Bastiat1

Wow, how awful for you that your commute will be increased by 40 seconds so that we can create a safer environment for pedestrians on Allen Parkway, a street where several pedestrians have been killed.

 

Anyway, I'm a middle class guy in Montrose, too. I think the new light at Dunlavy is a great idea, and will be highly useful during busy traffic hours. Making that turn from Allen Parkway can be pretty tricky when there's a steady stream of cars coming. It always struck me as odd that this intersection was treated as such a minor one when so many people turn between these two streets.

Sounds like we are all middle class guys living in Montrose soon to face longer commute times.  In addition to that I've also studied a lot of economics and there is no way this makes sense from an economics perspective. 

As best I can find there are 29,000 people driving down Allen each day.  If you conservatively assume only one person per car, and take the city's low ball estimates of 1 minute delayed each way, and conservatively assume that the marginal value of a lost hour of leisure is worth about $25 (which is why the earnings power of the demographic of commuter is relevant), you get...

2 minutes * ($25 / 60 minutes) * 29,000 commuters = $24,000 a day in lost leisure value.  That's $8.8 million per year.  The NHTSA pegs the cost of a pedestrian/bicycle bridge over an arterial street at about $1.5 million.  You need two bridges to get pedestrian traffic into the park- so that's a cost of $3.0 million.

Anyone in their right mind would spend $3.0 million to generate $8.8 million (using the city's own numbers!) in value.  For a 20-year useful life those pedestrian bridges would create $92 million in value for the commuters (using a 6% discount rate).

The point is that city officials need to take economics into consideration when they are playing with their Lego sets.  The city should be run for the betterment of its citizens.

1 minute increased commute time sounds incredibly optimistic.  Between the reduction in speed limit, two lights (likely poorly timed), crossing time, and the time lost by every car in succession gearing back up while idiots are texting and not paying attention, I figure it will be closer to 3 minutes each way.

Moreover, persons working downtown are likely some of the most highly paid in the city.  On top of that, those taking Allen are likely even higher paid than average (fewer bus commuters, or guys coming in from suburbs).  Then you add in the thousands that are taking Allen every day. 

That is all to say that the social costs of six minutes lost each day across thousands of people are enormous.  I don't know why they wouldn't just build pedestrian bridges for people to get to the park, eschew the new lights and speed reduction.  Hell, you could even make that section a toll road and charge people until the pedestrian bridges are paid for.