How speed limits are calculated (and CDOT's new approach). We don't really know unemployment as much as the press and politicians say we do. Well done Caldara, well done.
Did you ever learn how it is that speed limits are calculated?
There are a variety of answers based on things like vehicle size (for example, you may have noticed a different downhill speed limit for mountain grades for big trucks and cars because you don't want to burn out your brakes and have a runaway if you're a heavy truck), road conditions, Jimmy Carter's thoughts**, and etc.
For the garden variety decisions on "normal" roads, however, the decision is made by seeing the drivers on the road and aiming for the 85th percentile speed, the speed that 85% of drivers are going at or below.
Well, Colorado, say hello to a new way to do speed limits: per the article linked first below CDOT (when either setting limits on state roadways or when asked by a local government) will consider " ... the road’s purpose, geometry and the number of pedestrians and cyclists who use it."
I'll be honest, the cantankerous old man part of me wants to immediately reject this, if for no other reason than it's a new way of doing things.
After I let that thought flow through me, however, I don't think I can find a huge issue with this way of doing things. Their heart's in the right place, and who could take issue with safer roads?
I suppose the only concerns I would have would be over the process for setting the number.
Say what you will about the 85th percentile rule, it's a number and thus pretty objective. You either calculate and measure correctly or you don't.
The standard above seems like it would be pretty vague and open to some wiggling; it seems like it could depend greatly on who's doing the deciding.
What if the dude at CDOT is a real fan of bicycles? What about cases like that mentioned in the article where the geometry of a road changed and this means that heavy truck drivers who aren't paying attention and driving at the speed limit have a greater propensity to roll their loaded trucks? How many pedestrians equals one car? That is, how many people using the road to walk on means lowering the speeds?
I'm not saying these questions can't be decided in a fair way, but I just wonder at how fairly and objectively they can be decided on. I wonder, when it comes time to decide whose ox gets gored, they make the call and how responsible for that decision will they be when conflicts happen and complaints arise?
One last question: does the engineer in Denver set it for, say, where I live in Logan County if he or she has absolutely no familiarity with how it looks out here?
It ought to be interesting to see how this plays out.
**halfway a joke here, it was for mileage but the point being that sometimes it's political
https://www.cpr.org/2023/09/15/cdot-lower-speed-limit-change-colorado/
True understanding of things often means quantifying them. So what does that mean if you are unable to get some needed measurements?
Imagine that you went in for a check up. The doctor takes blood. Sends it to the lab. At the lab one of their machines has not been working exactly right and so one of the tests has (at the least) questionable validity.
How well would you say you know your health?
Something similar is happening with our knowledge of our state's economic health. The problem is that we are not sure if we're getting good measurements of a pretty key indicator of how we're doing.
We're not sure (per the article below) about our jobs numbers. And we're not talking about a little bit off either; we're talking about swings in the THOUSANDS when we talk about jobs gained or lost. Numbers that go from 3500 jobs lost to 1300 in the span of a month. That's a 63% slip.
For an indicator of how our economy is doing, for a number that politicians downplay or brag about, for a number that we base policy and tax-dollar spending on, discrepancies that large are not good. Would you want to be prescribed a medicine with high prices and side effects based on, say, cholesterol numbers that could be this far off?
Why? Well, and this was news to me, a lot of employment data is based on employer surveys, and employers aren't answering anymore.
Vis., the quote from the story below,
"Apparently, a lot of businesses aren’t responding at all. The response rate has fallen off dramatically since the pandemic, though it’s not clear exactly why. Nationally, 60 percent of businesses responded to the employment survey in January 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of June, the response rate was 40 percent."
Small wonder we can be so far off.
Economists do still have a tool to go back and check the numbers (see the bit in the article about the "Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages"), but this other measurement, while more accurate, doesn't offer a lot of resolution in terms of time and also lags what's happening. I.e. you might think jobs are doing great until 3 more months from now when you get disappointed.
Two lessons to be learned from this in my view.
1. When politicians lament or brag, ask yourself what numbers they're using. If it's the latest, it's likely not at all accurate. If it's the quarterly report, it's more accurate but it's got a lot of lag in it and doesn't give detail.
2. Put this in your pocket and remember if for the next time you see an economic forecast, by anyone and for anything. This should give you some healthy skepticism. Not only can we not predict well, we're not even measuring the present that well sometimes.
https://www.cpr.org/2023/09/21/colorados-job-economy-data-unclear/
The State Title Board started to work on a copy of Prop HH and then stopped.
The Colorado Constitution requires that bills (and referenda and initiatives) have a single subject. That is, that anything that would become law can only deal with one thing. If you've watched the giant omnibus bills that work their way through D.C., I'm sure you can understand the wisdom of this choice.
When it comes to laws, the fix, if you think the single subject rule was broken, is to take it to court. We may see that with Prop HH, though the Colorado Supreme Court said they wouldn't rule on whether HH violates the single subject rule unless and until it passes. And then we all know they'll find a reason to say it didn't because that's their job: rubberstamping Democrat policy.
At any rate, if we're talking about initiatives, one of the jobs of the Title Board is to make sure that no proposed initiative can pass to the next stage of things until it passes the single subject test (well, at least what their opinion on the matter is--if people disagree, you can ask for a rehearing and, finding no satisfaction there, can go to the state supreme court).
Jon Caldara and Ben Murrey proposed an initiative (Initiative 88) which is essentially a copy of Prop HH. By carbon copying HH as an initiative, though one that would have to go through the Title Board (recall that referenda like the real Prop HH don't go through the Title Board). It had its Title Board hearing on the 18th.
Give them credit for a wonderfully planned and executed bit of political theater. They brought yet more attention to how much of a mess Prop HH is, and forced another state agency to admit same.
There is more detail in the CBS article linked first below (I also went to the Title Board site to pull the audio of the hearing should you want to listen in). The link is second below and the hearing for this proposed initiative (#88) starts at the 3:35:00 mark.
Listening to the audio gives you a real sense of how much the Title Board struggled to fix the language of Prop HH to make it more accurate for voters. They also really struggled with the question of whether or not Prop HH has a single subject and what that subject should be.
If you're super interested in the details, give the audio a listen. The short version of what I'm talking about can easily be seen in the attached screenshot.
A picture is worth a thousand words and this screenshot is no exception. Ignore the words themselves and note how many changes were already needed for the tiny bit that the Title Board actually worked on.* They barely got started on the first paragraph and the language (again, a copy of the language in the real Prop HH) has more red ink splashed on it than a failing student's English paper.
We all knew Prop HH was bad policy, deceitful, and that it was legally a mess (along with the fact that I believe it is in violation of the single subject rule).
Thanks to Initiative #88 we now have a picture that clearly shows what we already knew.
And we have the Colorado State Title Board's struggles as evidence of what a steaming turd Prop HH is.
*The title board stopped their work after a bit by saying that they couldn't work on this because setting a title here was contingent on HH passing. I think that's probably fair: Mr. Caldara got his licks in, and the Title Board really does need to be careful about weighing in on politics. For counterpoint, though, I want to add the argument that Ms Masden, the attorney working with Caldara, made. Namely, that there were provisions of SB23-303 that did become law with Polis' signature and thus it was appropriate for the Title Board to proceed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-board-scrutinizes-ballot-measures-raises-questions-proposition-hh/
https://csos.granicus.com/player/clip/407?view_id=1&redirect=true&h=8c55de9d1765e8d2a69e9b524a2c413c