[lordofthemark]

@consularrider 64226 wrote:

News reporting a shooting about an hour ago. Here’s hoping that all our forum members there are ok (as well as everyone else.)

I left Navy Yard metro at about ten minutes to nine, to see M street east of NJ blocked off to “traffic” (probably won’t let cyclists through) and what seemed like half of MPD heading east.

USDOT seemed fine, but they have since put us on shelter in place and lockdown. Also apparently Navy Yard metro is closed. The center of the crisis seems to have moved west up M Street.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63992 wrote:

I have this strange suspicion that I’m about ready to be voted off the island.:rolleyes:

divoisity is good.

heck, I’m so old, I remember when the kinds of views on economics I currently espouse were considered RIGHT wing. (maybe not within the profession, but iamong lay people)

[lordofthemark]

@JorgeGortex 63963 wrote:

In regards to the traffic calming point that people are discussing: if anyone thinks that traffic calming on this stretch of road is wise…

Note, traffic calming does not always mean traffic slowing – by reducing the number of accidents, and generally by smoothing speeds, in some instances traffic calming can actually reduce delays for motor traffic.

I also doubt this will have a major negative impact on folks living in the denser parts of NW Alexandria (I used to live there some time ago). But they are welcome to express their opinions.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63967 wrote:

But the lawyers make all the decisions in government.

(I agree methodologically BCAs by the government and business should be the same although governments being run by politicians likely have higher discount rates!)

At the corp where I worked the senior execs (who included lawyers) made the final decisions.

The issues relating to discount rates are complex. Im of the old Chicago school that says they should be project spefic based on non-diversifiable risk – but Ive seen that applied very very loosely in the private sector, and the issue hardly examined in the public sector.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63962 wrote:

I think I agree that making a property rights issue about the allocation of public spaces is inappropriate and is best to stick to (as if there is an alternative) a BCA analysis. Just make sure everyone’s interests are fairly considered.

Additionally, there are benefits to consistent government policy over time.

As I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight. It seems that the neighborhood got together and came up with a solution without parking spaces, which is fine by me. I only reacted when someone made the subsidy argument. One could make the same argument justifying the county setting some sort of experimental theater in the parking spaces in front of a house in some quiet residential neighborhood. If that were done in front of that posters’ house, I doubt that we would here the same subsidy argument. As I said, I think it depends on whose ox is being gored.

There are many better places to put experimental theaters – from indoor spaces, to stages in parks, to parking spaces in commercial areas http://www.king5.com/news/cities/seattle/Seattle-to-turn-parking-spots-into-little-parks-202786881.html

If there are better places to put a bike lane connecting Janneys Lane to old Town, that should be considered.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63886 wrote:

These parking spaces aren’t assigned to anyone. Bike lanes would be subsidized infrastructure to bicyclists who may not reside in Alexandria and therefore not pay relevant taxes.

A lot of Alexandria residents bike in DC. And in arlington. Probably not so many in FFX.

I am all for greater regionalism in transport funding. Probably more important for rail and highways than for bike lanes, but still.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63947 wrote:

It’s entirely different for a business decision. Government is coercion. If the government screws up a BCA, the people have to deal with the consequences. If a business screws up, it loses money.

The business case is done by agents, on behalf of shareholders (and, arguably, other stakeholders) Shareholders have recourse by various means – as do citizens as voters and participants in a free political system.

The distinction is ideological, its not economics. Its not science. ANd its irrelevant to the issue of considering second order effects. A faithful agent in a business will consider second order impacts until the likely gain from doing so is less than the cost of doing the BCA. A faithful govt economist doing a BCA will do exactly the same thing.

I have been in BOTH positions, and I can tell you I took the same approach, and faced the same issues when I did BCA for govt, and when I did NPV/IRR analysis for a major corp.

[lordofthemark]

dismal

thought experiment

The federal govt owns a building in downtown washington. John Doe makes it a point to lean on the side, at noon, and get a sun tan. The govt, decides it will save money on AC by putting up awnings over the windows. This means John Doe will no longer get a sun tan.

John Doe objects.

He says 1. the lost of his sun tan should be considered in the BCA 2. Even if the BCA for the awnings is still positive, he has a RIGHT to the suntan, because he has come to rely on it, and he should be compensated for the loss. If there are institutional obstacles to such compensation, the awnings should just not be put up.

We can call his free suntan a “subsidy” or we can refrain from doing so (who knows? maybe he once worked for the govt and was underpaid, or he was the victim of a distorted tax or whatever.

While I wouldnt object to including his suntan in the BCA, I think its pretty clear that invoking his “property right” as a rationale to stop the awnings even if they are BCA positive, is absurd.

Yet thats precisely what we see regularly on issues of development and transportation, with, I think, alleged rights to on street parking the most egregious such issue.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63924 wrote:

My property line does not extend to the sidewalk and street in front of my house. Why do I have to subsidize the county by shoveling and mowing their damn snow and grass over which I have no property right?

Actually that raises another point. If the on street space is your property, but with a public easement, like the sidewalk, then why are you NOT required to shovel the snow from the onstreet parking space?

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63936 wrote:

I even with cardinal utility, there is the question of interpersonal utility comparison. Is your util worth my util? Conceptually, BCA just expresses everything in dollars and assumes that everyone has the same marginal utility of income.

