when driving costs a significant portion of one’s income to utilize. Indirectly, these same taxes help influence land-use and parking policy. In Denmark, avoiding low-density sprawl has been a priority for decades. However, gas taxes may be intended to complement high density land use policies, rather than directly create them. Aside from heavy taxation, many transportation improvements–from bridges to metro lines–are funded by user tolls, fees, and fares. Often a project will use monies from the general fund to finance a local match needed to get a loan or to float a bond, but those loans are usually acquired with the intent of paying them back with the revenue generated from user-collected tolls and fares after construction has been completed. This was the case for the Oresund Bridge–a road and rail link connecting Denmark to Sweden–as well as for the first two Metro lines in Copenhagen (Boye and Molgaard, 2002; Oresundsbron, 2010). In Denmark there is a policy of having the actual user of infrastructure pay for the majority of the capital investment. Compare this to infrastructure investment here in the Bay Area. Some more commonly used mechanisms for financing transportation projects in the U.S. are things like business improvement districts (BIDs), tax increment financing (TIF) and transportation improvement districts (TIDs), as well as passing various sales, parcel, payroll and other taxes to pre-finance a project before it’s built. This may result in lower tolls and user fees for the specific piece of infrastructure, but it can also mean that a person or taxpayer who may rarely use the bridge or subway might still pay for a piece of the project. Another contributor to a well-balanced transportation system is the fact that transit agencies and other entities do not have to be concerned with providing healthcare or pension benefits to their workers. The Danish federal government takes care of this and not only do the funds for these purposes not have to come from transit agencies budgets, but they also don’t have to commit funds to the personnel needed to manage these human resource functions either. That frees up funds for actual planning, construction and operations. As an example, assess how the Copenhagen Metro system was financed in comparison to traditional transit financing in California. The City of Copenhagen and the Danish Ministry of Finance contributed more than half of the capital construction costs from public funds, with the rest coming in the forms of loans to the newly formed Orestad Development Corporation (ODC, a partnership between the cities of Copenhagen, Fredericksberg and the Ministry of Finance). The idea was that the ODC would borrow the remainder of the funds needed for planning and construction. Ideally, all of the debt would be paid back around 2035, mostly from yearly operating profits, land sales and reversion of property tax (Boye and Molgaard, 2002). In many ways this sounds like tax increment financing here in the U.S., except that Metro passengers pay instead of homeowners. The most intriguing part is that–compared to the U.S.–the majority of construction costs were supposed to be paid for by user fees (the farebox), while here in California, a county-wide sales tax is often what contributes the bulk of locally provided funds. As noted in previous sections, substantial portions of the Metro’s operating costs are covered with fare revenue. This can be partially attributed to high ridership, but it can also be a testament to Metro’s ability to keep costs down. Metro is designed with the intent of keeping the agency as small as possible, with as 48
few permanent employees as possible. There are no drivers, as the Metro vehicles are automated. Metro only has about 200 employees, most of whom are a hybrid fare-inspector and station agent who ride the trains and staff stations in order to provide customer service and inspect proof of fare payment. Other than that, there are very few employees. This means that there are fewer salaries, pensions and health benefits which need to be paid. Moreover, contractors are hired for cleaning, operations and maintenance (Metro, 2010). Lastly, the structure of government itself is crucial to efficient implementation of any government function. Here in the U.S., government is often vilified for bureaucratic and antiquated procedures whose purposes are often misunderstood or not understood at all. In Denmark, many transit agencies and other government entities are designed to employ as few people as possible. In many cases, actual operations of certain functions are subcontracted out to private transportation companies that bid on contracts to actually operate and provide the transport service. In Denmark, the general policy is that government should be as accessible, democratic and streamlined as possible (Ikuta, 2006; Danish Ministry of Interior and Health, 2006). These were the reasons behind the municipal reform of 2007 (Ikuta, 2006; Danish Ministry of Interior and Health, 2006). On January 1 of that year, a restructuring of government levels took place. Thirteen counties were consolidated to five regions while 271 cities were whittled down to 98 municipalities. County jurisdiction and functions were dissolved. Regions, which replaced counties, did retain one sole function: to manage the healthcare system in its respective province. All other county responsibilities were given either to the municipalities or to the federal government, most going to the former. These reforms did reach transportation agencies. Movia, the bus system for Copenhagen and its greater region, is a great example. Before the government reform legislation in 2007, bus service as it’s now provided by Movia was planned and operated by many separate transit agencies that each covered a smaller individual service area. They still had a standardized payment system, but merging them together is a phenomenal act of democratic response by Denmark, especially since it only took three years to implement the program from inception to completion (Ikuta, 2006; Danish Ministry of Interior and Health, 2006). Planning and building transportation networks for local regions is easier when the levels of government bureaucracy are minimized as much as possible. San Francisco and the Bay Area could do well by emulating these actions. Recommendations A number of other lessons could be learned from the Danish experience. First, strictly enforced land-use patterns must be a top priority that complements any and all transportation policy. In San Francisco and in the Bay Area, piecemeal city and regional planning has reduced the landscape to a patchwork of densities and forms, making cohesive transit planning difficult. One way in which the city of San Francisco could assist in this endeavor would be to maintain its ambitiously low parking requirements for new infill development. San Francisco’s planning code stipulates that most new development provide a maximum amount of parking per unit. However, every time that the planning commission or board of supervisors caves to flimsily justified condiWorlds Apart | 49