First and foremost, we need to abolish the laws that caused
this all to happen. Yes, that’s right – all of this was
required to happen, by law. Many people think that sprawl is
a free market phenomenon, and they are exactly wrong. Sprawl
is caused by the following policies – I call these Sprawl
Laws; you can find them for yourself in your local city code
(for the most succinct explanation, see this paper[1]):
* Zoning
* Setbacks
* Minimum parking requirements
* Minimum lot sizes
* Maximum units per lot
* Minimum road widths
Add school district zoning into the mix, and you have the full recipe for where our cities are today.
It's interesting that some of the most charming neighborhoods in the country (e.g. Chelsea in New York, DuPont in D.C.) were built before all that crap. You'd never build a "modern city" like Philadelphia, with its narrow one-way streets, lack of parking, and commercial and retail mish-mashed together. But most of the rest of the country feels dead in comparison.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the mortgage interest tax deduction as a contributor to sprawl. I.e. federally subsidized home ownership. Talk about reasons to ditch your downtown rental and borrow against a grassy slice of suburban land.
The author never made the case that a property owner is SUPPOSED to pay for the cost of the street, so I'm not even motivated to figure out whether the analysis is correct or not.
The government is not a bank. You're not supposed to "get out what you put in" or "pay for what you use." The government provides things for the public good: roads, education, police, military, etc.
Of course some government is a Ponzi scheme in the sense that some people "pay for more than they use." That's called progressive taxation. So if the evil sprawlsters are subsidizing the older roads...so what? The evil sprawlsters can afford it.
It would be just as ridiculous to write an article about how "people with children in schools aren't paying the cost of the school" or good grief even "people who have a fire aren't paying the cost of the fire department." Roads are provided for the public good.
So it really doesn't matter that the author doesn't even address the fact that many of these supposedly deadbeat property owners are paying a whole bunch of taxes that are keeping the city of Ames afloat, along with its supposedly inaccurate road tax scheme.
> The author never made the case that a property owner is SUPPOSED to pay for the cost of the street, so I'm not even motivated to figure out whether the analysis is correct or not.
It's worth reading up on Joseph Stiglitz's work in the 1970s that demonstrated how government spending in public goods is transformed exactly into land rents under many conditions.[0]
The author was addressing the opposite situation -- people using more than what they pay for.
> It would be just as ridiculous to write an article about how "people with children in schools aren't paying the cost of the school"
A more similar analogy to what the author was pointing out would be that current taxpayers will receive more Social Security benefit over their lifetimes than the future value of their lifetime payments, meaning that the system is only financially sound if we assume the working population will grow at an appropriate rate such that we'll always have enough workers to pay for retirees.
Or, adjusting the analogies you provided: we are borrowing from other countries to pay for our schools and fire departments. This happens to be true. Is it bad? Unknown.
So if the evil sprawlsters are subsidizing the older roads...so what? The evil sprawlsters can afford it.
I think you (and probably the author) have got this exactly backwards. Sprawl creates blight when the rate of building outpaces the needs of population growth. The evil sprawlsters are creating new costs, but they aren't subsidizing old roads. The sprawl usually happens outside of long-ago drawn city borders, anyway.
If you have 5 families living in 5 houses in the urban core and you build 5 new houses for them to live in out in the suburbs, then population needs to double for there to be full occupancy.
As a case study, take a look at my home town of St. Louis. Much has been made about the city's population loss. But that's just in the urban core; the region's population has actually grown slightly over the last 40 years. It just hasn't grown fast enough to fill up all the new houses we've built out across the river.
The sprawlsters aren't subsidizing the old roads. They have completely abandoned them and are leaving them to nature.
You seem to be reading a tone into this article that I'm not. I didn't perceive a complaint that people don't pay for what they use, I perceived a complaint that the city of Ames is spending a huge portion of their budget on roads that may or may not be necessary. Putting the cost of these roads in terms of property tax is an interesting way of looking at this problem, which doesn't necessarily imply that everyone has to pay for their share of the road in full.
