Coyote Blog

Todd Zywicki at Volokh has an interesting post on what is driving hybrid car purchases in certain cities.  While certain segments are driven by environmentalism and fuel economy, the real boom in certain cities has come with the legal change in some cities allowing single persons in hybrid cars to use the carpool lanes.

"'I'd say 95 percent of the people who buy a Prius say it's to get into HOV,'" said Jay Taye, sales manager at Ourisman Fairfax Toyota. "'They talk about the tax break and the HOV, and once in a while they say they prefer it for the gas mileage as well.'"

By the way, he links an absolutely dead-on article about public transit in the Onion here called --"Report: 98 Percent of Commuters Favor Public Transportation For Others"

The link between the Onion article and the Washington Post story referred to by Zywicki is that what people really want is a fast commute in their car, and they are willing to pay for it.

Several years ago, I sent in a proposal to the Arizona Dept. of Transportation for their new HOV lanes in the Phoenix area, though I never got a response back.  I suggested that HOV lanes probably did not really increase carpooling, since they probably just shifted vehicles that would have already been carrying 2+ people into the faster lane.  Why should I get this artificial subsidy of a dedicated lane when I am driving my kid to a soccer game but not when I am driving myself to do productive work?  Either way, the lane is not changing my behavior.

Anyway, I suggested that instead, AZ DOT should create a number of special passes for exclusive use of the HOV lane.  The number of passes should be set as the largest number that could be issued while keeping the HOV lane moving at the speed limit at rush hour.  Maybe 5000?  Anyway, they would have the stats to set the number, and it could be adjusted over time.  I proposed that they then auction off these passes in a dutch auction once a year.  I posited that the clearing price might be as high as $1000, thus raising $5,000,000 a year that could be used for other transportation projects.

I have friends that said I was crazy, that no one would spend $1000.  Back then, I argued it in two ways.  First, thousands of people in town spend not $1000 but tens of thousands of dollars, in the form of purchasing a nicer-than-basic-car, to make their driving experience better.  In those terms, to the Mercedes or Lexus owner, $1000 was nothing and in fact the price might go higher.  Second, if each pass holder saved 15 minutes per commute, or 30 minutes per day over 250 work days, they would save 125 hours of their time each year.  Bidding just $1000 for this would mean that people would have to value their free time (since commuting generally comes out of free and family time) at $8 an hour.  I certainly value my free time at a MUCH higher rate than this.

This article cited above effectively adds another data point to what people might pay.  To buy a Prius, they are spending at least $5000-$10,000 more than a similar car that can't go into the HOV lane, and probably even more when you consider features they may be giving up to have the car.   

Today, I would bet that the clearing price for 5000 such passes may be $3000-$5000, thus increasing the annual revenue to the city/state as high as $25,000,000.

By the way, though it is a bit different than what I am suggesting, the best related plan that I know of that has actually been executed succesfully is congestion pricing in central London.

UPDATE:  Dang, reading up further in Volokh, Zywicki anticipated my post with a similar one here.

Why Aren't There More Private Schools?  This is a conversation my dad and I have had any number of times - as he has sat on the board of a number of public and private schools / districts and I have, given frequent moves, oven shopped for schooling for my kids.

The first, perhaps most obvious answer is that there is not that large of a market, because few people can afford to pay two tuitions for their kids (i.e. public school tuition via property taxes and then a separate private school payment).  But, I think that that answer is wrong.  This country is tremendously wealthy, both on average and at the top end.  Most really good private k-12 schools are oversubscribed -- with competitive entry requirements and long waiting lists.  We have all heard stories about New York City schools where you have to practically go straight from the act of conception to the admissions office to have a chance to get the kid in.

I have my own experience with this, in many cities, but take Seattle for example.  In the east side suburbs, their are 3-5 high quality private elementary schools, and for the most part, they are all way oversubscribed.  One of them admits something like 6% of applicants.  And charges $10,000+ a year for kindergarten and more for later years.

What other industries are there where 94% of the demand for a $10,000+ product goes unmet by new entrants?  And unmet for decades, not just in a short period of mismatched capacity?  Just look at iPods - how many people jumped into the market with copycat products when they saw the popularity of this product, and Apple's inability to keep up with demand?

But what really got me thinking about this problem was when I moved back to Phoenix.  Despite having my kids in some of the best schools in every city we have lived in, the absolute best is, of all places, here in Phoenix.  How do I know it is the best?  Well, my son went to kindergarten at this Phoenix school, and then we moved to Seattle for two years.   In Seattle, we went to what was supposed to be about the best elementary school on the east side -  Gates sent some of his kids here, as did the McCaws, and many other people who could afford any place they wanted.  At the end of second grade, the school told me my son could have skipped second grade, which means he could have skipped first grade there too.  In two years, he never learned anything more than he learned in one year of kindergarten in Phoenix.

There are two other interesting things about this Phoenix-area private school, beyond just its excellence:

• It is by far the cheapest we have ever attended, less than half what we paid in Seattle and well under the average per-pupil spending in public schools
• It is for profit - not a charity or foundation.  It has no donations, government grants, endowments, etc.  It runs itself for profit, it is inexpensive, and the education is great.

