Actual Conservatives for Actual Transit

From DC StreetsBlog:

Streetsblog: Why should conservatives support public transportation?

Glen Bottoms: We have three main reasons that we pitch to other conservatives. One is that we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Right now 90 percent of recoverable oil is controlled by foreign governments, most of which don’t wish us very well. Second is economic development. We’ve found that using streetcars in cities downtown spawns development. And third is that conservatives are traditional. Streetcars are a way to preserve neighborhoods by effectively promoting neighborhood cohesion and vitality.

ding ding ding ding. We have a winner.

Car companies like to portray that their product equates to freedom. It is a simple notion, that you can get in your car and drive wherever you want. Because it is a simple notion, it plays well with the idiot wing of the conservative party (of which Lind and Bottoms are not members).

The problem arises when all of our spending favors car travel that we are all literally forced to drive and that is the only acceptable and/or practical means of transportation. As we posted yesterday, they quite like that monopoly, thank you. However, 1) monopolies hardly fit in the conservative notion of market/competition-driven free market capitalism. 2) Gas taxes only pay for about half of our roads, the rest come out of taxes. 3) Gas is subsidized and the true cost is somewhere between $6 and $16/gallon (if you factor in military spending to secure oil). 4) Our gas spending predominantly goes to unstable foreign regimes.

So, in sum, we have no CHOICE in transportation, we are taxed excessively, we bail out auto industry, we support foreign dictatorships and presumably indirectly fund terrorism, and we drive budgets into the red. How is ANY of that conservative?

Linkages: Left, Right, and Beyond

What we can all agree on...

Leftist blogger Matt Yglesias links to an article about the federal government shifting policy and subsidy away from an anti-urban bias:

By way of contrast, the budget of the Federal Transit Administration is about $2.4 billion. If you put $300 billion in 30-year treasuries, you’d generate enough income to quintuple that. Which isn’t to say that’s something we can or should do, but merely to observe that suburban sprawl is not a market outcome. In part it’s a question of unintended consequences, but largely it’s a result of “industrial policy” designed to boost firms that make automobiles, drill oil, and build suburban homes. Much of that is legacy at this point but to this day Fannie Mae and Freddie Mack serve to create bias against financing mixed-use projects which is why it can be more economical to build large, empty lobbies rather than fill them with stores.

Rightist blogger/columnist Ross Douthat says it is time to not become a nationwide Phoenix and stop McMansion subsidy:

By subsidizing housing in our tax code, we stifle investment in other productive industries. So on the supply side, there are obvious problems. But there are problems on the demand side as well. In the last chapter of The Great Reset, Richard Florida argues that, on top of directing capital out of more productive and innovative sectors of the economy, homeownership provides a serious drag on workforce mobility. Homeowners are much less likely to move than renters, and that problem is redoubled when their houses are underwater. One of the more surprising statistics Florida cites is from a European study that found a correlation between homeownership and unemployment; a 10% rise in homeownership amounted to a 2% rise in unemployment. It’s not a politically popular position to take, but no economist will tell you that homeownership actually helps the economy.

And somehow Joel Kotkin still believes his own nonsense.

Meanwhile, in honor of Oak Cliff celebrating Bastille Day, France has gone completely bats (all in French):

In the preliminary draft of the new National Plan of Transport Infrastructure (SNIT) controlled by the government, nearly 170 billion euros are to be invested in 20-30 years time in transport infrastructure, 90% in alternative modes other than road and air, with priority on rail.

