House Republicans and Senate Democrats remain at loggerheads over the future of federal highway and transit funding. Although House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica introduced a compromise transportation bill this week, few are pleased with his proposal. Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, for example, calls it “the worst transportation bill” he has ever seen.

Congress passes legislation defining how federal gasoline taxes and other highway user fees will be spent every six years, and the most recent bill lapsed in 2009. Although the revenues all come from highway users, public transit agencies and other interests have captured increasing shares of the funds in successive bills passed since 1982. To please the wide range of interest groups who benefitted from this spending, the 2005 bill (which itself was two years late) made spending mandatory, meaning annual appropriations bills could not refuse to spend the money even if gas taxes failed to cover the costs—which they did after 2008, forcing Congress to transfer general funds to the Highway Trust Fund. In addition, Congress added more and more earmarks to the bills, increasing from 10 earmarks in 1982 to more than 6,000 in the 2005 bill.

The struggle today is between the Democrats (and others) who want to keep spending like there is no tomorrow and the Tea Party Republicans who want to reduce spending to be no more than actual revenues and eliminate earmarks and other pork.

One major source of pork is so-called competitive grants, which are mainly for transit. Although most highway funds have been distributed to the states using formulas based on such things as population, land area, and road miles, competitive transit grants are handed out on a project-by-project basis. Though the money was supposed to be used for the best projects, in fact most of it was distributed based on political power.

Mica’s compromise would keep spending at current levels—which are as much as $10 billion a year more than revenues—but include no earmarks and replace all competitive grants with formula funds. Instead of pleasing everyone, the compromise has simply ticked everyone off.

LaHood and various transit advocates are upset because they lose their funds dedicated to light-rail, streetcar, and other rail transit construction. Conservative groups hate the bill because it almost certainly will require deficit spending.

Mica could have compromised in the other direction: reducing spending to be no more than revenues, but maintaining competitive grants, earmarks, and other pork-barrel programs. This might have been more successful, as fiscal conservatives couldn’t complain about deficit spending while pork-barrelers could point with pride to the earmarks they were funding.

The negative response to Mica’s proposal makes it unlikely that Congress will pass a bill this year. Instead, it will have to once more extend the 2005 bill (which it has already done eight times), as the current extension expires on March 31, 2012. But the extensions maintain spending at current levels, which means the Highway Trust Fund is quickly running out of money.

Advocates of increased spending claim funds are needed to repair crumbling infrastructure. But America’s highways and bridges are actually in pretty good shape, partly because they are largely paid for out of user fees. The infrastructure that is crumbling is mainly those things paid for out of taxes, such as urban transit systems, which have at least a $78 billion maintenance backlog. Even President Obama’s head of the Federal Transit Administration complains that transit agencies are too eager to get federal funds to build new rail lines when they can’t afford to maintain the ones they have.

The real question is why the federal government should be involved at all in highways, urban transit, bike paths, and other surface transportation projects. State and local governments, not to mention private transportation companies, are more likely to make wise transportation investments and less likely to be swayed by pork barrel. Congress should simply eliminate the federal gas tax or, as some have proposed, allow states to opt out of federal programs by raising their gas taxes by the amount of the federal 18.3-cent-per-gallon tax.

Such alternatives will be taken more seriously if Tea Party candidates win more Senate and House seats in the 2012 election. If they lose seats, however, Congress is more likely to raise gas taxes so the transit industry and other interests can continue to get their largely undeserved shares of highway user fees.

Transportation Agreement Seems Remote is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In Gridlock, I argued that the next great improvement in human mobility will come not from rail transit or high-speed rail but driverless cars. Companies such as GM and Volkswagen have invested heavily in research and development of cars that can drive themselves, and I expected that they would soon begin lobbying state legislatures to change laws to allow such driverless cars on the road.

As it turned out, the lobbying was done not by an auto company but by Google, which has tested driverless cars (developed by the same Stanford University engineers who designed Volkswagen’s driverless cars) throughout the state of California. Google decided Nevada would be a good state to start legalizing driverless cars, and last week the Nevada legislature agreed.

By coincidence, Volkswagen has announced that it will soon offer semi-driverless cars for sale. The cars will include a “temporary auto pilot” that can stay within speed limits, steer within lane indicators, pass slow-moving vehicles, and avoid collisions on the highway. The cars will not be able to navigate city streets, but that will come soon.

The introduction of true driverless cars will significantly expand personal mobility because anyone—not just people over 16 who can pass a driver’s test—will be able to use them. Driverless cars will reduce congestion and improve safety. The new mobility will significantly change the way we live. And the cars will render obsolete any and all rail transit and moderate-speed rail lines now being planned or under construction long before taxpayers finish paying the heavy debts incurred to build such lines.

Driverless Nevada is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty received an “A” grade from Cato in 2010 (PDF) for his fiscal record in Minnesota, but in terms of national fiscal policy, he hasn’t gone far enough on ethanol subsidies.
• Regarding North Korea, “the United States should indicate its willingness to rethink its commitment to nonproliferation if the North continues its nuclear program. Maybe it would be better if South Korea and Japan were able to defend themselves than keeping them forever reliant on the United States and keeping America forever entangled.”
• Why is the federal government involved in state and local transportation issues?
• “Regulating, restricting, or eliminating [oil futures markets] would not bring prices down or make them more predictable.”
• Tim Pawlenty also sides with law enforcement on the medical marijuana issue. It’s too bad he doesn’t seem to side with taxpayers.

