It's Not Devolution, It's Spite

There's been a lot of discussion about devolution over the last few years.  We even had Bruce Katz from Brookings on the podcast to talk about the phenomenon in England where up until 2000, London didn't have a mayor or much say over local matters. 



But even before the new administration made the idea more real with threats to the New Starts and TIGER capital transit funding programs, there's been a push to discuss the idea even more.

On this blog, the idea was passed over briefly when talking about Caltrain funding getting pulled out right at the last second after over a half decade of planning for electrification, and I even think that devolution of some kinds might be a good idea.  But it shouldn't be punishment for political opposition.

But this weekend in Forbes another economics professor, this time libertarian leaning Jeffrey Dorfman at the University of Georgia, has come out in favor of what he calls de-federalization.  What we all know as devolution. 

While many city, state, and federal politicians are decrying the very idea of such transit funding cuts based on the harm that will befall their transit systems without access to such federal funding, what is missing from their argument is any explanation of why the federal government should have been giving them money in the first place.

He then goes on with the tired arguments of "transit doesn't pay for itself" and an interesting new wrinkle for me that sounds a bit too "let them eat transportation cake" for my taste "let's give poor people a tax credit".

Of course roads don't pay for themselves either but driving is such a virtuous activity it shouldn't be hindered in any way right?  Texas even calculated how much tax people would have to pay to break even.  But those analysis were taken down perhaps because they were too true.  Good thing we captured them.

Applying this methodology, revealed that no road pays for itself in gas taxes and fees. For example, in Houston, the 15 miles of SH 99 from I-10 to US 290 will cost $1 billion to build and maintain over its lifetime, while only generating $162 million in gas taxes.

That's a 16% farebox recovery just for the tracks. The Center for American Progress also did an analysis looking at major roads and whether they paid for themselves.  The maps are great if you get a chance to look.

But then Professor Dorfman gets to some points I kind of agree with, but for different reasons.

For the most part, transit systems are local matters. Using federal taxes to collect money from the whole country and then send it back to each local transit system is a terribly inefficient way to raise money for transit and is also inherently unfair as different locales receive back either more or less than they paid in.

I would make the same arguments for red states taking blue state hand outs for freeways to fuel sprawl.  But here comes the cognitive dissonance... 

This common practice of using federal funds for local projects in order to hide the true cost should be stopped. The federal government should pay for the things that are truly national in scope (like the interstate highway system).

Stop. 

The only thing that is truly national in scope are the parts of the highway system that are outside of major cities where trucks conduct interstate commerce.  The majority of traffic in cities are not trucks just passing through. It's traffic for regional trips.  Houston's I-10 is now 26 lanes west of the 610 loop, those were created for the Louisiana to New Mexico traffic right?

But aren't most transit trips commute trips as well? And isn't interstate commerce done by train on tracks freight rail companies own and pay property taxes on? Should trucking companies be paying for the roads the operate on or do we see them as a public good? 

We can flip this back and forth and argue what is "national in scope" all day I'm sure.  The point is that it's often based on ideology and what is virtuous in the eye of the person doing the analysis.  In a true libertarian world they'd have a user fee on everything.  But I'm not sure how that works on local streets or things we want to incentivize like say, using more compact transportation modes for traveling into a dense city center because that's where economic activity happens due to agglomeration effects.

But this gets to another point about local decision making as well.  Urban areas are set up to be ruled by the forests.  MPOs are often stacked with suburban representatives and regional transit is hard to create with so many fiefdoms.  In a discussion about the recent highway collapse in Atlanta, New York Magazine goes through all the reasons why having 29 counties in a single metropolitan area makes it impossible to build useful transit. Our extremely racist urban pasts.

Metro Atlanta is scattered across 29 counties, which has made it easy to confine public transit narrowly to the heavily African-American Fulton and Dekalb counties.

Atlanta's history on this is well documented.  But what about other states who have libertarians who hate transit to begin with.  Like say...Texas.

Burton’s bill, which has passed through committee and is awaiting attention from the full Senate, would require that every city through which a commuter line passes hold an election before federal funds are accepted for the projects.

There's a lot to unpack in a bill like this.  Such as why does a city have veto power over a regional project.  Why are rail projects singled out?  I've asked this before, but why does a city need to vote for every single transit project but not a single highway project.  They are both regional projects.  They are both subsidized.  Some might argue we should have that power, I'm not so sure.

