“I’m kind of flabbergasted,” … “It seems like we’re getting taxed right and left. They shouldn’t be charging for this. It’s going to be a financial burden for some people.”

And what is “this”? Why, (formerly) free parking of course. Parking must be “free” and plentiful. And I’m sure it could be a burden for some, but let’s keep things in perspective; Phoenix recently instituted a 2% grocery tax.

The plan would charge $5 a day, yearly passes would be available for $75. [arizona republic]

BP or whoever can theoretically run around an pick up every tar ball and clean off every pelican, but who is going to clean the air? As is usually the case, nobody does.  So everyone gets dirtier air. It’s just blowin’ in the wind. Just another externality of oil and gas consumption.

Ezra Klein had a good piece on externalities in last week’s Washington Post:

Think gas is to pricey? Think again

Sunday, June 13, 2010; G01

How much does a gallon of gasoline cost?

It seems like an easy question. You might ask whether I mean regular or premium, and where in the country I’m buying. Beyond that, though, the price is displayed in giant numbers on most main roads. It’s such common knowledge that we ask politicians to rattle it off to show that they retain some minimal awareness of the world they claim to represent.

But as the sludge choking the Gulf of Mexico shows, nothing is easy when it comes to oil. Not even the price. In fact, especially not the price.

Most of us would call the BP spill a tragedy. Ask an economist what it is, however, and you’ll hear a different word: “externality.” An externality is a cost that’s not paid by the person, or people, using the good that creates the cost. The BP spill is going to cost fishermen, it’s going to cost the gulf’s ecosystem, and it’s going to cost the region’s tourism industry. But that cost won’t be paid by the people who wanted that oil for their cars. It’ll fall on taxpayers, on Gulf Coast residents who need new jobs, on the poisoned wildlife on the seafloor.

That means the gasoline you’re buying at the pump is — stick with me here — too cheap. The price you pay is less than the product’s true cost. A lot less, actually. And it’s not just catastrophic spills and dramatic disruptions in the Middle East that add to the price. Gasoline has so many hidden costs that there’s a cottage industry devoted to tallying them up. At least the ones that can be tallied up.

Topping that list is air pollution, which we breathe in whether or not we drive. Then there’s climate change, which is difficult to slap a price tag on because it involves such esoteric calculations as how much your grandchild’s climate is worth. There’s traffic congestion and accidents, which harm drivers and non-drivers alike. There’s the cost of basing our transportation economy on a resource that undergoes wild price swings.

Some of the best work on this subject has been done by Ian Parry, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. His calculations — plus some data from other sources and studies — suggest that adding all the quantifiable costs into the price of oil would increase the cost of each gallon by about $1.65. According to the Energy Information Administration, the average price of a gallon of gas was $2.72 last week. It should really be as high as $4.37.

That, however, is almost certainly an underestimation. There are plenty of costs that we just don’t know how to put a price on. How much of our military policy is dictated by our need for secure oil resources? How much instability is created by our need to treat oil-producing monarchies such as Saudi Arabia with kid gloves? How much is the environment worth in a poor country that would prefer oil investment to air-quality regulations?

Or take the spill in the gulf. What’s the economic value of a whale? Of a pelican? Of plankton? The nation’s been horrified by the photographs of oil-soaked wildlife, but how much is not being horrified actually worth to us? And is not knowing about the problem enough to solve it? One reason we’re drilling wells far offshore and in countries with poor safety and environmental records is that we don’t want oil companies mucking about in the shallow waters near our homes, or on public lands such as the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve. But as Maureen Cropper, an environmental economist at the University of Maryland, notes, importing oil means exporting the damage associated with drilling for oil. When trying to put a price on that damage, do we think it varies by country? Is Kenya’s environment worth less than our own?

For all the complexity of calculating the true cost of gasoline, however, it’s unclear that it matters as much as some might think. When I started researching this column, my working assumption was that a world in which gasoline’s total costs were represented at the pump would be a world in which our consumption of gasoline was radically different. But almost all of the experts I spoke to said that wasn’t true. In part, that’s because years of regulations and innovations have made us much more efficient at finding, extracting, refining and using oil. If an energy source as dirty as coal had to pay its true cost, we’d pretty much stop using it. Disasters aside, that’s not the case with oil. Oil might be cheap compared with its true costs, but adding those costs in wouldn’t necessarily make it unaffordable. Our behavior might change at the margin, but we’d still be an oil-thirsty society.