Thursday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

America’s transportation system needs more centralized, top-down planning. At least, that’s what the Brookings Institution’s Robert Puentes advocates in a 2,350-word article in the May 23 Wall Street Journal.

If that seems like an unlikely message from America’s leading business daily, perhaps it is because Puentes couched it in terms such as “spending money wisely,” solving congestion, and “adhering to market forces.” But not-so-hidden behind these soothing phrases is Puentes real argument: “America needs to start directing traffic” by developing “a clear-cut vision for transportation.” Such a vision “must coordinate the efforts of the public and private sectors.”

“The big question,” Puentes says, “is how much it will all cost.” This is a diversion from the real big question, which is: who will do this coordination? In Puentes view, the answer is smart people in Washington DC who can best determine where to make “critical new investments on a merit basis” using such tools as an infrastructure bank.

One of the results of that system, Puentes makes clear, will be more spending on transit so that commuters have “more transportation choices.” He specifically mentions the ridiculous Subway-to-the-Sea being planned in Los Angeles. Never mind that, as the Antiplanner has previously noted, Puentes’ goal of extending transit to more jobs is both extremely expensive and will have little impact on actual transit ridership.

The real problem with America’s transportation system is not a lack of vision but too many people with visions trying to impose them on everyone else through lengthy and expensive planning processes. A bridge or road that once might have taken five years to plan and build now takes twenty or more, if it ever gets built at all, thanks to all these visions. (Of course, when it comes to expensive rail transit projects, Puentes thinks Congress should waive environmental impact statements and other expensive planning processes.)

The real solution is not more top-down planning but a bottom-up system that responds to actual user needs rather than to inside-the-beltway visions. That means funding transportation out of user fees and not out of infrastructure banks, which–no matter how “merit-based” in intent–will alway end up being politically driven.

In a bottom-up system, individual transit and highway agencies (or better yet transit and highway companies) would be funded by their users, so they would have incentives to provide and expand service where needed by those users. Such a system would be far more likely to relieve congestion, save energy, and meet Puentes’ other goals.

Thanks to our heavily planned and heavily subsidized transit industry, the average urban transit bus uses 80 percent more energy per passenger mile than Amtrak. But that’s not because Amtrak is energy-efficient: the average Amtrak train uses 60 percent more energy per passenger mile than intercity buses. Unlike both Amtrak and urban transit buses, private intercity buses aim to meet market demand, not political demand, so they tend to fill about two-thirds of their seats while Amtrak fills only half and transit buses less than a quarter.

Achieving a bottom-up transportation system means getting the federal government out of transportation decision-making. One way would be to have states take over federal gas taxes as proposed by New Jersey Representative Scott Garrett.

To the extent that the federal government distributes any transportation funds to states at all, they should be distributed using formulas, not grants, because formulas are much harder to politically manipulate. Ideally, the formulas should give heavy weight to the user fees collected by each state to reinforce, rather than distract from, the bottom-up process.

Puentes’ top-down vision will waste hundreds of billions of dollars on little-needed transportation projects while it does little to relieve congestion, save energy, or reduce auto emissions. A bottom-up process will save taxpayers money and increase mobility, which should be the real goals of any transportation policy.

Transportation: Top Down or Bottom Up? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

To sell his high-speed rail program, President Obama desperately needed a success story—a high-speed train operating during his administration that would awe the public and lead to a national demand for more such lines. That success story was going to be Florida’s Orlando-to-Tampa line, the only true high-speed route (as opposed to speeding up existing trains by 3 to 5 mph) that could have been completed during Obama’s term in office (assuming he is re-elected).

Anticipating that success, the administration drafted a proposal to use federal gasoline taxes and a “new energy tax” to fund $53 billion for more high-speed rail lines over the next six years. (The proposal also included $250 billion for highways, $120 billion for urban transit, $27 billion for “livability,” and $25 billion for an infrastructure bank.)

The chances of that happening died when Florida Governor Rick Scott decided to turn back the $2.4 billion in federal dollars dedicated to the Orlando-Tampa line. To maintain momentum behind high-speed rail, the administration could have given all of that money to California, the only other state proposing to build true high-speed rail.

Instead, the Department of Transportation gave nearly $1 billion of the $2.4 billion to Amtrak and states in the Northeast Corridor to replace worn out infrastructure and slightly speed up trains in that corridor, as well as connecting routes such as New Haven to Hartford and New York to Albany. Most of the rest of the money went to Midwestern states—Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, and Missouri—to buy new trains, improve stations, and do engineering studies of a few corridors such as the vital Minneapolis-to-Duluth corridor. Trains going an average of 57 mph instead of 52 mph are not going to inspire the public to spend $53 billion more on high-speed rail.

The administration did give California $300 million for its high-speed rail program. But, with that grant, the state still has only about 10 percent of the $65 billion estimated cost of a San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line, and there is no more money in the till. If the $300 million is ever spent, it will be for a 220-mph train to nowhere in California’s Central Valley.

In essence, the administration has given up on high-speed rail. New York Times editorial writers haven’t figured that out yet, opining that Florida Governor Scott made a dreadful mistake when he rejected the rail money. In fact, as tax activist Doug Guetzloe told a Tampa newspaper, “Federally funded rail is like being given a brand new Maserati and then you have to pick up the gas and the insurance — forever. The car looks great, but the costs will kill you.”

The Times suggested that Florida taxpayers will resent Scott’s decision whenever they are stuck in traffic. But no one seriously believes that intercity rail will ever relieve traffic congestion, most of which is in cities, not between them. In its original application for high-speed rail funds, Florida’s DOT admitted that Orlando-to-Tampa traffic grows more every five years than all the cars the trains were expected to take off the road, so at best high-speed rail was a very expensive and temporary solution to congestion.

