Monthly Archives: December 2006

In a trend that bodes well for the future of America’s core urban jurisdictions, the white people living in central cities are wealthier on average than their suburban counterparts — and the city/suburb wealth gap is actually widening. That’s the conclusion of University of Virginia scholars William H. Lucy and David L. Phillips in their latest research, “Whites Lead Cities’ Income Revival 2000 to 2005.”

The situation is different for African-Americans who, as they increasingly enter the middle class, are moving into the suburbs, and for Hispanics, who are swelling the ranks of the poor through massive immigration.

Write the authors: “This finding reverses the standard belief that most middle and upper-income whites had left cities before 2000 and that white middle and upper income newcomers usually choose suburbs over cities, leaving mainly low and moderate income whites in cities.” The finding also confirms the oft-state contention of fellow Bacon’s Rebellion columnist Ed Risse that Americans with greater financial resources, who enjoy wider latitude in the places they can afford to live, have demonstrated through their decisions in the marketplace that they prefer more compact human settlement patterns.

A driving force in rising city incomes in recent years, say Lucy and Phillips, is the surge in condominium construction. “We believe the condominium construction has contributed to relative income increases in cities, especially for young professionals and middle-aged and elderly empty nesters.”

Note: The authors are tracking per capita income, not household income. Because central cities contain disproportionate numbers of single people, average household incomes may be lower even if per capita incomes are higher.

Photovoltaic solar cells have an undeniable “cool” factor, but they’re not yet ready for prime time in Virginia. An Arlington blogger who goes by “X Curmudgeon” describes the economics of a 14-cell solar array he installed on his roof. The installation job cost him $24,000 — or $22,000 after a federal tax credit. He expects to cut his electric consumption about 17 percent, saving roughly $300 a year at current electric rates. That’s less than a 1.4 percent return on investment.

Of course, the return will increase as electric rates increase, which they surely will do when Dominion lifts its rate cap in a few years. And X Curmudgeon will always have the knowledge that he’s guaranteed enough electricity to keep the refrigerator running in case of a Dominion power outage. But under current conditions, only hard-core greenies are likely to invest their money this way.

However, things may change. Global production bottlenecks on solar units could ease, allowing prices to come down. Likewise, technological breakthroughs could improve solar PV efficiency. Virginia lawmakers still need to ensure that there are no regulatory barriers to widespread adoption should solar PV become economically competitive.

(Hat tip to Ray Hyde for pointing me to this blog entry.)

Parents and citizens in York County have a blog at their web site to monitor the County’s compliance with the School Board-approved changes to policy. Last year some schools were culturally cleansed of Christmas. The change in policy is to make sure that Christmas is observed as a Holiday in public schools.

You can see the latest status reports at http://blog.ycchh.org

This is a very innovative way to spread the word in near real time on any policy issue. Well done York County folks!

Localities on the Virginia Peninsula are facing the prospect of spending millions of dollars to prevent or repair damage from storm water flooding. Floods have been with us since Biblical times, but dysfunctional human settlement patterns makes them worse. As a Daily Press editorial observes, “Nature has its way of dealing with heavy rain.” Some of the rain filters through the soil where it joins underground water tables; run-off gets buffered by vegetation before it enters streams and rivers.

But development has in many places robbed the land of its ability to cope with a deluge. Residential and commercial development has replaced open land with rooftops and asphalt. It has stripped the vegetation that hung on to soil, so it erodes and runs off, clogging streams and rivers. When heavy rains come along, with hurricanes or just big storms, the water backs up. Into houses and apartments, and deep on roads.

Well said. I would observe only that it isn’t entirely helpful to blame “development,” as if all development was created equal. Land-intensive development that paves over thousands of acres of roads and parking lots make the problem of storm-water run-off even worse. Asphalt is impermeable. The more of it you have, the more run-off you have.

Any long-term solution to stormwater run-off should contain at least two elements: (1) new techniques for creating natural, vegetative barriers to buffer the flow of run-off into Virginia waterways, and (2) human settlement patterns that disrupt less land and create less run-off to begin with.

