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New story: The Butterfly Wrangler

2018-05-26T00:25:00.000-04:00

Ever try to tag a butterfly? I did. Read about my misadventures with a butterfly net via media personality Melissa Carter’s blog:
http://melissacartersays.com/2018/05/the-butterfly-wrangler-by-kevin-h-posey/

A Tour of the New Sections of the Atlanta BeltLine

2018-05-18T13:24:00.001-04:00

If you’re curious as to what the new sections of the Atlanta BeltLine look like, here’s a tour I wrote up on LinkedIn.

Urban v. Rural and the Alabama Senate Election Result

2017-12-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

Urban v. Rural

and the

Alabama Senate Election Result

Kevin H. Posey

Set aside for just a moment the partisan aspects and implications of last night’s Alabama Senate election victory for the Democrat, Doug Jones, over the Republican nominee, Roy Moore, and consider how it reflects on the longstanding tensions between rural and urban interests in the United States. These tensions date back to the founding of the republic, with Thomas Jefferson advocating for an agrarian democracy, while it could fairly be argued that Alexander Hamilton represented urban interests with his focus on a central bank that would fuel industry.

With this in mind, take a look at Alabama’s county results. Check out how the largest counties (with the highest precinct count) voted. There’s nothing unusual about the fact that they diverge from smaller, more rural counties. What is unusual is that, this time, they prevailed.


Results courtesy of AL.com

Essentially, even in one of the lesser-urbanized regions in the US, the political power of the city is starting to be felt. One cannot help but wonder if this is a trend that might play out in 2018 in more urban regions. If the cities are on the political ascent, this will have tremendous implications for transportation priorities in the US.

How? Well, highways are often used as a means to encourage economic growth in rural areas. The extension of Interstate 69 in Indiana (and eventually to Texas) is one such example. Or, they are often built to facilitate development in former agricultural areas outside of the city—also known as suburban sprawl.

Highways today are seldom built or expanded to benefit city residents. In fact, they are often fought for their destructive impacts on neighborhoods and the health of nearby residents. Opposition to the plan to drastically widen I-70 through the heart of Denver is reflective of this. So, if cities are growing in power, how likely is the funding spigot for road construction to stay open?

Birmingham, the largest city in Alabama, has had considerable trouble funding its transit system. At one point, city employees had to forego a raise just so it could stay in operation. Federal funding for such systems is often crucial, but Alabama’s Senators were elected primarily via support outside of the cities. But if you look at last night’s results, Jefferson County, wherein Birmingham lies, turned out for Senator-elect Doug Jones. One would imagine that he would be motivated to advocate for federal transit dollars to reward the constituents who gave him his narrow victory.

Now consider what happens if the scenario in Alabama plays out across the country in 2018. Keep an eye on Senate race competitiveness rankings via the independent Cook Political Report.

As we went into last night, it showed the Alabama seat as a toss-up. Seven other seats carry that ranking (shown as state-current occupant):

Democrats Republicans

Indiana- Donnelly Arizona- Flake

Missouri- McCaskill Nevada- Heller

West Virginia- Manchin Tennessee- Corker

Minnesota- Franken

Indiana, Missouri, Minnesota, Arizona, and Nevada all have large, urban centers comprising their electorate. If the Alabama scenario were to repeat, that could yield a pickup of three Senate seats for Democrats. All of the victors would likely owe their jobs to city voters. Greater funding for transit and complete streets projects, coupled with an overall de-emphasis of single occupant vehicles, is not out of the question.

The 2018 election is still a year off, and much can (and will) occur between now and then. But those with an interest in transportation and urban policy would do well to take heed of how the political winds are starting to blow.

New story posted: Roasting Marshmallows Over Lava & Other Adventures in Time Travel

2017-10-23T09:17:00.001-04:00

Writing only about transportation can be a bit dull. So, I have a collection of stories posted on Atlanta media personality Melissa Carter’s site. My latest combines cooking, geology, and, um, heat exhaustion.

http://melissacartersays.com/2017/10/roasting-marshmallows-over-lava/

Tourism, Bikes, and Money: How Atlanta Compares with Cities & Resort Communities Around the US

2017-10-15T17:31:00.002-04:00

I recently wrote that Atlanta was slowly morphing into a city fit for bicycling. Thanks to the growing Beltline and an expanding grid of bike lanes, it is possible to use a bike for more than merely showing off one’s physique in Lycra. Biking is normal, so normal clothing may now be worn. Similarly, Atlantans on foot are no longer assumed to merely be training for the next Peachtree Road Race or walking from their broken-down car to the nearest gas station. They’re simply going somewhere.

But if Atlanta is embracing better streetscapes for people who bike and walk, how does it compare to other cities? Complete Streets projects are known to have boosted tourism in a variety of communities. Are Atlanta’s efforts enough to provide a competitive edge versus not only other large cities, but also smaller towns and tourist-dependent communities?

Judging bike and pedestrian-friendliness can be a subjective exercise. Cycling advocates claim that riding a bike makes people happier, but we can’t measure smiles. So, let’s look at how much each city is actually spending on physical infrastructure for safer streets. Since the size of each of these communities varies widely, I will break down this spending on a per capita basis to keep comparisons relevant. I do the same for tourist spending numbers, so that a community’s dependency on tourism can more readily be seen.

Note that few cities delineate funds as being for “Complete Streets,” a term often used to describe spending on projects beyond those designed to ease motorist congestion, or any other readily identifiable label. However, spending for sidewalk projects, a specific bike trail, or road diets can sometimes be found buried in a budget. Where state and federal funding sources are called out by a city in its budget or press releases, I include them.

To aid comparison with Atlanta, I have set three broad categories for population, tourism-per-capita, and Complete Streets spending-per capita: Higher, Similar, and Lower. Cities with higher, similar, or lower amounts than Atlanta in these categories are labeled as such.

	Higher	Similar	Lower
Population (P)	600,001>	300,000-600,000	<299,999
Tourism (T)	$40,001>	$10,000-$40,000	<$9,999
Complete Streets (CS)	$101+	$30-$100	<$29.99

Atlanta, Georgia:


Bike rental along Atlanta's Beltline at Ponce City Market

A group of cyclists climb a traffic-calmed McLendon Avenue in Atlanta's Lake Claire neighborhood.

With the world’s busiest airport and film production spending just behind that of Hollywood, Atlanta has a robust, diverse economy and also substantial tourist revenue. While the city lacks any nearby natural attractions such as beaches or mountains, roughly $15 billion in 2016 tourist spending is generated by the city’s convention business. That’s good enough to propel the city into 7^th position among US cities in terms of visitor numbers. Break down total tourist revenue by the city’s 470,000 residents and you get over $32,000 in per capita tourist dollars.

Atlanta has a massive list of Complete Streets projects that are in various stages of planning and construction. According to city staff, $77,430,000 in funding will be spent on these projects over the next five years. These funds originate from roughly $187 million in bonds and over $200 million in sales tax revenue over the next five years. That equates to $33.67 per person spent per year on cyclists and pedestrians.

Boston, Massachusetts: P=Similar, T=Similar, CS=Similar

A typical unprotected bike lane in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood

A Barnes Dance crosswalk across high-speed, one-way streets in Boston

While Boston is known for transportation megaprojects like the Big Dig, the burial of the former Central Artery Expressway, as well as the seemingly constant rebuilding of Logan International Airport, the dense grid of streets in its center lends itself to walking and biking. How safe such activities are is another matter, as many streets are wide, one-way, and set up for high motorist speeds.

To address the questionable safety of its streets, Boston plans to spend $100 million over five years in accordance with its Go Boston 2030 plan. A representative with the city’s transportation department tells me this funding includes:

· $5 million a year toward Walk and Bike Friendly Main Streets Districts such as Hyde Square in Jamaica Plain and North Square in the North End
· $6.5 million a year for corridor redesign and reconstruction with a focus on leveraging this investment for state and federal funding. Corridors such as Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury and Harrison Avenue in the South End are included in this category.
· $4 million a year on traffic-calming zones and on providing short-term "tactical" improvements to increase safety for pedestrians and those on bicycles at intersections and along corridors, including improvements on Massachusetts Avenue and Kneeland Street.
· $2 million a year on multi-use paths for walking and biking including the city's contribution to the federally funded Connect Historic Boston project
· $5 million a year in City and developer funding for traffic signal upgrades which includes re-timing them to give priority to pedestrians.

Breaking this average annual budget of $20 million by the city’s population of 673,000 yields a per capita figure of $29.72. Tourism spending in 2015 hit $12.7 billion, or $18,870 per capita.

Chincoteague, Virginia: P=Less, T=Similar, CS=Less

A buffered bike lane on a roundabout in Chincoteague, Virginia

Heavy bike traffic on the bikeway to Assateague Island National Seashore and Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge

This coastal town is the gateway to Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge and the unspoiled southern beaches of the Assateague Island National Seashore. As such, it tends to boom in the summer months and go quiet in winter. Thanks to a fairly high park entry fee for motorists, many visitors choose the cheaper alternative of biking from town to the beach. Inside the parks, separated multiuser paths can be found along much of the main road. A wildlife loop road is closed to motorists until 3 PM each day and sees heavy bike traffic prior to that hour.

With a small year-round population of 2913, overall budget numbers will naturally be small. The 2017 draft budget shows $60,000 allotted for sidewalks, but calculating on-road expenditures is complicated by the fact that many Virginia streets are under the control of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), which recently installed bike lanes in the town. But even accounting for that, the per capita Complete Street spending is less than $30 when divided by the population of 2919. Annual tourist spending is approximately $50 million or $17,129 per capita.

Columbus, Georgia: P=Less, T=Less, CS=Similar

A group from the Georgia Bike Summit relaxes on the newly-pedestrianized 14th Street Bridge in downtown Columbus, GA

This former textile mill town repurposed its river from what was little more than an open sewer for much of the 20^th century into a recreational centerpiece, complete with the world’s longest urban whitewater course, zip line and adjacent multiuser trail--- the Chattahoochee Riverwalk. An abandoned railroad extending into the far northeast of the county is now the Fall Line Trace, a rail trail with several signalized street crossings.

Many of the city’s capital projects in transportation are funded via a special local option sales tax similar to that in Atlanta. This tax will yield more than $100 million over ten years. In FY 2016 the city planned to spend more than $7.3 million on a variety of pedestrian and bike-friendly projects, including a multiuser bridge and trail extension near Fort Benning, a large military base south of town. Break that down by the population of nearly 200,000 within the city limits and you get an average annual figure of $36.50 per person going towards safer streets.

