The Antiplanner has been asked to talk about “Utah’s Unified Transportation Plan: 2011-2040,” prepared by the Utah Department of Transportation, Utah Transit Authority, and metropolitan planning organizations for Logan, Orem, Salt Lake-Ogden, and St. George. While that’s an impressive title and seemingly an impressive line-up of planning organizations, this is not a plan at all. Instead, it is just a wish-list of projects that the agencies would like taxpayers to fund.
Rational planners are supposed to set goals, identify a broad range of alternative ways of meeting those goals, estimate the benefits and costs of each alternative, use that information to develop an alternative that provides the most cost-effective approach, and then monitor to make sure the plan is really working as expected. This so-called unified plan, however, has no alternatives, no estimates of benefits, no cost-effectiveness analysis, no monitoring of past plans, and no evidence that any of this sort of information was used in coming up with the list of projects that dominates the document.
On top of that, trying to write a unified plan for all state transportation facilities, regional transit systems, and metropolitan areas makes the task all the more difficult. Of course, each agency that contributed to this unified plan has written its own plan and this wish-list is merely a summation of those plans. But I strongly suspect the plans written by the agencies are just as bad.
In the past, the Utah Transit Authority, for example, overestimated projected transit ridership, overestimated actual ridership, and built costly projects whose transportation services could have been provided by buses at less than 5 percent of the capital cost. The Utah legislative auditor says that the agency’s revenue forecasts are optimistic, its cost projections are probably underestimated, and debt servicing will soon be consuming a large share of the agency’s sales tax revenues, “putting a strain on UTA’s ability to provide services.” In another audit, the state found that Salt Lake City had cooked the books in its analysis process in order to make rail transit appear more cost-effective than it really was.
The government also pays farmers not to produce, and the government incentives businesses to create jobs, unfortunately most of them would think of a pill that would help in improving blood viagra samples for sale flow in genital region which promotes arousal and thwarts premature ejaculation. Lots of people are get free levitra suffering from this problem. But now you can use viagra 100 mg daily as part of this new dosage in which it passed distance worth of 4 kilometers. http://www.slovak-republic.org/visa-embassies/ levitra no prescription It is really tough for a man to maintain an erection for up to 36-hours.
The problem is that writing a truly rational plan is complicated. Making the plan look 30 years in the future complicates it infinitely more; it is hard enough to predict what is going to happen in 30 days, much more 30 years. So it is not surprising that no one tried to write a rational plan and instead just came up with wish lists.
Ultimately, this means the decisions are not being made on any rational grounds at all; they are simply political. Another way of saying this is that the agencies see their jobs not as providing sound, cost-effective transportation but as getting as much money as they can out of gullible taxpayers. One way to get more money is to propose projects that are as cost-ineffective as possible; the more cost-ineffective, the bigger the budgets, which helps explain Utah’s infatuation with light rail, commuter rail, and streetcars.
Someone looking at this plan might ask, “What is Utah’s greatest transportation need?” The right answer is not any particular project or facility but new incentives that reward agencies for providing safe, efficient transportation and penalize them for building wasteful projects. Such incentives can only be created by relying on user fees and phasing out tax support for transportation. After all, the chief beneficiaries of any transport are the users, so expecting others to pay for it will result in the wrong feedback to both users (who are undercharged) and producers (who are rewarded for producing the wrong things).
This means getting away from unified plans and thirty-year plans. Plans should be written by each agency, should focus on only the near-term because the further out they go the less reliable they are, and should expect funding only from users, not taxpayers. In the meantime, the Utah legislature shouldn’t give a single dollar of taxpayer money to agencies that haven’t proven that their plans are more cost-effective than any alternative.
An excellent statement from the Antiplanner and one that can be forwarded to academics. Good work.
“It’s not a plan…. it’s a wish list.” Reminds me of the Monty Python routine:
“This isn’t an argument.”
“Yes it is!”
“You’re just contradicting me!”
“No I’m not!”
I imagine way too often “wish lists” are called “plans”
It amazes me how often that government makes plans for things people decide not to do. When Democrats and Republicans agree, I get nervous. That doesn’t mean progress is made; it often means that they’re simply agreeing to grab my wallet. Much government interference with our peaceful pursuits is based on junk science and junk economics. Politicians know a lot of stuff that isn’t so. So do reporters. And the law of unintended consequences often quashes the benefits.
Banning incandescent bulbs, as Congress has done starting in 2012, is also pointless. The ban will have only the tiniest effect on America’s energy use. In addition, fluorescent bulbs often use as much power as incandescent bulbs because people leave them on longer.
The Antiplanner needs to explain how he would take “politics” out of “rational planning” when every decision made about how “planning” occurs is a political decision. I hope The Antiplanner isn’t implying that we have to rely on elite technocrats to make “rational” decisions again–letting the highway engineers control the lion’s share of the “planning process” as this country has over the last 70+ years has been a disaster particularly when many, often much more important non-highway objectives are considered.
I contend that taking politics out of the process is impossible. For one thing, EVERYONE is a transportation “user” in one way or another, and every aspect of life, social, economic and other wide is impacted in some manner by transportation–this is one reason why in measuring congestion, for example, I think it should be s measured on a per capita basis, not just on a per driver basis. Since transportation impacts everything else, “user fees” are a very useful measure but only one of many considerations, mostly non-transportation per se. And how much weight a particular measure is given is a very political process–something impossible to avoid when collective social decisions are required.
Here’s an interesting case study of the “politics of infrastructure.”http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/1/14/the-political-hypocrisy-behind-infrastructure.html. Notice that the author decries the hyprocisy and double standards of the new Mayor and Council in Cincinnati, but doesn’t call for the removal of “politics” from the decision process, which I reiterate is impossible when conflicting needs and objectives exist–and usually uncomfortable tradeoffs must made.
I think it’s important to define “politics.” Every plan is political, but some plans purposefully obfuscate the facts to get approval (or more money).
On that note, it’s interesting that Lazy Reader brings up induced demand. I’m wondering if this only works for light bulbs or does transportation also fall into this trap?
I’m wondering if this only works for light bulbs or does transportation also fall into this trap?
;o)
For a while there, harrumphers and obfuscators were fond of pasting arguments about the ‘rebound effect’ as a reason why we shouldn’t conserve energy or change our behaviors or catch up with the rest of the world.
Most advanced policymakers have moved on and at best the issue is a distraction. And most folk who retrofit their homes for increased energy efficiency enjoy the lower utility payments instead of turning up the (smart) thermostat or leaving all the lights on in the house. That is: what do most people talk about: how much they saved on X item or how much more they paid for Y item? That’s right: most enjoy the savings.
DS
Bennett:
I think it’s important to define “politics.” Every plan is political, but some plans purposefully obfuscate the facts to get approval (or more money).
The book I’ve quoted before, The Dictator’s Handbook, I think has a useful definition. In pure dictatorships, the dictator only has to keep relatively few “constituents” (sic) fat in happy. In most societies that are “democratic” the politicians have to “spread the wealth” to a far broader constituency, usually the political coalition that got them elected. They also have to play-act at providing “benefits” to “the people” whoever they are.
And in democracies, “fairness”–even if only rhetorical–carries a lot of weight. Speaking of weight, Chris Christie is in trouble because his petty revenge on a mayor caused major inconvenience to thousands of people in an “unfair” way…this problem is also why in so-called “democratic” countries, politicians strive to keep their crony deals and corruption under wraps. On the other hand, dictators don’t care because it has zero impact on their hold on power.