The Bureau of Land Management has always labored in the shadow of its sister agency, the National Park Service, and its cousin, the Forest Service. While the national parks are America’s “crown jewels” and the Forest Service represents the best (and worst) of the Progressive era, the BLM manages the federal lands left over after everyone else took what they wanted. Possibly because it simply isn’t as romantic as those other agencies (and so Congress has less reason to throw money at it), the BLM manages its 245 million acres of land far more efficiently, spending an average of about $5 an acre compared with $37 for the Park Service and $32 for the Forest Service.
To help overcome its “romance” deficit, the BLM recently published a four-page flyer titled, “BLM: A Sound Investment for America.” The BLM, the flyer claims, “raises more money each year for the American taxpayer from the use of these lands than it spends.” It goes on to say that the agency’s “management of public lands contributed more than $112 billion to the national economy in 2010.”
It turns out this isn’t exactly true.
In 2010 (and most other years for the past couple of decades), the BLM earned a profit on less than a million of its 245 million acres. This includes about 500,000 acres are in the Powder River Coal Basin, plus about 400,000 acres–mostly in Montana and Wyoming–that are sites for oil & gas extractions.
Congress allows the BLM to charge fair market value for only three resources: timber, coal, and oil & gas. Before the early 1990s, when the spotted owl and related issues reduced cutting from Northwest public forests, the agency earned a profit on timber from about 2.4 million acres in western Oregon. Now even those lands lose money.
The other 242 million acres have pretty much always been a drain on the economy, costing taxpayers over a billion dollars a year but producing almost no revenue to speak of. And what revenues those acres do produce are nearly all either kept by the BLM or turned over to local governments “in lieu of property taxes.”
Taking antibiotics for a long term may bring more harm than benefits. viagra samples It has earned broad popularity among people suffering from ED sildenafil buy in canada from longer or if it is just from few days. This is the opacc.cv buy levitra online reason for the huge price gap between the American and Canadian drugs. Nowadays, even medicines wholesale tadalafil might be ordered on online prescriptions from online pharmacies which are numerous in number online.
What about the $112 billion of value claimed by the brochure? Consider page 3 of the brochure, which states that “BLM-administered lands yielded $337 million worth of timber.” Not even close. Page III-1 of BLM’s 2012 budget records that the BLM collected only $18.2 million from timber sales in 2010. The brochure claims Oregon timber alone was worth $246 million. But page VII-11 of the budget says western Oregon timber receipts were just $18.0 million (for reasons too arcane to get into here, the BLM’s most productive timber lands have always been in western Oregon).
Similarly, the recreation values listed on page 2 of the brochure average close to $50 a 12-hour day. There may be some rare kinds of BLM recreation that are worth $50 a day, but for the most part people won’t pay anything close that amount. Actual recreation fees were less than $17 million, compared with $2.7 billion claimed in the brochure.
Why the discrepancies? The last page of the brochure admits the “values” in the tables on pages 2 and 3 “are an estimate of the BLM’s economic contribution to local economies in terms of employment and other economic benefits.” In other words, in addition to the amount paid for timber, recreation, and other BLM resources, these numbers include all of the value added by other people after the resources leave the land (or, in the case of some recreation, before people use the land). Yes, and General Motors could make all sorts of claims about the value added after it sold its cars, but since it couldn’t make a profit on the cars, it still went into bankruptcy.
The Antiplanner has always considered this value-added stuff (technically, it is called “input-output analysis”) to be a pack of lies. In order to turn that $18.2 million worth of timber into $247 million worth of value, other people had to add their own time, money, and resources. In other words, the BLM is taking credit for other people’s work. Using this technique, bureaucrats come up with wildly inflated numbers about their own worth to the economy. The reality is their true worth is often near zero.
Sad to say, if the BLM and its lands (not counting the Powder River Coal Basin and oil & gas sites) disappeared tomorrow, hardly anyone would notice, and those who would (such as ranchers grazing their cattle) would actually save taxpayers money by closing up shop. So much for value added.
The only true value of something is measured by how much someone is willing to pay for it. The BLM could make the case that Congress has hamstrung the agency by preventing it from charging fair-market value for most resources. It could create “shadow prices” equal to that fair-market value, and if those prices were believable it could calculate the true value of the resources it produces. If that value was greater than the cost of providing the resources, it could argue that Congress should either continue funding the agency or let it charge full value and fund itself out of those revenues.
