"How Much Sprawl Costs America"

[darkeconomist]

Originally Posted by Malloric

Feel free to substantiate your claims though.

In Texas:
$2.8 billion on the Katy freeway expansion
$4.8 billion for the I-35E project

In California:
$1 billion on 405 widening
$425 million to widen 101 south of Santa Barbara
$900 million to widen 101 in Marin and Sonoma Counties

There's projects to widen or extend freeways in Ohio, Illinois, Virginia, and on and on, to avert the bogeyman of congestion, and none of these use wholly local funding. The bulk of the funding comes from the state and federal governments, but the bulk of the benefit is to people commuting out from the suburbs and exurbs. So, what we have is our governments underwriting the cost of putting developments further and further afield by building the kind of large-scale infrastructure that makes those developments viable. All those drive-till-you-qualify houses in Tracy and Lathrop wouldn't be nearly as viable if residents had to internalize the cost of getting out there.

[Malloric]

Katy freeway expansion was in Houston, not some suburbs or exurbs. The primary benefit was to the Houston Energy Corridor (which is Houston) through downtown Houston, incidentally also in Houston. Just for the Energy Corridor which has 84,000 jobs and 20,000 people living in it, obviously it's of huge importance to the area that the workers can get to the jobs. Despite your not liking it, that's a truism of any freeway connecting a bedroom to a business district. They both benefit, not just one. The difference with the Katy expansion, of course, is that it didn't do that. It just connects two business districts within the city to each other.

The federal government also pays for about 20% of the transit budget for Houston, which predominantly is spent in Houston. All across the country, the federal government funds transit. Another source is, of course, sales taxes. Personally, as much as I'd prefer the federal government entirely got out of funding intraregional transit but that's not how it operates. But as you rightly point out, cities like Houston get a lot of that money too for projects like the Katy expansion or METRORail. It isn't overwhelmingly going to build freeways to the exurbs.

I-35E gets most of it's funding from the state. Most of which is from toll revenues collected by the state and allocated Denton County based upon where toll revenue is collected.

Tracy/Lathrop was a bad example. I-205 widening was 100% paid for with local funds. Measure K (1/2 cent sales tax) similar to Measure B and BB (BB is paying for 580) in Alameda.

[pvande55]

I am going to play devils advocate. You talk about the cost as if that money goes down the drain or off to China, never to return. But in fact money spent to build roads, schools and transit lines mostly stays in the area, creating jobs. And they are good paying, not fast food. Though some retail jobs are created as well. Remember it wasn't that long ago that unemployment was our nation's most critical problem.

The title could alternatively be:
Sprawl generates $1000 billion a year in economic activity and creates 10 million well-paid jobs.

[darkeconomist]

Originally Posted by pvande55

I am going to play devils advocate. You talk about the cost as if that money goes down the drain or off to China, never to return. But in fact money spent to build roads, schools and transit lines mostly stays in the area, creating jobs. And they are good paying, not fast food. Though some retail jobs are created as well. Remember it wasn't that long ago that unemployment was our nation's most critical problem.

I talk about it as if it is money, very large sums of money, being used by our levels of government to underwrite the cost of living further and further out from the jobs. Even when it is local dollars, it is local dollars being spent servicing debts that could have but are no longer available to be spent on other things, like education, safety, or health care. Maybe the freeway was the best use, maybe not, but the opportunity cost--the "what else could be done with this money?"--of spending half a billion expanding a freeway gets little discourse.

I also talk as if, by building in this way, we create demand for more of the same, because capacity induces demand and begets more auto-centric development. Now that the freeway is wider, more people are making more trips and now the connecting roads are congested and need to be widened.

And I talk as if, by being auto-centric and sprawled out, large sums of consumer dollars are sent out of the local economy, weakening the local economy overall, a point which I've already covered.

[Phyxius]

Population growth occurs before during and after construction. More development brings more people.

[IC_deLight]

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

I talk about it as if it is money, very large sums of money, being used by our levels of government to underwrite the cost of living further and further out from the jobs. Even when it is local dollars, it is local dollars being spent servicing debts that could have but are no longer available to be spent on other things, like education, safety, or health care. Maybe the freeway was the best use, maybe not, but the opportunity cost--the "what else could be done with this money?"--of spending half a billion expanding a freeway gets little discourse.

You mean very large sums of money to support maintaining the jobs within an urban center?
So would you be content if the jobs were moved elsewhere - requiring city dwellers to use the same roads to leave the city for the job?

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

I also talk as if, by building in this way, we create demand for more of the same, because capacity induces demand and begets more auto-centric development. Now that the freeway is wider, more people are making more trips and now the connecting roads are congested and need to be widened.

That logic doesn't work well for other forms of transportation. More empty train cars just means more empty train cars.

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

And I talk as if, by being auto-centric and sprawled out, large sums of consumer dollars are sent out of the local economy, weakening the local economy overall, a point which I've already covered.

??? Isn't shipping and transportation part of the local economy? Don't commuters who come into town and spend money contribute to the "local economy"? How does your model hold up when people in town and out of town are both mail ordering stuff from Amazon that's made in China?

[Malloric]

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

I also talk as if, by building in this way, we create demand for more of the same, because capacity induces demand and begets more auto-centric development. Now that the freeway is wider, more people are making more trips and now the connecting roads are congested and need to be widened.

That's what infrastructure does. San Francisco is spending billions of dollars on transit hoping it induces more people making trips. San Francisco is interesting in that it's also got a lot of anti-growth sentiment which many suburbs do not have as well, but it's the same idea. Fed money is paying for most of that, not local dollars though.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by darkeconomist

I talk about it as if it is money, very large sums of money, being used by our levels of government to underwrite the cost of living further and further out from the jobs. Even when it is local dollars, it is local dollars being spent servicing debts that could have but are no longer available to be spent on other things, like education, safety, or health care. Maybe the freeway was the best use, maybe not, but the opportunity cost--the "what else could be done with this money?"--of spending half a billion expanding a freeway gets little discourse.

I also talk as if, by building in this way, we create demand for more of the same, because capacity induces demand and begets more auto-centric development. Now that the freeway is wider, more people are making more trips and now the connecting roads are congested and need to be widened.

And I talk as if, by being auto-centric and sprawled out, large sums of consumer dollars are sent out of the local economy, weakening the local economy overall, a point which I've already covered.

2nd avenue subway in NYC-8.5 miles and estimated at $17 billion.

I guess not much else could be done with a mere $17 billion.