The disconnect Kaminski, and others of his ideological ilk, is this; that somehow streets can be made safer by ever-expanding the number and speed of privately operated motor vehicles. But this is simply not possible. Faster and more always equals more dead; mostly more motorists, but also more dead peds, and more dead bicyclists. The numbers are stark; comparing e.g. Phoenix with Seattle (metro areas), the Dangerous by Design survey estimates Phoenix to be FOUR TIMES more deadly to pedestrians than Seattle. The number spills over not just in pedestrian deaths, but also cyclists deaths, and also to MOTORISTS deaths; see e.g. Beyond Safety in Numbers: why bike friendly cities are safer (for everybody).

Thus Kaminski rejects car-user-fees as hair-brained; yet motorists are the source of enormous externalities — economic impacts that aren’t paid for by their users — from air pollution (never mind ‘global warming’), to mayhem, to free parking.

By the way, McGinn has only been mayor for the past two years; I’m not suggesting that McGinn has made it safer. It was already safe, relatively speaking — due in no small part to its general overall “anti-car” culture.

What about fuel and other specific use taxes (like the VLT… for more, see Road Taxes)? They’re simply not enough. Automobility does not generate enough tax revenue to sustain itself, thus these subsidies to drivers paid from general funds. Not to mention any of the litany of externalities caused by driving — free parking, pollution, mayhem, etc.

Some Valley freeway projects will be delayed up to five years by a sharp downturn in revenues prompted in part by the recession, regional transportation officials say.
Proposition 400, approved by Maricopa County voters in 2004, imposed a countywide half-cent sales tax for 20 years to fund regional transit projects – freeways, streets, buses and light rail.
maricopa-county-proposition-400-funds-shortage.html

40 YEARS of sales taxes to build freeways

Here are a few of the ins-and-outs of this tax, as you can see it started in 1985, was renewed for another 20 year run starting in 2005 — in other words it is more or less permanent; see e.g. this AzRepublic article (my emphasis added):

Q: What does Proposition 400 do?

A: It would extend for another 20 years a half-cent transportation sales tax in Maricopa County that was first approved in 1985 to fund freeway construction. Without voter approval for an extension, the tax expires at the end of 2005.

Q: How much would be spent on each type of transportation in the MAG plan?
A: Of the $15.8 billion dedicated to program funding, $9 billion, or 57 percent, would fund freeways; $2.7 billion, or 17 percent, would fund the regional bus system; $2.3 billion, or 15 percent, would fund light-rail expansion; and $1.5 billion, or 9 percent, would fund arterial streets.
The remaining 2 percent would fund air-quality programs, bike and pedestrian routes and planning activities.

The 2010 Five-year update

Apparently there is a mandated audit to be performed every five years by the AZ Auditor General, here is the detailed report. The AZ Republic did a news story timed with its release, though it didn’t say much.

The detailed report has some pie charts that don’t exactly match up with the Q&A; for example it shows, in percentages exactly 3 components: Freeways 56.2, Transit 33.3, and Arterials 10.5% One guesses that the 2 percent catch-all (which includes bike and ped planning) is snuck in somewhere. The report gives no details on the ancillary activities. Oh, and I learned a new acronym: RARF, the Regional Area Road Fund is where the prop 400 sales tax monies go. (the HURF, Highway User Revenue Fund, is where motor fuel taxes and vlt goes).

The light rail came off pretty well; noting the thing was built on schedule and just slightly under-budget. Peer-city comparisons were generally favorable.

State officials posted the Valley’s eighth ozone pollution advisory of the season Tuesday, a fact clean-air activists noted repeatedly as they argued against a plan to repeal Arizona’s vehicle-emissions rules barely six months after they took effect. Arizona’s plan to cut clean-car program criticized by activists

It is worth pointing out to nervous cyclists that the large majority of traffic death and destruction is done by drivers of automobiles to other motorists (see, e.g. the chart here). This is to be expected, of course, since the large majority of traffic is motoring.

—

Here are a couple of  recent, local incidents… out of control “accidents” all –

Girl critically injured, was standing on the sidewalk, May 6, 2011: Deette Lynn Perry, 54, was arrested Friday after she was discharged from the hospital, where she had been admitted following the May 6 incident, Sgt. Steve Martos of the Phoenix Police Department said. Perry was in a 2004 Nissan Altima near Thomas Road and 23rd Avenue when she drove onto the sidewalk and struck a 17-year-old girl, Martos said. Police suspect Perry was impaired by drugs, Martos said. The girl suffered a fractured pelvis and severe head injuries, Martos said.