Instead, it fabricates all these much higher values that are totally meaningless. Members of Congress should reject funding proposals from any agency that won’t come clean about the true value of the resources that agency produces.
Randal wrote, “The only true value of something is measured by how much someone is willing to pay for it.”
For almost everyone air is free and they wouldn’t even consider that they would have to pay for it. If that someone has no air with sufficient oxygen and without poisonous gases that someone will die in a short time, If that someone is in an orbiting spacecraft or disabled submerged submarine he may be willing to pay a very high price for good air. People with respiratory illnesses (and many others) may be willing to pay higher prices for automobiles that emit less pollution and for other things to clean up the atmosphere. It could be that the value of the BLM land is worth much more as watershed, airshed , and as parts of the ecosystem than the resources that can be extracted from them or as playgrounds for people.
For some things (wilderness areas, oceans, the atmosphere) perhaps the true value is how much we are willing to pay to preserve them.
The other 242 million acres have pretty much always been a drain on the economy, costing taxpayers over a billion dollars a year but producing almost no revenue to speak of. And what revenues those acres do produce are nearly all either kept by the BLM or turned over to local governments “in lieu of property taxes.â€
Again, this is simply monetized into use value. There are many more values here that aren’t counted in Randal’s ‘analysis’. But we can’t assign true costs to ecosystem services so we can put those values into cost-benefit analyses – this would, of course, be anathema to our economic system and our economy.
But again, this is not to say I back all the uses BLM sees fit to allow on their land. We can eliminate the grazing and start to restore grasslands and sage steppe. We can discontinue logging for lower-value timber on BLM land. We can eliminate yahoos running over sh– with their ATVs and motorcycles. These activities cost more than they bring in. Which may be why they are touting their numbers.
DS
Tad,
You hit the great ideological gap between libertarians and everyone else. Libertarians see value only in the exchange of goods and services. They may pay lip service to one or two “moral” issues, but if it can’t be sold for a profit, it’s worthless to this ideology. Needless to say it’s a very cold and borderline inhumane perspective (though often touted as the only humane ideology with some careful wordsmithing and tiptoeing).
That said, the feds continually tie their hands charging waaaayyyyyy below market value for “our” land and the resources on it. I’m not sure how powerful the mining lobby is, but the more I learn about mining on public lands and purchasing land from the feds to mine ($5 an acre is the standard charge), I’m astonished. Why would our government bend over and take it like that?
Generalization.
Stereotype.
One giant straw man.
Do you have anything else to offer to discussion about today’s post other than logical fallacies, weak generalizations, and mischaracterizations?
“For some things (wilderness areas, oceans, the atmosphere) perhaps the true value is how much we are willing to pay to preserve them.”
And how much has the government spent to “preserve” BLM lands? Luckily Japan has scared the world away from uranium, for now, but I suppose it’s conceivable that the BLM will again mine the Grand Canyon for radioactive rocks. (That’s just uranium; in 1998 there were ~300k claims.) The BLM is allowing strip mining for coal just south of Bryce Canyon National Park, and there are questions about corruption in the permit process.
I could go on and on and on, but the BLM does not preserve lands. It despoils the lands while subsidizing large multinational corporations with taxpayer money.
Frank says: “Do you have anything else to offer to discussion about today’s post other than logical fallacies, weak generalizations, and mischaracterizations?”
I would say strong generalizations, characterizations, and yes… logical fallacies (touche). But I do have something to offer, or rather repeat…
Mr. O’Toole says: “The only true value of something is measured by how much someone is willing to pay for it.”
Whether or not it’s fair to ascribe this sentiment to all libertarians is a valid point. However, he’s obviously the libertarian ring leader in this forum. Not that I’m trying to pass the burden of proof off to you, but prove me wrong. Assuming that you are a libertarian, is there another way in which you ascribe value? Do you disagree with Mr. O’Toole’s statement?
I disagree with The Antiplanner’s statement. I don’t like the phrase “only true value” because it is absolute. I think economic value is important, but there are many other values to consider, such as preservation. The importance is finding the place where values intersect. I think the market, were it allowed to exist, would be better at preservation and finding value intersections than the central government, which is one of the worst polluters in the world. I believe that those who care about preservation and those who use preserved land should pay for it directly.