The point, as I read it, is this only works as long as there is enough growth to pay for upkeep of older infrastructure. The second the growth slows, or even stops, there's trouble. And nobody is arguing you should only get out what you put in, but on average, if property taxes are barely high enough to pay for the street in front of that house, it's obvious there will be a problem.
That taxes go to pay for things the gov't provides is clearly presupposed. You seem to be saying things that the gov't provides don't have costs associated with them.
It’s simple – here’s how it works:Say a community is built in Year 1.The community’s streets need to be rebuilt every 30 years.In Year 30 a new, identical community is built. Now twice the amount of taxes are coming, and so for time being the property owners only need to pay half the amount.And 30 years later, in Year 60, two new communities are built; as long as the number of properties and property taxes are doubling every 30 years, they can continue to pay half the amount.
Year 1, one community (community A), over the next 30 years is going to pay for 1 community's worth of roads (call it a 30 year loan given on day 1, let's say 1M dollars). So, the cost for community A is 1M dollars for 30 community-years of roads.
Year 30, we add a new community B to the mix. This community needs its own roads, so it needs a loan for 1M dollars it will pay off over the next 30 years. However, community A's roads have worn out. Community A just finished paying off their first loan, so they'll need a new one.
At year 60, we have paid 3M dollars, and gotten 90 "community-years" of roads out of it. This is no different than the equivalent end of the first year with one community, one loan, and 30 "community-years" of roads.
Community A doesn't take out a loan. The roads were built with exogenous funds. Starting in 30 years, Community A has to start paying X dollars a year in maintenance on it's roads. Community A taxes itself $X/2 per year and pays for a fire department with it.
In Year 30, Community B is built with exogenous funds. Starting in 30 years, Community B has to start paying $X a year in maintenance on it's roads. Community A has to raise taxes to $X, half of which goes to maintenance on it's roads and half of which goes to A's fire department, and Community B starts paying $X in taxes every year, half of which goes to maintenance on A's roads and half of which goes to B's fire department.
In Year 60, Community A and Community B each have to come up with an additional $X/2 per year in taxes or cut their fire departments.
Infrastructure is expensive to replace. These towns and cities are only able to afford to do so by making new subdivisions pay for it. This works so long as you keep growing exponentially, forever, which you won't. Someday, there won't be new people to pay for it.
City policies on this vary so much that it's impossible to generalize. That said, newer cities often end up forgetting that they need to pay for street reconstruction. The original cost of the street is usually included in the initial price of the house.
Sophisticated cities maintain a model (commonly called a pavement management program) that lets them predict future maintenance cost across the city.
He misses the fact that Ames does get tax money for street maintenance [1] and reconstruction [2]. His estimate for a properly maintained street is quite low -- other Midwestern US cities are able to get 60-70 years from their streets.
He also misses out on special assessments as a source of revenue -- which is very common for residential street projects.
>other Midwestern US cities are able to get 60-70 years from their streets.
By neglecting them when they are horribly cracked and potholed after 25 years. Then they make up for their long term "investment" in concrete by skim coating with asphalt.
Interesting article, and great visuals. The Sankey Diagram of the budget was very nice and of course all the interactive maps bear mentioning.
I think that anecdote about the "free" parking structure was really telling. The federal government swooped in and built a bunch of parking space then left the lesser governments squabbling over whose responsibility it wasn't.
More importantly, I think the best solution is to just pay more taxes. But "paying more taxes" seems to be antithetical to most Americans.
It's like the American Dream has just become "having nice things and not paying for them".
CA colleges are, for a number of reasons (prop 13, etc), in perpetual budget crises. A mother with a daughter in a UC was interviewed on tv whining about the impact of budget cuts on her daughter's education. After about a minute of this moron whinging, the reporter asked if she would be willing to pay a couple hundred dollars per year more in tax if it were dedicated to the UC system. Given my description of her, you know the answer: Of course not! We're overtaxed!
