to compete on their own against mass transit, the automakers, highway engineers, and road contractors sought for the state to both acquire the rights of way necessary for the roads, and to pay for them to be paved – an advantage the streetcars and railroads did not generally have. Not wanting to appear to be too blatant in their rent seeking, these interests lobbied the government indirectly, giving organizations like the AAA money in exchange for influence and seats on their boards. The […]

Urban[ism] Legend: Positive NPV Infrastructure

As Washington debates how many hundreds-of-billions of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus will go towards infrastructure or to other spending/tax cut schemes, pundits claim that spending billions on “shovel ready” public works projects can effectively create jobs that will lead to recovery. As readers probably know, I am skeptical that the anticipated spending could be activated so quickly. As Bruce Bartlett put it: Despite claims by the Conference of Mayors and the transportation lobby that there is as much as $96 billion in construction “ready to go,” the fact is that it takes a long time before meaningful numbers of workers can be hired for such projects. As a recent Congressional Budget Office study explains, “Practically speaking … public works involve long start-up lags. … Even those that are ‘on the shelf’ generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to provide timely stimulus to the economy.” The prospects for unconventional projects such as alternative energy sources are even worse. The CBO calls them “totally impractical for counter-cyclical policy” because they take even longer to come online… Finally, the impact of increased public works spending on state and local governments cannot be ignored. Most federal transportation spending goes for projects initiated by them. When they think there is a chance that the federal government will increase its funding, they tend to cut back on their own spending in hopes that the feds will foot the bill. A study by economist Edward Gramlich found that the $2 billion appropriated by the Local Public Works Act of 1976 postponed $22 billion in total spending as state and local governments competed for federal funds and actually reduced GDP by $30 billion ($225 billion today). Meanwhile, proponents of infrastructure spending claim that Congress should sift through the shelved projects to identify those projects that will be economically […]

Cul-de-sacs – Privatize ’em

Daniel Nairn at Discovering Urbanism brings up a great point about cul-de-sacs. Are they public goods, or truly unnecessary “socialism in its most extreme form”? Take the standard cul-de-sac that serves a handful of households. The purpose of this design is to exclude the general public from passing through while serving the automotive needs of a small number of individuals. Does it pass our intuitive sense of fairness to declare that the entire public, say the local municipal citizenry, ought to foot the bill for what could essentially be considered a shared driveway? Perhaps a more important question: How does the government’s decision of where to draw the line between public and private encourage or discourage the connectivity of the road system? Dan discusses that Virginia’s DOT is looking at shifting funding away from roads that don’t play a significant role in the transportation network, by using a very well defined metric: The link-node ratio is calculated by dividing the number of links (street segments and stub streets) by the number of nodes (intersections or cul-de-sacs). A perfect grid of streets will have a link-node ratio around 2.5 and a network of complete cul-de-sac or dead end streets with only one way in and one way out will have a link-node ratio of 1.0. It is suggested that a ratio of 1.4 will provide adequate connectivity in many situations. The link-to-node ratio seems like a very rational approach to determining public roadway funding, if one chooses to concede that roads are a public good. Unfortunately, owners of homes on cul-de-sacs have grown acustomed using their publicly-funded, communal driveways, and would suffer from decreased funding for roads they are entirely dependent upon. A viable solution would be for the municipality to grant the cul-de-sac roadway and land to the owners of […]

Another On “Conservatives” and Urbanism

While I sympathize with the theme and agree with regards to roadway spending and “conservative” hypocrisy, a recent article in the progressive The American Prospect takes a narrow-minded view of politics and urbanism, while throwing around broad generalizations about evolution and global warming to support their assertions: The Conservative Case for Urbanism In fact, one doesn’t have to be concerned about climate change at all in order to support such policies; values of fiscal conservatism and localism, both key to Republican ideology, can be better realized through population-dense development than through sprawl. Tom Darden, a developer of urban and close-in suburban properties, said Wednesday, “I’m a Republican and have been my whole life. I consider myself a very conservative person. But it never made sense to me why we would tax ordinary people in order to subsidize this form of development, sprawl.” Darden told the story of a road-paving project approved by North Carolina when he served on the state’s transportation board. A dirt road that handled just five trips per day was paved at taxpayer expense, with money that could have gone toward mass transit benefiting millions of people. “Those were driveways, in my view, not roads,” Darden said. I agree with Darden. However, so-called “progressives” fall into the same narrow minded trap when they support public transportation as a solution to global warming that “conservatives” fall into when they try to protect their auto-centric lifestyle. Many are really calling for more of the same top-down overspending on transportation infrastructure that will require a taxpayer bail out at some time in the distant future. Where is the rational voice trying to slow down overspending on all energy-reliant, sprawl-creating, redistribution of productive resources? While existing transit may be less bad environmentally in comparison to highways when looked at from a […]