Columbus’s urban whitewater course and small convention center pull in some tourism revenue, but it isn’t a major vacation destination. Tourism expenditures in 2015 were approximately $340 million. That breaks down to $1700 in per capita tourist dollars.

Columbus, Ohio: P=More, T=Less, CS=More

This riverfront park is part of a large network of trails and bike lanes in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

The other Columbus in this survey is a major city of over 860,000 people with a lot of things going for it. As Ohio’s state capital, a lot of business is naturally drawn here. Its location in what is virtually the geographic center of the state at the junction of major transportation corridors helps, as well. The city’s culture is kept vibrant by the massive population of over 66,000 students at Ohio State University. Perhaps this explains why so many people come to Columbus, for tourism expenditures exceeded $6.4 billion in 2015. That yields a per capita tourist revenue figure of $7441.

As with many riverfront cities, Columbus has revitalized its shore with trails and other amenities. However, the city is now venturing into the workaday downtown and surrounding neighborhoods with better bike and pedestrian facilities.

Columbus plans street reconstructions “so that, where feasible, new or rebuilt streets will be designed for safe access by all users, whether they drive, ride, pedal, walk or use mass transit.” Revenue for these comes from voter-approved bonds that are financed via income tax collections and utility ratepayer fees. In 2017 this contributed $178.5 million to new sidewalks, bike improvements. Break this down by the city’s population and Columbus is spending a per capita figure of $207 on Complete Streets.

Denver, Colorado: P=More, T=Less, CS= Less

This pedestrian bridge in downtown Denver, Colorado, has tracks for those walking their bikes.

The 16th Street Mall in downtown Denver

While the city’s high altitude and frigid winter climate can be a challenge for those who forsake the car, bike commuting grew by 43% from 2014 to 2015. To encourage pedestrians and revitalize downtown, the 16^th Street Mall was closed to all vehicular traffic except buses.

Denver’s efforts to shift away from car dependence haven’t been trouble-free: violent attacks have marred the 16^th Street Mall. Plus, whereas savvy transportation officials now remove urban interstates, Colorado’s planners are disregarding the likelihood of induced demand by dramatically widening I-70 through Denver.

Denver’s FY 2017 budget for pedestrian and bike-friendly projects was set at $2.7 million and $2.2 million, respectively. With a population of 682,000 people, that works out to $7.18 per resident going to safer streets for all. Tourism revenue in 2016 hit $5.3 billion, or almost $7800 per capita.

Greenville, South Carolina: P=Less, T=Similar, CS=Similar

The Swamp Rabbit Trail as it passes through downtown Greenville.

With no natural features of any consequence or any other big attractions, you might not expect Greenville to be making a play for tourists. However, the city has managed to attract 9.1% of the state’s total travel market share. That pales in comparison to Charleston on the coast with over $2 billion in 2015 revenue, but it still accounts for $1.145 billion in 2015 tourist spending. With a population of just over 67,000, per capita tourist spending is over $17,000.

Some of this tourism may be encouraged by the rejuvenation of downtown properties and parkland along the Reedy River. This redevelopment links up with the former Swamp Rabbit railroad, now a very popular multiuser path sponsored by the Greenville Health System. The trail is nearly 20 miles long and still growing.

Greenville secured $400,000 in FY 2016 via the US Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternatives Program (TAP) for a sidewalk project. This program requires participation in a competitive bid process and 20% in local matching funds. Greenville City Council also approved $2.5 million in its FY 2016 budget for expansion of the Swamp Rabbit Trail. That puts per capita spending on bike and pedestrian projects at just over $43.

Hilo, Hawaii: P=Less, T=Similar, CS=Less


A typical street in downtown Hilo, Hawaii

A bike race just east of downtown Hilo

Hilo is the largest city on the largest island in the Hawaiian chain, but it isn’t as popular with tourists as Kona on the opposite side of the Big Island. In 2015 nearly 1.28 million tourists disembarked at Kona’s airport, while nearly 549,000 arrived at Hilo’s. If we apply this ratio to the reported tourist expenditures for that same year, $1.9 billion, the tourist revenue in the vicinity of Hilo would be roughly $570 million. Hilo’s population is just over 43,000, yielding per capita tourism revenue of over $13,000.

While Hilo is in the shadow of Mauna Loa, one of the largest shield volcanoes on earth, much of the town is actually fairly level. Coupled with a pleasant climate, this would seem like a great place to walk bike. However, bike lanes are few while pedestrians must contend with wide roads and long blocks outside the picturesque downtown.

The city is in the process of developing a master plan for making the urban core more pedestrian and bike friendly, but no budget has been set for the plan yet. According to Aaron Brown of the Hawaii County Department of Public Works, “…the Complete Streets program at this point is in the conceptual and planning phase.” While funding has been found for sending staff to Complete Streets-themed conferences, expenditures on projects are $0.

Indianapolis, Indiana: P=More, T=Less, CS=Less


A stylized street crossing along the Cultural Trail in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana

Bike-share in downtown Indianapolis

With visitors drawn by the famous racetrack--- that’s technically in another town--- Indianapolis has a significant tourist appeal. In 2015 over $4.9 billion emptied from visitors’ wallets into the coffers of local businesses. Given its population of over 864,000 people, per capita tourist spending hit over $5670.

Indianapolis is beginning to take advantage of its flat terrain with a multitude of trails and bike lanes. The Cultural trail is a protected bikeway running through the central business district and by the zoo and museums. North of this, a former shipping canal is now the Canal Walk, a linear park. On the north side of town, the Monon Trail follows an abandoned railroad out through the suburbs.

Spending on bike and pedestrian projects as spelled out by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Planning Organization (IndyMPO) will exceed $23 million between 2018 and 2021. These funds, derived from a mix that includes federal grants, means the Indianapolis will spend more than $27 per resident annually on Complete Streets projects.

New Orleans, Louisiana: P=Similar, T=Similar, CS=Less

A multiuser path atop a Mississippi River levee in downtown New Orleans

My Tern Link C7 in the heart of the French Quarter

After the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans appears to be shedding the legacy of corruption and poor city management that bedeviled it for most of the latter 20^th century. The population has rebounded to more than 391,000 people within the city limits. Tourists have returned, spending over $7.41 billion in 2016. That breaks down to a tourist per capita expenditure amount of nearly $19,000.

The city’s terrain is well-known for its flat, sea-level terrain. While this makes it vulnerable to hurricane-related flooding, it also reminded me of another city susceptible to flooding yet ideally suited to cycling: Amsterdam in The Netherlands. That city was once as dominated by motorist traffic as New Orleans is today, but chose in the 1970s to transform itself into the bike capital of the world that it is today.

However, much of the New Orleans transportation budget is dedicated to simply repairing streets damaged by Hurricane Katrina and the poor city governance that preceded it. Yet $800,000 in bond funds has been allocated in FY2018 for “Various enhancement projects including bicycle routes, pedestrian walkways, signalization, ADA access ramps, complete streets improvements, and other projects.” Another $700,000 over the next two years had been proposed to connect the 2.6 mile Lafitte Greenway to another corridor, but Council declined to fund it.

This means that New Orleans seems to be spending little more than $2 per person on bike and pedestrian infrastructure. At that rate, achieving the goals set forth in the city’s Complete Streets ordinance looks rather daunting.

New York City, New York: P=More, T=Less, CS= Less

The East River Bikeway in New York City

A sadly common sight in Manhattan: a blocked, unprotected bike lane in front of a NYPD precinct

New York is known in transportation industry circles for its early embrace back in 2008 of Complete Streets- referred to as Sustainable Streets by NYC DOT- and boisterous political brawls over bike lanes. While many of the bike lanes in Manhattan are unprotected and prone to blockage or encroachment by motorists, overall biking is up to the point where the city now plans a major expansion of its bike lane network. Massive sidewalk congestion is also leading to more space being taken away from motorists and given over to pedestrians as sidewalks are widened.

The budget allocated by New York’s city council is roughly $66 million per year. With a population of 8.5 million people, that works out to the city spending approximately $7.76 per person on safer streets. The city’s tourism industry is quite large, with revenues topping $42 billion in 2015, but on a per capita basis it is just over $4900.

Savannah, Georgia: P=Less, T=Similar, CS=Less

Just another bicyclist taking advantage of Savannah's dense street grid

Savannah in the mid 20^th century was a sleepy coastal city that served as a gateway to one of the few beach resort areas in Georgia, Tybee Island. But as it popped up in bestsellers like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and drew a young, creative population via the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD), it grew to a population of over 146,000 and became a tourist destination in its own right with visitor spending of over $2.8 billion in 2016. That equates to a per capita tourism revenue of $19,178.

Much of the city’s appeal rests on the many bucolic squares surrounded by elegant houses and townhomes dating back to previous centuries. One reason the city has such a fine stock of such homes is because, unlike Boston, New York, or other contemporary coastal cities, Savannah was sleepy for a very long time.

Since so much of the city was laid out in a pattern designed around travel no faster than a horse-drawn carriage, walking and biking should be easy. “Should” is the operative word, here. In fact, the streets are given over to motorists, with heavy congestion that’s not exactly welcoming to vulnerable users. Savannah’s spending on Complete Streets projects in FY2016 was $43,000 for a bikeshare expansion project. With a budget of $0.29 per capita spent on sustainable, non-transit projects, Savannah may struggle to meet the challenges set forth in its own Complete Streets resolution.

Seattle, Washington: P=More, T=Less, CS=Less

A protected bikeway calms traffic in Seattle

A failed investment in transportation infrastructure passes above a successful one in downtown Seattle

With its hilly terrain and rainy weather, you might not expect Seattle to have a transportation culture that embraces modes other than the car. Yet pedestrian mode share grew from 8.6% in 2010 to 10.7% in 2015; cycling grew from 3.6% to 4% over the same period. Solo car commuters dropped from 53.3% to 48.5%. With its strong tech industry populated mostly by Millennials who prize a less car-dependent, urban lifestyle, these numbers shouldn’t be surprising.

For its population of 704,000, Seattle’s city government set aside $4.5 million for pedestrian and bike improvements in FY2016. That works out to almost $6.39 per city resident. The tourism industry provided $7 billion to the city’s economy in 2015, or just over $9900 per capita.

These numbers show that while Atlanta is doing well on a per capita basis in getting tourists to visit, there is at least one community that is out-competing it on Complete Streets spending: Columbus, Ohio. Interestingly, that city also lacks the obvious tourist attractions of Boston or Hilo.

