Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Time for a Carbon Tax

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

NYT

columnist Thomas Friedman has been beating the drums for an energy policy that seriously reduces our appetite for foreign oil. The unquenchable American consumption of oil is one of the key factors, along with increasing demand from China, India and the developing world, driving up the price of oil and buttressing fundamentalist regimes that are overtly hostile to our interests, like Iran, or covertly hostile, like Saudi Arabia.

As noted in a post in today’s Road to Ruin blog, Friedman notes that we are funding both sides of the war on terror. “It is a war against open societies mounted by Islamo-fascists, who are nurtured by mosques, charities and madrasas preaching an intolerant brand of Islam and financed by medieval regimes sustained by our oil purchases.”

So, why am I raising an issue like this in a blog about Virginia politics and policy? Because so much of our demand for oil is the direct outgrowth of our driving habits. And our driving habits are largely the result of our sprawling pattern of development. Increasing the fuel efficiency of the cars we drive is one good place to start. But that’s not enough. Individual Virginia drivers are driving, on average, 70 percent more today than they were 25 years ago (as measured by Vehicle Miles Traveled).

How can we change that, while respecting the principles of market economics and shunning social engineering? By restructuring Virginia’s tax base. We should enact a “carbon” tax on all forms of petroleum consumption — gasoline, home heating oil, diesel fuel, aviation fuel, whatever — and apply that revenue to reducing our other taxes. By taxing petroleum, we encourage petroleum conservation and shift demand to other fuels, such as coal, nuclear and green fuels. We then could apply several billion dollars to reduce corporate income taxes and personal income taxes, thus making Virginia more attractive in the competition for corporate and human capital. Or, if social equity is our concern, we could apply the revenue to eliminating the sales tax on commodities consumed disproportionately by the poor.

Here’s the sublime beauty of the petroleum tax: It indirectly taxes the mullahs and sheikhs who are so hostile to our way of life. By enacting a petroleum tax, Virginians can take a huge step towards energy independence while thumbing their noses at the radical Islamic fundamentalists who threaten our way of life.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

  1. Ranger03 Avatar
    Ranger03

    ha! Good luck getting politicians on either side of the spectrum to vote in favor of a higher gas tax. (OK, you get Tim Kaine.)

  2. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Shipwrecked, I didn’t say it would be easy to get politicians to vote for a higher gas tax — just that there are compelling reasons to do so. The virute of a policy is one thing; the politics of adopting that policy is quite another.

  3. Terry M. Avatar
    Terry M.

    Jim, I’m all for it. I think it may be the only way to get us away from our dependency on fossil fuels and on to using new energy sources.

  4. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I’ll repeat some of the comments I made on the transportation blog — this isn’t about transportation, although some of the money could go to that. This is about winning the new Hundred Years War we are in, with thousand of our sons on the front line and thousands of civilians in the line of fire. Make no mistake about — you can draw a direct line from the Iranian-made roadside bomb and the rich Saudi willing to blow himself up to get laid in the afterlife — a direct line from them to the gas tank of your giant SUV. The bubba in his giant Ford 650 pickup playing patriotic music is the best friend these murdering infidels have in the world. And once they see we are serious, the Iranians and the Saudis will reign in their terrorists (they could do that in a matter of months) or face their own economic armageddon.

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Sons and daughters on the front line. Sons and daughters.

  6. TheModerate Avatar
    TheModerate

    A higher tax on petroleum will not reduce consumption. It will simply penalize those who use more of it.

    Why should we penalize someone that has to commute 70 miles to work each day because they can’t afford to live close to where they work?

    A great solution would be hybrid vehicles that continue to use gas but are much more efficient. They are getting more and more popular every day.

    Also, has anyone seen the recently passed energy bill?

    The Congress is giving tax breaks to oil companies who are making more money now than ever before in the history of the world!

  7. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    I’m afraid that I have nothing to offer but this: Heck yeah.

  8. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    I am not sure that the tax will decrease demand significantly. It may shift marginal propensity to spend on other things like fast food, movies, etc.

    How about increasing supply? And increasing supply of alternative fuels? The cross over point for expensive alternatives is sustained oil prices of what – $50 a barrel? $070?

