WHY URBAN POLICY ADVOCATES FAIL.

Last fall, we noted an essay by Streetsblog's Hayden Clarkin, who was not a fan of making motorists miserable, and might have recommended that advocates of a certain stripe lose the smug.

His colleague Alex Burns didn't get the memo.

The Trump Administration continues to dismantle federal climate policy, and Biden-era goals are drifting increasingly out of reach. As the federal government of the world’s second-biggest polluter abdicates responsibility, state and local governments must accelerate the decarbonization efforts. This is especially true for the transportation sector, the country’s biggest emissions source, as state and local governments are key decision makers on highway and transit spending.

Unfortunately, even states that have pledged to take climate seriously are failing to reduce transportation emissions at the rapid pace that is needed. At the root of this failure is an unwillingness by policy makers to inconvenience drivers and meaningfully depart from a car-dominated transport system. As progress on climate goals falters, it is time for state transportation leaders to come to terms with an inconvenient truth: climate goals are not feasible without a swift and methodical reallocation of road space away from cars.

"Unwillingness by policy makers to inconvenience drivers."  As if defenders of the status quo or advocates of the proposition that the private automobile confers freedom of movement don't already think of urban transit advocates as a convex combination of smug and depriving people of their freedoms.  Moreover, Mr Burns's essay does nothing to disabuse people who think of bicycle lanes and road diets as deliberately taking road space away from cars.  Those are Desirable Features and Governments Aren't Doing Enough.

Supporting policy actions have focused on improving multimodal transportation options and promoting denser, walkable, urban land use. Projects that significantly impact cost and convenience for car drivers have been largely off-limits.

Nowhere in his essay, though, do we see any mention of treating the roads and parking spaces as productive assets and pricing them accordingly.  Those policies impose costs but might improve convenience.  Can't have that, the streets have to be narrowed.