Professor Glenn Reynolds : Politics is for politicians

Professor Glenn Reynolds reports:

Why do politicians get so excited over things like streetcars and “light rail?” What’s wrong with buses?

The answer isn’t that politicos are train aficionados, but rather the standard answer for why politicians don’t like some things as much as they like others: Insufficient opportunities for graft.

You see, the problem with buses is that you can change a bus route by printing up some new maps. Routes for things that run on rails, on the other hand, are harder to change.

That would seem to be a mark in favor of buses, right? They’re much more flexible. But when you think about opportunities for graft, buses come up short.

Trains offer two advantages: First, all those tracks have to be laid, which means more construction contracts. (If it’s a subway, even better — digging tunnels is worth years, even decades sometimes, of construction work).

But more importantly, property along the rail lines, and especially near the stations, becomes more valuable in most cases. Developers are thus encouraged to cough up big consideration (sometimes actual bribes, sometimes bribes disguised as political support) to politicians to get the stations put where they want. And one reason they’re willing to pay big is that, once the rails are laid and the stations are built, the politicians can’t go back on their word. A development along a bus line isn’t worth as much because you have only a politician’s unsupported promise not to move it, and nobody much trusts a politician’s unsupported promises.

The problem of the rent-seeking society.