« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

EDITOR OF REDSTATE

The GPPF T-SPLOST Analysis

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  May 23rd, 2012 at 05:56 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Here is the T-SPLOST analysis from the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The GPPF is less than thrilled with the T-SPLOST (Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) and the Atlanta area T-SPLOST’s emphasis on rail. There is one graphic that stands out in my mind.

From page 19 of the report:

Comparing Atlanta and Barcelona

Atlanta and Barcelona have the same number of people and Atlanta uses 30 times the physical land area as Barcelona. In other words, rail works great in Barcelona due to population density, but not Atlanta for the same reason. Zoning in Atlanta doesn’t help the matter.

Tonight on the Erick Erickson Show, I’m going to get into this topic and also Joe Biden’s comments that the tea party is to blame for the lack of economic recovery. You can listen live tonight on the WSB live stream and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK. The show is from 6pm to 9pm ET on the nation’s most listened to talk radio station.

Consider this an open thread.

Tags: , ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • johnt

    as an acronym, abbreviation, anything? But public money must be spent before the suckers wake up, or before some elections are lost.
    English already being dead, let’s kill the taxpayer.
    The Biden thing should be a trip. Who else and from what other administration this side of Mars, would blame be laid on peaceful demonstrators who work and pay their taxes. Among many other Obama/Biden lead balloons this is prime stuff.

  • aesthete

    and not so well almost anywhere else.

    First, Europe and Japan already had developed urbanized regions all over by the time that they industrialized. Railroads were used to connect urbanized areas to one another and to facilitate troop transport. Freight was a secondary concern in the development of Europe and Japan’s railway systems. In contrast, the US’ major rail projects were intended to ship freight across “flyover country”, and developed before we had settled much of what is now known as the continental US. Rails connecting urbanized areas were grafted onto our national rail network later on, but this was not the emphasis.

    Second, as you allude to above, Europe and Japan’s populations are both more urbanized, and more densely packed in their urban areas. In this list of the 125 largest world cities ranked by population density, the top-ranked US city (Los Angeles) is #90 on the list, and the other US cities are all past #100 on the list. The lowest-ranked Spanish, UK, and Japanese cities are all well above the top ranked US city (Barcelona @ #48, Nagoya @ #74, Glasgow @ #73), and the rest of their country is much more urbanized (there is much less “flyover country” in Europe than there is in the US). Note that in the sparsely-populated Japanese island of Hokkaido, routes are much less frequent and less

    Rail works in Europe because there are simply more people, and the railways are already in place. In the US, where freight is king and where the population is less dense, it doesn’t make sense to fund and use rail, except maybe in some pockets of the Northeast and Southern California.

  • acat

    In the U.S., the average social distance people keep from one another is 2.5 feet. Want to see this in action? Watch a line at a fast food place or a WalMart checkout line. To be fair, urbanites drop this a bit .. one way you can tell the yokels is by how uncomfortable they are “penned in” on a city bus or train.

    Germans are comfortable closer, around half a meter, Arabs at a bit more than a foot, Japanese and Chinese are closest of all at a foot or less.

    The point being, on top of the geographical differences, there’s a cultural difference as well… and all the wish-think by all the bureaucrats in Atlanta won’t change it.

    Mew

  • aesthete

    I’m not so sure that it’s a cultural difference, having lived in countries in all of those regions.

    For example, Germans are probably the “touchiest” of all groups I’ve run into when it comes to personal space. They’re just more urbanized. You’d have to compare urbanized Germans to urbanized Americans to really get a feel for the difference — and I can tell you right now, Stuttgart (#79 on the list I link to above) had a much larger “personal bubble” for its commuters (at least for ethnic Germans) than the average American commuter in NYC (#114 on the list). In fact, I’d say that almost all of northern Europe + the UK is more culturally averse to close personal contact than Americans.

    Asians have smaller personal bubbles than either Euros or Americans, it is true, but much larger ones than Africans or Latin Americans. I’d say there are more social taboos against close personal contact or touching in Asian cultures than in Latin American, African, or southern European culture groups. Yet, it would make even less sense to develop a rail network in, say, sparsely-populated South America or sub-Saharan Africa than it would to develop one in the US.

    I don’t think culture (at least, not cultures separated by ethnography) is as important as ultra-urbanization and pre-existing railways, infrastructure, and already developed transportation systems in this story.