    Consider the principles. Is it the responsibility of the Commonwealth to shift demand for oil away from a region of the world that produces Islamists? Foreign policy isn’t part of the Governor’s and GA constitutional duties. If we need revenue for transportation issues, then tax the users with more carbon taxes or if we need revenue for pollution issues, then tax carbon more – and make darn sure the money goes to answer the problem.

  9. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “The bubba in his giant Ford 650 pickup playing patriotic music is the best friend these murdering infidels have in the world.”

    Anon 10:24, last time I checked the only kinds of mass produced vehicles available in the world burn fossil fuels. By your logic, it’s not just “the bubba” who is their best friend, but anyone, including the pencil-necked, mealy-mouthed, whiners on the left driving their plastic Yugo-sized hybrids, listening to the Dixie Chicks on their Ipods. Oh, and lets not forget anyone who buys any polymer based product of any kind; and what about the tree-hugging environmentalist whack-o’s who have made it impossible for us to develop or refine any of our own fossil fuel resources? Gee, I guess that makes just about everyone in the world a friend to those “murdering infidels” in your mind. Can you try to be a little more constructive instead of making stupid, hyberbolic statements of guilt by association, or perhaps your name is Michael Moore?

  10. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    J.A.B. you make a good point on the economics. Eventually the price of oil will make it possible for alternative sources of energy to become viable. From strictly that standpoint I would believe that we shouldn’t tax anything more.

    What I would consider at the national level though would be some sort of “Manhattan Project”-like effort to develop alternative fuels. This out of national security reasons, more than economic. Taxes to support such an effort would be a good investment if as you say we could be certain the money would be used for that. Also, alleviating the restrictions that keep us from developing our own resources should be considered as part of this National Security effort. Our own bureacracy that has been beholden to the environmentalists is part of the problem here.

  11. Virginia Centrist Avatar
    Virginia Centrist

    Yeah…it would take a $4.00 gas tax increase to start affecting demand…gasoline has a very inelastic demand curve (demand doesn’t respond much to price hikes).

  12. GOPHokie Avatar
    GOPHokie

    For once, i agree with VA Centrist. Its not like everyone spends most of their gas money on driving around for the heck of it. Our tractor-trailers, and locomotives probably burn more fuel than all the cars we have. Dont forget about all the diesel that has to br burnt just to harvest out food. Almost all electric generation is something other than oil, so we dont gain much there. Most new houses have heat pumps, not oil furnances, so that wont drop off much either. Raising the gas tax will just hurt the economy, but not curb demand.

  13. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    My name is not Michael Moore and I’m all for developing our own sources to the max and, yes, the problem involves far more than the giant pickup and the SUVs. They are symbols of incredible waste, however. But looking at the above string of rationalization I can hear Osama laughing out load, punctuated every now and then with the cries of another grieving mother. This current Hundred Years War started with the 1974 oil embargo so we’re in the fourth decade now. I’ve also heard it called “President Carter’s War” because another milestone was the hostage taking in Iran.

  14. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Jim is right on re a carbon tax.

    A Few Notes for those who disagree on the wisdom of a carbon tax. But first a note of caution for Anonynous 10:24

    In your heartfelt SUV rant: Before you bomb Bubba’s pickup or SUV check his spedometer and VMT.

    We have a big SUV and have driven one for over 15 years. We have only one vehicle and the two of us burn less energy by 1/2 that the average Virginian would burn in a hybrid. It meets our family needs without helping the enemy.

    The Moderate: The carbon tax is necessary but not sufficient. We also need to solve the Shelter Crisis and to fairly allocate location based costs of goods and services for starters.

    VA Centerist: It is a myth that gas consumption is inelastic. Just ask GM and Ford. Also check what happened in 1973/74 to jobs/housing balance in places where that can be measured.

    You and GOPHokie are running on bad informantion.

    EMR

  15. GOPHokie Avatar
    GOPHokie

    Im not saying consumption is COMPLETELY inelastic, but I am saying it almost is. Case in point right now. Prices have risen 60% and demand has still risen 3-5%. If you triple the price of oil, the demand might fall 10%.
    You have to realize all the uses of oil and that are basically un stoppable.
    Example: I dont really think John Deere is going to roll out a hybrid tractor the day we triple diesel prices. The farmer will pay the higher prices and pass it on to us.
    I agree we need to come up with a comprehensive, long-term strategy to decrease comsumption, but taxes is not the way to do it. We need to continue to encourage hybrid technology, not only in cars and trucks, but increase MPG in tractor-trailers and make farm machinery more efficient. We have curbed usage of heating oil due to heat pumps and electric baseboard heat. Using coal and nuclear instead of oil in electric generation is another great idea. We need to look at ways to decrease usage in every category, not just “gas-guzzling SUVs”.

