| > DC's been on a building spree and rents have stabilized, maybe even decreased a bit. You can obviously offset something that raises rents by doing something that lowers rents, but then you're only depriving yourself of the benefits you would have had from actually lowering rents (or lowering them more) instead of having the benefit canceled out. And it still screws over anyone who still can't afford to live in the city. > new housing and jobs are placed too far away from Metro It's probably also that new housing and jobs are placed too far away from each other. > dedicated bus lanes Bus lanes are crazy. It's impossible for them to cause congestion relief because the instant they actually did the bus lane would no longer confer any advantage to the bus and any incentive it provided not to drive would evaporate. So it's logically impossible for them to actually solve the problem, but they can easily make it worse by wasting road capacity when the reason people don't take the bus isn't just congestion, e.g. if the bus doesn't go where they need it to. > If we tolled every car coming into DC (NYC and SF have tolls on their bridges and tunnels), that could be a nice funding stream for mass transit projects; but we can't simply because of Congress. Tolls are popular with some cities because it's effectively taxation without representation. The city gets to collect money from people who live in neighboring cities and states, who don't get a vote on whether there should be a toll there. This is not commendable behavior. And there is no magic. One way or another the citizens have to pay for the infrastructure. It's not like tolls can cost them less money than to pay for it with normal taxes. For most people it will cost them more, because tolls are incredibly regressive. Even more regressive than flat taxes. And on top of that you have to pay the overhead cost to collect the tolls. Build housing and eliminate rules that prevent it from being built, and build infrastructure and pay for it with normal taxes. Don't make driving worse, make the alternatives better. |