Update: This from today’s News Virginian: “Hayes, Seay, Mattern & Mattern Inc. outlined eight different ways the council could pay for the stormwater management plan approved earlier this year, with each option centered around the same idea of charging property owners based on the amount of impervious surface they own. … A proposal to offer discounts as an incentive to those who improve their onsite stormwater management facilities was met with a more favorable reception.”

A fundamental principle for any tax that pays for stormwater management systems should reward landowners who (a) reduce the area of impermeable surface or (b) improve onsite stormwater management facilities.

Free parking, like free lunch, is not truly free. Someone pays for it, whether they know it or not. Outside of downtown areas, the cost of parking is usually embedded in the price of real estate, and passed along in the form of higher leases, rents and prices for products and services. Donald Shoup, a UCLA urban planner and arguably the nation’s foremost academic expert on parking, estimates that the capital value of parking facilities — parking decks, parking lots, on-street parking — equals that of motor vehicles and roads combined.

“Free” parking has at least two pernicious consequences: (1) by reducing the cost of driving, it encourages people to drive more often than they would otherwise, and (2) by separating buildings spatially, it reduces the number of buildings that fall within the 1/4-mile pedestrian shed of bus and transit stops, thus undermining the economics of mass transit.

As I argue in my column this week, at the root of this problem is the universal practice of local governments to set minimum parking-space requirements for every conceivable land use. Although a free market would provide a lot of “free” parking, it would provide significantly less of it than under the current regime. Yes, thanks to government regulations, American landowners have over invested in parking spaces to the tune of tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars, kneecapped mass transit and subsidized traffic congestion!

The very first thing we should do is repeal minimum parking-lot requirements and let property owners make their own calculations of how much parking they should provide. A free market, I suggest, would encourage property owners to devise creative solutions, such as clustering land uses that generate peak traffic demand during different times of the day: apartments at night, offices during the day, shops and restaurants in the evening.

The second thing we should do is embrace emerging GPS satellite technology that will simplify tracking and billing for parking services. Parking managers soon will have the latitude to apply a wide range of creative pricing strategies that will maximize parking-space utilization and charge motorists the full cost of their driving. For this article, I had the opportunity to interview Bern Grush, the visionary founder of Skymeter, a Canadian start-up that has solved the technical problems that had made satellite metering impracticable. Grush is taking Shoup’s academic thinking about parking and figuring out how to apply it in the real world.

Grush has some must-read ideas related to congestion pricing and other transportation-related topics that I will share in due course. For now, make sure you check out “No Such Thing as a Free Park.“

(Photo credit: Richmond parking lot after Hurricane Gaston.)

The December 4, 2006, edition of Bacon’s Rebellion has been published. You can view it in its entirety here. Make sure you don’t miss a single issue and sign up for our free subscription.

In case you’re feeling too lethargic to click the mouse and transport yourself to the Bacon’s Rebellion website directly, here are the columns:

No Such Thing as a Free Park
“Free” parking is like a free lunch: Someone pays, whether they know it or not. Trouble is, the hidden subsidy increases driving and worsens traffic congestion.
by James A. Bacon

Blueprint
Northern Virginia localities have the transportation plan should the General Assembly ever stop dithering and decide to fund it.
by Doug Koelemay

Clueless
Politicians talk about protecting the “American Dream.” What they refuse to tell voters is that the greatest threat to an unsustainable American way of life is… the American way of life.
by EM Risse

William & Mary vs the Cross
Multi-cultural expression is great for everyone — except Christians. The removal of the cross from William & Mary’s Wrenn Chapel is just one more reminder of academe’s hostility to Christianity.
by James Atticus Bowden

Good Government Is Good Business
Virginia may have the top-rated business climate in the country, but lawmakers could make it even better by addressing transportation and making the legislative process more transparent.
by Clayton Roberts

Nice & Curious Questions
Mailbox Ballots: Absentee Voting in Virginia
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs

Lest anyone be misled that our 10:38 AM comment on Jim’s “Zipcar to Invest…” posting of 30 November was meant to suggest Zipcar should abandon its current market focus, let me be very clear:

We support Zipcar’s current focus. Our 10:38 AM post suggested additional markets, not abandonment of the primary one.