Outside of the Times editorial offices, most transportation experts agree that the President’s high-speed rail program is over and his draft transportation bill is dead on arrival. Taxpayers throughout the country should thank Scott (as well as Ohio Governor John Kasich and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker) for saving them the hundreds of billions of dollars that Obama’s program would have eventually cost.

The Administration Concedes Defeat is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

New York state senator Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) is crusading to ban pedestrians’ use of cellphones and other mobile devices while crossing the street. It’s for your own good, you must understand:

“When people are doing things that are detrimental to their own well being, then government should step in.”

The Daily Caller asked me to write an opinion piece about this proposal so I just did. Excerpt:

Phone use on the street has become near-ubiquitous in recent years, yet over nearly all that time — nationally as in Gotham — pedestrian death rates were falling steadily, just as highway fatalities fell steadily over the years in which “distracted driving” became a big concern.

In the first half of 2010, the national statistics showed a tiny upward blip (0.4 percent), occasioned by a relative handful of fatalities in a few states. Even a spokesman for the Governor’s Highway Safety Association, Jonathan Adkins, seems to agree it’s premature to jump to conclusions: “You don’t want to overreact to six months of data,” he told columnist Steve Chapman.

Like others who seek quasi-parental control over adults, Sen. Kruger tends to infantilize his charges. He told the Times: “We’re taught from knee-high to look in both directions, wait, listen and then cross. You can perform none of those functions if you are engaged in some kind of wired activity.”

This drew proper scorn from columnist Chapman: “Actually, you can perform all those functions and dance an Irish jig, even with text messages or rock music bombarding you.” That some ear bud devotees don’t take due caution is no reason to pretend they can’t.

C.S. Lewis, Lily Tomlin and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood all get walk-on parts as well.

A Ban On “Walking While Wired”? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The other day, The Wall Street Journal provided a public service by lambasting Newt Gingrich for his absurd speech to the ethanol lobby in Des Moines last month (money line:  ”Obviously big urban newspapers want to kill it because it’s working, and you wonder, ‘What are their values?’”).  Today, Gingrich and fellow ethanol-maven James Woolsey struck back in those very same pages.  In doing so, Gingrich provided yet more evidence that he’s intellectually unfit for office.

“It is in this country’s long-term best interest,” he said, ”to stop the flow of $1 billion a day overseas.”  Really?  So money sent overseas is gone forever.  News to me.  The only thing you can buy with dollars earned from oil sales to the U.S. is to buy things denominated in dollars or to exchange them so that someone else can.  And we sell a lot of stuff to foreigners that are denominated in dollars (treasury bills for one) and that money comes right back to the good old U.S. of A.

But put that aside.  If Gingrich really believes this, then why not just ban all imports all together?  Is that what the GOP is about these days – rank gooberism on trade?

And one other thing; the U.S. does not spend $1 billion a day on foreign oil.  It spends about half that; $530 million a day (in 2009 anyway).

Gingrich & Woolsey on Energy is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Bloomberg is reporting more bad news for the nation’s air traffic control system, which is run by the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA is $500 million overbudget and six years behind schedule on a $2.1 billion technology upgrade project.

The FAA has a long history of mismanaged technology projects, and so the latest screw-ups are nothing new. Yet the nation needs high-tech advances in air traffic control more than ever to ease our increasingly congested airspaces.

There is a better way to run air traffic control—a private sector way, as Canada has been demonstrating. In 1996, Canada converted its government air traffic control system to a private nonprofit corporation. Nav Canada has been a smashing success, providing an excellent model for possible U.S. reforms.

A December 24 story in the Financial Post describes how Nav Canada is a world leader in efficiency, safety, and technology under private management. “A once troubled government asset, the country’s civil air traffic controller was privatized 14 years ago and is now a shining example of how to create a global technology leader out of a hulking government bureaucracy.” It really is an impressive story of pro-market reform.  

Canada’s system recently won an award from the International Air Transport Association. The IATA said that “Nav Canada is a global leader in the efficient implementation and reliable delivery of air traffic control procedures and technologies.”

We should have that type of efficient air traffic control system in this country. Privatizing the FAA should be a high priority for the next Congress.

See here for a discussion on privatizing air traffic control.

Privatize the FAA is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Cato essays on the Department of Transportation contain a common theme: federal subsidies for various modes of transportation have stifled privately funded and operated alternatives. One emerging bright spot is private intercity bus companies.

From a Cato essay on Amtrak subsidies:

If Amtrak is privatized, passenger rail will be in a much better position to compete with resurgent intercity bus services. The rapid growth in bus services in recent years illustrates how private markets can solve our mobility needs if left reasonably unregulated and unsubsidized. A Washington Post reporter detailed her experiences with today’s low-cost intercity buses: “This new species offers curbside pickup and drop-offs, cheap fares, clean restrooms, express service, online reservations, free WiFi and loyalty programs . . . The bus fares undercut Amtrak and, depending on the number of passengers, personal vehicles.”

That’s why a story out of Minnesota is disturbing. According to the Duluth News Tribune, Jefferson Lines, which operates a bus line between Duluth and the Twin Cities, received $2.65 million in federal stimulus money to purchase five of the eight buses it has in service. One of Jefferson Lines’ competitors isn’t happy:

That angers Dave Clark, owner of Skyline Shuttle, which provides transportation from Duluth to the Twin Cities. Clark claims it’s unfair for Jefferson Lines to use government money to compete with his business and cut into his revenue.

