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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35347 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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This seems like a reasonably fair summary to me.

While I find many of the Urbanist arguments appealing — and have at times commuted by transit, bike, and foot — for me there are two big weaknesses. First, that we should prioritize possible efficiencies at full capacity over observed performance. Second, is the strength of irreversibly of the situation. It seems quite possible that pure car-oriented and pure transit-oriented transportation are relative equilibrium states, but the transition state is not equilibrium.

I think the two objections are related. Ranking trains over cars in efficiency in long-term thinking requires some optimism about actual ridership. If ridership is expected to remain low over the long term in the US, it is by definition not short-term thinking to deprioritize it.

If all that has to be done to make transit superior is (1) Convince people to abandon existing driving infrastructure. (2) Figure out how to contain the high costs of projects in the US. (3) Improve the strength of our institutions and management (4) Move forward transit spending to update all outdated systems. Then there is NOT a small potential barrier to cross from the O’Toole analysis world to the idealist Urbanist paradise world.

Three small side notes to round things out. I generally thought the DC metro system was one of the more pleasant metro experiences in the US, but even that wasn't free from people involved seemingly actively trying to make it worse (sorry for the source but you can check the twitter thread if you're skeptical of the slant). I also can't say there were never uncomfortable situations on the DC metro. Second, it is fair to consider the impact of transit on infectious disease. Some transit analyses try to discount the recent drop in ridership, but unless you think there will never be another infectious disease again it seems silly to call for relying on a transportation method that will either not be there when you need it or be a vector for the disease to spread. Third, I'm unwilling to defend minimum parking requirements, but in terms of reveled preference I do think it's quite possible American really do prefer car-centric neighborhoods. And those that do rightfully bear (at least part) of the cost of the preference.

Another thing that seems to be missing from all those analyses, that I think about more and more as my parents get older, is the effect of forcing an aging population that relies on cars to use mass transit for all their daily needs. Eliminate the cars, and you're suddenly trapping millions of reasonably active older people in "deserts" of various kinds, because it's one thing to take the subway to see a play or the bus to go to a park on the weekend, and quite another to have to lug around bags of groceries (or a pathetic little cart) on mass transit day in and day out to meet your basic needs.

For the old and disabled, a system with zero cars clearly doesn't work. Those too old/disabled to use transit probably (although not always) shouldn't be driving their own cars either, so taxis of some kind are needed. Paratransit does exist in some places, and it's really bad (as in, 2-4 hours extra waiting/travel time over using a car); as that Wikipedia article mentions, some places are subsidizing taxis (sorry, "ride-hailing services") instead which makes sense (assuming you've worked out the issues of whether your old users can use a smartphone needed to access ride-hailing services).

While I'm very pro-transit, there are definitely edge cases where cars are necessary, so literally zero cars is not a reasonable goal, and any pro-transit person arguing for such is either confused or being misunderstood.

Rereading your comment, I see

quite another to have to lug around bags of groceries (or a pathetic little cart) on mass transit day in and day out to meet your basic needs.

Trying to discourage car usage in an area so not-dense that people can't walk to a grocery store is nonsense. No one would ever take transit to do their grocery shopping if they had another option (except for maybe occasional trips of a specialty store of some kind); that sounds awful. Work on improving density first.

Urbanists may want to discourage people from living in single-family-home suburbs in favor of denser areas; they certainly don't want to leave suburbs exactly as they are except deleting all the cars and putting in buses and trains.

they certainly don't want to leave suburbs exactly as they are except deleting all the cars and putting in buses and trains.

Okay, but:

The California Air Resources Board on Thursday signed off on a sweeping plan requiring that by 2035, all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the state be electric vehicles or other emissions-free models.

Given that we lack the raw materials to replace ICE cars with electric cars, I think they sort of are. They can't make riding the LA public transportation system attractive. But they can effectively ban most private ownership of vehicles. Degrading quality of life of people in the suburbs is surprisingly popular among some political factions.

I've been hearing "the new emissions standards are impossible to achieve affordably" all my life. Somehow they always manage to figure it out, either by changing the cars or changing the standards.

Are new cars not less affordable now? I mean a new car in 2022 averaged $48,080. A new car in 1980 was something like $8,025 or $23,920 in inflation adjusted dollars. Part of this is consumer behavior and non-emissions or efficiency improvements. "CPI: New Vehicles" already "corrects" for quality improvements including emissions or efficiency improvements, so shouldn't be used to compare affordability.

That is an interesting point. Not sure how to properly control for cars lasting longer, making new cars even more of a luxury item as used cars are not as bad, but that certainly suggests that cars really are getting less affordable. Also not sure how to judge how much of the cost increases are specifically due to emissions or efficiency improvements as opposed to other improvements like safety and convenience features. Maybe trying to compare the prices of the cheapest new cars over time instead of the average? Required safety features would still get priced in, but I guess they should be considered in the question of whether cars are being legislated out of affordability.