  16. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    It just may be that if Diesel prices triple (and there is reason to beleive they will continue at or above that level) John Deere will bring out a stand alone bio-diesel distillery to sell with their tractor.

    A lot of the apparent inelasticity of gasoline consumption (and energy consumtion in general)is that pandering politicains keep saying they will “fix” the problem as they are with the current federal energy bill.

    There is no fix except Fandamental Change in energy consumption, all energy consumption. The free ride is coming to an end.

    EMR

  17. subpatre Avatar
    subpatre

    What a great idea! Those mad-mullahs are terrible, so we’ll wreck our own economy. That’ll show ’em!

    From every bit of plastic (the keyboards people bang out incoherent thoughts) and every ounce of food transported to your table, petroleum is a core component. A ‘carbon tax’ will be taxing on the entire economy.

    What to do, assuming a goal of less money to mad-mullahs? The same as any firm that depended on a product –painted square-blocks for example– made by a conglomerate determined to gain control over, or even wreck, your firm.

    Add to existing capacities of your own firm to produce its own square-blocks. Make better use of square-blocks. Use known substitutes for them, investing in R&D to find new ones. I’d hope the firm already made sure the block-painting and transport departments never become bottlenecks.

    If the square-block market is unreliable, it’s smart to have a reserve; but it’s a short-term patch, not a solution. Nobody can store enough material for sustained operation.

    At the corporate level, management should work at acquisition, control, or purchase of square-block production; perhaps construct new facilities.

    Indirect approaches are risky in the free market because competition, also needing painted square-blocks, may offer better alternative deals to the square-block producer.

    Without shortage, increased demand produces rising square-block prices. It’s ridiculous to add unneeded cost to your own product just because component prices have risen. It’s insane to advise reduced production and lay-offs.

  18. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Subpatre, you and I normally find ourselves on the same side of a debate, but you’re missing the point here. Yes, a carbon tax would increase the cost of various goods and services. But taxes always have a negative effect. Sales taxes increase the cost of goods, too. Income taxes punish people for generating income. Property taxes punish people for owning real estate. ALL taxes suck. All taxes have debilitating effects.

    Here’s the difference: With a petroleum tax, some of the negative consequences would be offset by some positive consequences, namely more conservation, more functional land use patterns, and a shift to forms of energy 100 percent produced in the United States. The other taxes have no positive consequences.

  19. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Me again. It’s been fun yanking chains and stirring the bile, but at heart I am dead serious. Good for you EMR in your prudent use of a less efficient vehicle, but on a cold day on my street there are three of four of them parked on the corner waiting for the school bus, one kid per vehicle, with the engines running to keep the heat on. The school is a quarter mile away. Don’t tell me demand is inelastic.

    Yes there are lots of other, vital uses for petro products in our economy but do the math — the vast, vast bulk of it goes to the internal combustion engines, heating and manufacturing, and we need to cut the umbilical to the Middle East. Even a five percent drop in our consumption would cause panic in Saudi and Iranian circles.

    One of Bin Laden’s stated goals, stated reasons for this war of his, is the low price of oil. We’ve played into his hands and now the world price is 60 plus a barrel. I do think a consumption tax, imposed gradually but steadily, would do the trickv — for oil or square blocks. Remember, this is a wartime scenario. Fun to debate, anyway. Not a joke for the kids getting killed to keep the Iraqi fields flowing.

  20. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    I’m not an economist. My degree is not in economics. But in my experience, usage is rather elastic.

    Friends and family have often remarked to me in the past year, “I’d drive up to X, but with gasoline prices…” That’s a part of the daily calculus for me — it’s a consideration every single day. Rather than driving to town one or more times daily, I drive in every 2-3 days, consolidating my trips. I needed milk this weekend, but I decided to do without for a few days. Two years ago, I might have driven on in anyhow and probably turned it into a light shopping trip.

