4 ms·

But that’s the thing. The street’s utility is exclusively to the houses that are on it. Those houses are very unlikely to be paying enough property tax to cover

But that’s the thing. The street’s utility is exclusively to the houses that are on it. Those houses are very unlikely to be paying enough property tax to cover its existence. This luxury of yours is paid for by other people’s productive activity in the future. Great deal for you! But we the (net) taxpayers ought to think about how many more of these sweetheart deals we offer to cul de sac homeowners in the future, before we bankrupt ourselves. I’m not a libertarian, I think it’s fine for government to tap rich people to provide nice things for everyone, but this particular nice thing (way more roadway than you pay for) has a pretty bad cost:benefit, and its beneficiaries are not exactly the neediest or most deserving of aid.

wkearney99 5y ago
or if not 'tap the rich', better structure the payouts so there isn't such an imbalance. wage stagnation is a BIG problem.
halpert 5y ago
I find it hard to believe that building a road is so expensive. Some random website I found claims the cost of a two-lane undivided road costs $3 million per mile in an urban setting. Looking at the satellite imagery of Mississauga linked elsewhere, the frontage of each house is around 50 ft. So there are about 211 houses per mile. That comes out to $14,000 per house to build the road. The approximate lifespan of an asphalt road is 18 years, leading to a per year cost of ~800 dollars. Of course, this doesn't include maintenance of the road (fixing pot holes, plowing, etc.), but $800 per year seems like a pretty manageable sum of money.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  In Galesburg (the town in the article), it wasn’t a manageable amount. That town has extremely low property values compared to any towns I’m familiar with, though. The author’s single-family home is worth about $60k. The median home in Mississauga is $900k (CAD), so I assume they can afford to maintain their roads. We’re talking about pretty different things, though. Suburbs of ultra high-cost-of-living cities have their taxes buoyed up their proximity to the big economic engines, while small towns like Galesburg have to figure out how to be self-sufficient without that constant influx of wealth.
  - halpert 5y ago
    But would more density really solve the problem? An inability to produce $800 per household will make anything hard.
    - closeparen 5y ago
      The property tax bill in TFA is $1700, but roads are only one of the things property taxes buy.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      I was thinking this as well. I wonder how much this is just a consequence of per capita city productivity being so many times greater than small towns.
    - notfromhere 5y ago
      More density means more people per road and less road in general. Done right, and households are not the only entities paying into the coffers
  - tptacek 5y ago
    The median home price in Galesburg is $90k. Makes sense for a declining city in far-out rural Illinois.
    - titanomachy 5y ago
      It’s an interesting question to me what these towns will do going forward. If participation in the global economy is required to maintain a first-world standard of living, what will these towns produce that the rest of the world wants? Some will farm or extract natural resources, but these operations require fewer people than they used to, so fewer towns. Some will be holiday destinations for city-dwellers. But we will probably sustain far fewer of these towns than we have historically.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        What do towns full of software developers produce? There are developers that like living out in the country.
TulliusCicero 5y ago
I think having some residential that's offset is fine, the problem is that almost inevitably these places are designed to be impermeable to walk/bike traffic as well, and with the long distances required to go anywhere, you do have to drive everywhere. A positive counter-example would be Houten. Winding street layout that's not good for through traffic, but very nice for walking and especially biking: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.033207,5.1474598,3a,75y,4.09h,74.97t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4kwz_ykT5xxYdk2nGUMiMQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D4kwz_ykT5xxYdk2nGUMiMQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D51.383823%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@52.033207,5.1474598,3a,75y,4.09...

wkearney99 5y ago

or if not 'tap the rich', better structure the payouts so there isn't such an imbalance. wage stagnation is a BIG problem.

halpert 5y ago

I find it hard to believe that building a road is so expensive. Some random website I found claims the cost of a two-lane undivided road costs $3 million per mile in an urban setting. Looking at the satellite imagery of Mississauga linked elsewhere, the frontage of each house is around 50 ft. So there are about 211 houses per mile. That comes out to $14,000 per house to build the road. The approximate lifespan of an asphalt road is 18 years, leading to a per year cost of ~800 dollars. Of course, this doesn't include maintenance of the road (fixing pot holes, plowing, etc.), but $800 per year seems like a pretty manageable sum of money.

titanomachy 5y ago
In Galesburg (the town in the article), it wasn’t a manageable amount. That town has extremely low property values compared to any towns I’m familiar with, though. The author’s single-family home is worth about $60k. The median home in Mississauga is $900k (CAD), so I assume they can afford to maintain their roads. We’re talking about pretty different things, though. Suburbs of ultra high-cost-of-living cities have their taxes buoyed up their proximity to the big economic engines, while small towns like Galesburg have to figure out how to be self-sufficient without that constant influx of wealth.
- halpert 5y ago
  But would more density really solve the problem? An inability to produce $800 per household will make anything hard.
  - closeparen 5y ago
    The property tax bill in TFA is $1700, but roads are only one of the things property taxes buy.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    I was thinking this as well. I wonder how much this is just a consequence of per capita city productivity being so many times greater than small towns.
  - notfromhere 5y ago
    More density means more people per road and less road in general. Done right, and households are not the only entities paying into the coffers
- tptacek 5y ago
  The median home price in Galesburg is $90k. Makes sense for a declining city in far-out rural Illinois.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    It’s an interesting question to me what these towns will do going forward. If participation in the global economy is required to maintain a first-world standard of living, what will these towns produce that the rest of the world wants? Some will farm or extract natural resources, but these operations require fewer people than they used to, so fewer towns. Some will be holiday destinations for city-dwellers. But we will probably sustain far fewer of these towns than we have historically.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      What do towns full of software developers produce? There are developers that like living out in the country.

TulliusCicero 5y ago

I think having some residential that's offset is fine, the problem is that almost inevitably these places are designed to be impermeable to walk/bike traffic as well, and with the long distances required to go anywhere, you do have to drive everywhere. A positive counter-example would be Houten. Winding street layout that's not good for through traffic, but very nice for walking and especially biking: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.033207,5.1474598,3a,75y,4.09h,74.97t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s4kwz_ykT5xxYdk2nGUMiMQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3D4kwz_ykT5xxYdk2nGUMiMQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D51.383823%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/@52.033207,5.1474598,3a,75y,4.09...