I find direct and voluntary transactions to be a superior way to finance preservation. The opposite financial strategy (state/crony capitalism), as the NPS, USFS, and BLM have demonstrated, causes both environmental and financial harm.
I may have been a bit over the top in saying the “only true value” is what people are willing to pay. But nearly all resources on BLM land — from hard-rock minerals to recreation — are things that can be easily marketed. The only reason they are not is Congressional favors to special interest groups. Sure, there may be some “existence values,” but there are ways of paying for those too, such as by donating to Nature Conservancy or various wildlife groups.
The main point of my post, which few comments addressed, is that the BLM’s accounting of value is completely wrong because it attributes value to the land that is really created by other people’s investments of time, money, and resources.
If you took the Planners’ approach to the world, you would run around inner cities asking people how much they would pay to make rural people live without any economic use of public lands.
You would get bids of millions of dollars from homeless people, because of course, you are just asking them and they really don’t have to pay.
Then academia and arrogant planners would say that empty public lands are enormously worthwhile.
You must have made your case so well that no one can respond with criticism. I’d be interested in hearing a rebuttal to this point. I can’t do it. I have always heard that X National Park produces X amount of dollars for the economy (would you agree this is equally dubious?), but I’d not read analysis of the BLM’s wild economic claims. Thank you for taking the time to do the analysis.
Bennett,
Libertarianism is a branch of moral philosophy. It has applications and adherents across a wide range of disciplines. Economics, law, business, governance, crime and punishment. Like any philosphy there is a fair amount of differentiation and disagreement about what it is. To say, “You hit the great ideological gap between libertarians and everyone else. Libertarians see value only in the exchange of goods and services.” is not just a generalization it reflects a wholesale ignorance of that to which you speak. To your response, “but prove me wrong”; I say go get an education.
“Assuming that you are a libertarian, is there another way in which you ascribe value?” I consider myself more of an anarchist than a libertarian. Some libertarians and anarchists, particularly Miseians says there is no objective measure of value. All value is subjective. Value is a perception which exists only in exchange and during exchange between two or more parties who engage in such exchange without coercion.
“value to the land that is really created by other people’s investments of time, money, and resources.” That is the definition of homesteading, both legal and economic.
I totally agree with DAN. He is so smart. We should get rid of all the uses of BLM lands that generate any economic value.
After all, BLM lands provide “ecosystem services” like attracting rain to fall on them and allowing hippies to look at them from long distances. Just think how terrible life would be if hippies had to look at other things they also don’t pay anything for.
And the study doesn’t even count the biggest value of BLM land for hippies: all the Mary Jane that is grown on BLM lands.
Andy posted:
And the study doesn’t even count the biggest value of BLM land for hippies: all the Mary Jane that is grown on BLM lands.
Imagine how much rent money the federal government would be raking in through the BLM and the USDA/Forest Service if production, sale, possession and use of marihuana were made legal (and taxable)?
Full disclosure: I don’t use marihuana now, I never have, and I likely never will.
I normally don’t respond to the more outrageous rhetoric, but parts of #13 and #14 merit consideration.
This is another area in which the federal government’s actions have unintended consequences. Federal prohibition is drastically affecting public lands:
While I can’t support a federal tax on cannabis (and to respond to #14, at 15%, the feds might bring in $5 billion a year, a mere speck in the multi-trillion dollar budget), I do support ending federal prohibition. We have wasted hundreds of billions in the ridiculous “war on drugs”, not including the cost to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders whose only crime was consuming or voluntarily exchanging a harmless plant. The NPS, BLM, and USFS are wasting money busting Mexican cartels that wouldn’t exist were it not for prohibition.
Frank posted:
I normally don’t respond to the more outrageous rhetoric, but parts of #13 and #14 merit consideration.
Thank you.
While I can’t support a federal tax on cannabis (and to respond to #14, at 15%, the feds might bring in $5 billion a year, a mere speck in the multi-trillion dollar budget), I do support ending federal prohibition. We have wasted hundreds of billions in the ridiculous “war on drugsâ€, not including the cost to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of non-violent offenders whose only crime was consuming or voluntarily exchanging a harmless plant. The NPS, BLM, and USFS are wasting money busting Mexican cartels that wouldn’t exist were it not for prohibition.
