The Shape of the Future

E M Risse


 

 

Commuter Tax? Yes!

 

A commuter tax is a great idea -- but only if it incentivizes commuters, employers and municipalities to create communities with a balance of jobs and housing.


 

A citizen who is active in subregional transportation and land-use issues recently asked, “What about the commuter tax?” Here is how a fair and equitable tax on commuting fits among the strategies to create a sustainable future.

 

The overarching goal must be to create sustainable human settlement patterns that support a prosperous, safe region. This means creating Balanced Communities. By definition, Balanced Communities have a relative balance of jobs, housing, services, recreation and amenity. A balance of jobs and housing means there would be few traditional “commuters.”

 

So! Let’s create tax-based incentives to reduce commuting. To help achieve Balanced Communities and vastly reduce the need to commute, the four entities listed below should share responsibility in the National Capital Subregion:

  • Jurisdictions that do not provide housing to balance their jobs

  • The federal government, which caused and exacerbates the imbalance in the federal District of Columbia

  • Employers that hire workers who live in remote locations

  • Long distance, single-occupant-vehicle commuters

The following summary of who should pay what to whom may seem complex. However, creating Balanced Communities is a complicated task. Citizens and their representatives need to start solving the core problems rather than patch over deficits with new taxes and other stop-gap remedies.

Reducing the commuting problem to help create Balanced Communities in the National Capital Subregion will be far easier than living with the consequences of current practices. The citizens of the subregion cannot continue to do things the way they have been done and hope to resolve the economic, social and physical impact of dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

As Will Rodgers noted, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is an sign of insanity.

 

Jurisdictions 

 

An equitable commuter tax would be structured to encourage all communities to become more balanced. If communities were balanced, the location-variable services that citizens must have to achieve a quality life would cost much less. Over time, there would be fewer traditional commuters, and the commuter tax would revert from a revenue source to a reminder of why communities must be balanced.

The largest commuter tax burden should fall on the jurisdictions which have a surplus of jobs over housing accessible to job holders.

Communities with more jobs than housing should pay a commuter tax to those communities with an abundance of housing and paucity of jobs. The concept is similar to the luxury tax in the National Basketball Association: It levels the playing field.  Communities with more housing than jobs now are forced to provide residential services for those with excess jobs and insufficient housing.

 

The goal of all jurisdictions should be to create Balanced Communities by matching jobs with housing and providing quality services, recreation and amenities for all who live, work and seek services in the community.  This will be a relative balance, and there will always be some cross-boundary movement, but the goal should be to achieve a balance, not compensate for imbalance.

Overcoming transport dysfunction (aka, imbalance) that results from random distribution of jobs and housing cannot be overcome by building new transport facilities. (See “Too Little, Too Late,” December 23, 2002, and “Access and Mobility,” June 30, 2003.) The National Capital Subregion’s jobs/housing imbalance starts in the Federal District, which has the greatest disparity. However, there are imbalances that should be addressed throughout the Subregion.

 

A fair commuter tax would mean that a community such as North Arlington (the Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor is the core of this community) would pay communities such as West Prince William (Manassas is the core of this community) to help cover costs such as education, fire and police, etc., for those who work in North Arlington but must live and seek services elsewhere such as in West Prince William. The tax would generate significant revenue flow from North Arlington to West Prince William only until North Arlington created the housing necessary for it to qualify as a balanced community.*

 

Federal Government

 

When we consider the commuter tax that the municipal government in federal District of Columbia is currently suggesting, it turns out that this jurisdiction has many more jobs than houses for individuals who work in the jurisdiction. So, why are those in the District raising the commuter tax issue?

 

Municipal officials in the federal district are calling for the opposite of a fair and equitable commuter tax. The federal district’s commuter tax proposal would reinforce dysfunctional job and housing relationships.

The municipal government in the District of Columbia needs money because the federal government does not pay the taxes and fees for federal facilities and workplaces that a private corporation would. To add insult to injury, the federal government also provides free or subsidized parking for many of its employees, which encourages them to rely on single-occupant vehicles.

 

Some federal agencies now support shared-vehicle and telework programs. An active program should be mandatory for the entire federal government. Penalties should be assessed if an agency program falls under X percent of workers who live outside the community in which they work.

 

In addition, under federal management (aka, federal oversight), the federal District of Columbia has become a place where a few very rich and a lot of not-so-rich people live. The current spectrum of residents is inadequate to support Balanced Communities in the federal district. Federal "oversight" has resulted in some of the most unbalanced communities in the United States. Places such as these have very high service demands and high service costs. Thus, the federal district’s municipal officials are calling for a new tax.