“When there’s a market and they are competitors, it should be left to the market without government interference,” Clark said. “They could have taken the risk themselves, but they relied on the taxpayer to take the risk.”

The first problem is that federal taxpayers across the country are being forced to subsidize a private bus line in Minnesota. The second problem is that the government is effectively picking winners and losers in the market for intercity bus services. Instead of spreading transportation subsidies across every form of transportation, the federal government should cease with the seemingly endless interventions and allow free individuals to figure out what makes the most sense.

Unfair Subsidies for Buses is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Wisconsin has become a battleground over the Obama administration’s plan to create a national system of high-speed rail. Of the $8 billion in HSR grants awarded to the states in the stimulus bill, $810 million of it went toward a high-speed route between Milwaukee and Madison.

Ironically, this Wisconsin “high-speed” route would only achieve speeds of 79 mph initially and 110 mph by 2016. As a Cato essay on high-speed rail points out, HSR aficionados don’t even consider 110 mph to be true high-speed. In fact, passenger trains were being run at speeds of 110 mph or more back in the 1930s. And those “high-speed” trains didn’t prevent the decline of passenger trains after World War II.

The Cato essay also notes that the 85-mile line between Milwaukee and Madison “is only a tiny portion of the eventual planned route from Chicago to Minneapolis, and no one knows who will pay the billions necessary to complete that route.” In fact, to build a national system of true high-speed rail on the 12,800 mile network envisioned by the administration, the cost could be close to $1 trillion.

Where would the money come from? State governments are hoping that it would be all from federal taxpayers. As I recently discussed, the states’ interest in grabbing new federal HSR money has dropped now that Congress is requiring a 20 percent state match:

The states already have dedicated revenue sources for federal highway aid matching requirements (also 20 percent). With state tax revenues flat due to the recession, where would the money come from to pay for high-speed rail projects? Proposing new taxes to fund high-speed rail would probably be political suicide. And most state policymakers recognize that shifting money away from more popular programs to pay for high-speed rail won’t be any more politically rewarding.

The issue is even affecting elections in states that are in line to receive federal funding for high-speed rail. Scott Walker, a Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, recently said he’d send back the $810 million in stimulus funds the state has received for a rail line between Madison and Milwaukee. Walker appears to understand that his state has more pressing infrastructure needs and that high-speed rail could become a fiscal black hole.

On Tuesday, Walker won the GOP primary to replace outgoing Democratic Governor Jim Doyle, who is an ardent supporter of the Milwaukee-Madison route. Walker’s Democratic opponent, Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, supports the route’s construction. According to Stateline.org, the outgoing Doyle administration plans to have $300 million of the money under contract by January, which Walker says he would cancel if elected.

Wisconsin Democrats have made hay out of the fact that former Republican Governor Tommy Thompson first championed the idea of a regional network of high-speed rail. Unfortunately for HSR proponents, Thompson’s past involvement with federally-subsidized rail is a reason not to build the route.

From a Cato essay on Amtrak subsidies:

Amtrak reform legislation in 1997 stipulated that its board be replaced with a “reform board” of directors. The Clinton administration nominated, and the Senate confirmed, politicians that included the then-governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, and the mayor of Meridian, Mississippi, John Robert Smith. Mayor Smith tried to create a route that would have lost millions linking Atlanta and Dallas via Meridian. Governor Thompson succeeded in creating a route from Chicago to Janesville, Wisconsin. It was eventually discontinued after Thompson’s departure from the board due to low ridership and financial losses.

As is the case with Amtrak, HSR can’t compete with more efficient modes of transportation like automobiles and airplanes without massive subsidies. At a time when the federal debt is heading toward the moon, policymakers should be looking to the private sector to take care of our transportation needs. The country simply can’t afford to sink taxpayer money into high-speed rail when it makes so little economic sense.

High-Speed Rail Battle is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

On Labor Day, President Obama announced his plan for an additional $50 billion in spending, mostly on transportation.  An area Obama specifically mentioned was more spending for bridges, playing on the widely held perception that America’s bridging are falling apart.  While clearly there are bridges that are greatly in need of repair and represent a threat to passenger safety, what has been the overall trend in bridge quality?  In one word:  improving.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics only about 1 in ten bridges today can be characterized as “structurally deficient”, this is, in need of serious repair.  This may sound high, but it is down from 1 in four back in 1990.  As one can tell from the accompanying chart, the percent of deficient bridges has been on a steady decline over the last two decades.

It is also worth noting that over 80 percent of the deficient bridges in the U.S. are in rural areas, and  subject to much less passenger traffic.  Many of these bridges likely see little, if any, traffic. 

Perhaps more important from the perspective of “economic stimulus” is that additional bridge construction and repair would take years to have any real impact on employment.  Rather than coming up with policies designed with solely political appeal in mind, the President and Congress should focus on broad policies that allow the private sector to determine what investment needs should be addressed.

“We’re Talking Bridges…” is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Donald Shoup, the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, has posted a response to my first post about Tyler Cowen’s op ed against free parking. Shoup points out that I erroneously attributed proposals to him that are in fact only urged by his followers, such as maximum-parking requirements and requirements that all businesses charge for parking. I apologize for that.

In fact, Shoup’s book argues that cities should eliminate minimum-parking requirements and charge market rates for on-street parking. I favor these things as well. Where we may disagree is about the effects of these policies.

