Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

  First and foremost, we need to abolish the laws that caused 
  this all to happen. Yes, that’s right – all of this was 
  required to happen, by law. Many people think that sprawl is 
  a free market phenomenon, and they are exactly wrong. Sprawl 
  is caused by the following policies – I call these Sprawl 
  Laws; you can find them for yourself in your local city code 
  (for the most succinct explanation, see this paper[1]):

  * Zoning
  * Setbacks
  * Minimum parking requirements
  * Minimum lot sizes
  * Maximum units per lot
  * Minimum road widths

Add school district zoning into the mix, and you have the full recipe for where our cities are today.

[1] http://digitalcommons.tourolaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

The author never made the case that a property owner is SUPPOSED to pay for the cost of the street, so I'm not even motivated to figure out whether the analysis is correct or not.

The government is not a bank. You're not supposed to "get out what you put in" or "pay for what you use." The government provides things for the public good: roads, education, police, military, etc.

Of course some government is a Ponzi scheme in the sense that some people "pay for more than they use." That's called progressive taxation. So if the evil sprawlsters are subsidizing the older roads...so what? The evil sprawlsters can afford it.

It would be just as ridiculous to write an article about how "people with children in schools aren't paying the cost of the school" or good grief even "people who have a fire aren't paying the cost of the fire department." Roads are provided for the public good.

So it really doesn't matter that the author doesn't even address the fact that many of these supposedly deadbeat property owners are paying a whole bunch of taxes that are keeping the city of Ames afloat, along with its supposedly inaccurate road tax scheme.

I'm confused

It’s simple – here’s how it works: Say a community is built in Year 1. The community’s streets need to be rebuilt every 30 years. In Year 30 a new, identical community is built. Now twice the amount of taxes are coming, and so for time being the property owners only need to pay half the amount. And 30 years later, in Year 60, two new communities are built; as long as the number of properties and property taxes are doubling every 30 years, they can continue to pay half the amount.

Year 1, one community (community A), over the next 30 years is going to pay for 1 community's worth of roads (call it a 30 year loan given on day 1, let's say 1M dollars). So, the cost for community A is 1M dollars for 30 community-years of roads.

Year 30, we add a new community B to the mix. This community needs its own roads, so it needs a loan for 1M dollars it will pay off over the next 30 years. However, community A's roads have worn out. Community A just finished paying off their first loan, so they'll need a new one.

At year 60, we have paid 3M dollars, and gotten 90 "community-years" of roads out of it. This is no different than the equivalent end of the first year with one community, one loan, and 30 "community-years" of roads.

What am i missing from this example?

City policies on this vary so much that it's impossible to generalize. That said, newer cities often end up forgetting that they need to pay for street reconstruction. The original cost of the street is usually included in the initial price of the house.

Sophisticated cities maintain a model (commonly called a pavement management program) that lets them predict future maintenance cost across the city.

He misses the fact that Ames does get tax money for street maintenance [1] and reconstruction [2]. His estimate for a properly maintained street is quite low -- other Midwestern US cities are able to get 60-70 years from their streets.

He also misses out on special assessments as a source of revenue -- which is very common for residential street projects.

[1] http://www.cityofames.org/home/showdocument?id=22486 page 178 shows state taxes as a revenue source

[2] http://www.cityofames.org/home/showdocument?id=8045 page 91/92 shows a variety of sources, including state taxes

Interesting article, and great visuals. The Sankey Diagram of the budget was very nice and of course all the interactive maps bear mentioning.

I think that anecdote about the "free" parking structure was really telling. The federal government swooped in and built a bunch of parking space then left the lesser governments squabbling over whose responsibility it wasn't.

More importantly, I think the best solution is to just pay more taxes. But "paying more taxes" seems to be antithetical to most Americans.

It's like the American Dream has just become "having nice things and not paying for them".

As a cyclist, I get a lot of reasons I shouldn't be on the road thrown at me from people with uneducated opinions, but this one - this misconception right here that driving pays for roads, is the only one that makes my blood boil. I think if more people understood what actually pays for the roads it would cut down on the sense of entitled driving so many seem to have in general.

There's this assumption that are $15-$18 per square foot. I'm no expert here, but I think that number might be roughly double what cities actually pay, based on this document from the State of Michigan : https://www.michigan.gov/documents/Vol2-40UIP16SubDevCosts-Y...

It's a decade old, but I'm seeing only $8/square foot cost, not $15+. Using the rest of the authors map + numbers, the majority of properties are now actually covering their street costs, with some room to spare for extras (such as curbs, sewers, sidewalks, etc, which suburban sprawl-type streets typically don't have).