Most people are too stupid to understand that if we want nice things, we have to collectively pay for them. Though to be fair, there's plenty of politicians (see Republicans in Kansas, Louisiana, etc) telling people what they want to hear: tax cuts pay for themselves...
As a cyclist, I get a lot of reasons I shouldn't be on the road thrown at me from people with uneducated opinions, but this one - this misconception right here that driving pays for roads, is the only one that makes my blood boil. I think if more people understood what actually pays for the roads it would cut down on the sense of entitled driving so many seem to have in general.
Admittedly it's more due to the UK's peculiar form of taxation (in a netshell: occupiers of houses pay "council tax" rather than owners paying "property tax"). But the website is a little dated, I hear they re-instated a ring-fenced sales tax on cars that will go towards road development.
There's this assumption that are $15-$18 per square foot. I'm no expert here, but I think that number might be roughly double what cities actually pay, based on this document from the State of Michigan : https://www.michigan.gov/documents/Vol2-40UIP16SubDevCosts-Y...
It's a decade old, but I'm seeing only $8/square foot cost, not $15+. Using the rest of the authors map + numbers, the majority of properties are now actually covering their street costs, with some room to spare for extras (such as curbs, sewers, sidewalks, etc, which suburban sprawl-type streets typically don't have).
Of course, Michigan roads are infamous for being terrible -- this might be the reason.
It might also be worth considering that a lot of high-end sprawl costs the city nothing in maintenance for their roads, since they are privately paved / plowed / maintained by HOAs.
This research seems more thorough, but still concludes that low-density developments often require much more than 30 years to pay off a road's 30-year lifecycle.
Edit: Looks like OP's calculations are based on how much of the collected taxes actually goes to the road budget.
> Of course, Michigan roads are infamous for being terrible -- this might be the reason.
This is a bit of a tangent, but Michigan actually has fairly high construction standards for roads. However, it also has one of the highest truck weight limits in the nation (over double the federal limit) and most road damage comes from heavy trucks.
CPI from 2003 to 2016 would bring that $8 up to $10.35, FWIW. And then, as you mentioned, road quality may come in to play. As would labor costs and other factors.
How are you arriving at $8? The footnote on page 2 puts it maybe close to that at minimum just for the construction (the article is including 30 years of maintenance).
I wonder if at some point we'll look back at the 20th century for what it was: a complete disaster of urban planning as sacrifice to the Church of the Car.
I live in NYC. It still befuddles me when I see people driving around Manhattan (why??). On a Saturday you can see traffic backed up half a mile to get to the Holland Tunnel. How was any of this not entirely foreseeable? Why do people endure it?
Anyway I discussed with someone how much space is allocated to free or highly subsidized parking. The going rate for land in Manhattan is >$600/sq ft now. Back-of-the-envelope estimates of the land dedicated to parking below 125th street puts the value of these parking spots at around $2 billion. A parking spot in prime real estate would be close to $100k. It's maintained by the city, chokes traffic and is given away for free (in a lot of cases). Why doesn't it generate revenues of $10k/year or roughly $30/day at the very minimum?
In most parts of the US living without a car is nigh-on-impossible. The dismantling of streetcars is many cities at the behest of the auto industry has been well-covered.
Something else I find interesting: the gun debate is contentious. Some argue guns make crime more likely. Others argue it's people not guns that are the problem.
Why isn't there this same debate about cars? I don't think they're inherently bad but you have to consider that the car made a lot of crimes possible that previously weren't (or at least weren't practical). Kidnappings, serial killings, bank robberies, burglaries, smuggling (eg cigarettes/alcohol across state lines) often feature a car or truck as a necessary component of the crime.
When people talk about crime getting worse over time, how much of this can be correlated with the ease and propensity of car ownership?