My post pointed out that many municipalities do not have minimum-parking requirements, but businesses still offer plenty of free parking to their employees and customers. Shoup asks for “a list of some of these.” Virtually all counties in Texas, most counties in Nevada, and many counties in Indiana have no minimum-parking requirements, and I am sure I could find counties in many other states as well. Unlike California, where Shoup lives, and Oregon, where I live, these states do not restrict urban development to within city limits or urban-growth boundaries, and developments in unincorporated parts of these counties offer plenty of free parking.

Much of Shoup’s response seems to assume that my posts were defending minimum-parking requirements. “City planners have no training that would enable them to estimate the demand for parking, and no financial stake in the success of a development,” says Shoup. “They know much less than developers do about how many parking spaces to provide for each project.” As I pointed out in my later posting on this issue, I entirely agree. My goal was to defend private provision of free parking.

That said, I think Shoup’s worries about the “high cost” of parking are overblown. As I pointed out in my first post, surface parking is cheap, and even structured parking is not terribly expensive in the long run. Most of Shoup’s analysis is not of the high cost of free parking but the high cost of minimum-parking requirements, and there the cost is only of the spaces that developers are forced to provide that they wouldn’t otherwise provide. Shoup and I seem to agree that businesses who want to free parking should be allowed to do so.

Unfortunately, many urban planners disagree; they want to set maximum-parking limits, and they often cite Shoup in their plans and proposals. The negative effects of such limits are likely to be as bad if not worse than minimum-parking requirements. Planners promote such limits in order to discourage driving, which planners say is bad.

Shoup himself relies on anti-auto rhetoric. “Ubiquitous free parking helps explain why American motor vehicles, by themselves, consume one-eighth of the world’s total oil production,” Shoup says, for example. “America’s extravagant consumption of imported oil to fuel our cars is not sustainable, economically or environmentally, and anything that is not sustainable must eventually stop.” But we can find many alternatives to “extravagant consumption of imported oil” without limiting people’s mobility the way many urban planners want to do.

Planners with Portland’s Metro, for example, have set a goal of allowing congestion on most of the region’s highways to reach level of service F (meaning stop-and-go driving). They also promote “traffic calming” (a euphemism for congestion building), “boulevarding” (a euphemism for taking lanes away from autos in busy thoroughfares), and other anti-auto policies. But their own analyses found that these policies would have very little effect on the amount of driving people do. The biggest effect came from a plan to require that all businesses in the region charge for parking — yet even that effect was small, estimated to reduce per capita driving by about 2 percent. Even though such a plan has not been put into effect, at least a few years ago Metro’s transportation models assumed that it would be put into effect sometime in the next couple of decades.

As I have shown at length, trying to save energy or reduce auto emissions by reducing driving is not cost effective, and the resulting reduction in mobility could have serious negative effects on our economy. Instead, it is much more cost effective to make the cars we drive more energy efficient and/or capable of using alternative fuels, and if oil prices go up that will happen without government coercion anyway.

Although Shoup teaches in an urban planning school, he is actually an economist, and he and I share many areas of agreement. I won’t even mind if it turns out that I am wrong: if cities get rid of minimum-parking requirements without imposing maximum-parking limits and it leads businesses to charge for parking that are now offering it for free, that’s just the market at work. My only concern is that many planners are using Shoup’s work to promote their own coercive agendas. I hope he responds to them as vigorously as he responded to me.

One more thing: Shoup asks, “Can you tell me if the Cato Institute offers free parking for its employees? If so, does it also offer commuters the option to cash out their parking subsidies?” I do not work in Cato’s Washington, DC, office, but as far as I know it does offer free parking to at least some of its employees and does not provide a cash-out option. Cato is currently expanding its building and I understand it is installing showers for cyclists, as required by DC zoning codes, and is not providing a cash-out option for cyclists (or other employees) who do not plan to use those showers. As a cyclist, I’ll probably use those showers from time to time on my visits to DC. Perhaps someday Dr. Shoup and I will write a paper titled, “The High Cost of Free Showers.”

Donald Shoup on Free Parking is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Two weeks ago, I responded with dismay to George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen’s op-ed against free parking. This led to a variety of responses in the blogosphere, none of which address my point. Instead, they all argue against the minimum-parking requirements found in many zoning regulations.

In particular, Cowen himself points to a study that found that Los Angeles’ minimum-parking requirements forced some developers to build more parking than they would have without such requirements. But Cowen’s op-ed was titled, “Free Parking Comes at a Price,” not “Minimum-Parking Requirements Come at a Price.” The op-ed was based on a book by Donald Shoup titled The High Cost of Free Parking, not The High Cost of Minimum-Parking Requirements.

Nothing I wrote defended minimum-parking requirements. Instead, I pointed out that, even without such requirements, most businesses still provide free parking for their employees and customers. It is one thing to oppose minimum-parking requirements as an unnecessary form of government regulation. It is another thing to favor government regulation mandating that private businesses charge for parking.

That certainly seems to be what Cowen favors. His article concluded, “if we’re going to wean ourselves away from excess use of fossil fuels,” then “imposing higher fees for parking may make further changes more palatable by helping to promote higher residential density and support for mass transit.” There are a lot of fallacies in those statements. Will higher residential density significantly reduce use of fossil fuels? Probably not. Will support for mass transit significantly reduce use of fossil fuels? Probably not. Even if you believe we excessively use fossil fuels, do indirect tools such as “imposing parking fees” make sense when more direct tools are available? Certainly not.

