Reason Foundation - Staff > Ted Balaker

Reason.tv Video: Hasta La Vista, Arnold

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:14:00 EDT

He was the perfect political superhero, sent to rescue California from spend-happy politicians at just the right time. And yet Arnold Schwarzenegger’s reign as governor has turned into a disaster flick that could spell catastrophe for the Golden State—and the whole nation.

In 2003's historic recall election, the former Mr. Olympia pummeled dozens of candidates—from incumbent Gray Davis to former child actor Gary Coleman to porn star Mary Carey—on the road to Sacramento. He promised to abolish the odious car tax implemented by Davis. And to balance the budget, cut taxes and spending, and make California more business-friendly.

"He promised to stop the crazy deficit spending, cut up the credit cards, live within our means. And he did exactly the opposite. Schwarzenegger increased spending faster than we saw under Gray Davis," says Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), who was a state senator—and one of Arnold's challengers—six years ago.

Now the Golden State faces yet another spending-induced catastrophe. California could simply go broke by July. Sacramento reacted to the latest crisis by passing a massive tax increase in February, squeezing another $1,100 dollars from the average family. Even the dreaded car tax, the issue that catapulted Arnold to office, is back.

How could it all have gone so horribly wrong, especially after it looked so wonderfully right? Well, it turns out there's a force in California politics that's much more powerful than the Governator: a culture of spending pushed by public-employee unions, money-grubbing corporate-welfare cases, and more.

Sadly, California and Schwarzenegger are hardly alone in spending well beyond their means. As many as 40 states face whopping deficits that are only going to get worse as recession continues.

If country-wide trends do start in California, Rep. McClintock worries about what's in store for our nation. "As high taxes, high borrowing and high spending destroy California’s economy, Californians are moving to those 49 other states. If we allow the same policies to destroy our country where are we going to go?"

"Hasta La Vista, Arnold" is written and produced by Ted Balaker. Director of Photography is Alex Manning and Associate Producer is Paul Detrick.

'We Have a Lot of Work to Do'

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 15:56:00 EDT

John Stossel is the best-known libertarian in the news media. As the co-anchor of the long-running and immensely popular ABC News program 20/20, auteur of a continuing series of specials on topics ranging from corporate welfare to educational waste to laws criminalizing consensual adult behavior, and author of best-selling books such as Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, Stossel brings a consistent message of liberty to millions of viewers on a weekly basis.

It wasn’t always this way. Born in 1947, Stossel started out as a standard-issue consumer reporter, working in Oregon and New York before joining the staff of Good Morning America and, later, 20/20. He did scare stories about everything from pharmaceutical rip-offs to exploding coffee pots. Then, in the 1980s, he encountered reason, which radically changed his thinking about the benefits of laissez faire in economics and personal lifestyles.

“It was a revelation,” he writes in his 2004 memoir, Give Me a Break. “Here were writers who analyzed the benefits of free markets that I witnessed as a reporter. They called themselves libertarians, and their slogan was ‘Free Minds and Free Markets.’ I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant, but what they wrote sure made sense.”

reason caught up with Stossel in January in Los Angeles, where he was filming a special episode of 20/20 based on six reason.tv documentaries featuring Drew Carey. Among the topics: the desirability of open borders, the need to reform the nation’s drug laws, and the case against universal preschool. Ted Balaker, a reason.tv producer, talked with Stossel about bailouts, his hopes for the Obama years, and his attempt to educate a generation of school kids with a video series called Stossel in the Classroom.

Audio and video of the interview is available online at reason.tv/stossel.

reason: What do you think of the bailout mania that’s sweeping the country?

John Stossel: I think it’s disgusting. They keep saying everybody agrees that we have to bail these people out and the feds have to spend trillions of your tax dollars guaranteeing this and that. It’s just so irresponsible. We’ve got a $35 trillion Medicare liability already that they’re not facing. Now they’re going to throw more trillions of dollars to stop this recession, like we’re not allowed to experience any pain in America. There are recessions. There are booms and busts. Bubbles have to pop.

In this case, there are smart people, like [former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chief] Hank Paulson, making the argument that this is different: You’ve got the credit lock; the whole system is at stake. That is possible, but what I’ve learned over 30 years of consumer reporting is that the people closest to the problem panic. And when they panic, that is an invitation for government to get bigger. It’s not only war that is the friend of the state. Any crisis is the friend of the state.

The mad cow disease doctors were convinced we were all going to have holes in our brains and anybody who ate meat was at risk of these horrible diseases. The Y2K technicians were convinced all the planes were going to crash. Now it’s the Wall Street investment bankers, who unfortunately are allowed to spend trillions of our dollars in their panic.

reason: Let’s take a quick look back at the Bush years. Spending has exploded to historic proportions. Regulations exploded too. Yet people look back on the Bush years and say it’s a failure of free market policies. What do you say to that?

Stossel: I say bullshit. There was no deregulation under Bush. People don’t know that, yet everybody says, “See, your libertarian ideas, they’re wrong and this proves it.” First of all, there was no real deregulation. [The repeal of the Depression-era banking regulation] Glass-Steagall was done under Clinton, and he rightly defends that. Banks that had more options after Glass-Steagall were not the ones that got into trouble. Under Bush, the regulators have added more pages of rules than any administration ever. The cost of regulation has gone up more under Bush than any president before. And yet, because of the bad media coverage and assumptions about Republicans, people think it as
laissez-faire.

I’m sure there are some people at regulatory agencies—at least I hope there were—who said, “You know, a lot of these rules are bad and we’re going to be less aggressive about them under Bush.” But that’s not what caused this bubble. The bubble was the government saying: “Lend more, lend more. You’re discriminating against poor people; you’re racist. Lend to more people.” That’s not deregulation.

reason: What are your hopes and fears for the Obama years?

Stossel: My fear is that they’ll spend us all into bankruptcy and we’ll be like the people in the Weimar Republic, running around with wheelbarrows full of cash because inflation is so bad. We’re trillions of dollars in the hole for just Social Security and Medicare. They won’t have the guts to raise taxes. Well, maybe they will, but they won’t be able to raise taxes enough to pay for Social Security and Medicare because you’d have to take just about all people make, and that would totally destroy the economy. They won’t cut the programs because we older people want the best of medical care, and we’re going to demand it, and the politicians can’t say no to anybody.

reason: And your hope?

Stossel: Hey, Nixon went to China. Maybe Obama will be financially responsible. And maybe he’ll do the things that reason thinks should be done, like legalizing drugs and prostitution and ending the criminalization of behavior between consenting adults.

Hayek called it a fatal conceit to think you can plan an economy. I think it’s also a fatal conceit to predict what these politicians will do.

reason: Talk about your collaboration with reason.tv and Drew Carey and how it came about.

Stossel: reason magazine has always meant a lot to me. I was lost in the political wilderness and politically naive. Conservatives didn’t make sense to me in the magazines I was reading, and the liberals who controlled the media where I am always said government will fix it and we just have to spend more. That made no sense to me either. Discovering reason was just wonderful. I could see that, wow, there was another way to think about these things. I’ve always read the magazine. [Former Editor] Virginia Postrel was my teacher originally, and when you guys started doing television, I thought, “Great, let’s take the best of it and get it out to a wider audience.”

reason: Is the mainstream media biased?

Stossel: Yes.

reason: Is it because liberty just isn’t TV-friendly? You can pass a minimum wage law and go interview the happy employee at Burger King who just had her wage boosted, but you can’t interview the person who doesn’t know she got squeezed out of a job.

Stossel: That’s part of it. It’s certainly hard to show the people who arehurt by a government program that takes two cents from everyone or prevents a job from being created. You can’t take a picture of that. I think liberty intuitively is hard to get. Intuitively, the minimum wage makes sense. We want to help poor people, so raise the minimum wage. It’s hard for people to understand how that hurts people.

Plus, there is just the basic political bias. The people with whom I work read The New York Times and The Washington Post, and that’s their world. Everybody around them agrees with them. They all lean left, and they think that’s the middle.

The Internet has shown people that there was a liberal media. Now the public at least knows that ABC, NBC, CBS lean left. CNN, especially. MSNBC gets talked about a lot on the Internet. Thanks finally to the Internet and cable deregulation and Fox TV, people have an alternative from the days when government monopoly limited the number of TV stations. The broadcast networks lobbied Congress to say if you allow cable to come in everywhere, then poor people who can’t afford cable will be deprived of free TV. So there were five channels. That helped me make more money, but it certainly wasn’t fair. It’s far better that we have 150 channels now. It’s right for people that they should have more choices.

reason: What sort of new media gets your attention?

Stossel: I’m embarrassed to say that I still read magazines. I’m still reading reason in its print form, and The American Prospect and The New Republic and National Review. It’s the traditional publications of the left and the right. I’d like to say I check Google all the time, but I don’t.

reason: Do you think the libertarian worldview is gaining influence?

Stossel: I don’t know. It’s easier for me now because there are more points of view on TV. That makes me think at least now people know these ideas deserve a place at the table. It’s why ABC lets me do my specials, but are we winning?

This move toward more spending makes me think not. On the other hand, as [Cato Institute Executive Vice President] David Boaz often points out, if you are gay or black or a woman, we forget how America has changed, how much more freedom there is. It’s a mixed bag.

Government’s much bigger, but in many personal ways we are freer. The fall of the Soviet Union in some ways is a danger because we used to have role models of failure. Now you have the left saying, “Ah, we just have to do it right, be more a middle way between government and capitalism, like Europe.” We have models of failure in Cuba and North Korea and the post office and the motor vehicles department, but they are relatively few. People still say, “When I’m scared, government must step in.”

reason: What are some of the things you regret about your career?

Stossel: Now that I’ve wised up to the benefits of economic freedom, I regret much of my first 20 years of bashing business, of calling for more regulation. That’s the intuitive reaction. You send the TV out to 15 repair shops. Some people cheat you. Politicians call me up and say, “Oh, great piece, we’re going to establish a department of consumer affairs and license TV repair shops and car repair shops.” If you haven’t read reason, it sounds good, because you like licensing. We license dogs and drivers. It sounds like the right thing to do.

I encouraged that sort of thing for many years. Just scare stories: “Danger in the Grass,” things about lawn chemicals that were over the top.

reason: I was worried about exploding coffee pots during my whole childhood because of you.

Stossel: I did a story on somebody who died because their house caught fire after their coffee pot blew up. These things do happen, but it’s a big country. There’s a lot of nasty stuff happening to people. You’ve got 50 people who die every year from plastic bags.

reason: What about the flip side, the things that you look back on and you’re truly proud of what you’ve done?

Stossel: My first special was this show called Are We Scaring Ourselves to Death? That’s when I finally said, “We’re scaring people about everything. We ought to put this into perspective.” I read Searching for Safety by [political scientist] Aaron Wildavsky, which really opened my brain. I tried to put risks in perspective. It was tough to get on the air. Two freelance producers quit rather than work on that show. They said I wasn’t objective, that it was conservative dogma to say that regulation itself might hurt people. To ABC’s credit, a producer said, We don’t agree with you, but this is an argument that deserves to be heard.

More recently, we did a special called Stupid in America, which was about education. I worried that the show wouldn’t be well received because education isn’t good TV. It’s just people, kids sitting at a desk. But the ratings—we get minute-by-minute ratings now—went straight up. It was the highest-watched show that night, as was the repeat. It argued pretty forcefully that choice and competition might make a big difference. There’s this argument that the reason public education is failing is that we’re not spending enough money. We’re spending $11,000 per student. If you do the math, that’s more than $200,000 per classroom. Think what you would do with that money.

reason: Drive the kids up in limos?

Stossel: Hire four excellent teachers. It just shows that government monopolies waste money. That special stirred the pot some. I’m happy with that show.

reason: If you look at the positions you’ve taken over the years, there’s a lot for conservatives to dislike about you and a lot for liberals to love. You’ve spoken out against corporate welfare, against greedy peddlers of junk science and medicine ripping people off, in favor of legalizing drugs, gay rights, and free speech. Yet it seems almost always that you’re widely adored by conservatives and widely scorned by liberals. Why is that?

Stossel: I’m not sure, but you’re absolutely right. Somebody came up to me in New York and said, “Are you John Stossel?…I hope you die soon.” He was a legal aid lawyer. There is this real hatred on the left because I’m a consumer reporter defending business, and they just so hate business.

I don’t know. I mean, I’m prochoice. I was against the war in Iraq. I think homosexuality is just fine. I want drugs legal and prostitution legal. Yet conservatives invite me to their conferences and give me standing ovations. Sometimes. Not always, but they generally like what I have to say. I even mention some of that, and it shows how pathetic it is for conservatives in the mainstream media that I, a libertarian, am the closest thing that they have to invite to a conference.

This hatred of business—I’m not sure what that’s about. I used to think it was envy, that the college professor is angry that his slightly stupider roommate is making more money than he is because he’s in business. Then you think about the kings and queens of Europe. People didn’t hate them for all their wealth, and their wealth proportionately was vastly greater than now, but they hated the bourgeoisie. They gave them that nasty name. They hated the very people who sold them the things that they needed to make their lives better. What’s that about?

My best guess is that it’s the intuitive reaction that the world is a zero-sum game, that if he makes profit off you, you must’ve lost something. If you don’t study economics, that is how people think. I see why politicians think that way, because that’s how their world works. One wins. Somebody else has to lose. We have a lot of work to do to explain that free commerce doesn’t work that way, that everybody gains.

reason: Talk about Stossel in the Classroom. What is it, and what do you hope to accomplish through it?

Stossel: I’m very invested in that now. We do these shows, and they cost ABC almost half a million bucks, and then they air and they’re gone. Teachers sometimes wrote in saying, “I wish I’d taped that because I wanted to show it in class.” Or, “We did tape it and I showed it in class, and the kids, quiet kids who’ve never spoken all year, suddenly they were up arguing. We had a great discussion. Can we get more of these things to use in the classroom?”

I had some shows like Greed or Is America No. 1?, which discussed why America is prosperous. You ask kids, and they say it’s because we have democracy and we have natural resources. I point out, well, India has democracy and natural resources, but India’s poor. They’d say, India’s overpopulated. Actually the population density of India is the same as that of New Jersey, and New Jersey’s doing OK. And Hong Kong has no natural resources and 20 times as many people per square foot as India, and Hong Kong got rich. In 50 years it went from the Third World to First World because, as Milton Friedman points out, economic freedom is the answer to why a country’s prosperous. The British rulers in Hong Kong enforced the rule of law, kept people and property safe, and then they sat around and drank tea. They left people alone. To me, that’s such a valuable lesson for kids.

Weirdly, more public school teachers are asking for these. Now I have a nonprofit that raises money to buy them from ABC. Any teacher can go to stosselintheclassroom.org to get a DVD with teacher’s guides and suggestions for how it meets the curriculum.

reason: What are the stories that you’re still itching to do?

Stossel: I would love to do more on Medicare. We did a show called Sick in America, which touched on the success of free market medicine and the times and places where it’s been allowed to flourish. As we criticize Bernie Madoff, I’d like to point out that the government’s running a bigger Ponzi scheme in Social Security and Medicare.

