Sprawl inducing taxes have better uses
Published in the Bakersfield Californian on February 09, 2002
I do not agree with the conclusions of a recent transportation report that was the basis for a Californian story.
The Kern Council of Governments and the Kern Transportation Foundation jointly developed the report, titled "Road to Ruin." According to the report, $2 billion has to be raised in 20 years.
Interestingly, "Road to Ruin" also is the title of a series of reports jointly published by Taxpayers for Common Sense and Friends of the Earth. I wonder if KernCOG and KTF intentionally chose this title in order to counter the original "Road to Ruin" reports.
The original "Road to Ruin" reports argue that unchecked road building wastes tax money, harms the environment and destroys communities. The reports are also concerned that investments in roads encourages homes to be built farther away from centers of work and commerce.
The arguments laid out in the original "Road to Ruin" reports are very much applicable to Bakersfield. The wide multi-lane roads in almost every part of Bakersfield have made it easy for us to try to get away to "better" areas in the fringes of the city. After a few years, those "better" areas are bested by newer developments that are in what used to be the boondocks, and people move into those new developments.
This pattern of urban development has resulted in a few roadways that are extremely congested -- such as Rosedale, or the White Lane off-ramp from 99-South -- while quite a few other roadways are vastly underutilized -- most of the roads in the northeast part of town are good examples here.
To waste excess capacity in most roadways and to simultaneously encourage development that adds demand to a few already crowded roadways appears to be an illogical use of collective resources.
Furthermore, it is not fiscally prudent to suggest that all of us should pay $2 billion for such an inefficient use of resources to address problems faced only by a few!
Instead, KernCOG and the KTF should launch a vigorous campaign to convince local governments and community groups that we need to make better use of existing infrastructure before presenting a justification for a tax hike.
The so-called transportation congestion and gridlock in our town is nothing compared to the "real" transportation problems in any of the communities in Northern or Southern California.
Our problems are acute in other fronts. For instance, Kern County ranks last among 58 counties in the state in the percentage of high school graduates going on to college. And having a labor pool with higher education is much more important when it comes to value-adding businesses compared to having roadways where we can speed at 75 miles per hour.
There are many problems that are way more acute in this wonderful home of ours than the extra five-minutes that a few families have to put up with. Let us focus on those urgent problems, instead of building more roads to accommodate a few hundred additional Ford Excursions.