Claims that parking is subsidized would carry a lot more weight if 5 percent of the people drove and the other 95 percent had to pay 75 percent of the cost. Those are, in fact, the ratios for transit (less than 5 percent of American workers take transit to work but fares cover less than 25 percent of transit costs), which Cowen wants to promote. With driving, the numbers are practically reversed: discounting air travel, more than 90 percent of travel is by car and auto drivers pay more than 90 percent of the costs of driving.

I suspect someone has made the case for minimum-parking requirements: without such requirements, businesses might try to externalize some of their costs by letting someone else provide parking for them. But let’s ignore that. Cities should get rid of zoning codes that have minimum-parking requirements. (Cities should get rid of zoning codes period.) Cities should charge market rates for on-street parking and any publicly owned off-street parking. But even if these things happen, private businesses will still provide free parking to their employees and customers in many areas — in fact, practically everywhere outside of old downtowns.

Note: My previous post on this subject quoted Cowan quoting Donald Shoup saying, “On average [in the U.S.] a new parking space has cost 17 percent more than a new car.” I commented that this was ridiculous. Someone sent an email saying that Shoup actually estimates there are four parking spaces for every car, and the combined cost of those spaces is more than the average car. Without searching Shoup’s 733-page tome to check his arithmetic, I am still not certain why this is important.

Most people who buy homes want to room to park their cars. People also need room to park at work and elsewhere. Should we only have one bathroom for every four houses because the average bathroom is in use only a couple of hours every day? Is it a waste that almost every home in the country has a kitchen, when there are plenty of kitchens in restaurants (not to mention many workplaces) as well? Then why is it a waste that homes, as well as offices, stores, and other businesses, have parking?

Free Parking Revisited is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

I am disappointed that the distinguished George Mason University economist, Tyler Cowen, has fallen for the “high-cost-of-free-parking” arguments of UCLA urban planner Donald Shoup. Shoup is an excellent scholar, but like many scholars, he has the parochial view that the city that he lives in is a representative example of what is happening everywhere else.

Should free parking be a thing of the past?

Shoup’s work is biased by his residency in Los Angeles, the nation’s densest urban area. One way L.A. copes with that density is by requiring builders of offices, shopping malls, and multi-family residences to provide parking. Shoup assumes that every municipality in the country has such parking requirements, even though many do not, and that without such requirements there would be less free parking. This last assumption is extremely unlikely, as entrepreneurs everywhere know that (outside of New York City) 90 percent of all urban travel is by car, and businesses that don’t offer parking are going to lose customers to ones that do.

Shoup portrays such free parking as a “subsidy” because not all people drive and so the ones who don’t drive end up subsidizing the ones who do. But any business offers a variety of services to its customers and employees, and no one frets about subsidies just because they don’t take advantage of every single service. How often do you actually swim in the swimming pools or work out in the exercise rooms of the hotels you stay at?

Shoup also supposes (and Cowen accepts) that universal parking fees would greatly reduce the amount of driving people do. “Minimum parking requirements act like a fertility drug for cars,” Cowen quotes Shoup as saying. Metro, Portland’s regional planning agency, submitted this question to its transportation model and concluded that requiring all offices, shopping malls, and multi-family residences to charge for parking would reduce driving by about 2 percent. The model showed that charging for parking has a greater effect on driving than spending billions on light rail, building scores of transit-oriented developments, or increasing the urban area’s population density by 20 percent. But 2 percent still isn’t going to do much to relieve congestion or solve any of the other problems Cowen associates with driving. Plus he never really explains why he thinks reducing mobility is a good idea in the first place.

Shoup claims that a single parking space costs, on average, 17 percent more than the cost of an average car, and as a result, the cost of parking greatly exceeds the value of all automobiles in the country. This is ridiculous. Most free parking is surface parking, which costs about $2,000 a space plus the cost of land. In areas that have not used urban-growth boundaries and similar tools to create artificial land shortages, vacant suburban land with urban services typically costs about $20,000 an acre. Since each acre can hold about 100 parking spaces, the total cost is about $2,200 per space. From the point of view of a business owner, this cost can be amortized over 30 years at 6 percent, for an annual cost of about $160. If that parking space is used by just two customers a day, the cost is about 22 cents per customer. That’s pretty trivial, and the costs of collecting fees for such parking would probably be greater than the parking itself. Even structured parking typically costs only about $10,000 a space (or, using the above assumptions, $1 per customer), but structured parking is rarely provided for free.

Strangely, one of the examples Cowen uses in his article is Manhattan, where (he claims) “streets are full of cars cruising around, looking for cheaper on-street parking, rather than pulling into a lot.” Give me a break! I defy Cowen to find any free parking anywhere in Manhattan, where ownership of a single parking space can cost more than a median home in other parts of the country.

Cowen’s complaint about Manhattan is not about free parking but that the government is pricing on-street parking below the market. If that were the extent of Shoup’s argument, I would have no problem, as I noted in my blog last week. But Shoup’s goal isn’t market pricing of public parking; it is to create artificial shortages of private parking. He doesn’t want to simply eliminate the minimum-parking requirements that are found in many zoning codes; he wants to replace them with maximum-parking limits so that places like WalMart will not be allowed to provide their customers with as much parking as they like.

The empirical question is: do shopping malls, office parks, and companies like WalMart provide parking for their customers and employees because of zoning mandates, as Shoup claims? Or would they and do they provide parking just because it is good for their businesses? Texas counties are not allowed to zone, yet shopping centers and office parks in unincorporated Texas still provide plenty of parking. Much to planners’ annoyance, many developers elsewhere routinely provide more parking than zoning codes demand. This suggests that free parking is a free-market choice, and Cowen, who generally supports free markets, should have no objection to it.