That gets to the bigger issue, which is that energy sources are cheap or expensive only in relation to one another. And the heaviest anchor beneath our reliance on oil is that, at this point, there’s nothing to replace it with.

“We’re pretty much stuck with our dependency on oil,” Parry says. “We don’t have any substitutes. Even if we hugely increase the price on oil, we’d only have limited impact on it. People need to drive and get to work.”

That’s not to say there’d be no benefit to forcing gasoline to pay its full freight. Increasing the cost of oil could make other energy sources cheaper in comparison, and if the mechanism were a tax that would fund development of alternatives, that would hasten our transition. But it is the speed with which we can discover and refine those alternatives, more than the price of oil, that will decide our energy future.

The question, in other words, isn’t just what a gallon of gas costs. It’s what a gallon of anything that can replace gas costs. Maybe that’s what we should start asking politicians.

Also no word yet from the many legislators who have vowed to increase DPS patrols on highways, claiming that will enhance safety. Arizona faces record budget shortfalls, and it isn’t clear where money for increasing patrols would come from. The budge shortfall just got a little bigger, now that the Redflex contract has be canceled (well, not renewed) — because as the critics like to point out; the program made money for the state.

Unaffected are city-run programs, which are used for both speed and red-light running enforcement on surface streets (not on limited-access highways).

Arizona to eliminate speed-enforcement cameras on freeways, The Arizona Republic, 5/06/2010

This book gives the accepted guidelines for dimensions and usage of various bicycle facilities, i.e. bike lanes, wide curb lanes.

49th Leg, 2nd Regular Session; HB2633 ( text of HB2633). Its been assigned to the House TI (Transportation and Infrastructure) committee. It’s hard for me to imagine Chairman Biggs letting this bill go anywhere.

You can review articles and background materials from the last session here.

Views of Estrella Mountains westbound on Willis Rd

For cyclists going “around the mountain”, this means it will no longer be necessary to cross over I-10 to get to Maricopa Road, usually via S 56th Street, and then cross back over to pick up Maricopa Road. Here is a map of the general vicinity (the new road is not shown yet).

For us less-ambitious Ahwatukee area cyclists, it provides a pleasant connection to some enjoyable scenery; particularly the area around the resort (NOT the new hotel-casino which is boring, and out by the I-10) which is beautiful natural desert surrounding a lush golf course all with sweeping vistas of the Estrella Mountains. The area around the new road itself is still just raw dirt, as this land was most recently (years?) agricultural.

The road is actually in 3 segments, a  short piece extending 40th St, a one mile (exactly!) stretch called Willis Road,  and finally a short stub of 48th Street connects to the casino and whatnot. The road is built to (strangely?) high traffic standards, with two wide-ish (12′ foot) lanes in each direction plus a bike lane. There is a fully divided median w/curbs, and curbs on both outsides.

Concerns about the Pecos and 40th intersection

40th St. southbound, just before intersection with Pecos Rd. Oct 28, 2009.

40th Street in Phoenix has full (real) bike lanes between Chandler Blvd and where it presently ends, at Pecos Road. This will be a nice addition connectivity wise. One concern I have is that southbound on 40th approaching the intersection with Pecos the bike lane is to the right of a straight/right combo lane. The predominant traffic flow will be right-turn — thus a straight-thru cyclist in the bike lane will be to the right of predominantly right-turning traffic — this is a recipe for right-hooks.

