An article in Salon last week, entitled Who says Americans won't ride mass transit? contained some interesting factoids:
- Like mass transit systems across the country, BART has experienced record ridership this year. In 2007, Americans took 10.3 billion trips on public transportation, the highest number since the Model T and its progeny took over the nation.
- Back in 1926, Americans each year took 147 transit rides per capita.
- By 1950, Americans took just 113 transit rides per capita, and by 1956 that number had plummeted to just 66. By 2006, Americans took just 33 transit trips a year per capita. In the decades since World War II, it has been only in the dense financial centers, like New York, Chicago and San Francisco, where transit has been able to stubbornly resist the rise of the car, remaining a major way for many residents to get around.
- In 1960, some 12 percent of all U.S. workers used transit to get to work. By 2000, that number was down to 4.7 percent, and in the past couple of years it has just barely ticked up to 4.9 percent.
- Since the early '80s, 15 major American cities, including San Diego, Portland, Ore., Denver, Houston, St. Louis, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, have built new light-rail systems from the ground up. Dozens of other cities are considering proposals for similar systems, or have them in development, such as Phoenix and Seattle.
So how do we go about making our cities and towns mass-transit-friendly? Seems to me that measures that lead to increased density will help support mass transit ... and that mass transit will support increased population density.
The best measure I know is shifting taxes onto land value. Sites well-served by infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, highways, airports, public transportation systems, ports, city water and sewer, stormwater runoff and, where needed, levees or hurricane protection, etc.) -- and services (e.g., schools, emergency response for small- and large-scale emergencies, public health, courts, etc.) -- and in places made desirable by nature (e.g., good views, waterfront, access to recreation, an appealing climate, a reliable supply of clean water, etc.) and good laws (e.g., limiting pollution, unpleasant smells, noise, etc.), efficient and uncorrupted government, and a healthy economy (with smart incentives and few disincentives to productivity, good infrastructure, logical and efficient services provided by the government, particularly in natural monopolies) have tremendous value. For a good example of this, see this post.
When we tax land value lightly, those who own choice sites can choose whether to sit and wait -- without lifting a finger -- for the rise in land value they can reasonably expect to occur, or put the land to good use now. Putting the land to good use now creates jobs, housing, offices, retail spaces, density. Sitting and waiting produces nothing on that site, and leads to sprawl at the fringes. Should our landholders have that choice, or is putting such sites to something approaching their highest and best use sufficiently important to the community as a whole that we ought to have incentives to good land use? I'd say that reducing and reversing sprawl is sufficiently important that we ought to be taxing land value heavily.
And there are many other good reasons to do so beyond this one.
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