Secrets of the City

This is great for them to point out. Trying to spend a few million dollars on public transportation is like pulling teeth; everyone bitches about it and argues about it for years, while hundred-million-dollar road projects fly by without anyone noticing or questioning them.

We should privatize our entire system of roads, bridges and highways and let the Invisible Hand run everything.

That’s the answer!

Let it be known that Bob is now mocking capitalism.

Take the train to Valley City next time, Bob

The Invisible Hand will then be outstretched every 5 miles waiting for your toll payment.

I’d think that could get to be a bit expensive, if a privatized highway system winds up being run anything like the health care industry; itself a model of administrative and fiscal efficiency (not).

What if a consortium of oil companies and auto-truck companies owned and maintained the highways? I mean, they have a vested interest. They need people driving. It would be like railroads owning right-of-ways.

Just throwing that out there for discussion.

@Rat: Isn’t that what started the whole ball rolling in the first place? Heavy lobbying by the auto and truck industries in favor of the interstate highway system (or, as it was officially known, the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways)? Plus, the auto-bus-truck companies are alleged to have conspired in the 1950s to do away with rail-based mass transit (See: Los Angeles)

That’s more than I know. But remember reading that Eisenhower saw it as part of defense in the Cold War.

That’s not exactly how Eisenhower saw it, but it is how the clever old soldier pitched it to some in Congress (and his own Party) that balked at the project’s enormous costs.

Mrs. Lungs and I will have to hope a coal train to Valley City — theat’s all that rolls through there now…

@Rat: Yes, Eisenhower saw the military value of such a system based on what he had observed of the Autobahn. What he (and the system’s designers) did not foresee, I think, was the use of the interstates by short-distance (<30 miles) commuters.

It’s those commuters that are clogging up the concrete arteries.

But it’s CARS! It’s my God given right as an AMERICAN to drive any 5 mpg vehicle I choose. It says so in the Constitution and Bible.

More seriously:

Rat, I didn’t take Bob to be mocking capitalism, so much as the irrational belief of some people that the “free market” is all good, and will provide all.

Second, I have my doubts how well that would go over with many of them. Texas Gov. Rick Perry was booed at a Teabagger party on the 4th over his support for toll roads in Texas.

“Rat, I didn’t take Bob to be mocking capitalism”

There was contempt in every word.

We should privatize our entire system of roads, bridges and highways and let the Invisible Hand run everything.

Actually, a lot of planners think that adding some sort of cost to road use is a good thing! Right now, it’s free to use a road (or, one price if you take into account the price of gas).

However, we should have congestion pricing that does factor in escalating costs as roads get more congested. It’s worked in London and other places, because it makes sense: it probably doesn’t “cost” the same for you to go to PDQ to get bread versus you trying to make it to an important business meeting. With congestion pricing, you’d wait on the bread until the roads clear up a bit, and you’d have less-congested roads for your big meeting.

As a bonus, this helps ease sprawl because it’s now cheaper to live closer to where you work/play.

That’s not exactly how Eisenhower saw it

That is almost exactly how Eisenhower saw it, based not only on his post-war Autobahn observations but also his post-World War I experience as a participant in the 1919 U.S. Army’s Cross-Country Motor Transport Train.

Btw, here’s the original 1919 New York Times news item regarding the excursion. If you thought our roads are bad now, you should’ve tried crossing the country by automobile in 1919!

Rick Perry was booed at a Teabagger party on the 4th over his support for toll roads in Texas.

I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone who is a tea-bagger is just a stingy bastard who doesn’t want to pay for anything. Nothing. Except for a 5-cent cup of coffee. And they want to roll back prices to 1980 while keeping their 2009 salaries.

… but has anybody taken the train around Germany lately? I say the ICE is a fine substitute for the Autobahn, cruising in style on a regular schedule at up to 300 km/h. Mrs. Champs and I took it from Utrecht to Stuttgart (among other places) this spring, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, several externalities notwithstanding.

I will always believe there’s nothing better than riding a “bullet” train (Shinkansen).

I’ll be spending some time on our taxpayer subsidized highways this summer for work-related events. We have events in Albert Lea, Glenwood and Watkins (a town that has NOT been renamed Family Leasure, as far as I know)this month.

I’ll be dring a big Ford F150 with a “oil spill” paint job, featuring the slogan: ADDICTED TO OIL? GET CLEAN!

They’re fun to ride. Took the Eurostar from Paris to London a few years back. Soon as it got up to full speed it had to stop because there was a man sitting in the tracks. He had to be physically removed before the train could start.

That’s in France, of course.

I took the high speed train from Paris to Lyon more than 25 years ago — it was a nice experience. Very smooth ride.

Rode the ICE in December. Roomy, fast. Have enjoyed the TGV a few times too. I took the Eurostar a while back and while it seemed fine, I got sick from some food I ate while en route to France, and blame the Eurostar for that.

Watkins (a town that has NOT been renamed Family Leasure

That’s because there’s still the Watkins spice company doing business. Once they change their, however, all bets are off. Maybe they can rename the town Carp?

/more partial to “Eelpout, MN”

I’ll be dring a big Ford F150 with a “oil spill” paint job, featuring the slogan: ADDICTED TO OIL? GET CLEAN!

Oh, Bob. You’re just the fashion maven, aren’t you.

You should consider adding a McCain-Palin bumper sticker, too, to provide contrast.

Love that Watkins vanilla. It’s still the best.

Noodleman: We’re stricty nonpartisan.

Noodleman: We’re stricty nonpartisan.

Oh, okay. Be that way.

(grin)

Where in this analysis are the funds generated by gas tax, car sales tax, registration fees, speeding tickets etc?

My understanding is that roads are largely self sufficient.

