Watch as I link to Megan McArdle making a sensible case for a conventional -- and correct! -- liberal view: we should shift the balance of subsidy away from roads and toward mass transit. I even found the link via Brad DeLong.
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Is This Okay?
01 Oct 2007 10:02 pm
Comments (17)
I don't think you're reading Megan correctly. She doesn't want to spend money on mass transit. She wants to charge people to use roads, so that important people like her can get where they're going in a hurry.
Actually, that's unfair, because if you read some of her other entries, you'll find out that she doesn't own a car (but she still wants toll roads), but, really shocking, she wants DC suburbanites in Va and Md to pay DC taxes, to pay for DC roads for her to bicycle on.
Frankly, this doesn't sound libertarian to me. I live in DC (and don't own a car or a bike), but I think it's ridiculous to expect outsiders to pay taxes, not the least reason being that the DC government already has plenty of money. It simply wastes so much of it. I also don't understand why people complain about the roads in DC. I rent a car from time to time. Are they driving in Anacostia? I doubt it.
Give DC back to Maryland! Give California and Texas back to Mexico, Mass. back to England and Montana back to the Injuns.
McArdle: Dude, you've linked to her occasionally over the years, and everytime I follow it, I think, 'Well, OK, Matt likes her' and then I read it for awhile and realize I've just blown minutes (which eventually will add up to hours) reading something I coulda got it in a less awful way from somebody else who might be, you know, actual libertarians, who like actual liberty. Or, for that matter, actual liberals. As opposed to whatever the hell it is she's doing.
So no follow linky.
max
['"I have this terrible inability to remember the names of authors whose books I do not like." -- some dude']
The rent control bait and switch was a clever touch. Has she declared war on her commenters?
I hate trafffic as much as the next person, but forcing people to pay to drive on the roads they have already been paying for all these years is not a winning political policy. Roads are already highly subsidised by users through all kind of taxes. And these drivers also subsidise public transit which in almost every case that I've read about cannot pay for themselves.
People like cars for a reason. Cars are increadibly convinent. They also give people the power of instant mobility. if I want to drive to washington DC and as Megahn McCardle what the hell is up, I can leave right after I finish this post. This is the kind of power tht people attributied to the gods in the olden days. To cross the contentnt at a whim. Most people are going to be pretty reluctant to give that up.
No, it's not ok. I don't even see why you call it a liberal view. Are you in favor of more bridges collapsing? What kind of asshole do you have to be to try to incentivize mass transit by making our roads more dangerous?
Is this like the preaching dog? Not much of a sermon, but c'mon, not bad for a dog? Or a broken clock? Right twice a day?
Talk about soft bigotry of low expectations.
Maybe she's smart and wonderful in person. Not so much in print. She does, however, make a great lightning rod.
Matt, does your contract with the Atlantic stipulate that you have to provide a certain number of links to the other Atlantic bloggers? And why is it that you only seem to link to people in the center and on the right. Don't you like to read anybody who is to your left?
I think you erred in referring to mass transit. You actually meant public transportation. The masses drive to work in their own cars. They drive because it is faster, they have more control, and it gives them more choices. Cars are also one of the most liberating things for women. Women feel safer in cars and can work when they have school age children. Working mothers cannot depend on public transportation to get them home in case of a sick child or family emergency.
"Is This Okay?"
I think the problem people have is that you're linking to Megan McArdle, a sloppy thinker and a conservative hack who happens to be a buddy of yours. If you were looking to link to good arguments for urbanization and mass transit, you could link to any number of actual liberal bloggers who do the job better, like Brad Plumer or the folks at Grist. But instead you link to McArdle again, and so instead of making a point about mass transit, it looks like you're just being defensive and petulant about your personal and professional relationships. "See? She's not totally wrong about everything! Now get off my back!" But we're not reading the blog to see you justify your friendships; some of us are reading the blog because we're actually interested in politics and policy, and we'd like you actually write about these policies, not write about how support for these policies makes your friends slightly better people.