We are working on a show that asks why, if you’re an owner of a business, can’t you hire and fire who you want? Why can’t you refuse to hire older people if you want because they cost more? Or refuse to hire pregnant women because they’re probably going to leave, or they’re certainly going to take time off? Who gets to make these decisions? You or the state?

As reason readers know, companies that were racist and homophobic would bid up the price of whites and straights, and a business then that hired only gay men or women would clean their clock because they’d have better workers they could hire more effectively. The market sorts these things out. But again, that’s an education job to explain to people.

This interview first appeared at Reason.com.

How LA Can Get People Out of Their Cars

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:02:00 EST

Los Angeles Times

It propelled SpaceShipOne into suborbital space, so maybe a low-altitude version of the X Prize could give Angelenos more space on the road. Here's how it might work: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority carves out some of the $115 billion in transportation funding that's headed to the region over the next couple of decades to stage a contest.

It also creates two teams. Team A tries to lure as many motorists out of their cars as possible by building rail. (Note to referee: Ex-bus riders don't count as ex-motorists.) Team B must lure motorists to telecommuting. The team with the most ex-motorists after a set period of time wins the prize.

(Let the general public chase the bounty too. The X Prize was just a $10-million purse, yet it helped induce the birth of private spaceflight as well as a host of technological innovations. Is it really so fanciful to think that it could conquer gridlock?)

Does telecommuting really stand a chance? Absolutely. Telecommuters already outnumber rail commuters in the L.A. area, and according to U.S. census data, those who work from home outnumber total transit commuters (rail and bus) in most of the 50 most populous metro areas. A zero-minute commute alone is an enticing carrot -- imagine what an extra nudge might do.

This column first appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Pols Love Public Transit-Just Not for Themselves

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 10:56:00 EDT

L.A. Daily News

"You've got to use public transit," Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared. "You can't keep on pointing to someone else and saying it's their responsibility."

Imagine the credibility and public-relations points Villaraigosa could have racked up uttering those words while commuting on a bus to City Hall. But instead of being the "eco-friendly transit-riding mayor," Villaraigosa rides an SUV to work.

Yet many Angelenos probably sympathize with the mayor. "Give me a first-rate transit system, and I'll use it," they might say. Until that system arrives, they support new transit proposals, like the $5 billion "subway to the sea," while continuing to drive everywhere.

But what would it say about the practicality of mass transit if the mayor of the city with the nation's best subway system also took an SUV to work?

After Michael Bloomberg became mayor of New York City, he invited reporters to follow him to work. The billionaire mayor didn't slip into a limo - he piled into a subway car like a "regular Joe mayor."

Positive press gushed forth. Bloomberg was the real deal, a green leader and blue-collar populist. One transit group dubbed him "the MetroCard Mayor." Bloomberg bragged about taking transit, and urged others to follow.

Yet after a five-week stakeout, New York Times reporters discovered that Bloomberg's enthusiasm for transit has since fizzled. These days, he only takes the subway to work about twice a week. That's more transit travel than Villaraigosa, but not enough to meet the federal government's definition of a transit commuter.

Even during transit days, Bloomberg doesn't schlep to the nearest subway stop. Staffers drive him 22 blocks so he can hop aboard an express train, avoiding the hassle of making a transfer and shrinking his commute time by about a third. Avoiding transit is commonplace for those who run some of our nation's other top-tier transit systems.

Villaraigosa's actions make the obvious point that his words never would: Public transit doesn't work for the vast majority of Angelenos, 95 percent of whom find another way to get to work. Still he and other public officials fuel a double fantasy.

First, they claim our existing public transit system is a better choice for motorists, at least those who aren't serving as mayor.

Villaraigosa says he'd use transit more often, "But my problem is I have to go all over the city. ... It's very tough because of my schedule."

City Councilman Herb Wesson, a transportation committee member, says the same thing, "Given the type of work I do, it just doesn't work for me to take public transportation."

Don't the rest of us also have busy schedules - jobs to get to, kids to pick up and errands to run?

Why are we being urged to ditch our cars for a transit system that is ill-suited to serve city officials?

The second fantasy is that each new rail transit project represents a step toward building a New York-style transit system.

New York's subway system boasts 468 stations; LA's 78 (if you generously count light-rail stations, too). The current piecemeal transit approach should get L.A. to New York's level sometime in the middle of the next millennium, and the "build it all at once" strategy made fashionable by Denver is really just a replay of L.A. in 1980, when Proposition A was supposed to fund 11 rail transit lines. What committing to rail really did was soak up funds that could have gone toward more sensible fixes, mainly improving and expanding bus service for the transit-dependent poor.

Bloomberg's falling out with transit adds another disturbing wrinkle: Maybe even a system as extensive as New York's couldn't transform Villaraigosa into a transit-riding mayor. In Metro New York, 25 percent of commuters rely on transit, much more than L.A.'s 5 percent, but not in step with the popular view that "everyone" takes transit in New York.

Back when workers traveled in beelines from homes in the suburbs to offices in a city center, it was relatively easy to design successful transit systems. Today, old fixed-route systems don't serve most travelers. Yet officials still prefer to fund snazzy rail lines over buses because for them transit's primary use isn't transportation but a backdrop for photo ops: Cut the ribbon, huddle around the others who fought for funding, smile and then jump back into your SUV.

Imagine how much transit might improve if public officials actually had to ride the systems they tout.

For Traffic Solutions Think Over the Box

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) sam.staley@reason.org (Samuel Staley) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 12:20:00 EDT

The New York Times

Amid the debates — and the looming deadline — over Mayor Michael Bloomberg's congestion pricing plans for the city, one recent traffic measure has caused little uproar: increased fines ($115) for drivers who block the box. Indeed, many New Yorkers support the mayor's plan, which means that not just regular police officers, but also the city's more than 2,800 traffic agents have the authority to hand out tickets for an infraction known as blocking the box. And why not? Few things enrage travelers more than the driver who blocks the intersection, intensifying the already suffocating traffic congestion.

But the truth is that while this plan may satisfy revenge fantasies and increase city coffers, it won't loosen gridlock's grip. It may even tighten it.

Blocking the box isn't a law enforcement issue that Mayor Bloomberg can address by simply having traffic agents mete out punishment. It's a traffic management issue that represents political neglect of the road network. Drivers aren't letting their cars sit in the cross hairs of oncoming traffic out of spite. They don't relish the cursing, honking and fist shaking aimed at them. Like everyone else in the standstill, they'd prefer to be moving. But there's just nowhere to go.

Much of Manhattan's congestion stems from vehicles passing through the island on their way to destinations outside or on the outskirts of the borough. These travelers would love to bypass most or all of Manhattan, but the roadway network won't allow it. Instead it crams motorists together, turning crosstown travelers into box blockers.

So, here's the question: If straphangers can choose between local and express service, why can't motorists? In cities all over the world and even in the United States, drivers can choose to drive up and over intersections on humps called queue jumpers, or they can duck under intersections through short tunnels.

Queue jumpers and tunnels could make for a good fit in many spots throughout New York because they operate within existing rights of way. They can also be configured for many different types of roads, from two-lanes on a one-way street (sending one lane over the intersection) to streets with six or more lanes.

Just take a look at how effective the Murray Hill Tunnel is at bypassing traffic. The tunnel, which carries two lanes of car traffic from East 33rd Street to East 41st Street, is a great way to avoid the congestion of Park Avenue. Now imagine more of these tunnels and some well-placed queue jumpers and soon you're traveling across town, dodging red lights.

Cities like Paris, Sydney, Melbourne, Tokyo and even Tampa, Fla., have upgraded beyond queue jumpers to provide longer under- and aboveground motorways. Granted, much of the metropolitan region is packed with subway and train tunnels and other utilities, but elevated facilities need only airspace, and wide swaths of subterranean space remain uncluttered.

Consider the western edge of Manhattan, where there are no serious underground obstructions from the Battery to the George Washington Bridge. Various east-west streets are also free of subway tunnels. In the book “Street Smart,” one contributor, Peter Samuel, makes a sensible suggestion: construct a truck-only tunnel that would take many lane-cloggers off surface streets. “It would feed a north-south truckway spine along the west side of Manhattan, with short east-west spurs,” he writes.

Gridlock hasn't grown fiercer because drivers have become ruder and simply no longer care if they block the box. Rather, clogged intersections represent a symptom of congestion's root cause: political neglect.

For decades, officials have failed to upgrade the road network to keep up with a swelling population. Mayor Bloomberg has said that the city will grow by 900,000 people by 2030; if this neglect continues, it will generate even more gridlock. Over the next 20 years city forecasters expect automobile traffic to grow by 10 percent and freight traffic to increase by 64 percent. But of the mayor's 16 major transportation recommendations in the city's long-range plan, not one would significantly increase the road system's capacity.

Mayor Bloomberg's ironfisted approach to intersection blockers not only allows an outdated roadway system to grow more antiquated, it may also erode support for congestion pricing. Cities like London and Stockholm have found it easier to sell the public on congestion pricing when road projects are a part of the deal, and New York should follow suit. After all, most of those who would pay the $8 congestion toll — if the plan is approved by Albany in time to meet tomorrow's federal deadline for a grant of about $500 million for the program — aren't out-of-towners, they're the mayor's own constituents.

As we await news from Albany, many remain suspicious of congestion pricing, and they won't take kindly to additional measures that cast drivers as scapegoats. Promising to devote some congestion pricing money to building queue jumpers may win over fence-sitting motorists, not to mention bus riders who would enjoy bona fide express service.

Why Mobility Matters to Personal Life

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 16:22:00 EDT

...

Stand Down, Trans Fat Fighters

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Tue, 29 May 2007 15:35:00 EDT

Attention Mr. and Mrs. America:

Armies of activists and politicians think you've let yourselves go, and the foot soldiers in the "War on Fat" will do just about anything to get you to their target weight. They'll tax junk food, restrict fast food advertising, and even reconfigure your neighborhood if it'll get you to drive less. Now the crosshairs have settled on trans fat. The naughty little substance helps make donuts, chips, and other foods taste better and store longer, but it also increases levels of "bad" cholesterol.

What to do? Plenty of public health officials demand zero tolerance. The perpetually alarmed Center for Science in the Public Interest aims to take trans fat "entirely out of the food supply," and recently Dr. David Katz of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center told lawmakers in Connecticut's Public Health Committee that trans fat is a poison that should be banned from restaurants. Now many politicians are taking up arms.

New York and Philadelphia have banned the scourge, and other cities, as well as more than a dozen states are drawing up battle plans. But trans fat hardliners should stand down. They have no right to regulate what we shove down our pie holes, and their crusade may fail on its ultimate aim—making us thinner.

With so many agitated activists and politicians, you might assume that we Americans are gorging on trans fat. But trans fat comprises about 2 percent of the average American's daily caloric intake. The American Heart Association says the figure should be 1 percent, but to reach this goal, someone who consumes 2,000 calories a day doesn't have to undergo a dietary overall. Simply dropping the number of calories that come from trans fats from 40 to 20 will do the trick.

And even without additional bans, chances are Americans will eat less trans fat in the future. From Taco Bell to Starbucks, many companies have already sworn off trans fats and new FDA labeling requirements make it easier for consumers to spot "poisoned" foods.

Some public health experts worry that the battle against trans fat now tilts toward hysteria. The American Council on Science and Health listed "Trans fatty acids cause obesity and heart disease" as its number one unfounded health scare of 2006. Some news reports describe trans fat as "fattier" than other fats, but ACSH notes that all fats contain the same amount of calories. So while there are cholesterol-related reasons to cut back on trans fats, merely trading trans fat for, say, saturated fat will not get our chubby nation any thinner. Indeed if diners reach for the trans fat free fries because they think they're healthier than regular fries, they may end up downing more fries.

And it turns out that all trans fats aren't equally evil. Keith-Thomas Ayoob of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine says trans fats that occur naturally in milk, meat, and other foods "might even be good for you." He points to preliminary research that suggests a particular type of trans fat may reduce the risk of heart disease and certain cancers. Yet even if lawmakers steer clear of the natural variety, the crude "trans fat bad!" drumbeat will still be ringing in our heads, and that could make some more inclined to avoid trans fat foods all together.

The prohibitionist mind has room for two categories, good and bad. If trans fat is a poison, then it's clearly bad. But the prohibitionist worldview often conflicts with a fundamental principle of toxicology—the dose makes the poison. In moderate amounts, alcohol is a health aid; in large amounts it's a poison. Two aspirin cure your headache; two hundred may kill you. Artificial trans fats may have no health benefits, but one need not go cold turkey to live a perfectly healthy life. Dr. Ayoob's "trans action" plan allows for one serving of deep-fried food per week, and diets that allow for occasional indulgence may be easier to stick with than those that demand abstinence.

There's another reason to greet today's anti-trans fat warriors with skepticism: Decades ago they were pushing for greater use of this "poison." In 1988 CSPI declared: "[T]here is little good evidenced that trans fats cause any more harm than other fats … All told, the charges against trans fat just don't stand up."

Good thing we didn't slap restaurants with mandates back then. At the time CPSI was in step with current scientific understanding, but scientific understanding evolves. Committing to bans based on today's knowledge makes it harder to react to future scientific developments. Resisting today's would-be banners would spare us from their shortsightedness, and it might also spare them the trouble of fighting to undo laws they once championed.

How to Fix Traffic

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 15:46:00 EDT

Los Angeles Times

[With the city considering converting Pico and Olympic boulevards into one-way streets, Opinion asked some experts for other quick and inexpensive ways to reduce traffic in L.A. Longer versions of their responses are available at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/oneway.]

A big roadblock to faster traffic flow is the now-outdated notion that carpool lanes, or high-occupancy vehicle lanes, are good congestion-busters. For the most part, they're not. Carpool commuting is becoming less common even as more lanes to accommodate it are being built. Better that we turn these carpool lanes into special toll lanes.

The toll would go up or down depending on the flow of cars: The greater the congestion, the more expensive to use these high-occupancy-toll lanes, or HOT lanes. But the flexible-pricing system would maintain free-flow conditions, allowing more vehicles to fly along the same lanes that today are often as congested as the regular ones.

Apart from buying special software and hiring some back-office staff, setting up HOT lanes would be simply a matter of installing antennas for communication with electronic toll collectors, video cameras to catch cheaters, changeable message signs at various points along the route and plastic pylons to separate the lanes from the regular ones.

How Traffic Jams Are Made In City Hall

sam.staley@reason.org (Samuel Staley) ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 15:54:00 EDT

If you want to know why so few people use mass transit, meet Sue, a college administrator in Minneapolis. If anyone would use transit, Sue would. She's single, she lives in a condominium, and she can afford any additional out-of-pocket expense. She could use her city's Hiawatha Line, a light rail route newly completed at a cost of $715 million. But she doesn't, although she feels guilty about it. That's because her car gets her where she needs to go. Faster.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the typical driver in America's metropolitan areas takes 21 minutes to get from home to work. If you take public transit, the average commute stretches to 36 minutes. That's 71 percent longer. Workers in the New York metropolitan area have the longest commute: There it takes an average of 52 minutes to get to work, even though the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut mass transit systems are among the most extensive in the nation.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is about average. The typical commuter takes 21 minutes to get to work by car or 32 minutes by public transit. Congestion can be pretty bad: The average driver in the Twin Cities spends 43 hours-more than an entire work week-stuck in traffic every year. According to the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University, that costs Twin Cities drivers almost $1 billion in wasted time and fuel. But mass transit takes even longer, and it isn't as flexible as a car when it comes to picking where and when you'd like to go. Is it any wonder Sue drives to work rather than taking the bus or train?

