We Need More Policy Comparisons

American Exceptionalism is not a formula for good policy

I can’t believe I’m saying this but… I agree with Kyrsten Sinema. While I have made my general contempt for Sinema clear on many occasions, she was actually on the receiving end of undeserved criticism recently. So, what’s going on?

This tweet went viral, criticising Sinema

Travel demand is currently surging and there are not enough airline pilots. As a result, airlines want to lower the amount of training required from 1500 hours to 500 hours. That sounds bad, right? Don’t we want our pilots to have as much training as possible? Well, it’s a little more complicated than that, and we need to look at the history of this rule. In the US, the standard used to be 250 hours until the crash of Colgan Air Flight 3407 in 2009. Congress raised the minimum number of flight hours sixfold to 1,500 in response to the crash. However, the crash wasn’t caused by inexperienced pilots with a lack of training. The captain of the flight had 3,379 hours of flight experience and the first officer had 2,244 hours. This rule wouldn’t have prevented the crash. Nonetheless, it was implemented in the wake of the disaster as part of a broad airplane safety bill.

Our goal should be for flying to be as safe as possible. As a result, we should look around the world to see which laws are effective at creating safe flying conditions. In Europe, the standard is still 250 hours, and there hasn’t been a single deadly accident there over the past decade. It’s clear that this arbitrary rule isn’t what’s keeping planes safe, and pilots themselves have admitted that this rule is really just a barrier to entry that reduces competition and artificially increases their wages at customers’ expense.

What’s the big deal here?

My substack isn’t usually about the minutiae of airline regulation, it’s about cities. So why am I writing about this? Well, this is just one symptom of a major issue affecting American cities: a refusal to learn from global best practices. Oftentimes, American Exceptionalism is used as an excuse for incuriosity, and we end up with worse outcomes than comparable developed countries. American Exceptionalism when it comes to our cities is one of the things making us exceptionally bad on so many outcomes from lifespans to carbon emissions to walkability. Here are just a few examples:

1. Single-stair bans. Part of the reason that most new American buildings look so similar is that almost all of America has banned single-stair point-access blocks, which are narrower, more efficient, and more livable buildings with better circulation. As a result, almost all apartment buildings have double-loaded corridors (think a hotel hallway) which are more expensive and have worse layouts for air circulation and sunlight. Why does America do this? Well, the claimed reason is safety, that we need two stairs to evacuate a building in case of a fire. Just like the 1,500 hour rule, this sounds reasonable on the surface. But when you dig into it, the facts don’t add up. The US has far higher rates of fire deaths than most EU countries where single-stair buildings are legal. And with a ladder, windows typically serve as a secondary point of egress. As a matter of fact, the country with the lowest fire death rate, Switzerland, allows single-stair high-rises. And New York and Seattle are the only two cities in the US that allow taller single-stair buildings and both have right around the average fire death rate for the US. Thankfully, after years of lobbying from housing advocates, more places are starting to push to legalize single-stair buildings, including California (if you live there, call your State Senator and ask them to support AB835!)

   

2. Transit Costs. The US has obscenely high transit construction costs (I already wrote about this here!). These costs aren’t just high, they’re like… obscenely bad. Like, 10x as expensive as Finland or Spain or South Korea levels of bad. And yet, American officials show a total lack of curiosity in learning from these countries about how they can lower costs. Instead, officials just come up with excuses. Former MTA chair Joe Lhota once attributed this to uncontrollable factors: “aging utilities, expensive land, high density, strict regulations and large ridership requiring big stations”. But this doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny. Paris has aging utilities, expensive land, high density, strict regulations, and large ridership as well. And yet they are building transit for a small fraction of the cost as New York. Additionally, here’s former New York Mayor DeBlasio saying the city couldn’t be more ambitious with bus/bike lanes like other cities have because he “doesn’t think any two cities are comparable”. Similarly, here’s an MTA Board member saying New York shouldn’t have open gangway subway cars that are successful all over the world because “New York subway riders are different” This is the type of thinking we need to avoid at all costs. We absolutely need to be looking at other cities that are building transit more efficiently and trying to learn from them. We can’t just throw our hands up and accept our worst-in-class status quo.

   

3. Traffic Deaths. The US has the highest rate of traffic deaths amongst any OECD country, and our death rate has actually increased over the past decade despite falling in almost every other developed country. When faced with this reality, elected officials either enact half-assed “Vision Zero” plans or just ignore the issue entirely. And yet, there’s so much we can learn from other countries that have successfully saved hundreds of thousands of lives by making the roads safer. Just for starters, we could be lowering speed limits, taxing larger vehicles, increasing automated speed enforcement, and incorporating pedestrian safety into car safety ratings. It works everywhere else, and yet we refuse to do it here even though it will save lives.

4. And many more: Mayor DeBlasio saying that New York can’t charge for parking because “it’s too complicated” even though other cities all across the world (and even the country) manage to do it. New York leaving garbage on the streets and refusing to adopt containerized trash collection that is commonplace elsewhere in the world (although there is movement to finally fix this). Deputy Secretary of Transportation Polly Trottenberg saying New York can’t do a full network of open streets like Paris because the city is too big. The list goes on…

One common thread here is that this type of American Exceptionalism is most common in New York. I understand why: New York is the only true megacity in the country and lots of things in New York cannot be compared to small towns in America. But it can absolutely be compared to other global megacities like Paris, London, Tokyo, and Seoul. And most importantly, elected officials must be curious. Better things are possible, and they already exist if you are willing to look at and learn from other countries.