Vote (With Your Feet) for Charlottesville

This morning I ran on the AT with my little brother on a section just a little south of Humpback Rocks. When we parked, we were one of two cars in a "parking area" which was designed to fit 2 or 3 cars. When we finished our tenth mile and returned to our car 2 hours later, there were at least 20 cars squeezed off the side of the road to park there. When we drove north to go back home, we passed the Humpback Rocks parking areas, all of which were full. I'd estimate there were at least 120 cars there, and there were dozens of cars lining the edges of the Blue Ridge Parkway. This made me think about how people's choices to hike en masse on Saturday mornings are an expression of preferences that is a form of voting. People in Charlottesville, Waynesboro, and surrounding areas have strong preferences for hiking, and what's great is that our local and state governments know it and have spent money on trails and trash cans and visitors' centers and parking lots to enable hiking. Not only that, but they've also secured federal money through the Highway Trust Fund and the National Park Service to preserve roads. This reminds me of how local governments in Tiebout's theory compete for consumer-voters so public goods are provided at the right level. Charlottesville certainly has had my family's vote for the past 30 years, and I'd say the public goods provision of hiking opportunities has something to do with that. 

This could also mean that people, in the age of the coronavirus, might soon consider moving to places with better hiking opportunities, because outdoor activity is a great way to reduce exposure to COVID-19 while having some fun, and hiking trail usage seems to be up to about 3x what it was in previous years. That means the optimal amount of hiking trails provision may be on the rise, and people may move to places like Charlottesville until other local governments catch on and catch up.