Anyway, as for urban planning, it's amazing how much people expect the city, state and Federal governments to subsidize their lifestyle choices with infrastructure like roads, sewer lines, water and the like. Rarely do these developments pay for their own infrastructure (it's at least subsidized to some degree).
How quickly society changes to where car ownership and all the infrastructure required became viewed as some God given right.
I think there are a few problems with the math but the largest seems to be his costs seem out of whack.
Creating a new road is more expensive than any maintenance/entire repaving since it shouldn't need to be re-graded/piped/utilities dealt with/etc. Sunnyvale in California quotes a variety of prices for street maintenance up to reconstruction and none are over $7/sq foot.[1] And this is in California where constructions costs are usually high compared to the rest of the nation.
Don't most streets with houses on them have houses on both sides of the street? In which case if two houses are each paying 60% the cost of the street on their frontage, isn't there a 20% overage?
I've always wondered why we pave our streets to begin with. Yes, I know that dirt and gravel kick up alot of dust, but the expense of the street itself seems a bit extreme as well.
I can't think of how many times I've seen a new street go in, and just a few weeks later they cut it up and dig up a water line to replace it.
There has to be a better material besides concrete or asphalt that would provide similar benefits.
The other part, while I don't know how you would get around it, seems to be the fact that my car tires are about 10" wide (20" combined). The street in front of my house is 80' wide. Thats an awful lot of space not being used.
"I've always wondered why we pave our streets to begin with."
Dramatic reduction in particulate air pollution.
There have been programs to reduce air pollution in towns along the US - Mexico border. Folks on the US side paid to have roads paved in Mexico so it would reduce pollution--it was cheaper than taking incremental steps on the US side.
I've lived on dirt roads. At this point you only really find them in very rural areas because of their disadvantages.
1) Dirt roads can become almost impassable in bad weather. Everything turns to mud so it's very easy to get stuck or damage your car
2) Dirt roads require a fair amount of maintenance under moderate use. Roads can wash out, have too many rocks, can become lopsided or have gauges in them from car traffic.
3) Its way to damage your car. If you go too fast you can easily blow your oil pan. Dust of course gets into everywhere including the engine.
4) Low speeds. Your max speed is around 20-40 mph in good weather depending on the curves. Bad weather you can easily be going 5 mph. When getting to the town center takes an hour takes an hour, it becomes beneficial to leave roads just because of the increased store traffic.
5) Your vehicle gets incredibly dirty. Those wash me memes are clean in comparison
I grew up in a rural area with its fair share of dirt/gravel roads.
Vehicles definitely see a lot more wear from driving on dirt roads (beyond the superficial constant dust covering). I expect that the cost of pavement is less than the cost of additional maintenance for all the road's users. (This also explains why it makes sense to leave some dirt roads in very rural areas.)
I'm sure there are some road users this wouldn't work for, but check out permeable interlocking pavers. I encountered some country roads in Germany that were paved with these for many kilometers. It was a beautiful and pleasant place to ride.
It sounds like you're suggesting there could be gaps in the middle of the lane, so only the area the tyre uses is paved, but that's surely missing the bigger picture:
80' is 7 or 8 lanes for highway traffic! Why is the road so wide?
Interesting opinion.
Americans built free road at the expense of their own future generations.
The author think Americans must stop this spiral and paying the road cost by paying more tax or reduce economic activities by not building and maintaining the road.
Paying more tax would not happens. The Citizen will flee to other states/countries for avoiding high tax(and that place gets free road).
Reducing the economy doesn't work too.
Your future generation unsatisfied the situation(lack of jobs, cultures etc) and flee to other more economically advanced cities/countries(and that place gets free road).
It seems like the yearly cost calculation (19,146.11 /30 years = $638.20) ignores the time value of money. $19,146.11 30 years from now is only worth $5,778.22 today at 4%. The future value of 30 $378.49 yearly payments at 4%/yr is $21,227.59 ..