Sin taxes have a long and honorable history in the United States, dating back to the early days of the republic (consider the Whiskey Rebellion).
I suppose people could opt out of that tax by growing their own.
On an semi-related note, check out this OPB video about how Portland’s suburb, Grizzly Gresham, preserves critical sensitive species. Those McSuburbs!
So lets sell the land to ranchers that is already being ranched, offer the rest on the open market to any willing buyers at whatever it will sell for, even if it is one mill per acre for desert wasteland, and then the BLM can close up shop and its employees can find something more useful to do with their time than sucking the taxpayer dry.
Why does the BLM exist (and the Forest Service)? The whole point of the Homestead Act and Mining Act and Desert Lands Act was to get the government out of the landowning business and let people own a piece of American terra firma of their own.
I fail to see the need for endless handwringing here. This is agency we should be able to shut down in a year or so. Well, except for all our homegrown American Communists who think there is nothing wrong with the Government owning, what is it, 35% of the surface of America and controlling much of the timber, ranching, and mineral extraction portions of the economy through that ownership?
Its contradictory to the American Way of Life for the government to hold such vast acreages.
The people can’t own public land? Why not? Just because it has ‘public’ in it?
DS
I wish Andrew would tone done the rhetoric; it’s undermining his position.
To add paraphrase, I think that collective ownership of land on the scale we have today would shock our 18th century founders. With collective ownership of land comes the tragedy of the commons, for which BLM is the poster boy.
(See, no need to fling around words like “American Communists” and “American Way of Life”.)
I’m starting to believe in the sockpuppets.
Well, your link mentions Ostrom & her view on a strict interpretation of Hardin. I was just at a conference where she spoke several times, BTW, and her prescriptions for reversing our ecological decline don’t include wholesale privatization, I assure you. Nonetheless, it is not strictly ownership per se that is the issue here. Lots of problems are causing degradation of BLM land, few of which would be solved by carving it up for private resource exploitation.
DS
Dan:
The “people” don’t own public land. If you are under that mistaken impression, go see how far you get trying to visit a military base or a national park after hours. You will discover that the “people” actually have no voice whatsoever in the use and entry of “their” “public lands”.
Now sure the government can legitimately own land. But it should own land that is actually used for the common good of all and available for all to enjoy and use. I.e. parks, military bases, government offices, etc. Public land implies either universal public access (i.e. a park) or universal public benefit (i.e. a military installation).
BLM and Forest Service land that is publicly held but dedicated to private gain (Mining, Timber, Ranches, etc.) inevitably turns towards politcal favoritism, corruption, waste, and fraud – the inevitable and always recurrent results of profitable opportunities controlled for dissemination by government agents. All power corrupts, we aren’t governed by angels, etc., etc., etc.
And yes, people in favor of socialized ownership of land dedicated to profit-making activities are Communists. This is called the collective ownership of the means of production (land and capital goods being the means of production which then occurs through the application of human labor). Collective land ownership, and the prohitition of the possibility of private title and exclusive benefit from that title, were and are one of the key features of the Communist system of government and economics. I’m not sure why this statement would scandalize you.
As to the American Way of Life, that refers to the concept of free individuals in control of their own destiny working for and enjoying the benefit of their own private intiative within the sphere of their personal property, and coming together collectively to decide questions impacting the common good of all.
Think about the following things that might occur on BLM or Forest Service land:
Rancher Brown’s land management techniques and grazing and irrigation decisions.
Lumberman Smith’s tree cutting decisions.
Miner Jones’ extraction plans.
Tour Guide Miller’s hiking club.
Are any of them a matter of the common good of all? I’d say no, except for the fact of public land ownership and refusal of the rights of ownership to those who work and use the land. If these activities were occurring on private land, if the people in question were obeying all of the laws, the public would have no voice whatsoever in how they go about their actions.
The question always then comes back to why do the BLM and Forest Service exist? Why is land put to private use and gain publicly owned and (mis?)managed? The only rational answer I can see is a belief in Communist collectivized land ownership and a concomittant total mistrust of and disbelief in the virtues of private land holdings.
This land rightfully belongs to its present users and inhabitants. In my mind, they hold true title to it regardless of whether the US Government is willing to issue it to them. And if no one is regularly using the land, it should either become a park for the enjoyment and use of all who desire entry, or it should be sold to someone who will put it to some economic use.