There's no reason to buy a cheap new car today, you can buy a used car instead.

My wife, my parents, my sister, my brother in law, and myself all make six figures. The newest car in the group is a 2018. The average is roughly 2013. And I don't feel deprived in any way.

Cars used to break down at 100k miles. And features used to vastly improve every ten years. Now we all drive ten year old cars and they have Bluetooth and abs and airbags.

New cars are more comfortable, with no degradation of the frame or suspension, and there is no question about maintenance or accident history. Used cars are also rarely as good a deal as people think they are. People still want $15k for their 10-year-old basic options sedans because “they changed the oil regularly.”

It is objectively false that there is no reason to buy a new car over a used one. Both choices have their advantages.

Now we all drive ten year old cars

This has been true for quite some time; the average car in 2010 was 10 years old as well (it's crept up to 11-12 years since then).

Cars used to break down at 100k miles.

Unfortunately for us, manufacturers have figured out that they can just stop updating the software for the screens (and in Tesla's case, accidentally burn the hardware out by writing so much telemetry data to the integrated flash storage). The car still works fine; the radio not so much.

When I was car shopping last year, this was very much not the case, due to the supply chain issues. We ended up buying new and waiting several months, despite preferring something a bit older and less expensive, because used cars cost about the same as new ones. Some used cars cost more than used ones last summer, because there wasn't a waiting list.

The situation may have started to clear up by now, though.

because used cars cost about the same as new ones.

This is true precisely because of my point: used cars today are about as good as new cars. This was simply not true twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. There used to be some really shitty cars on the market. Growing up the used cars were stuff like the Neon, the Cavalier, the first gen Ford Exploder, the Jeep Cherokee. Of course, being middle aged now, I'm growing nostalgic for some of those cars, but they were real junk in a lot of ways. Used to be that bottom end old cars got to 60 in "eventually;" had self changing oil by 80k, were junk or Ships of Theseus by 150k, were pigs on gas if they were larger than a Focus, were loud and uncomfortable and ugly. As a result they lost value quickly as better, faster, prettier cars came on the market. Sports cars went through such a revolution between 1995 and 2012 or so that every five years cars were noticeably faster and better handling.

Today that simply isn't the case. Even mom-mobiles are generally fast enough that the limitation is the driver's willingness to press down on the gas moreso than the car's capability to hit higher speeds. Most of the creature comforts like heated seats, ABS, bluetooth audio, GPS, rearview cameras were standard equipment on mid-high end models by 2015 so it's not something you need to go new for. Car design was in a much better place 2010-2015 than it was 1980-2005, so used cars look better than they used to, and improved paint prevents that sun-faded look old trucks used to get. ((Maybe I'm just crotchety, but I also think that car design has gone into decline in the last couple years as companies compete to be more EXTREME on the one end, more aggressive and less friendly all around, and all the SUVs start to look like fish.))

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But to be clear: the EU and California are completely banning new ICE cars starting 2035. Electric cars require large batteries and the raw materials needed to make those batteries in sufficient quantities do not exist.

So yeah: maybe these standards will be pushed back as we approach them or some sci-fi battery technology will be invented soon. Or new cars will be de facto banned in much of the developed world.

These claims are hyperbolic, do you really think people will outright ban cars? The goal is to make public transit reasonable or possible for people to use, not destroy all the roads and cars people have.

This type of disingenuous argument about older folks is why I get so frustrated about density conversations.

you really think people will outright ban cars?

They'll ban new internal combustion engine vehicles and then crank up taxes on people who drive. They don't need to "outright ban" all cars. They will merely state that Pavlovian taxes [Edit: Pigouvian tax, the dangers of phone posting] are a good thing and due to global climate change ICE vehicles need to be phased out.

The European Union agreed to end the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) cars and SUVs by 2035

The California Air Resources Board on Thursday signed off on a sweeping plan requiring that by 2035, all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the state be electric vehicles or other emissions-free models.

Given the limited quantities of relevant minerals, unless there is a world changing revolution in battery technology, electric cars are simply not going to replace ICE cars.

I'm sure that rich people will still be allowed to drive. So in some picky technical sense it will not be a outright ban. In a more relevant practical sense it will feel like a ban to the median person.

Thanks for backing up the concerns with sources, I agree these bans on ICE vehicles are pretty awful. I had no idea the environmental lobby had gotten so ridiculous.

I like to think these regulations will be made more realistic before actually being implemented, but I’ve been wrong before. We’ll have to see I suppose.

I am sold on electric being a better type of car, but I agree with you that this could be a tool for tyranny.

I'm sure that rich people will still be allowed to drive. So in some picky technical sense it will not be a outright ban

It's even a little more nuanced than that, as with electric vehicles you have to pay more for more range.