  • David123

    Frequent commuter rail out to Gainesville and Macon, and other suburbs would be well patronized.

    VRE, Washington, DC commuter rail, is well patronized. Driving on I-85 near Atlanta or I-95/I-395 near Washington is an unpleasant experience.

    The subway rail (MARTA) is a nice way to get from the airport to downtown Atlanta, but it doesn’t go far out into the suburbs.

  • aesthete

    but probably not at a price that would keep it profitable.

    Europe+Japan’s state-run rail networks range from being very moderately profitable to running consistent (but small) deficits. Even so, they don’t tend to pay for themselves — and rail in most metropolitan areas in the US would be prohibitively expensive to run it in a way that would encourage daily rail usage on the part of commuters.

  • acat

    I found it an interesting parallel… we sprawl in our personal space – and while we’re not as touchy about it as the Germans, our bubbles are larger .. and we sprawl in our urbs.

    It would be near impossible to get the kind of fiscal incentives needed to increase our density to European, let alone Asian levels passed.

    Taking Atlanta as an example, if Fulton and DeKalb changed their property tax law so it’s by square foot of real estate, regardless (or .. with less regard) toward improvement .. so the 20 residents in an apartment tower each pay 1/20 of the property tax bill that the owner of a single-family home on the same sized piece of land pays … and if Fulton and DeKalb bumped up their vehicle registration rates by 50% .. and nudged the gas tax up by a quarter a gallon … light rail would make sense.

    Of course, Atlanta would also be a ghost town.

    Mew

  • acat

    but routinely goes hat-in-hand to the statehouse for bail-outs…. because raising their rates opens them to all kinds of complaints.

    The Chicago Transit Authority (i.e. “the El” + city buses) likewise only work due to subsidies by farmers in Litchfield and factory workers in Peoria who rarely, if ever, use either service.

    Mew

  • aesthete

    I don’t have a problem with subsidizing public transportation for some costs, but when the subsidy has to increase every year, and service isn’t even that good or comprehensive? Pass.

    At least in Europe, it can be credibly stated that you don’t need a car or that you can travel from Stuttgart to Madrid for ~20 euro, and that this was only moderately subsidized. Where can rail boast that kind of success in the US?

  • aesthete

    it makes no real sense to pursue explicitly pro-urbanization policies. We have plenty of land available for use and high discretionary income; let cities develop organically. There’s no need to force our cities and lifestyles to be something that they’re not.

  • acat

    Besides, I don’t see the “internet generation” and the “always online” generation (a.k.a. “those pesky kids, always texing on their iPhones”) to look at “work/life balance” and “commuting” in the same way…

    It’s going to be interesting to see what they do.

    Mew

  • Agelaius

    But it really does seem like Barcelona might be a nicer place to live than Atlanta. There’s an advantage to having a living city center without so much urban sprawl, and fast cheap public transportation. I’ve been to both cities. I hate to say it, but I prefer Barcelona. I have no idea about the economics of rail transport in Atlanta, and suspect that Atlanta’s vast growth after the invention of the automobile probably has more to do with the difference between the two cities. For most of the 20th century, most Spaniards were too poor to own autos, at least until the 1980′s, and Atlanta grew up with our economic sense of space, not so much our cultural sense of space as someone else commented. Cheap fuel, fast cars, incentives for builders and home ownership (some of which we came to regret), and lack of urban planning and what you get is Atlanta – for good or ill.

  • macwell

    in the 50′s, and even earlier. They wanted to live away from the cities and ride to work and back in their grand automobiles. The city only rail systems work well, to a point, but to think Americans are going to move to urban planned areas, away from their country, let’s just say I hope I don’t live to see it. First our right to bear arms, then our property, what next folks?

  • acat

    Both urban, both have decent (good?) light rail networks, both have “living” (and liveable…) urban centers…. so it’s not a uniquely Spanish thing.

    Of course, it’s quite expensive to live in downtown Philly compared with suburban DeKalb County, and while Portland can be cheaper it’s .. an acquired taste. (I don’t mind spontaneous bursts of opera from random street people, but others seem to …)

    Mew

  • jimmyg

    Cook and the collar counties. Farmers in Litchfield and factory workers are pretty much shielded from funding the CTA. These agencies generally go to Springfield to seek larger subsidies from the RTA, and pension help.