The U.S. Department of Transportation puts the yearly cost of congestion at $168 billion. But the planning gurus who are supposed to solve our transportation problems are in the grip of transitphilia and autophobia; their beliefs about how cities and transportation work are grounded more in nostalgia than in a realistic view of the world we live in now. The public policies they design and try to enforce make it harder for us to get to work, pick up our kids from school, or go shopping. They are deliberately fostering congestion. In the words of David Solow, head of the Metrolink commuter rail in Southern California, congestion is "actually good" because "it drives people out of their cars."

Keeping Minneapolis Congested

Every major urban area in the country has an official bureaucracy responsible for planning roads, highways, and mass transit. It has to; it's required by federal law.

Minneapolis has one of the more competent planning agencies. The Metropolitan Council-or Met Council, as locals call it-has at least acknowledged the importance of congestion and has tried a few innovative ways to address it. Unfortunately, its solutions will have minimal impact on the problem. It provides an instructive example of how poorly even our better regional planning agencies are addressing one of the most important policy problems they face.

The Met Council has some extraordinary powers. Established by the Minnesota legislature in 1967, it has legal responsibility for managing the Twin Cities' sewers, parks, transportation, aviation, and land use planning. But the primary focus of its huge organizational bureaucracy is transportation. Of its 3,718 employees, 73 percent do transportation-related work, spending three-quarters of the agency's annual budget.

The council says it aims to enhance "transportation choices" and to "improve the ability of Minnesotans to travel safely and efficiently through the region." So far, so good. The council goes even further: "To a growing number of metro area residents, traffic congestion ranks as the No. 1 livability issue. It affects the length of their daily commute, the times of day they choose to make trips, and the amount of time they sit in traffic, even where they choose to live and work."

But is the Met Council really focused on reducing congestion? Its stated goal isn't to solve the problem; it merely calls for "slowing the growth in traffic congestion and improving mobility" (emphasis added). In other words, traffic will continue to get worse, just not as much worse as it would if the council did nothing. The Met Council also has priorities besides congestion: reducing the number of people living in single-family homes, preserving open space, limiting sprawl-and increasing transit use.

During the next 10 years, the Met Council is planning to invest $4.2 billion in the highway system and $1.4 billion in transit facilities. In other words, the region's primary transportation planning agency has decided to spend 25 percent of its budget on mass transit. But transit accounts for just 2.5 percent of all trips in the region, whether they're for pleasure, taking kids to school, going to the supermarket, or commuting to the office. Less than 5 percent of the Minneapolis-St. Paul region's population uses public transit to get to work, and that share is declining: According to U.S. Census statistics, the number of passengers using mass transit increased slightly in absolute terms between 1990 and 2000, but its market share fell by 12 percent.

The Met Council hopes to double bus capacity by 2030 and greatly expand its light rail line and commuter train system. It also intends to boost transit use from 74.9 million passenger trips per year to 150 million by 2030, even though the current trend projects virtually no growth in use and even though transit lost market share from 1990 to 2000, according to the Census Bureau's decennial data. The Met Council expects 574,625 new jobs to be created in the area by 2030. But even though the vast majority of Minneapolis-St. Paul's population travels to work by car, the planners improbably expect per capita road use to decline.

The council does plan to expand the road system. It will add 300 additional lane-miles of freeway, or about 12 lane-miles per year. That works out to about three miles of a two-lane (in each direction) freeway each year. That's well below the expected growth in travel demand.

The net result? Without road improvements, highway congestion is expected to increase from 28 hours annually per traveler in 2001 to 40 hours in 2030. With the improvements, congestion should "moderate" to 37 hours in 2030. Congestion would be 32 percent higher than in 2001, rather than 42 percent higher without the improvements. "Just to keep pace with these [highway] needs," the council's 2030 Regional Development Framework says, "would add $4.7 billion to current plans for the next decade" above the currently planned spending.

For most regional planning agencies, automobility and congestion relief simply are not high on the priority list. Sometimes they aren't on the list at all. Portland, Oregon, distinguished itself among its peers when it made a conscious decision in the mid-1990s to let congestion approach gridlock because it feared that otherwise fewer people would use the transit system. The drive to reduce sprawl creates a conflict of interest, too, since congestion relief makes it easier to commute long distances.

To make "more effective use" of the road system, the Met Council believes it has to get people out of their cars. That's unfortunate, especially since the agency admits congestion is many residents' "No. 1 livability issue." The council is spending 25 percent of its transportation funds on a solution that, at most, might improve the quality of life for 5 percent of the population, and it will do nothing for people like Sue. Even transit users might not be better off, since they will be spending more time commuting than if they used a car. Drivers will definitely be worse off. They will be spending much more time stuck in traffic in 2030 than they did in 2006.

If Minneapolis has one of the best planning agencies, what are the others like?

Fiddling While Atlanta Burns Gas

According to the Texas Transportation Institute, Atlanta is the nation's fourth most traffic-clogged metropolitan area, measured by the amount of time stuck in traffic. Its residents crawl and wind through more than 5,000 congested lane-miles each day. Most of these congested roads are arterials and collectors-local roads that let residents navigate short trips around town or their neighborhood or that take them to major highway interchanges. An analysis by the Atlanta Regional Commission of 75 intersections found that 60 were "deficient"-that is, they performed below engineered standards-during the morning rush hour and 68 were deficient during the afternoon rush. The freeways are even worse off: Almost 60 percent of Atlanta's interstates are congested, twice the incidence for local roads.

The South isn't normally seen as a hotbed of progressive government, but the Atlanta Regional Commission was the nation's first government-supported multi-county planning commission. The Atlanta Chamber of Commerce hatched the idea in 1938, and it became official with an act of the Georgia General Assembly in 1947.

As clogged roads slowly choke Atlanta's economy and its quality of life, traffic reduction should be the commission's No. 1 priority. And the commission appears to take its role seriously. During the next 25 years, it plans to spend $57 billion on transportation projects even if the federal, state, or local governments don't cough up more money. (Presumably the funds would come from tolls or other user fees.) Its plan, however, assumes that vehicle miles traveled per person-a common measure of travel demand-will fall by 5 percent and that average travel time won't change. The plan anticipates "significant improvement in congestion and travel times" along the corridors targeted for investment, saving billions of dollars through improved efficiency and productivity.

The commission has some reason for optimism. Travel demand appears to have fallen in Atlanta from a peak of 35 vehicle miles traveled per person each day in 1998 to 31 vehicle miles in 2002. Total demand has increased-from 109 million vehicle miles traveled in 1998 to 113 million in 2002-but that's because population has grown so much. (The number of people living in the Atlanta area increased by more than 200,000 during the same four years.) Each person is driving slightly less, but since there are so many more people, the roads are getting more use than ever.

Naturally, congestion increased during this period too, reflecting the increase in travel demand without a similar investment in roadway capacity. Travel times to work also increased, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, rising 24 percent during the 1990s to 30 minutes in 2000. The commission reports that this was the largest increase in the nation.

So congestion is increasing, even though demand seems to be moderating. And local policy makers aren't expecting much more help from the federal, state, or local governments.

What's Atlanta's plan? Roadway expansion will get $8 billion. Car pool lanes will get another $5 billion, bringing the total pavement capacity building budget to $13 billion. The commission has slotted another $14 billion for nontransit operations and maintenance. These efforts will add 2,000 additional miles of arterial and collector roads and 300 miles of new freeway lanes. Another $3 billion is slated for improving the management of the road system.

Atlanta also believes that improving traffic signal timing to smooth out traffic flows, using meters on entrance ramps to prevent too many cars from entering the freeway at the same time, and similar measures that "manage" travel demand will reduce delays on local roads by 25 percent and increase freeway speeds by a similar magnitude. If those plans are implemented comprehensively and efficiently, that estimate may be plausible.

Meanwhile, $5 billion will be used to expand public transit, while $15 billion more will go toward maintenance and operations. A program expanding options for bicyclists, walkers, and others not using cars will get $2 billion. All in all, 38 percent of the regional planning budget is devoted to getting people out of their cars and onto buses and trains. Transit ridership, the commission boldly asserts, will increase "72 percent between now and 2030."

That conclusion is hard to swallow. Transit isn't fulfilling its promise in Atlanta now, and the trends in the city's census data aren't much different from what's happening in Minneapolis. Atlanta's regional work force is 2 million. Transit ridership increased to 75,272 workers in 2000 (an 8 percent increase), hardly making a dent in general commute patterns. And despite that modest uptick in absolute numbers, transit's market share fell from 4.7 percent of all commuting trips in 1990 to 3.7 percent in 2000.

Almost 2 million jobs will be added to the regional economy during the next 30 years. If Atlanta achieves its transit ridership goal, 129,467 people will be using mass transit in 2030. And even then, transit's commute share would fall. Put another way, Atlanta is investing almost 40 percent of its transportation budget on less than 4 percent of the market, and the latter number is shrinking.

This might be a worthy investment if the main beneficiaries were people too poor to afford cars or otherwise restricted from getting around. But the commission wants to compete with the automobile-to get working-class and middle-income commuters out of their cars and onto buses and trains.

Even our more skeptical analysis of the city's transit trends might be overly optimistic. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Transit Database, Atlanta's bus transit system logged 235 million passenger miles in 2003. That's down from 273 million miles reported in 2000. Atlanta's subway system reported 487 million passenger miles in 2003, down from 504 million reported in 2000. So transit use is falling even in absolute terms. For transit to turn around and increase market share would be unprecedented.

Atlanta's policy makers can still shift course. Traffic in the city has become so bad that in 2004 Gov. Sonny Perdue convened a task force that called for making congestion reduction the top priority for regional transportation planners. The Atlanta Regional Commission, along with the Georgia Department of Transportation and other agencies, recently agreed to set specific targets for reducing congestion in absolute terms, as measured by travel delay in peak periods, by 2030. Local officials appear receptive, but have not yet revealed how and to what extent they will follow the recommendations.

We'll see if the follow-through lives up to the promises. If it does, we can only hope the rest of the country's urban planners are paying attention. The myths that have held Atlanta back are hardly unique to that city.

City House, Country House

In 2005 the Urban Transportation Monitor, a biweekly industry newsletter, surveyed more than 600 transportation professionals to find out their thoughts on traffic congestion. About 19 percent responded. Of those, 45 percent thought the profession was "doing all it can do" to stop congestion. Half thought congestion was the result of too many people using their cars, and 45 percent attributed it primarily to the desire to live in low-density suburbs.

The preferred solutions were predictable: 51 percent thought mass transit should be improved or expanded, and 50 percent thought the government should manage demand better by getting people to telecommute or carpool. Only 29 percent believed increased highway capacity could be a cost-effective way to reduce congestion significantly. (The survey did not ask whether new capacity should be provided if it were privately funded.)

Many believed the problem is simply too many cars. Fifty-one percent said one of "the main reasons for the high level of congestion in many metropolitan areas" is the desire "of many to use cars for all their trips." Indeed, of the 11 options offered by the survey, that was the biggest vote getter. For traffic engineers, planners, and other transportation professionals, the solution to traffic jam is to keep us from using our automobiles.

The planning profession clings tenaciously to its foundational myths. Even as overwhelming evidence to the contrary piles up, planners keep claiming that cars are inefficient and socially destructive; that expanding road capacity isn't practical; and, most fundamentally, that the government can determine how we choose to travel by planning where and how we live.

That last assumption is the logical conclusion of a rather sophisticated (if largely incorrect) way of looking at human behavior. It's rooted in a common-sense observation: How we live influences how we travel. If we live on a farm, we are going to travel by car. Buses simply don't go out to farms to pick people up and take them into town for work or to buy groceries. Trains don't either. A neighbor might, but she would probably be driving a car and doing this as a service because you don't have a car. School buses are the exception that proves the rule. They pick up a large number of kids, but only because they're being delivered to one destination, the school building.

The flip side is the experience of the Manhattanite. If someone lives in the densest neighborhood of an American city, cars are costly, frustrating, and inefficient. Most Manhattan residents can get to their destination far more efficiently using the subway, taking a bus, or walking. Because parking is so costly, they also can get around fairly efficiently using taxis.

So people in dense urban areas have more choices, and personal automobiles are inefficient ways to get around town. Congestion, in fact, leads people to use alternative modes of transportation. Many regional planners, like those in Atlanta, conclude that the way a region develops dictates how people are likely to travel and what transportation strategies are most feasible. And the way to influence development patterns, they believe, is to carefully plan where and how much to invest in the transportation system. But proximity to work is only one of many factors people consider when finding a home; other criteria, such as price, neighborhood safety, and proximity to good schools, are often deemed more important than living close to the office.

Of course, Atlanta is not Manhattan. In fact, it's virtually the opposite. At 1,783 people per square mile, Atlanta is the poster child for low-density residential development. The New York metropolitan area is three times as dense, with 5,309 people per square mile. Manhattan's density is even higher: more than 50,000 people per square mile.

According to the Atlanta commission, "Land use is an important determinant of how people choose to travel. No other variable impacts [mobility] to a greater extent. The Regional Development Plan policies help shape future growth and protect existing stable areas by encouraging appropriate land use, transportation, and environmental decisions."

To say this is an exaggeration would be charitable. While land use can influence travel behavior in small and crude ways, to claim that it is the biggest factor distorts the mainstream research on the subject. A 2004 study sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) cautioned against the tendency to "overemphasize vertically mixed uses such as ground-floor retail and upper-level residential." In particular, it noted that "outside of dense urban locations, building mixed-use products in today's marketplace can be a complex and risky proposition; few believe that being near a train station fundamentally changes this market reality."

This isn't to say that these developments can't generate more transit riders. The FTA study found that those living near rail stations were five to six times more likely to commute using transit than other residents. While those seem like dramatic effects, the majority of commuters near transit stations (often two-thirds or more) still use cars to get to work. Moreover, many of the people living in these transit areas were transit users already. They just moved so they could be closer to transit.

Put differently, if 5 percent of a region commutes using transit-about the national average-then 25 or 30 percent of those living in a transit-oriented development will commute using transit. This is consistent with case studies of transit use in San Francisco and Chicago. (Incidentally, those results invariably come from studies of predominantly heavy rail commuter systems, such as subways. Light rail and buses are more fashionable in planning circles these days, but they're also slower and carry fewer riders.)

To get such high use rates, densities have to be very high. The traditional American home with a private yard doesn't fit this model. The typical new house in the United States is built on about one-fifth of an acre. A study in San Francisco found that doubling densities from 10 units per acre to 20 units per acre would increase transit's commute share from 20 percent to 24 percent.

In short, even cramming four times more people into the typical U.S. subdivision of 4-5 units per acre would produce only a modest uptick in transit use. And it isn't an uptick for the region. It's an uptick for the neighborhood-those living within a quarter mile of a transit stop. There is virtually no effect beyond the immediate vicinity of the transit stop, regardless of density.