 

The sorts of folks needed to create Balanced Communities in the federal district have been leaving for six decades in order to find acceptable places to live. They will not come back until education, fire and police, health care, parks, potholes, pollution, rats and politics are fixed, and there is an equitable distribution of costs and benefits for those living there. Many workers are unable to find suitable housing in the federal district because the costs are too high and/or housing does not exist due to municipal misallocations of land and fiscal resources.

 

In the context of eliminating commuters, Joe Passonneau, a nationally respected transportation facility designer, cites a 1944 Federal study that advocated keeping houses close to jobs in the federal district. The study was ignored while another 1944 Federal study advocating an “interregional” (sic) highway system was implemented in 1956. Many former residents of the federal district now rely upon the Interstate (nee, interregional) expressway system to commute from new homes far from their jobs.

 

A partial solution is for the federal government to provide the federal district’s municipal government with a more equitable payment in lieu of taxes and fees. The federal government also should pay an annual liquidated damages penalty to compensate for its bad oversight in the past. These payments would be made only if the federal district’s municipal government agrees to pay its share of a fair and equitable National Capital Subregional commuter tax program. (The alternative would be for the Federal government to help the whole region switch to a tax system based on consumption and user fees.)

 

A significant amount of the federal payment to the federal district’s municipal government would go to communities which currently are forced to house and service the federal workers but do not have a revenue stream sufficient to pay for the services they require. Core communities within the federal district would pay the jurisdictions now faced with servicing their workers.

 

The communities that are all or partly located within the federal district would use the rest of the enhanced federal payments to do the things that are required to make those communities desirable places to live and seek services as well as to work.  If they addressed the problems listed above, more people would want to live and seek services in the communities within the federal district -- leading to a greater balance within these communities.

 

One of the significant problems associated with creating Balanced Communities in the District of Columbia is that those in control of the federal district –- both in Congress and in the municipal government -– could not be more satisfied with the status quo. After all, they now are in control.

 

Many who hold leadership positions in the Federal District want more money to do what they want to do. That does not include assisting in the evolution of Balanced Communities.  Fundamental change would benefit all the citizens but not the current “leadership.”

Employers

 

The next group to whom a commuting tax would apply are large companies whose employees commute outside the community in single-occupant vehicles.

 

Taxing employers will encourage them to locate new jobs in communities with adequate housing, hire workers who live close to the job locations, and encourage employees to support shared-vehicle and telework programs.

 

One action that employers could take immediately would be to eliminate subsidies of free parking. This subsidy, in effect, lowers the wages of those who now walk, bike or use shared-vehicle systems to get to work.

 

Commuters

 

Finally, some individual commuters would be taxed.  Before that can happen, however, there need to be significant changes in public policy and programs so that citizens have realistic alternatives to long-distance commutes. This is especially true for those who work in the core of the National Capital Subregion.

 

To implement a fair tax directly on individual commuters, there must first be a region-wide land-use and transportation plan. This plan must balance transportation-system capacity with land-use travel demand. An important element of this regional plan would be detailed strategies to create a balance between METRO station-area land uses and the METRO rail system’s capacity. Under current conditions, many METRO station areas are wasted with vacant and underutilized land including parking lots and uncovered roadways. For this reason, the METRO system’s station-area land uses do not balance with the transit-system capacity.  Proof of this condition is that while some METRO trains are overcrowded at some times, most trains leave most stations most of the time essentially empty.

With these substantial changes in place, it would be possible to tax single-occupant-vehicle commuters who travel over ‘X’ miles. In addition, the tax could be broadened to cover workers who hold jobs outside the community where they live and do not use available shared-vehicles systems to get to work.

Where to From Here?

The long-range goal of the National Capital subregion should be to foster Balanced Communities.  Balanced Communities have vastly fewer traditional commuters so the commuter tax should be crafted in a way to facilitate positive change, not a way to pay for the status quo.

Just say "yes” to a commuter tax. This will create the fora in which the real role and the complexity of a fair commuter tax which is comprised of these four elements can be explored.

 

-- August 4, 2003

 


 

*A note on potential Balanced Communities: The process to determine the boundaries of potential Balanced Communities is spelled out in Handbook: The Three-Step Process to Create Balanced Communities in Sustainable New Urban Regions. The potential Balanced Communities of “North Arlington” and “West Prince William” were selected for purposes of illustration. In the discussion of the commuter tax, think community. Do not be distracted by municipal (town, city or county) borders. For example, the current Fairfax County borders encompass eight or nine potential balanced communities. Potential Balanced Communities are called "Beta Communities" in The Shape of the Future.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Risse, and his wife Linda live inside the "Clear Edge" of the "urban enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban Region."

 

Mr. Risse, the principal of

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc., can be contacted at spirisse@aol.com.

 

See profile.