The masses will go on buses. Managers may be able to buy a car that fits their commute, but the range and charging limitations mean it's only good for the commute, you can't do anything else besides. So you've bought a more comfortable commute, but no freedom.

Upper management can get 50km range on top of that. A little freedom. And so on, and for the real rich we'll keep ICE vehicles that can just go wherever, whenever.

Given the limited quantities of relevant minerals, unless there is a world changing revolution in battery technology, electric cars are simply not going to replace ICE cars.

If a hundred ICE cars are replaced by one electric car, then I think many environmentalists will consider that an ideological victory. You've already quoted the EU's policy here. And that policy is why I take the EU to be a force of destruction in Europe - they will annihilate the German economy, and everything that depends on it, for the sake of wishful thinking. And by the time that is through, we can consider ourselves happy to keep one car in a hundred running.

I do hope to be wrong.

They will merely state that Pavlovian taxes are a good thing and due to global climate change ICE vehicles need to be phased out.

[emphasis mine -- Nybbler]

LOL, I think you mean "Pigouvian", but fair enough since the proposed taxes aren't that either, since the externality figures are just made up.

Given the limited quantities of relevant minerals, unless there is a world changing revolution in battery technology, electric cars are simply not going to replace ICE cars.

It's not just the minerals, it's the electricity. If you're not building fossil plants and you're not building nuclear and you're not building hydro, then no, you aren't going to be able to run your current grid plus the load from cars on renewables. What I expect will happen is ICE cars will be banned but there will be an exception for public transit vehicles, so effectively most people will be forced onto fuel-burning buses.

I’m not advocating for getting rid of cars entirely, I think anyone who wants to do so in the US is deranged. I’d be curious to read any arguments you can point to that call for that drastic of a move.

do you really think people will outright ban cars

Yes.

The goal is to make public transit reasonable or possible for people to use, not destroy all the roads and cars people have.

The goal is to make public transit better with respect to cars. Mostly this means making cars worse; you suggested increasing taxes to cover "externalities", which is one such way. There are many others.

I do think this is a major drawback, with a very sudden drop-off in independence. At one time I was hopeful that self-driving cars would help relieve this issue, though now I wonder how much cheaper it would really be than an Uber. For those that can afford it, I do think that an Uber offers a better experience for those with limited mobility over even very good transit systems.

There does seem to be demand for walk-able communities with a variety of amenities like the "age-restricted communities" such as the The Villages. I suppose that a charitable interpretation for their popping up over choosing to move to an existing dense urban core, is that the amenities are more tailored to older people's interests?

Sure, I don't disagree with any of that. Though I'm personally not a fan of driving I do think there's a place for both cars and trains in society and that each accomplish better efficiency in different areas. Among new urbanists this is the much maligned "cars- and- trains" take but I don't really see how anything else would work for America. All I want is for both to better serve customers . Insofar as transit's contingent lack of success is used by folks like O'Toole to argue for cuts to productive funding, that's all I'm personally against.

If all that has to be done to make transit superior is (1) Convince people to abandon existing driving infrastructure. (2) Figure out how to contain the high costs of projects in the US. (3) Improve the strength of our institutions and management (4) Move forward transit spending to update all outdated systems. Then there is NOT a small potential barrier to cross from the O’Toole analysis world to the idealist Urbanist paradise world.

All true, but while there are public policy situations that are genuinely so daunting they might as well be imaginary, I don't think this should include systems that we see a bunch of peer countries having solved. In truth these countries haven't built paradise either - they all deal with project delays and cost overruns as well - but they have managed to make things function well enough that transit can turn a profit, and that's the really important question for me.

(1) Convince people to abandon existing driving infrastructure.

Extremely simple, just increase taxes on cars to capture their externalities.

(2) Figure out how to contain the high costs of projects in the US.

This is the hardest one, but is not limited to transit. If we solve this one we solve a ton of our other problems. I'm convinced that the lack of pay/prestige in public service is the issue - we should have less jobs that are much more highly paid.

(3) Improve the strength of our institutions and management

Not sure how this is related?

(4) Move forward transit spending to update all outdated systems.

Even with current systems, if people use public transit it's massively beneficial and efficient compared to cars.

in terms of reveled preference I do think it's quite possible American really do prefer car-centric neighborhoods. And those that do rightfully bear (at least part) of the cost of the preference.

People also like smoking cigarettes, and we took that away too. Seatbelts etc etc.

I'd argue that car owners bear very little of the cost of the preference, as it hits the urban poor who can't afford a good car the hardest. You get into a poverty trap where you can't afford a good car, have to spend money on repairs constantly, lose jobs, and generally have a bad life.

