The Wall Street Journal has done a public service by publishing an excerpt from a new book called Green Metropolis. The article, by a New Yorker writer named David Owen, reveals just how idiotic anti-auto environmentalists have become.
Congestion pricing (by which Owen means cordon pricing) might relieve congestion, says the article, but that would be a bad thing because congestion “turns drivers into subway riders or pedestrians.” Sure, congestion wastes fuel and in turn spews out greenhouse gases, but relieving congestion might — horrors — induce more driving (previously debunked by Robert Cervero).
Owen’s book claims Manhattan is the greenest place in America because people there drive the least. “The real problem with cars is not that they don’t get enough miles to the gallon, It’s that they make it too easy for people to spread out, encouraging forms of development that are inherently wasteful and damaging,” he says. “What we really need, from the point of view of both energy conservation and environmental protection, is to make driving costlier and less pleasant.”
However, the experts opine that the purchases buy canadian viagra will be funded through structured debt instead of equity while a few ancestry players may attract equity. Though ED is painful but it is even most of time directed that ladies and kids must shirk contact with this potent viagra india prices drug as it could lead to deadly side effects that are quite harmful for life. Unfortunately, when it comes to getting nutrients to the extremities, the penis is often the case, even if the specific levitra sale downtownsault.org harm caused by the fall can be successfully treated. This medication ought to be taken stand out order cheap viagra time in a day. People like Owen lack imagination. Growing Cooler (7-mb pdf), a report from the Urban Land Institute, argues that we have to reduce driving because the fuel-efficiency standards in the 2007 Energy Independence & Security Act will not be enough to offset increases in driving. But why should we assume that cars will never be more energy-efficient than that law would require? (As a matter of fact, the auto industry has already agreed to make cars even more energy efficient than the 2007 standard.)
More important, people like Owen lack empathy. To them, the only problem with congestion is that it might waste a little fuel. What about the value of people’s time? What about the costs to businesses? What about the fact that a major reason for the sprawl they hate so much is that people are trying to get away from congestion?
An unspoken but fundamental assumption of the anti-auto crowd is that automobility has no value. So what if automobiles made homeownership affordable to more than a quarter of American households that previously had to live in crowded tenements? Some people are better off renting anyway, they say. So what if automobiles force retailers to be competitive and keep prices low? People ought to buy local anyway. So what if automobiles lead to higher personal incomes? People probably just spend that extra money buying bigger cars.
The truth is that mobility is valuable, there is no substitute for automobility, and we can find ways to solve environmental problems without taking that mobility away.
Well the automobile is a double edged sword.
It seems that there is a spectrum of zoning and planning activities, from passive coordination that increases efficiency and reduces negative externalities, to aggressive requirements on any development that seeks to increase positive externalities for the non-property owner. Perhaps even further along the spectrum is actively forcing a population to change their lifestyle.
I think planners cross an important line when they desire to increase congestion in order to force the public to take transit or move their homes.
There are so many strawmen and ridiculous red herrings in this argumentation it is hard to know why anyone takes this seriously. Is this post comedy? Freedom to choose between one choice? Putting all transportation eggs in one outdated basket while society changes*? Surely this proscription is comedy.
Nonetheless, here is the correct link for the “debunked” link above.
DS
* http://realestate.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=21179977
There’s little data or evidence that shows that the costs of mitigating congestion will outweigh the environmental impacts of keeping congestion. And let’s not assess environmental impacts of highways/sprawl with just carbon or air emissions. That seems to be the big environmental push (climate change), but along the way other environmental issues have taken a back seat.
Borealis said: I think planners cross an important line when they desire to increase congestion in order to force the public to take transit or move their homes.
THWM: Though the reverse is true too, when planners make transit use more difficult and force people to drive.
Indeed. Yes, it’s true that certain ways of mitigating congestion will increase driving. But that goes for mass transit, too. If you make the mass transit better, and more people take it, freeing up the highways– that traffic may be replaced by new people driving on them, perhaps people that would have not chosen to live farther away and commute on the highways. Intercity rail likes to boast of “induced travel” as well, travel that would not otherwise occur; it needs it in order to be profitable.
It’s reasonable to think that, e.g., some of the environmental benefits of increased fuel economy will be reduced by people driving longer when driving becomes cheaper. I’m not sure that it’s reasonable to claim that it would actually increase emissions on net without good evidence, though. But a congestion charge will on net reduce driving; that’s what charges do.
I wasn’t speaking too much of induced travel, though it was part of my overall argument. Maybe instead of this current article’s title, we can revere it to say: “Congestion Relief is Good for the Environment?”
Once again hijacking the comments section for my own benefit: wayyyyy off topic, what’s the libertarian position on money supply and inflation?