    Something that I do have some interest in is transportation. A maxim among planners interested in sustainability is that fixing traffic by building more roads is like fixing obesity by wearing a bigger belt. The reason for this is latent traffic. There’s a certain percent of trips that people only take if they can make the trip quickly — that is, if there’s not going to be any traffic. Faced with a wide open road, people may drive a mile to the corner store; if they know it’s going to be packed, they may wait until the following day, when they have to drive by there anyway.

    This has nothing to do with gasoline prices, but surely this phenomenon of traffic-induced latent trips can be a result of high fuel prices, too.

  21. criticallythinking Avatar
    criticallythinking

    OK, if making the roads bigger doesn’t help, why don’t we save ourselves a lot of money and cut them all to one lane each and stop maintaining the rest?

    Because it does help to make bigger roads. If we had 10 lanes, they would be empty. The only reason making the roads a little bigger doesn’t help is because they got so small that people DID stop using them. The demand isn’t infinite, it has just been so badly effected by how far behind we are.

    A carbon tax is a remarkably bad idea. Attempting to fiddle with the supply/demand cost curves through government intervention has a history, and it is a bad one.

    The use of gasoline and other fuels is remarkable inelastic. And it is LEAST elastic with those who are most unable to afford higher prices, because these are the people who are already making decisions about driving based on their gas costs.

    And unfortunately, but truthfully, a lot of our economy is based on our ability to drive wherever we want whenever we want. To the degree we “succeed” in interfering with this by a gas tax, we will do greater harm to our economy than simply the problem of the higher costs applied to all our goods. If I don’t drive out to McDonalds as often, they cut back their staff. If I decide to skip the movie and rent it later, they shut down theatres. If I’m driving less, I replace my car less often, and need fewer replacement parts. All good for me, but bad for the economy.

    The point is, when the market moves as it is want to do through supply/demand, it generally does so in ways that tend to allow time for the economy to react. Throwing a gas tax into the works is something that would upset that balance.

    If you want to do something, get a fuel-efficient car. We should be running ads to convince people to do this, and to conserve, and to do all those other things that we THINK we could get out of an increased gas tax.

    Realise this. The carbon tax was touted in the 1990s as the answer to our increasing use of fuel. If we only would raise the price, people would stop using it.

    Well, since then, the price of fuel has risen MUCH higher than the proposed carbon tax, and yet we use more than ever. Now, that doesn’t mean you couldn’t find a price at which you COULD destroy the economy and thereby cut fuel use, but it doesn’t seem it works the way the proponents of the 90s say it would.

    I’m still fleshing out these ideas, and I haven’t thought them over too much. Just trying some things out here. Love the discussion.

    BTW, I think my cable bill has gone up more than my gas bill…..

  22. subpatre Avatar
    subpatre

    “….negative consequences would be offset by some positive consequences..”

    Perhaps possibly maybe. We know the negatives of a high fuel tax; a hit on the entire economy, with the poorest hit hardest. Any tax big enough to make a significant difference in consumption is big enough to spark inflation, chase away Virginia’s last manufacturers, and out of necessity, expand social programs.

    Positive consequences? There’s no evidence that any desired reduction can be reached. A 50% increase in price (1979-84 ) produced less than 15% drop in use. In dollars per mile, gasoline is currently at historic lows.

    McMansion™ land use is an upper and professional class occurrence, and it isn’t solely an economic product. They have financial padding; can switch to efficient cars, reduced dining out, cut luxury and discretionary spending. Fuel taxes curbing that form of land use trend will generate both double-digit inflation and unemployment.

    If I might be so bold, you’re looking for a silver bullet. Tax isn’t it.

    Like the BigMac, McMansions™ are enabled by transportation. Unlike the burger, scattered land use is a product of high fuel-efficiency. Restated, great gas mileage causes dysfunctional settlement patterns!

