It’s good that the potential of TIF’s as a transit funding tool is recognized, but the paper presents problems both for Georgists and for transit rider advocates.

For Georgists the big concern is that, though Heidel does cite work by Bill Batt, and Jeff Smith/Tom Gihring(pdf), he doesn’t seem to recognize the difference between land and improvements. A related concern is that his evaluation assumes that past trends in each TIF’s value predict the future trend, which is to say that the possible new transit station will have no effect on value.

For transit rider advocates, it is bothersome that he rejects restoration of closed stations on the Congress line because, after all, they were closed due to low ridership.  That seems to assume that little new development will take place.  As a result, most of the stations he considers are at sites where service was discontinued in the 1950s, rather than the 1970s. No rationale is provided for this decision.

It is also striking that he was informed, apparently by CTA, that the cost to build a station on an existing line is $165,000, and the maintenance cost is $50,000/year.  In fact, can anyone report a cta station built or rebuilt for less than $5 million in recent years?

Still, at least someone is paying attention to the fact that the value created by transit facilities can be recovered for the community thru the real estate tax.

Heidel presented his paper at the 2008 Transport Chicago Conference.  Most of the papers presented there are here.

Now comes a report that the City Council Finance Committee has delayed approval of the subsidy. Not because of the wasteful spending or small number of jobs created, but because some local people prefer that a school be built on the site.  I’m not familiar enough with the area’s land use or politics to know whether this is a good site for a school, but at least somebody seems to be paying attention to the fact that land is a limited resource, and perhaps giving land and money away for a small number of jobs is a bad idea.

btw, the more recent report places the parcel size at 12 acres, not 30, which seems small to me but perhaps the area involved is less than the entire site of the former Brach’s facility.