The cost of resurfacing will probably rise proportional to inflation, so it will cost more to resurface in the future as well .. but couldn't the city invest the funds to get 3-4% over inflation? Also, the yearly tax payments will rise proportionally over time.
I can only speak for my own city, but the cost of building out new roads and infrastructure for new development is paid for not by property taxes, but by the building permits for the development. They actually just had a city council meeting outlining the expected growth over the next 5 years, its expected cost, and the resulting fees for building various types of residential and commercial development.
So the article is correct, that property taxes do not pay for it all. But that is not the only source of revenue.
I don't quite see his argument that this is a ponzi scheme. Wouldn't that mean, if a city stops growing, the whole thing collapses and the streets fall apart?
It seems more like parasitism, where the urban core is burdened with supporting more and more suburbs, and stopping growth is a step toward stability.
I live in an established town. The municipal boundary is about eight square miles. Very few new developments so the author's math doesn't apply. Our roads are maintained by the "tar and chip" approach which is pretty automated. A truck which has both the tar sprayer and the chip spreader drives around town on a regular basis to resurface the roads. Our road has been resurfaced this way about every five years.
The next town over has brick roads. They also need periodic maintenance, but it looks like the same bricks have been in place for a hundred years.
I'm sure that in both cases our taxes ARE paying the cost of the streets.
I don't think zoning and the other minimum requirements are the issue. It's the fact that the longterm costs of sprawl aren't going to be born by the individual, so the individual doesn't consider them.
If the country decides to fight a war that adds another $5K in debt per citizen, most people are oblivious to that.
But if they told you your share for the war will be an extra $100 a month for the next 5 years, you might pay more attention.
By the way, the average taxpayer's share of the national debt is now $161K.
The cost estimates for road construction the author uses are probably roughly the same across the country. Property taxes, on the other hand, vary widely. So at most, he's proving that in Iowa—where property prices are relatively low—there may be an imbalance. But this tells us very little about whether there is a widespread problem. Go to a higher cost of living area, or an area with higher population density, and the math looks very different.
Based on the amount of potholes and cracks on the streets bounding my apartment, I'm almost certain that we (me) aren't paying for the street to be maintained.
[+] [-] clarkmoody|10 years ago|reply
[1] http://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
[+] [-] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngould|10 years ago|reply
http://freakonomics.com/2012/06/29/homeownership-and-suburba...
[+] [-] gumby|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] massysett|10 years ago|reply
The government is not a bank. You're not supposed to "get out what you put in" or "pay for what you use." The government provides things for the public good: roads, education, police, military, etc.
Of course some government is a Ponzi scheme in the sense that some people "pay for more than they use." That's called progressive taxation. So if the evil sprawlsters are subsidizing the older roads...so what? The evil sprawlsters can afford it.
It would be just as ridiculous to write an article about how "people with children in schools aren't paying the cost of the school" or good grief even "people who have a fire aren't paying the cost of the fire department." Roads are provided for the public good.
So it really doesn't matter that the author doesn't even address the fact that many of these supposedly deadbeat property owners are paying a whole bunch of taxes that are keeping the city of Ames afloat, along with its supposedly inaccurate road tax scheme.
[+] [-] bufordsharkley|10 years ago|reply
It's worth reading up on Joseph Stiglitz's work in the 1970s that demonstrated how government spending in public goods is transformed exactly into land rents under many conditions.[0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George_theorem
[+] [-] msellout|10 years ago|reply
The author was addressing the opposite situation -- people using more than what they pay for.
> It would be just as ridiculous to write an article about how "people with children in schools aren't paying the cost of the school"
A more similar analogy to what the author was pointing out would be that current taxpayers will receive more Social Security benefit over their lifetimes than the future value of their lifetime payments, meaning that the system is only financially sound if we assume the working population will grow at an appropriate rate such that we'll always have enough workers to pay for retirees.