  23. GOPHokie Avatar
    GOPHokie

    Jim, I think your idea may an OK one based on taxing petrol and then cutting other taxes so that net taxes stay relatively the same. Unfortunately, that never seems to play out that way. We have a federal gas tax to build the interstate highway system. We have had that my entire life. The gov’t always says a tax is for a specific purpose, but itends up lasting forever.
    Another thing about inelasticity. Look at the market 2 years ago. Had we added this tax what would it have done? We have much higher prices and still higher demand. I am still not convinced it would really help curb demand. Oil, by the way, is not the only thing that is inelastic. Look at cigarettes. Cigarette prices are up about 100% since around 1998 when the MSA was signed. Consumption though is only down 10-15%. People will buy what they want, regardless of whether they need it or not. It just makes their ability to buy more of other things change. Oil is one thing that usually comes first on the list of “things to buy”.
    One more thing, criticallythinking makes a great point. A higher price of fuel effects alot of things we cant directly see. I have said for a while now that our economy would be blowing the roof off if we had more reasonable gas prices.
    One last thing to think about, when people get a hybrid, or better MPG vehicle, do they tend then to drive more miles and still essentially use the same amount of gas, or perhaps even more bc now their dollar goes further?

  24. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “The farmer will pay the higher prices and pass it on to us.”

    Gee. What planet do you live on? Farmers are chronically unable to pass higher prices on to us. If they were able to do that, we could stop whining about the loss of prime farmland.

    EMR: I own a one ton dump truck, a one ton flatbed, a half ton pickup, a quarter ton pickup, a hybrid, a sports car and three tractors. I am one of the reasons the number of vehicles has gone up substantially. I use only one vehicle at a time: the vehicle that suits the mission, and my collection of vehicles suits my needs with minimum damage to the environment.

    I drive almost twice as much as the average person, but then, I have two jobs, and more than half my driving involves heavy vehicles and tractors involved with farm work. When I was in EMR’s situation I had a small car and a utility trailer…..

    With all my vehicles there is not a single SUV because I can’t think of any reasonable mission statement that requires one, except maybe SUV work: packing the kids up for a weekend of camping in order to get out of the Alpha New Urbanist Dooryard Cluster.

    If I could get a camping permit for the farm I might make some money, be able to sustain the farm, and give some SUV’s a purpose in life. ‘Course you’d have to build roads for them to get here.

    My commuting costs in the hybrid are a fraction of my other fuel uses, especially if you consider home heating oil. Without question, it is the best vehicle I ever owned.

    Home heating oil is similar to diesel, so we could convert to biodiesel for home heating and transportation. I have long said that six dollar a gallon gas would be the best thing to ever happen to agriculture.

    Of course, the carbon tax would have to apply to biodiesel, too. We’d have to re write all our air pollution laws so our cities wouldn’t smell like on massive McDonald’s. In order to make a net energy gain in producing biodiesel we would have to eliminate the use of gas-based fertilizers and probably revert to animal power to grow the crops. The additional methane from the animals would wipe out any gain in greennhouse gas production from reduced fuel usage.

    Hybrids make their gains from low load operating conditions and regenerative braking, neither of which apply to tractors, so don’t look for the JD Hybrid.

    Jim, if you think more functional land use ( higher density ) will cut fuel use, then you don’t understand what makes cities work. Cities are enormous energy sinks. Why do you suppose they create heat islands?

    All taxes suck, and until we base taxes on some truly equitable basis all taxes will amount to social engineering. The most equitable basis I can think of is cash flow, which is independent of the price we pay for whatever it is we choose to (or can afford to) buy. Such a basis promotes saving.

    The latest word on induced traffic is that it is a fraction of what the former estimates were. It may be as low as a couple or five percent.

    What Waldo says about latent traffic makes some sense, you might drive to the corner store for a quart of milk or a pack of cigs, if it is around the corner and the intersction isn’t jammed. In my case the corner store is a 20 mile round trip and you don’t do it unless you can chain the trips and bring back a truckload of stuff so you don’t have to leave the farm again for a long time.

    It is not clear to me that the kind of road construction we need is the kind that facilitates getting a quart of milk, especially if it is around the corner. Of course we could have milk delivery trucks, maybe that would cut down on traffic.

    Traffic engineers define latent traffic differently. Latent traffic is traffic that would have happened had the roads been sufficient, but didn’t. That is a subtle difference from traffic that happened because there were excess roads. Some congestion is a sign you have not overspent on roads: severe congestion is a sure sign you haven’t spent enough. CThinking is right, the reason our roads are so bad is because we are so far behind.

    All of our economy is dependent on fuel prices, and I expect to get a premium for my firewood this year (more Carbon tax?). If everyone goes that route, this continent will be naked in five years. We will see this country 100% dependent on domestic fuel when the population is reduced considerably.