So, if things are going well now, what should keep Atlanta’s business and political leaders up at night? It’s what would happen to their competitiveness if cities with obvious tourism appeal suddenly boosted their Complete Streets spending-per-capita beyond that of Atlanta. The tourist spending-per-capita could drop.

The Shape of Things to Come- An Update

2017-01-19T11:52:00.000-05:00

In 1936 Things to Come, a film adaptation written by H.G. Wells based on his book, The Shape of Things to Come, foretold of apocalyptic wars followed by the thuggish rule of a warlord (played by Ralph Richardson) put in power by an angry, fearful mob. This warlord would ultimately be overthrown by a technocratic movement, known in the film as Wings Over the World, that had banded together in a remote location in anticipation of the apocalypse. These technocrats, who prized intellectual achievement and peace, would go on to usher in a golden age, though not without further uprisings by angry mobs.

As is often the case, H.G. Wells is eerily prescient, at least in regards to the early-21^st century United States. But instead of raging wars, the devastating effects of accelerating climate change are coupling with the decline of low-skill, US manufacturing to bring an apocalypse down upon rural America. The desperate residents of this bleak landscape have reacted by electing a President who, like the aforementioned warlord, panders to the mob using racially-charged rhetoric coupled with empty economic promises.

An example of these empty promises came shortly after his election, but before his inauguration. Donald Trump boasted he had saved hundreds of jobs in largely-rural Indiana by persuading Carrier Corporation to refrain from moving to Mexico. However, Carrier still planned to move more jobs to Mexico than it was keeping in the US. That’s in spite of a large subsidy by the state of Indiana, home of Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, to stay.

A lack of manufacturing employment means rural populations must rely on agriculture. But agriculture is vulnerable to climate change. Temperatures are now rising in the Midwest, a region known for agriculture and a large rural population. According to the US Global Change Research Program, greater heat in southern areas of the Midwest will decrease summer precipitation by an average of about 8% in 2041-2062 versus 1979-2000.

That lack of precipitation impacts crop yields. According to Wolfram Schlenker of Columbia University and Michael J. Roberts of North Carolina State University, “…area-weighted average yields are predicted to decrease by 30 – 46% before the end of the century under the slowest warming scenario and decrease by 63– 82% under the most rapid warming scenario…”

While rural communities dependent on agriculture face an economic threat, those dependent on tourism face a potentially existential threat as vegetation dries out due to extreme drought. Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a vacation retreat nestled in a valley at the northern entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, was surrounded by lush forests fed by a plethora of streams and rivers. That was until it burned.

In late 2016, a devastating and extremely unprecedented drought converted the lush forests into a vast source of fuel for a fire that swept from the center of the park into Gatlinburg. Hundreds of homes and businesses were destroyed with the death toll rising into the double-digits. The local economy, which depended on tourism, was shattered. But this was only one fire in a broad outbreak that spanned six states. Climate change experts anticipate more such fires, as extreme drought in the interior of the US due to global warming is as likely as a widely-anticipated rise in sea level.

History shows how Americans will react to such hardship: by embarking on a mass migration such as that last seen in the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The Dust Bowl was a semi-arid region in the central US that included parts or the entirety of Oklahoma, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, and other states. During periods of heavy rain, the region could seem deceptively friendly to aggressive agricultural exploitation. But when the rains failed, that exploitation resulted in a rapid loss of topsoil to high winds, making it virtually impossible to farm. In the 1930s, the rainfall failure led to a mass exodus from the Midwest to California. These climatic/economic refugees were often derisively known as Okies, famously depicted by John Steinbeck in The Grapes of Wrath.

A repeat of this migration is now underway, as census data shows that eight out of ten US counties that are losing population are rural. An early indicator of a region’s duress is where the children end up. If there’s prosperity, they might remain in familiar environs. But in rural America, young people are fleeing for the cities in search of employment. As economic conditions back home collapse due to population decline, their extended families may join them, as has happened in other countries. Economic weakness and sheer numbers will obligate them to seek the cheapest housing available. That will be in the suburbs of major cities.

In December of 2016 the Wall Street Journal reported that suburban population growth outperformed that of central cities. In the fifty largest US metro regions, the suburbs accounted for 91% of the population growth over the past 15 years. According to the Urban Land Institute (ULI), many households cite lower housing costs as a key reason for moving to the suburbs. Demand in the suburbs therefore isn’t a function of desirability, but of necessity.

Who are these economic and climatic refugees? According to US Census figures, the rapidly-emptying rural America from which this migration originates is nearly 78% white. Thus it is one of history’s great ironies that after the race-based rancor towards Latin American migrants during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, a mostly white, mid-21^st century refugee migration has begun.

Troublingly, many of these new migrants are very capable of fomenting serious political instability. According to Gallup polling, rural Americans are twice as likely to possess firearms as those living in cities. Most of these gun owners are white men who are buying guns at a higher rate than at any point in the past quarter-century: over 500,000 per year. Alarmingly, in 2010 this rate was still as low as 70,000 per year, meaning most of the surge came in the last decade.

Economic duress often leads to civil violence. Runaway inflation and unemployment was a cause of the Yugoslav Civil War of the 1990s. Germany’s slide into extreme militarism and fascist rule was exacerbated by the Great Depression of the 1930s. A mass of armed refugees clustering at the edges of major US cities is not a recipe for peace and tranquility. One need only look at the banlieue of Paris or the favelas of Rio de Janiero to see the shape of things to come.

The blasted landscape envisioned by H. G. Wells hasn’t manifested itself yet, but avoiding that future is looking more difficult. There is no Wings Over the World to save the American people from themselves. Technocrats and intellectuals are frowned upon by a celebrity and athlete-obsessed culture. As Notre Dame professor Gary Gutting observed in The New York Times, “…in the United States, there is a strong strain of anti-intellectualism that undervalues intellectual culture and overvalues athletics.”

That anti-intellectual bias is already showing up in the rising wage inequality between those with and without advanced degrees. According to a study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, demand for those with advanced degrees exceeds the supply. That drives up their salaries. Those without such degrees must compete for an ever-dwindling number of jobs. In effect, anti-intellectualism is making the poor more numerous, more vulnerable to economic and climatic change.

Only if this basic anti-intellectual cultural flaw is undone will there be any hope of finding a way to avoid catastrophe and restart American progress. H. G. Wells’ dialogue sums up the choice:

“All the universe or nothingness? Which shall it be, Passworthy? Which shall it be?”

Does It Matter Who Pays For Sidewalks Or Is Walk Score Useless?

2016-11-17T14:50:00.003-05:00

Some advocates for pedestrian access claim that the source of funding for sidewalks strongly affects a city’s walkability. Groups such as Atlanta’s PEDS argue that if cities fully fund sidewalk construction without any cost placed on adjacent property owners, walkability will be higher.

Measuring walkability is fraught with controversy. Walk Score is a popular tool that measures how pedestrian-friendly a city and its neighborhoods are. However, it is dependent on the proximity of residences to businesses. Their focus appears to be that it is more important to have somewhere to walk to than to have a clear path to get there. Such an assumption is a great way to start a bar fight among urbanists.

Let’s compare how the walk score for a few select cities varies under the following two circumstances:

1. 1. The city spreads the cost of building sidewalks among all taxpayers, as with streets and highways via taxation.

2. 2. The city puts the onus of paying for sidewalk construction on the adjacent property owners.

The possible walk score range is 0-100. Higher scores reflect better walkability using this metric. Note that I am focusing on city policies for new construction to fill in sidewalk gaps.

Georgetown, a section of Washington, DC, features a dense grid, small blocks, and extensive sidewalks.

Washington, DC, updated its sidewalk installation policy in 2015 to ensure that gaps in sidewalk coverage were filled even when no new construction projects, such as road improvements or development projects, were planned. New sidewalk construction in gaps is prioritized as follows:

1. School areas

2. Routes that provide access to parks and recreational facilities

3. Transit stops

4. Locations where the absence of a sidewalk creates substantial pedestrian safety risks

5. Roadway segments for which residents have petitioned to have sidewalks

The process is primarily staff-driven until the last criterion. It requires property owner input, but not their contribution of funds. Washington’s walk score is an impressive 77.

Fairfax City, VA, a city in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., reserves the authority in its Residential New Concrete Sidewalk Policy to build new sidewalks via its tax-funded Capital Improvement Program. Neither payment nor permission from adjacent homeowners is required, though notice to them and nearby civic associations is. The city has a lackluster walk score of 52.

Sure, Fairfax City will pay for sidewalks, but is this highway-choked sprawl really walkable?

Los Angeles, CA is often thought of as the stereotypical, car-centric American city, yet its walk score of 66 indicates that perception may no longer be accurate. Thanks to the settlement of a lawsuit over the city’s failure to make miles of broken and missing sidewalks comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, L.A. must commit $1.3 billion to pedestrian projects over the next few decades. That enormous commitment led the city to embrace a “fix-and-release” policy for sidewalks.

Under this scheme, L.A. will pay to build new sidewalks, as well as reconstruct damaged ones, next to commercial, industrial and residential properties. It will then offer a limited warranty period that guarantees only one repair in the future. The duration of the warranty is twenty years for sidewalks next to residences and five years for those next to commercial properties.

Nobody walks in LA, especially if they close off the entire street.

On the day the plan passed, L.A. Councilman Paul Krekorian claimed, “This fear that seems to be out there that suddenly people are going to have a burden dumped upon them – that just isn’t the case.” But, that’s exactly what will happen once the warranty’s clock runs out. For those of limited financial means, fixing a city sidewalk could be a heavy burden.

Atlanta, GA mirrors Los Angeles by shunting the cost of sidewalks squarely on the shoulders of adjacent property owners, though without L.A.’s limited warranty. Sidewalk gaps in Atlanta are common and building new sidewalks can be costly, thanks to Atlanta’s use of hexagonal blocks instead of poured concrete. Atlanta’s walk score is a poor 48.

Few would argue that Atlanta is a pedestrian-friendly city today, but that may be about to change thanks to T-SPLOST.

In response to this poor environment for walking, the city leadership backed a referendum on a special local option sales tax for transportation, commonly known as T-SPLOST. Now that it has passed, $300 million in revenue will be generated over a five year period. Sidewalk projects will receive over $69 million of that amount.

