Eva Young
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From: Chris Johnson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: Re: [Mpls] Suburb/auto bashing
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X-Original-Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 12:31:40 -0600
Date: Wed, 26 Mar 2003 12:31:40 -0600
Bruce Gaarder wrote:Chris Johnson, in the typical fashion, thinks that the costs of cars are "magnitudes higher". Carol Becker points you to some local research and then says that the gas tax doesn't come close, leaving an impression that Chris is right. I include quotations from that report at the end of this posting. You should also look to the article by Mark Delucchi, an advocate of rail transit, in Access magazine by the University of California Transportation Center. www.uctc.net/access/access16.pdf (for those with slower links, www.uctc.net/access/access16lite.pdf). Being a good researcher, he gives a range of costs, with a most likely figure in parentheses.
Mr. Gaarder manages to find one thin, poorly researched report from a young, fresh out of school post-doc "scientist" who has a "penchant" for putting phrases in "quotes" in his essay, and calls it The Final Trvth.
I'm afraid Mark Delucchi's "report" is far from convincing, and is demonstrably wrong. Delucchi convenient ignores costs which are "hard" for him to calculate, and worse, completely ignore the cost of parking. The cost of parking is not that hard to calculate. The University of Minnesota's Center for Transportation Studies just did so recently.
Moreover, Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute (Canada) and Allen Greenberg of the Federal Highway Administration (USA) refute many Delucchi's assumptions, claims and conclusions. You can read their refutation here: http://www.vtpi.org/delucchi.htm
One conclusion is that efficient user fees would increase the cost of driving a car by 20 to 50 cents a mile, a 200-500% increase over current costs. Or another way to look at is, multiply the millions of miles driven per year by cars by .20 (cents) to get a LOW end estimate of the amount of subsidy automobile transportation gets from all sources, mostly the taxpayer at a variety of levels of government.
200-500% sure sounds like "magnitudes higher" to me, Mr. Gaarder. In fact, it sounds exactly like several magnitudes. So I guess my thinking is right, "in typical fashion."
Despite that, I have nothing against cars or suburbs, per se. I am a car guy, as the popular saying goes. I just don't want to pay tax for Mn/DOT to pave part of my neighborhood, reducing property values and safety, and increasing noise and pollution, just so commuters from Elko, New Market and Lakeville can drive to their jobs in Roseville, Brooklyn Park and even downtown Minneapolis faster and easier. If they want to live that far out, they should pay the consequences, not me.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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Eva Young Near North Minneapolis [EMAIL PROTECTED] Blog is up: http://lloydletta.blogspot.com
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