    Elasticity in price assumes the fuel is available. If it is not available, then our economy will collapse and functional living patterns will be proceeded by Fundamental Change in the form of considerable death.

    There are enough local Mullahs of Land Use, Sheikers of Tax Money; enough Muezzins calling us to the political prayer houses and RINO-Madrassas, enough Ayatollahs of Education to keep us busy here for a long time.

    If we think the Saudi’s, who have their free cash heavily invested in America, want to see us collapse, then we have completely lost sight of what having a market means. Here is a country where the entire treasury was carried in a box on a camel in 1930. Here is a country that has been yanked bodily from the 3rd century to the 21’s century in one generation.

    Maybe one reason they are so bent on assisting us in Fundamental Change has to do with the changes we caused to them.

  25. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Subpatre: Give me a break. Unless you are ateenager on Sat. Night you are not going to drive any mor than makes economic sense whether you get 50 mpg or 10.

    I was driving my Hybrid to a high paying job in the city. First chance I got at a job closer to home, I took it.

    Don’t forget, the capital cost of the car is the biggest cost driver, not the fuel. Since the capital cost is largely related to the weight, the weight to steel, and steel to energy, anyone who thinks he is saving by driving an SUV for short distances is practicing yet another false economy.

  26. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    CriticallyThinking, Once again, I insist upon drawing a distinction between short-term and long-term elasticity in the demand for gasoline. In the short term, demand is fairly inelastic; people cut out a few trips on the margin, but still have to drive back and forth to work, etc. In the long run, demand is far more elastic. When in doubt, look at the numbers. What happened to gasoline consumption when energy prices shot up in the mid/late 1970s? Between 1973 and 1981, Vehicle Miles Traveled per individual motorist in Virginia declined from 12,000 miles per year to 10,000 miles per year. Admittedly, some of that decline was caused by a sluggish economy –that was the stagflation era. But people also changed their driving habits.

    How is it possible that only 25 years ago Virginians were driving only 10,000 miles a year on average, and they’re driving 17,000 miles a year now? (See the chart about halfway down this page.)

    Are you going to maintain that cheap gasoline and urban sprawl had nothing to with that extraordinary increase in driving? If not cheap gasoline and urban sprawl, what was responsible for the increase?

  27. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    25 years ago the cars we were driving were junk, and both the cars and the gas cost more in current dollars than they do today. Women didn’t work for the most part, and children didn’t drive to school because most families had one car: a function of the economy.

    I don’t think it is surprising we drive 70% more now than 25 years ago. For one thing, how much stronger is the economy now than then. For another, we have more places to go: there weren’t too many soccer games 25 years ago. More of our economy is mobile based services so we travel more for work, and just in time delivery and a major increase in the number of products available mean more deliveries.

    Is sprawl part of the increase in driving? Maybe. The fact is that we just don’t know. I have my own gas consumption records going back 25 years, I have no children and my wife does not work, so I am insulated from many of those changes. My personal mileage is only slightly greater today than then, even though I now live beyond sprawlville. My total fuel consumption is much higher, because now I have two jobs, and the farm sucks down huge quntites of fuel, and the farmhouse is large.

    Anyway, VMT is meaningless unless we compare it to value delivered, and it isn’t even related to congestion, except that congestiion is measured by VMT per square mile, or by VMT per available road mile.

    Look at today’s story in WaPo. EMR will have a fit, I’m sure, but according to the story LA is the nations densest city. The most highly valued homes in the story had a six lane road leading to the subdivision. Sprawl has been halted by a lack of water and a lack of land: the people (or government) already own most of the land, so it is not available for housing. The result is large houses on small lots, affordable (if substandard) housing created by building on old oil wells and dumpsites, by subdividing and adding on to existing houses, by doubling up extended families, converting garages etc. One resident said she never walked to the grocery, even though it was ten minutes away.

    All of those affordable housing options are prohibited here, although they still occur. We are not creating enough building lots, and have excessive restrictions on the ones we do create. If we want to stop sprawl, we don’t get much help from a lack of water, but we can go buy up the land we want to preserve, an create higher density that way.

    I don’t happen to believe it will save us either money or miles, but as I said, we just don’t know.

  28. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ray, Thank you for pointing out that illuminating article in the Washington Post about the densification of Los Angeles. (It’s here, if anyone wants to see it.)