Free Markets for Free Parking is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Matthew Yglesias is somehow offended by my recent post about the huge decline in the productivity of our socialized transit industry since 1970. He never addresses or even acknowledges any of the arguments made in my article. Instead, his problem is that the article “fails to acknowledge any government role in promoting the usage of private automobiles.” Since my article was about transit, not automobiles, I don’t see why I need to acknowledge government’s role in driving any more than I should acknowledge government’s role in our failed education system or any other government failing.

It could be that Yglesias is arguing that I am somehow inconsistent because I object to socialized transit without objecting to socialized highways. If so, he would be wrong: In books, papers, and policy statements I have argued that highways should be funded out of user fees, not taxes; that states should encourage private highway construction; and that the federal government should get out of the highway business. That isn’t in any way inconsistent with my article on transit.

It could be that Yglesias is going further and arguing that “government’s role in promoting the usage of private automobiles” somehow contributed to the huge decline in transit productivity since 1970. If so, he would be wrong. Since 1970, government’s role in transportation has mainly been to steal money from the users of roads that carry 85 percent of American passenger travel and spend that money supporting transit systems that move barely 1 percent of all passenger travel. In 2008 alone, more than $15 billion in federal, state, and local highway user fees were spent on transit, which did highway users little good (see cell O17).

Yglesias says that government land-use policies have caused “regulatory impediments” to creating transit-friendly cities. I’ve previously invited Yglesias to join me in calling for the elimination of all government land-use policies, but he has remained silent about that. Instead, he would rather rant about things I didn’t say.

Since Yglesias is so fond of attacking me for things I haven’t said, let me return the favor by pointing out that one of the most common arguments that people like Yglesias use against highways (and he himself may not have made this argument) is what they call “induced demand.” That is, they say we shouldn’t build more roads (even if paid for entirely with user fees) because they will just lead people to drive more. This is supposed to be a bad thing because driving is supposed to be bad. But really, they are admitting that Americans want to use and are willing to pay for more roads, whereas in their demands for more subsidies to transit they are admitting that Americans are not willing to pay for their transit-oriented utopias.

And Your Point Is? is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

U.S. News & World Report’s columnist Paul Bedard reports that Transportation secretary Ray LaHood told him that it’s fun playing Santa Claus to states and cities around the nation.

So let’s take a look at some recent examples of DOT gift-giving with federal taxpayers’ money:

• DOT’s Federal Highway Administration helped restore an old brewery in Petosi, Wisconsin with a $450,000 gift. That should make taxpayers want to drink.

• DOT is sending $116,000 to Calaveras County, California to restore a train that operated in the 1920s.

• Dolgeville, New York intends to use DOT stimulus money to repair sidewalks even though the village acknowledges that the new sidewalks will have to be torn up and replaced again due to impending water and sewage line upgrades. Keynes would be particularly proud of this one. Last year the city received a $1 million gift from DOT for the “installation of period street lights, trees, accent pavers, street furniture and sidewalk improvements” on the city’s Main Street.

• Cascade County, Montana plans on spending $75,000 of DOT money on the Montana Museum of Railroad History.

• The Michigan Department of Transportation plans on spending $5 million in federal DOT money on a bunch of projects that are of unquestionable national importance: cobblestone streets in Grand Rapids; exhibits at the Detroit Science Center; rehabilitating the historic Quincy and Torch Lake Railroad Engine House in the Upper Peninsula; a bridge for bicyclists and pedestrians over the Clinton River in Utica and bike racks at several locations in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties.

• Boone County Regional Airport in Arkansas plans on using $50,000 in DOT money to market SeaPort Airlines. Fly, fly away taxpayer money.

These projects might be worthwhile, but they should be paid for by the local interests who can best judge their worth.

In his 1932 book, Congress as Santa Claus, constitutional scholar Charles Warren offered a prescient warning on the dangers of federal subsidization of state and local affairs:

The continuance of this practice of shifting to the National Government responsibility for payment for matters which formerly were dealt with by individual initiative, by community cooperation, by voluntary organizations, or by local or State governments – the continuance of this practice of making drafts on the National Treasury to carry out purposes not within the enumerated or implied powers of the National Government will inevitably have two results.

So far as these Government donations consist of direct appropriations for private or local interests, they will deaden and finally destroy the eagerness or willingness of State Governments and local communities to pay for their own needs. So far as they take the shape of the so-called Federal Aid laws for local projects to be matched by local appropriations, they will have ‘a tendency to induce excessive expenditures by State and municipal governments, with top-heavy bond issues and oppressive local taxation.’

I doubt in Warren’s worst nightmares could he have envisioned the examples of DOT spending above, let alone the existence of a $90 billion federal Department of Transportation.

Ray LaHood as Santa Claus is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

In response to the large recalls affecting several Toyota models, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood yesterday advised Americans to “stop driving” their Toyotas. In testimony before the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, LaHood said:

My advice to anyone who owns one of these vehicles is stop driving it, and take it to the Toyota dealership because they believe they have the fix for it.

Later in the day, he elaborated:

I want to encourage owners of any recalled Toyota models to contact their local dealer and get their vehicles fixed as soon as possible. NHTSA will continue to hold Toyota’s feet to the fire to make sure that they are doing everything they have promised to make their vehicles safe. We will continue to investigate all possible causes of these safety issues.