We believe strongly that every Alpha Village scale station-area urban enclave served by a high-capacity, shared-vehicle system (e.g. METRO) should have two or more Zipcar-like services.

Our only problem with Zipcars is any implication that Zipcar-like services alone, without Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns – especially in shared-vehicle station areas, will have a major impact on mobility and access.

As Jim’s post and comment suggest, he and I agree on this. We also agree that the existence of Zipcar-like services will enhance the market for more functional, less private-vehicle exclusive settlement patterns as he notes in a comment.

While we are at it let us also note that in functional Dooryards and Clusters, informal and formal individual-vehicle sharing has been going on since the autonomobile first appeared and existed for horses and bigger buggies before that.

“You are welcome to borrow the Expedition to pick up your family at the Airport.”

“We will be happy to pay for gas and insurance to use your Land Rover to go get a Christmas tree and we will bring you back one too.”

“Why don’t our four families pool our resources and get a “second car” that will serve all of us for special trips and in an emergency?”

As Jim points out higher cost per mile are a catalyst for such discussions.

One final note. The sort of take-home-and-plug-in shared vehicles that Larry suggests do exist. So do many other ways to reduce the area devoted to parking vehicles and making vehicles avaliable to those who need them just when they need them.

You have heard this before:

If the total cost of mobility and access was equitably shared these systems would be part of the America’s way of life and the American Dream instead of being fringe ideas for tree huggers.

Appologists for Business As Usual and those who want to profit from dysfunctional settlement patterns will continue to look for nits to pick.

EMR

Reports Chuck Hagee at the Gazette Packet:

Alexandria Transit Company (DASH) has partnered with nearly 40 local businesses to expedite buyers throughout the holiday season. “DASHing Through Alexandria” encourages holiday shoppers to “take the bus and leave the driving to us.” The program’s goals are to help shoppers reduce holiday stress, reduce traffic congestion, and alleviate the endless search for parking, according to the transit company announcement. They believe Alexandria enjoys a competitive edge over many other area shopping venues by offering accessibility by transit.

Good for DASH! Public transit companies need to create a lot more partnerships with merchant groups and real estate developers, and execute a lot more special promotions like this. That they don’t is one of the drawbacks of the public ownership of public transit. If bus companies were privately owned, as they once were, I feel certain that they would promote their services far more aggressively and gain significantly more market share.

While the publicly owned DASH deserves praise for its initiative in this instance, the “DASHing through Alexandria” promotion reminds us what could be possible on a much larger scale.

The automobile industry spends billions of dollars annually in advertising to hype the joys of car ownership (as they have every right to do). By contrast, public transit companies are notorious for skimping on advertising and promotion. As a consequence, publicly owned transit systems fall far short of the automobile industry in validating mass transit as a viable transportation and lifestyle option.

If mass transit is to have a prayer of making a comeback in this country, it needs to be far more aggressive in packaging promotions and advertising its allures. Lovers of mass transit should think seriously about eliminating the monopolistic franchises that protect the weak public transit systems, and start thinking about ways to create strong, well-capitalized private transit companies that can compete for transportation market share.

In anticipation of receiving the Copley medal from Britain’s Royal Society, revered cosmologist Stephen Hawking granted a rare interview this week. He told BBC that “humans must colonize other planets.” That statement generated headlines around the planet. His arguments are sound and you can read them on http://www.cnn.com/ in a story CNN picked up from Reuters.