    That article explains what had always seemed an anomoly to me. The 2005 Urban Mobility Study calculates the Average Delay Per Traveler, and publishes numbers since 1982. (See the table here.) When I first looked over the study, I was startled to see that, while congestion delay had increased almost universally across the United States, it has declined substantially over the past decade in L.A.: from 113 hours of delay per year to 93. Why has L.A. bucked the national trend? My hypothesis: Because it’s one of the very few cities in the country to have increased density over the past 10 years!

    Ray, you’re a champ. Thanks for making my case for me!

  29. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Did the decrease occur because they have given up all hope of going anywhere? What about VMT? Has latent traffic demand increased and the demand is simply unmet? Does that affect the economy, and is it the cause of CA being an financial basket case? Is density that is the result of illegal immigrants living in substandard housing a good thing?

    I should point out that there are serious disagreements about how that density is calculated.

    I’ll be happy to make your case when we have the answers that prove your position is correct. Right now, I submit we still don’t know.

  30. Waldo Jaquith Avatar
    Waldo Jaquith

    “OK, if making the roads bigger doesn’t help, why don’t we save ourselves a lot of money and cut them all to one lane each and stop maintaining the rest?“

    I know that it’s an easy idea to dismiss — it baffles people — but study after study have shown that when roads are expanded, traffic is not improved.

    Part of this is because we’re always behind the curve — it takes us so long to build roads that by the time they’re built, we really need them.

    Part of this is because development follows road construction. If a road is widened, commercial property springs up on the other end of it, meaning that there’s more demand to travel down that road than there used to be.

    And part of this is because of, as we’ve discussed, latent demand.

    I don’t save old magazines, but there is just one I have saved. It a New Yorker from ~2003, on the topic of latent demand. The author reviewed a series of studies on the effects of widening roads, and attempted to describe and understand this well-documented result of there being no improvement whatsoever in traffic flow. Unfortunately, as I moved a few months ago, I can’t find it just now.

    Suffice it to say, it’s well known about planners that widening roads simply doesn’t alleviate traffic. We can debate all day about the reasons behind that, but the fact that it’s so is not up for dispute, I’m afraid.

  31. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I don’t have the exact figures but a large percentage of our road capacity (80%?) is largely unused, and those are roads we have already invested in and maintain. Some of these roads have been in place for years with out causing development, and some have seen development leave.

    If you widen those roads it won’t alleviate traffic because there isn’t any.

    Apparently we have too many roads and not enough traffic in some places and not enough and too much in other places. Either that or we have too many jobs and houses and businesses in some places and not enough in another. If you tear down enough of the houses and businesses in order to put in roads you will eventually get enough roads to reduce traffic.

    If we designed the structures to support the highways we could have double decker roads to support the traffic density.

    What that says is that roads need more space, whether it is out or up.

    The reason wider roads don’t reduce traffic is that we have not built anywhere near enough of them. Anyway, we don’t want to becuase congestion indicates we are getting good use out of our roads, not like those rural roads sitting there empty, waiting for the land use rules, which make our investment in roads worthless, to change.

    I’ll say it again. There is a difference in latent demand and induced demand. The most current estimates indicate latent demand is high and induced demand is lower than previously estimated.

    Despite the often repeated refrain to the contrary, there is ample evidence that roads don’t cause traffic. They are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for traffic to occur.

    On the ocean you have, basically, and infinite amount of roads, free to go in any direction, without hinderance, lanes or construction. It is completely free.

    Vast stretches are completely empty and other areas are crowded with ships. Same as with highways, there is too much demand in some locations and not enough in others. Just like the highways, there is plenty of capacity for more traffic, just not all in the same spot.

  32. dave s Avatar
    dave s

    Virginia’s the wrong level of government. This can be done at the Federal level, and may well have all the good effects you guys are offering. If Virginia does it, everybody who lives within 20 miles of the border will fill up in DC, Maryland, WVA, Tennessee, North Carolina…

  33. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    How about a tax CREDIT for comanies that allow and develop VPN technologies. 90 of you driving is going to and from work. Take that out of the equation for 5% of the countries population and thats a big chunk.

    Carbon tax is a tax on everything and will hurt the poor more than anyone.

Leave a Reply

Read More