The reason your readers are upset about the constant linking to McArdle, in case you haven't figured it out, is that most of us think there are a lot of better writers you could be linking to instead. Try reading and linking to people to your left for a while - even if they're people you don't rub elbows with in person.
I too am resisting the temptation, but for the commenters wanting better stuff on mass transit, here's a great case for fare-free public transit.
Advance Transit in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire and Vermont goes fare-free, and has the highest ridership in the state with the exception of the UNH system (which I believe is also free to riders).
"The masses drive to work in their own cars. They drive because it is faster, they have more control, and it gives them more choices."
This is not entirely true. For short commutes, a car is definitely faster than a bus or a train. However, for long daily commutes from a suburb to a large urban downtown like Chicago or LA or NYC, taking the train is often much faster than driving all the way, so long as you use your car to travel from home to the train station.
I live in south suburban Chicago and commute to work in downtown Chicago. In my case, my daily commute to work by the Metra train (including my short drive from my house to the train station)takes 50 minutes. If I were to drive all the way to work, this same commute would take 75 minutes (on a good day). I would lose 15 minutes due to traffic jams on the expressway and in downtown Chicago, and then another 10 minutes from parking my car.
As for the control issue, the reality is mixed. Yes, with a car I can leave at any time, but I don't have full control over how long my commute will take. Traffic on Chicago's expressways can slow your commute down enormously, and if there is an accident, you can lose anywhere from 15 minutes to a whole hour, depending on how badly the accident backs traffic up. So even in the case of an emergency, traveling by Metra train from downtown Chicago back to the suburbs in often faster and more reliable. The car comes in handy, however, for travelling from the train station to the hospital.
One benefit of public transportation (vs. cars or bikes) is that you don't have to come back the same way you go. For example, in the two cities I've lived in over the past 10 years, I've lived around 5-7 miles from my office. So, I run to work. To come back home, I take the train. Or a cab if I'm in a rush. Or my wife and daughter drive up and meet me for dinner and I go back with them. Or I get a ride home with a friend. Whatever.
You can't do that with a car -- if you drive it to work, you have to drive it home. Which means no post-work happy hour. And if you go somewhere with somebody, you drive separate cars.
Total commute time non-car (assuming running in and training home): 77 minutes.
Total commute time car: 35 minutes.
But, in the extra 32 minutes, I get a 5-7 mile run in, plus I get to read the paper on the train on the way home. Also, I save probably 15 minutes bathroom time because I shower/dress/etc. a LOT faster at the office than at home.
When I think that the Atlantic decided to hire a thumb-sucker like McArdle as their token woman when there are so many talented, hard-working woman bloggers who are doing important and pioneering work - Lindsay Beyerstein is my own favorite but there are others - I could just spit.
We should agree that using cars to commute is one thing, using a cars to go shopping, go on vacation, haul building materials, visit friends, etc, is another. Mass transit works for communting (in the sense that it moves a lot of people a few specific location to a few other specific locations) but it doesn't work for the other things. We need lots of ideas ( I like the idea of car sharing) and we need to really think about costs vrs. benefits.
Re: The car comes in handy, however, for travelling from the train station to the hospital.
I take the train often, but I regularly have days when I have to drive since there are errands to run. Too many businesses (banks and post offices, for example) are only open during normal working hours and unless you are lucky enough to work within walking distance of these places, you will need to drive out to them during lunch hour.
Comments closed October 15, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
"Is This Okay?"
I don't know. I found myself agreeing with her take on the fed and headline-vs-core inflation. But I was mostly out of my league.
Obviously urbanite liberals will end up making common cause with greenish quasi-libertarians from time to times.
Read her comments on rent control and you'll be returned to your normal -- and correct -- poster vis-a-vis McMegan.
Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | October 1, 2007 10:19 PM