If noisy, claustrophobic, concrete Manhattan is the “greenest” place in America, I’ll choose ANY other color.
Regarding Owen’s desire to control people, and his willingness to disregard others’ wishes to achieve that, remember a famous Hayek quote:
“The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.“
chipdouglas said: Regarding Owen’s desire to control people, and his willingness to disregard others’ wishes to achieve that, remember a famous Hayek quote:
“The principle that the end justifies the means is in individualist ethics regarded as the denial of all morals. In collectivist ethics it becomes necessarily the supreme rule.“
THWM: Though the oligarchy that pays Mr.O’Toole wants to control people too!
David Owen is just another ignorant journalist who, like many planners, is too stupid or too lazy to actually dirty themselves by looking at real world “data”, instead preferring to live in an ivory tower fantasy world of Sierra club handouts.
If he had actually looked into the real world, he would have found that buses use more energy than cars and thus there is no environmental benefit to moving people from cars to buses. But there is a big downside: buses cost more and are slower than driving cars!
Further his beloved subway is probabley powered by coal.
Just another in the long line of fools that can’t be bothered to actually study something before opening their mouths.
Thanks
JK
So, the light rail system in Calgary is mostly powered by the wind.
Mr.Karlock if you want to live like a hermit, no one is stoping you!
Though the oligarchy that pays Mr.O’Toole wants to control people too!
CATO et al. an “oligarchy”? BWAHAHAHA! THWM: You’re a smart guy, and that’s how I know you don’t really believe Randal is a blank slate who will say anything The Corporationsâ„¢ tell him to. Maybe it gives you some sort of psychic relief to believe in a caricature of your detractors, but I’d be willing to bet Mr. O’Toole does this for reasons other than just money! Even in your Rube Goldberg fantasy contraption, at least the oligarchs have a choice of paying ROT — I know none of us has a choice but to pay the salaries of every diversity and social justice make-worker at our local P&D departments.
JK: Owen is just another lazy journalist, but I think it gets even worse than that: he is elitist by trade, and endorses anything that can provide him the weird sexual thrill he seeks through conquest and contradiction of the masses. If they don’t want it, it’s probably good for them. Save for the sexual thrill, this contrarian-control tendency of the intelligentsia has been noted for centuries.
So what if automobiles made homeownership affordable to more than a quarter of American households that previously had to live in crowded tenements? Some people are better off renting anyway, they say. So what if automobiles force retailers to be competitive and keep prices low? People ought to buy local anyway. So what if automobiles lead to higher personal incomes? People probably just spend that extra money buying bigger cars.
This is surely a quote from Highwayman.
I think any attempt to argue that congestion is worth the cost or relieving it isn’t is a waste of time. Any attempt to do so must be a prime candidate for Hayek’s fatal conceit: planners cannot know enough to write rules that make things better.
The upshot is that sprawl occurs precisely because people are prepared to trade off closeness to work for a larger house and a longer commute. It is folly for planners to tell those people they are wrong – planners cannot ever have enough information to understand the trade offs and make decisions better than consumers.
The better approach is to build roads where people want to go and in some cases put a price on access to roading at peak times. Leaving decisionmaking in the hands of individuals, who are rich in information about their own circumstances, rather than passing it to central authorities who are necessarily information poor by comparison, is a basic objection to all planning.
The better approach is to build roads where people want to go and in some cases put a price on access to roading at peak times. Leaving decisionmaking in the hands of individuals, who are rich in information about their own circumstances,
Rational utility maximizing agents being an old, tired and refuted paradigm notwithstanding, no one – no one, n-o o-n-e can build a road to where people want to go.
Why can no one build a road to where people want to go?
Because roads are almost always the first thing to go in. There is no there to go to.
[/Land Use, Planning, Real Estate 101]
DS
chipdouglas said: CATO et al. an “oligarchy� BWAHAHAHA! THWM: You’re a smart guy, and that’s how I know you don’t really believe Randal is a blank slate who will say anything The Corporations™ tell him to. Maybe it gives you some sort of psychic relief to believe in a caricature of your detractors, but I’d be willing to bet Mr. O’Toole does this for reasons other than just money! Even in your Rube Goldberg fantasy contraption, at least the oligarchs have a choice of paying ROT.
THWM: He’s pretty much a henchman. Cato is a lobby group for their sponsors & they want power.
Just as I can’t reason with you, if you don’t want to be reasonable.
