Of course what they should do to fund it is what they figured out in Hong Kong or Singapore decades ago. Have government requisition land around stations and redevelop it as high density towers and profit on the sales.
One random house I think they still own is Julia Child's childhood home in Pasadena.
Source: South Pasadena is my home town and I left shortly after Caltrans officially gave up. The year after Caltrans dropped the project altogether, a massive chunk of the city's budget was reallocated back to the schools and roads which made a huge difference to the infrastructure.
The issue wasn't that they tried to put the freeway where someone didn't want it because nobody wants a freeway nextdoor, the issue is they tried to force it upon people who could fight back.
Pretty much. The history of US highway construction is full of politicians using freeways to bulldoze and split poor communities. That's how the euphemism "urban renewal" got its name.
Did that actually stop its construction? No. The state government ended up building the eastern section anyway, starting in 2019, and it opened in 2023. But the surface reservation had been lost, and reacquiring it through eminent domain would have been prohibitively expensive due to high property prices, and politically too controversial too, so it had to go through a tunnel. A surface freeway would have cost AU$1–3 billion, with underground tunnelling the cost was well over AU$15 billion (around US$10 billion)
Wran's 1977 decision to sell the freeway land reservation was arguably one of the most expensive decisions ever made in Australian history. In the long-run it had made life worse for local residents, as the freeway dumped commuter traffic 15 km short of its primary destination, and they had to put up with that traffic traversing their local roads–which made the eventual completion of the freeway almost inevitable
The railway is a common good, and the housing development profits are just a means to those ends.
It isnt about sustainability, it is about who pays, and the public not wanting to pay for something you use isnt a good enough reason size private property from a small number of individuals.
By that logic, we could do away with taxes entirely if the state simply confiscated everything it needed form select individuals.
using eminent domain to get land for a shop attached to a train station isn't a slippery slope to the cops coming in and confiscating your car just because they want it.
Taxes and fares aren't enough to run a transportation system properly because of politics and culture.
I hate when people seem to justify handing private land to private developers to build a shopping mall for profit but get the vapors when it’s the public wanting to build a subway. Same as the conservatives who did bush v gore and then get the vapors when the other side wants its calvinball relief when the circumstances justify it.
The slippery slope is real and once you open the bloodgates to private interests you really ought to open it to others as well. Like draw me a coherent line as to why a developer sucking up land via eminent domain should be legally allowed but the public building a train is not. If you want to argue the former should be rolled back then fine but that’s a thing that will ruffle numerous feathers, and in the meantime we have a public who’s tapping their watch waiting for the train.
Abstract disagreement with the legislative and legal realities doesn’t make the existence of eminent domain for speculation or the calvinball court ruling any less of a concrete power. This is a thing we do, and if you want to campaign to end eminent domain then fine but right now the law says we can eminent domain it, develop it, and sell it.
>Like draw me a coherent line as to why a developer sucking up land via eminent domain should be legally allowed but the public building a train is not
My whole point is that building a train is a legitimate use (IMO), but taking the adjacent land just to sell to developers make the state money is not.
Technically private property, but also already shared, public space.
Which of those actually seems more fair?
It seems like this is just a way for the average taxpayer avoid paying for the asset they want.
Major social projects should be selected based on the value they provide to the public at large, and paid for by the public at large.
There are other types of public-private collaboration available if the goal is to benefit a niche group.
Investments cost capital. The point of investing is to make things better that they are today. It's essentially impossible to exactly 'break even' on your returns, given uncertainty in the variables we know and the unknown unknowns in the variables we don't.
Society is not a zero sum game. Everyone benefits here. I don't see the problem. 'california' is not a niche group of Californians -- it is the group.
Im saying the tax payers should pay for the project, because everyone benefits. They shouldnt try to foist the cost on some niche group, as suggested above.
We already have a tax system which captures a portion of benefits from the social endeavor to each person.
Arguments that specific landowners stand to benefit more, and therefore should pay for the train instead of taxpayers is faulty. It is faulty because it ignores the benefits of a train to the general population, and it ignores that those with disproportionate benefit will pay more taxes.
No one is suggesting specific landowners pay for the train…?
Are you claiming that infrastructures are a loss to the public and state? If there isnt enough public upside to justify the project, then the public should not take it on. IF there is enough upside, then spillover is acceptable and much of it will be captured in taxes anyways.
You didnt say foisting the cost, but you did suggest seizing private property to reduce the taxpayer expense and prevent owners from benefiting.
Im quite similar with Georgism, and think it is economically outdated in a service economy. Beyond that, it is only appealing if you oppose property ownership and think the purpose of the state is to optimize allocation of resources for tax farming.
In short, I think it is outdated because it is a material consumption and utilization tax applied relatively regressively.
Henry George lived in the 1800s when economic value creation primarily was primarily through agricultural and industrial utilization of natural resources (farming, mining, manufacturing). Since then, the value creation in industrialized countries have largely shifted to service and knowledge economies (finance, medicine, entertainment, technology, arbitrage, and IP). Service and knowledge economies are much more detached from natural resources consumption. As and example, a banker might make a million dollar trade consuming little more than the electricity and a PC, whereas a farmer needs hundreds of acres, Water, tractors, fuel, and fertilizer.
One might think that the tax burden would get passed along from the primary users of natural recourses to the end consumers, and this is may be true to a degree. However, differences in consumption is much more flat between individuals than income or wealth. Your Warren Buffets of the world might have an income 100,000 X higher than the average person, but they dont consume 100,000X more material goods like food, water, housing, ect.