Expanding testing is very important now.  It's also clearly an area we were unprepared.  We should commit to having testing capacity long term, to both provide more certainty to anyone expanding testing capacity today, and to be prepared in the future. I had some thoughts about how this testing would be best structured.  It's not possible to test for an contagious disease you're not aware of, but much of the infrastructure for doing so can already be in place, ready to be adapted.  That infrastructure would roughly boil down to a) sample collection b) sample handling c) sample preparation d) sample analysis e) materials: reagents, etc. Scaling these up from scratch is quite a bit more work than adapting to a new contagion.  A commitment to having that infrastructure would have helped a lot with the current crisis. Right now, the focus is rightfully on health care workers, suspected cases and essential workers.  In terms of preparation though, in...

Use Less As part of the current crisis, oil usage is down, and storage around the world is filling up, to the point that oil has traded at negative prices.  As a reaction, many Republican lawmakers want to bailout the oil industry, by providing free access to storage or no-collateral loans.  While it would make sense to ensure oil doesn't get dumped in the ocean, the right way to do that is by producing less oil. These proposals from the Republicans undermine the motivation for the industry to do so.  Workers are important, but they have the same access to unemployment as the other 25 million Americans who are out of work. What this crisis should illustrate is something that has been illustrated many times before, the oil industry is a fragile thing.  In the past this fragility has been demonstrated by massive spikes in prices and fears of shortage, in this case it's the inverse.  Why the fragility?  The simplest explanation is, we use too much....

Uber has been disruptive in many ways.  One way, which has been a great disappointment, is the effect on public transit systems.  It was once hoped that ride hailing would provide an assist to public transit, as a gateway to abandoning car ownership.  There have also been hopes that suburban commuters would use ride-hailing as their connection to public-transit which is not accessible by walking in these areas.   Multiple studies have confirmed these hopes have largely not materialized, and public-transit has been weakened . Cities have reacted, mostly by putting barriers to ride-hailing growth.  Sometimes they are collecting extra fees, sometimes placing new requirements.  But mostly these efforts don't do much to change the relationship between ride-hailing and public-transit. I work with a local group that spends time thinking about automated car policy, how to get the most good and the least bad.  We've discussed a proposal that fits ride...

California was pursuing a new transit oriented development bill, SB50. It morphed into a general housing bill, before being killed by a powerful Senator . His arguments, shared by other LA residents , was that they didn't want local control taken away. On the surface, that sounds reasonable, who doesn't like more direct democratic processes? But local zoning has failed to address the problems the bill targets, and it is predictable that it will continue to fail, so long as political engagement maintains its current form. In many places, city-by-city control could work, but California is such a jigsaw of localities that each city has incentives to keep following business as usual, which means, zoning restrictions to prop up property values, which inevitably lead to housing shortages and unsustainable costs for anyone who isn't getting the land value windfall. Even those getting the windfall are trapped into non-optimal decisions by housing immobility. That immobility ha...

It's ironic that in a country where providing free access to basic healthcare, food and water are so contentious, we've been providing one resource for free in astounding quantities: Roads. It's even more ironic, that while proving the roads (and often parking spaces) for free, we've neglected to provide the real need, transportation. Should roads be free? The evidence, from a 50+ year experiment is no. Free roads leads to overuse and traffic jams, a net negative for every potential road user. There is no amount of roads you can build that prevents this tragedy of the commons. Every major city in the US has traffic jams. A city with "good" traffic is one where those only happen for an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening, and only at certain points. The trouble with trying to build your way out of traffic jams is that housing and driving patterns always shift to consume everything to capacity and beyond. There is also the cost in terms of money, ...

The below article wonders if Uber/Lyft will ever be profitable. Seems likely to me they will. It's the belief that their promises aren't as grand as they make that will lead to that. When investors stop believing that, they'll stop funding discounts, and profitability will emerge seemingly spontaneously. It's probably less than what Uber is promising, as there will be competition. It's worth noting that in addition to competition being somewhat local, Uber and Lyft don't just compete with taxis, but also with public transit and personal vehicles. When competing with public transit, cities should regulate, as there are many public goods arising from quality public transit. The story for personal vehicles however is different, which have most of the same negative aspects of ride-hails, plus some additional negative externalities (parking is a big one). Thus the first step in regulation should be one that targets both personal vehicles and ride-hails. I support...

Effective public transport increases the productivity of a city. Somewhat obvious, but the scale is not. A city without effective public transport is a smaller city. The network effects of being able to connect with others who might spawn ideas and opportunities are diminished by not having effective transport. Transit systems that rely upon buses without priority, which have their service level cut by the congestion of personal automobiles at peak times, suffer as a result. Also notable, is that how areas of the city underserved by public transit are from a economic point of view, not truly part of the city. Improving transit is critical to improving the economic well being of such areas. This post inspired by reading...   City Metric

Chicago should also pursue congestion (road) pricing. Using a personal vehicle on city streets consumes limited road space we all paid for, creates pollution and other effects we all have to live with. When one alternative (transit) consumes these services at a much lower rate, and produces the negative effects at a much lower rate, it's unfair for the higher consumption/externality behavior to pay the same rate. This is the way to restore fairness, while also creating a healthier city with less traffic. The one thing I'd change in the New York's approach, is the exemption for low income. Absolutely agree with the effort to help those with low income, but it shouldn't be an exemption, but rather an in-tandem assistance, such as housing assistance, which could be funded through the revenues and savings of the base policy. This post inspired by reading...   The Economist