Panic-buying suburban real estate

Atlantic: Suburbia was never as bad as anyone said it was. Now it’s looking even better

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/06/pandemic-suburbs-are-best/613300/?utm_source=atl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=share

I enjoy the Atlantic, but I feel it’s necessary to recognize it’s essential NYC-centricity, and it’s propensity to be one-sided. Sometimes it’s articles read like (well-written) click-bait.

I regard the present ode to suburbia as something analogous to the panic-buying of toilet-paper. Seems like  good idea now, but regrettable later. People are going to panic-buy all sorts of things they aren’t going to use—chest freezers, etc.  For some people, that will include real estate.

Urban life is bleak right now, with the lock-down, and everything closed. That’s not going to last forever. Nor can everyone can work from home.  2/3 of people already have to be at their place of work to do their job. For the rest—some will keep working at home—they love spending time with family and the lack of commute. I expect those with the worst commutes and/or children will be most enthusiastic. I expect working mothers will be eager adoptees of working from home. I do expect to see enormous demand for home offices on that basis. But I also expect to see co-working spaces come back (albeit in a less open-plan format). However, not everyone can hack working from home, and not everyone is going to like it. I expect we’ll also see a growing backlash that companies are using employees homes rent-free. If working from home becomes more normal, the value of that ‘perk’ is going to decline, especially if their isn’t an option of an office available. I recall an anecdote about a bank in New York which permitted working from home full-time—they still anticipated having 800 desks for 2000 employees.

Mass Transit Account Origins

 A ways back, I said I'd look into whether the Mass Transit Account was the thing putting the Highway Trust Fund into the red. Turns out the reality is more complicated. From TransitCenter:

James Dunn describing how President Reagan’s secretary of transportation lobbied behind the scenes to win votes for a 1982 gas tax hike:

He began by solidifying the transit lobby’s support. He promised to create a mass transit account in the highway trust fund that would receive 20 percent of the revenue from a five cent per gallon tax hike (the “transit penny”). This convinced many big city Democrats and liberals to support the measure despite their concern over the effects of the tax on the poor.

And that, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where the Mass Transit Account comes from. A political bargain where transit got a penny and cars got four, in exchange for political support. Which, depending on your interpretation, may mean that transit got a penny of gas tax it had no right to...or that cars only got 4 pennies a gallon because of transit. 

Looking at the history of gas tax increases after which (5 more cents in 1990, 5 more again in 1993), creating the Mass Transit Account for gas tax money looks kind of silly.

 But if we look at the effects of inflation on gas tax over time, it becomes clear why the secretary of transportation might have been a little desperate in '82: the effective tax was lower than it had ever been, effectively about half today's level.

The reality is probably worse: The inputs to making roads (asphalt) were likely subject to higher than average inflation--asphalt and gasoline both come from oil, and refiners got cleverer about refining more of the dregs that would otherwise become asphalt into gasoline.

Needs based planning

"Needs-based planning defines a need as any shortcoming in current performance (or projected performance at current build levels) relative to a set understanding of what is acceptable. Potential remedies are evaluated based on whether the outlay required is less than the cost of imposing the deficiency on system users. However, under needs-based planning, there is limited consideration given to validating needs or questioning whether projected deficiencies would actually occur."

 Needs based planning is an antiquated paradigm--the 'predict and provide', an antiquity from the era when the Feds were paying for all the highway construction. Modern planning requires scenario planning--serious consideration of alternate investment approaches (and not just funding level specific scenarios). 

Planning Support Systems

Designing tools for other people seems helpful, but the history of the various ‘Planning Support Systems’ strongly suggests they are highly localized and context specific to answer certain questions in a certain way. Envision Tomorrow+ has seen only limited use, for example.  Unless a compliance agency mandates/encourages their use (MOVES/TBEST/STOPS), there is limited traction. They have to become (in the way travel models have) part of the institutional context.