Alexandria, VA, has a sidewalk policy that spreads the cost of sidewalks among all taxpayers, while effectively allowing adjacent property owners to veto a new sidewalk. Applications to the Residential Sidewalk Program require the signatures of five residents within that project area in support of the sidewalk. Those commuting through the area to reach a transit hub like King Street Metro station won’t be counted. Additionally, Alexandria “requires the identification of a project champion, who will be the main point of contact for the City.” That champion must then:

…notify each household in project area with flyer distribution and provide signatures noting support for or against the project from 80% of addresses in project area. Property owners directly adjacent to proposed sidewalk MUST sign the petition and note if they support or do not support the project.

There is no exception if an adjacent property owner refuses to sign and indicate support of opposition. Conceivably, that conveys a veto power to those who don’t cooperate with the process.

This is close to a schoolbus stop and along a busy pedestrian route to a Metrorail/Commuter rail/Bus transit hub. Pedestrians are forced into the street because the city gives homeowners a veto on sidewalks.

Alexandria maintains Silver level status as a Walk Friendly Community, a designation made by a coalition that includes the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, the League of American Bicyclists, and multiple federal agencies. However, that status appears to derive from a combination of staffing and a city Complete Streets policy, rather than sidewalk conditions. The city’s overall walk score is a mediocre 61.

New York City, NY, puts all responsibility for construction of missing sidewalks onto adjacent property owners. That includes both installation and subsequent maintenance. If a property owner refuses to comply, the city will do the work, send them an invoice, and place a lien on the property, if necessary. As with Los Angeles, this approach could be a burden on property owners in low-income areas.

Is a city walkable if the sidewalks are so crowded that pedestrians walk in the street? That's happening in NYC, but Walk Score rates them highly.

New York faces a serious pedestrian congestion issue in the city. Sidewalks in extreme high-density areas such as Manhattan simply aren’t wide enough to handle the traffic. The New York Times refers to this situation as “Sidewalk Gridlock.” However, despite this apparent infrastructural shortcoming, the city still has a high walk score of 89.

The funding source of new sidewalk construction does not appear to track with walkability as measured by Walk Score. That would indicate that either Walk Score’s methodology is utterly useless or that the importance of sidewalk conditions is overrated. Until a metric is developed that directly accounts for sidewalk conditions across multiple jurisdictions, this is a debate that will be impossible to settle, as measurement of walkability will remain largely subjective.

New Article on Streetsblog: The Mythology of HOT Lanes

2016-09-28T23:21:00.000-04:00

From Governor McAuliffe to the US Federal Highway Administration, High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lanes are not lacking for champions. Unfortunately, I found that the assumptions underlying such advocacy are wrong.
You can read more in my article at Streetsblog.

Essay on Drive-to Urbanism at Strong Towns

2016-07-30T10:29:00.001-04:00

I have an essay up at Strong Towns on Drive-to Urbanism. Check it out and post comments there or on Twitter (tag me so I can see them).

An Open Letter to People Who Bike & Walk in DC Regarding the Atlantic Gateway Project

2016-07-08T13:12:00.001-04:00

To those who walk and bike in Washington, DC:

I attended a press conference today in which Virginia's Governor, Terry McAuliffe, promised to end congestion (his words) by widening I-95 near Fredericksburg and inside the Beltway with HOT lanes. From the amount of time he spent on this aspect, this was clearly the primary component of the Atlantic Gateway project. You might not immediately realize the implications of that statement.

Virginia Governor McAuliffe addresses a small crowd in Alexandria, vows road widenings will "end congestion."

Most of you reading this are already one up on the governor's staff, as you are familiar with induced demand: more road capacity yields more traffic, which yields more congestion. As Houston's Katy Freeway shows, more HOT lane mileage will also yield more car traffic. Those additional cars have a destination: DC's streets. More drivers, many of them distracted, mean more risk to people who walk and bike in DC.

The only way to protect DC's livability from the traffic induced by the Atlantic Gateway project is to embark on an emergency program of road diet implementation throughout the downtown area. If you take away capacity at the destination, you will mitigate the threat posed by Virginia's attempt to shove more cars your way.

Any street with more than one car lane in a particular direction is a candidate. So, for a two-way street, look at those with four lanes cars are allowed to use and reduce them to two. For one-way streets, look at those with two lanes and reduce them to one. Substitute whatever works best in that area: bus lanes, bike lanes, wider sidewalks, or loading zones. Just reduce the throughput for cars.

You will also need to eliminate as much of your public parking as possible. If suburban Virginia commuters cannot park in DC, there's no point in hopping in a longer HOT lane. They simply will have nowhere to go.

As someone who lives in Virginia, I apologize for the shortsightedness of our politicians and planners. I hope the DC political and planning establishment will act quickly, preferably before this new tsunami of traffic breaks upon DC's streets.

2016-06-01T17:59:00.000-04:00

Be sure to check out my latest article, Making a Street Safe for All, at the Virginia Bicycle Federation: http://wp.me/pafPZ-2w6

A Road Diet for the George Washington Memorial Parkway

2016-04-30T17:28:00.000-04:00

My latest post is available via the Virginia Bicycling Federation. If you have ever biked on the Mount Vernon Trail, you will want to consider this idea. Link: http://bit.ly/1NbNeun

Comments on the Research & Development Plan for the FAST Act

2016-04-14T10:40:00.000-04:00

President Obama signs the FAST Act -photo courtesy of Alex Wong/Getty Images

Those of you who follow transportation issues in the US probably know that at the end of 2015 President Obama signed the so-called FAST Act (Fixing America's Surface Transportation). This measure authorizes $305 billion over a period stretching from 2016 to 2020 for a variety of modes and purposes. What you may not know is that the Department of Transportation is seeking public comment on the strategic plan for research and development called for by the act.

The request consists of seven questions, which I list below along with my responses. As you will see, I focus on the enduring problem of a road-centric mentality that pervades the transportation planning establishment, primarily at the federal and state levels. At the local levels, where NACTO's (National Association of City Transportation Officials) mindset prevails, it's a very different matter due to demographic changes I discuss below.

If you find my responses useful, please use and share them as you like.

1. What research strategies and priorities should the U.S. DOT adopt to achieve the primary purposes cited in the FAST Act?

Too many projects are built using traffic and usage models that are based more on faith than on systematic, scientific research. In order to prevent the waste of limited taxpayer resources, a systematic inventory of the long-term (i.e.- at least 5 years) effectiveness of previous, similar projects must be required of agencies seeking FAST Act funds. This inventory study must be verifiable by both US DOT and independent observers. Projects that lack such support for their claimed benefits must be discounted.

2. How can the issues raised in the U.S. DOT document “Beyond Traffic 2045: Trends and Choices” be strategically addressed by RD&T activities over the next five years?

As the projection for population growth focuses on mega-regions with high populations, prioritization for any efforts must sift out areas outside of these regions. However, great care should be exercised to ensure that old assumptions about growth don't contaminate the process. In the case of growth of suburbs and exurbs in mega-regions, the standard warning on mutual funds comes to mind: "Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results." That is especially true now that the so-called Millennial generation is forsaking car ownership and the suburbs for life in downtowns.

3. What emerging challenges or opportunities in transportation warrant additional Federal RD&T activities or investments?

Priority should be given to how growing central cities can be re-adapted for local commutes, as opposed to commutes from far-flung suburbs. These cities have street grids developed before the advent of the car, but they were adapted for motorist use throughout the 20th century. The challenge now is to figure out how to put them back in something like that earlier state, albeit with greater use of technology and consideration for environmental impact. This means pedestrian and bicyclist traffic needs will have to be addressed ahead of, or instead of, declining motorist uses.
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4. What current and planned RD&T activities sponsored by the federal government should be continued or revised in the future?

A quick review of the statistical analysis shows a bias towards an assumption that all road users are in a car. Examples can be found here:

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/north_american_transportation_in_figures/html/table_2_3.html

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/

In order to meet the challenge posed by a demographic shift towards urban population centers where heavy car use is impractical, this institutional bias must be eliminated. Otherwise, considerable taxpayer resources will be wasted on efforts that create little meaningful benefit.

5. What strategies could improve the cost-effectiveness of U.S. DOT research investments?

Reach out to the political and planning leadership within large urban centers. Coordinate with the US Conference of Mayors and NACTO. Their concerns will help focus US DOT efforts where they will be most useful, because they are at the center of the demographic shift I previously described.

6. How can U.S. DOT best coordinate its RD&T activities with Federal, State, local, private sector, non-profit institutions, and international partners?

While reaching out to individual agencies and groups would seem ideal, the odds are that someone will be overlooked. Boost US DOT's social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, or even Instagram) to get the word out about forthcoming efforts. The first step in coordination is to alert those you want to coordinate with, and social media is now a ubiquitous tool.

7. What knowledge gaps merit additional exploration by the USDOT?

Most transportation agencies have a generational divide between those in senior ranks who grew up in the suburban heyday of the car and those in junior ranks who know a different lifestyle. It is difficult, though not impossible, for someone who never has thought of pedestrians and bicyclists as a high priority to focus on their infrastructural issues. Such individuals must be retrained and tested so that they implement the new multimodal, Complete Streets paradigm.

Thanks

The Unintentional Road Diet

2016-01-27T21:01:00.001-05:00

In June of 2015, one of the greatest experiments in road diets took place on one of the most prominent commuter routes in the United States. Ironically, it was entirely unintentional. One-third of the motor vehicle lanes on Memorial Bridge between Arlington, VA, and Washington, D.C., were closed to allow for emergency repairs. The repairs would last for many months.

The bridge handles a whopping 68,000 cars per day. The Federal Highway Administration recommends that only streets with less than 25,000 cars per day should get road diets. Given the huge disparity in these numbers, a traffic apocalypse should have happened by now. It should be impossible to enter the District of Columbia from Virginia, unless you’re prepared to swim. U.S. Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia warned of “unbearable congestion” due to the closures.

So where is the apocalypse? Why aren’t people abandoning their cars mid-span and walking across, as though an invisible snowstorm had struck? Simple: motorists had warning and changed their habits.

A Wednesday afternoon: no apocalypse in sight.

The truth is that any road can have a successful implementation of a road diet. In the latter part of the 20^th century, Groningen, The Netherlands, narrowed a road with 4 through-lanes, a center turn lane, and 2 parking lanes. This was no unimportant side street, as it lies between the center of town and the central train station. The current configuration is now split into sections with 2 through-lanes, a bus-only lane, and two protected bike lanes. The turn lane is gone, as is a fair amount of parking. The road’s importance to motorists dropped as they found either alternative routes or chose a different mode, such as buses or bikes. Since the initial narrowing, parts of the street have been further restricted to motorists, with buses getting priority.

How can the Dutch stand all this gridlock?