Another:

Tourist killed at Phoenix intersection The Arizona Republic, Glen Creno – Aug. 19, 2010

An Australian tourist crossing a Phoenix street was killed late Tuesday when a sport-utility vehicle slammed into him, authorities said Wednesday…The SUV was moving so fast the victim was dismembered by the impact. Witnesses told police the vehicle apparently ran a red light…Ramzy Khalil, 29, of New South Wales, was hit and thrown across the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Camelback Road about 10 p.m. Tuesday… Police declined to identify the driver of the SUV, who told police he had some sort of medical emergency behind the wheel. Authorities declined to say what that emergency was…The SUV driver was not seriously hurt but remained in a hospital Wednesday for treatment of the medical condition…

another:

This driver drove up ON THE SIDEWALK, killing a man, striking another, and then fled the scene. How often does this happen (running down pedestrians on the sidewalk? See also the Lance Adams killing see also killing of ‘top doc’ Richard Pavese) .           [azcentral][KOLD]

Man arrested in fatal hit & run in Phoenix, Associated Press – July 30, 2010 6:34 PM ET, PHOENIX (AP) – Authorities say a Phoenix man has been arrested on suspicion of leaving the scene of a fatal hit & run accident. Phoenix police say 35-year-old Hermida Lester was walking with family members on a sidewalk north of Bell Road on Thursday night when she was hit by a car. Police say 26-year-old Jeremy Johnson apparently drove his vehicle up on the sidewalk and it struck Lester and her 20-year-old sister. They say Lester was killed and her sister sustained minor injuries. The vehicle was found abandoned a short distance away from the accident and police say Johnson apparently got a ride to a friend’s home in Mesa. Johnson was taken into custody Friday by Mesa police and booked into jail.

another:

[ktar] Car jumps curb, kills Walgreens employee, by Jeremy Foster/News-Talk 92.3 KTAR (June 1st, 2010 @ 4:17pm)

PEORIA, Ariz. – A tragedy at a west Valley drug store Tuesday. It happened in the parking lot of a Walgreen’s near Lake Pleasant Road and Beardsley. ”A Honda Accord being driven by an 87-year-old from Peoria was pulling into a parking lot, and for some reason instead of hitting the breaks she hit the gas pedal,” said Mike Tellef with Peoria Police. Tellef said that’s when the car jumped the curb. ”And then struck a 65-year-old female employee of the store who was sitting on a bench taking a break,” he said. Police said the victim is Alice Fielding, who was pronounced dead at the hospital. There was no impairment involved and no charges are expected to be filed against the driver.

another:

No charges will be filed against a 16-year-old Mesa girl who accidentally ran over and killed her 17-year-old brother in the Superstition Springs Mall parking lot on Saturday, authorities said.

Nicole M. Brock, a student at Red Mountain High School, had only been driving for four months when she dropped off her brother, Dwight J. Brock Jr., 17, shortly before 9:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Dwight started jumping in front of the car Nicole was driving, forcing her to slam on the brakes. Dwight was run down and killed when Nicole was unable to stop for an unknown reason, but it is possible that she may have confused the accelerator with the brake, said Sgt. Ed Wessing, a Mesa police spokesman…

[arizonarepublic] Jan 4, 2010

…

Here is the incident that originally (lately) got me thinking about this issue:

Fairfax county (Virginia) out-of-control SUV kills both cyclist and its driver. [washpost] May 21, 2010, 4pm: Bicyclist Abdelouahid Chadli, 18 was killed by an out of control SUV driver Gary Anthony Thorne, 31. The SUV veered across 6 lanes of traffic, jumped a curb and hit the cyclist on a (an apparently) separated bicycle path, and continue on to hit a large tree with such force that the driver was killed.

It is not known what caused the driver to go out of control. There are no known medical conditions, but some sort of sudden medical impairment is suspected — we’ll have to wait for the investigation.

Funding for local roads (the roads that both cyclists and motorists use) are paid for heavily through state and local tax general funds — not user fess like gasoline taxes. Cyclists are paying their way, just like everybody else.

Most/much of the direct user fees that motorists pay do go to fund freeways (limited access highways). These roads are used exclusively (with minor exceptions) by motorists — and yet even then the fees are not high enough, and have to be supplemented from other sources, like general sales taxes.

Specifics vary depending on location but the general theme is similar throughout the US.

What follows are specifics as we do things here in Arizona, and specifically Maricopa County and the Phoenix Metro area.

The HURF

Arizona levies two taxes directly upon motorists and the proceeds are termed the “HURF” (Highway User’s something Fund). The two souces are; motor fuel taxes, and VLT (Vehicle License Tax, a fee paid yearly based on the value of a motor vehicle).

Because the rate on gasoline is levied per gallon, 18.5 cents per gallon, and hasn’t changed since 199?, the amounts available to the HURF have been dwindling.

usgovernmentspending.com has some good charts of, e.g. ARizona state spending broken down in categories like education, police, transportation, etc.

