Market Urbanism

Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up

“Market Urbanism” refers to the synthesis of classical liberal economics and ethics (market), with an appreciation of the urban way of life and its benefits to society (urbanism). We advocate for the emergence of bottom up solutions to urban issues, as opposed to ones imposed from the top down.

Randal O’Toole’s responds on “per passenger miles”

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I’ve had my disagreements with Randal O’Toole, a libertarian defender of suburban sprawl, but to his credit, he’s done the most convincing accounting of subsidies (well, accounting costs, at least) that I’ve seen yet. And though he normally concentrates on federal costs, his write-up of an American Bus Association report includes this paragraph about mass transit:

What about state and local subsidies? A first approximation of such subsidies can be found by subtracting expenses from revenues in National Transportation Statistics. The results suggest that total subsidies to air travel are tiny, subsidies to highways are large (but tiny per passenger mile), and subsidies to transit are in between (but much larger per passenger mile). National Transportation Statistics doesn’t have state and local subsidies to Amtrak or intercity buses, but I suspect the former are much larger than the latter.

All of this is probably true, but I’ve criticized the use of “per passenger miles” in the past (as had Michael Lewyn, unbeknownst to me at the time) on the basis that trips in areas served by mass transit can be shorter than trips made with in the suburbs and the exurbs with a car. I emailed Randal O’Toole and asked him what he thought of this argument, and as always, he was kind enough to send me his response:

You make a valid point. But it is most valid in regions where transit is concentrated in dense areas and jobs are concentrated in those dense areas. In post-automobile regions, such as San Jose, Phoenix, and Houston, neither of those conditions apply. The same is true in pre-auto regions that have undergone massive decentralization, such as Cleveland and St. Louis. Even in Chicago and San Francisco, jobs have decentralized to the point where dense downtowns hold only a small share of the region’s jobs.

Wendell Cox has some great maps somewhere on one of his web sites, or at least in his slide shows, showing the portion of urban areas such as Portland that can be reached from a random starting point within so many minutes by transit and by auto. Unless the starting point is downtown, transit reaches only a tiny fraction of the area reached by autos.

In sum, outside of Manhattan, I suspect your point is valid only for people starting downtown — that is, at the hub of our hub-and-spoke transit systems. I am sure a detailed analysis could be done to prove whether or not this is true.

First of all, I’m not sure Wendell’s point is all that relevant here – the question is whether miles (in other words, the “tiny fraction of the area reached by autos” that he mentions) is even a useful measurement when comparing transit-oriented cities and car-oriented sprawl. But the point in his first paragraph is undoubtedly true: most regions do not have very many jobs downtown, and transit works most effectively when everyone commutes downtown, within neighborhood, or somewhere in between the two. But is the paucity of jobs in cities’ dense urban cores a natural free market outcome, or is it the result of anti-density limits like zoning and parking minimums?

Furthermore, are transit lines not located in dense places (like most new lines out west) because there is no demand for density, or is it because they’re “zoned out” – that is, infill development is essentially no longer allowed? I know that every neighborhood near a transit line I’ve ever lived in has been completely built up to the zoning envelope. And the fact that most transit authorities allocate prime TOD property – the parcels directly adjacent to the station – to parking lots, completely ruling out any development whatsoever, can’t help matters. The problem of land socialistically allocated to parking near stations is most acute out west, where all new stations are surrounded by a sea of parking, but it also happens with commuter rail lines in the Northeast.

  • None of this is justification for denying people the ability to build at higher than single use, single residence density. And that is the fundamental point at issue in the “libertarian” defense of sprawl: sprawl is not average density over a broad terrain, but high average separation of the destinations that one wishes to make.

    If conventional suburbs were located “around” a suburban village core, in 1/4 mile around with a zoning easement permitting mixed use, 3 story (or more) height limits, ground floor professional/commercial, 3 residences per mixed use lot, 4 residence per residential lot, stacked townhouses ~ the local density that occurred would determine the viability of public transport connecting multiple such suburban villages to larger town or city centers, not the average county density.

    At a spacing of 5 miles, 1/4 mile suburban village within a 5 mile radius of ordinary suburban residence is 0.25% of the total area, so even if 4x surrounding density only 1% of households would be the difference in “dense” settlement, but all suburban residences in the hinterland of the suburban village would have the CHOICE of multiple purpose trips to a single location, where they could park and proceed to a range of other multipurpose locations on a single corridor … if developers CHOOSE to take advantage of those easements and entrepreneurs CHOOSE to take advantage of the easements to establish businesses within the easement.

    Which as a thought experiment at the very least suggests that the sprawl suburbia that Randall O’Toole defends is just one possible suburban form, and a suburban form which results from government policy that creates not just low density development in general, but low density sprawl in particular.

    That government imposed sprawl imposes costs on local common carrier transport systems, just as government imposed parking provision mandates are a taking which subsidizes auto transport.

  • The second point is simpler: the auto subsidies create costs for the bus systems, so when considering the bus subsidies per bus passenger mile, it is also important to consider the auto subsidies per bus passenger mile that the buses are coping with. The fact that a distinct subset of the auto subsidies are relatively low per car passenger mile does not address the magnitude of the costs imposed by the consequences of those subsidies per bus passenger mile.

  • To be fair to O’Toole, he has never said that he supports single-use sprawl zoning, just that he doesn’t think that it matters whether the zoning is there or not. That is to say, he doesn’t believe that many people actually want to build more densely than the zoning codes currently allow. Obviously I disagree with him on that, but that’s generally been his position.