Before anyone runs out and suggests that Hawking’s position in anyway supports the current NASA / administration view that one nation-state, the US of A, is wise to spend the resources necessary to put humans back on the Moon and then on Mars, let us get four things straight:

1. Hawking correctly points out that eventually an asteroid, nuclear war or some other event (and in the long term the natural life cycle of our Sun) will make Earth uninhabitable. With this position, no scientist disagrees. Every major religion has an escape clause for those who believe in that particular faith, the rest just burn up.

2. Hawking also notes that to get to the nearest potentially habitable planet it would take 50,000 years with current technology. See Fundamental Thesis Nine (No Exit) in Chapter 1 Box 1 and Chapter 23 on sustainability including Chapter 23 Box 1 No Exit in “The Shape of the Future.”

3. Before humans go back to the Moon, we need technology that will get us there in 30 minutes. If humans can develop that technology it will be done here on Earth, not on the Moon or on Mars. This is especially true when the rationale given by the administration to go there is to exploit material resources on these nearby bodies.

4. There is an even bigger issue:

Before US of A taxpayers, or everyone on the planet, expend vast resources to insure survival of the humans species, citizens need to prove they can efficiently and sustainablely manage our activity on Earth. The Earth is the only known planet where human survival is possible under current conditions. Without a sustainable trajectory for civilization, going to Mars and beyond would just be exporting chaos.

Evolving functional and sustainable human settlement patterns here on Earth is a first step. It is still possible if governments, institutions and enterprises would stop distorting the market and the environment for short-term profit.

EMR

Sen. Walter A. Stosch, R-Henrico, a certified member of the Axis of Taxes, will face a nomination challenge in June from a seemingly credible opponent — Joseph E. Blackburn Jr., an attorney and former chair of the Henrico Republican Committee.

The article by Jeff Schapiro and Tyler Whitley does little to illluminate Blackburn’s motives in running, offering only one brief quote: “My opponent proposed to place a 5 percent tax on gasoline, even as it was reaching $3 per gallon. He wanted you to pay another 15 cents per gallon.”

Stosch argued that Blackburn’s challenge is a distraction to the larger challenge of beating Democrats: “Our time could be better spent in preparing for the fall general election. Unfortunately, some folks do not see it that way. They want to engage us in an intraparty nomination battle that will drain precious resources.”

Pretty lame. Stosch has done so little to distinguish himself from his Democratic colleagues in the state Senate that many Republicans don’t see much difference. Blackburn will garner some support simply by inveighing against tax hikes. What remains to be seen is whether he offers a positive vision of governance. If he doesn’t want tax hikes, how does he propose addressing the very real challenges in transportation, education, Medicaid, the environment, tax reform, etc. etc.?

Tax hikes are unpopular in Henrico. But “Just say no to taxes” won’t get you elected. I will be most interested to see if Blackburn can develop a platform as strong as his party credentials.

Cayman Brac, a Caribbean island with a population of 1,822 residents, is installing a pay-as-you-go metering system, Smart Meter, that allows homeowners to monitor their electric charges real time. The goal is to equip consumers with data that will enable them to conserve energy. Reports Cayman Net News:

This initiative is driven by efforts to conserve and reduce electricity consumption, and [Jonathan] Tibbetts, [General Manager of Cayman Brac Power and Light,] maintained that consumers gain valuable insight as to their energy usage, which in turn empowers them to take control of their consumption and ultimately save money.

“Energy conservation is an important global issue that needs to be brought to the forefront of all consumers worldwide,” said Tibbets, who has a Smart Meter installed in his own home. “This has saved me as much as thirty percent off my current bill,” he claimed.

If a tiny Caribbean island can equip homeowners with this conservation technology — manufactured by an American company, APMY Metering, incidentally — you’d think that a comparable initiative would be within the grasp of Virginia utility companies more than 1,000 times larger.

Dominion anticipates that economic/population growth in Northern Virginia will lead to scattered electric power shortages within five years. Dominion’s answer: build a 240-mile electric transmission line of 150-foot tall towers to wheel in surplus electricity from the Midwest — against the vehement objections of the communities whose lands would be traversed and landscapes despoiled.

