How land use patterns keep driving cheap: Geographic support for transportation taxes

Abstract

Economists tend to favour price-based approaches, such as gasoline and carbon taxes, to address the negative impacts of car travel, while urban planners tend to emphasise land use planning such as compact development. In this paper, we argue that the two approaches are synergistic. We use precinct-level data from two California referenda to show that land use planning makes pricing more feasible: voters in dense, transit-oriented neighbourhoods are more willing to support a carbon price and increased gasoline taxes. Political ideology is a more important determinant of voting patterns, but in a closely divided election, land use patterns, public transportation, and other aspects of the built environment can determine the success of a referendum on driving taxes. Our results also imply that the voluminous research on land use and transportation underestimates the long-run impacts of compact development on driving, through ignoring the ways in which urban form shapes the politics of taxation.