Thats a question that was around long before Ken Arrow, and I think is more philosophical than economic. I can accept that there issues when comparing utility across different incomes (does one dollar mean more or less to someone earning 20k than to someone earning 300k – and what does that tell us about BCA of big things like healthcare reform, or minimum wages) I personally very much doubt that its an issue between the owners of million dollar homes on King Street and average cyclists. I would say in that case its a tertiary order effect – if not actually obfuscation

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63926 wrote:

Yes. And make the cost benefit analysis explicit.

(Now if they would start with the Columbia Pike trolley…)

Its been done – there are some large issues that reasonable folks disagree about (the extent of rail preference among potential riders, the impact of rail infra on development, the operating issues with on street rail and with articulated buses, the lifecycle costs of articulated buses, etc). Its not helped by confusion about the alternatives (like opponents claiming the alt is BRT simillar to the Cleveland Healthline which is not possible there, like claims that bus can match street car volumes by use of articulated buses, while neglecting higher life cycle costs of articulated buses, etc)

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63924 wrote:

How does one do a proper cost/benefit analysis in light of the Arrow Impossibility Theorem? Are there biases implicit in the methodology of the BCA? In the process of eliminating things as second order effects?

My property line does not extend to the sidewalk and street in front of my house. Why do I have to subsidize the county by shoveling and mowing their damn snow and grass over which I have no property right?

As stated above, the impossibility theorem does not apply to BCA, which is not a rank ordered voting system. Knowing where to cut off secondary effects is a matter of art. Often dictated by the resources available to do the BCA. In which mattet it is NO different from the business case analysis done regularly in the private sector.

As for you shoveling the snow, thats a seperate question. Its orthogonal to whether bike lane gets built or not. BCA is not a weighing of subsidies. The BCA reason for requiring residents to shovel snow is that its efficient to do it that way – versus not doing it at all, or having the govt do it. However since utilitarianism is not as widely accepted as I might like, there is also a property argument. The sidewalk IS your property, though there is a public easement on it. We COULD give you property rights to the parking space on the road, however historically we generally dont. In parts of DC the govt owns your front yard and all you have is an easement. Im not sure the practical effects of that, other than to make it easier to widen streets without having to formally invoke eminent domain.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63899 wrote:

. (Note that whatever is the public good cannot really be defined–see the Arrow Impossibility Theorem in Economics.)

Its been a long time since Ive studied Arrow. Is this not correct? “Voting systems that use cardinal utility (which conveys more information than rank orders; see the subsection discussing the cardinal utility approach to overcoming the negative conclusion) are not covered by the theorem.”

IIUC the arrow system is about rank order voting systems, in which people rank order their preferred outcome, and vote. BCA is inherently an attempt to get the result that would have been obtained had people been able to weight their preferences by the extent of cost and benefit. Ergo, the Impossibility Theorem does not apply, and thats why BCA is still considered a legitimate approach to public policy making by most economists. Of course if people are voting their ordered preferences, it may be difficult to make BCA stick in the political system. One way to do that is not to argue for use of BCA on a case by case basis, but to do it as part of more general approaches to public policy making, where no one can know in advance how the use of BCA will impact their interests.

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63899 wrote:

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the parking spaces. I just don’t like people blithely making arguments that government should do something for the “public good” by attacking some “subsidy” to one group or another.

Can we do something for the public good because we think the net benefits of more and safer biking exceed the costs of folks having to park at spots less convenient than on King Street? Would that be more acceptable if we simply said net benefits exceed net costs and avoided the hot button words “public good” out of deference to the only prominent econ dept in northern Virginia?

[lordofthemark]

@DismalScientist 63899 wrote:

Frankly, I don’t give a damn about the parking spaces. I just don’t like people blithely making arguments that government should do something for the “public good” by attacking some “subsidy” to one group or another. Perhaps I am overly jaded, but there are these government “subsidies” everywhere and these arguments can be used to screw over small groups of citizens on almost any issue. When the government gets into the business of redistributing these subsidies (and how can it not?) I tend to doubt that the subsidies go where they do the most public good. (Note that whatever is the public good cannot really be defined–see the Arrow Impossibility Theorem in Economics.) Instead subsidies will go to those with the most political power, often due to connections unavailable to the average system. (After all, its the Arlington Way.)

On a related topic: Do you really think the proposed configuration will calm traffic? Before, one has a narrow, shoulderless two lane street with parking on one side. With bike lanes (when no bikes are present), this is transformed into something looking more like a narrow two lane street with shoulders. Which would you rather speed on?

I don’t feel that the hot button word subsidies is terribly helpful in making public policy decisions. I do not think that the existence of private influence over govt means that benefit cost analysis of changes at the margins is impossible. There may be subsidies and distortions beyond the scope of analysis, but those are usually second order effects, and will often offset each other (IE some will pull to the benefit side of a project, and some to the cost side, and will be a wash) We do our best, just as we do as private sector decision makers. In neither case is it better to flip a coin to make a decision, or to assume the status quo is best – and for the same reasons.

I think the subsidies question comes up often, because someone proposes what is clearly a BCA justified change, and then someone defends the status quo based on a sense of outrage to their established interests. Often invoking some property right or pseudo property right. In which case I think its fair to question the nature of that right – if its in fact simply a defense of a subsidy that happens to be have time on its side. Its not that those folks are WRONG on the BCA because they have received a “subsidy” – its that their interests should be weighed with everyone elses, and not be privileged.

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