Charles, you agree with me that most of the long-range transportation plans written by states and metropolitan areas are “dismal.” But you imagine that planning is necessary for all sorts of reasons — efficiency, meeting national priorities, measuring results, and promoting innovations. Just because you think those are necessary goals, you insist that we must plan.
I submit to you that no long-range plan has ever met any of those goals, nor will one ever do so because they are impossible to meet over the long run. Efficiencies? When we don’t know what the future will bring or what people will want, we can’t imagine what will be efficient. Priorities? How can people today dictate priorities for the future, and how can Congress — where “all politics is local” — set national priorities anyway? Measuring results? When have government agencies ever bothered to follow up to see if their plans produced the results they claimed? And, by their tedious and time-consuming nature, long-range plans are much more likely to stifle innovations than promote them.
Since planning cannot do the things you ask of it, you have to consider two questions. First, are these goals really that important? Second, to the extent that they are, can you find ways to meet them other than through an endless and complicated planning process?
To a large degree, it makes more sense to focus on today’s problems than to try to plan for the distant future. In Return of the King, Gandolf tells the fellowship that the battle he proposes to fight will not solve all the problems of the world. “Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
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We don’t know what kind of transportation cities will have in 2030, but we know what problems we face today. If we don’t solve those problems, they will only be worse in 2030. By planning for 2030 instead of solving today’s problems, we are really not planning at all.
To the extent that we do want to promote efficiency or some other national priority, there are much better ways to do so than to require states and metro areas to spend billions of dollars on plans that are obsolete the day they are signed. For example, Congress can distribute funds based on those goals.
I personally believe we would be much better off if transportation were funded more by user fees than by taxes. So one of my Cato reports urges Congress to allocate funds to the states based on the user fees those states collect. This would result in a “race to the top” as states substitute user fees for taxes to fund their transportation programs and be eligible for a larger share of federal funds. If you have other goals, I am sure you can figure out ways to put those goals in funding formulas instead of in a planning process that, you admit, hasn’t worked anyway.
Ultimately, the problem with long-range planning is that the world doesn’t work that way. Planners imagine a rational process, but we don’t have enough data to develop a rational plan, so it devolves into political battles. The world is based on incentives, not rational plans, so those who truly want efficient and sensible transportation should design incentives aimed at achieving those goals, not rely on a fantasy of a planning process that does not exist in reality.
Did you quote Lord of the Rings and then reject planning as fantasy?
In other words O’Toole is anti-provisions.
Mr. O’Toole – wouldn’t your proposed improvement of offering incentives to the state to improve efficiency or some other goal suffer from the same malady you suggest long-term plans have? Namely, that we don’t have all the information necessary to know if our incentive schemes will actually work or cause some unintended side effect that makes something else worse?
The fact is that life is uncertain. Our knowledge is limited. Out viewpoints are narrow. So does that mean we don’t at least try and think ahead a bit? We’ll certainly be wrong sometimes. We’ll be glad we did some other times. I’d rather try than do nothing.
That said, I agree that some of the “planning” we do (which as Chuck pointed out is not really planning – just simply a laundry list of desired projects) would not be as necessary if we could get the market signals right. The closer we can get to paying the full costs of our decisions, the more likely we are to avoid the problems that limited knowledge, etc… creates. User fees are probably better than taxes, but that only addresses the funding issue. There is still the matter of obtaining land for whatever transportation system we want to have. How are we supposed to ensure we obtain that land without “planning” for it? How are we to just respond to traffic demand by (for instance) adding a lane to an existing road when there is already many homes and business built up along that road? Without such planning, the costs would become prohibitive and our “freedom” to live where we choose would then be restricted.
If we truly did have a user fee system, but had also prevented ourselves from adding capacity to that road by not planning for the needed right-of-way, wouldn’t those user fees necessarily have to go up? And therefore limit the ability of people to use that road? And therefore making the housing and the access to jobs that you are trying to make more affordable by eliminating planning more expensive?
Heck, a step in the right direction would be to stop spending taxpayer money on redistributive social programs so that future infrastructure needs (setting aside the argument over their putative legitimacy) could be funded in cash instead of by bond or borrowing at multiple times the overall eventual cost.
Part of the problem in central planning is that it tries to change behavior & force people to do certain things, rather than accommodate people’s choices os transportation & living.
This will only get worse if Obamcare passes. Then gov will have more reason to legislate what you eat & that you have exercise. Personally, I eat healthy & exercise, by choice. Even though that is good, it should not be coerced.
People have the right to be lazy & eat junk. It’s strange that laziness & lack of education (20% dropout HS) are even given incentive, with many gov programs & taxing methods.
Yet Scott you have no problem with coercing people to drive, by denying better transit options.
As for junk food, a transfat ban no, a transfat tax sure.
For that matter Mike & Scott, you both chose to to assholes & douche bags.
There is no coercion for people to drive. It’s a choice that offers much better options: convenience, speed, time, trunk space, flexibility, etc.
Public transit is certainly not better.
You are trying to force others to pay for your transit.
Public transit needs to have a certain level of population density.
People have choice to live in those areas.
As for your namecalling, that is pointless & shows your lack of discussion skills & lack of substance.
I can accurately depict you as an immoral person, because you want to take from others, for your benefit.