Imagine you are the director of a federal agency that gives grants to state and local governments. Suppose a researcher in your agency’s department finds that the local governments to which you give grants routinely lied on their grant applications in order to get the money.
Do you:
a. Root out and punish the states and cities that lied?
b. Tighten up your grantmaking procedures to make sure that future lies are exposed? or
c. Use your political power to have the researcher transferred to a dead-end job and ordered never to do research on your agency’s programs again?
If you picked anything but c, obviously you haven’t spent much time working in government.
The agency is the Federal Transit Adminstration and the researcher is Don Pickrell, who in 1989 published a report showing that cities that obtained federal grants to build rail transit lines systematically overestimated ridership and underestimated costs. “The systematic tendency to overestimate ridership and to underestimate capital and operating costs,” said Pickrell, “introduces a distinct bias toward the selection of capital-intensive transit improvements such as rail lines.”
Also at some point it is hard to differentiate between the sin itself and the sinner, especially if the sinner cialis prescription cheap does it over and over again. The probable side effects brand cialis prices associated with TRT include acne, metallic taste in mouth, hair loss, gingivitis, or change in your sexual drive. Herbal remedies to increase male testosterone buy brand levitra are now becoming a greater necessity these days as a result keeps it erect throughout the process. This condition can cialis generic australia also mean you are in the early stages of labor. Rail advocates responded by viciously attacking Pickrell. The kindest among them say that the problems he reported no longer exist, that rail transit lines today routinely are built within their budgets and carry more than the projected number of riders. Today, any mention of Pickrell’s name or report causes the word “discredited” to immediately spring to the lips of rail supporters.
Yet a 2006 study by researchers at Northeastern University found that rail projects completed since 1989 had cost overruns averaging 40 percent. Moreover, there is no indication that the accuracy of cost projections is improving over time: the most recent project in the study, the Minneapolis Hiawatha light rail, went 49 percent over budget.
“I have interviewed public officials, consultants and planners who have been involved in these transit planning cases,” wrote University of California planning Professor Martin Wachs shortly after the Pickrell report was published, “and I am absolutely convinced that the cost overruns and patronage overestimates were not the result of technical errors, honest mistakes or inadequate methods. In case after case planners, engineers and economists have told me that they had to ‘revise’ their forecasts many times because they failed to satisfy their superiors. The forecasts had to be ‘cooked’ in order to produce numbers that were dramatic enough to gain federal support for the projects.”
Rutgers University political scientist James Dunn goes beyond blaming planners’ “superiors.” He argues that planners have joined an “anti-auto advocacy coalition” and use their position in government to promote the aims of that coalition. Specifically, he says, planners
- Oversell their policy preferences as a panacea for problems that it cannot solve;
- Overlook problems with their policy preferences;
- Oppose reasonable proposals from the “other” side; and
- Overdramatize the political power of the other side.
Dunn gives concrete examples of each of these. He concludes by arguing that Americans should be suspicious of anyone who supports their policy proposals by focusing on their good intentions rather than their actual outcomes.
Accusing planners of imposing their personal preferences on a planning process implies that planners can potentially be objective if they are careful enough. In fact, comprehensive, long-range planning is necessarily subjective; it includes too many factors that are either unknown or cannot be quantified. Given that subjectivity, planners (and their superiors) inevitably end up imposing their preferences on their plans.
First, thank you for the very nice ‘preview’ feature Randal.
In case after case planners, engineers and economists have told me that they had to ‘revise’ their forecasts many times because they failed to satisfy their superiors. The forecasts had to be ‘cooked’ in order to produce numbers that were dramatic enough to gain federal support for the projects.
Coming soon to a blog near you: Randal’s new diatribes against the professions of engineering and economics for being manipulated by politicians. I mean, why single out planners? Economists are just as complicit at being manipulated by the political process. Sure, antiplanner rolls off the tongue better than antiinjuneer, but still.
Anyway, almost all transportation projects on the planet are oversold [nine out of ten infrastructure project costs are underestimated. For railways the average cost overrun is 45 percent, for tunnels and bridges 34 percent and for road projects 20 percent].
So, Randal, using your logic in this post, the planners are imposing autocentrism on their plans too**. Sounds good for your little autocentrism campaign.
Lastly, I note that Jim Dunn, in his little paper you linked to, says auto transportation has serious externalities but they are manageable. How is our society doing at that management? I mean, besides not well?