Conservatives Against Sprawl

It is starting to pick up steam, as our endless ranting apparently has now apparently migrated rearward from the explicit memory of our collective frontal lobe to the implicit regions of the hemisphere. Personally, I think this is one issue that can be agreed upon by both right and left, possibly for differing reasons, and we can certainly disagree on the best way out of the mess. Here is E.D. Kain at True/Slant citing Kunstler and requesting Andrew Sullivan take up the mantle (which he has in the past):

Sprawl is a result of massive statist interventions into our culture and society, and its symptoms are equally enormous. Everything that conservatism has historically stood for is undermined by sprawl. It is not only the physical manifestation of our decline, it is a poison which continues to contribute to that decline. Its repercussions can be felt in our discourse, in our speech, in our way of thinking. This is not merely a matter of aesthetically pleasing communities, but of communities which allow individuals to be a part of the whole. I doubt this is sustainable, this suburban maze - in any way: fiscally, socially, spiritually. It is, as James Howard Kunstler called it, “a peculiar blip in human experience.”

I can't disagree with anything he states. He doesn't really offer any solutions, but that really isn't his job. Frankly, he gets at the fundamental and logical disconnect in the modern conservative mind that peripherally suggests limited government then gleefully spends on highway projects, forming an endless rhetorical loop that people want their house an hour from their job and the road that caused that to be the only choice must be expanded to allow for "free choice."

Perhaps this tipping point suggests a potential coalescence of common purpose, which will be the only way out of this mess.

If You Build It, the True Costs will Come...Eventually

Elana Schor at StreetsblogDC has an article on the budgetary shortfall in funding transportation and the potential solutions for paying for an overextended transportation (read: highway/road network) system:

Of course, Conrad's chart makes one significant assumption: that the gas tax is kept at its current, non-inflation-adjusted level of 18.3 cents per gallon. Increasing that (gas) tax was one of five transportation financing options that he outlined today. 

The others were: levying new charges of vehicle miles traveled (VMT), greater use of tolls, more transfers from the general fund ("which I strongly oppose," he noted), and a revenue-raising option yet to be proposed by Congress. 

Here is the timeline of how we got to this point, as simply as it can be said:

1 - Because of Industrialization, cities were pretty attrocious places to live in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Low pay, high pollution/squalor/poverty, and poor sanitation marked many cities American and otherwise.

2 - One solution was to move to the "countryside," aka areas immediately adjacent to cities and streetcars were the way to get to those new areas with "unlocked" real estate value for use intensification, ie new neighborhoods.  These were primarily for the well-to-do, although some company towns were also constructed this way with workforce housing near the factory.

3 - Getting out of the city and land use policies in support became humane.  Legal codifications were constructed unfortunately, without the adaptability to reflect changing conditions (for example Form-Based Code is intended to codify quantifiable urban "regularities" while allowing flexibility and adaptability of use/density).  This is why you see cities like Miami adopt sweeping zoning changes like Miami 21 and NYC rezone 20% of its land in one year, the effort to catch land use regulations with modern times.

4 - Invention and implementation of mass production combined with a burgeoning form of transportation and its marketing promised new freedom of mobility with more affordable cars for the middle class to also get out of cities combined with mass production of single family housing (Levittowns, etc.).  This did nothing to reduce the cost of the infrastructure and its eventual maintenance, which is paid for by taxes.  While initial costs of transportation to the new found living arrangements were often factored into the housing, the long-term maintenance of the infrastructure was not, meaning it was essentially financed on credit.

5 - Skip to today:  diffused, low-density housing created for a dendritic road hierarchy which funnels traffic to primary arterials and highways.  This by nature creates traffic, which is typically treated with the call for more supply.  The more supply of lane-miles to reduce traffic however, is no longer backed by a booming housing market (or one that has actual demand driving it rather than funny money), meaning it has no one to finance it except the the same housing that created the problem. 

This is a reality that every suburbanite must realize. For those who love their house, their neighborhood, and their commute and that is fine, two things:  1) your costs are going to go up (and this has nothing to do with fluctuations in oil/gas prices) because the lack of density can't support the infrastructure at the current per capita, and 2) if you are fiscally conservative, you should be encouraging higher-density walkable neighborhoods for others that may want it but there isn't the supply to meet the demand.  Walkability often means more density and a more balanced housing market (in terms of density) which means less infrastructure per capita.

Promoting walkable urbanism is a more efficient allocation of commonwealth resources.  Walkability is a tax cut.