Posted on 08/30/2009 11:41:26 PM PDT by ari-freedom
People and businesses waste time, fuel and money stuck in traffic. How much would regional economies grow if traffic conditions were free-flowing instead of jammed?
My new Reason Foundation study, written with Gregory Fields and Adrian Moore, looks at how reducing gridlock would increase economic output and worker productivity in eight cities across the country. The results show how much cities stand to gain if they increase mobility around key destinations like universities, suburbs and retail shopping centers. Once free-flow conditions were achieved, the Gross Regional Product of these areas would see major annual gains:
* Reducing Atlanta's Congestion Could Boost Economy by $15 Billion, Produce $1 Billion in New Tax Revenues
* Reducing Charlotte's Congestion Could Give $22 Billion Boost to Economy, $1 Billion in New Tax Revenues
* Reducing Dallas' Congestion Could Boost Economy by Over $40 Billion, Add $3 Billion in New Tax Revenues
* Reducing Denver's Congestion Could Boost Economy by Over $38 Billion, Add $2 Billion in New Tax Revenues
* Reducing Detroit's Congestion Could Boost Economy by Over $7 Billion, Add $500 Million in New Tax Revenues
* Reducing Salt Lake's Congestion Could Spur $700 Million In Economic Growth
* Reducing the Bay Area's Congestion Could Boost Economy by Over $10 Billion, Add $750 Million in New Tax Revenues
* Reducing Congestion Around Seattle Could Bring $13 Billion Boost to Economy
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.org ...
Some people have the corniest ideas! Do people actually get paid to think these things up?
?
I remember that illegals staged protest sometime ago.. don’t show up for work or something. traffic was a bliss.
I don't think so...
Reducing the governments of these cities by 50%, and taxes on the people by 50%, is a better way to boost their economies.
well you reduce govt by only spending money on worthwhile infrastructure projects and not on bike roads or high speed rail. People want to drive but the left wants to push everyone towards mass public transit. They don’t want to deal with traffic congestion because they hope people will get so sick of it that they’ll switch to public transit.
There, the left is happy...
If, big IF, there was some infrastructure spending that would achieve this goal, this would be a logical place to focus the Porkulus (before it has dribbled all away).
However. I believe people would react to increased road capacity by driving more, vitiating at least some of the savings.
why do you think they wanted to destroy all those ‘clunkers’? They hate cars and it’s not just about pollution. Cars=individual freedom and they want to be in control and have everyone together in the same deal.
The article presumes that lots of people would rather go downtown for xyz, but don’t due to the traffic.
If congestion is eased, more people will be able to drive downtown.
This in turn would mean more money spent downtown, more taxes etc.
That makes sense. The Dems seem to almost always bet against individual choice.
To de-congest the downtown might be like trying to put a gallon of milk into a quart bottle. There’s only so much space.
I don’t think this is realistic anyhow. People will drive across a metro area to another suburb before spending a similar amount of time to go downtown.
Couldn’t agree more with the sentiment. Those powerful cars have got to go.
Many of the jackasses who develop policy are in love with the New York lifestyle. “If only we could grow up to use taxis, the subway, and buses to get everywhere we want to go.”
Gag me with a pitchfork!
Implausible for one reason. The smaller cars pushed by C4C allow packing more people on the road. If that’s where liberals don’t want people to be, they did it backwards.
I think they did it intending a boost to the newly gummit taken over companies, GM and Chrysler.
They'll begin to reduce traffic congestion when they finally start utilizing smart technology to control traffic signals, instead of $10,000 timers from the 50s and 60s. For a fraction of the price of a "timer" a sophisticated system could optimize traffic signal switching to help keep the traffic moving.
bump
Cities don’t even sever a purpose anymore...look at Detroit.
They’re chasing a ghost.
They did do it to boost GM. I don’t doubt that. Did GM get the lion’s share of the “bidness”? Of course not! LOL, the government is a comedy of errors. Foreign owned manufactured cars made up a very large portion of the new sales. Obama wound up undercutting GM more than helping it. All those new sales means that about 8 out of 10 people who bought cars, won’t be buying a GM for the next five years. Those potential customers were lured away from an “American” car.
You watch the drought that GM sees now. Anyone thinking of buying a new car was lured in. Now what?
My comments about trying to get cars off the road were based on more than this program. Here in LA they simply refuse to build more infrastructure. There are a variety of ways they could ease traffic congestion that would allow people to remain in their cars. They refuse to do it.
If our grandparents and parents had been as near sighted as these fools, we wouldn’t even have freeways. The government we get now is a major embarrassment to mankind.
IF... they had a gov't-definition clunker to tender. Folks who were tooling around in old Escorts and Neons were no better off. No matter if the transmissions were falling out and they never passed emissions tests.
Well, the real definition was gas mileage. You had to show increased mileage with the new car or no deal. There were different levels of payout too. If you only increased your mileage a little, they cut the cash for your clunker.
Still, this was an awful lot of cars in a very short period of time. I still think we’ll see moans about the empty show rooms coming up.
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