Or, adjusting the analogies you provided: we are borrowing from other countries to pay for our schools and fire departments. This happens to be true. Is it bad? Unknown.
[+] [-] dionidium|10 years ago|reply
I think you (and probably the author) have got this exactly backwards. Sprawl creates blight when the rate of building outpaces the needs of population growth. The evil sprawlsters are creating new costs, but they aren't subsidizing old roads. The sprawl usually happens outside of long-ago drawn city borders, anyway.
If you have 5 families living in 5 houses in the urban core and you build 5 new houses for them to live in out in the suburbs, then population needs to double for there to be full occupancy.
As a case study, take a look at my home town of St. Louis. Much has been made about the city's population loss. But that's just in the urban core; the region's population has actually grown slightly over the last 40 years. It just hasn't grown fast enough to fill up all the new houses we've built out across the river.
The sprawlsters aren't subsidizing the old roads. They have completely abandoned them and are leaving them to nature.
[+] [-] thescriptkiddie|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] x0x0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lubesGordi|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tamana|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theanomaly|10 years ago|reply
It’s simple – here’s how it works: Say a community is built in Year 1. The community’s streets need to be rebuilt every 30 years. In Year 30 a new, identical community is built. Now twice the amount of taxes are coming, and so for time being the property owners only need to pay half the amount. And 30 years later, in Year 60, two new communities are built; as long as the number of properties and property taxes are doubling every 30 years, they can continue to pay half the amount.
Year 1, one community (community A), over the next 30 years is going to pay for 1 community's worth of roads (call it a 30 year loan given on day 1, let's say 1M dollars). So, the cost for community A is 1M dollars for 30 community-years of roads.
Year 30, we add a new community B to the mix. This community needs its own roads, so it needs a loan for 1M dollars it will pay off over the next 30 years. However, community A's roads have worn out. Community A just finished paying off their first loan, so they'll need a new one.
At year 60, we have paid 3M dollars, and gotten 90 "community-years" of roads out of it. This is no different than the equivalent end of the first year with one community, one loan, and 30 "community-years" of roads.
What am i missing from this example?
[+] [-] aaronbwebber|10 years ago|reply
In Year 30, Community B is built with exogenous funds. Starting in 30 years, Community B has to start paying $X a year in maintenance on it's roads. Community A has to raise taxes to $X, half of which goes to maintenance on it's roads and half of which goes to A's fire department, and Community B starts paying $X in taxes every year, half of which goes to maintenance on A's roads and half of which goes to B's fire department.
In Year 60, Community A and Community B each have to come up with an additional $X/2 per year in taxes or cut their fire departments.
[+] [-] mabbo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevep001|10 years ago|reply
Sophisticated cities maintain a model (commonly called a pavement management program) that lets them predict future maintenance cost across the city.
He misses the fact that Ames does get tax money for street maintenance [1] and reconstruction [2]. His estimate for a properly maintained street is quite low -- other Midwestern US cities are able to get 60-70 years from their streets.
He also misses out on special assessments as a source of revenue -- which is very common for residential street projects.
[1] http://www.cityofames.org/home/showdocument?id=22486 page 178 shows state taxes as a revenue source
[2] http://www.cityofames.org/home/showdocument?id=8045 page 91/92 shows a variety of sources, including state taxes
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|10 years ago|reply
By neglecting them when they are horribly cracked and potholed after 25 years. Then they make up for their long term "investment" in concrete by skim coating with asphalt.
[+] [-] mfoy_|10 years ago|reply
I think that anecdote about the "free" parking structure was really telling. The federal government swooped in and built a bunch of parking space then left the lesser governments squabbling over whose responsibility it wasn't.
More importantly, I think the best solution is to just pay more taxes. But "paying more taxes" seems to be antithetical to most Americans.
It's like the American Dream has just become "having nice things and not paying for them".