Additionally, while trains in germany are lovely to travel in, and often convenient, you can generally reach your destination faster by car (excepting the few high speed ICE routes, which have very expensive tickets, making auto a more cost-fesible option).

I doubt speeding ticket monies go anywhere near a road crew and their asphalt truck.

Wrt to roads being largely self-sufficient: That might be so to some extent today but there are billions and billions of dollars of bridge and road-deck replacement that will need to be made (sooner than later) that the current taxation levels cannot support.

It’s also not just about the money – talking about cars being self-suffient doesn’t factor in the enormous environmental costs, the demand for zoning codes that rarely allow for things to be built without parking or at least a traffic study (and those costs do get passed on to even those who don’t use cars, besides often can hurt good development), and the many other ways in which cars cost society more than just the upkeep of roads.

I did it backwards and read the article after posting; it also makes the good point about oil-related military action, which of course involves not only money but also people.

Indeed, u_u.

As I tell people at E85 promotions, say what you will about E85, we haven’t had to send the 1st Armored Division to guard a corn field yet.

@justpbob: I recall the original argument, several years ago, in favor of ethanol was that it would lessen our dependence on imported petroleum; not that it would be cheaper than gasoline.

what would life be like with gas at $20 a gallon?  looks interesting.

That was one of several arguments in favor of ethanol. However, E85 is almost always cheaper than gasoline, and it always burns cleaner than gas. While it is true that much of our “imported” oil in MN comes from Canada, not the Middle East, it is coming from the Alberta Tar Sands, a place that now looks like Mordor.

That’s a pretty sunny view, there cubbie.

My prediction. At each other’s throats.

“Resort towns will shrink, Disney World will close and overseas trips will be rare for the middle class.”

The second half of The Rats life would be poor if he couldn’t travel.

E85 is almost always cheaper than gasoline

Only because of the subsidized dollars used for its production and distribution, though, isn’t it?

Plus, the consumer food cost pressures of using corn as fuel instead of food production? And doesn’t it take more fossil energy to produce ethanol than ethanol provides as a fuel (1.3 gallons oil to produce 1 gallon of ethanol)?

I just bring these up as discussion points. I’m all in favor of the production and use of alternative fuels, but I would rather something other than a food be used.

That’s a pretty sunny view, there cubbie.

agreed, but he does predict the demise of suburbs and wal-mart, which would warm most mnspeakers hearts.

We’d all weigh less and breath cleaner air, too. And in this new world of health uber alles who cares if we never went anywhere? We’d live 10 years longer and bustle through our smart growth city.

Or maybe it would just feel like 10 years.

heh. i suppose our northeast property values would shoot thru the roofs, no?

And the concurrent taxes.

I’ve always said this supposed argument would have no credibility until the government starts subsidizing the cars people drive on the…

Oh, crap.

Just think. You might get $4.5K in trade for that car up on blocks in your front yard, Kwatt.

All you Republicans have those, right?

I bought a new (actually it’s used, but new to me) car Saturday. Government deemed me a loser in the cash-for-clunkers program, so I only got $200 for my trade-in. As all that unfolded, I couldn’t help but think about all the people that will be trading in far crappier cars for oodles more and getting shiny new cars in return.

If we privatized the roads, we’d have a system that works about as well as our health care system, which spends a great deal more than anyone else with poorer results and fatcats building little parks next to places like the Guthrie to divert attention from the way they are skimming off the cream.

As for paying its own way, gasoline taxes pay for about 60% if the cost of roads. Property and sales taxes pay the rest. That’s why Saint Paul had to raise fees to pay for plowing and why people get assessed sometimes when the street in front of their house gets repaved. In general, gasoline taxes pay for highways, not city streets. Either the Daily Planet or the Independant ( I can’t remember which) ran an interesting article last year on how Minneapolis is spending twice as much on asphalt patch because it can’t afford to repave. The City of Minneapolis levies property taxes, not gasoline taxes.

If it will make you feel better, kwatt, I can’t get the “cash for clunkers” deal either, as my VW Golf was pretty fuel efficient to begin with. I’ll be lucky if I’m offered $200.

Mrs. Lungs and I are going to Hopkins Honda later this afternoon. I’ll let you know what happens.

Noodle: I just pointed out that E85 is usually cheaper than gas, I did not offer the reasons this is so. When the price of E85 dropped sharply last summer, it caused a sharp decline in E85 sales. We are just now pulling out of that decline as summer sales of E85 rise.

Read Sebastian Blanco’s post in AutoBlog Green carefully — you will not that the Congressional Budget Office report found the ethanol could be blamed for less than one percent of the reported 5.1% increase in U.S. food prices — and even then, they can’t be certain it was ethanol’s fault.

Like you, I would love to see ethanol made from non-food feedsocks, noodle, but right now, cellulosic ethanol is just too expensive and energy-intensive to compete with corn ethanol. Maybe that will change, but right now, that’s the hard truth.

Finally, for the last time, the US Dept. of Energy tells us that for every unit of energy used to produce ethanol, 1.67 units of energy results. Refining gasoline from crude oil actually has a negative energy return of 0.79.

“Start with the $1.5 billion a year in Minnesota property taxes (100 times Hiawatha’s state support”

And do you think the roads serve 100 times the people that Hiawatha serves each day?

No,more like 1000’s of times the people.

Also, I’m curious how much of the stuff on our store shelves are stocked with merchandise or food that was transported on LRT or Bus for distribution purposes?

I’m guessing somewhere between zero and zilch would be the number.

Conrad’s point is a foolish arguement meant to fire up the unwashed masses.

No, I think bourgeois parlor game. Not unwashed masses.

Local News for Global Citizens. As TC Daily Planet says.