At these densities, Americans would literally have to give up any hope of having a decent-sized yard and most would have to live in townhouses. The land use pattern would have to fundamentally change, resembling the landscape more common in the carless 19th century than in the highly mobile and adaptable 21st century.

Forget, at least for the moment, whether the government should effect such a sweeping change. It almost certainly can't. In a forthcoming report, Adrian Moore of the Reason Foundation (the nonprofit organization that publishes this magazine) and Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute examine data from the National Personal Transportation Survey and find that doubling an urban area's density would, at most, reduce the total number of car trips by 10 percent to 20 percent. No U.S. urban area has managed to double its density or to reduce car travel by such magnitudes.

Real Solutions

Believe it or not, there are ways to reduce traffic congestion, even if most politicians and planners haven't been eager to adopt them. Here are five potent suggestions, ideally done not alone but in conjunction with one another:

Creative construction. Expanding capacity doesn't always mean adding lanes to congested roads, although that's often a good idea as well. In densely populated Southern California, portions of the highway network are elevated well above the ground, including the Harbor Transitway approaching downtown Los Angeles. In Texas, San Antonio and Austin have double-decker freeways as well. In 2006 Tampa opened its cross-town expressway, an elevated road built in the median of an existing four-lane highway.

If going up is a problem, you can also go down. Australia has done an effective job of using tunnels to connect highways while preserving neighborhoods, an excellent alternative to destroying businesses and homes.

Smarter management. Building new capacity can get you only so far. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that half of all congestion could be eliminated simply through better management of the existing road network. Among other approaches, this could mean metering freeway ramps, turning two-way streets into one-way streets, and improving traffic light coordination. According to the Institute of Transportation Engineers, better-coordinated lights can reduce stops by as much as 40 percent, thereby cutting gas consumption, emissions, and travel times.

Market pricing for roads. One especially fruitful idea is high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes, which allow drivers who put the highest priority on quick commutes to pay a premium for uncongested lanes. These have been built in Denver, Houston, and-yes-Minneapolis, among other cities. In Atlanta several private companies have submitted plans to build new HOT lanes on their own dime. During rush hour, the congestion difference between the special lanes and the regular lanes can be the difference between going 15 miles per hour and doing 65.

Areas with lots of car pool lanes could convert those to HOT lanes, add some connectors, and create a congestion-free HOT network. Transit boosters, take note: It would be easy to tweak the arrangement to guarantee bus riders a speedy trip too.

Market pricing for parking. On 99 percent of our trips we park for free, thanks largely to the minimum parking requirements embedded in our zoning codes. Eliminating those requirements would allow market forces to reflect the true cost of parking. Instead of adhering to arbitrary regulations that often order more spaces than necessary, developers would have greater flexibility to build only the number of spaces that is needed. Workplaces would be more likely to adopt parking cash-out programs, which give employees who do not drive to work a share of the money that otherwise would have gone toward parking costs. Employees would be more likely to work from home.

Market pricing for parking would reduce traffic too. If drivers had to pay the full cost of parking, they might be less inclined to take certain trips, thus putting a dent in congestion. More important, when parking is scarce but free (or underpriced), drivers have an incentive to keep the spots as long as possible. When it is scarce but costs money, drivers are less likely to dally. One additional result: Other drivers have less need to circle around and around, hoping eventually to spot an empty space.

Traditional parking meters can be notoriously inconvenient, but they aren't the only way to pay for parking. Aspen, Colorado, uses a variety of new technologies, including personal in-vehicle meters. The town determines its parking rates by zones; prices are highest in the city center and drop the further you are from the core. Motorists simply park, type in the number of their parking zone, turn on the meter, and hang it from the rearview meter. A timer deducts the prepaid amount until the driver returns. No one has to hunt for loose change.

Privatization. We're much more likely to adopt ideas like the above when roads are built and managed by companies responding to market incentives, not by government officials responding to planning fads and political clout. Private companies can create and operate highways using toll revenues as a funding source. The government can also convert existing roads to privately managed systems to allow improvements and expansions of the existing network.

For a spectacularly successful example, consider the 407 Electronic Tollway outside Toronto. This innovative road isn't fully private, but it was built by a private company (the Canadian Highways International Corporation) and is now managed by another private company (407 International) that bought a 99-year lease from the government of Ontario. Yet another company, Hughes Electronics, equipped it with an electronic toll-collecting system that eliminates toll booths and the congestion they can cause.

Baby, You Can Drive Your Car

There is a fundamental disconnect between transportation planners and the typical American commuter. Most travelers believe the car is a good thing, a source of freedom and mobility. Giving up the flexibility of the private automobile reduces our quality of life; it's a step back, not a step forward. That's the main reason the use of mass transit is declining in the U.S., despite the billions of dollars poured annually into such systems.

Yet transportation planners believe public transit and sharing rides with strangers increases the typical American's quality of life. It doesn't, and our behavior reflects this. That's why the vast majority of us choose not to use public transit.

Back in Minneapolis, Sue may hop aboard the Hiawatha Line from time to time. But when even well-off, condo-dwelling rail fans like her continue to rely on their cars, the currently dominant school of transportation policy seems destined to create many more traffic jams than transit users.

5 Myths About Suburbia and Our Car-Happy Culture

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) sam.staley@reason.org (Samuel Staley) — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:13:00 EST

Washington Post

They don't rate up there with cancer and al-Qaeda — at least not yet — but suburban sprawl and automobiles are rapidly acquiring a reputation as scourges of modern American society. Sprawl, goes the typical indictment, devours open space, exacerbates global warming and causes pollution, social alienation and even obesity. And cars are the evil co-conspirator — the driving force, so to speak, behind sprawl.

Yet the anti-suburbs culture has also fostered many myths about sprawl and driving, a few of which deserve to be reconsidered:

1. Americans are addicted to driving.

Actually, Americans aren't addicted to their cars any more than office workers are addicted to their computers. Both items are merely tools that allow people to accomplish tasks faster and more conveniently. The New York metropolitan area is home to the nation's most extensive transit system, yet even there it takes transit riders about twice as long as drivers to get to work.

In 1930, the interstate highway system and the rise of suburbia were still decades away, and yet car ownership was already widespread, with three in four households having an automobile. Look at any U.S. city and the car is the dominant mode of travel.

Some claim that Europeans have developed an enlightened alternative. Americans return from London and Paris and tell their friends that everyone gets around by transit. But tourists tend to confine themselves to the central cities. Europeans may enjoy top-notch transit and endure gasoline that costs $5 per gallon, but in fact they don't drive much less than we do. In the United States, automobiles account for about 88 percent of travel. In Europe, the figure is about 78 percent. And Europeans are gaining on us.

The key factor that affects driving habits isn't population density, public transit availability, gasoline taxes or even different attitudes. It's wealth. Europe and the United States are relatively wealthy, but American incomes are 15 to 40 percent higher than those in Western Europe. And as nations such as China and India become wealthier, the portion of their populations that drive cars will grow.

2. Public transit can reduce traffic congestion.

Transit has been on the slide for well more than half a century. Even though spending on public transportation has ballooned to more than seven times its 1960s levels, the percentage of people who use it to get to work fell 63 percent from 1960 to 2000 and now stands at just under 5 percent nationwide. Transit is also decreasing in Europe, down to 16 percent in 2000.

Like auto use, suburbanization is driven by wealth. Workers once left the fields to find better lives in the cities. Today more and more have decided that they can do so in the suburbs. Indeed, commuters are now increasingly likely to travel from one suburb to another or embark upon "reverse" commutes (from the city to the suburbs). Also, most American commuters (52 percent) do not go directly to and from work but stop along the way to pick up kids, drop off dry cleaning, buy a latte or complete some other errand.

We have to be realistic about what transit can accomplish. Suppose we could not only reverse transit's long slide but also triple the size of the nation's transit system and fill it with riders. Transportation guru Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institution notes that this enormous feat would be "extremely costly" and, even if it could be done, would not "notably reduce" rush-hour congestion, primarily because transit would continue to account for only a small percentage of commuting trips.

But public transit still has an important role. Millions of Americans rely on it as a primary means of transportation. Transit agencies should focus on serving those who need transit the most: the poor and the handicapped. They should also seek out the niches where they can be most useful, such as express bus service for commuters and high-volume local routes.

Many officials say we should reconfigure the landscape — pack people in more tightly — to make it fit better with a transit-oriented lifestyle. But that would mean increasing density in existing developments by bulldozing the low-density neighborhoods that countless families call home. Single-family houses, malls and shops would have to make way for a stacked-up style of living that most don't want. And even then the best-case scenario would be replicating New York, where only one in four commuters uses mass transit.

3. We can cut air pollution only if we stop driving.

Polls often show that Americans think that air quality is deteriorating. Yet air is getting much cleaner. We miss it because, while we see more people and more cars, we easily overlook the success of air-quality legislation and new technologies. In April 2004, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that 474 counties in 31 states violated the Clean Air Act. But that doesn't mean that the air is dirtier. The widely publicized failing air-quality grades were a result of the EPA's adoption of tougher standards.

Air quality has been improving for a long time. More stringent regulations and better technology have allowed us to achieve what was previously unthinkable: driving more and getting cleaner. Since 1970, driving — total vehicle miles traveled — has increased 155 percent, and yet the EPA reports a dramatic decrease in every major pollutant it measures. Although driving is increasing by 1 to 3 percent each year, average vehicle emissions are dropping about 10 percent annually. Pollution will wane even more as motorists continue to replace older, dirtier cars with newer, cleaner models.

4. We're paving over America.

How much of the United States is developed? Twenty-five percent? Fifty? Seventy-five? How about 5.4 percent? That's the Census Bureau's figure. And even much of that is not exactly crowded: The bureau says that an area is "developed" when it has 30 or more people per square mile.

But most people do live in developed areas, so it's easy to get the impression that humans have trampled nature. One need only take a cross-country flight and look down, however, to realize that our nation is mostly open space. And there are signs that Mother Nature is gaining ground. After furious tree chopping during America's early years, forests have made a comeback. The U.S. Forest Service notes that the "total area of forests has been fairly stable since about 1920." Agricultural innovations have a lot to do with this. Farmers can raise more on less land.

Yes, American houses are getting bigger. From 1970 to 2000, the average size ballooned from 1,500 square feet to 2,260. But this hardly means we're gobbling up ever more land. U.S. homeowners are using land more efficiently. Between 1970 and 2000, the average lot size shrank from 14,000 square feet to 10,000.

In truth, housing in this country takes up less space than most people realize. If the nation were divided into four-person households and each household had an acre, everyone would fit in an area half the size of Texas. The United States is not coming anywhere close to becoming an "Asphalt Nation," to use the title of a book by Jane Holtz Kay.

5. We can't deal with global warming unless we stop driving.

What should be done about global warming? The Kyoto Protocol seeks to get the world to agree to burn less fossil fuel and emit less carbon dioxide, and much of that involves driving less. But even disregarding the treaty's economic costs, Kyoto's environmental impact would be slight. Tom M.L. Wigley, chief scientist at the U.S. Center for Atmospheric Research, calculates that even if every nation met its obligation to reduce greenhouse gas, the Earth would be only .07 degrees centigrade cooler by 2050.

Wigley favors a much more stringent plan than Kyoto, but such restrictions would severely restrict economic growth, particularly in the developing world. Nations such as China and India were excluded from the Kyoto Protocol; yet if we're serious about reversing global warming by driving less, the developing world will have to be included.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that during the 20th century the Earth's temperature rose by 0.6 degrees centigrade and — depending on which of the many climate models turn out to be closest to reality — it expects the temperature to rise 1.4 to 5.8 degrees by 2100.

What does the IPCC think the effects of global warming may be? Flooding may increase. Infectious diseases may spread. Heat-related illness and death may increase. Yet as the IPCC notes repeatedly, the severity of such outcomes is enormously uncertain.

On the other hand, there's great certainty regarding who would be hurt the most: poor people in developing nations, especially those who lack clean, piped water and are thus vulnerable to waterborne disease. The IPCC points out that the quality of housing in those countries is important because simple measures such as adding screens to windows can help prevent diseases (including malaria, dengue and yellow fever) from entering homes. Fragile transportation systems can also frustrate disaster recovery efforts, as medical personnel are often unable to reach people trapped in flooded areas.

Two ways of dealing with global warming emerge. A more stringent version of Kyoto could be crafted to chase the unprecedented goal of trying to cool the atmosphere of the entire planet. Yet if such efforts resulted in lower economic growth, low-income populations in the United States and developing countries would be less able to protect themselves from the ill effects of extreme heat or other kinds of severe weather.

Alternatively, the focus could be on preventing the negative effects — the disease and death — that global warming might bring. Each year malaria kills 1 million to 3 million people, and one-third of the world's population is infected with water- or soil-borne parasitic diseases. It may well be that dealing with global warming by building resilience against its possible effects is more productive — and more realistic — than trying to solve the problem by driving our automobiles less.

Ted Balaker and Sam Staley are coauthors of "The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It" (Rowman & Littlefield). Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

Traffic Jams Keep Consumers Away From LA Businesses

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST

Los Angeles Business Journal

An Uzbek restaurant in LA—who knew? I didn't until I happed to drive past it one night and ever since then I've wanted to check it out. The restaurant (conveniently named Uzbekistan) sits only eight miles from my home, but a year passed before I dug into my first bowl of ogra. Why? Traffic congestion.

When I noticed the restaurant in one of the city's anonymous strip malls, my wife and I were embarrassingly late for a dinner party. We had factored in a generous amount of travel time, but the Saturday evening Hollywood traffic was downright wicked. So although I was intrigued by the mystery of central Asian cuisine, I certainly didn't want to venture into that traffic hell again.

When conversation would turn to dinner options I would think of Uzbekistan sometimes and suggest it occasionally, but only half-heartedly. For an entire year my cranky, hassle-averse self overcame my adventurous, boundary-expanding self. Whenever the spark of interest emerged, it was smothered by dreaded congestion. A clever mockumentary buoyed Uzbekistan's profile by highlighting its rivalry with Kazakhstan, but even Borat-mania couldn't propel me to Sunset and La Brea.

Then one evening my hunger coincided with the realization that it was the week after Christmas—the citywide lull when even congestion takes a break. The missus and I headed to the car, breezed all the way to Uzbekistan, and even scored a parking spot right in front.

Once inside we experienced what critics of LA miss when they fixate on the external drabness of the city�s strip malls. The architectural tedium gave way to gaudy murals and a concave ceiling complete with a partly-cloudy faux sky and a dangling disco ball. The synthesizer-heavy live music alternated between Uzbek tunes (or maybe they were Russian) and Sting cover songs. Most of the cocktails were vodka-based, some with simple ingredients (vodka, pickle), others a tad more elaborate like my "Asian mule" (vodka, beer and lemon juice). We enjoyed eggplant and beef salad, noodley kaurma lagman, ogra (dumpling soup), and some oh-so-juicy chicken kabobs.

No doubt congestion has thwarted the plans of other would-be diners and explorers across the city, and it's probably not those bent on experiencing something specific who get thwarted most often. Rather, it's the fence-sitters (like me) who get nudged to the "don't go" side.

Traffic congestion restrains all sorts of businesses, but the quirky ones face special challenges. We all need milk and toothpaste, so a supermarket can rely on a customer base that extends just a short distance. But businesses that cater to niche markets are especially dependent on mobility.