DS
** Not other departments or firms like engineering, mind you – even though enginers are the ones that do the actual cost-outs – but only the planners. You’d know this if you knew anything about the profession
” I mean, why single out planners? Economists are just as complicit at being manipulated by the political process. Sure, antiplanner rolls off the tongue better than antiinjuneer, but still.”
Randal,
I’d like to hear from you on this point, as well. I suspect it has something to do with a far larger number of planners being government employees than economists, especially at the local government level. As to the engineers, is it your position that they are not much involved in the ‘selling’ of planning policies? While you’re on the topic, I would also like to know why you don’t lump planners and politicians together. From what I know, it’s really the politicians who
drive planning, with planners acting more or less in an advisory capacity.
“Anyway, almost all transportation projects on the planet are oversold [nine out of ten infrastructure project costs are underestimated. For railways the average cost overrun is 45 percent, for tunnels and bridges 34 percent and for road projects 20 percent].”
Dan, I clicked the link you provided, but it only took me to the post on which we’re commenting. I was looking for the source of your citation to determine if almost all transportation projects are government-driven. I suspect they are, and I suspect that explains why most of them are over sold.
“Lastly, I note that Jim Dunn, in his little paper you linked to, says auto transportation has serious externalities but they are manageable. How is our society doing at that management? I mean, besides not well?”
DS is right in suggesting the externalities of auto transportation are not being well managed by our society. It is time to reject the statism and interventionism that have brought about these perverse results.
Dan,
If you send me the proper link to the report you are citing, I’ll be glad to edit it into your comment.
I suspect you are citing Bent Flyvbjerg’s research. He looked at both Europe and the U.S. If you sort out his data to just look at the U.S., rail projects went 41 percent overbudget while road projects only went 8 percent over budget.
Davek,
i would be just as critical of economists who tried to socially engineer Americans based on untested hypotheses. That has happened a few times, but for the most part is not happening now.
The reason I bring up politics is that, when I say plans don’t work, someone always says, “That wasn’t the planners’ fault. It was political interference.”
As far as auto externalities go, I agree we could do better. But we have done amazingly well already. Air pollution, traffic fatalities, and some other externalities are all way down from a few decades ago even though driving is way up. And the trend is continuing downward, at least for air pollution.
Then there is Perfectly Planned Portland’s record:
East Side Light Rail—55% over construction budget-53% over operating budget
West Side Light Rail—394% over budget
Tram—533% OVER construction budget–250% OVER operating budget
Notice that, as time goes by, Perfectly Planned Portland is getting better at underestimating in order to sell garbage projects.
See http://www.debunkingportland.com/
Thanks
JK
Dan said: Lastly, I note that Jim Dunn, in his little paper you linked to, says auto transportation has serious externalities but they are manageable. How is our society doing at that management? I mean, besides not well?
JK: Just a couple of points for planner Dan to consider:
*Over the years, air pollution has gone down while asthma has gone up. Please reconcile this fact with your linked articles.
* If you worry about CO2, you must spend lots of sleepless nights over all the CO2 from light rail and streetcars. (Most light rail are powered by electricity made for burning coal, which puts out more CO2 per unit of energy than any other fossil fuel.)(Not to mention the mercury, uranium and thorium emitted by coal burning and thusly light rail. See http://www.ornl.gov/ORNLReview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html)
* Then there is bus pollution which is many times worse than cars. See http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/big_rig_cleanup/rolling-smokestacks-cleaning-up-americas-trucks-and-buses.html
Thanks
JK
Randal, I’ll try to get to fixing those links tonight or tomorrow morning, just got home.
Jim, I merely showed the association between auto transport and increased asthma exacerbations and a decrease in children’s lung capacity.
If you want to paint my stance as claiming auto emissions create all asthma exacerbations, then this doesn’t reflect well on your rhetorical skills, except for those with limited critical thinking skills.
wrt the auto sector portion of the transportation sector and emissions, you may want to look at the sector’s emission as a whole, and put a chart on your little site that shows the proper ratio of total emissions. The chart will show that cars and light trucks emit about 2/3 of the total GHGs for the personal transport sector. Let us know when you post your chart to your site so we can view it.
DS
Here is the paper where I screwed up the link, explained in JAPA here. Note how much higher the road SD is the overrun (for the US), and the authors’ explanations for this overrun phenomenon.
DS