This is the hardest one, but is not limited to transit. If we solve this one we solve a ton of our other problems. I'm convinced that the lack of pay/prestige in public service is the issue - we should have less jobs that are much more highly paid.

We have accomplished this, it's called privatization and it works well. The people who manage renewable energy projects in the United States are efficient and well paid because they are competitively bidding on these projects in a market with several other players. Offer enough tax credits for an impossible project to be completed and you will be amazed as the impossible becomes possible.

Yeah at this point I’m on board with a platform to just shop out most government functions to the private sector. It already happens through consulting/tech firms constantly, but it’s horribly inefficient.

In appraisal districts in the US for instance a lot of districts have 3-5 full time employees, but they literally just ship the entire job out to an appraisal firm. These peoples entire job is to find a firm once every four years, and they almost always just continue to use the same one. Yet they get full time pay and benefits. It’s absurd when you really get a look at what’s going on.

(2) Figure out how to contain the high costs of projects in the US.

This is the hardest one, but is not limited to transit. If we solve this one we solve a ton of our other problems. I'm convinced that the lack of pay/prestige in public service is the issue - we should have less jobs that are much more highly paid.

Agreed, while cutting project costs is definitely the most challenging battle, it's also one that encompasses so many things beyond trains - our inability to build housing, energy infrastructure, etc, to meet Americans needs and decrease costs. It should definitely be one of the top public policy priorities. And it's not like it's a mystery where to start; there's a lot of low hanging fruit from streamlining environmental review, permitting, and procurement processes.

The same groups which want public transit want strong environmental review and lots of veto points ("community input") in permitting.

It seems that environmental groups and regulations are losing their hallowed status in the left intelligentsia as others have mentioned. Exciting times to be alive.

I think this was true for a while but nowadays the yimbyist-transit crowd have developed a growing consensus around opposing things like zoning and environmental road blocks to construction. The mouthpiece for this crowd are people like Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein who talk about "supply-side progressivism" and fighting veto-points.

Yimby's are like libertarians. There are dozens of them!

I'm familiar with the unmitigated disaster that is the California high speed rail project. As best I know this "growing consensus" has not produced actionable cost-effective American rail projects. Billions are poured into contractors to perform various reviews, hardly any low speed track is laid.

Yes, trains are more expensive than they need to be, because of the reasons I listed in the comment you’re replying to and in my OP. The “growing consensus” isn’t among policymakers and politicians but among urbanist advocates. Like him or not, if Noah Smith were transit god king these projects would likely happen much more cheaply.

Zoning is not "environmental review" or "community inputs". They want some carveouts from roadblocks they favor for things they like, but they haven't actually turned against the roadblocks in general.

just increase taxes on cars to capture their externalities.

I'm not really arguing against doing this, I just don't think this seems very politically viable as a "solution."

Improve the strength of our institutions and management

Sorry if this was unclear. I meant to express the idea that in general public transit management and planing is the US is clearly worse than counterparts in other places. It's not clear to me that improving this does not require clearing substantial hurdles with deeply entrenched interests.

Even with current systems

Yes, but I'm arguing that increasing adoption will likely require substantial improvements, not that increasing adoption is bad?

Can't afford a good car

I am sympathetic to this argument, like I said I find many of the Urbanist arguments appealing. I do think that some of the cost comparisons are a bit tricky though. Realistically, someone on the edge of poverty should not be paying the Experian number quoted by OP. When I was driving around in a 20+ year old Honda Civic my lifetime total cost was about 1/3 of the IRS standard mileage rate at the time, including fuel, insurance, maintenance, and repairs. Driving certainly can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be as expensive as the average diver in the US spends.

Extremely simple, just increase taxes on cars to capture their externalities.

For this to have any effect, you'd have to do it without doing the same for public transit, otherwise you've just increased taxes across the board.

Even with current systems, if people use public transit it's massively beneficial and efficient compared to cars.

It is not. On a per-passenger-mile basis it is less efficient. And that's without accounting for circuity, which means it's wasting more passenger piles.

Trains are less efficient not because they aren't capable of better per-passenger-mile metrics than cars, but because trains use the same amount of energy no matter how many people ride them, and right now not that many people ride the train, so a lot of energy goes into moving around not that many people. The more that people use the train the more efficient it becomes (easily beating cars long before reaching peak capacity), so while I am not personally advocating for higher car taxes, to the extent that they shifted consumers towards trains they would be solving the problem of efficiency/reducing externalities per passenger mile in real time.

Trains are less efficient not because they aren't capable of better per-passenger-mile metrics than cars, but because trains use the same amount of energy no matter how many people ride them, and right now not that many people ride the train, so a lot of energy goes into moving around not that many people

Yes, but we have to deal with the trains we have, not hypothetical full ones.

Sure, but that was why I added in the stats noting that ridership doesn't just decline, it bounces around and can be increased as well as decreased

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