At any one time only a fraction of Southlanders get a hankering for Uzbek cuisine, karaoke, dance lessons, model trains, hiking trails, or any of the off-beat offerings that make cities interesting. The more ground potential customers can traverse quickly, the more actual customers establishments will attract.

But urban planners urge us to stay close to home—no need to go across town if you have entertainment options nearby. It's great to take a stroll to a neighborhood restaurant, but variety matters too. We shouldn't expect frictionless travel to every imaginable destination, but more access is better than less.

Too bad we're on course to get more traffic and less access. Over the next 25 years local transportation officials plan to spend $115 billion, yet despite all that money congestion is on track to get 25 percent worse.

Los Angeles could actually improve mobility by directing funds to where they would do the most good. Although automobile travel accounts for 98.7 percent of travel, officials are devoting over half, 58 percent, of transportation spending to mass transit.

There are many other state-of-the-art reforms, like one-way street conversions and "queue jumpers" that allow toll-paying motorists to hurdle over traffic stops that could help LA traffic flow more freely. If state legislators passed a sensible public-private partnership law allowing private financing of roads who knows what kind of innovations would emerge. Perhaps underground toll-tunnels, like those used in Sydney and other world cities, would help us gain access to more of our city.

When mobility degrades, a city offers less of itself to its denizens. In Commuting in America III, transportation guru Alan Pisarski suggests that policies that suppress freewheeling travel "are destroying part of what makes a big region a great region."

Indeed, it is gridlock standing between Angelinos and so many of the city's most intriguing nooks and businesses.

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and co-author of the book The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think and What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield 2006). An archive of his work is here. Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

How to Untangle Gridlock

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) sam.staley@reason.org (Samuel Staley) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 00:00:00 EST

Los Angeles Times

Everyone in Los Angeles knows we can't do anything about traffic congestion. We complain about it, but gridlock just keeps getting worse. Each year, the typical rush-hour traveler wastes 93 hours — more than two workweeks — stuck in traffic. Under current plans, congestion will drive up travel delays by another 11% over the next 25 years, ensuring that L.A. remains the congestion capital of the nation.

Even our regional planners resign themselves to ever-worsening congestion. The passage of Proposition 1B, which allows the state to sell $19.9 billion in bonds for transportation, still doesn't generate enough money to pay for all the improvements we need. We're restrained by technical problems, and we don't have space for new lanes.

Yet other cities of the world have faced the same challenges without surrendering to congestion.

Melbourne, Australia, found room for roads in places many Angelenos overlook. When urban traffic slowed to a crawl, Aussies built elevated structures that weave through commercial districts and tunnels that plunge under residences and city parks.

Other planners are also using innovative highway design to improve traffic flow and preserve the urban fabric of the city. In France, the A86 West Tunnel will complete the "super ring road" around Paris by laying 6.2 miles of two-level, two-lane traffic under Versailles.

In Los Angeles, tunneling could fill in the missing link and connect the 710 Freeway to the 210. But naysayers point to the Big Dig — the fiasco in Boston that went extravagantly over budget and proved fatal when tiles fell from a tunnel roof last summer. Earthquakes make Angelenos especially wary of tunnels.

But the Big Dig is an anomaly. When officials follow best practices, tunnels offer cost-effective solutions to regional traffic problems. And tunnels have proven safe even in seismically active Tokyo.

Building Southern California's roads up to needed capacity means getting back into the game of private financing. Toll revenue bonds have paid for multibillion-dollar projects in Australia, Britain, Canada, France and many other nations. California was once a trailblazer in highway finance. In 1989, a groundbreaking but flawed law known as AB 680 yielded Orange County's 91 Express Lanes, a project that scored many "firsts." It was 20th century America's first privately funded toll road, the first without tollbooths and the world's first experience with "value pricing," in which variable tolls keep traffic flowing smoothly.

However, a stringent "non-compete" clause in the contract enraged motorists because it stymied other roadway projects. The controversy subsided only after the local transportation agency bought the facility. Since then, other nations — as well as more than 20 U.S. states � have ironed out problems that hampered earlier public/private partnership legislation, and today contractors no longer insist on rigid non-compete clauses. But instead of improving AB 680, the state shifted into reverse and repealed it in 2002. Transportation innovation stalled in California but took off overseas.

The right law could help California catch up to the rest of the world by again allowing private investors to relieve gridlock. Such legislation would be especially welcome in Southern California, the region former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta called "the most attractive [road] investment opportunity in America, if not the world."

Imagine if we could expand the 91 Express Lanes model and transform our carpool-lane network into a regionwide network of special toll lanes. Motorists could pay to swerve past congestion, and bus riders could finally enjoy speedy travel. If the project proved too much for one contractor, multiple contractors could bid on different parts of the network.

That strikes many as unthinkable; everyone knows that greedy private companies wouldn't work together for the good of the whole system. Yet they've done just that in Santiago, Chile. Four private companies have just completed an integrated, 97-mile network of toll-financed roads. Tolls are collected electronically, and motorists need only sign up with one company to gain access to any and all of the tollways.

Unlike conventional bond financing, private funding places financial risk on investors, not taxpayers. There's also the issue of fairness; only those who use toll roads pay for them. Politicians often shy away from tolling because they fear backlash from voters. Yet London Mayor Ken Livingstone pushed for tolling and won reelection. And there's evidence that motorists are warming to the idea of tolling new capacity. A recent Mineta Transportation Institute survey revealed that Californians prefer tolls to bonds or higher gas taxes.

Los Angeles should draw inspiration from other cities of the world and embrace the solutions that will allow us to escape our fatalistic view of congestion.

Reason Foundation's Ted Balaker and Sam Staley are the authors of The Road More Traveled: Why The Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, And What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield 2006). An archive of Balaker's work is here, an archive of Staley's work is here, and Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

Why Bush Is Right to Resist Raising the Gas Tax

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST

Tech Central Station

To many, George W. Bush is a dimwit who stands in the way of progress. Take the gas tax. Many smart people want to raise it. Even former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, a man of the right whose every utterance commands the world's attention, recently added himself to the list. But W. folds his arms and refuses to budge. It may look like obstinence, but this time the cowboy president may be on to something.

Many hope that higher gas taxes will curb American's appetite for driving. If we drove less, we'd pollute less and wouldn't have to worry as much about global warming.

A recent New York Times piece by Daniel Gross was typical. Gross pointed out that Europeans endure much higher gas taxes than we do. In the U.S. the state and federal gas taxes amounts to about 40 cents per gallon, compared to nearly $4 in Italy, France, and Germany. He also noted that the last time the federal government raised the gas tax was way back in 1993.

Then the surprising news: more right-leaning economists are saying it's time for a raise. It's not just Greenspan, but others like former Bush administration economists Andrew Samwick and Greg Mankiw, as well as prominent libertarian Tyler Cowen. It sure seems like a bipartisan consensus is emerging, one that makes Bush look like the Lone Star State loner.

Still, that doesn't mean he's wrong.

If there is a consensus among experts, it's for road pricing. A recent paper published in Econ Journal Watch found that economists overwhelmingly support pricing and tolls.

Suppose the price of bread were zero. At the grocery store you'd see a line going around the block. Just like in the old Soviet economy. Well, imagine if the price of highway access were zero�actually you don't have to imagine. Just look at the highway at rush-hour.

Our reliance on gas taxes means that drivers pay for roads when they're at the gas station, not when they're actually using them. The result is traffic congestion. And that congestion frustrates the environmental goals of those who support higher gas taxes. The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that each year idling cars burn 2.3 billion gallons of gas. That gas isn't taking someone to work or to a doctor's appointment, it's just wasted.

If our system were toll-based instead, motorists would pay for roads only when they actually used them. They would think more carefully before piling on the road at rush hour. Tolling, especially the kind of variable tolling used on the 91 Express Lanes, does more than give motorists speedy and predictable trips, it's also easier on the environment than stop-and-go traffic.

But if we boosted the gas tax we'd pump more money into a system in which decisions are based more on political pull than environmental concerns or motorists' needs. Just a couple decades ago, the federal highway bill was nearly pork-free. But the last one contained 6,000 earmarks amounting to about $25 billion. Raise the gas tax and we'll surely fund more bridges to nowhere and pork is just the beginning. More than a quarter of every gas tax dollar funds something other than highways and even much of the money that does go to roadwork is burnt up by bureaucracy. A former federal highway administrator reckons that federal regulations increase project costs by 30 percent.

And sky-high gas taxes havn't reduced driving as much as one might expect. Joel Schwartz points out that in Europe driving accounts for 78 percent of travel, only about 10 percent less than the U.S. And the Euros are gaining on us. Over there per capita driving has been increasing more than twice as fast as in the states. Higher gas taxes haven't spared them from pollution or traffic congestion either. In both cases, Europeans have it worse than Americans.

Economists also say that the gas tax will help the government's fiscal mess. Perhaps, but the fiscal mess can also be alleviated by turning highway facilities into revenue sources. Tolling for scarce highway capacity is good economics and good public finance.

Yet transitioning to tolls gets harder as gas taxes get higher. At $4.24 per gallon, Britain has Europe's highest gas tax. It's made tolling a tougher sell as Brits demand to know why they should pay more when they already pay so much. American reformers may regard tolling as even more of a political long-shot than raising the gas tax, but there are signs that motorists are warming to tolls. Users of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes in Southern California and Minneapolis give them high marks and folks in places like Atlanta, California, Denver, and Washington, D.C. tell survey-takers that they prefer tolls to taxes.

When he opposes an increase in the gas tax is Bush being courageous or pig-headed? Who knows? Whatever his reasons he's making it easier to escape from an old system that doesn't work.

Reason Foundation's Ted Balaker is co-author of The Road More Traveled: Why The Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, And What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield 2006). An archive of his work is here and Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

Nothing Wrong with CEOs Making Top Dollar

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST

Los Angeles Business Journal

From iconic movie villains like Gordon Gekko to real-life bad guys like Ken Lay, Americans have had it with corporate scoundrels. To many, corporate big-shots are greedy, bloodless, and showered with undeserved wealth. Americans are typically offended by stereotypes, and yet they're quite willing to accept a broad-brush view of corporative executives.

Sometimes it's easy to see why. Between 1980 and 2003, compensation packages for CEOs in the top 500 companies shot up by a factor of about six. Even if there's nothing fraudulent going on, that's the kind of figure that irks many of us.

And why not? It's well known that CEOs often enjoy cozy relationships with board members. Boards may rubber-stamp salary hikes and other goodies, even as company stocks tumble. Americans rightfully cry foul when pay isn't tied to performance, but sometimes they cry foul even when a big pay day is earned.

In 1992 Disney CEO Michael Eisner became the face of corporate gluttony when he exercised options valued at $127 million. President Clinton paid attention to the outrage that followed. He made CEO pay a campaign issue, and pushed for new regulations that included more stringent compensation disclosure.

Many fumed over Eisner's giant payday, yet few bothered to remember that he resuscitated Disney during the 80s and presided over a tenfold increase in share price. Harvey Golub emphasizes the same point. During the eight years he headed American Express, Golub made roughly $172 million. That figure might make most of us weak-kneed, but Golub points out that the company's value grew by $55 billion during his tenure. His seemingly obscene compensation represented less than one-half of one percent of the wealth he helped create.

Self-appointed corporate watchdogs get plenty of ink pointing out that CEOs earn vastly more than most everyone else, but they rarely make the uncomfortable point that relatively few people posses the experience, talent, and drive to lead a company of thousands. If people were interchangeable, if anyone could thrive as a corporate boss, then CEO salaries would plummet.

The CEO club is about as elite as it gets, and yet corporate America is more democratic than its jet-set image conveys. Today 57 million American households—roughly half—own stock, up from just 16 million in 1983. So when companies grow, many regular American families are enriched too.

Yes corporate excesses occur, but they're typically self-correcting. A poorly managed company may chug along for a while, but the market will eventually expose its weaknesses. When performance suffers, stockholders clamor for change. Indeed a recent Wall Street Journal Online/Harris Interactive poll revealed that poor corporate governance has prompted 64 percent of respondents to reduce or divest their holdings in a company. Sometimes corporate excess is reigned in by corporate raiders, real-life Gordon Gekkos who are ironically regarded as the very embodiment of white-collar excess. We shouldn't assume that executive compensation is fixed on an upward trajectory. Indeed a University of Chicago economist calculates that average CEO compensation for S&P 500 firms peaked in 2000, and has since tumbled by about a third.

While the market tends to correct itself, government intervention is often ineffectual or even counterproductive. For example, Clinton 's disclosure requirements probably helped drive compensation up as CEOs began to act more like pro athletes who use their peer's salaries as leverage during contract negotiations.

With our Enron-obsessed news media, it's easy to get the impression that most CEOs just aren't worth the money. But recently economists from MIT and NYU made a far different discovery. They found that, between 1980 and 2003, the average value of the top 500 companies increased by a factor of six. In other words executive compensation grew about as much as companies' values. Pay reflected performance.

Don't agree? Don't think that's the right way to measure performance? Then don't invest in companies that you think pay their execs too much. CEO pay is based on voluntary arrangements. This simple point is often overlooked during all the thundering about "corporate fat cats."

If a company's shareholders are happy, why should outsiders wail about how many Ferraris the boss owns?

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and co-author of the new book The Road More Traveled (Rowman&Littlefield). An archive of his work is here and Reason's privatization research and commentary is here.

Prop 1B Might Make Things Worse

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST

If California voters give the nod to Proposition 1B, they'll get $20 billion for transportation. Ironically, Southern California could also get more gridlock. The proposition spreads the dough around enough to ensure widespread political support, but the approach also ensures that no area gets enough resources to take a real bite out of congestion. Yet even if we could stuff Prop 1B with twice as much funding, our transportation woes would still continue. State leaders say our transportation network is starved for funds, but what it's really hungry for is reform.

If Prop 1B fails state leaders may actually be forced to reform, but if it passes reformist pressure will surely dissipate. That's too bad, because Southern California is surprisingly well-positioned to beat back congestion.

Consider California's history as a transportation innovator. Fifteen years ago, a trailblazing but imperfect law called AB680 spawned two public-private toll road projects. The law allowed an unused freeway median on Orange County's SR91 to be transformed into High-Occupancy Toll or "HOT" lanes. When the facility opened in 1995 it introduced some groundbreaking "firsts." It was the first privately financed toll road in America in the 20th Century, the first with no tollbooths, and the first facility in the world to use "value pricing" to manage traffic flow. The price of the toll goes up and down with the flow of traffic, and since the HOT lanes run parallel to regular freeway lanes, motorists always have a free-flowing alternative to congestion.

Why not expand on this home-grown innovation?

The good news is that many HOT lanes are nearly built already. The region is home to the nation's highest concentration of carpool lanes, and these lanes can be converted to HOT lanes rather easily. Add the necessary connectors and motorists could enjoy a network of congestion-free lanes. Imagine driving from Pasadena to Santa Monica or from Burbank to Anaheim, knowing you could leave any time of day and travel at free-flow conditions the whole way.