[+] [-] x0x0|10 years ago|reply
CA colleges are, for a number of reasons (prop 13, etc), in perpetual budget crises. A mother with a daughter in a UC was interviewed on tv whining about the impact of budget cuts on her daughter's education. After about a minute of this moron whinging, the reporter asked if she would be willing to pay a couple hundred dollars per year more in tax if it were dedicated to the UC system. Given my description of her, you know the answer: Of course not! We're overtaxed!
Most people are too stupid to understand that if we want nice things, we have to collectively pay for them. Though to be fair, there's plenty of politicians (see Republicans in Kansas, Louisiana, etc) telling people what they want to hear: tax cuts pay for themselves...
[+] [-] bbarn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kspaans|10 years ago|reply
Admittedly it's more due to the UK's peculiar form of taxation (in a netshell: occupiers of houses pay "council tax" rather than owners paying "property tax"). But the website is a little dated, I hear they re-instated a ring-fenced sales tax on cars that will go towards road development.
[+] [-] maxsilver|10 years ago|reply
It's a decade old, but I'm seeing only $8/square foot cost, not $15+. Using the rest of the authors map + numbers, the majority of properties are now actually covering their street costs, with some room to spare for extras (such as curbs, sewers, sidewalks, etc, which suburban sprawl-type streets typically don't have).
Of course, Michigan roads are infamous for being terrible -- this might be the reason.
It might also be worth considering that a lot of high-end sprawl costs the city nothing in maintenance for their roads, since they are privately paved / plowed / maintained by HOAs.
[+] [-] jtsnow|10 years ago|reply
This research seems more thorough, but still concludes that low-density developments often require much more than 30 years to pay off a road's 30-year lifecycle.
Edit: Looks like OP's calculations are based on how much of the collected taxes actually goes to the road budget.
[+] [-] kevinnk|10 years ago|reply
This is a bit of a tangent, but Michigan actually has fairly high construction standards for roads. However, it also has one of the highest truck weight limits in the nation (over double the federal limit) and most road damage comes from heavy trucks.
[+] [-] ffumarola|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|10 years ago|reply
I live in NYC. It still befuddles me when I see people driving around Manhattan (why??). On a Saturday you can see traffic backed up half a mile to get to the Holland Tunnel. How was any of this not entirely foreseeable? Why do people endure it?
Anyway I discussed with someone how much space is allocated to free or highly subsidized parking. The going rate for land in Manhattan is >$600/sq ft now. Back-of-the-envelope estimates of the land dedicated to parking below 125th street puts the value of these parking spots at around $2 billion. A parking spot in prime real estate would be close to $100k. It's maintained by the city, chokes traffic and is given away for free (in a lot of cases). Why doesn't it generate revenues of $10k/year or roughly $30/day at the very minimum?
In most parts of the US living without a car is nigh-on-impossible. The dismantling of streetcars is many cities at the behest of the auto industry has been well-covered.
Something else I find interesting: the gun debate is contentious. Some argue guns make crime more likely. Others argue it's people not guns that are the problem.
Why isn't there this same debate about cars? I don't think they're inherently bad but you have to consider that the car made a lot of crimes possible that previously weren't (or at least weren't practical). Kidnappings, serial killings, bank robberies, burglaries, smuggling (eg cigarettes/alcohol across state lines) often feature a car or truck as a necessary component of the crime.
When people talk about crime getting worse over time, how much of this can be correlated with the ease and propensity of car ownership?
Anyway, as for urban planning, it's amazing how much people expect the city, state and Federal governments to subsidize their lifestyle choices with infrastructure like roads, sewer lines, water and the like. Rarely do these developments pay for their own infrastructure (it's at least subsidized to some degree).
How quickly society changes to where car ownership and all the infrastructure required became viewed as some God given right.
[+] [-] JoblessWonder|10 years ago|reply
Creating a new road is more expensive than any maintenance/entire repaving since it shouldn't need to be re-graded/piped/utilities dealt with/etc. Sunnyvale in California quotes a variety of prices for street maintenance up to reconstruction and none are over $7/sq foot.[1] And this is in California where constructions costs are usually high compared to the rest of the nation.