Andrew,
I was unaware that BLM, FS, and NPS land was inaccessible to the public. Wait, I misread. You want universal access under every context. You do know that almost every park and every scale has a curfew? You do know that you can enter, stay and sleep at BLM, FS, and NPS land at night. I’ve never come across BLM land that was off limits (though I’m sure it exists), nor FS or NPS, without good cause (safety concerns etc.).
Also, your Communist label is way over the top. It’s not to say that the idea itself cannot be found in the Communist philosophy, but in this day in age not many philosophies are absolute (including libertarianism: props to Frank and Jardinero1 for hashing that one out with me). Communitarian ideals can even be found in the writings of Adam Smith. Just because a portion of land is held by the federal government, in no way means that there is a “total mistrust of and disbelief in the virtues of private land holdings,” because there is a ton of land privately held too. Shoot, I own land and you probably do too.
I think “Park” or “Production” is too limited of a choice. Heck, there is a lot of privately held property that is not being “put it to some economic use.”
Andrew, you obviously aren’t a camper. We count on going somewhere and pitching a tent in NF or BLM land if we can’t find a spot. We did it twice last year west of the divide. We normally do it several times a year. It used to be standard for me in my heavy backpacking days to sleep at the trailhead – usu in NF land – and get up and start hiking to the W.A.. So I don’t know what you are talking about. And you’ve forgotten about the MUSYA.
Dan
Oh, and I forgot: one backpacking trip many years ago in CA most passes were still snowed in and I parked somewhere in a canyon, where I thought I could get in and that I thought was public. I couldn’t get in and had to turn around and spend the night under some eaves on a deck. I walked back to my truck to find a tire slashed. At least the private landowners were nice about it and just did one. So whatever.
DS
Dan:
Land used for camping and hiking should be a park. I do go camping, but I live out east, so it is typically in state parks, and occassionally in the past at Shenandoah.
I don’t see why this is such a confusing concept. What I am suggesting is how all the rest of the country east of the Rocky Mountain Front Range is owned – states and the US own park land including hiking trails, farmers and ranchers own crop and grazing land, logging companies own commercial timberland. Eastern wasteland (mountain sides and mountain tops in the appalachians) is typically held as state game land or state forests if no other reasonable use can be found for it. There is no reason the same model wouldn’t work in the west.
Land used for camping and hiking should be a park.
That’s a very small minority opinion. Thanks for sharing it. Good luck in your campaign. Let us know how your ballot measure goes to overturn a federal act and separate uses on public lands.
DS
Oh Dan is just so smart. He is so cute. Look at how smart Dan is today. Normally Dan fights democracy and declares that he is so much smarter and wiser than mere normal people, but today he realizes that he might have an opinion that has a democratic majority.
So suddenly Dan wants democratic decisions. How brilliant is that mind? He lives knowing public opinion is usually far against him, but he can pivot and be pro-democracy when public opinion is for him. I will nominate Dan for the Nobel Planner Prize!!!!!
P.S. to Dan. The guy slit your tires because you were parking near his Mary Jane plantation.
Andy says: “Normally Dan fights democracy…”
Wow! So wrong. Planners on this blog continually point out how Antiplanners oppose the democratic process (see: bond initiatives) usually to be told that “this is not a democracy, it’s a republic,” (Mr. O’Toole has said this directly to me).
Let’s be honest; the biggest challenge to the Antiplanner agenda is that they have to convince the voting masses that their ideology is the right one, or they have to oppose the democratic processes that continually shows that the voting masses do not share their ideology. Good luck.
bennett posted:
Wow! So wrong. Planners on this blog continually point out how Antiplanners oppose the democratic process (see: bond initiatives) usually to be told that “this is not a democracy, it’s a republic,†(Mr. O’Toole has said this directly to me).
Bond initiatives? I am frequently accused of being sympathetic and in agreement with the Antiplanner, but I don’t have a problem with voter-approved bond initiatives (nor do I recall Randal being opposed to them, in general (and he can comment if he chooses)). Now I do have a problem with spending money on highly questionable rail transit projects (be that money from bonds or other (tax) sources) that are incapable of paying back the bondholders. And I am not at all a fan of so-called tax increment financing (TIF), for such schemes are frequently pitched by their promoters as “getting something for nothing,” while in reality, they drain tax resources from services that I feel need to be funded by those tax dollars.
