Back in the Air Again

The Antiplanner was in Phoenix this week debating light rail with proponents of a ballot measure that would increase sales taxes in order to expand that city’s rail system. In addition to a public forum, a brief debate was televised and is available on video.

After the Antiplanner’s review of the existing light-rail line debunked claims that the line stimulated $7 billion in economic development, Valley Metro published a new paper claiming that it stimulated $8.2 billion in development. This $8.2 billion still includes projects that haven’t yet (and may never be) built. However, the new paper does not provide a complete list of the developments supposedly built because of the light rail, and the agency has been unresponsive to requests for such a list, but it is clear Valley Metro merely counted anything that happened to be built within a half mile of a light-rail station without asking whether those projects would have been built without the rail line.

In their campaign for the ballot measure, proponents claim the increased sales tax will provide money for repaving and improving streets. It is clear from the city’s transportation plan, however, that most if not all of the street money will be used to reduce the capacity of streets for cars in favor of more room for buses and bicycles (see exhibit A on page 18). Even if the city intended to improve streets, any light-rail cost overruns would quickly eat up most of the street money.
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Although the tax increase will supposedly go for rail, buses, and streets, in fact all of the revenue from the increase roughly equals the projected cost of new light-rail lines. That means everything in the plan could be funded without a tax increase except the rail lines. Voters will decide on August 25 whether Phoenix should spend $7 billion on new light-rail lines or instead focus on low-cost bus and other improvements, which could result in better transit service without increasing taxes.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

5 Responses to Back in the Air Again

  1. Frank says:

    You owned Kate Gallego in that debate. She simply couldn’t respond to the allegation that light rail is an obsolete technology and that buses are a more efficient and cost effective way of moving people. Nor could she respond to the claim that one new light rail line would cost 150 times BRT. Just kept babbling on about “investment” and what investors want… It’s a dubious thing when the public has to spend 150 more on an alternative to attract “investment”.

    At least Gallego speaks to reality when stating “We really think this is an investment in creating a global city.” A global city? What?! Just say you want a pretty train as a status symbol so you can be as hip as Portland or as progressive (read:socialist) as Europe. Just admit that Phoenix has rail envy and have read too much spam about increasing the size of their rail line.

    Interesting that Phoenix is “investing” in shade trees in a desert where it’s going to hit 110 this week. Can’t imagine too many shade trees that will grow in a desert urban environment that won’t need lots and lots of precious water.

    Keep up the good work.

  2. FrancisKing says:

    I wasn’t so convinced by what Antiplanner was saying. He and Ms. Gallego were not talking about the same things. He was saying that if the light rail was not built, the development would go in anyway elsewhere. I think this is correct, and she didn’t respond to the point. She was saying that investors want to clump together, which isn’t possible with bus, it needs light rail. Antiplanner made the point that most people (at the moment) travel by car, even when they don’t own one themselves. But then neither he nor Ms. Gallego realised that their claims of high capacity are then worthless…if everyone is going by car, regardless.

    Antiplanner continues to maintain that buses have a higher capacity than light rail. I’d love to see some maths for that claim. Light rail can be run line-of-sight, like a bus. So where does the claim of closer running come from? Bus services like Curitiba are put forwards as a solution, but that requires strap-hanging, and running at crush capacities.

  3. ahwr says:

    @Frank
    Doesn’t the Phoenix area grow a lot of cotton? If they sell the water on the open market would farmers switch to less thirsty crops, or would they outbid city dwellers/block associations/BIDs etc… who want trees?

    Assuming the Navajo generating station keeps running and the feds don’t cut the allotment from the Colorado too much…

  4. prk166 says:

    Those differences are important but I’m not sure where they get us. Just because a few developers want to be able to upsell apartments on land they own ( or have an option to buy ), doesn’t mean it’s something that should be done, let alone good.

    As for capacity potential, there’s no use in talking about those without talking about what it costs to have that capacity and what is gained. For example, a lot of folks in the lead up to Fastracks would comment on light rail carrying more than buses.

    Why does theoretical capacity matter? Light rail was so expensive for them to build that they had to build 3 car platforms instead of five. They had to single track a large portion of the West Line, etc, etc. Worse, operational savings that may have been gained by the volume aren’t seen because their customers demanded they don’t cut the now redundant bus routes.

  5. MJ says:

    Doesn’t the Phoenix area grow a lot of cotton? If they sell the water on the open market would farmers switch to less thirsty crops, or would they outbid city dwellers/block associations/BIDs etc… who want trees?

    The areas around Phoenix do grow quite a bit of cotton. I’m not sure what you mean by selling water on the “open market”. Water allocation in that area is handled by quasi-governmental organizations that assign water rights, often by fairly political means. Joel Garreau’s book Edge Cities has a chapter-long account of this phenomena. He refers to the organizations as “shadow governments”.

    In principle it is possible to adjust water pricing to reflect scarcity. Were water actually priced at marginal cost, we would probably see a lot fewer trees, fewer golf courses, and a lot less cotton grown in that region. Of course, as the recent water shortage in California has indicated, public water providers often have difficulty implementing such policies because the economic allocation function of these organizations is not (and I believe, cannot be) disentangled from the political process. Many people have a tendency to see water as a fundamental ‘right’ (as distinct from a property right), which leads them to reject the idea of pricing water to reflect its scarcity. Moreover, there are always groups who make a claim to special treatment when it comes to water allocation (e.g. farmers, ranchers, native groups, etc.) and thus lobby to exempt themselves from being subject to price as a rationing mechanism.

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