Bike Sharing

My Other Bike is a Public Transportation System by Greg Beato at Reason.com: A bike delivers a strong sense of autonomy, too—stronger even than a car in many ways. It doesn’t, for example, require a license, registration, insurance. You aren’t beholden to routes or schedules. You go where you want, when you want. Unless the bike you’re riding is part of a bike-sharing program. Then your usage is more proscribed. Take, for example, SmartBike D.C., America’s first high-tech bike-sharing program. Launched in August, and, like Velib, funded by an advertising company (Clear Channel Outdoor in this case) in return for the right to advertise on the city’s bus shelters, the program currently consists of 120 bikes and ten docking stations, all of which are clustered within a relatively small radius downtown. For a $40 annual fee, users get a smart card that allows them to unlock a bike from its docking station and start contributing to America’s energy independence. Sounds like a great free-market solution. Right? Greg doesn’t think it’s so great: it’s like you own the bike, except you don’t. You’re not permitted to let someone else ride it. You’re not permitted to put too much stuff in the front basket. (The baskets are for “light goods” only.) You aren’t supposed to ride it in “inclement and dangerous weather.” You have to return it to very specific places at very specific times. If something on your bike breaks while you’re riding it, you aren’t supposed to take it to the nearest bike shop or attempt to make the repair yourself. Instead, you have to call SmartBike’s customer service line and wait for a repair person to respond to your request for help. At least when a bus breaks down, you can abandon ship and take destiny in your own […]

Boudreaux: Roads Don’t Need New Taxes

Don Boudreaux to the Washington Times: LETTER TO EDITOR: Roads don’t need new taxes Thursday, July 24, 2008 Upset that Virginians’ taxes were not recently raised to construct more roads, State Delegate Brian J. Moran, Alexandria and Fairfax Democrat, declares that “Government has an important role to play in strengthening our infrastructure, developing our economy and creating new jobs” (“Virginia’s transportation conundrum,” Op-Ed, Tuesday). Not so fast. Infrastructure that we today naively suppose must be supplied by government has in the past often been supplied by the private sector – supplied so well, indeed, that these private-infrastructure projects helped to spark the Industrial Revolution in 18th-century Britain. Harvard University historian David S. Landes explains: “At the same time, the British were making major gains in land and water transport. New turnpike roads and canals, intended primarily to serve industry and mining, opened the way to valuable resources, linked production to markets, facilitated the division of labor. Other European countries were trying to do the same, but nowhere were these improvements so widespread and effective as in Britain. For a simple reason: nowhere else were roads and canals typically the work of private enterprise, hence responsive to need (rather than to prestige and military concerns) and profitable to users…. These roads (and canals) hastened growth and specialization.” DONALD J. BOUDREAUX Chairman Economics Department George Mason University Fairfax Also, Cafe Hayek – Infrastructure and the State (by Don Boudreaux) for some good discussion in the comments.

Urban[ism] Legend: Density is Bad for the Environment

This is a topic I want to cover more thoroughly, but for now I present a one hour documentary video on green buildings for you leisurely viewing. I came across the snagfilms website from a recent Wall Street Journal article. Most of the documentary videos lean towards “progressive” tastes, but hopefully they’ll add some free-market content such as Friedman’s “Free To Choose” videos. Through quick browsing, this video seemed to be the only one that had relevance to Market Urbanism. I think it does a decent job dispelling the Urbanism Legend that high density is bad for the environment. However, some of the commenters seem to fall for the myth that further government intervention will somehow solve the problem. They all seem to forget that progressive government meddling in transportation and land use has done much to cause the problems of sprawl and auto-dependency that modern progressives are now trying to fight with more intervention. [Watching it a second time, I wanted to point something out. One commenter stated that European and Japanese developers plan for a 50 year life-cycle of buildings, while in the US only 12 months. This is absolutely false. Developers usually use a 10-year discounted cash flow model, but still incorporate a sale value of the property based on projected incomes in the 11th year. That sale value could be calculated on the cash flow of the next 10 years and so, on, but they usually use a more simple calculation for the 10th year sale. They could use 50 year models, but they wouldn’t give much better information than the standard 10-year model. European developers use the same methods as the US. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to decieve you.]

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