Office of behavior modification

I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the phrase “we” (who’s we?) “have to get people out of their cars.” Usually it involves not funding road repairs and funding a high tech bus station (multi-modal station) instead. Or creating a subsidized bus service that travels two miles through Manteca and costs roughly $25 each trip. (The passenger pays $1, the taxpayer pays the rest.)

How many times have we heard about incorporating “smart growth” into something they call the city’s “general plan?” It’s about fighting something called “sprawl” and its evil proponents, “the developers.” Here, the “sprawl” is defined as what occurs precisely after the point in time that I move in to an area (i.e., sprawl-fighters want to move to an area and build a home for themselves, but it’s “sprawl” if anyone else does the same.)

Paradoxically, Manteca has a set of regulations outlawing building small houses and using less than a minimum amount of land while simultaneously providing taxpayer money to certain builders if they build below that minimum. It's called “high density.” Remember “density” is the inverse of “amount of land used.” So the city outlaws building on small lots, then wonders why people aren’t building on small lots, then decides to fix the problem by paying a developer to build on small lots.

Manteca also complains about traffic congestion. And at the same time it builds speed bumps, “bulb outs,” wide medians with trees in the middle of roads, and caps roads with dead ends just yards from the cross street so that road can’t be used to relieve traffic congestion. The policy is to force you to use the congested road. Then they do “studies” before giving out building permits and charge homebuyers huge extra taxes to fix the “congestion” they say they “cause.”

Come to think of it I think I just answered my own question. It’s the “cycle of money/laws/favors” in Manteca. But that really wasn’t the point of this entry, I just found the following article by George Will interesting:

Why Ray LaHood Is Wrong Newsweek George F. Will Newsweek.com