And, from a tunnel that fills in the 710's missing link to truck-only toll lanes that separate towering big-rigs from regular traffic, motorists could also expect faster project delivery. San Diego's South Bay Expressway was made possible by AB680 and the road is set to open next year�at least 13 years sooner than if it had been built the conventional way.

Since AB680 dozens of cities have pursued HOT lanes and 23 states have adopted public-private partnership legislation. Unfortunately, California shifted into reverse. Instead of improving the law, the state repealed AB680 in 2002. While many billions of private dollars bypass California on their way to other destinations, 1B backers tell us that the state with the nation's lowest credit rating has no choice but to sink deeper into debt.

If California passed a sensible public-private partnership law we would see that even the severity of our problem has an upside. The amount of funding gridlocked Southern California could lure would probably dwarf what other areas have attracted. Recently former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta noted that the private sector regards the region as "the most attractive [road] investment opportunity in America, if not the world."

Experience would also be on our side. HOT lanes aren't the "Lexus Lanes" that early detractors feared they'd be; a decade's-worth of evidence shows that motorists of all income levels use and support the lanes. And over the years other states have ironed out problems that dogged AB680. For example, the SR91 contract included a "non-compete" provision that thwarted other highway projects. The clause infuriated motorists and eventually led the local public transportation agency to buy the facility. But today such non-compete provisions are no longer necessary.

Even public opinion is warming to toll-based reform. Voters would probably pounce on a politician who suggested tolling existing roads, but tolling new capacity is a different story. Recently the Mineta Institute revealed that Californians are actually more supportive of tolling than raising gas taxes or floating bonds.

With an open-minded public, willing investors, and so much else going for it, we really could take a whack at congestion. But if voters hand over their credit card again, we'll just get more of the same congested thinking that has kept us stuck in congested streets for so long.

Reason Foundation's Ted Balaker is co-author of the new book, The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, And What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield). An archive of his work is here. Reason's transportation research and commentary is here and Reason's California-specific research and commentary is here.

California's Transportation Bond Won't Build Roads

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Los Angeles Daily News

When it comes to transportation, Angelenos have plenty to gripe about: the nation's worst traffic congestion, and - with 6 million more people expected to arrive by 2030 - the expectation that those jams will get even worse.

Enter the phony fix of Proposition 1B, the $19.9 billion transportation bond.

A recent Reason Foundation study revealed that it would take $68 billion in roadway-capacity expansion for Los Angeles to vanquish severe congestion by 2030. Next to that figure Proposition 1B's promise of $19.9 billion seems small.

But isn't something better than nothing? Not in this case.

Proposition 1B's "something" is more expensive than it first seems. Because so much money would be spent on debt payments, 1B would cost nearly $2 for every dollar spent.

Taxpayers would get a $38 billion bill, but receive only $19.9 billion worth of product.

And what would they have to show for it? The real-world impact of 1B would probably be close to nothing. Nearly half of the money goes toward projects that have nothing to do with fighting gridlock, and only $11 billion is tabbed for what can loosely be defined as congestion relief.

Of that, $1 billion is earmarked for State Route 99 in the Central Valley, and the remaining funds will be spread across the state. When the dust settles, no one knows how much L.A. will get.

Large sums of Proposition 1B money would go toward simply keeping our current transportation system running. Decades from now taxpayers will still be paying for 1B, while puzzled Angelenos look around for all the new infrastructure they thought they'd bought.

Bonding would also take us farther away from a much better "something." If Proposition 1B passes, complacency will follow. Gridlock-weary drivers will be temporarily pacified. Lawmakers will congratulate themselves for showing leadership. And momentum for the real reform California needs will fizzle, because these bonds certainly don't encourage lawmakers to be fiscally responsible.

Over the past three years, state spending has shot up 29 percent. If voters bail Sacramento out by giving our politicians credit cards for essentials like transportation, lawmakers can safely devote more of the general fund budget to their pet projects.

If bonds weren't an option, state leaders might have asked the private sector for help. After all, $25 billion in private sector transportation is currently flowing into other states. In fact, the kind of funding California could attract would probably dwarf what other states are getting.

Earlier this year former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta noted, "Every private-sector investment group that we talk to says that California - and Southern California in particular - is the most attractive (road) investment opportunity in America, if not the world."

But if Proposition 1B passes, legislators will ease back into their business-as-usual habits. And when congestion grows more unbearable, they'll cobble together another bond, and ask voters to give the state's credit card another swipe. Criticize their new bond and lawmakers will have a familiar response at the ready: "Something is better than nothing."

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation, a free market think tank based in Los Angeles, and co-author of "The Road More Traveled: Why The Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, And What We Can Do About It." An archive of his work is here. Reason's transportation research and commentary is here and the California-specific research and commentary is here.

Addressing California's Transportation Needs

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Executive Summary

California’s population is projected to reach 48 million by 2030, an increase of 11 million people. The majority of this growth will occur in the state’s three major urban regions (Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego). Vehicle miles traveled by individuals will increase by 30 to 50 percent in these regions, with truck traffic growing even faster, especially in greater Los Angeles. Yet California’s urban freeway systems are already nearing capacity, with pervasive congestion during ever-lengthening peak periods.

By 2030, if current long-range transportation plans are implemented, congestion in the three largest urban areas will be much worse than today’s already intolerable levels. The Los Angeles metro area already leads the nation in congestion, with the Bay Area ranking fourth. To eliminate the most severe congestion requires adding enough highway capacity to more than keep pace with projected growth in vehicle travel. A recent Reason Foundation study projects that between now and 2030, California would need to add 13,132 new lane-miles to do this. That amount of new capacity would cost $122 billion, or about $5 billion per year over 25 years.

While these are not small numbers in any sense, they are reasonable in the grand scheme of transportation spending. In response to this growing crisis, California’s leaders have offered a dismal response.

Proposition 1B, the Highway Safety, Traffic Reduction, Air Quality, and Port Security Bond Act of 2006, would authorize more than $19.9 billion in General Obligation debt, with an annual debt service of $1.3 billion and a total cost to taxpayers of approximately $38.9 billion. The funds would be spent as follows:

$4.5 billion to congested highway capacity projects
$2 billion to highways, local roads and public transit systems
$2 billion to local roads
$1 billion to State Route 99 through the Central Valley
$1.75 billion to local transportation projects and to state highways.
$4 billion to capital projects for local transit systems and intercity rail systems.
$2 billion to goods movement via ports, highways and rail
$1.2 billion to reduce air emissions and replace/retrofit old school buses.
$1.1 billion to security and disaster response on transit systems and in publicly owned ports and harbors
$325 million to railroad crossings and to retrofit local bridges and overpasses

While that is an impressive looking list and it would seem that $19.9 billion could make a substantial improvement to the state’s transportation system, only a limited portion of this money will be used to invest in new infrastructure, and an even smaller portion for new roads and highways. Most funds may go to ongoing maintenance and rehabilitation and to other noninfrastructure uses such as retrofitting buses or improving security on local transit systems. And since most of the money will be apportioned by the legislature if Proposition 1B is approved, we should expect plenty of it to go to local pork barrel projects.

This attention to California’s transportation infrastructure is overdue, but good intentions and recognition of the problem alone do not make good public policy. In reality, this bond proposal is an easy way for California’s leaders to look as if they’re addressing the congestion problem while passing the buck on to future generations and making very little in the way of real long-term improvement.

Californians recognize these doubts. In spite of the overwhelming support for the bond among state leaders and groups like AAA, the Chamber of Commerce, etc., the latest PPIC survey shows only 50 percent of likely voters say they would vote yes on Proposition 1B if the election were held today.

Even more damning is an innovative survey conducted by researchers from San Jose State University and Portland State University as a project for the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. They surveyed Californians on different ways to fund transportation projects, and their question about using general obligation bonds like that of Proposition 1B explained that “paying off the bonds from the state’s general fund over 30 years would use money that otherwise might be spent for other state programs and services.” With that reality included, only 29.9 percent of those surveyed said they would support using general obligation bonds like Proposition 1B.

Fundamental problems with the approach of Proposition 1B include:

Roads should be funded by user fees. General obligation bonds paid out of general tax revenues require many Californians to pay for roads they will never use and don’t need. Gasoline taxes at least come close to relating how much you pay to how much you use the system. The use of direct fees—tolls—to pay for many new roads and lanes is increasingly popular with drivers and makes the most economic sense. Gas tax funds could then focus on roads that cannot be toll funded.
Proposition 1B is a drop in the bucket that would decrease momentum for long-term solutions. Many argue that something is better than nothing, but based on impact, 1B would be very close to doing nothing. The bond will not provide congestion relief on interstate freeways. A portion of the funds would be unavailable to the most of the state— $1 billion is devoted specifically to State Route 99. An unknown portion of a $2 billion component of the bond devoted to traffic safety and congestion relief may be spent on public transit. But conventional transit is unlikely to offer much in the way of congestion relief and Proposition 1B’s passage would not change that reality. If the bond passes many will be satisfied that “something” has been done about transportation when what we really need is a radical overhaul of California’s approach to transportation infrastructure.
Essential infrastructure ought to be a priority for general revenue funding. By allowing the legislature to bond for essential infrastructure, taxpayers remove the pressure on the legislature to prioritize the general budget. In 1960-1961 bonds accounted for only 16 percent of infrastructure funding, but by 2002-2003 the figure had grown to 76 percent. Voters have approved bond after bond, and yet here we are again. An expert panel assembled by USC’s Keston Institute “believes that the Department of Finance is singling out transportation to pay a disproportionate share of the General Fund deficit.” This bond would allow our leaders to lean on the crutch of borrowing yet again and continue their habit of shortchanging transportation in the general fund.
Proposition 1B allows poor prioritization to continue. State leaders and local MPOs have refused to make cutting congestion a priority. Officials hope to slow congestion’s rate of growth, but they fully expect conditions to grow much worse in the future. Policymakers claim they simply do not have the money to actually make conditions better, but that is not the case. The MPOs for our state’s three largest regions (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego) plan to spend $265 billion over the next couple of decades, but the majority will go toward transit, not toward reducing congestion on our roads. Our MPOs do have the money necessary to actually reduce congestion by 2030.

Los Angeles plans to spend 58 percent of transportation funds on transit. Devoting the same percentage to expanding capacity would eliminate gridlock by 2030.

San Francisco plans to spend 64 percent of transportation funds on transit. Devoting just 25 percent of planned funds to expanding capacity would eliminate gridlock by 2030.

San Diego plans to spend 49 percent of transportation funds on transit. Devoting just 24 percent of planned funds to expanding capacity would eliminate gridlock by 2030.

California’s bonded indebtedness is already at record levels. The state issued 2.5 times as much debt in FY 2005-06 as it did in FY 1995-96, and over 10.5 times as much as in FY 1985-86. We have already authorized the state to go nearly $80 billion in debt. It is fiscally risky to increase the state’s level of debt by the amount proposed in this and the other bond measures on the November ballot.

There are three main parts to the way California ought to be approaching our transportation infrastructure needs.

First, make better use of current funds. Proposition 1B is a pork-laden mess and much less than half the money will go to projects that will relieve congestion. That is typical of our transportation spending. While transit is important and needs appropriate funding, current spending plans allocate very disproportionate funds to transit. The three largest metro areas plan to spend about $154 billion on transit over the next 25 years, vs. $109 billion on roads, and most of the road money will go to maintenance and upgrades, not new capacity. If even one-third of the money going to transit were shifted to roads we could get three to five times more congestion relief than Proposition 1B will accomplish.

Second, give transportation its share of the budget. We used to devote a reasonable share of the general fund to transportation infrastructure. Now, even though the state budget has grown considerably, we don't devote the same share of general fund revenue to infrastructure that we used to. If Proposition 1B passes, we will pay $38.9 billion to get less than $20 billion in current funds for projects, and we’ll be paying for that with about $1.33 billion each year out of the general fund. It makes more sense to take a responsible look at our bloated budget and cut less essential spending so that we could allocate about $4-5 billion per year out of the general fund for what is surely one of the most core functions of the state. Some bonding for large infrastructure investments might still be good policy, but prioritizing spending of the revenue we have should come first. We have plenty of good examples of such an approach. Nineteen counties in California have put in place local sales taxes for local transportation funding and used them to combine pay-as-you-go financing with bonding.

Third, California is falling far short of making full use of public-private partnerships for transportation projects. We are far behind states like Virginia, Massachusetts, and Florida in outsourcing highway maintenance, which would free up gas tax funds to help fund new road projects. More importantly, the private sector would happily invest capital in providing major new highway projects. If we aggressively pursued PPPs and tolled some of the new facilities and lanes added, private capital could fund at least 25 percent of what the bond could do if all the bond funds were spent on roads.

We recommend improving an existing public-private partnership law to incorporate state-of-the-art learning on this issue. The legislation would authorize both CalTrans and other levels of government (cities, counties, joint powers authorities, etc.) to initiate toll-funded transportation infrastructure projects, and permit them to partner with the private sector to carry out such projects, using both RFPs and procedures for dealing with unsolicited proposals. The appropriate approval process would occur within the responsible government entity (the MPO, or CalTrans, for example). This would enable California to enter the global capital markets, as well as tap worldclass expertise for modernizing its vitally important highway system. With the private sector to provide investment for these large-scale projects, scarce public money can be spent on things only the public sector can do.

Suburban Style Evolution

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Ease into the red Eames chair next to the fireplace, log onto a high-speed wireless connection and dine on your fruit and walnut salad. Where are you? You just might be at one of the new-look McDonald's that the company recently unveiled in certain markets. The kind of evolution Mickey D's has been going through has also reshaped many other suburban fixtures and the transformation may render many of the criticisms lobbed at suburbia outdated—that is, if they were ever accurate in the first place.

Morgan Spurlock's 2004 documentary Super Size Me exacerbated our nation's body image angst by exposing the obvious: eating nothing but high calorie foods and not exercising much makes you fat. McDonald's was the perfect villain because, over the years, few sights have been a more ubiquitous feature of suburbia than the Golden Arches. And drive-throughs helped Americans maintain their infamously sedentary lifestyles by removing the need for customers to remove themselves from their cars. Public health activists revile McDonald's for what it does to our insides and architects revile it for how it looks on the outside. To these critics McDonald's is unhealthy, superficial, repetitious, and ugly—nearly everything they hate about suburbia wrapped up neatly in an American icon.

But now executives aim to deemphasize the familiar Golden Arches in favor of a sleeker, sexed up exterior. Once inside you can still grab on with both hands and shove a 560-calorie Big Mac down your throat, but today's McDonald's also offers plenty of heart-healthy salads and such. Diners may even squirt low-fat sesame ginger dressing from the head of the famously progressive Paul Newman. And yes, a growing number of restaurants are being equipped with loungy furniture and fireplaces, and roughly 7,000 already offer wi-fi access.

These days, many customers want more than cheap fast food; they also seek a pleasant aesthetic experience (a la Starbucks) and healthier fare (a la Subway). Indeed, when Spurlock's "expose" hit theaters, Subway already had more American locations than McDonald's. After some financial slipping during the early 2000s, McDonald's regained its footing by borrowing some of the approaches that have made its upstart competitors so successful.

