More government waste
Inside Liberty Watch Today - Nov. 25, 2005
Do you remember the Clark County Community Growth Task Force and their 190-page report? The Task Force in that report consistently expressed utter distain for the automobile, all under the guise of improving air quality and combating sprawl.
The Report touted mixed-use development and to: "Place heavy emphasis on linkage to mass transit systems and development." The strategy is to "Reduce dependency on automobiles; and Increase ability for residents to invest in housing rather than automobiles."
The Task Force believed: "There are significant social benefits associated with mass transit (e.g., air quality improvements, reduced congestion, reduced travel related deaths, increased individual mobility, and improved access to housing)."
Since that report was published there has been a test case for how this new urbanism will work. New Orleans was a model for smart growth: high population density, low rates of auto ownership, and huge investments in rail transit.
All of those car haters out there should look at New Orleans. Why did Hurricane Katrina have such a devastating effect on the Big Easy? According to Randall O'Toole, senior economist with the Thoreau Institute, it was New Orleans' lack of automobility that caused thousands to be stranded and hundreds to parish.
In an article for the November edition of Liberty magazine, O'Toole points out that New Orleans had one of the lowest rates of automobile ownership in the country according to the 2000 census. Close to a third of the city's residents did not own an automobile. In the end, "it was auto ownership, not race, that meant the difference between safety and disaster," O'Toole writes.
People with autos drove out of town to safety, while those without cars were left behind.
Smart growth advocates love to use the term "auto dependent" as a pejorative term painting car drivers as Neanderthals. But, as O'Toole points out, "Katrina proved that the automobile is a liberator."
The dependent ones are those dependent on government to respond quickly and effectively to an emergency. Those New Orleans residents without a car were in O'Toole's words "dependent on the competence of government officials, dependent on charity, dependent on complex and sometimes uncaring institutions,"
The number of people killed by hurricanes in the U.S. has dropped dramatically since 1900 according to the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. Between 1900 and 1919, hurricanes caused 10,000 deaths. From 1980 to 1999, the hurricane death toll dropped to 57.
Economists attribute this decrease in deaths to increased wealth. That is why so many perish in India and other poor countries from storms and other natural disasters as opposed to Europe and the US. But O'Toole asks what makes wealthier societies less vulnerable to natural disasters? What is most important is mobility. People can leave if a storm is coming.
In the aftermath of Katrina, those without cars in New Orleans were herded into high-density crime-ridden refugee camps: the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center. Depending on government put these people in even greater danger.
The New Orleans version of the RTC decided years ago that its priority was to subsidize streetcar rides for tourists. The city spent $15 million in the 1980's and 1990's converting an abandoned 1.5-mile rail line into the Riverfront Streetcar line.
Just last year the 3.6-mile Canal Street line was opened at a cost of $150 million, and another line was in the pipeline at a projected cost of $120 million.
None of these streetcars would have helped autoless New Orleans residents to escape. O'Toole mentions that rail advocates often say; "We can't let poor people have cars. It would cause too much congestion." "Yes," O'Toole retorts, "as the Soviet Union discovered, poverty is one way to prevent congestion."
"The holistic, long-range transportation planning the Sierra Club was demanding through its lawsuit is starting to occur," wrote smart growth advocate Geoff Schumacher recently in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. "The fact that it's happening is a victory for the Sierra Club and others who believe Las Vegas must evolve beyond a single transportation option: the almighty car (or, more likely in Las Vegas, the four-wheel-drive pickup)."
You can bet that the New Orleans residents caught in Katrina's wake wished that they had the almighty automobile that Schumacher so strenuously scorns to escape those rancid floodwaters. When government involves itself in something, the poorest citizens are forced to feel the brunt of government's mistake.
Doug French, Liberty Watch Columnist