  • Alon Levy

    You can talk about how Houston and Phoenix are totally different. Or you can fire up the NTD, see that Houston’s average trip length is 2.39 miles on LRT and 6.5 on the bus (a reversal of the usual pattern of rail trips being longer), and compare to the average distance one would drive to work, which has two digits. Houston’s numbers are unusually low by national standards for rail and higher than average for the bus; in San Jose the corresponding numbers are 5.5 and 4.44, and in Phoenix the average bus trip length is 3.75 miles (no LRT yet on the 2009 NTD).

  • On the other hand, since they are the entrenched status quo, that belief, if accepted, is as much support as single-use sprawl zoning requires, since if people are persuaded that change will not make a difference, they will not put in the work required to win changes.

  • Jim654

    The value of trips increases with their distance. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t be willing to pay the higher costs of longer trips. That is why passenger-miles, and not trips, is the standard unit of measurement for transportation cost-benefit analysis.

    In fact, there are plenty of reasons for thinking that the average passenger-mile of car travel provides MORE benefit than the average passenger-mile of travel by mass transit. Car travel is generally much faster, more comfortable, more private and more convenient than travel by mass transit. Cars also make it easier for groups of people to travel together, especially parents with children. Cars make it easier to travel with shopping and other kinds of cargo. This is why people are willing to pay so much to own and operate a car when for a small fraction of that cost they could buy an unlimited-use transit pass.

  • How does the value of a trip increase with distance? Why is a 1-mile trip to Whole Foods less valuable than a 5-mile trip to Whole Foods?

  • Jim654

    The cost of a trip generally increases with the trip distance. People wouldn’t be willing to pay the higher costs of longer trips if they could get the same benefit from shorter ones. Common benefits of longer shopping trips are lower prices and a greater selection of products. Common benefits of longer commutes are cheaper housing and better schools. Common benefits of longer vacation trips are better weather and more exotic destinations. And so on.

  • It sounds like you’re defending the suburbs writ large, whereas the specific question here is about the use of this particular metric. The benefits you’re describing here aren’t so much the ceteris paribus effects of longer drives (I mean, are better public schools really the direct result of how far you have to drive to get to them?), but rather general benefits of living in the suburbs in America in 2011 over living in the city in America in 2011.

  • Jim654

    I haven’t said anything about the suburbs here. I’ve explained why passenger-miles is the standard unit of travel for transportation cost-benefit analysis and is far more meaningful for this purpose than trips.

    As for public schools, the better schools tend not to be located near areas with high concentrations of jobs. One of the reasons people are willing to pay the higher costs of longer commutes is to allow their kids to attend better schools. This is one illustration of why transportation cost-benefit analysis must include travel distances and not simply the number of trips.

  • Jim654

    Buses are subsidized at a vastly higher rate per passenger-mile than automobiles. This is true whether you compare just direct monetary subidies, or all direct and indirect subsidies.

  • Jim654

    “None of this is justification for denying people the ability to build at higher than single use, single residence density.”

    Higher densities create negative externalities: more congestion, more crowding, more noise, more pollution, less privacy and so on. People care about these things. That is why they support laws that limit increases in density. They’re probably not going to agree to significantly relax these laws unless these costs are internalized.

    Local zoning laws, and other forms of “government policy” relating to land use and transportation that you seem to dislike so much, are not imposed on an unwilling population by unaccountable overlords. They are created and sustained by the democratic process, by the political choices of millions of individuals all over the country.

  • I guess then that’s just the fundamental difference between you and me – you believe that the political process is the best way to divine the will of the people, whereas I believe the market process is the best way. You think that a democratic vote in favor of a policy is enough to justify it, whereas I have a less sanguine opinion of the political process.

  • Jim654

    I did not say, and do not believe, that “the political process is the best way to divine the will of the people.”

    I do believe that market prices do not always reflect the full costs of producing and consuming goods and services. One example of this is urban density. High urban densities tend to create costs that are not reflected in market pricing. To limit these costs, people support laws that limit density. Complaining that these laws are unjust or inefficient because they restrict the operation of the market ignores these costs.

  • Ignores them? Why does it have to ignore them? Why do your opponents have to be ignorant of things entirely? Can’t they just have made the judgment that the cure is worse than the disease, even acknowledging that a free market in land use would have some negative externalities? Do you really think that lowly of us?

  • Anonymous

    “Higher densities create negative externalities: more congestion, more
    crowding, more noise, more pollution, less privacy and so on.”

    As a blanket statement (which is how you worded it) this is not always true. I have lived in both suburban SF houses (at relatively low density) and higher density intown SF houses. There is far less congestion in the higher density areas (largely because of gridded streets and transportation alternatives such as walking and transit). I would judge pollution and privacy to be a wash.

    Based on my, not so unusual, experience higher densities do not always cause more congestion.

  • Anonymous

    “Higher densities create negative externalities: more congestion, more
    crowding, more noise, more pollution, less privacy and so on.”

    As a blanket statement (which is how you worded it) this is not always true. I have lived in both suburban SF houses (at relatively low density) and higher density intown SF houses. There is far less congestion in the higher density areas (largely because of gridded streets and transportation alternatives such as walking and transit). I would judge pollution and privacy to be a wash.

    Based on my, not so unusual, experience higher densities do not always cause more congestion.

  • Eric

    Those costs (with the possible exception of congestion) are all primarily born by the residents of the area. In a free market, if people decide that the benefits of density (convenience, diversity, interest) outweigh the cost to them, then there will be a demand for density. If people decide that the tradeoff is worth it for them, who are we to tell them otherwise?

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