More Nannying in Store

Sigh. Nanny-state nonsense in housing and transportation rears its ugly head again. Heritage paper, "President Obama's New Plan to Decide Where Americans Live and How They Travel":

As with most other fables, the fundamental premise of the Smart Growth effort to restructure American lives rests on fabricated assumptions that have no support either in reality or in the copious housing and transportation data collected by the fed­eral government and other institutions. As an earlier Heritage Foundation study using nationwide munici­pal data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census revealed, there is no evidence to indicate that infrastructure or other public costs in low-density suburbs are any greater than those in high-density communities.[4]

As for the alleged savings in transportation costs that are predicted to occur by shifting from cars to mass transit, data from a 2004 DOT study reveal that public transit survives on massive taxpayer subsidies that are generally hidden and excluded from any discussions of the relative costs and bene­fits of different modes of travel.[5] When all costs are considered, public transit is far more expensive than automobiles.

That 2004 DOT study was expected to become an annual assessment, but congressional opposition to DOT's exposure of the high costs of urban transit and Amtrak forced DOT to cancel any subsequent studies. In response to President Obama's newest call for greater "transparency" in transportation costs, this DOT compilation of federal subsidies by transportation mode should be revived and made available to the public by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Fat chance. But Heritage is compiling the numbers. We already know we suburbanites are subsidizing the CTA. And I imagine housing diktats are coming again. It worked so well the first time.