Freeway Sales Tax

Maricopa county levies a 0.25% (check that) 20-year SALES tax to build freeways. First approved in 1985, it was set to expire in 2005 but extended for another 20 years by “Proposition 400″. The split was more favorable to public transit, but still heavily favors freeway spending. The most vociferous opposition came from those who specifically thought that not enough of the money would be used for freeways, and in particular hated that any monies would be spent on light-rail. See e.g. Prop. 400 foe wants to stop light rail., Arizona Republic, Sept 23, 2004.

I note that bicyclists do not ride bikes on freeways (in fact, bicycles are banned from freeways in the metro area).

So, the freeway sales tax is just another externality of automobility — drivers not paying their way.

Background on Federal Tax

The federal levy on fuel is much the same story — it is based solely on a per-gallon charge of 18.4 cents per gallon gasoline THAT HASN’T GONE UP SINCE !993! Of course, the price level has gone up a lot since then, so the amount of real dollars keeps falling. If 18.4 was the “right” amount in 1993, the rate should be raised to ~ 28 cents/gal (2011 dollars). These missing dollars of course still get spent, replace from other sources like general funds; funds that everybody pays, not just drivers.

A minority of the fuel tax funds (about 15%) is spent on mass transit, and 0.1 cents of it is spent on cleanup for leaking underground fuel storage tanks.

Historical gasoline fuel tax rates from Table 1 CRS report:

There are also some excise taxes aimed at heavy trucks — based on the obvious theory that heavier vehicles cause more wear and tear on roads and bridges.

Maricopa County’s ozone season starts today with a fresh burst of heat and sunlight, two key ingredients needed for unhealthful levels of the smog to form.

Temperatures could rise to nearly 100 degrees today as a strong high-pressure system creates the ideal conditions for ground-level ozone. The other elements – vehicle exhaust, power-plant emissions, gasoline, paint and industrial solvents – are always in abundant supply.  Read more…

My gripe? While I agree that vehicle exhaust is always in abundant supply, I don’t imagine power plants contribute any significant amount of pollution to the Phoenix area. The closest big power plant is Palo Verde nuke which is by definition smog-free. There are a bunch of small-scale power plants within the valley but they tend to be natural gas fired, which is very very clean smog-wise. The nearest big coal plant, which are among other pollutants very smoggy are hundreds (?) of miles away.

I wonder how much of smog is contributed other than from vehicle exhaust (and fueling)?? I doubt very much.

Experts warn of poor Valley air quality The Arizona Republic. A familiar brown cloud is settling over a cool, dry Valley, prompting air-quality experts to warn that residents could be in for a particularly dirty winter.

Bad air expected for Valley through the holidays Bob McClay/KTAR PHOENIX — The Valley’s brown cloud season has arrived, with poor air quality that irritates respiratory systems … Mark Shaffer with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. …said the high pressure creates an air bubble that collects ozone below 5,000 feet.

For those of you who don’t follow such minutia, the Phoenix area is what is termed a “Serious Non-Attainment Area” for various forms of air pollution. This leads to, of course, some amount of human misery especially via various lung diseases, but it also brings the specter of loss of federal funds if the air isn’t cleaned up. Some local (state, or maybe county?) agency must produce a plan to clean up the air to the satisfaction of the EPA; that plan (critique here dated 9/13/2010: EPA Disapproves Air Quality Plan for Phoenix ) was rejected in part because “EPA has determined that the SIP (State Implementation Plan) over-emphasized emission reductions needed from construction-related activities and de-emphasized emission reductions from other sources”, you know,  other source like, for example, those produced as a result of using motor vehicles.

So the story is that Washington D.C. enacted a law that mandates that anyone who sells food must charge 5 cents for each bag given. Customers can either bring their own bags, or not use a bag, or pay the nickel. There were the usual predictions of the world coming to an end, however the WSJ story claims no major disruptions have occurred, and even some who opposed the tax initially now have changed their minds.

The bags often become floating trash and muck-up the Chesapeake watershed — a negative externality. The tax is designed to cut disposable plastic bag consumption and, it is hoped, plastic bag waterway pollution by 50%.

Here where I live, we have no such bag tax, of course, but it is trendy for grocery retailers to offer customers a nickel credit for each bag brought in that is then reused — a positive incentive.

Looking around here, it is obvious that the (coincidentally) equal positive incentive has had very little impact on bag usage, whereas the incentive in D.C. has had a large impact. I’ve also noticed that initially the grocers offering the incentive volunteered the credit, and now they seem to “forget” or not notice to give the credit unless the customer points it out, and most/many aren’t likely to do that to earn a nickel or a dime.

I’m thinking there must be a lesson here for things like free parking; which is that positive incentives have little impact, while negative incentives have a huge influence on behaviors.