The school is not perfect -- it has a strong focus on academics, without the big theater programs or art programs or photography classes you might find in a large public school, so we have to supplement that stuff outside of school.  But my point is, why aren't there more schools like this?  Why aren't people jumping in to fill this market?  This is more than of academic interest to me.  I am a big supporter of school choice, but to support choice you have to believe that private schools will be created to meet the new demand vouchers would open up.

Thus it is with great interest that I saw this post at Marginal Revolution about the barriers to starting a private school.  They link this article from the Reason foundation.  The Reason Foundation argues that a lot of micro-regulation, particularly zoning, limits private schools, especially when zoning boards are dominated by people who have an interest in protecting public schools from competition.

In the context of my Seattle story earlier, by the way, note this proposal that came out a while back to actually ban private school (and church) construction in large parts of the county that Seattle is in. 

UPDATE:

There were several responses to this along the lines of 'so what - everyone has to navigate basic permitting processes'.  That may be, but my experience is that zoning is stacked against private schools, even before you consider the proposed total ban on private school construction described in the article I linked above.  For example, in the Seattle eastside suburbs, one private school that needed to move to larger quarters was unable to find a site within a 20 mile radius where they were allowed to build a private school.  Residential zoned tracks did not want more traffic from a school, and they were not allowed to have a school with little kids in most commercial zoned tracks.  The point is that private schools face permitting hurdles that go beyond what most businesses face, and, as I mentioned earlier, most zoning boards are packed with people who have a vested interest in not allowing new private schools to be built anywhere.

The Carnival of the Vanities is up at Ravenwood.  Don't miss my post on the 60th anniversary of the great Phoenix-area German POW escape.

Hats off to ex-Arizona Cardinals cheerleeder and Phoenix resident Sarah Coggin for being part of the work to support our troops by visiting them overseas.  And here is more on other cheerleader visits here at the NFL Cheerleader Blog (as I have said in the past, if I could get paid to write that blog, my life would be set).  And shame on you cynics who think that I posted this just to have an excuse to get a cheerleader picture on the front page.  I actually did it to get two cheerleader pictures up:

I have written a number of times about how I hate public funding of sports stadiums for billionaires.  But, via the Arizona Republic, this is perhaps worse:

Mired in debt, the Insight Bowl is considering leaving downtown Phoenix's Bank One Ballpark unless the postseason college football game receives a public subsidy.

Great - using tax money to fund random college bowl games.  And where does the money go - most of the money does to the participant teams and their conferences which this year are Notre Dame and Oregon State.  Why does Arizona need to subsidize the State of Oregon's athletic programs.  And Notre Dame?  They have one of the largest endowments in the country.  Neither of these teams have any connection to Phoenix or Arizona.

OK, I am being purposefully naive.  The money may go directly to the teams, but the purpose of the subsidy is to get those teams' fans to come to Arizona on the week between Christmas and New Years and buy hotel rooms.  In fact, it is an indirect subsidy of the lodging industry.

Why does the lodging industry have so much power in Phoenix?  People come here anyway, because it is warm - our climate is the best advertising.  And during the week between Christmas and New Years all the hotels are probably full anyway - certainly their rates are the highest of the year, as I have found when family have come to town that week.  And don't even get me started on tax money for this.

If the lodging industry values this stuff, let them pay for it via one of their trade groups.  The city of Phoenix does not advertise my business.  In fact, it does not advertise most of the businesses in town.  Why is lodging the exception?

Many people have seen the Steve McQueen movie "the Great Escape", about a group of 60 or so prisoners who cleverly dug a tunnel out of a German POW camp and escaped in various directions across Europe, many of whom where eventually recaptured.

I don't know if such an event occurred in Europe, but an almost identical real-life POW escape (tunnel and all) occurred right here in Phoenix, Arizona almost exactly 60 years ago.

Like many isolated western towns in WWII, Phoenix played host to a number of German POW's, in our case about 1700 in Papago Park.  Phoenix, and in particular Papago Park, with its arid climate and red rocks, must have been quite a culture shock to the Germans.

Anyway, I won't tell the whole story, but it is fascinating and you can read it all here.  A short excerpt:

The German prisoners asked their guards for permission to create a volleyball courtyard. Innocently obliging, the guards provided them with digging tools. From that point on, two men were digging at all times during night hours. A cart was rigged up to travel along tracks to take the dirt out. The men stuffed the dirt in their pants pockets which had holes in the bottoms, and they shuffled the dirt out along the ground as they walked around. In addition, they flushed a huge amount of dirt down the toilets. They labeled their escape route Der Faustball Tunnel (The Volleyball Tunnel).

They dug a 178 foot tunnel with a diameter of 3 feet. The tunnel went 8 to 14 feet beneath the surface, under the two prison camp fences, a drainage ditch and a road. The exit was near a power pole in a clump of brush about 15 feet from the Cross Cut Canal. To disguise their plans, the men built a square box, filled it with dirt and planted native weeds in it for the lid to cover the exit. When the lid was on the tunnel exit, the area looked like undisturbed desert.

