DigitalSciGuy
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Driving Trends
I acknowledge each and every one of these reasons and further add that driving trends have decreased on the whole, nationally and furthermore peaked in 2004. There are many factors at play and it's helpful to our main argument - Is parking too cheap? - to agree that we're all roughly saying the same thing, that for the forseeable future, multiple factors will be keeping that stagnant or pushing that down further. Regardless, this general dip in driving is an opportunity to:
- remove the justification for parking minimums to facilitate aggressive construction of much needed housing by making build costs more palatable for housing that satisfies the market between Section 8 and luxury housing
- reinvest in our transit and road networks on a fix-it-first basis
- implement a comprehensive parking management program within the confines of Boston and ideally throughout the metro area
Suffice it to say, energy cost and economy are but a couple of the many other factors contributing to a more sustained and profound change in driving trends than even the energy crisis of the 1970s, which doesn't even register as a blip on some charts. If anything, the energy costs show a weak correlation to the driving trend:
Cultural Shift - The Millennial Factor
We are roughly the second or third generation to have mostly grown up or partially experienced the suburbs in our childhood before college. My parents immigrated here from the Philippines, I was born in New York City, lived 5 years in 'advanced mutation suburbia' in Florida, spent the remainder of middle school and high school in the more classical suburbia of Long Island, went to school at RPI in a relatively tiny, but sprawling town in mid-state New York, and have lived here since. I'd like to think that this also affords me a unique experience of hyper density through to a step above rural, so I can frame my experiences in each, including mine here in Boston for the past ~5 years. No one I know from high school wants to ever go back to living on Long Island's suburbia. My only friend who lives in Florida's suburbs is there because that's where the construction jobs are and she desperately wants to be an Imagineer. Almost every peer I talk to wants to find a way to raise a family within Boston, though some are still going the suburban route and scoping detached homes to stake their claim. (These are usually also the same people I don't see eye-to-eye on issues of locality of shops and restaurants, smaller scale living, and the larger, more principal issue that Boston is inherently more expensive because of these conveniences and concessions, but need not be as expensive.)
I guess what I'm saying is that ultimately, a lot of us are doing the math because of our student loans and are beginning to see the true costs of car ownership - both out-of-pocket and less tangible externalities. That is to say, our students loans are making us appreciate the money coming into our bank accounts that much more and are forced at least once to run the calculation of owning a car. Add this to the wealth of information about deficient infrastructure, gas tax issues, implications of land use on commute time and energy consumption that is now not only accessible through 24-hour news streams, but also increasingly echoed in many of our social circles by mainstream news outlets. I think the underappreciated factor is what information technology has had on the transparency of costs around us. I'd argue that it has contributed more to a culture of knowledge and smarter decision-making than it has to telecommuting, but the effect of telecommuting on the national average of miles driven is easier to quantify than that of people making smarter decisions about car ownership. Suffice it to say, there has been enough of an effect of the need for and access to information and connectivity that it is definitely turning heads. I think we're going to see a larger number of people from the millennial generation stay in the city rather than about-face into the suburbs if/when they can afford it. Lower cost construction afforded by reduced/eliminated on-site parking requirements will give them more of a reason to stay.
Millennials aside, there is increasing pressure from other age brackets trying to enter the urban housing market because of many of the other transport costs that the city liberates them from and the conveniences it affords them.
Gas Tax - Transport Funding
Cynicism or not, many signs point to the fact that MassDOT, if anything, will be prioritising new funding or added leg room in the budget to increasing funding toward extended fix-it-first programs and not buying the equivalent of 'office chairs'. For the next several decades, there is no way there will be a budget surplus from any form of an indexed gas tax increase that would not go directly to continued maintenance or paying down existing mountains of debit.
In fact, with such public scrutiny, I can't ever see MassDOT or the MBTA for that matter, being allowed to ever have such luxuries as a budget surplus that has them needing to buy 'office chairs' to make sure they don't get the funding rug pulled from underneath them the next year. I think the only 'office chair' construction projects we'll be seeing will be 'equality' projects to spread the wealth and make the rest of the Commonwealth feel less spiteful of eastern Mass for the financial sink that was the Central Artery Project.
Also, ant, I don't know what luxurious budget you think MassDOT/the legislature is going to be gorging itself on, but even visualised at the massbudget.org site, increases in transport dollars would be paltry with a gas increase designed to compensate for and effectively continue to provide the same level of funding year over year.
Transport is already only the second or third smallest budget item year over year out of the entire Commonwealth's expenses. If you want to blame someone for the $16bn difference in the past 13 years, blame all the sick people and children for the non-adjusted revenues:
and costs:
Yes, a periodic reanalysis of the gas tax amount is a much better idea than not having revisited the subject in years and not having a plan to do so in the future. Also, with the external push from increasingly fuel efficient cars - and if the technocentric transport problem solvers of the world have their way, increasing replacement of our automobile fleet with electric cars - as well as driving trends that hint at them either decreasing or plateauing, not going back up, the gas tax is going to become less effective at raising revenue and have no effect whatsoever on drivers of electric vehicles. When push comes to shove, we'll have to revisit the transport funding issue another day anyway. Within the limits of reality, an indexed gas tax that is revisited periodically is one of the more politically feasible ways of improving transport funding at the moment...unless someone can outline a road to land taxing...
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