Of course, Michigan roads are infamous for being terrible -- this might be the reason.

It might also be worth considering that a lot of high-end sprawl costs the city nothing in maintenance for their roads, since they are privately paved / plowed / maintained by HOAs.

I wonder if at some point we'll look back at the 20th century for what it was: a complete disaster of urban planning as sacrifice to the Church of the Car.

I live in NYC. It still befuddles me when I see people driving around Manhattan (why??). On a Saturday you can see traffic backed up half a mile to get to the Holland Tunnel. How was any of this not entirely foreseeable? Why do people endure it?

Anyway I discussed with someone how much space is allocated to free or highly subsidized parking. The going rate for land in Manhattan is >$600/sq ft now. Back-of-the-envelope estimates of the land dedicated to parking below 125th street puts the value of these parking spots at around $2 billion. A parking spot in prime real estate would be close to $100k. It's maintained by the city, chokes traffic and is given away for free (in a lot of cases). Why doesn't it generate revenues of $10k/year or roughly $30/day at the very minimum?

In most parts of the US living without a car is nigh-on-impossible. The dismantling of streetcars is many cities at the behest of the auto industry has been well-covered.

Something else I find interesting: the gun debate is contentious. Some argue guns make crime more likely. Others argue it's people not guns that are the problem.

Why isn't there this same debate about cars? I don't think they're inherently bad but you have to consider that the car made a lot of crimes possible that previously weren't (or at least weren't practical). Kidnappings, serial killings, bank robberies, burglaries, smuggling (eg cigarettes/alcohol across state lines) often feature a car or truck as a necessary component of the crime.

When people talk about crime getting worse over time, how much of this can be correlated with the ease and propensity of car ownership?

Anyway, as for urban planning, it's amazing how much people expect the city, state and Federal governments to subsidize their lifestyle choices with infrastructure like roads, sewer lines, water and the like. Rarely do these developments pay for their own infrastructure (it's at least subsidized to some degree).

How quickly society changes to where car ownership and all the infrastructure required became viewed as some God given right.

I think there are a few problems with the math but the largest seems to be his costs seem out of whack.

Creating a new road is more expensive than any maintenance/entire repaving since it shouldn't need to be re-graded/piped/utilities dealt with/etc. Sunnyvale in California quotes a variety of prices for street maintenance up to reconstruction and none are over $7/sq foot.[1] And this is in California where constructions costs are usually high compared to the rest of the nation.

[1] http://sunnyvale.ca.gov/Departments/PublicWork/StreetMainten...

Don't most streets with houses on them have houses on both sides of the street? In which case if two houses are each paying 60% the cost of the street on their frontage, isn't there a 20% overage?

I've always wondered why we pave our streets to begin with. Yes, I know that dirt and gravel kick up alot of dust, but the expense of the street itself seems a bit extreme as well.

I can't think of how many times I've seen a new street go in, and just a few weeks later they cut it up and dig up a water line to replace it.

There has to be a better material besides concrete or asphalt that would provide similar benefits.

The other part, while I don't know how you would get around it, seems to be the fact that my car tires are about 10" wide (20" combined). The street in front of my house is 80' wide. Thats an awful lot of space not being used.

Interesting opinion. Americans built free road at the expense of their own future generations. The author think Americans must stop this spiral and paying the road cost by paying more tax or reduce economic activities by not building and maintaining the road.

Paying more tax would not happens. The Citizen will flee to other states/countries for avoiding high tax(and that place gets free road). Reducing the economy doesn't work too. Your future generation unsatisfied the situation(lack of jobs, cultures etc) and flee to other more economically advanced cities/countries(and that place gets free road).

Borrowing from the future generation is better.

It seems like the yearly cost calculation (19,146.11 /30 years = $638.20) ignores the time value of money. $19,146.11 30 years from now is only worth $5,778.22 today at 4%. The future value of 30 $378.49 yearly payments at 4%/yr is $21,227.59 ..

The cost of resurfacing will probably rise proportional to inflation, so it will cost more to resurface in the future as well .. but couldn't the city invest the funds to get 3-4% over inflation? Also, the yearly tax payments will rise proportionally over time.

I can only speak for my own city, but the cost of building out new roads and infrastructure for new development is paid for not by property taxes, but by the building permits for the development. They actually just had a city council meeting outlining the expected growth over the next 5 years, its expected cost, and the resulting fees for building various types of residential and commercial development.

