Michael Lewyn

<p> A couple of years ago, I was listening to a friend explain why she left Rochester for Jacksonville. &quot;I was tired of digging my car out of the snow.&quot; It occurred to me that the nexus between driving and winter weather may at least partially explain the decline of America’s northern Rust Belt. </p> <p> Here’s why: car care and storage makes snow a bigger bother than might otherwise be the case: if you don’t have a heated garage, you have to dig your car out of the snow every day, and if you park on the street you may have to constantly move your car to accommodate municipal snow removal. </p>

<p class="ecxMsoNormal"> A couple of weeks ago, I was on a bus in Chicago and noticed something that I had not noticed before- that how you paid to get on the bus affected how long you took to get on the bus.<span>  </span>People who flashed monthly passes boarded in a few seconds.<span>  </span>People who put in dollar bills got on a lot more slowly, as they fumbled for the right number of bills.<span>  </span>People who had to pay change took longer still.<span>  </span> </p> <p class="ecxMsoNormal"> So to speed buses’ on-time performance (pun intended) transit agencies should encourage the former and discourage the latter. </p>

<p> A few days ago, I was in a Chicago neighborhood called Lincoln Square, on Lincoln Avenue just south of Lawrence Avenue.  Lincoln Avenue looks like many posh urban neighborhoods- narrow, walkable streets inhabited by gelato-eating, prosperous-looking people.  Even on a weeknight, the shops and streets of Lincoln Square betrayed no evidence of a recession.* </p>

<p style="text-indent: 0.5in" class="ecxMsoNormal"> (NOTE TO READERS: An expanded, footnote-filled version of this article is online at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1632935 ) </p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in" class="ecxMsoNormal"> &nbsp; </p> <p style="text-indent: 0.5in" class="ecxMsoNormal"> <span>Externalities are costs (or benefits) imposed on third parties by another individual’s voluntary action.  Government regulations exist at least partially to protect us from externalities created by others.</span> </p>

<p style="text-indent: 0.25in; line-height: 200%" class="ecxMsoNormal"> <span>As I began to type this, I was on a Greyhound bus somewhere in southern Ontario, on the first leg of my return from Toronto (where I have spent the past year getting an extra degree) to the United States. <span> </span>As I type, it occurs to me to ask myself: what are the interests of the long-distance bus rider?<span>  </span>Are they the same as users of other forms of public transit, or closer to those of drivers and truckers?<span>  </span>My short answer to these questions is: a little of both.</span> </p>