As Transportation Secretary in an administration that is politically vested in the success of General Motors (recall how taxpayers were forced to take a 60% stake in GM for $50 billion+), was LaHood exploiting an opportunity to tip the scales further in GM’s favor? I guess we’ll never know for sure, but as long as GM remains nationalized, any comments by administration officials on matters affecting the auto industry should be viewed skeptically and through this prism, as they can irresponsibly move markets.

Raising an Eyebrow at LaHood’s Toyota Remarks is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

Last night I received a press release from the National Republican Senatorial Committee entitled “Lincoln Votes to Protect Millions in Taxpayer Funds for Little-Used Pennsylvania Airport.”  Lincoln would be Arkansas Democrat Senator Blanche Lincoln.  According to the NRSC press release:

In a remarkable vote on the Senate floor this afternoon, U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) made clear that despite rising federal deficits and a record national debt, she still stands firmly on the side of more wasteful Washington spending.  Lincoln today helped defeat an amendment, offered by U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC), to the annual transportation appropriations bill that would end taxpayer subsidies for the John Murtha Airport, a little used 650-acre facility in Johnstown, Pennsylvania that has received at least $200 million in taxpayer funding.  U.S. Congressman John Murtha (D-PA), who the airport was named after and who has been the subject of a number of ethics-related stories in recent months, has personally directed $150 million in federal funds to the facility even though it only has 3 flights daily to one destination: Washington, D.C.

When I went to the NRSC’s website I noticed similar press releases for other Democrat senators who I’m assuming are on the outfit’s election hit-list.  Having never received an NRSC press release before, I’m assuming I received this one because I ripped Senator Lincoln in a blog post last week.  If that’s the case, I’m impressed with the NRSC’s resourcefulness.  Regardless, it made me curious to find out if any Republican senators voted with Lincoln and the other Democrats.

In fact, yes, two Republicans did vote to keep the federal money flowing to Murtha’s airport:  George Voinovich of Ohio and Christopher “Kit” Bond of Missouri.  Both are members of the third party in Congress: Appropriators.  Given that he is the ranking member of the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, it’s not a surprise that Bond voted against an amendment unfriendly to a larded-up transportation appropriations bill.  Both are retiring at the end of their terms in 2010, so the NRSC apparently wasn’t too worried about charges of hypocrisy.

With the exception of the aforementioned, all Republican senators voted for the amendment, including appropriators like Murkowski, Collins, Cochran, and Bennett.  None of those folks are exactly known as fiscal tightwads.  So what gives?  Will these senators be headlining tea parties in the near future?

The truth is it’s just politics.  The Republicans are in the minority and got kicked out of the majority by voters due in part to years of fiscal profligacy.  I’m sure more than a few believed this was the type of vote that will help them curry favor with the growing swarms of voters upset with Washington’s out-of-control spending.  It probably helps a smidgen (sarcasm intended) that the airport in question is located in Pennsylvania, home to two Democrat senators, one of which is recent Republican defector Arlen Specter.  Oh, and it’s Democrat John Murtha’s airport.

I’m wondering where these Republican votes to eliminate pork were when I was working with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) several years ago to kill funding for the Bridge to Nowhere and other assorted congressional slop.  At the time, Republicans were in the Senate majority. For example, on the Bridge to Nowhere vote, our amendment went down 15-82.  Only 11 Republicans supported the amendment.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m pleased to see almost all Republicans (and five Democrats) vote to stop funding Murtha’s airport.  But their votes were driven by political considerations and not a new-found zeal for reigning in federal spending.  And let’s face it, defunding the Murtha airport is merely symbolic given that it would save peanuts.  So let’s see what happens on a vote to strip funding for the entire transportation program that subsidizes the other small airports in this country, many of which probably wouldn’t exist were it not for the federal cheese.  Of course, someone would have to actually introduce such an amendment first.  Senator Coburn or DeMint?

Pork Politics is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

The $4 million Union Station Bike Transit Center is scheduled to open in Washington, DC on October 2nd.  According to an August Washington Post story, 80 percent of the cost of this opulent bike center is being borne by federal taxpayers via the U.S. Department of Transportation.

Look, I harbor no animosity against bike riders, but under what authority — legal or moral — does the federal government tax me in order to build bike centers for parochial, special interests?  The Constitution?

But let’s pretend — and I mean pretend – that such federal expenditures are legitimate.  The Post article say the center will have 150 indoor bike racks and 20 outdoors.  A recent NPR article says it will hold 130 bikes.  Whatever the figure, at a cost of $4 million, it comes out to around $25-$30 thousand per bike.  And, yes, I recognize that the “1,700-square-foot building west of the station will also have changing rooms, personal lockers, a bike repair shop and a retail store that will sell drinks and bike accessories.”  But the ultimate purpose is to hold bikes.  In my mind, the extra extravagance merely reflects the fact that taxpayers are picking up the tab.

There’s the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.  In this case, it’s more like 4 million:

There you go, America.  Your taxes are funding this multi-million dollar bike rack in Washington, DC — the beneficiaries of which will probably be the same Capitol Hill lobbyists and congressional staffers who spend all day pilfering your paychecks.

Government Pays $4 Million for a Bike Rack is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

• After last weekend’s 9/12 March, you’d have to be deaf not to recognize that small-government conservatism remains a vital part of the national conversation. That, or you watch too much MSNBC.

• Nothing is simple when dealing with the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. But here are a few ways the U.S. can engage the nuclear armed nation.

• Questions that must be answered before we proceed deeper into Afghanistan.

• Why it’s time to abolish the Department of Transportation, and devolve federal transportation programs to the states.

• Podcast: New police suit records every move an officer makes while on the job. Radley Balko weighs in.

Tuesday Links is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog