The Folly of Conventional Wisdom
There were plenty of winners and losers in last week's election. But perhaps the biggest loser of all was conventional wisdom.
Consider the national election. As of late 2007, conventional wisdom asserted that Hillary Clinton had the Democratic nomination sewn up, and that McCain ought to pull the plug on his faltering, underfunded campaign.
Conventional wisdom went 0-for-2 on that one.
If anything, political prognosticators in Washington State fared even worse. Consider the Puget Sound light rail vote. Time and again, political insiders billed the 2007 "Roads-and-Transit" package as the last, best hope for rail transit in greater Seattle. The roads were considered crucial to the train's chances: there was simply no way, the wise ones intoned, that the electorate would approve a multi-billion dollar train system unless it was leavened with some road projects to lure suburban voters. And if voters rejected the package in 2007, we were assured, the train would be dead for a decade; politicians would never put a tax increase on the ballot two years in a row, especially with an economic downturn on the horizon.
How'd the wisdom do? 0-for-4.
Are Canadian Car-Buyers Getting Sold A Bill of Goods?
A few weeks ago, Canadian resident Rachel Perks sent me an email puzzler. Why is it that apparently identical cars -- same make, model, engine size, specs, etc. -- are advertised with drastically better fuel economy in Canada than in the United States?
To see what I mean, compare the official government fuel ratings in the US versus Canada. Or take my car as an example. It's a 2003 Honda Civic with a 5-speed manual transmission and a 1.7 litre VTEC engine. The US Environmental Protection Agency says I should expect 27 mpg in the city and 35 mpg on the highway. Natural Resources Canada, however, says 38 mpg city and 48 mpg highway. What's going on? [Quick technical aside: Canadian car sellers use both litres per kilometre (a vastly superior formulation) and also miles per gallon (the terribly misleading measurement we use in the States).]
As it turns out, the greater part of the explanation is mundane -- just a translation error really. Canadians use imperial gallons and Americans use US gallons. An imperial gallon is 20 percent larger than a US gallon, so a Canadian vehicle needs fewer "gallons" to travel the same distance. Problem solved, right?
Actually, no. The volumetric conversion accounts for much of the difference, but not nearly all of it. As it turns out, Canadian fuel efficiency ratings are almost certainly misleading and inflated.
Congestion Pricing: Can Tolling Be Fair?
Brilliant.
That’s the word kept crossing my mind as I read this clearly-written report (pdf link) about the Puget Sound Regional Council's study on using road tolls to fight congestion. The study found that a well-designed, comprehensive system of congestion-busting tolls could make a major dent in traffic backups in the Puget Sound. It would also speed up transit, shorten commute times, and reduce gasoline consumption.
But much to its credit, the report also identifies one critical question that may dominate any public debate over congestion pricing: Can tolling be fair?