Let’s be honest; the biggest challenge to the Antiplanner agenda is that they have to convince the voting masses that their ideology is the right one, or they have to oppose the democratic processes that continually shows that the voting masses do not share their ideology. Good luck.
I do not always agree with the Antiplanner, but I like and respect him and regard him as a friend (and I think I have said this before 😉 ). But how often is the flipside (in favor of smart growth, urban growth boundaries, densification, rail transit and against highway expansion) really put to a popular vote?
But how often is the flipside (in favor of smart growth, urban growth boundaries, densification, rail transit and against highway expansion) really put to a popular vote?
This is an interesting question.
Do we put every single decision to a popular vote and be…populist, which is a word that I thought was anathema on this site**, or do we continue with our representative democracy and vote for elected officials to make decisions on issues that have gone thru public process?
Especially SG, which – as we all know – the vast majority of surveys show that the majority of folks want a neighborhood that resembles a SG community***?
DS
** (I’ll cop to being wrong on that, hard to keep track of which week and for whom populist is bad, as there seems to be no memo distributed for its consistent usage).
*** The link also has results on questions about existing road repair vs new roads…twofer!
Especially SG, which – as we all know – the vast majority of surveys show that the majority of folks want a neighborhood that resembles a SG community***?
Those surveys are pure nonsense because the questions are worded in such a way that the only possible answers positively reflect on smart growth. Who would possibly say that they would prefer not to be within walking distance of stores? Yet we all know that not everyone can be within walking distance of jobs, school, and stores. There are more important factors in choosing housing then how close it is to the corner mart.
But thank you for the arrogant, deceptive “as we all know” manner in which you presented that completely bogus data.
C.P,
Here in Austin TX,funding to build the commuter rail, public funds to build the toll roads were put to a vote. The MU Overlay (densification) zone is an “opt in” zone that private sector actors can choose. But there are several top down planning decisions that I’m selectively ignoring here…
I would never “accuse” you of sympathizing with Mr. O’Toole. Heck, sometimes I agree with him and although we’re often opponents I appreciate his perspective and hope to meet him one day. My comment was in response to the accusation that a pro-planner is usually aligning himself against democratic processes. I find that laughable due to the fact that we see posts by Mr O’Toole lampooning the outcomes of various (often rail funding)democratic initiatives. Now the argument is often made that the electorate was duped, and I take that as a valid criticzem, but that gets to my second point.
Many antiplanners want to end subsidies for almost everything, get rid of growth management and zoning, and abolish government planning. The biggest challenge to the antiplanner mission is convincing the voters who, misguided or not, time, and time, and time, and time again show that they want and value these things.
You and Mr. O’Toole may not be on the fringe or have a vastly radical viewpoint, but I would say that your viewpoint on planning is held by a minority. Turning those tables is a daunting task, and you have a way to go before you convince me.
Dan wrote:
Do we put every single decision to a popular vote and be…populist, which is a word that I thought was anathema on this site**, or do we continue with our representative democracy and vote for elected officials to make decisions on issues that have gone thru public process?
At least where I live, influencing land use policy requires a lot of time, patience and grit. People with time on their hands can (and frequently do) influence those decisions, which have frequently been damaging to communities where residents did not have the time to raise objections to proposed land use schemes (frequently involving densification attempts to force residents onto transit).
Recall that my experiences are mostly in Montgomery County, Maryland, a jurisdiction that has been pushing (what we now call) Smart Growth since the 1960’s, but in spite of that remains a remarkably suburban county.
Especially SG, which – as we all know – the vast majority of surveys show that the majority of folks want a neighborhood that resembles a SG community***?
I am deeply skeptical of such surveys, for they are frequently stated preference surveys, which (in my opinion) resemble “push” polls done by political campaign consultants. Much better to survey revealed behavior.
Then transit and Smart Growth don’t look quite so good, do they?
Bennett posted:
Here in Austin TX,funding to build the commuter rail, public funds to build the toll roads were put to a vote. The MU Overlay (densification) zone is an “opt in†zone that private sector actors can choose. But there are several top down planning decisions that I’m selectively ignoring here…
I presume that the toll roads must pay for themselves, and the bonds that were issued to fund construction are probably non-recourse bonds, which means that the revenue from the tolls is the only way that the bondholders get their money back – they cannot demand that Austin or Texas taxpayers pay them back if the toll revenues are below what was assumed when they purchased the bonds.