There is some dispute about how many people actually escaped -- official records say 25.  Others argue that as many as 60 escaped, but since only 25 were recaptured, 25 was used as the official number to cover up the fact that German POW's might be roaming about Arizona.

The prisoners who led this escape were clearly daring and inventive, but unfortunately in Arizona lore they are better known for their one mistake.  Coming from wet Northern European climes, the prisoners assumed that the "rivers" marked on their map would actually have flowing water in them.  Their map showed what looked like the very substantial Salt River flowing down to the Colorado River and eventual escape in Mexico.  Unfortunately, the Salt River most of the year (at least in the Phoenix area) is pretty much a really wide flat body of dirt.  The German expressions as they carried their stolen canoes up to its banks must have been priceless.

It never occurred to the Germans that in dry Arizona a blue line marked "river" on a map might be filled with water only occasionally. The three men with the canoe were disappointed to find the Salt River bed merely a mud bog from recent rains. Not to be discouraged, they carried their canoe pieces twenty miles to the confluence with the Gila river, only to find a series of large puddles. They sat on the river bank, put their heads in their hands and cried out their frustration.

I know how they feel every summer when we go to Lake Powell and find the water lower than the previous year.  Anyway, we shouldn't just make light of the escapees.  Apparently the prison guards made Sargent Schultz look like Sherlock Holmes:

Although the men left in the wee hours of Christmas Eve, the camp officials were blissfully unaware of anything amiss until the escapees began to show up that evening. The first to return was an enlisted man, Herbert Fuchs, who decided he had been cold, wet and hungry long enough by Christmas Eve evening. Thinking about his dry, warm bed and hot meal that the men in the prison camp were enjoying, he decided his attempt at freedom had come to an end. The 22-year old U-boat crewman hitched a ride on East Van Buren Street and asked the driver to take him to the sheriff's office where he surrendered. Much to the surprise of the officers at the camp, the sheriff called and told them he had a prisoner who wanted to return to camp.

One of the last to be re-captured was U-boat Commander Jürgen Wattenberg, the leader of the breakout.  Interestingly, Captain Wattenberg hid out in the hills just a few hundred yards from my current home.

UPDATE

One reason I thought of this story, beyond being close to the anniversary, was this story about new Harvard Law professor Jack Goldsmith.  Though I am not necesarily a supporter of Mr. Goldsmith's views, the article is a good insight into where campuses are today in terms of academic freedoms.  His conservative views and opinions are treated like some hidden scandal that was missed in his hiring and would surely have disqualified him for the position if known.  I am sympathetic not because I am conservative, but as a libertarian and defender of free markets, I was thought to be an odd duck on campus as well.

The part of the article that got me thinking about the Great Escape was this:

Before he stepped down from his post as a U.S. assistant attorney general this summer, Goldsmith penned a March draft memo arguing that Central Intelligence Agency officials could transfer Iraqi detainees out of their native country for interrogation without violating the Geneva Convention.

The memo said that detainees would still have to be treated in accordance with international humanitarian norms. But Goldsmith's position has drawn fire from human rights activists and some scholars who argue that the memo marks a dramatic reinterpretation of the 1949 treaty, which safeguards the rights of prisoners of war.

I know nothing about the 1949 treaty, but it seems odd that holding POW's in other countries would be outlawed so soon after we did so much of it ourselves in WWII.  Generally, my understanding is that detention of German prisoners in the US went very well for all concerned - in fact, the biggest problem I have ever heard about is that many Germans did not want to leave and be sent back to Germany after the war (see also here).  My guess is that such a ban may have resulted from Soviet actions in the later stages of WWII.  The Soviets sent many, many German prisoners back east, never ever to return, living out a life of slavery in Siberia and other happy locations long after the war was over.  Anyone have any other background on this?

America experienced no major terrorist attack on its soil in the run-up to the election.  This can't be for lack of trying.  If the terrorists bombed Spain, at best a peripheral country in the war on terror, to influence its election, you know that they would have loved to have bombed the Great Satan.  But they didn't.  All we got was a VHS valentine from Osama.

Thank you to the US Military, to the administration, to the department of homeland security, to the FAA, to the Phoenix Police, to the FBI, to the CIA, and to everyone else who made this non-event possible.  And, thank you to all the citizens of the US, who, whatever issues they might have with those in power, would never harbor a terrorist.  This sounds like an obvious statement, but its not.  It is in fact our best defense against terrorism.  Europe is much more vulnerable, because it has communities and groups and various cities who ARE willing to aid and abet terrorists.

I was stuck out in California today, one day longer than I expected. I got up early, got my business done, and drove about 7 hours to get back to Phoenix in time to vote.

I have absolutely no patience for people who can't find the time to vote. Its ridiculously easy, except for some of those idiot counties in Ohio I am looking at right now that have such long lines - how can you manage things so poorly?

You might ask why I do not absentee vote. I like voting on election day, I like the ritual, sortof like the secular version of taking communion. Voting by mail feels more like paying bills. It loses a lot for me.