The Antiplanner has been so busy in Washington this week that I’ve barely had time to download email, much less read your no-doubt excellent comments on the posts I wrote earlier this week. But I did read a story about high-speed rail from the San Francisco Examiner.
Apparently, California thinks that it deserves “the lion’s share” of the $8 billion in the stimulus package for high-speed rail. Of course, in Aesop’s fable, the lion ended up with all of the stuff that was in dispute.
But whoever makes the decision parcelling out high-speed stimulus funds to the states will have to confront the fact that California’s high-speed rail plan is qualitatively different from those of most other states. These qualitative differences make it quantitatively at least a dozen times more expensive, not to mention far from shovel-ready.
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Eight billion dollars is enough to upgrade and buy equipment for the entire 2,300-mile Midwest high-speed rail plan, which would connect Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, and St. Louis with 110-mile-per-hour trains, plus slightly slower trains to Indianapolis and Louisville. But $8 billion is only 20 percent of the amount needed for a 400-mile rail line between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The improvements required for “moderate-speed” 110-mph trains are probably shovel-ready in many places. Construction won’t begin on California’s lines for several years. So any claim California has to stimulus money is highly questionable.
The Antiplanner is skeptical about both moderate-speed and high-speed rail for reasons that I’ve expressed in the past and more reasons that I’ll cover in a future post. For now, if any stimulus money is spent on rail, it should go to the moderate-speed projects that are likely to produce the most immediate benefits for both freight and passenger service.
ROT: For now, if any stimulus money is spent on rail, it should go to the moderate-speed projects that are likely to produce the most immediate benefits for both freight and passenger service.
THWM: A very good point, in America we use walk, but now we crawl.
We need to learn how walk again in America, before even attempting to run.
“Does California Deserve the Lion’s Share?â€Â
As William Munny (Clint Eastwood) says to Little Bill (Gene Hackman), just before killing him in the film “Unforgiven”,
“Deserve’s got nothing to do with it.”
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/the-lorax-was-wrong-skyscrapers-are-green/
The Lorax Was Wrong: Skyscrapers Are Green
By Edward L. Glaeser
Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard.
In Dr. Seuss’ environmentalist fable, “The Lorax,†the Once-ler, a budding textile magnate, chops down Truffula to knit “Thneeds.â€Â
Over the protests of the environmentally sensitive Lorax, the Once-ler builds a great industrial town that despoils the environment, because he “had to grow bigger.†Eventually, the Once-ler overdoes it, and he chops down the last Truffula tree, destroying the source of his income. Chastened, Dr. Seuss’s industrialist turns green, urging a young listener to take the last Truffula seed and plant a new forest.
Some of the lessons told by this story are correct. From a purely profit-maximizing point of view, the Once-ler is pretty inept, because he kills his golden goose. Any good management consultant would have told him to manage his growth more wisely. One aspect of the story’s environmentalist message, that bad things happen when we overfish a common pool, is also correct.
But the unfortunate aspect of the story is that urbanization comes off terribly. The forests are good; the factories are bad. Not only does the story disparage the remarkable benefits that came from the mass production of clothing in 19th-century textile towns, it sends exactly the wrong message on the environment. Contrary to the story’s implied message, living in cities is green, while living surrounded by forests is brown.
By building taller and taller buildings, the Once-ler was proving himself to be the real environmentalist.
Matthew Kahn, a U.C.L.A. environmental economist, and I looked across America’s metropolitan areas and calculated the carbon emissions associated with a new home in different parts of the country. We estimated expected energy use from driving and public transportation, for a family of fixed size and income. We added in carbon emissions from home electricity and home heating. We didn’t try to take on the far thornier issues related to commercial or industrial energy use.
This exercise wasn’t meant to be some sort of environmental beauty contest, but an estimate of the environmental costs and benefits associated with living in different parts of the country. In a recent City Journal article, I gave a brief (and somewhat polemical) synopsis of the results.
In almost every metropolitan area, we found the central city residents emitted less carbon than the suburban counterparts. In New York and San Francisco, the average urban family emits more than two tons less carbon annually because it drives less. In Nashville, the city-suburb carbon gap due to driving is more than three tons. After all, density is the defining characteristic of cities. All that closeness means that people need to travel shorter distances, and that shows up clearly in the data.
While public transportation certainly uses much less energy, per rider, than driving, large carbon reductions are possible without any switch to buses or rails. Higher-density suburban areas, which are still entirely car-dependent, still involve a lot less travel than the really sprawling places. This fact offers some hope for greens eager to reduce carbon emissions, since it is a lot easier to imagine Americans driving shorter distances than giving up their cars.
But cars represent only one-third of the gap in carbon emissions between New Yorkers and their suburbanites. The gap in electricity usage between New York City and its suburbs is also about two tons. The gap in emissions from home heating is almost three tons. All told, we estimate a seven-ton difference in carbon emissions between the residents of Manhattan’s urban aeries and the good burghers of Westchester County. Living surrounded by concrete is actually pretty green. Living surrounded by trees is not.
The policy prescription that follows from this is that environmentalists should be championing the growth of more and taller skyscrapers. Every new crane in New York City means less low-density development. The environmental ideal should be an apartment in downtown San Francisco, not a ranch in Marin County.
Of course, many environmentalists will still prefer to take their cue from Henry David Thoreau, who advocated living alone in the woods. They would do well to remember that Thoreau, in a sloppy chowder-cooking moment, burned down 300 acres of prime Concord woodland. Few Boston merchants did as much environmental harm, which suggests that if you want to take good care of the environment, stay away from it and live in cities.
Yes, the real environmentalists live in Manhatten because they don’t need to drive to their jobs financing the deforestation of the rainforests, drilling for oil in remote areas, and industralizing the last 3/4s of the world. What a great environment we would have if everyone else did that!
“Of course, many environmentalists will still prefer to take their cue from Henry David Thoreau, who advocated living alone in the woods. They would do well to remember that Thoreau, in a sloppy chowder-cooking moment, burned down 300 acres of prime Concord woodland. Few Boston merchants did as much environmental harm, which suggests that if you want to take good care of the environment, stay away from it and live in cities.”
If Thoreau burned down 300 acres of wood (must have been a very dry summer), then it grew back 150 years ago. Boston Harbor is still a cespool. How can that be with all those green merchants living in the city?
I’m not against Henry David Thoreau, though the man has his good points and bad points.
The highwayman,
You agree with Randall, and I agree with both of you. What a day. I completely agree with Ed Glaeser. However, I’m really not confident in his suggestions being adopted.
In my view, and Ed seems to agree by his comments on the unintended consequence of local environmentalism, the smart-growth idea of higher density is always co-opted by those who turn smart-growth into “no-growth,” and push development farther out.
The highwayman,
You should realize that Ed Glaeser blames zoning and growth-management planning for decreasing density in the cities and forcing people out to the suburbs. His policy recommendations on planning are essentially the same as Randall’s.
Of course, he may have different expectations at to what would happen if the planning restrictions are lifted.
You should realize that Ed Glaeser blames zoning and growth-management planning for decreasing density in the cities and forcing people out to the suburbs.
No he doesn’t.
He blames homeowners pressuring lawmakers to zone large-lot to zone out lower-income homeowners so they can keep their value.
His policy recommendations on planning are essentially the same as Randall’s.
No they are not.
He implores cities to resist large-lot zoning (compare to Randal) so more housing can get built.
Certain ideologies frequently misquote Glaeser to support their unsupportable ideology.
DS
Things like zoning & forced parking requirements have become a monster over time.
Also Thoreau was right in that there should be provisions for green space as park land.