Fw: Sprawl in Hungary

[ITDP]

Dear Wendell,

Thanks for your comments.  The debates over subsidies to auto users are well
known to us all, and I guess we can be allowed differences of opinion.  In any
case, the connection to the S & L crisis was indeed the interesting point that
had somehow eluded me before.

I don't think you can say that all that real estate would have been developed
anyway.  Sprawl in the Sun Belt, particularly in Texas and California, was
quite rampant in the 1980s, exactly where the majority of the worst S & Ls were
located.  There is a film from the period shot from a helecopter showing
endless rows of strip malls and condominiums on the outskirts of Dallas,
completely vacant at the time, built by real estate firms, many directly owned
by the S & Ls.  These developments would certainly not have been built if it
weren't for the deregulation of the financial services sector under Reagan and
Regan.  The end result, of course, was that the taxpayers, whether or not they
subsidized the roads, also subsidized the sprawling real estate development.
The figures of this subsidy, $500 billion, (even if its only $200 billion)
still dwarf the annual US spending on highways ($40-$50 billion these days, I
believe, and closer to $20 billion in those days), subsidized or not.

Best,
Walter Hook

Wendell Cox wrote:

> > Sorry for the discordant view... but...
> >
> > I understand that a lot of people think of autos and roads as being the
> > equivalent of the "Great Satan," but that does not change the facts.
> > Contrary to the claims in the "sprawl in Hungary" article...
> >
> > The highways in Calif and Texas, not to mention across the US were paid
> for
> > by users --- through taxes assessed on fuel alone for the purpose of
> > building the roads. These taxes are specific to fuel, and not charged on
> > other commodities. A small percentage of user fees is tolls. Data for the
> > past five years is available at....
> >
> > http://www.publicpurpose.com/hwy-us$93&c.htm
> >
> > There is some general taxation support of roads, but it is approximately
> > canceled by the diversion of user revenues to other sources, such as mass
> > transit. Moreover, virtually all general taxation support of roads is for
> > LOCAL roadways, not for the motorways that are the backbone of the
> national
> > system.
> >
> > It is an inventive argument to connect sprawl to the S&L crisis. While
> some
> > weak connection might be made, the fact is that suburban expansion was at
> > its weakest in the 1980s, and much of the development would have occured
> > without the S&L crisis. The problem was that the national insurance
> program
> > was poorly administered... it was one of our most unfortunate government
> > failures, and we have had a few. A couple of larger ones have been the
> > abysmal failure of central city education and explosion of central city
> > crime rates from 1960 to 1990, which in and of themselves were of
> sufficient
> > concern to drive millions of people out of the central cities into the
> > suburbs. One would hope that the same will not occur in Hungary, and that
> as
> > a result, the inevitable movement to suburbs that is attendant to
> increased
> > affluence will simply reflect preferences in the market, rather than the
> > "bleeding" that has resulted from government failure in US central cities
> > (FYI, the city of St. Louis will show a population of 325k in 2000, down
> > from 857k in 1950 --- virtually all US inner cities have declined in
> > population, though the trend has been masked by annexation in some).
> >
> > Best regards,
> > Wendell Cox
> > --
> > WENDELL COX CONSULTANCY: International Public Policy, Economics, Labor,
> > Transport & Strategic Planning
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> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: ITDP <mobility at igc.org>
> > To: <FriendsofITDP at igc.org>
> > Sent: Friday, January 28, 2000 10:02 PM
> > Subject: [sustran] ITDP's latest TransportActions
> >
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> > > TransportActions
> > > Winter, 2000
> > > > *   Hungarian Sprawl:  Another S & L Crisis in the Making?
> >



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