Another concern is signal timing. I was pleasantly surprised that my bicycle triggered the demand light northbound on 40th street (by stopping in the right hand lane, and not the bike lane… there do not appear to be sensors under the bike lane). However, the green cycle seems waaaay too short — 3 seconds, if that’s possible? — and Pecos is a wiiide road. It’s hard to say for sure, due to other traffic showing up what the whole timing scheme is. I was under the possibly mistaken impression that 5 seconds was some sort of bare minimum. There are several dilemmas involving signal timing and cyclists (Forester discusses them at great detail here), so…

I don’t usually say this — and there is no obligation to do so — but cyclists should consider dismounting and pushing the pedestrian button, thus insuring a full cycle time. The level of dangerous driving there is off the scale. Dangerous drivers have killed 5 people along Pecos Road, including one cyclist (see Pecos Death Trap?), not to mention a bunch of injuries. We’ve had drunk drivers, wrong-way drivers, drivers who inexplicably crossed the median and smash head-on into dump trucks, drivers making bad lefts, along with the usual “inattentive” drivers like the one who killed Don Anselmo.

Lack of connectivity

By the way, for those keeping count, there are no bike lanes on Pecos road (though the paved shoulders are generally okay), and there are no connecting bike lanes on 40th Street north of Chandler Blvd., the lane just unceremoniously ends. The contiguous roadway officially changes names at Chandler Blvd, south it is 40th Street, north it is S. Mountain Parkway. This is one piece of crappy planning, as there is a bike lane just 1000′ north at Ranch Circle South.

The human brain is wired with biases that often keep people from acting in their best interest. Now, some employers and insurers are testing ways to harness such psychological pitfalls to get people to make healthier choices…

Rather than encouraging good behavior with small or one-time payments, some health and wellness plans have begun enrolling employees in lotteries for a chance to win a bigger reward….

Such approaches stem from the field of behavioral economics, which challenges the conventional economic doctrine that consumers always act as informed, rational decision makers. Instead, behavioral researchers have found, people often exhibit irrational, albeit predictable, biases that lead them not to act in their best interests.

…Though the study is still under way, about 70% of the lottery group has completed the assessment, researchers say. That compares with 34% of those receiving the basic cash reward, and 43% of those getting an additional grocery card.

It seems to me the lottery incentive could be used by businesses as an incentive for bicycle commuting (to comply with trip-reduction efforts).

The Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists own Radar Matt was quoted in Bicyclists will benefit from $700 billion bailout (The Arizona Republic Oct 10, 2008).

Upon reading the comments, a couple of things become evident. First, that the general public has a bad reaction because of anger about the financial bailout, and specifically to this provision because it has nothing do with the financial bailout. I cannot defend the sausage factory that is the legislative process of our government , it is what it is. Secondly, there is the general feeling that the government should not be paying for this sort of thing.

This is based on the mis-perception that the money is paid by the government to the commuter. This is not at all how these expenses are paid (technically, these are known as IRC Section 132(f) “commutation expenses” , after the part of the Internal Revenue Service code).

The money is not paid by the government, it is either paid by the employer directly, or withheld from the employee’s pay.

The only cost to the government is that of foregone income taxes.

Arguably, it would be better, more “economically efficient”, to have car-commuters pay their costs directly. The cost of “free” parking are huge (see Donald Shoup’s book “the High Cost of Free Parking” referenced here) and generally not reflected anywhere.

Bicyclists will benefit from $700 billion bailout The Arizona Republic Oct 10, 2008.

Bicycle Commuter Tax Break Is a Bittersweet Victory for Measure’s Sponsor New York Times Oct 10, 2008

bailout bill includes bike commuting-benefit Streetsblog, retreived Oct 12, 2008 has good commentary. And the Knowledgeproblem blog. The latter includes a link to .pdf of the senate version.

A shady backroom deal cooked up between Napolitano and the Arizona Home Builders is almost too much to bear. It seems the home builders have engineered a way to escape any extra taxation (impact fees) by helping out the governor with another of here proposals. More here: nototime.blogspot.com including an image of the leaked agreement

As a tactic to derail TIME’s proposition (should it make it to the ballot), no-new-taxes lawmakers are preparing their own legislative initiative. This would set up a situation where potentially there could be two similar but competing ballot propositions both dealing with “transportation”. Rep. Russell Pearce’s legislation would put a ballot proposition that would levy a 1/2 percent addition general state sales tax whose revenues would be used for building roads. This is meant to stick it in the eye of TIME’s proposition which spends some of its revenue on public transportation — but not very much, 78% is on roads and freeways and only around 20% is on public transit. Rival Transportation Plan Posed, Arizona Republic, May 30, 2008.