But it leaves a place for the federal involvement in large infrastructure projects. So let's not kid ourselves that there's something economic about devolution of transit and not roads to the local level.  And what does local mean anyway?  Because if we go to the state level we all know where the money will be re-purposed.

If we were going to be real about a devolution conversation, we wouldn't just start with the dirty hippy transit.  It's just sad that we know it's all for political show to "punish dirty cities"

I Am a Card Carrying Member

Recently Joel Kotkin wrote an article that accused everyone who likes rail transit's ability to shape communities of being part of the "density lobby". We've heard similar lines before from Randall O'Toole about the light rail cabal in Portland. We never hear about the road building lobby (You know, AASHTO, Highway Users Alliance, et al.) from these folks but what do you expect from the libertarian fun zone.

Also, I really wish these guys would do at least a little research before they write stuff and print it. This quote was pretty funny considering Houston already has a rail line between Downtown and the Medical Center that has 45,000 riders a day.

Some other urban routes--for example between Houston's relatively buoyant downtown and the massive, ever expanding Texas Medical Center--could potentially prove suitable for trains.

But we can have more fun with those guys. I am now a card carrying member of the density lobby. In light of the madness, I decided to go over the edge. Anyone who wants to be a card carrying member of the density lobby, shoot me an email and I'll make you one to display proudly on your site. Of course its a big joke, but so are people that say there is a big UN bike conspiracy or actually believe there is an organized lobby for "big density". If you meet anyone that wants to fund our cabal let us know. I'm sure there is someone out there who is rich and nefarious enough to take over the world with affordable TOD!

Email me at theoverheadwire at gmail | Send your name (real or fake), specific office (ie density integration), and location of choice. I will assign a member number and join date. Also if you just want the illustrator file I can send that along as well.

Even better, if I make you a card and you show it to me at the Rail~Volution blogger meetup in Portland in October, I'll buy you a beer. Cheers to density forever!

Oh the Logic

O'Toole writes his rules of the stimulus, wherein I immediately start dying of laughter at his rules and claims...

User fees must cover all operating and most capital costs...Many, if not most, wish-list projects fail this test. House Transportation Committee Chairman James Oberstar, Minnesota Democrat, wants to increase transit's share of federal surface transportation funding from 15 to nearly 30 percent. But transit riders pay only a third of the operating costs and none of the capital costs of transit, while highway users pay 80 to 90 percent of highway costs. This suggests transit will not have anywhere near the stimulative effect of highway spending.

It's official, my mind is officially blown. He's basically saying that since we spend a whole lot of money on driving cars, freeways are the only way to stimulate the economy. I should just give up now because transit is wasteful and doesn't make me spend a lot of my money on cars. In fact, I save so much money from taking transit, it doesn't count when I spend it on something else, like say a nice dinner locally. Let's send our money to the Saudis instead.

Libertarian Backlash

Like Adron and others, I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we operated in a true libertarian based market in terms of land use and transportation. Apparently, so do other libertarian commenters who in a recent blog post on the reason foundation blog take Wendell Cox to town. We all know that he and Randal and other sprawl apologists are just vulgar libertarians, using the ideology as a corporate protection racket. In thier case it's the highway and auto industry. Here's a comment that hits the mark for me:

I fully understand the idea that excessive land use regulation can raise the costs of home ownership. Smart Growth or anti-sprawl regulations, however, are just as much an implementation of greater flexibility in urban development, by allowing greater densities of housing, tenure and use, than it is a restriction on building. It is pretty well established that sprawl producing land use regulation is that which creates an artificial scarcity by requiring large lots, minimum square footage, and lower densities - driving up prices.

HT PublicTransit.US

Pushy SF1

I always find the opposition to more density and urban neighborhoods quite perplexing. Even more so when its backed up using vulgar libertarianism. Bill Fulton discusses the issue of libertarians and thier exceptionalism on single family housing trumpeted through a recent article in the OC Register.

Most amusing of all, however, is the way the Register conflates the free-market idea of what people want with the socially conservative idea of what people should want. Simply put: Despite its supposedly free-market orientation, the Register can’t imagine a world in which some people might answer their derisive question –“Want to live in a condo by the tracks?” – by saying yes.

This is a pretty common theme by urbanists who aren't trying to get rid of people's choices, just give them more. In fact Ryan posted on an Atrios comment today as well:

It never ceases to amaze me how angrily people react to advocates of pro-urban policies, as if the very idea of improving such places is equivalent to war on the suburbs and the people who inhabit them. It’s also strange to be told how people don’t like to live in cities by folks seemingly incapable of grasping the fact that some people don’t like living in suburbs.

