An environmental economist describes how “common sense” often fails when it comes to transportation and housing.
What initially attracted me to economics was how intuitive it seemed — what people call “common sense.” If the price of something goes up, people buy less of it. In environmental economics, pollution has costs, and businesses should have to account for those costs. Easy to grasp, if not always politically appealing.
In regional planning, economics is intertwined with transportation and housing policies that dramatically affect the way we live and get around, and impact the planet. But in regional planning “common sense” often fails.
In the late 20th century, because of the automobile, we could live in a clean, cheap, spacious suburb, drive on a speedy freeway into a city, park for free, and go about our business. And for a while, this held true (though likely never as well as we might remember). But we’ve long passed the limit where such a world is feasible, though we cling to the “common sense” ingrained in us.
Transportation
Common Sense: If a highway is crowded, you can reduce congestion by adding more lanes.
Reality: It’s been proven all over the country time and again that this formula doesn’t work. In the short run, people respond to added freeway capacity by using it more; in the long run, more nearby land gets developed to take advantage of the new capacity. The end result is more people driving even more making congestion worse. The Katy Freeway in Houston is maybe the most extreme example; 26 lanes wide and still choked with traffic. Meanwhile, other cities are tearing down highways, revitalizing their downtowns, and actually reducing gridlock.
Common Sense: Plenty of free parking is a good thing.
Reality: Parking is a terrible use of a city’s scarce land that could otherwise be businesses or housing. People have become so accustomed to being given valuable public space to store their private vehicles that attempts to have people pay for parking are often fought even by businesses that would benefit from increased turnover of spaces. Parking, like any limited resource provided for free, will be overused (economists know this as “the tragedy of the commons”). Instead of mandating free parking, we should let the market decide how much to provide, and how much to charge. Cities all over America are getting on the bandwagon, cutting parking requirements and freeing up money and land for more productive uses.
Common Sense: Building bike lanes that reduce on-street parking is bad for local businesses.
Reality: Bike lanes are another surprisingly divisive issue. Business owners fret that reducing parking will negatively impact their livelihoods. But in every study I’ve seen, business stays the same or actually improves after the bike lanes. Turns out shoppers enjoy the atmosphere of places that are less auto-centric, and are willing to walk a block.
Common Sense: Public transit is a waste because it doesn’t pay for itself.
Reality: It’s true that public transit fares don’t cover the whole cost of service, and that it requires taxpayer subsidies. But that’s no different from roads. You may hear people claim that gas taxes pay for roadways, and they do pay for roughly half of them, but not all. Even in California, with the second-highest gas taxes in the nation (hi, Pennsylvania), gas taxes don’t come close to paying for the roads, so sales taxes, income taxes, and property taxes are used to subsidize the roads in the same way they subsidize public transit. And public transit has the added economic benefit of allowing people who can’t afford a car to participate in the economy. And, of course, it’s far better environmentally.
Housing
Common Sense: Affordable housing advocates should fight against market-rate housing developments (often marketed as “luxury”) in favor of affordable housing.
Reality: At first glance, this makes sense. But the housing market isn’t siloed into “affordable” and “luxury.” If we don’t build “luxury” housing, the people with money who would buy “luxury” housing will buy up the existing “affordable” housing, and turn that into “luxury” housing. And people of modest incomes are left out on the street. This also doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build public/affordable housing, just that one is not the enemy of the other.
Common Sense: Preventing development in your neighborhood will both maintain affordability and protect the local environment.
Reality: It seems sensible, but does neither. The scarcer housing gets, the more the prices rise, and the local environment suffers much more when housing is pushed into exurbs, which likely means less open space and more time in vehicles. California has made it difficult to build for decades, leading to terrible traffic and a horrible housing and homelessness crisis; only now are state politicians beginning to change course.
Common Sense: Houses a long drive from the city are cheaper.
Reality: Certainly their list prices tend to be lower. But add in the costs of transportation to jobs, shopping, and recreation (including out-of-pocket costs, the cost in time, and the environmental impact), and the price goes way up.
What You Can Do: When it comes to housing, we have too little in the right places. And when it comes to cars, we have traffic and pollution. We no longer have time for outdated and flatly wrong “common sense.” We need to be guided by the facts, the data, and experts. The most important thing you can do as someone concerned about your city or town is to learn about local planning issues and get involved. Give the politicians and policy-makers the public support they need to fight “common sense” and make real changes that will make our communities greener, more prosperous, and more livable.