Travel wise if you want to drive so be it, though don’t try to prevent people from not wanting to drive. Freedom comes with price, I don’t object to paying for roads, even if I rarely drive on them.
mattb02 said: So what if automobiles made homeownership affordable to more than a quarter of American households that previously had to live in crowded tenements? Some people are better off renting anyway, they say. So what if automobiles force retailers to be competitive and keep prices low? People ought to buy local anyway. So what if automobiles lead to higher personal incomes? People probably just spend that extra money buying bigger cars.
THWM: If any thing this just show’s O’Toole’s modal bias.
Cox writes in the same Triumph of the Will load the deck style too.
Just remember, suburban trains aren’t anti-suburban.
This seems to be a timely topic. Matt Kahn has a recent post on his blog about this issue, with a link to a paper looking at the pollution reduction benefits of replacing a manual toll collection facility with electronic collection.
Anyone who uses words like “henchmen” to describe bloggers and obscure, private policy wonks is a barking lunatic who belongs in a padded cell. And CATO a power-hungry interest group? The next Nobel prize belongs to you for figuring out how to create your own universe.
Chip, don’t get upset if I call a spade a spade.
O’Toole is a highway lobbyist, the out comes for what he writes are planned by those that pay his bills. It’s always four lanes good, two tracks bad.
If you won’t even be honest about that, then you have a real problem.
Yeah, highwayman, CATO isn’t power hungry…they rank number four for total annual citations (pg 10). Hungry? They’re quite sated by power.
TWHM: I think it’s an accurate characterization of my position to say that I get furious when you call a spade a spade. I hate that! I prefer to live in my fantasy world of lies and self-deceit, and I just can’t handle your truth.
t g said: Yeah, highwayman, CATO isn’t power hungry…they rank number four for total annual citations (pg 10). Hungry? They’re quite sated by power.
THWM: Well Cato is by no means an impartial/non-partisan entity.
chipdouglas said: I think it’s an accurate characterization of my position to say that I get furious when you call a spade a spade! I prefer to live in my fantasy world of lies, self-deceit and I just can’t handle the truth.
THWM: You need your space and that’s fine. Though other people and things need their space too. Just don’t be so greedy & hostile.
I just want to say amidst all the snark and snipe on here, that highwayman seems like the most relaxed dude.
THWM: Whatever you need to believe about mine, or Randal’s, or CATO’s, or any of your adversaries’ backgrounds, motives, or endgames to connect with that pillow every night — that’s fine. Lots of people do it; choose clinical paranoia. Is it a substantive argument? No. Is it an argument at all? Of course not. But it seems to sate you and if you’re happy, we are too.
Thanks TG!
chipdouglas said: Whatever you need to believe about mine, or Randal’s, or CATO’s, or any of your adversaries’ backgrounds, motives, or endgames to connect with that pillow every night — that’s fine. Lots of people do it; choose clinical paranoia.
THWM: Then why are you so worried?
“The light rail system in Calgary is mostly powered by the wind.” – Highwayman
This is really a bit of creative or, worse, Enron-esque accounting on the part of Calgary transit to make such a claim. First off because, as we all know, the wind isn’t always blowing when the trains are running. There is hydro, natural gas or coal being used during those times.
More so the problem is that they they claim to only be using 12 windmills to generate the power equivalent of their system. Since they don’t name the specific windfarm let alone which 12 turbines are doing this we’ll have to guess.
Given timing of the program and that they were working with Vision Quest it’s likely they’re referring to 12 turbines in the Castle Rock wind farm. The nameplate output for those 58 older turbines is about 40 MW. The problem is that no wind project every produces power like this even at it’s peak let alone consistently.
Calgary’s light rail requires about 25 million kWh annually to operate.
The question then becomes what is the actual kWh output. First off, this is likely something that Vision Quest guards tightly as possible. It’s actual number is going to depend on specific wind patterns at their Castle Rock wind farm. It’s also going to depend on how well that older generation holds up; do they require a lot of maintenance?
So it all depends on what actual kWh generation is. For example, for wind farms in Texas that is about 10% of their nameplate. If that’s the case, powering Calgary’s light rail would require nearly all 58 of those turbines to supply the equivalent number of kWh of electricty that it’s system consumes. Even with a generous 25% of nameplate, they would require 17 or 18 turbines. That’s 50% more than what Calgary Transit claims.
So TransAlta is doing the same stuff as O’Toole, Karlock & Cox.
THWM: Non-sequitur.
So Chip are you’re using a gasoline powered computer.
Guess what Mr.Karlock, Mr.Owen is just like you!
http://www.filedby.com/author/david_owen/8586/
the highwayman said:
So Chip are you’re using a gasoline powered computer.
I want you to reread that sentence, then explain to me what it means, this time in discernible English.
Is it a question or a statement? Is it a possessive adjective or a conjunction? Get back to me — thanks!