Why isn’t Dominion actively exploring the conservation option? Smart Meters combined with pricing that charged higher rates during periods of peak demand would encourage homeowners (a) to invest in energy-saving appliances, and (b) shift electric demand to off-peak periods of time. Dominion could save multi-millions in transmission-line construction costs.

Perhaps one reason is that the electric utility industry in Virginia isn’t kept on a short leash like it is in the Cayman Islands. This comes from a December 2003 article in Cayman Net News:

The Cayman Islands Government and Cayman Brac Power & Light Co. Ltd (CBPL) signed a 15-year non-exclusive licence to generate, transmit, distribute and supply electricity to Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, on Wednesday. …

The terms of the agreement are in keeping with the policy announced by government earlier this year that no more exclusive licences would be issued in the electricity sector, and that new licences would not exceed 15 years in duration. (My italics.)

Maybe 15-year, non-exclusive licenses would encourage Virginia power companies to be a little more creative in their thinking.

(Hat tip to Larry Gross for pointing me to the Cayman Net News.)

The Center for Digital Government has released its 2006 Digital Cities Survey, which rates city governments for how they “utilize digital technologies to better serve their citizens and streamline operations.” Virginia cities — and not just those in Northern Virginia — stood out nationally for their embrace of technology.

125,000-249,999 population:

1st: Alexandria (tie with Madison, Wis.)
3rd: Richmond
5th: Hampton (tied with Hollywood, Fla., and Winston-Salem, N.C.)
8th: Chesapeake

75,000-124,999 population:

1st: Roanoke (tied with Ogden City, Utah)

30,000-74,999 population:

3rd: Charlottesville
5th: Lynchburg
6th: Blacksburg

With ties, 37 cities were included in the three categories listed here. Virginia cities nailed down eight of the top spots — more than 20 percent of the total. Kudos all around!

One of the ongoing debates on this blog is the extent to which American drivers are willing and able to modify their driving habits in response to higher gasoline prices. Well, here’s the latest data. Reuters reports:

HOUSTON (Reuters) — High gasoline prices not only slowed fuel demand growth and cut sales of gas-guzzling vehicles in 2005, they also prompted Americans to drive less for the first time in 25 years, a consulting group said in a report Thursday.

The drop in driving was small – the average American drove 13,657 miles (21,978.8 km) per year in 2005, down from 13,711 miles in 2004 – but it is more evidence that the market works and prices help control consumption, Boston-based Cambridge Energy Research Associates said.

“Price matters,” CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin said.

Notable was the fact that driving declined even though the general economy remained strong. The decline was not induced by recession and a contraction of economic activity.

Miles driven per motorist was down partly because there are more elderly people driving, and they tend to drive less, the report said. Between 1980 and 2004, drivers under age 21 dropped from 18.8 million to 15.8 million and those over 65 almost doubled, from 15.4 million to nearly 29 million, CERA said.

I find the impact of changing demographics to be particularly interesting. I’ve argued in the past that the the aging of the population (old people don’t commute to work) and the leveling off of women in the workforce will slow the rate of increase in Vehicle Miles Driven compared to historical rates over the past 20 to 30 years. That’s why I placed little faith in long-range forecasts that Virginia faces a $108 billion shortfall in transportation revenues over the next 20 years.

Demographics may explain a slowing in the rate of increase but it doesn’t explain the outright decline in Vehicle Miles Driven. The big story is that people do respond to price incentives. Higher gasoline prices do reduce driving. The lesson to learn: Time-of-day pricing for tolls will reduce congestion. Likewise, time-of-day pricing for parking, as I will argue next Monday, will reduce driving.

The moral: Any transportation policy that attempts to match every increase in Vehicle Miles Driven with an increase in road capacity is doomed to failure. As with every other sector of a functioning capitalist economy, we need to incorporate pricing into the transportation marketplace that sends appropriate signals to consumers (motorists) and vendors (those who supply transportation services).

(Hat tip to Ed Risse for pointing me to the article.)