  • acat

    are the “bosnywash megalopolis” (and even with subsidies, brainless Joe Biden’s Accela costs more than flying from Dulles to Newark or Logan) and the pacific northwest – specifically Seattle to Portland – and the latter is only because the population is *very* concentrated in the urbs.. both drop from urban to rural (away from the I-5) *very* fast.

    Mew

  • acat

    from the general fund, not just from the sales tax levied in the counties served.

    Mew

  • oldprospector

    There is only one new rail line in the project list and it goes into Emory University area. A huge employment area that is an absolute cluster to get in and out of. Opponents of this thing act like we are laying out 7 new lines all over the Atlanta area when in fact we are not.

    Huge fan of Erick and Redstate, but got to disagree on this issue.

    Plus, it took Georgia 5 years to put forth a plan of some sort and legislators spent all that time trying to figure out a way to maximize local control. They damn near voted unanimously on HB 277 to enable this whole fiasco. Now in the late innings people who voted Yes are complaining that those who they empowered to select the projects got it wrong. Severe lack of leadership on this issue here.

  • oldprospector

    2 rail lines, Atlanta Beltline included as well

  • aesthete

    but I’m not sure that rail makes sense in areas that are mostly rural besides 2-4 ultra-urbanized areas (IIRC, Portland and Seattle aren’t even that urban).

    Elsewise, you’d see rail (or at least feasible rail plans) all over West Africa, and more effective rail systems in places like China.

    I think you need to have regions that are urban all over, with major transit points in super-urbanized cities.

    Routes that look like this:

    A============================================>B

    are going to be more expensive to operate, and will pick up less passengers, than routes that look like this:

    A====>B====>C====D>====>E====>F====>G====>H

    Where B, C, D, E, F, and G are smaller urban areas between main destinations like A and H.

  • aesthete

    that’s for sure.

  • aesthete

    According to the latest Gallup poll, 50% of respondents are pro-life, and only 42% identify as being pro-choice — this is a record low for the “choice” movement, and a record high for the pro-life movement’s popularity. Much of the gain comes from younger respondents — as it turns out, they are quite possibly the most pro-life generation in decades.

    This comes on the heels of polls by Gallup and others indicating majority support for both marijuana legalization and gay marriage (both driven by trends in youth, as well).

    Interesting times, friends…

  • rabun1016

    Currently, the Marta employees are unionized, and make a large premium over their market value, probably in the area of 30%.
    If those unions go away, costs go done, and it operates for less money. I like the train as a solution so when people lose their drivers license due to age, vision, etc, they can still be part of the community.
    Atlanta has been poorly planned. If you were someone influential with a piece of land, the taxpayers would build a four-lane road right out to your subdivision. That is why the sprawl is unbelievable. Twenty more years of doing that is not a solution.

  • zachv

    Two cities I’ve lived in Madison, WI and Bonn, Germany are roughly on the same on the population side of things: 250,000 in Madison and 325,000 in Bonn.

    Anecdotally I can tell you that in Madison, WI we have big road, a lot of space and single-family home next to single-family home. In Bonn? Tiny narrow roads, multifamily homes and a crowded downtown.

    Type this into Google and Madison comes out to be 85 sq miles and Bonn’s 55 sq miles. Bonn’s got a 30% larger population within 60% of the space. You build a S-Bahn in Bonn, you’ll get more people (customers) per mile of track than Madison would ever dream of getting.

  • acat

    Do B, C, D, E, F, and G in your above example pre-exist the rail system, or do they grow in later, once the possibility of rail is available?

    On this note, not all stations will produce the same number of passengers – so “express” trains that skip, say, C, D, and E may be “appreciated” by passengers .. who may pay more to get home to F faster.

    As for Seattle and Portland, both are served by light rail networks that, arguably, make sense .. and both are linked by a routinely crowded Amtrak line that makes a few stops in between. It’s the closest to a European model that comes to mind.. although the Accela link between the various bosnywash subway systems are similar.

    In all cases, a deliberate mindset shift to live in an urban area is necessary .. and Americans seem (based on population size) to prefer suburban mcmansions to urban condos…

    Mew

  • Finrod

    With the exception of the local interstate system (which thankfully almost all of Atlanta’s expressways were built, unlike many other East Coast cities), Atlanta was not planned at all, it just sort of happened. Complicating the matter is that the actual city of Atlanta is only a small fraction of the Atlanta metro area; included in the metro area are also: Smyrna, Marietta, Kennesaw, Sandy Springs, Dunwoody, Roswell, Alpharetta, Doraville, Norcross, Duluth, Decatur, Tucker, Lilburn, Snellville, Stone Mountain, Forest Park, College Park, Mableton, Lithia Springs, and probably several others that I omitted. Getting all these municipalities on board with something is about the same order of magnitude of difficulty as herding cats.