I've said this before but I believe if there were more urban neighborhoods in cities, more people would be able to afford to live in them. I understand why people live in the burbs. I grew up there and it was a great experience. Right now though, I'm liking my urban neighborhood in San Francisco. And it sure has helped me save gas money.

The Future is in the Past

Orphan Road has photos of a 1920 plan for a Seattle Subway System. It looks awfully familiar.

Second Avenue Sagas discusses the 1960 New York Subway Expansion that never happened.

Switchback laments the loss of the Arborway Branch of the Green Line in Boston. The State has a legal obligation to run it as a rail line again, but they just paved over the tracks, hoping the thought will just go away. I would say that Boston is second to AC Transit in rail hate. Not an easy feat when everyone else is trying to put rail lines back.

A post on the Political Environment Blog discusses the loss of a rail fight in Milwaukee back in 1997. Then Governor Tommy Thompson loved the idea, but apparently its demise was due to right-wing radio. It seems like some things never change. The city still can't quite beat back the scourge of winger radio and in a city that's set up well for transit (weighted density 5,830) with approaching $5 gas, things are starting to look up a little when the main paper is pushing both sides a bit harder.

Had Tommy stood up to the local conservative talk radio hosts who still use "light rail" as an all-purpose anti-urban code phrase, workers and students commuting from Waukesha could be riding the rails with some of that $4-gallon gas money in their pockets.

We can learn much from the past, so we don't make similar mistakes going forward.

Vulgar Libertarianism in Pittsburgh

I often wonder if libertarianism has a built in preference for getting around. Why do I wonder? Because it shouldn't. But that is how conversations about transport and libertarianism start out in this country. Basically most libertarians (I say most because there are some that understand history) use their libertarianism to declare that transit does not work. "Let the free market work" they say, without discussing the massive amount of subsidies that turned the United States into its car loving, wealth transferring, big business loving self.

In fact during the time at which most transit was built, it was during the most free market period in the history of this country and it was about the development of land. That development opportunity disappeared with the invention of the automobile and the road funding by the government. By that time zoning was implemented and separate districts mostly single family were created like they were on an assembly line.

So I'm not surprised when the assistant editor of the Pittsburgh Tribune started his column out like this without historical context:

It was no place for a lone libertarian. And it was certainly no friendly place for anyone who thinks wasteful government transportation monopolies like the Port Authority of Allegheny County are proof that America's 40-year-old experiment in socialized urban mass transit is a failure.

Just jump right into it Bill, leave no history forgetting opinion out. Then the preference issue:

In fact, anyone who openly prefers cars to buses would have found himself feeling very alone during a salon dinner discussion on "The Future of Urban Growth and Transportation" Tuesday night at the upscale restaurant Eleven in the Strip District.

Why is it that you prefer cars? Is it because we've made cars and oil pretty much the only game in town? This brings me to Vulgar Libertarianism. The Mutualist Blog lays it out:

The defining feature of vulgar political economy, as Marx described it, was that it had ceased to be an attempt at the scientific explication of the laws of economics, and had become a hired prize-fighter on behalf of plutocratic interests.

Interests like the automobile, at the cost of every other mode. But Japan can have free market transit! Why not be like them?

When the lone libertarian finally found the nerve, he did his uncomfortable best to politely shame his fellow salon-goers for their blind acceptance of our obviously third-rate mass-transit industrial complex. He pointed out that Tokyo's gargantuan transit system -- arguably the world's best -- was about 90 percent private and mostly profitable.

He tried to point out that in progressive Europe, governments are decentralizing control and funding of mass transit or privatizing its bus and rail lines, as Stockholm and London have done.

Remember earlier when we talked about land and our zoning. Well Japan's railroad owns land and that's where it makes most of its money. We don't let transit agencies become real estate companies either in this country. If we do, we often get into the whole eminent domain mess, which libertarians hate. In addition, London's privatization has been seen as a money sucking failure and the government in Denmark provides the best bike infrastructure in the world by which 24% of total trips are made.

So all of this points to hypocrisy and a misunderstanding of the past(or even the present) by the libertarian faction, one in which we subsidized cars and trucks so much, it killed the private railroads, passenger and freight. Now when are we going to talk about how much money we're sending overseas to fuel those cars? Is that the free market at work?