The obstacle to road diets isn’t the traffic count. It’s politics. Even when the traffic count is low, politicians will thunder forth about the need to keep motorist convenience has a higher priority than the safety of people who walk or bike, as the mayor of Gainesville, FL, did in 2014. The mayor successfully campaigned to remove bike lanes from a road with a mere 14,551 vehicles per day. No evidence of congestion caused by the bike lanes existed, but political posturing is seldom backed by facts.

That is the inherent problem with the debate over road diets: those who oppose them use unverifiable anecdotes (to be generous) and never manage to offer scientific data to back up their arguments. That can be forgiven from a public that is largely uninformed on matters of transportation, but it is inexcusable from professionals in the field.

Consider New Orleans: much like another Dutch city, Amsterdam, the city is largely below sea level. That means the topography is ideal for biking and walking. But, as I found on a recent trip, current street conditions are hardly up to the Dutch standard. Bike lanes are rare, even though streets are often very wide. That makes life a little tough for all vulnerable road users, but many leaders in post-Katrina New Orleans recognize the need to better. So, the Baronne Street road diet project was put forward.

Nice lane markings, eh? When waiting on the streetcar, don’t stick your rear too far out in the street.

The Baronne Street project would be no mere set of stripes on the road, but a protected bike lane buffered from moving vehicles by a parking lane. The bike lane would be created via a reduction in motor vehicle lanes on a one-way street from 2 to 1.

Image courtesy of Bike Easy

As with all things, it isn’t considered perfect, but people who bike love it. Yet they had opposition from a transportation professional.

A New Orleans transportation engineer wrote emails to his supervisor claiming that traffic would be gridlocked with the loss of a lane. Although he cited little more than anecdotal evidence and an internal Level of Service (LOS) study, his emails were enough to persuade a judge to grant a temporary order freezing the project. Thankfully, the judge later ruled that there were no legal grounds to stop the project.

This engineer thought a shared lane, or sharrow, would suffice. Those who bike in New Orleans thought otherwise, which is why so many of them turned out to the public hearings on the project. So, why couldn’t this engineer produce anything more than discredited LOS modeling? Simple: scientific evidence that road diets cause congestion does not exist.

The sharrow just visible to the right is fine, but only because the street is empty.

That should not be surprising. Transportation experts who are on the cutting edge of the field have long known that induced demand results from road expansions; why should the opposite strategy not produce opposite results? Even the state of California’s Department of Transportation, Caltrans, admitted recently in public that bigger roads cause more traffic (though I’d heard it from them at an event over a year ago).

But old habits are hard to break, so Caltrans plans a monumental road expansion via a tunnel project in the Los Angeles area. I cannot argue that switching from surface parking lots (LA’s current freeway system) to underground parking (this project’s certain outcome) is progress.

The utility of wide highways is clearly not as scientifically supported as parts of the profession or the large swathes of the public think it is. Perhaps a few more completed road diets, even if somewhat unintentional like DC’s Memorial Bridge, will finally put an end to debunked, old-school, transportation thinking.

Self-driving Cars & Medical Emergencies

2015-10-18T14:13:00.000-04:00


Don't hate me because I'm smarter than you. Photo courtesy of Google, Inc.

Here’s an idea for the developers of self-driving cars, such as Google/Alphabet and Tesla Motors: make them actual lifesavers. Both Google/Alphabet and Tesla are facing blowback on their efforts because of fears that their vehicles won’t perform safely, but will behave like something out of the sci-fi novel, Robopocalypse. That fear could lead to a regulatory throttling of the technology before it can even get established. It is imperative for developers to show that self-driving cars can be more than just another excuse for drivers to stop paying attention to the road. One possibility is to develop technology that allows autonomous vehicles to save lives when their drivers are incapacitated by medical emergencies.

When a driver loses consciousness, the car keeps going. Anything in its way, whether people or structures, is in trouble. These types of crashes can number approximately 25,000 per year.

Who is to blame when these incidents occur? It’s hardly the driver’s fault if their body suddenly betrays them. Nor is it the fault of the house that suddenly has a car plowing through it. But, self-driving vehicles that monitor the condition of the driver can put a stop to this sort of thing.

As the technology is still largely in the prototype stage, I will break up my suggestions into two phases: Semi-Autonomous and Full Autonomy. Some measure can be implemented immediately, while others would follow as the technology progresses.

Phase 1: Semi-Autonomous

Vehicles at this level should be able to monitor the driver’s condition via sensors, such as the heartbeat monitors found on exercise bikes at gyms, and make limited decisions on their own. Those decisions could be as simple as applying the brakes. Consider this scenario based on a real event: a driver of a sedan loses consciousness while on a busy urban street. People walking and biking are all around and suddenly vulnerable to a large, out-of-control vehicle. Through sensors inside the steering wheel and cameras focused on the driver, the sedan detects the driver losing his or her grip on the wheel and slumping. It applies the brakes immediately, then dials 911 or some other emergency number and gives its position by pulling data from the on-board sat-nav. If the sensors are robust enough, it might even give a quick diagnosis of the driver’s condition. As with all robocallers, it should add at the end, “Press 1 to repeat,” just in case the 911 operator didn’t get enough coffee that morning.

Note that this is rather like a dead-man’s switch. The car is both preventing further harm and acting as a witness to an emergency situation. It protects other road users, while calling for help. It can’t directly save the driver at this stage, though. That becomes possible at full autonomy.

"I'm sorry, Dave, but your HMO doesn't include that hospital." Photo courtesy of Emerging Technologies Blog.

Phase 2: Full Autonomy

What if the incident above took place on a rural interstate? Stopping in high-speed traffic is risky to both the sedan’s occupant and other drivers approaching from the rear. It would be better if the on-board computer was capable of recognizing the road shoulder and maneuvering onto it gradually. But what if it could do more than that? Suppose the same incident occurs on a rural interstate, but this time the sedan keeps going. It accesses the sat-nav system to locate the nearest hospital with an emergency room and plots a course for it. Simultaneously, it calls 911 to inform emergency services that it is about to deliver a patient to that hospital. It might even be able to give a reasonable diagnosis using more robust versions of the sensors mentioned previously, so that the hospital’s staff have some idea what to expect.

Here’s where it gets a bit tricky. Once the sedan arrives at the hospital property, it will have to find the emergency room entrance. That can be difficult given the sprawling nature of some regional hospitals. Plus, as hospitals expand, they often will move that entrance. Relying on a mere map database will be useless, as the vehicle might pull up to the maternity ward entrance. This sedan is going to have to be able to read signs.

Soon, your car may be able to read road signs. Later, it may open an Amazon account and download War & Peace. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia/Coolcaesar.

Thankfully, hospitals are pretty standardized when it comes to emergency room directional signage: the signs all read, “EMERGENCY.” But, the signs can be in a variety of sizes and styles. The on-board systems will have to be far more advanced than they are today. If this sedan makes it to the emergency entrance, it will have to attract attention. That can be difficult in busier hospitals, but not impossible. I suggest a siren that cannot be ignored.

Some of this, particularly the latter bit, may seem pretty far-fetched. But, to any good engineer, these are merely design challenges. Hopefully, the makers of self-driving cars will take up this challenge. We need these vehicles to be more than an excuse to eat a hot dog while roaring down the New Jersey Turnpike.

A Note to VDOT that One Alleged Transportation Advocacy Group Won't Like

2015-06-08T16:56:00.001-04:00

Thanks to David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington, I was recently made aware of an effort by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance (NVTA), an organization hopelessly mired in old-school transportation thinking, to mount an email (or letter-writing, as they're VERY old-school) campaign to push the state of Virginia to cut spending on transit and nonmotorized modes, such as bikes and pedestrians. NVTA wants this money re-tasked to highway widenings.

So, I set out to write Virginia's Department of Transportation a note of my own. But as I did so, I realized that what I was writing was applicable throughout much of the U.S. Too much, really.

Most regions have organizations stuffed with wealthy, generally older, business owners and CEOs frustrated by congestion created largely via previous plans that they, themselves, advocated. Rather than read up on the field of transportation, or even notice what's going on around them, they advocate the same failed solutions they tried before.

So please read the note below and, if you like, cut and paste to suit your own needs. The only way "Dumbgrowth" organizations like NVTA will be thwarted is if those who favor "Smartgrowth" speak up. If you'd like to submit a comment to VDOT, click here.

Here's my note:

"I understand that the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance is asking its allies to push VDOT for more emphasis on reducing road congestion via widenings. As a realtor and a northern Virginia resident, I strongly DISAGREE with this approach.

One need only look at the congestion on newly-widened roads in northern Virginia to realize that our state's reliance on road widenings has utterly failed. I see the result firsthand in the staggering residential price premiums near transit stations. Nobody pays a premium to live within easy reach of a highway these days.

While that's good for me, as a realtor focused on areas close to DC- and therefore close to transit- it's bad for Virginia. Those areas without good, rail-based transit and high levels of walking and biking infrastructure are doomed. Their prices have already stagnated as Millennials stay away; soon they will drop as their neighborhoods age.

The ONLY way to stop this is via a full embrace of transit and Complete Streets by VDOT. Anything else will merely add to Virginia's legacy of transportation failure."

Wider roads worked great in Atlanta! Here's downtown at 4 PM on a Monday.
They might as well get out and start walking.

When Politicians Can't Bring Themselves to Do the Right Thing

2015-04-22T15:09:00.000-04:00

In my hometown, Alexandria, Virginia, the local all-Democratic city council is proposing a big cut to their already-meager budget for Complete Streets: from $900k down to almost $600k.

If we put it in tiny, tiny print, maybe nobody will complain.

Local advocates have tried being polite, calm and respectful in arguing against a cut to tht portion of the budget that provides better pedestrian and bike access. Clearly, that approach has run its course. The proposal is still going forward, if only perhaps slightly less draconian.

That means it's time to get tough. When politicians refuse to do the right thing, advocates mustn't shy away from getting both more vocal and more organized.

In the spirit of the former, I've pointed out to Council how cutting the budget that, among other things, funds curb ramps at intersections for the disabled fits a pattern of behavior. As it turns out, this Council and other local Democratic officials make use of an office with absolutely no ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) access. I've personally witnessed a man in a wheelchair having to be carried down these steps. That humiliation is not something anyone with a disability should have to endure.

Remember, we're the party that advocates for the vulnerable.

Well, at least the steps have a railing.

If you're in a wheelchair, they'll be willing to carry you down like cargo.