So McDonald's recent image enhancements represent a continuation of change that was already underway when Spurlock puked up his Mickey D's on the big screen. In fact, Spurlock could have slimmed down by eating nothing but items from McDonald's veggie-heavy menu (or simply by exercising more, as middle-aged muscleman Chazz "Down Size Me" Weaverdid).

Usually the kind of change McDonald's is going through isn't spurred by some grandiose stunt; it emerges gradually as sellers react to buyers' changing tastes. Similar examples abound. Hulking SUVs still roam the roads, but this year smaller, car-based "CUVs"s are on pace to outsell them. The "Beast from Bentonville" doesn't just sell ammo and tube socks; today Wal-Mart also peddles pedicures, cashmere sweaters, organic foods, sushi, and (despite squawks from the American Family Association) Brokeback Mountain DVDs. Even newer suburban subdivisions are often less "cookie cutter" than their predecessors.

Take Highlands Ranch in suburban Denver. This year the nation's largest master-planned community celebrates its 25th year and its rows of big boxy houses have provoked derision from the outset. Although she didn't upchuck like Spurlock, one Denver councilwoman's assessment of Highlands Ranch conveyed similar revulsion: "one big smush of beige puke." As this LA Times articlenotes, its reputation as the epitome of sterile, superficial suburbia, "was cemented when National Geographic magazine ran a picture of Highlands Ranch in 1996. It showed a dizzying panorama of rooftops, one after another after another, so close they practically touched."

Although the "dizzying panorama of rooftops" still remains the visual of choice for countless articles and books, suburbia is not the smear of homogeneity that such imagery implies. Compared to decades past, today's suburbia is less "white bread" and more diverse in other ways. Subdivisions still reveal common characteristics, but a growing array of floor plans, exteriors, and landscape designs allows today's suburbanites greater opportunity to escape from architectural tedium. In Highlands Ranch covenant controls still enforce a great deal of blandness, but single-family homes have been joined by new structures, including town homes and cafes.

The changes inside are even more pronounced, as America's tract home dwellers adorn their personal spaces with crisp paint, funky furniture, and pieces of art that reflect their own style. Homeowners no longer need a giant pile of money to fulfill their aesthetic desires and popular TV shows like Design on a Dime reveal the degree to which style has been democratized. Still, the most substantive aspects of suburban life predate such outward changes.

Megan Chard has come to learn that the reasons why people live in suburbia are hardly superficial. The 35-year-old grew up among the tract homes and then promptly moved to the grittier environment of downtown Denver, vowing never to return to suburbia. Eventually, she and her husband had a child and their priorities changed. They wanted to live in a place with safer streets, affordable housing, and plenty of other kids. The family moved to Highlands Ranch, and completed the suburbia-to-suburbia roundtrip countless others have made.

But the distinction between city and suburbia is blurring, which means today's neighborhood shoppers no longer face a stark all-or-nothing choice between excitement and family-friendliness. Many cities are much safer than they used to be, and many suburban neighborhoods are incorporating aspects of city life. At Highlands Ranch one can sip a latte at a coffee house, browse through an independent book store, stock up on hummus at Whole Foods—even enjoy an Asian salad sprinkled with edamame at McDonald's.

As McDonald's gets healthier and subdivision life gets hipper, will suburbia's uppity detractors finally bite their tongues? Some already have, but many continue to blurt old criticisms at the new suburbia, showing that, even in the mist of so much evolution, some minds remain stubbornly resistant to change.

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation. He is co-author of the forthcoming book The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield, Fall 2006), which includes an examination of the new suburbia. An archive of Balaker's work is here and Reason's urban growth research and commentary is here.

Thanks to Flourishing Market Forces, Angelenos Can Enjoy More for Less

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Los Angeles Business Journal

If given the choice of living in today's LA or the Los Angeles of a generation ago, which would you choose? I'll stick with today's Southern California.

For the glass is half-empty crowd, let's start with the common complaints — many of which aren't as bad as they seem at first glance.

Take gas prices. As much as they hurt, UCLA researchers note that we pump a smaller portion of our incomes into our cars than we did in the 1980s.

What about LA's smoggy reputation and awful air quality? The California Air Resources Board finds the number of days that LA has exceeded the 1-hour ozone standard has dropped from 192 in 1975 to 75 last year—an impressive 61 percent drop.

And then there's the crime. Outsiders often regard LA as one giant playground for gangs, but the serious crime rate has been cut in half since 1980.

Sure, Los Angeles' economic performance hasn't been as robust as we might have liked, but the local economy is more resilient than many realize. Recall that LA has shaken off defense cuts, the '92 riots, the Northridge earthquake, and more. And despite all that, since 1979, median household income is up more than 140 percent. Business services jobs grew by 58 percent and the Milken Institute notes that in 2004, with telecommuting and technology helping entrepreneurs, LA reached a new peak in residential employment.

Some worry about income inequality, but even if the gap between rich and poor widens, that tells us little about the actual state of economic opportunity because the faces that comprise income groups keep changing. Such comparisons over time are particularly misleading in LA, where immigration constantly swells the ranks of the poor. We're fortunate that ours is a rather fluid society, in which the dynamics of a relatively free market help those at the bottom make their way up the economic ladder.

From faltering public schools to the housing crunch, plenty of problems remain in Southern California and some have gotten much worse. Traffic congestion, for instance, has gotten 150 percent worse since the early 80s. It's gone from just an irritant to a force that squeezes much of the economic vitality from the local economy, costing Angelenos $11 billion each year just in wasted gas and time.

And, of course there are the heavy hands of state and local government. Many a business has recently escaped the squeeze of high state taxes and onerous regulations by heading to Nevada, Arizona, and Texas. Bureaucracy is booming in LA, as local government now accounts for the county's largest employment sector. No wonder Forbes recently named LA the nation's most expensive place to do business.

And yet, the good still edges out the bad. One often-overlooked aspect of progress is the degree to which falling prices have improved living standards.

When measured as the amount of time someone must work to make enough money to buy something, the price of nearly everything has fallen dramatically. Buying a dozen eggs requires only about a quarter of the time an American from 1920 had to invest. What to buy a car? You'll only have to work about a third as long as your early-century counterpart.

The nationwide homeownership rate stands at nearly 70 percent, a historic high. Yet restrictions on building permits, a sluggish approval process, inclusionary zoning and other local policies have constricted housing supply in LA, catapulting home prices to new heights. Thankfully, cheaper cars make it easier for people to live in more affordable areas outside of LA and still travel into LA's economic orbit.

The bottom-line is clear: when market forces flourish, Americans enjoy more for less.

A 1970s IBM mainframe cost over $3 million, but today's consumer need only pay about $500 to buy a computer that's a thousand times faster — and better. Deregulation has lowered air fares, allowing average folks more opportunities to visit loved ones or explore faraway lands. Medical science continues to give new hope to those with age-old ailments. Laser eye surgery gives the blind sight and cochlear implants let the deaf hear. Many advances we take for granted haven't been around that long and, thanks to research in fields like genetics and nanotechnology, many more are on the way. Indeed such progress is a global phenomenon, with LA playing its part.

Los Angeles offers unlimited opportunities for entrepreneurs and consumers. We may pay more than folks in North Dakota do for a lot of things, but instead of yearning for days gone by, give me today's digital LA—with its explosion of films and state-of-the-art movie theaters, funky shops, fantastic restaurants, inviting beaches, and updated maps to the stars' homes.

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and author of a forthcoming book on traffic congestion. An archive of his work is here and Reason's California research and commentary is here.

Why Mobility Matters

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EDT

...

Dial-Up Interstates

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Tech Central Station

When it comes to internet connections we are quick to appreciate the importance of speed. Whether we're shopping, job hunting, or doing just about anything else, we recognize that our opportunities expand when broadband connections let us zip around this global network quickly. We'd never want to return to dial-up now, but that's what we're doing with another network — our roadway system.

Fifty years ago today President Eisenhower signed legislation that created the Interstate Highway System. Many years prior a young Ike endured a long lesson on the importance of mobility when he participated in coast-to-coast military convoy. Much of the trip was a struggle, as the group slogged through muddy roads and faced down bridgeless rivers. The convoy inched across America at an average speed of 6 mph, needing 62 days to reach the West coast.

The interstate system sped up travel and connected previously isolated pockets of America to the rest of the nation. Traffic congestion, already a growing problem, was beaten back significantly and new opportunities abounded. Businesses enjoyed larger consumer markets and bigger labor pools. Customers welcomed the greater variety and lower prices that expanded competition offered.

It was something akin to the evolution of the internet. In the days when we called the it "cyberspace," users enthused about the network's potential but wailed in frustration as their screeching dial-up modems struggled to load even graphics-free sites. But broadband was just around the corner, and when speed and connectivity improved, opportunity exploded.

Though they developed along parallel routes for some time, the transportation and online networks are now headed in opposite directions. Online performance continues to improve, but on the road conditions are sliding backward. Just as server capacity must grow to ensure fast and efficient virtual travel, so must physical capacity grow to keep up with growing demand for travel across physical space. But capacity hasn't expanded much. The interstate system was mostly complete by 1980 and since then driving has nearly doubled but our roadway system has grown by only about 4 percent. Our leaders have even avoided relatively cheap fixes, like optimizing traffic signals.

Traffic congestion was once a minor irritant, but it's been allowed to fester for decades, and now more people are complaining. According to recent surveys, congestion is residents' biggest gripe in places like Austin, Atlanta, Portland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, San Diego, and San Francisco. Another recent survey asked Silicon Valley CEOs about their business-related gripes. In the span of a single year, congestion moved from the number nine spot to number two.

The Texas Transportation Institute estimates that each year, congestion drains more than $63 billion from the U.S. economy from wasted time and gas. The U.S. Department of Transportation sees an even bigger drain, pegging congestion costs from freight bottlenecks and delayed deliveries at $200 billion per year. Yet it can be tough to pinpoint the true cost of congestion because a complete analysis would have to account for factors that are hard to quantify — from gridlock-induced stress to opportunities lost.

Since customers and employees have limits on how long they will travel, consumer markets and labor pools shrink when congestion grows. Likewise, employees often settle for less interesting and lower paying jobs because simply getting to work (or even an interview) is such a chore. Alternatively, researchers often find that improved mobility helps the poor climb up the economic ladder, and what's true for individuals is also true for entire cities.

A study published by the Transportation Research Board examined the economies of Philadelphia and Chicago and considered the impact of a 10 percent increase in travel speeds. The researchers estimate that each year this improvement would save Philadelphia businesses $440 million and Chicago businesses $1.3 billion. Certainly predicting the future is tricky business, but a French-Korean research team also discovered a mobility-prosperity link when they looked at the real-world effects of mobility on 22 French cities. In France a 10 percent increase in average speeds was associated with a 15 percent expansion of the labor market and a 3 percent increase in productivity.

Sadly, all but a few state and local governments have surrendered and aren't even attempting to cut congestion. How times have changed. Eisenhower and earlier champions of the interstate system like Harry Truman and Franklin Roosevelt weren't cowed by congestion. They knew it was possible to improve mobility, and if we could resuscitate that optimism we could beat congestion back with a market-based approach that would avoid the missteps of the 1956 legislation.

The interstate program tackled a key issue, but in the process it shoved an important player, the entrepreneur, to the sidelines. Today Americans expect roads to be governments' domain, but that's not always the case elsewhere. For example, France's tolled motorway system (the equivalent of our interstate system) is investor owned, but in America nearly all aspects of transportation policy suffer because they have been separated from the market.

Where and when roads get built is usually determined by arcane funding formulas that often weigh congressional tenure more than actual need. But investors rarely fund bridges to nowhere; instead they figure out where projects make sense by responding to consumer demand.

The interstate program's reliance on user taxes (mainly fuel taxes) has also made motorists skeptical of a central characteristic of private roads — tolls. And this aversion to market-based traffic management has much to do with our current congestion woes. If motorists paid each time they used a road (instead of all at once at the pump) they would think twice before piling onto roads at rush-hour. New technology that wasn't available in the 50s has made tolling more sophisticated, and on Southern California's 91 Express Lanes, it's actually abolished gridlock.

Special toll lanes run parallel to regular highway lanes and motorists can avoid congestion by paying a toll that goes up and down with the flow of traffic. This method, called variable pricing, ensures that traffic always scoots along at 65 mph. Since tolls are collected electronically there's no need to stop at tollbooths and this arrangement can even bring speedy transportation to the transit dependent poor.

Certainly much more can be done. We could legalize competition in transit services (PDF), clear accidents faster, and embrace telecommuting. It is possible to enjoy "broadband" speeds on our transportation network, but if the political dawdling goes on, we'll continue to be dragged back toward dial-up conditions.

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst and the Jacobs Fellow at Reason Foundation. He is co-author of the forthcoming book, The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters More Than You Think, and What We Can Do About It (Rowman & Littlefield). An archive of Balaker's work is here, and Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.

Telecommuting Helps Companies Recruit

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Companies often complain when factors beyond their control make it harder to attract top-notch talent, so it's surprising to find a company that shrinks its labor pool on its own. Yet Hewlett Packard did just that when it recently announced plans to yank nearly all of its IT-division staffers back into the office. By going against the trend toward increased telecommuting, the famously innovative company may end up dulling its reputation.

Companies rely on sharp employees to help them out-innovate the competition and that's why more are allowing their staff to personalize the process of work. No surprise that employees have discovered that they like the extra flexibility. A recent MONEY magazine/Salary.com survey found that workers with the most telecommuting and flexible work options were also the most satisfied.

Since HP's IT staffers have already tasted freedom, how many of the reportedly 1,000 affected employees will stick with the company if it means being tethered to a conventional office? One employee told the Mercury News that she doesn't want to uproot her family and head cross-country to her newly designated California office. "I like my flexibility," she says. "The only reason I've stayed with HP this long is because I've been telecommuting."

Even if this is a move to shed expensive employees, it could hurt HP's future recruiting efforts. When it comes to recruiting, telecommuting-friendly companies can be extra choosy because they enjoy the geography advantage. As long as a job can be done remotely, these companies can select from a huge labor pool�most anyone; anywhere with a broadband connection could be a potential employee. But labor pools shrink when bosses demand on-site work. They can only hire those who can get to the office in a reasonable amount of time and often outside factors exacerbate geographical restraints.

Take traffic congestion. We might regard congestion as merely a mundane irritant, but it becomes much more than irritating when it drains companies of talent. Long commutes can just be a matter of traveling long distances, but as congestion worsens fewer employees are willing to surrender the time, money, and sanity that battling gridlock requires. Additional factors conspire with congestion to constrict labor pools even more. Employees might be able to avoid an awful commute if they can live closer to work, but often housing sticker shock makes workers retreat to distant suburbs. The one-two punch of housing and congestion really stings in Silicon Valley, where HP is headquartered.

Recently, a survey asked Silicon Valley CEOs to rank their top business headaches: high housing costs came in first and traffic congestion second. The good news is that HP has offices in different areas, so it's not necessary for all of the recently office-bound employees to move to the company's headquarters. This geographic variety certainly helps, but it's still no where near the level of location flexibility that employees previously enjoyed. And, although few places come close to the Bay Area's shockingly high housing costs (median home price $733,000), mounting congestion is shrinking labor pools in every major metro area.