I would never “accuse†you of sympathizing with Mr. O’Toole. Heck, sometimes I agree with him and although we’re often opponents I appreciate his perspective and hope to meet him one day.
Mr. O’Toole is a fine and entertaining speaker, and I enjoy speaking with him. And he’s up-front and honest about what he favors and what he opposes and why.
My comment was in response to the accusation that a pro-planner is usually aligning himself against democratic processes. I find that laughable due to the fact that we see posts by Mr O’Toole lampooning the outcomes of various (often rail funding)democratic initiatives. Now the argument is often made that the electorate was duped, and I take that as a valid criticzem, but that gets to my second point.
There are more than a few rail transit projects that have gotten voter approval (even the Washington Metrorail system was voted on once, back in 1968). But it is my opinion that the voters usually get much more than they expected in the form of endless operating subsidies and lower-than-expected rail system patronage, combined with frequently militant unionized employees.
Many antiplanners want to end subsidies for almost everything, get rid of growth management and zoning, and abolish government planning. The biggest challenge to the antiplanner mission is convincing the voters who, misguided or not, time, and time, and time, and time again show that they want and value these things.
I am not as anti-subsidy as Mr. O’Toole, though our society would be a better one if various modes of transportation paid their own way (which passenger rail seems incapable of doing anywhere in the United States – and that means never-ending capital and operating subsidies either from government general funds, or, perhaps more frequently, from highway users in the form of diverted motor fuel taxes or toll revenues).
You and Mr. O’Toole may not be on the fringe or have a vastly radical viewpoint, but I would say that your viewpoint on planning is held by a minority. Turning those tables is a daunting task, and you have a way to go before you convince me.
Keep reading.
I am deeply skeptical of such surveys, for they are frequently stated preference surveys, which (in my opinion) resemble “push†polls done by political campaign consultants. Much better to survey revealed behavior.
The briefest, most curory reading shows this is not a push poll, nor are any of the other score of surveys which find the same.
And revealed preference shows that the SG developments are in high demand, they get bid up very quickly to be acquired. And they held their value much better than McSuburbs when the bubble popped.
But we’ve been over this before many times on this blog, so you knew that already.
DS
metrosucks:
Yet we all know that not everyone can be within walking distance of jobs, school, and stores.
Why not? There is no fundemental reason that development cannot be undertaken in the traditional city-town-village type model depending on development size where commercial activities naturally cluster or in centers or stretch out along certain streets and residential areas can conveniently access them from the outer ring and have essential conveniences (convenience stores, dry cleaners/tailors, gas stations/repair shops, lawyers and doctors and dentists, etc.) interspersed in their midst.
The major hindrance towards this today is an unwillingness to incorporate new towns along with incessant whining about “too many” local government bodies existing, and an antipathy towards small unconsolidated school districts.
This country would be a much more free, much better, and much different place if more political power were focused down to the neighborhood/borough/town level of about 5000-30000 residents and these units were made more autonomous, and less of it were professionalized, centralized and consolidated into only a few hands.
There were always be some people who want to live off in the wilds on their own, which is certainly their right, but most people like living in a community and having neighbors and being able to walk down the sidewalk.
Clearly, that style of business only works in high density areas that can support the sort of customer volume those businesses need. Which is the whole point. Dumb–oops, smart growth wants to force everyone into stacked sardine cans so the planners can finally get their dream of “walkable” communities and walking to your corner Albertson’s. Turns out that it doesn’t really work that well in the real world. The rest of the US is not Manhattan or Brooklyn, no matter how much Dan and his ilk would like it to be so.
metrosucks:
My town works like that. Its only 7800 people per square mile, not 33-36,000 like the Bronx and Brooklyn. I think that is a pretty typical density for the actual developed area of small towns and cities across the US (5000-10,000 people per square mile).
Frankly, New York City is an atypical example of the walkable world, and it is tiresome to keep seeing it brought up in that context, because no one is proposing to build anything like it anywhere. A far better example would be any nearby community built before the Great Depression and the attendant motorization of development forms.