To my knowledge, only ONE local Democratic candidate has publicly called for this condition to be remedied or have the office removed without delay. Interestingly, elections for Council, Mayor, and the 45th district Virginia Delegate seat are set for this year.

While the city's leaders have ignored their office's condition and plead poverty when funding Complete Streets, they have managed to scrounge up the millions of dollars necessary over the years to lure and accommodate large federal and quasi-federal institutions in Alexandria. These include the DOD's Washington Headquarters Service, the National Science Foundation, and potentially a new TSA headquarters.

Yet now the city argues it can't cough up a measly $300k gap to make Alexandria safe and accessible for those who:
1. Don't WANT to drive.
2. Can't AFFORD to drive.
3. Are UNABLE to drive.

Even if the proposed cuts are reduced ever so slightly, what does that say about the city's priorities? How progressive can an elected official claim to be when subsidies for development trump safety and accessibility for citizens in any way? And, of course, how can a city's leaders allow their own campaign office to send a signal of discrimination towards those with mobility impairment?

It's a sorry state of affairs, but it demonstrates the need for sustainable transportation and disability advocates to get tough. The easy stuff is all behind them. Now comes the hard part.

Will Bikes Eliminate the Need for Big-Ticket Highway & Transit Projects?

2015-01-22T16:38:00.000-05:00

I like innovation. Creative thinking to me reflects intellectual vigor. When we become afraid of change, we age all too quickly.

Miami, a beacon of youthful vigor in a state with the opposite reputation, is the site of an idea that takes poorly-used space and makes room for one of the most sustainable transportation modes available: bikes. The proposal, which unsurprisingly comes from consultants from the Dutch Cycling Embassy, is to build a linear park and bike path under Metrorail elevated transit in the southwest corner of town. This Metrorail line already has a pockmarked, bumpy, sorry excuse for a path underneath it called the M-Path. However, like so many similar asphalt afterthoughts built by DOTs in the latter part of the 20^th century, it’s hardly used. The new path, entitled the Underline, would seek to recreate the same allure and excitement that the High Line created in Manhattan in these early years of the 21^st century, except the addition of a proper bike route makes it far more useful.

A usable, attractive corridor is bound to attract economic growth. Witness the sustained boom taking place in the intown areas of Atlanta, particularly near the still-unfinished Beltline. The Beltline may seem to be a bit grandiose, with its promise of light rail transit, redeveloped neighborhoods, and multiuser paths. Expensive light rail projects are getting harder to fund as infrastructure spending throughout the US withers under conservative pressure. For example, Arlington, Virginia, surrendered to such antipathy when it chose to kill a streetcar project in a low-income corridor after strenuous objections from right-leaning county board members, Libby Garvey and John Vihstadt. Luckily for Atlanta, the economic benefits of the Beltline are already coming in with only multiuser paths in place in some areas.

That raises a rather unsettling question for transportation and city planners: is the key to neighborhood vigor and economic growth a combination of low-impact, low-cost transportation infrastructure and parks? If the High Line, Underline, and Beltline are all successful in injecting vitality into close-in neighborhoods, with the latter two offering new connectivity, should we re-task funding away from elaborate road and transit projects designed to expensively move people between outlying areas and the central cores of metropolitan areas? If a rail transit system is too much for Arlington to stomach, for instance, should the county look to a long corridor of bike paths and parks paralleling the route of the defunct streetcar as a replacement?

Some signs of a new trend in this direction are starting to appear. In the early 1990s, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) finally realized its collective dream of building an expressway through the heart of north Atlanta after years of opposition during Atlanta’s Freeway Revolt. Georgia 400 was initially built as a toll road with an expensive MARTA heavy rail line in the center. The road recently lost its tolls (cue massive backups).

In a glaring oversight, GDOT chose not to include a bike path alongside the new road, as Virginia’s DOT had done years earlier along I-66 inside the Beltway (the Custis Trail). GDOT is now going a little way towards rectifying that error by donating right-of-way along part of GA 400 to Atlanta’s PATH organization. PATH is part of a consortium constructing a multiuser path through north Atlanta’s Buckhead community that will connect to the Atlanta Beltline. The beginnings of a citywide bike network are starting to form.

That this is occurring in Georgia is positively earthshaking. This is the same state that gives no money at all to Atlanta’s MARTA transit system. That’s not to say that the Republican governor, Nathan Deal, has turned his back on that most traditional of congestion relief measures, the widening of urban expressways. Years of repeated failures of such projects to alleviate congestion have yet to have an impact on the governor’s transportation policy. However, big changes often have small beginnings.

In this era of diminishing budgets, more regions should look to these innovative ideas from Miami and Atlanta. It’s better to build something cheap that will keep its full functionality many years after completion than waste time on projects that will never get off the ground (Arlington Streetcar) or will ultimately fail to relieve congestion (any given urban highway expansion). If the Underline and Beltline can be completed and grow in popularity, as well as economic impact, the consultants at the Dutch Cycling Embassy will get a lot busier.

Five Steps to Successful Transportation Planning (and how to tell a NIMBY from a Naysayer)

2014-04-17T11:08:00.000-04:00

Imagine yourself as a political official with authority over a city's transportation system. Your task is to build an efficient, functional transportation system in your city.
Let's assume that, for external reasons, exponential growth is headed your way. Your current infrastructure can't possibly handle it all. What do you do?

Step 1: Don't freak out.
All too often, planners faced with exponential growth panic. They propose outlandish plans to double, or even triple, the capacity of primary roadways. Georgia's Department of Transportation (DOT) did this with Atlanta's expressway network in the 1980s. For their trouble, they got some of the worst congestion resulting from induced demand the US has seen.

Step 2: Learn from the failures of your predecessors.
California built a staggering number of freeway lane-miles in the 1960s and 1970s, many of them in urban areas. It was very impressive-from the air. From the ground, it was bad enough to give rise to a new phrase, "road rage." Unfortunately, in the 2000s under Governor Schwarzenegger, California planners went old school and started building urban freeways again. Neither the former governor nor his advisors connected the dots and realized that their approach had no more chance of success than did their predecessors'. Indeed, despite of the continuing gridlock, the former governor claimed in a recent interview on The Nerdist Podcast that his freeway construction was one of his great legacies. That's an odd way to feel about a collection of what are effectively parking lots during rush hour.

Step 3: Don't just react to circumstances.
If you simply take a reactive approach, you'll end up with a mess. Consider this hypothetical scenario: Main Street is jammed with cars, buses, and pedestrians. So, you decide to add vehicle capacity to the road by widening it. This penalizes pedestrians, of course, but maybe you're hoping to fix that later.
The added capacity induces demand, as it always does in urban areas, so you decide to build a bypass. That induces more demand, so you widen the bypass which induces still more demand. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The reactive approach, wildly popular in the mid-20th century US and currently in vogue in China, is great for keeping construction companies happy, but lousy for actually accomplishing anything. Try to anticipate conditions so that your solutions are sustainable.

Step 4: Get some vision.
This is easier said than done, as engineers and technocrats are seldom trained, or even asked, for creative vision. Vision requires the capability to step back and imagine the best result. Engineers and technocrats are usually expected to just make sure the details are right.
No, you need not be an artist (though that could lead to some amusing results), but you must have knowledge in a broad variety of fields so you can synthesize them into a holistic view of the urban environment. For instance, psychology gives insight into how pedestrian pathways tend to gravitate towards a straight line, even if it leads to walking a muddy track or jaywalking across an expressway. Sociology offers perspective on why Americans tend to shun buses, but ride streetcars, even when there's no difference in travel times. Political Science might give you a clue as to why mass transit is unpopular in the GOP-dominated American South, but highly prized in Democratic strongholds on the East and West Coasts. Bottom line: read outside your professional box.

Step 5: Don't confuse naysayers with NIMBYs.
Naysayers are those who reflexively say no to any change, even if it doesn't affect them directly. NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) are, as the name suggests, directly affected opponents.
However, someone who is adjacent to project doesn't necessarily start out as an opponent. For example, suppose a redevelopment project that will boost homevalues by eliminating ugly, decrepit warehouses ends up with strong NIMBY opposition because someone in a neighborhood association excitedly spread wordthat traffic would be awful. Never mind that the site is well-connected to transit and in a highly walkable area. Professional staff opinions will count for nothing, because those opinions are grounded in evidence. The naysayers who are whipping up the NIMBYs into a frenzy are manipulating emotions and have no need or use for evidence.

If you consider yourself a leader, you will have to be able to disregard dishonest naysayer objections and push forward. Luckily, in politics memories are surprisingly short. Those NIMBYs who want to burn you in effigy today may reluctantly admit you were right tomorrow, especially if the results of your projects are discernibly different from the apocalypse forecast by naysayers. But, this favorable outcome won't happen if you skip any of these steps.

When Public Input Isn’t a Good Thing

2012-08-02T16:04:00.000-04:00

I shall now utter what amounts to heresy in current public policy thinking. Getting the public’s input isn’t always a good thing. In fact, it can often lead to paralysis. Why? Because no matter how good a project might be, there will always be those who oppose it. Unfortunately, those opponents usually are louder than those in favor of a project, even if they are numerically weaker .

That’s because of the stronger motivation inherent in opposing an initiative. Think for a moment: when have you ever seen someone stage a protest in favor of a project? Now think about the last time you heard of a lawsuit being filed to stop a project or, on the more extreme end of the spectrum, someone chaining themselves to a tree to stop a bulldozer.

That latter example comes from Atlanta, where the Presidential Parkway was stopped mid-construction through a combination of protests and lawsuits. The original plan, backed by former President Jimmy Carter and the Georgia DOT, would have resulted in a limited access, elevated highway east of downtown Atlanta. The impacted neighborhoods, many of which were undergoing the initial stages of gentrification, fought against it with lawsuits and the occasional protestor firmly attached to a tree.

Imagine a freeway opposition so successful, the government has to put up a plaque to commemorate their efforts. This plaque is in Freedom Park, where officeholders originally wanted a wide expressway to be built. Photo courtesy of Keizers/Wikipedia.

The lawsuits were more successful at delaying construction, but the protests gradually soured politicians’ attitudes towards the project. Construction was cancelled and the Georgia DOT learned the hard way that politicians prefer for problems to go away quietly, rather than become more distracting over time. Today parkland and a grade-level boulevard named Freedom Parkway fills a space that, for at least a few years, was an eerie world of unused bridge supports rising like Roman ruins from the red Georgia clay.