So the article is correct, that property taxes do not pay for it all. But that is not the only source of revenue.

I don't quite see his argument that this is a ponzi scheme. Wouldn't that mean, if a city stops growing, the whole thing collapses and the streets fall apart?

It seems more like parasitism, where the urban core is burdened with supporting more and more suburbs, and stopping growth is a step toward stability.

I live in an established town. The municipal boundary is about eight square miles. Very few new developments so the author's math doesn't apply. Our roads are maintained by the "tar and chip" approach which is pretty automated. A truck which has both the tar sprayer and the chip spreader drives around town on a regular basis to resurface the roads. Our road has been resurfaced this way about every five years.

The next town over has brick roads. They also need periodic maintenance, but it looks like the same bricks have been in place for a hundred years.

I'm sure that in both cases our taxes ARE paying the cost of the streets.

I don't think zoning and the other minimum requirements are the issue. It's the fact that the longterm costs of sprawl aren't going to be born by the individual, so the individual doesn't consider them.

If the country decides to fight a war that adds another $5K in debt per citizen, most people are oblivious to that.

But if they told you your share for the war will be an extra $100 a month for the next 5 years, you might pay more attention.

By the way, the average taxpayer's share of the national debt is now $161K.

The cost estimates for road construction the author uses are probably roughly the same across the country. Property taxes, on the other hand, vary widely. So at most, he's proving that in Iowa—where property prices are relatively low—there may be an imbalance. But this tells us very little about whether there is a widespread problem. Go to a higher cost of living area, or an area with higher population density, and the math looks very different.

Based on the amount of potholes and cracks on the streets bounding my apartment, I'm almost certain that we (me) aren't paying for the street to be maintained.

What do you mean by "for streets"? What about the rest of the taxes, not tied to any specific public service?

site seems down for me, use google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:FtW484i...

What's really illuminating about this article is that it reveals the myopic thinking of a statist. The only solutions proposed are a) increase taxes or b) change spending or c) reduce liabilities. Where is option d) reduce the cost of roads?

See also: http://andrewalexanderprice.com/blog.php for lots of pictures.

I don't know why the author only does an analysis of just property taxes contributing to road maintenance.

Most people in the US are contributing additional taxes in the form of:

* Gasoline taxes

* State and local sales taxes

* State and federal income taxes

Those taxes are available to build and maintain infrastructure as well. Whether they are [used for that purpose] or not is a different question.

I know that I am contributing more than enough taxes to maintain the small patch of road in front of where I live by the author's cost analysis.

Driverless cars solve this problem pretty soon

The end result is going to be about ~80% fewer cars in existence.

So how's that war against "sprawl" working out for San Francisco? Oh right...

Btw, what's your first pet's name?

(now that we know the street you grew up on..)

The analysis seems to include the material and labor costs of building the street. Most peoples' street was already built by the time it became theirs, so, of course their taxes didn't pay for any of the substantial costs that were previously laid out.

Moreover, looking at only a single year's budget would not represent the years with large expenditures on streets, or take into account increased, future amortized payments to cover costs.

Ultimately, we can know that this particular article is invalid because it is representing "long-term costs estimated by unnamed civil engineer as a global average" as "the actual costs of the streets in my city", and "the actual costs of the streets in my city" for "all my city wants to bill me for my streets, even though they actually cost a lot more".

Further, the article never explains who actually paid the costs, nor how this all relates to a claimed Growth Ponzi Scheme, or even evidence of property taxes halving...ever.

I'm guessing this partially depends on region, and is of course partially dependent on both, but what is the primary factor limiting the lifespan of road surfaces: usage or weather (rain, snow, winter salt, etc.)? Certainly, there are some types of city infrastructure that deteriorate less from usage and more so from exposure to the elements over time (telephone poles, bridges, drainage systems). It seems that increased housing density would increase the amount of tax dollars for a given area of land without necessarily increasing the need for more roads or roadway area. One might argue that higher housing density means more cars, but if doubling the number of cars doesn't half the lifespan of the roads, then it's a win. Also, double the housing density doesn't necessarily mean twice the cars, because higher density regions are generally more walkable and there are greater opportunities for carpooling/ride-sharing/public transit.

So, basically, increase housing density so that more people are sharing established infrastructure. Fund the maintenance of this infrastructure using taxes that are population (or perhaps income) dependent, rather than property taxes.

Oh, and based on the cost and longevity numbers provided in the article, why would anyone ever use asphalt over concrete for a roadway surface? I assume some key factor has been left out of this comparison.