Silliness of induced demand arguments, Austin and Denver rail fails, NZ MUD troubles, TX is the future, and more
A lot of smaller items this week:
- Unfortunate news from New Zealand on their difficulties implementing Texas MUDs, but I do get quoted in it!
"Some organisations even sent staff to Houston to watch the system at work, and a pilot of it effectively took place in Auckland with Fulton Hogan and its Milldale project.What came out of all this broad political consensus was a new piece of legislation: the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act, which allows councils to set up Texas-style Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). It passed in 2020 with the support of every political party in Parliament, showing just how broad the surrounding consensus had grown.Megan Woods says she is expecting three special project vehicle initiatives to come across her desk this year.In the Houston Business Journal, Urban Reform Institute fellow Tory Gattis said: “if all goes well, there should be a tremendous increase in New Zealand housing supply in coming years which will help to ease prices.”“Texans and Houstonians should be proud to serve as a model to the world for market-based approaches to affordable homeownership.”
- Banner week for getting quoted: yours truly gets quoted at the very end of this Reason Surface Transportation Innovations newsletter on the silliness of the induced demand anti-freeway-expansion argument. As taxpayers we *want* government to invest in infrastructure where there is demand! (as opposed to so many new rail lines these days)
“We want government to invest in infrastructure that gets a high utilization (as opposed to roads to nowhere). If they built a new airport runway and it filled up with flights, people would sing the praises of such a great investment. Yet if we invest in additional freeway capacity and it fills up, it was wasted money? How does that make sense? It means the government built mobility infrastructure exactly where people needed it—where there was unmet demand—and isn’t that exactly what we want them to do as taxpayers?”—Tory Gattis, Urban Reform Institute
- Speaking of induced demand, Reason has an excellent new report on induced demand's effect on freeway expansion.
- Unherd: Texas is the Future: "Texan metros, notably Houston and Austin, also are among the nation’s leading destinations for minorities and immigrants, the drivers of America’s demographic future."
- Surprise, surprise: Austin light rail costs nearly double after getting voter approval. Now over $10 billion bucks(!!). Would it have passed with the real costs? Nope. Texas and the Feds should automatically invalidate approvals when this happens.
- Houston ranked sixth in Best (and Worst) Housing Markets for Growth and Stability. Hat tip to George.
- Governing: Houston Is the Nation’s Most Diverse City: Report
- Chronicle: Texas drivers license data reveals where new Houston residents are coming from. Short answer: California, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, and New York.
- Colorado Public Radio has a new four-part podcast that examines how Denver's Rail system has overpromised and under-delivered. The system is deeply in debt and is realizing that they could have a similar level of service with BRT bus lanes rather than expensive trains, a lesson Houston also learned the hard way.
"RTD took on a lot of debt during its rail-building push. Now, the fiscally-struggling agency is paring back planned rail expansion, while looking toward less costly projects that benefit core riders: bus-only lanes and bus system reorganization."
Labels: census, demographics, development, infrastructure, land-use regulation, migration, perspectives, rail, rankings
posted by Tory Gattis @ 4:56 PM
17 Comments:
Re NZ: I think we tend to underestimate the impact of culture on TX' success. Laws are one thing but how society thinks about growth and development probably is at least as important. From personal experience I've found NZ to be a rather eccentric and insular society. Nice people but not that enthusiastic about change. Hope they figure it out, though.
Really good points. That is a bit what it sounds like. They just don't have developers used to thinking this way.
And I'm shocked, shocked about Austin's choo choo problems. Didn't see that one coming. I wish there was a way to short urban rail projects. We'd make a bundle.
Lol, we would!! We really, really need a federal rule that if the budget moves by more than 10% they lose funding. That would force them to publish more accurate estimates with proper reserves.
That won't happen too much graft.
Regarding MUDs, it's notable that even within TX, developers have been slow to adopt them outside the Houston region. Though they're starting to spread more widely, in some metros like DFW, the PID, combined with annexation into a city, has been a more widely used tool historically. There's definitely a mindset component to it.
Yes, I've heard similar things, although there have been a surge in new MUDs north of DFW as the growth seems to have outstripped the ability of those cities to annex!
Yes, I've heard about new MUDs in Collin County as well.
There's kernels of truth to induced demand arguments, but the whole debate rests on the presumption that road congestion is avoidable in a growing metro, or is some sort of worthy policy goal. Our non-tolled road system is literally designed to be congested, and should be treated as successful when it is, as it's moving the maximum number of vehicles for the infrastructure investment (though you could argue it could move more people if the vehicles were multi-occupancy). Dispersing destinations such as jobs around the metro, as is the case in Houston, hasn't been shown to create a congestion-less environment, though there's other benefits to destination dispersal. If people are bothered by congestion so much, the focus should be on whether there's alternatives to it, be it MAX lanes, other public transit, work-from-home, shop-from-home, walking / cycling etc.
I agree, well said.
Amen.
The underlying presumption of the induced demand argument is that growth is bad. But growth is how organizations measure their overall effectiveness. Abandonment of growth allows cities to abandon the only objective success measure that they have. It's like a private stock company declaring it doesn't want its stock price to rise. Their abandonment of the objective is the signal to sell.
Exactly!!
I do think metros need to develop strategies for non-growth scenarios - how can a metro be self-sustaining and successful even if its population / jobs count is stagnant. I have to wonder if places like the CA Bay Area may be getting close to such a point, where they've started reaching limits of costs and constraints, both natural and self-created. I would think it's a lot easier to manage such a scenario if your main industries are importing a lot of wealth into the region and maintaining a good share of high-income jobs, though they obviously still have to deal with supporting and housing folks who don't earn as much in a decent manner (which such places are increasingly failing at).
I think it's easier to find examples of those kinds of cities in Europe. In America, maybe Boston? New York? Minneapolis? None are growing but still fairly successful, although they all struggle with housing affordability. Otherwise, there are a lot of really stagnant/declining cities, like in the Midwest.
Another approach would be to offer a certain subsidy rate to businesses per ride for transit between geographies and within them. But only once operations commence. Of course that would result in tons of small, practical rideshare jitney services. And that means no "we're a big city now" choo choo trains that the affluent take to the ballpark and airport.
Love it! That's actually the next level of my MaX Lanes network strategy: private bus operators getting a flat subsidy per rider-mile, and competing on routes, schedules, price, and amenities (like wifi).
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