Quantifying the fiscal outcomes of well-designed streets?
(Member comment) "I have not seen much guidance in the Action Lab about how concerned citizens can quantify/illustrate 1. the expense and unproductivity of overbuilt streets, and 2. the benefits to a city's fiscal health and to local businesses that can result from well-designed streets (e.g. streets designed to slow traffic and serve as a platform for wealth creation).
Just as Strong Towns provides instructions for ""doing the math"" on Tax Value Per Acre, it would be helpful to have some instructions for ""doing the math"" on the fiscal outcomes of good street design. (I admire that Strong Towns has started the Crash Analysis Studio, to begin demonstrating the tangible relationship between street design and safety; but what about the tangible relationship between street design and city finances?)
I realize this could get complicated very quickly. I keep wondering, for example, what the fiscal impact would be if my city (Saint Paul, MN) committed to narrowing the width of its streets when it fully rebuilds them. How much money would it save over the long-run by reducing the physical surface area that needs a Mill and Overlay every few years? Could narrower streets induce more people to go car-free (by making it less convenient to drive and park), and reduce the wear-and-tear on streets that increases maintenance costs? How would narrowing Saint Paul's streets affect the cost (and effectiveness) of snowplowing in the winter? (I suppose the answer to this last question probably has more to do with how effectively we enforce street-parking rules during snow emergencies, and less to do with the width of the streets.)
I can imagine one Strong Towns response to my query is that the fiscal impacts of good street design vary widely, depending on the features of the places where they're located (not only which region, or which city, but which specific area within a city). But even if it's impossible to provide one simple ""formula"" for calculating the fiscal impacts of good street design (like Tax Value Per Acre), I imagine Strong Towns could produce a list of some ways that advocates could creatively illustrate/calculate the concrete/tangible fiscal benefits of good street design depending on local context."
What about you? Have you found anything that would help in addressing this member's comment?
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