The basic gist is that everything you “know” about power, particularly if you are an American, is wrong. His data is no doubt correct, but I think he goes out of his way to sometimes mislead. For example he claims that the United States economy is somehow very energy efficient. To prove his point he gives figures for the change in energy intensity over some period shows that the US is “winning”, beating such countries as France and others. The trouble is, a simple trip to wikipedia shows that actual, and not the percentage change in,  energy intensity (power used per unit of economic output),the US continues to lag behind other industrialized nation, particularly of western europe and the UK. Furthermore, our large houses and large vehicles really drives our per capita energy consumption through the roof where it is around twice as high as countries such as the UK, France, Germany to name a few.

So contrary to what the author would have you believe, the US economy and lifestyle is, in fact, energy-gobbling.

On page 50 he says, referring to his skepticism about anthropogenic global warming, “…I adhere to one of the oldest maxims in science: Correlation does not prove causation”, then right on the next page “increasing energy consumption equals higher living standards. Always. Everywhere”.  I would posit/accuse the author of implying that the higher consumption of the US causes a higher standard of living — but that is nonsense; the typical person could trade in his sedan for an SUV using twice the fuel… and this wouldn’t create any wealth. I wouldn’t argue that Bangladeshis, for example as the lowest per capita energy consumption at fifty times less per capita energy use that Americans, could greatly benefit; just that Americans could stand to use less with no loss in wealth.

The book generally makes no mention of conservation at all, when in fact conservation has the least impact. forget coal vs. natural gas vs. nuclear;

The answer to his complaint that wind power’s variability requires too much backup (usually natural gas) could be addressed by smart-metering, which he doesn’t mention. Smart metering coupled with real-time demand pricing causes (either automatically, or financially) consumers to lower their demand during non-windy times.

He strangely either doesn’t talk at all(? or maybe mentions in passing) direct solar generation of electricity, either PV, Photo Voltaic, or thermal. Here in the desert where i live, it seems like direct generation eliminates the wind-variability problem that he dwelled on with windmills — that is to say that when the sun in out bright and shining is exactly when the highest electric grid loads are. So direct generation is a great for peak loads, the thermal even has a couple of hour lag in it which again matches up well to peak demand loads.

His ultimate solution he dubs N2N: Natural Gas to Nuclear — he wants way more natural gas consumption coupled with eventually way more nuclear. He does mention various problems of all sorts and even mentions that many of these things are externalities; but he doesn’t seem to think that is a problem, or suggest solutions (such as taxing pollution; or taxing mountain-top removal; or fixing coal ash pond problems), he just kind of supposes that we should accept it because that’s the way it is.

—-

What is an externality?

I also just got done reading Superfreakonomics by economist Steven Levitt and journalist Stephen Dubner. (and by the way, lots of good stuff on the Freakonomics blog). It was a worthy follow-on to their earlier bestseller Freakonomics, and is eminently readable. I particularly liked the definition, from page 171:

What’s an externality? It’s what happens when someone takes an action, but someone else, without agreeing, pay some or all of the costs of that action.  An externality is an economic version of taxation without representation.

If you happen to live downwind of fertilizer factory, the ammonium stench is in externality. When your neighbor throws a big party (and you don’t have the courtesy to invite you), their ruckus is in externality.

Secondhand cigarette smoke is an externality, as is the stray gunshot one drug dealer meant for another that instead hit a child on the playground.

The greenhouse gases thought to be responsible for global warming are primarily externalities. When you have a bonfire in your backyard, you’re not just toasting marshmallows. You’re also emitting gases that in a tiny way, help heat the whole planet. Every time you get behind the wheel of a car, eat a hamburger, or fly in an airplane, you’re generating some byproducts that you’re not paying for.

Imagine a fellow named Jack, who lives in a lovely house — he buildt himself — and comes home from work. The first warm day of summer. All he wants is to relax and cool off. So he cranks the air conditioner all the way up. Maybe he thinks for a moment about the extra dollar or two he will pay on his next electricity bill. But the cost isn’t enough to deter him. What he doesn’t think about is the black smoke from the power plant that burns the coal that heats the water that turns the steam fills the turbine spins the generator. That makes the power to cool the house that Jack built. Nobody thinks about the environmental costs associated with mining and trucking away that coal, or the associated dangers. In the United States alone more than 100,000 coal miners died on the job over the past century, with another estimated 200,000 dying later from black lung disease. Now those are externalities. Thankfully coal mining deaths have plummeted in the United States to an average of about 36 per year. But if Jack happened to live in China, local deaf externality would be much steeper; at least 3000 Chinese coal miners died on the job each year. It’s hard to blame Jack for not thinking about externalities. Modern technology is so proficient that often masks the costs associated with our consumption is nothing visibly dirty about the electricity that these checks air conditioner. It just magically appears as if it were out of a fairy tale. If there were only a few Jacks in a world or even a few million noone would care. But as the global population hurtles toward 7 billion, all those externalities add up. So who should be paying for them?

…

“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]