No Light Rail in Vancouver!
Light rail costs too much, does too little
“Choice” as a Rhetorical Device
A couple of weeks ago, I asked what we should call Portland’s transit and real-estate
development mafia if not the light-rail mafia. Loyal opponent Dan S suggested the
“greater choice mafia.” This, of course, reflects the repeated claim of smart-growth
planners that all they are doing is offering people more housing and transportation
choices.
Bull. If someone wants to live in high-density housing, they can find it. Most Americans
don’t, so there isn’t as much high-density housing as low density. But it is there.
Planners want to turn it around — to get more people living in high densities than
in low. That’s not offering people a choice — it is taking away America’s preferred
type of housing from a large share of American families.
If someone wants to take public transportation, they can find it. Most Americans
don’t, so public transportation doesn’t go as many places as highways. Planners want
spending to be the reverse — where 80 percent of travel is by car, they want to spend
80 percent of our transportation dollars on public transit. That’s not offering people
a choice — it is taking away (or at least making more costly) America’s preferred
method of mobility from a large share of American travelers.
Taking a rocket ship to work is a choice. So is a hot-air balloon. Living in a underground
cavern is a choice. So is living in an undersea city. Why aren’t planners giving
us these choices? They would be ridiculously expensive, but then, so is light rail.
More realistically, living on a 40-acre hobby farm and commuting to work in a city
on uncongested roads is a choice. But planners want to deny such choices to people.
In Oregon, if you own 40 acres, it is almost certainly against zoning rules for you
to build a house on it. And uncongested commuting in a single-occupancy vehicle?
Forget it. If you aren’t willing to take rail transit, you don’t deserve uncongested
roads.
The worst part about the choice claim is that those who make it not only want to
take your choices away, they want to make you pay for their choices. A light-rail
line costs $50 to $170 million per mile — money that its users won’t ever be expected
to pay? So what. It gives people a choice. High-density housing requires huge subsidies
such as tax-increment financing? So what. There is a pent-up demand for such housing
(though those who supposedly demand it won’t have to pay the cost).
Portlanders had a choice. They voted “no” on the south and north light-rail lines.
Yet Portland is building them anyway. Some choice.
The choice argument is rhetoric. Worse, it is Newspeak: saying exactly the opposite
of what the planners mean. Planners are experts at Newspeak. When they talk about
how bad congestion will be in the future unless we do something about it, what they
mean is how bad congestion will be in the future if we let them decide what to do
about it. When they say “traffic calming,” they mean “congestion building.”
Just one more reason to abolish the planning profession. Thank you, Dan, for bringing
up this issue.
Reprinted from The Antiplanner