These opponents were certainly helped along by the inherent flaws in what was a wasteful project. After all, Atlanta’s expressways are little more than multilane parking lots for several hours each workday. The neighborhood this road would have bisected, Inman Park, later gentrified into one of the most expensive in Atlanta. If an elevated, pollution-spewing expressway had been built, would anyone have wanted to live near it? Probably not.


A traffic jam in Atlanta. Would you want to live near this? Photo courtesy of Atlantacitizen/Wikipedia.

Fair enough, but does an opposition lose when a project isn’t so flawed? No, for on July 31^st of 2012, voters in the Atlanta metro area voted against a local option sales tax (T-SPLOST) that would have paid for a vast array of transportation projects. Most of that revenue (52%) would have gone to new transit programs, but a lot would have gone to roads, too. While only 1% would have gone to bike and pedestrian facilities, it must be remembered that such projects are fairly cheap, as I pointed out when I wrote about Complete Streets Policies.

So, why did the opponents win in this case? Ironically, it was the actions of the policymakers that ensured their victory. Georgia’s elected and appointed officialdom opted for a funding option that required a referendum. A referendum is the purest form of citizen input on policy, so a win for the proposal would be inoculated both it and its sponsors against the all-too-common charge that officials didn’t get enough feedback from the public. But if you look at the assortment of special interest groups that opposed it and why, a pattern emerges:

1. The Sierra Club opposed it because too much money was allocated to roads.

2. The NAACP opposed it because not enough money was being spent in poor, largely black portions of the area.

3. The Georgia chapter of the Tea Party opposed it because it was a tax increase, period.

See the pattern? The opponents were all taking purist positions in line with the political agenda. Simple positions make for good soundbites in a political fight.

On the other side were most major employers in Atlanta, including Coca-Cola, plus various political figures such as the Mayor of Atlanta, Kasim Reed, who was elected with strong support from the City’s African-American electorate. They were comfortable with messy compromises, as this proposal essentially was, because they operate in an environment that requires compromise to function, i.e. the real world.

But compromises make lousy rallying cries. It’s much easier to yell “No new taxes” than it is to yell “It’s not perfect, but what is?” In a referendum contest, the motivated minority is going to vote; the apathetic majority won’t, unless there’s something else bringing them to the polls. They aren’t going to show up for a referendum or a boring primary in mid-summer. That’s why T-SPLOST went “t-splat”.

So, are policymakers trapped? If they fail to consult the public, are they doomed to suffer headline-grabbing protests and expensive lawsuits? If they do ask for public input, will their plans always be derailed by small groups of motivated opponents? No, but they can only avoid these fates if they pay attention to conditions on the ground.

In the case of the Presidential Parkway, leaders failed to recognize that entire neighborhoods were rebelling against their plans. Neighborhoods can easily sway elections for city council, Mayor, or legislative seats because of their concentration of votes. Officeholders facing such a hotbed of hostility must either find a way to placate these constituents or start packing up their offices.

Those who didn’t rely on electoral support from these areas, such as Georgia DOT board members, failed to realize that their constituents were those same officeholders that came under intense pressure from the neighborhoods they represented. These elected officials weren’t going to stick their necks out for a project that would cost them their office.

For the T-SPLOST issue, policymakers didn’t understand that it’s not always a good idea to punt the ball. Stretching the football metaphor further (this is Georgia we’re talking about, after all), the ball should have been run, because the defense wasn’t deep. The opposition consisted of a few special interest groups that could sway the outcome of an election if only their motivated supporters showed up.

Transit proposed for the Atlanta Beltline. With funding defeated by a coalition of the Sierra Club, NAACP, and the Georgia chapter of the Tea Party, how will it ever be funded? Enjoy the traffic jams, y'all! Rendering courtesy of the Atlanta Beltine, Inc.

The bottom line is that policymakers need to pay attention to how concentrated the opposition is. If it appears to be very concentrated and strong, extensive public outreach isn’t a bad idea as it could save a lot of time, money, and political embarrassment.

However, if the angry faces they see at public hearings and meetings are the same ones seen at EVERY public hearing, regardless of the topic, they may very well be looking at a scattered, weak opposition that doesn’t have the backing of the public at large. That’s what happened in Georgia’s referendum. Unfortunately, in the current skittish climate of public policymaking, it’s a scenario that will likely play out repeatedly.

Complete Streets---Coming to Eat Your Shrubbery?

2012-07-28T14:46:00.005-04:00

When you read the phrase, “Complete Streets”, what do you think of? If you’re from a rural area, or a poorly-run major city, you might think it refers to streets that are paved and free of Fiat-swallowing potholes. It’s actually an initiative that’s simply common practice in other developed countries: a Complete Street takes into account all users, not just cars.

Those other users typically include pedestrians, cyclists, and transit. For pedestrians, sidewalks and safe crossing points are installed. Cyclists might get a dedicated bike lane or off-road cycletrack. Accommodating transit could be as simple as creating pull-outs for buses or as elaborate as a dedicated lane for the bus or streetcar.

A crosswalk along the Fall Line Trace in Columbus, GA. Cyclists are protected by a HAWK signal. Photo by author.

Allowances are also supposed to be made to allow for access by those with disabilities as well. This could mean audible pedestrian signals so that those with vision impairments can cross safely. For those in wheelchairs, ramps would be installed at all crossing points.

These are just a sampling of the changes a Complete Streets program can bring. You might think that there’s nothing even slightly controversial about any of these. You would also be very, very wrong.

Even something as seemingly correct as transportation accommodations mandated by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) can incite opposition from organizations such as the Heritage Foundation. If helping the most physically vulnerable in our society can arouse irritation, imagine the anger at spending taxpayer dollars on those who are simply trying to get about in something other than a car. In the run-up to passage of a transportation funding bill in June of 2012, Senator Rand Paul attempted to eliminate all funding for bike and pedestrian improvements. The Senate rejected his amendment with 60 Senators voting against it, but 38 Senators thought his amendment was a good idea.

Their argument centered on the need to divert the money to fix bridges, which by some estimates could cost $71 billion. The elimination sought by Senator Paul would have diverted $900 million at the most to that effort. In other words, those who voted for elimination thought they could achieve fix a major problem with a little over 1% of what was needed. That might have paid for painting a few railings somewhere, but not much else. However, the occasional budgetary complaint from politicians isn’t the biggest problem faced by Complete Streets proposals.

The more pervasive opposition stems from far more mundane concerns. Some residents may complain that a sidewalk in their yard would be too much of an imposition because some of the tree canopy or landscaping would need to be removed. This raises a rather crucial question: should the needs of the pedestrians, such as kids walking to a school bus stop, be secondary to those of the residents’ shrubbery?

To answer this, the benefits of Complete Streets must be weighed against the hassles. As it turns out, they are an incredibly effective expenditure of transportation dollars, especially given their low cost---relative to a freeway widening or other big-ticket item. The Federal Highway Administration found that installing sidewalks can reduce accidents involving pedestrians walking along roadways by 88%! Bike lanes installed in New York City have been credited with a 28% reduction in crashes.

Let’s not forget the convenience benefits, though. As I said, transit is supposed to be incorporated into a Complete Streets Policy. If a dedicated lane is possible, the speed benefits can be significant. At least, that’s what a UC Berkeley Study found in Seoul, South Korea, where bus speeds nearly doubled once dedicated lanes in the median were opened. Faster service typically translates into more users, which in turn means less pollution being inhaled by local residents.

So, Complete Streets programs have benefits, but a lingering fear remains among those unfamiliar with the concept. They fear that planners will foist a one-size-fits-all approach upon them. Granted, planners haven’t done themselves any favors by insisting on standards designed to accommodate worst-case scenarios. In the case of lane widths, planners may express reluctance to narrow them to less than 12 feet, even though current federal standards allow widths all the way down to nine feet. Why? Because they will want to allow enough space for the largest fire engine (10 feet) or the largest tour bus (8 2/3 feet). Instead of procuring or allowing vehicles that fit the roads, some planners may want to make the roads fit the vehicles.

It gets worse. The ADA mandates a clear width minimum of 3 feet for walkways. That’s not a sidewalk width recommendation; that’s how much space must be kept clear of obstructions. ADA guidelines call for the placement of wider sections of 5-6 feet every 200 feet to allow for two users to pass each other, but this is often misinterpreted as a mandate to make an ENTIRE sidewalk 5-6 wide. That’s fine for newly-developed areas, but terrible for areas that are already established. Lots of shrubbery faces its doom, unless planners show some flexibility.

Happily, Complete Streets policies as adopted around the country are demonstrating this flexibility. That’s probably because the pressure for adoption is a bottom-up process emanating from citizens, rather than a top-down approach from a bureaucracy.

Consider two of the Complete Streets resolutions that I’ve been a part of. The City of Alexandria’s Complete Streets Resolution doesn’t insist on rigid standards, but simply demands consideration of all uses. This is also true of the Washington metro area’s regional Complete Streets policy, which is essentially a recommendation of best practices. This is hardly surprising. Alexandria has centuries-old streets in the Old Town neighborhood with narrow sidewalks and, in some cases, cobblestones. Washington has the Georgetown neighborhood, which is very similar. Both cities also have sections built in the car-dependent mid-20^th century, with minimal pedestrian accommodation. How is a one-size-fits-all policy even conceivable?

A crosswalk in Old Town Alexandria. Notice the signage and bulb-out to shorten the crossing distance. Photo by author.

Complete Streets policies are nothing radical. Their cost is a pittance compared to what urban expressways such as Washington’s Intercounty Connector cost (a cool $2.5 billion). And it’s highly unlikely that they will turn into overpriced parking lots, as urban expressways always do.

Can Transit Ever be a Free Ride? In Vienna, Perhaps

2012-07-15T16:20:00.000-04:00

If there’s one debate in transportation that’s never-ending, it’s the argument between those who say transportation systems should be free for the disadvantaged and those who believe that these systems must be self-sustaining or even profitable. The former group claims that low-income riders are dependent on mass transit to get to their low-paying jobs, so fares must be kept at nominal levels without regard for operations and capital improvement costs. The latter thinks that all entities, including governments, should be run like private companies and earn a profit. Sadly, both sides are living in a fantasy world.

In San Francisco, advocates for low-income students are pushing the Metropolitan Transportation Commission to offer free passes to disadvantaged youth. Their argument is based on the claim that school bus routes are being cut back and students’ families can’t afford to pay full price for MUNI fares. Fares climbed nearly 1.6% in July 2012, representing a 70% increase over costs in 2009. As exorbitant as that increases appears, it still leaves MUNI fares at a cheaper level than Boston and New York. But that’s small comfort to someone who suddenly can’t afford to ride.

