Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

mapstoryblog.thenittygritty.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 172 posts

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#111

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

stevep001 wrote: post #81

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 f…

>other Midwestern US cities are able to get 60-70 years from their streets.

By neglecting them when they are horribly cracked and potholed after 25 years. Then they make up for their long term "investment" in concrete by skim coating with asphalt.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#112

Post by mabbo »

theanomaly wrote: post #55

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…

Infrastructure is expensive to replace. These towns and cities are only able to afford to do so by making new subdivisions pay for it. This works so long as you keep growing exponentially, forever, which you won't. Someday, there won't be new people to pay for it.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#113

Post by khuey »

r00fus wrote: post #89
jws wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

St. Louis City also has a problem with its beloved "earnings tax". At one point as our office space lease renewal was approaching I plotted all of our 100+ employees at the time on a map, almost all software engineers, about 2/3 of them lived west of the city and 1/3 lived east, and only a single one lived in the city, and he was in a temporary apartment immediately post divorce, didn't get the house. To me that says…

First time I've ever heard the highways fawned over as "teleporting"...

Some American cities have seen significant population declines since their infrastructure was built and thus have surplus transportation/housing/etc capacity.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#114

Post by ezoe »

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.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#115

Post by Agustus »

ItsDeathball wrote: post #27
bagels wrote: post #14

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…

It's mentioned in the article that this is about local, city-maintained streets. Unless you live directly on a state or federal highway, those gas taxes, state sales taxes, and income taxes do not go towards the street you live one. Local sales taxes may, and the author includes these in the diagram of the city budget. Your largest contribution to the maintenance of city infrastructure is in property taxes, either di…

Gas taxes go to federal, state, and local (county level).

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#116

Post by zardo »

rayiner wrote: post #13
clarkmoody wrote: post #8

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]): * Zonin…

It's interesting that some of the most charming neighborhoods in the country (e.g. Chelsea in New York, DuPont in D.C.) were built before all that crap. You'd never build a "modern city" like Philadelphia, with its narrow one-way streets, lack of parking, and commercial and retail mish-mashed together. But most of the rest of the country feels dead in comparison.

It was supposed to be one farm per block. http://xroads.virginia.edu/~cap/penn/pnplan.html

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#117

Post by throwawaybookst »

jws wrote: post #85
dionidium wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if the evil sprawlsters are subsidizing the older roads...so what? The evil sprawlsters can afford it. I think you (and probably the author) have got this exactly backwards. Sprawl creates blight when the rate of building outpaces the needs of population growth. The evil sprawlsters are creating new costs, but they aren't subsidizing old roads. The sprawl usually happens outside of long-ago drawn city borders, any…

St. Louis City also has a problem with its beloved "earnings tax". At one point as our office space lease renewal was approaching I plotted all of our 100+ employees at the time on a map, almost all software engineers, about 2/3 of them lived west of the city and 1/3 lived east, and only a single one lived in the city, and he was in a temporary apartment immediately post divorce, didn't get the house. To me that says…

The fact that burbs are the most desirable places to live in STL is pretty much the reason I'll never move back. It's an incredibly depressing metro area.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#118

Post by groby_b »

rayiner wrote: post #13
clarkmoody wrote: post #8

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]): * Zonin…

It's interesting that some of the most charming neighborhoods in the country (e.g. Chelsea in New York, DuPont in D.C.) were built before all that crap. You'd never build a "modern city" like Philadelphia, with its narrow one-way streets, lack of parking, and commercial and retail mish-mashed together. But most of the rest of the country feels dead in comparison.

Of course, the issue is not zoning laws, but bad zoning laws. European zoning laws are mostly concerned with actual urban planning. US zoning laws are focused on maintaining property values.

Read e.g. "Zoned in the USA"[1] for a nice introduction to the topic.

[1]http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=8014010017822...

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#119

Post by bagels »

msellout wrote: post #41
bagels wrote: post #14

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…

The author excluded roads financed by gasoline tax from the analysis. I don't remember reading about sales and income taxes in the article, but perhaps those are in the same category.

My point was that it's not necessarily that there aren't enough taxes, but the problem could be misallocation on bombs and baby boomer pensions. By ignoring the majority of the taxes, this analysis is incomplete.

Re: Are Your Taxes Paying for the Cost of Your Street?

#120

Post by pm24601 »

ars wrote: post #92
rayiner wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that some of the most charming neighborhoods in the country (e.g. Chelsea in New York, DuPont in D.C.) were built before all that crap. You'd never build a "modern city" like Philadelphia, with its narrow one-way streets, lack of parking, and commercial and retail mish-mashed together. But most of the rest of the country feels dead in comparison.

> charming neighborhoods in the country (e.g. Chelsea in New York That's charming to you???? Looking at photos of it gives me the creeps. How can people stand to live in places like that? > But most of the rest of the country feels dead in comparison. ????? The rest of the country feels open and alive, not crowded and oppressive. I've very glad that in the US you can pick and choose what you like, and it's not all a…

So long as you can pay for the sewer, fire protection, police protection, electrical power, etc. by yourself - you are welcome to anything you want.
Post reply on HN