Category: Chicagoland

News search engines; transit and traffic too

Last night I decided to avoid Red Line delays by taking route 147 north instead.  Everything was pretty fine until we approached Loyola.  All traffic was diverted in both directions.  Cars were going west (to where?).  Buses were just sitting there.  Although there seems to be plenty of room to u-turn and reroute to Clark Street, apparently cta wasn’t able to do this. Or maybe Clark was too congested.

I got off the stopped bus, walked up to the blockage, the entire street was closed off with yellow tape, tho sidewalks were open.  No indication of what happened, so I went upstairs to the red line (which was performing its own delays, but restored service after a few minutes).  So why was the street blocked?

This afternoon I used news.google and news.yahoo to answer that question.  Searching for “sheridan” and “loyola”, google was unable to come up with anything relevant, while yahoo linked to four articles (well, actually four copies of two articles) which explained that pedestrian had been killed crossing the street.   (Even googling for the name of the victim yielded nothing.) Which doesn’t explain why buses could not have been allowed thru while the investigation was conducted.

Bus Rapid Transit and Land Values

Network effects seem to be the main impact of bus rapid transit on land values, at least according to a Lincoln-supported study of Bogota, Colombia.  The analysis suggests that an extension of BRT service in 2003 may have had little impact on land prices in the area of the extension, but greatly increased land costs in an area which was already served by BRT previously.   The explanation could be a network effect– as the area served by BRT expands, the value of access to the system also expands.  A 15%- 20% increase in “property” value was found.   Obviously if one were looking only at land value, the percentage would be higher. Also, the data source was asking prices rather than actual transactions.

The study is described here (free registration required, or use bugmenot) , and a more detailed working paper is here (ditto).  The basic finding is that, yes, you can expect to fund transit from a land value tax, and it can be appropriate to use systemwide funding sources to pay for extensions.

I would have said that there is no “bus rapid transit” service in Chicago, but I can’t refute the wikipedia claim that the McCormick Place Busway is BRT.  For regular transit passengers here, however, there are no bus routes which are isolated for any distance from automobiles and other traffic.

Access to broadcast spectrum creates jobs

Sunday’s Tribune carries a report about Low Power FM– stations licensed for less than 100 watts, on commercial (not “educational”) frequencies. Currently these licenses are virtually unavailable where population density could make them commercially viable– and it seems that they must operate as noncommercial nonprofits anyhow. But there seems no reason, other than protecting existing privilege-holders, why a station that serves a market of 470,000 people (as claimed by WRTE-FM in Chicago) couldn’t provide paid jobs and commercial opportunities.

A report highlighting some of the tricks used to prevent LPFM stations was discussed previously.

Illusion of profit drives wages down?

Very good presentation last night at APA by Margaret Garb, historian at Washington U who has researched post-Fire working class housing arrangements and their financing in Chicago. Evidently she did a lot of detailed research, focusing on a single block of the old Harrison/Halsted district (obliterated in the 1960s by the UIC campus), examining who bought and sold property, how they financed, who rented, who boarded, their occupations and incomes, etc.

One striking similarity to more recent times is that workers used the equity Continue reading Illusion of profit drives wages down?

Legitimate academic to study transit funding

Lincoln Institute reports that they have granted a fellowship for work on Sustaining Mass Transit through Land Value Taxation: A Case Study of Chicago. Lincoln requires registration (free) to read the article that says the project will focus on the South Chicago USX site but will also “estimate the impact of transit accessibility on land values in the Chicago metropolitan area.” MIT Graduate student Shan Jiang will work with Prof. P. Christopher Zegras on the project.

From what I can find, Zegras has done quite a bit of work on transport funding, mainly in Latin America, and doesn’t seem to have any particular interest in land value. Although I have already estimated that RTA-funded rail transit alone generates something over $1.3 billion land rent annually, Zegras will have greater financial and technical resources and should be able to develop a better estimate. We shall see.

Transit funding will cost >80,000 jobs

That’s the estimate I came up with in the revised and quite enhanced version of HGS Research Note 5a. I’m using parameters estimated several years ago in a study of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. Maybe the actual number here would be a lot more; I wish someone would do the analysis. This loss is expected to occur by 2014; further losses would follow.

If RTA really needs the funding, I estimate we could do it with a land tax that would cost the typical homeowner maybe $40/year, with renters essentially paying nothing. For $290/year, the homeowner could do away with all transit taxes, and fares too. No jobs would be lost; some would be gained.

By comparison, Chicago Metropolis 2020, in their surprisingly thoughtful study Time is Money, estimate that fully funding all the transit spending that RTA wants, plus some “smart growth” changes in land use arrangements, would add 22,307 jobs by 2020. They do not discuss how the funds would be obtained, although the study does note that a doubling of gasoline prices– which might be achieved thru taxation– would have great benefits for transit use.

We'll pay $141,000/job you "create"

Or, to look at it differently, we’ll give you $353,000 per acre of land you use.  That’s what the City of Chicago is giving ” ML Realty Partners LLC” to build a “distribution center” at 401 N. Cicero.  Now, all I know about this is what I read in the papers, but according to the Jan 20 Tribune article, $10.6 million in TIF money is going to “create” 75 jobs on 30 acres.  This site is practically adjacent to the Green Line Cicero station.  Why did nobody want to develop it before? (My guess is that it’s because the landowner was holding out for TIF money.)  And how can we justify less than 3 jobs/acre on a transit-served site?  This sort of thing might be suitable for Will County, not the west side of Chicago.  Is there nothing more productive that can be done with this land?

More on transit delays and funding

The good news is that, since October 4, not a single CTA bus has broken down while I was aboard (and yes, I have been riding buses, not every day but often).

The less good news is that this morning a minor fire (or at least smoke) aboard Purple Line Run 503 delayed inbound service 20 minutes during the AM peak.  The problem was aboard a 3200-series car, CTA’s newest.  I don’t know the specific details of the fire, perhaps it was unavoidable, but it doesn’t seem to be due to the age of the equipment.

Vacant Land is still undertaxed

Many years ago, I wrote a memo called “Vacant Land is Undertaxed.” The title says it all, but it’s still true today.

A new Civic Federation report shows vacant land in Chicago assessed at just 4.81% of market value– it’s supposed to be assessed at 22%. On this basis, vacant land in Chicago is worth $5.3 billion, and to assess (and tax) it properly would bring in over $50 million/year. If the County Board were to revise its classification ordinance to assess vacant land at 40% of value (to go any higher would have other repercussions), another $40 million or more would be recovered.

In the suburbs, the underassessment is less severe, but vacant land there is estimated to be worth over $4.6 billion, so some additional revenue could be realized.

And or course, no matter how high the taxes on vacant land are raised, nobody’s going to move it away or decide not to use it because of the tax on it.

A letter to this effect was sent to the Tribune this afternoon. I am sure they will instantly recognize it as a perceptive and cogent statement, and will publish it under a prominent headline. Uh, right?

UPDATE Nov 6: The Tribune did publish the letter,  though not formatted quite as I wished.  Two days later they also included on their web page (but not in print) my suggestion (about halfway down here)  for transit funding from land value.