    And really, what’s so bad about sprawl, as long as the highways keep up? The automobile is one of the most important commercial expressions of consumer freedom that exists. It’s those that hate freedom that want to take away everyone’s cars and force them onto trains and other public transportation. Atlanta’s problem is that it’s added nearly 2 million people in the last 15 years to the metro population and other than adding some lanes to Georgia 400, there’s been no expansion of highways at all (I don’t count the toll lane on I-85); the Outer Perimeter became the Northern Arc became canceled, and plans to double-deck the topside perimeter never got off the ground. Bigger cities need bigger highways, and thanks to the government giving Atlanta crap about the Clean Air Act, Atlanta’s highway expansion plans mostly got canceled for them.

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    Some are obviously better than others, but most just happened. I worked in architecture for many years, and it quite a few states. It was always the same, except for Santa Barbara, CA. It has the strictest architectural policies (and growth policies) of any city I’ve ever worked in. It’s also the reason why it’s obscenely expensive to live there.

  • aesthete

    that B-G don’t tend to grow too much with the mere addition of rail, ditto experiences in Brazil and China for their attempts at rail. I just don’t see it — the Pacific northwest is one of the least urbanized areas in the US, and Portland/Seattle don’t compare to what you see in the places where rail works in Europe.

  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    not least in New York in the mid-to-late 1800s: uniform block design, Central Park and others, confinement of major arteries to borough perimeters, magnetic extension of subways through existing villages into outer boroughs. Enough foresight, at the very least, to weather the wholesale transition of economy from manufacturing and shipping to media and service without disruption, with even the last gritty remnant of the vanished era recently transformed into new parkland, The High Line.

    The worst failures were those that valued efficiency over that most precious of partially-tangibles, community: in The Bronx, the Cross Bronx and Grand Concourse severed once-coherent neighborhoods, and projects that scream “quarantine” eliminated street-level interaction. But with those early-20th C. exceptions, given what was known at the time, I very much doubt that much better plans could have been laid here.

    Looking ahead, it’s way past time for our side to lay aside its urbophobia and demonstrate a similar boldness and vision for American cities. Sadly, as always surfaces in threads like this, some consider urban conservatism an oxymoron not worth living for–but they are simply wrong.

    Speaking of rail transport–where else can you go 209 miles for $2.25? If you’re ever able to visit, I’m near the top of the hill in the background at the 1:17 mark:

  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    “worth living for”? Brain freeze. I value the concept–but it’s not my raison d’etre. “Worth considering and planning for and outthinking the opposition on and promoting and implementing” was my intent.

  • acat

    His thumbprints are all over Chicago.

    You are very right, though, in saying that most suburbs “just happen” – the comparative to Burnham’s Chicago is the suburban sprawl of Schaumburg….once a relatively quaint farm town that happened to be near two interstates and a rail line, it’s now known more as a poorly matched collection of townhome developments, strip malls, and wide, pedestrian-hostile streets….

    Mew

  • Finrod

    The streets of downtown Indy are some of the widest downtown streets I’ve ever been on in any city anywhere. Many of them are wide enough for three lanes of traffic both directions, plus parking, plus sidewalks.

    Oh, and CincoSolas_del_Bronx — your signature is very apt for this thread.

  • CincoSolas_del_Bronx

    Please enlighten me on your unqualified use of the term in light of:
    Americans made their decision …
    They wanted to live away from the cities …
    to think Americans are going to move …
    away from their country …
    … our right to bear arms …
    … our property …

    If that’s how you see your country–a gentle suggestion that you get out a bit more. I could even arrange an educational weekend in the South Bronx if you’d be interested …

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    If you worked on a project in Farmer’s Branch, the very worst think you could say was,

    This is how we do it in Dallas.

  • Tbone

    There, is that better? Teehee.

  • http://www.editedforbias.com editedforbias

    I really want to locate the podcast for this show? Maybe the date 5/23 is not right but I found it odd this one was how was missing.

  • Agelaius

    But I do like Philly – several friends have lived there or near there. Transportation is good and it seems to me Philly is an underrated city with lots going on.