The HP exec behind the telecommuting reversal argues that remote work makes it harder for new employees to learn from veterans. Indeed the lack face-to-face human contact is a very real drawback to telecommuting, one that often prompts management gurus to fret about that venerated corporate concept�synergy.

Sure spontaneous brainstorming and water-cooler socializing can generate synergy. But consider the company that demands on-site work and has to settle for somewhat less talented employees. Will more synergy be generated from two second-rate employees sharing the same pot of coffee or from two first-raters separated by a thousand miles of earth?

Bosses who insist that workers aren't really working unless they're at work forget that different people reach their "aha!" moments at different times of day and in different environments. Two years ago an HP mechanical-design engineer explained that he works from his backyard, while sitting in a lounge chair. If he hit a creative block, he'd just stop working for a while. "Not everyone can be innovative in a very structured, 9-to-5 type office environment," he said.

To many managers' ears that sounds like the kind of hippy-dippy talk that prompts them to dismiss telecommuters as slackers. But the HP engineer offered a different take: at home "you stop watching the clock. It now becomes more of a focus on getting the task done." Since telecommuters aren't clock-punchers, they know will be judged on results and this is one reason they often work longer and more productively than office workers.

HP's telecommuting reversal reportedly shocked employees and human resources experts who recognize that more companies are beginning to get over their longstanding aversion to remote work. And HP's decision is even more unexpected because the company has long pioneered flexible work arrangements.

Almost four-decades ago, Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard wrote: "To my mind, flextime is the essence of respect for and trust in people. It says that we both appreciate that our people have busy personal lives and that we trust them to devise, with their supervisor and work group, a schedule that is personally convenient yet fair to others."

Packard recognized that flexibility benefits employers and employees alike and his words should remind companies that telecommuting is not an all-or-nothing choice, but a spectrum of choices. Some people thrive on the buzz of the office, while others prefer the comfort of home. Many function best with a personalized mix of at-home and office work, which is why Sun Microsystems allows for a wide range of telecommuting frequency.

When it comes to what we do, we've all benefited from the personalization of work.

It was only a couple hundred years ago when roughly 90 percent of Americans worked on the farm. Since then the variety of jobs has exploded (The Occupational Outlook Handbook lists hundreds of types of jobs and each splinters into countless subcategories). As people became better able to match their interests to their jobs, work became more fulfilling and specialization fueled innovation. We've made great progress in personalizing what we do, but now it's time to take the next step and personalize how we do it.

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst and the Jacobs Fellow at Reason Foundation. He is author of the study The Quiet Success: Telecommuting's Impact on Transportation and Beyond. An archive of Balaker's research and commentary is here, and Reason's telecommuting and transportation research and commentary is here.

Government Solutions From the 1950s Won't Fix Today's Traffic Problems

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Investors Business Daily

Despite its massive $286.4 billion price tag, last year's federal transportation bill wasn't designed to beat back traffic congestion. Thankfully, the Transportation Department has just put gridlock in its cross hairs with a new plan that relies heavily on the user-pays principle and private highway financing.

And it's appropriate to take aim at congestion on this, the 50th anniversary of the interstate highway system. Early on, the system's chief architect promised it would take Americans "from anywhere to everywhere."

We might regard that vision as a tad outdated because new technology has given business a new kind of mobility. Armed with cell phones, laptops and BlackBerries, we can "be" almost everywhere without crawling into a car, train or plane. But good old-fashioned mobility — moving people, parts and products across physical space — still matters a lot. Just ask Austin, Texas.

Seven years ago, mounting traffic congestion helped prompt Austin-based Dell to expand in Nashville, Tenn., instead of its home town. "We lost 10,000 jobs that day," recalls state Rep. Mike Krusee.

The loss shocked Texas leaders into embarking on the nation's most ambitious congestion-reduction plan, which includes a privately financed $7.2 billion San Antonio-to-Austin-to-Dallas toll road.

Now Texas' commitment is paying off. South Korean-based Samsung recently decided to open a new $3.5 billion chip plant in Austin, which beat other locations, many of whom offered bigger tax breaks.

Initially, Samsung worried that congestion would slow its global production process — silicon wafers would be trucked from Austin to Dallas, then flown to South Korea for final processing. Surely, Texas' commitment to transportation helped seal the deal. But such happy endings are rare.

Most government officials greet mounting congestion with a shrug and inaction. During the past two decades, driving has nearly doubled, but our nation's roadway system has grown by only 4%.

As a result, congestion causes 3.7 billion hours of delays, wastes over 2.3 billion gallons of fuel and costs the economy over $63 billion a year. Congestion has gone from a background concern to what Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta calls "one of the single largest threats to our economic prosperity."

Surveys show that residents in various major metro areas list congestion as their No. 1 complaint. A recent analysis asked CEOs of Silicon Valley financial firms to rank their business concerns. Traffic congestion tied with high housing costs for the top spot — ahead of perennial business headaches like taxes and health care.

Our roadway system was designed for an America eager to spur interstate commerce but unaware of the coming boom in international trade.

Today in the Seattle area, congestion makes it harder to get shipments from sea to stores and distribution centers on land. As a result, Puget Sound ports have lost 12% of their market share in a six-year span. Truck traffic stemming from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach already swamps area freeways, and truck traffic is expected to grow 71% by 2030.

It's time to transform our transportation system from a drag on commerce to a facilitator of innovation. We must borrow good ideas, both homegrown and foreign. In Southern California, variably priced toll lanes — which control demand by increasing/decreasing the price to ensure freely flowing traffic — have actually abolished congestion in an extremely busy corridor.

France has shown ways around (and under) problems that many American leaders would regard as insurmountable. A missing link in Paris' A86 ring road has long created terrible congestion because officials were understandably hesitant to finish the road by building through portions of historic Versailles.

Instead of accepting congestion, as many U.S. cities and states have done, the French are filling in the missing link and preserving the historic space by building road tunnels beneath Versailles.

"Socialist" France has readily embraced market-based transportation innovations. The A86 tunnels are being built with private money, and France's 5,000-mile tolled motorway system is investor-owned.

Mineta said the U.S. "will never succeed in making today's traffic a thing of the past without the involvement of this nation's private sector." Some states, like Indiana, Virginia and Texas, have already come to this conclusion. More than $25 billion in private capital has already emerged for U.S. road projects in just a few states — and there's much more where that came from.

States should ensure that the "from anywhere to everywhere" vision for our transportation system flourishes in the 21st century by using public-private partnerships and tapping the private sector for much-needed new road projects.

After all, we cannot create the economy of tomorrow with an interstate transportation system that's stuck in the 1950s.

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation and author of a forthcoming book on mobility and congestion. An archive of Balaker's research and commentary is here, and Reason's telecommuting and transportation research and commentary is here.

Telecommuting Could Ease Los Angeles' Traffic Woes

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:00:00 EDT

Instead of wailing about gas prices why don't more Angelinos just ditch the commute and work from home? Unfortunately, it's not that easy. Unlike carpooling or taking transit, employees can telecommute only with their bosses' permission—and that's something most area workers don't have.

Bosses often resist telecommuting and for a long while logistics made the practice more trouble than it was worth. But skepticism persists even as technology makes working from remote locations increasingly feasible.

Computers continue to get cheaper and faster, and in the span of a single decade the Internet and cell phones have gone from novelties to tools that average Americans use every day. So much progress, and yet, according to a survey of LA area employees who don't telecommute, 80 percent have bosses who still won't let them work from home.

There are plenty of employees just waiting for their bosses to give them the nod and it's not surprising that workers like telecommuting. A recent MONEY magazine/Salary.com survey found that satisfied workers had more work-at-home options than other respondents and that unhappy workers were the least able to telecommute.

Why should bosses care?

Respected companies like AT&T, American Express, and JetBlue have learned that telecommuters are more productive workers. Telecommuting also helps managers find the right person for the job, a task that's difficult in LA, where traffic congestion shrinks labor pools rather dramatically. In a recent Center of Economic Development report, a local accounting firm CEO remarks that one reason "we do not have enough talented people to service our clients is that most of our employees spend an hour driving each way to and from work." Transportation woes, coupled with other hassles like expensive housing, make it harder to recruit good talent.

Telecommuting gives employers another carrot to dangle in front of new recruits and the power of the carrot doesn't disappear once workers get hired. One manager notes that his new employees work hard to earn the opportunity to work from home and those who have the privilege work hard to keep it. He credits it with increasing employee loyalty and keeping workforce turnover costs low.

Telecommuting suits LA's workforce quite well because the area is home to one of our nation's highest concentrations of early adopters. These folks make quick use of new technology, meaning that they are particularly comfortable with the tools of remote work.

Managers who remain skeptical have many ways of ensuring that at-home workers aren't just gorging on daytime TV. New technology even lets them take random screen shots of telecommuters' computers and chronicle their ever key stroke.

Certainly telecommuting isn't for everyone, but some managers dismiss it because they mistakenly regard it as an all-or-nothing choice. Some people do avoid the office entirely, but others work from home only occasionally. Roughly 23 million Americans work from home at least once a month, which means that more than 100 million workers don't telecommute at all.

But telecommuting isn't just something you do, managers and employees must learn how to do it right. Consider these tips.

Start small. Allow occasional telecommuting, say, once a week. Increase frequency only after workers prove they can work remotely.

Insist on accessibility. With telecommuting physical location is less important, but workers should always be accessible to managers, colleagues, and customers.

Make employees earn the right to telecommute. Let new hires telecommute only after they've been with the company for a certain period of time.

Focus on results. Telecommuting gives employees more freedom over the process of work, but results should remain non-negotiable. The employee and employer should be clear about what's expected and, as much as possible, performance should be tied to metrics that are easy to measure, such as projects completed, clients served, or revenue generated.

We are indeed creatures of habit. For many decades we made the trek to the office because that was the only way we could get business done. If that were still the case it might be less aggravating watching so much of our money funnel into our gas tanks. But with the explosion of telecommuting-enabling technology and the mounting evidence that at-home work boosts bottom lines our nation's managers have more reason than ever to give telecommuting a second look.

So what do you say, boss?

Ted Balaker is a policy analyst and Jacobs Fellow at Reason Foundation. An archive of Balaker's research and commentary is here, and Reason's telecommuting and transportation research and commentary is here.

Political Gridlock Worsens California's Congestion

ted.balaker@reason.org (Ted Balaker) — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EDT

CAPoliticalNews.com

Tell a Californian that traffic congestion is a problem and you probably won't even elicit a blink. Californians know congestion is awful and they're certainly not shy about complaining about it. Any one of us can rattle off the ways congestion frustrates our own lives, but we're less likely to step back, add others' frustrations to our own, and consider the full extent of the problem. Today commuters, customers and businesses shape more and more of their activities around what used to be considered just an everyday irritant. Californians know congestion is awful, but it may be even worse than we realized.

Congestion in our state's major metropolitan areas has long been bad-Los Angeles and San Francisco frequently sit atop the Texas Transportation Institute's annual worst-congestion list and San Diego has cracked the top 10. Over the past two decades, the problem has grown much worse. According to TTI, congestion is up 160 percent in San Francisco, 150 percent in Los Angeles, and nearly 600 percent in San Diego.

Naturally businesses want to cater to their customers, but now all sorts of businesses are forced to cater to congestion first. Blue collar plumbers and repairman try to reach as many customers as possible but congestion stands in their way. White collar professionals, from salespeople to realtors, face similar headaches. Most of us fight congestion on our way to and from work, but these people do battle with it all day long. Congestion makes it harder for would-be buyers and sellers to connect and it also shrinks labor pools.

Shrinking labor pools often hurt high tech, financial, and other specialized operations most. According to a recent survey, Silicon Valley financial companies fingered congestion as their number-one headache�even ahead of longstanding business headaches like taxes, regulations, and health care costs.

Employers who require workers with specialized skills want to be able to draw from as large a labor pool as possible for, unlike fast food restaurants and certain other businesses; they cannot just hire whoever's nearby. Yet before they hire a promising applicant, employers must be sure that person can actually get to work reliably. Congestion isn't just frustrating because it slows us down. It's frustrating because from day-to-day we don't know how much it will slow us down. This element of unpredictability wears on commuters and employers. In San Diego some high tech employers have decided they simply won't look at resumes from those who live north of the I-5/I-805 interchange and the infamous bottlenecks it causes.

Expensive housing—another common feature of California life—combines with congestion to make a bad situation worse. "[One reason] we do not have enough talented people to service our clients is that most of our employees spend an hour driving each way to and from work," remarks the CEO of a Santa Monica accounting firm in a Center of Economic Development report. "We pay our people very well, we put money, golden handcuffs on them, and they still can't afford to live here on the Westside. It is a harder sell now than ten years ago to recruit from out of state."

Congestion and high housing costs make it harder to recruit from out of state and they also give homegrown businesses more reason to leave. In recent years our state legislators have whipped up many bills that take aim at the trickle of jobs that go overseas, but lawmakers who fear offshore outsourcing should pay closer attention to the currents of jobs and capital that flow within our borders. Many of us have seen the billboards Nevada has planted in California. Over an image of a worker with a black eye, one billboard reads, "Will your business be terminated? Nevada to the rescue." Nevada has no corporate income tax, no personal income tax, lower workers' compensation costs, and more affordable real estate.

When Dell computers cited congestion and decided to expand in Nashville instead of Austin, Texas learned that transportation troubles can also push businesses to other states. "We lost 10,000 jobs in one day," recalls Texas State Rep. Mike Krusee, who has since helped Texas embark upon our nation's most ambitious congestion-cutting effort.

Dell's decision shocked Texas into making a commitment to improving mobility, but, like most of the rest of the nation, California continues to dawdle. State leaders dubbed 2006 the "year of transportation," but in terms of tangible reform it's been no different than any other year. For example, there has been little recognition of the success private-sector roadway funding has enjoyed in places as varied as Texas and France. The Golden State considers going deeper in debt to fund infrastructure, but still lacks the legislation necessary to make use of private sector financing. We cannot afford to slide back into complacency.

Lawmakers often fail to appreciate the mobility-congestion give-and-take. Mobility gives economies vitality that is gradually taken away by congestion. When people, products, and ideas cannot churn freely an urban area becomes more segregated. It behaves less like a dynamic metropolis that draws on the talents of all its denizens and more like a collection of isolated hamlets.

Reason Foundation has responded by initiating the Mobility Project (see www.reason.org/mobility), a long-term, nationwide effort to help stimulate urban economies by improving mobility and cutting back congestion. The Mobility Project incorporates ideas from a wide range of scholars and presents comprehensive policy recommendations that will help our cities realize their full potential.

Too often lawmakers and voters seem resigned to mounting congestion. Indeed few metropolitan areas are actually intent on cutting it back�making a commitment to slow congestion's growth is usually all they hope to do. Yet congestion isn't like gravity. It's not an unstoppable force. Across the world cities have adopted innovations�some small-scale, some large�that quell congestion. The trick is mustering the political momentum necessary to cobble these innovations together and reinvigorate urban life.

Ted Balaker is the Jacobs Fellow at Reason Foundation and co-author of a forthcoming book about mobility and congestion (Rowman & Littlefield). An archive of Balaker's research and commentary is here. Reason Foundation's California research and commentary is here and Reason's transportation research is here.