[1] http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/PublicWork/StreetMainten...
[+] [-] warfangle|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HighPlainsDrftr|10 years ago|reply
I can't think of how many times I've seen a new street go in, and just a few weeks later they cut it up and dig up a water line to replace it.
There has to be a better material besides concrete or asphalt that would provide similar benefits.
The other part, while I don't know how you would get around it, seems to be the fact that my car tires are about 10" wide (20" combined). The street in front of my house is 80' wide. Thats an awful lot of space not being used.
[+] [-] massysett|10 years ago|reply
Dramatic reduction in particulate air pollution.
There have been programs to reduce air pollution in towns along the US - Mexico border. Folks on the US side paid to have roads paved in Mexico so it would reduce pollution--it was cheaper than taking incremental steps on the US side.
[+] [-] twunde|10 years ago|reply
1) Dirt roads can become almost impassable in bad weather. Everything turns to mud so it's very easy to get stuck or damage your car
2) Dirt roads require a fair amount of maintenance under moderate use. Roads can wash out, have too many rocks, can become lopsided or have gauges in them from car traffic.
3) Its way to damage your car. If you go too fast you can easily blow your oil pan. Dust of course gets into everywhere including the engine.
4) Low speeds. Your max speed is around 20-40 mph in good weather depending on the curves. Bad weather you can easily be going 5 mph. When getting to the town center takes an hour takes an hour, it becomes beneficial to leave roads just because of the increased store traffic.
5) Your vehicle gets incredibly dirty. Those wash me memes are clean in comparison
[+] [-] machrider|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morgante|10 years ago|reply
Vehicles definitely see a lot more wear from driving on dirt roads (beyond the superficial constant dust covering). I expect that the cost of pavement is less than the cost of additional maintenance for all the road's users. (This also explains why it makes sense to leave some dirt roads in very rural areas.)
[+] [-] jchrisa|10 years ago|reply
Portland Oregon has a fun policy to encourage neighbors to turn unpaved roads into linear parks. https://www.portlandoregon.gov/transportation/63612
[+] [-] stellar678|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NLips|10 years ago|reply
80' is 7 or 8 lanes for highway traffic! Why is the road so wide?
[+] [-] ezoe|10 years ago|reply
Paying more tax would not happens. The Citizen will flee to other states/countries for avoiding high tax(and that place gets free road). Reducing the economy doesn't work too. Your future generation unsatisfied the situation(lack of jobs, cultures etc) and flee to other more economically advanced cities/countries(and that place gets free road).
Borrowing from the future generation is better.
[+] [-] cwalv|10 years ago|reply
The cost of resurfacing will probably rise proportional to inflation, so it will cost more to resurface in the future as well .. but couldn't the city invest the funds to get 3-4% over inflation? Also, the yearly tax payments will rise proportionally over time.
[+] [-] codingdave|10 years ago|reply
So the article is correct, that property taxes do not pay for it all. But that is not the only source of revenue.
[+] [-] andys627|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ranprieur|10 years ago|reply
It seems more like parasitism, where the urban core is burdened with supporting more and more suburbs, and stopping growth is a step toward stability.
[+] [-] intrasight|10 years ago|reply
The next town over has brick roads. They also need periodic maintenance, but it looks like the same bricks have been in place for a hundred years.
I'm sure that in both cases our taxes ARE paying the cost of the streets.
[+] [-] stretchwithme|10 years ago|reply
If the country decides to fight a war that adds another $5K in debt per citizen, most people are oblivious to that.
But if they told you your share for the war will be an extra $100 a month for the next 5 years, you might pay more attention.
By the way, the average taxpayer's share of the national debt is now $161K.
[+] [-] gnicholas|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdavis703|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fiatjaf|10 years ago|reply