Look Andrew, the completely walkable community is mostly a hallucination. It’s extremely difficult to bring it about. Who wants to walk even a quarter mile with three bags of groceries? Or pay 50% more for groceries for the privilege of walking downstairs to the mixed-use corner mart?
There would have to be an Albertson’s on every corner for it to work in more than a theoretical fashion.
The car is here to stay and is a fact of life. Personally, I don’t have a problem with that. Cars represent freedom and mobility, no matter how much planners would like to deny that.
Why is it that Planner Academia dedicates its mission to life without cars?
Thankfully we live in a free society where 99% of houses can respond to revealed demand that be built for life with cars. Planner Academia can build a few “demonstration” projects which successfully demonstrate that “walking communities” and “New Urban Nivana” must be heavily subsidized to just draw a few hippie families.
Remember this Planner Dream World, that now is 50 years behind schedule, and only exists to sell wind chimes and Mary Jane to tourists? http://www.arcosanti.org/
“My town works like that. Its only 7800 people per square mile, not 33-36,000 like the Bronx and Brooklyn. I think that is a pretty typical density for the actual developed area of small towns and cities across the US (5000-10,000 people per square mile).”
Strangely enough, before I navigated here I was checking out densities of places I’ve lived. I lived in New York, but not the city, and the wife is watching Sex and the City, and a street shot made me wonder about the density in Manhattan. 71,000 per square mile. No wonder I was utterly exhausted 24 hours in to my dozens of trips into the city. That dwarfs the 8,000 per square mile that’s currently oppressing me. Then I looked up my home county in the State of Jefferson. Two. Two per square mile.
Density sucks. It’s draining. It’s like living in a cage of rats. Let the urban elites have it. They’re the only ones who can afford it.
Andy says: “Why is it that Planner Academia dedicates its mission to life without cars?”
Hyperbolic misrepresentation. Obviously Andy has never attend planning classes or he would know that much of the literature and lessons revolve around planning for the automobile. Yes, there are aspects of the planning curriculum that focus on other mobility options and development patterns so if an individual so chooses, they are not solely dependent on a car.
I know I harp on this point time and time again, but you do realize that in most cases highways and low density suburban developments rely on heavy handed top down government planning? You do know that every state DOT has a team of planners working on road expansion and building? Almost every incorporated town, regardless of density has a planner or someone who fulfills the planning role right?
In this regard planning is it’s own worse enemy as the planning solutions of today are the planning problems of tomorrow (see sprawl). There is no doubt in my mind the New Urbanism and Smart Growth will have some unintended consequences, some of which are already coming to fruition, just as the planning push to move people to the suburbs several decades ago had unintended consequences.
metrosucks:
Walkable in my mind means an ability to walk if one so chooses, not all transportation occurs on foot. I.e., I can walk to Church on Sunday if I wish, but I can also drive if there is a storm and I want to stay dry.
Obviously you can’t walk where no sidewalks are provided, or if destinations one might wish to walk to are an unreasonable distance from your home (over 1 mile, maybe 2 at most).
Andy writes:
99% of houses can respond to revealed demand that be built for life with cars
That seems a little high, as 99% of people don’t own a car. There are still plenty of poor people who cannot afford one. There are also moderately well off families that can only afford one car, so obviously at least one adult must do without sometimes. And there are also a group of people called children under the age of 16/18 who are legally prohibited from driving, but many of whom do like to still get out without their parents sometimes and go places, and some of whom are even lucky enough to have modern day parents who allow them to do so. Then there are blind, disabled and elderly people who physically cannot drive but who can walk or use a wheelchair.
I guess that 25%+ of the population is invisible to you though, probably because they do not own cars.
I guess that 25%+ of the population is invisible to you though, probably because they do not own cars.
Yeah, because the Manhattan lifestyle that Planners worship is perfectly suited to the poor, the blind, the disabled, the elderly, and the children. The first thing people do when they get poor, old, or have children is to MOVE OUT OF MANHATTAN. Who do you think lives in Miami or NYC suburbs?
Why do planners not look at how people want to live, but instead lecture people about how they SHOULD live?
Do you really think people want to buy groceries from the crappy little corner Quik-K-Mart and pay 50% higher prices for a tiny selection of unsanitary? Sure the rich people like a little ambiance so they can tell stories at their catered cocktail parties, but the poor and elderly choose Wal-Mart.