Yet the need to raise fares was very real. This transit agency, like Washington’s Metro and virtually every other system around the US, had deferred maintenance for years thanks to a budget shortfall that’s over $20 million dollars this fiscal year---and climbing. In some cases, MUNI had gone so far as to use Glad garbage bags to insulate wiring on their fleet of electric buses. This sort of ingenuity is commonplace in underdeveloped countries. Perhaps an application for UN aid is in order if the fare increases don’t work out.

A Muni bus free of garbage bag insulation. Photo courtesy of Sam Bowman/Wikipedia.

So, is the only option to raise the fares forever upwards? That’s fine if you don’t mind catastrophic levels of vehicular traffic on the road. Part of the main justification for mass transit is to provide an alternative to sitting in traffic for hours on end. A fare rise will screen out those who either can’t afford it or simply don’t think the expense is worthwhile. Those who drop out of the transit system will inevitably get in their cars and attempt to drive on overburdened roads, thus leading to traffic jams.

Driving can appear to be a cheaper than transit to users because roads in the US are heavily subsidized. You seldom pay a toll, so the only cost is time and gas. Congestion pricing has been proposed in a number of cities, but many drivers don’t like the idea of suddenly having to pay for a road that they used to drive on for free. The scheme works well in London, but that didn’t stop an uproar from occurring when New York City proposed a congestion charge for Manhattan.

A rare case of roads paying for themselves: the London Congestion Charge zone. Photo courtesy of Nevilley/Wikipedia.

Keeping prices for mass transit at a lower level would appear to be the best way to alleviate congestion, just to keep drivers off the road. But in terms of funding, you’re right back to where you started. The subway/streetcar/bus network will be overburdened and unable to pay its own way. Happily, there’s a way around this predicament.

Vienna in Austria recently reduced the price of its yearly passes from EUR 449 to EUR 365. The monthly passes dropped from EUR 49.50 to EUR 45. That’s a decline of over 18% and 8% respectively.

How can Vienna’s transit system keep going with such a dramatic cut in fares? Simple: they make up the revenues elsewhere. Vienna is cleverly forcing occasional users to choose a long-term investment by raising single ticket fares 11% to EUR 2. The occasional riders are now faced with a stark choice: shell out more money to maintain the option of transit use or make a commitment that will save them a lot of cash, but will bind them to a transit mode for the long term. The rational ones will choose the discounted pass.

Vienna's streetcar fleet (part of Wiener Linien), now available at lower prices! Photo courtesy of Martin Ortner/Wikipedia.

Vienna will forego some cash from those who switched from full price single tickets to the discounted annual passes, but someone who buys a one-off pass does not have the same motivation to return to the system that an annual pass holder does. The annual pass holder has invested in multiple trips and is unlikely to let them expire, as that would be tantamount to throwing money away. The occasional single-ticket user has no such motivation. It’s the same principle that operates behind frequent flyer miles and other reward programs. However, there’s still lost revenue to be made up, as the existing user discount amounts to EUR 31 million. How does Vienna plan to make up the remaining balance?

It helps that the sales volume for the annual passes has jumped by 16% (60,000 additional passes). That’s an additional EUR 5 million in the coffers. As any big box retailer will tell you, the key to success is volume.

Fare dodging is another loss area that Vienna is tackling with vigor. The penalty for being caught without a ticket used to be EUR 70. It’s jumped a staggering 43% to EUR 100. Those users that are caught will obviously have an additional encouragement to buy an annual or monthly pass.

Does this mean that Vienna’s transit will be completely self-sustaining or even profitable? Of course not. But then again, the alternative---driving---isn’t, either. At least this model offers some measure of financial sustainability, fairness of access, and congestion improvement. That’s surely better than the model of deferred maintenance, endless fare increases, and capital starvation dominant in the US.

America's Fear of Trains

2012-07-11T11:32:00.000-04:00

America’s political elite has an unusual phobia. They are terrified of large, metal machines that are guided by rails. This doesn’t apply to all large metal machines, such as SUVs. They just can’t abide the ones with rails underneath them.

A recent blog from the Heritage Foundation provides the clearest example of this irrational fear by using the headline, “Transportation Secretary Wants Us to Be Like Communist China!” You might expect Secretary LaHood to appear wearing a Mao suit, but apparently his sin was to call for more investment in high-speed rail (HSR). He further offended Heritage by comparing America’s commitment to HSR to China’s and found it lacking.

China's High-Speed Rail in service. No sign of terrified Heritage Foundation writers in this picture. Photo courtesy of Khalidshou/Wikipedia

Those who oppose rail transit tend to gravitate towards the same talking points as in Heritage’s blog. They are:

1. It’s fiscally irresponsible, since passenger railroads always need subsidies.

2. The public will never ride in trains because they love their cars so much.

3. A federally-funded HSR program is an intrusion on states’ rights.

The first point is perhaps the oddest. Heritage cited a Voice of America article that, in turn, cited China’s Academy of Science’s claim that fares from the Chinese HSR system would never be enough to pay off the construction loans. A large portion of these costs may be generated by corruption, which Heritage insinuates is inevitable in big government projects. Heritage appears to be unaware that government corruption in China isn’t just limited to big rail projects.

I would imagine that the assumption that HSR and corruption go hand-in-hand would be quite a surprise to Germany, builder of the ICE bullet train, and Japan, home of the Shinkansen. Both nations ranked far higher than China on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index and slightly higher than the United States.

A corruption-free German ICE train. Photo courtesy of Sebastian Terfloth/Wikipedia.

Cost estimates for US HSR projects range from $50 million ---via an American Enterprise Institute scholar---to a range between $35 million and $50 million---courtesy of a former chairman of California’s High Speed Rail Authority. That sounds pretty high, until you compare it to the cost of a toll-free interstate highway. A simple upgrade of the Century Freeway in Los Angeles and various routes in Orange County cost between $25 million and $29 million per mile (inflation adjusted from 1994 levels). That’s money thrown into the gas tank and burned, because in less than five years those improvements will have no effect on these roads’ level of service. Just try driving these routes in the late afternoon to verify. Plus, it’s all being paid for out of taxes (fuel and general revenues, mostly). How’s that for a subsidy?

So what about the second point? Will the public refuse to ride a high-speed train? Acela, the high-speed train running from Washington to Boston, certainly isn’t running empty. In the first six months of FY 2012 ridership hit 1.6 million passengers. That’s comparable to traffic out of Washington’s Reagan National Airport bound for New York and Boston on the US Air and Delta Shuttles. Acela isn’t exactly cheap, thanks to Congress’s attempts to starve Amtrak of subsidies, but it takes you directly to Manhattan. The Delta Shuttle out of Washington takes you to LaGuardia Airport in Queens. Expect a hefty cab fare to get into the city, because there’s no rail connection of any kind.

California’s HSR will tie the state’s two largest metropolitan regions together. Opponents claim its first leg will be underutilized, since it will not reach either San Francisco or Los Angeles. However, this is not unprecedented: the first long-distance superhighway built in the US, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, didn’t reach either Pittsburgh or Philadelphia. It stopped well short of both because builders were using the right-of-way of an unbuilt railroad to get at least some of it built quickly and cheaply. That’s EXACTLY what HSR planners in California are doing. We all know the impact of this first superhighway: rail travel, which had been dominant, declined and nearly died off entirely. The car became supreme because it was perceived as being faster. That perception is steadily weakening on the highly-congested Interstate 5 corridor between San Francisco and Los Angeles, so HSR has some competitive space to get established.

This segues into Heritage’s final point that these decisions are best left to the states. The Pennsylvania Turnpike was a state effort, so opponents might point to this as an example of state-led innovation. However, efforts to expand the nation’s network of superhighways crept along at a Model T’s pace until passage of the Interstate and Defense Highways Act (aka the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956) under President Eisenhower.

This includes Pennsylvania’s own efforts to add onto the Turnpike. The first stretch opened in 1940; it wouldn’t reach Philadelphia until 1950. The proposed extensions to other parts of the state would not get built until Eisenhower’s Interstate program came into existence in 1956. That’s right---it took federal involvement to get things done.

This is the inherent weakness in the argument of those who view federal programs as an intrusion into states’ rights. To think that California could build an entire HSR line without massive federal assistance is as absurd as expecting Pennsylvania or a more rural state like Alabama to build their interstate highway system without any help.

Perhaps the final irony in all of this is that the Heritage Foundation, a group traditionally allied with the Republican Party, is arguing against the approach endorsed by that same party at its founding. As Patt Morrison pointed out in the Los Angeles Times, the Republicans incorporated in the mid-19^th century federal funding of a transcontinental rail link to California into their party’s platform. They did not insist that Nebraska self-finance its section. Corruption was rife in the project, as China is experiencing with their HSR, but it’s hard to argue that the Transcontinental Railroad was a mistake. In fact, it’s hard to see how the US could have become an industrial powerhouse without it.

A train in a museum display going nowhere, rather like Heritage's vision for the US transportation system. Photo by the author.

It’s just as difficult to imagine how the US can sustain its global economic position today if it fails to embrace the same transportation technology now in place in Germany, Japan, and China. Nobody gets ahead if they let their fears paralyze them. Let’s hope the Heritage Foundation and its allies get over their rail-phobia soon.

Overhead Power Lines: Transportation’s Achilles Heel

2012-07-05T13:22:00.000-04:00

Bad Weather + Overhead power lines = Explosion. Photo courtesy of Robert Lawton/Wikipedia

A power outage shuts down a major metropolitan area. Customers are outraged. Politicians demand answers. The utility company responsible issues a full page ad to apologize.

Am I referring to Washington, DC in July of 2012? Yes to the first part, no to the second. I’m referring to the outage of February 2010 and July of the same year. PEPCO, the utility serving the city of Washington and some of its suburbs, was forced to issue a public apology for failing to keep their grid up and running. The need for an apology stemmed from the fact that this was not the first time power had failed because of a shoddy network. The Washington Post found a persistent pattern of failure going back to 2005.

So what does this matter to transportation planners? Plenty--- all of the smart technology linking traffic signals, road sensors, cameras and so forth depends on power. When power dies, the signals die with it. Those charged with monitoring transportation find themselves in the dark figuratively, and perhaps literally, as they can’t see what’s happening with dead sensors and cameras.

Mass transit staff have the greatest challenge of all, as a subway train isn’t going anywhere without electricity through the third rail. Buses are hamstrung by those darkened traffic lights, especially since those intersections will revert to all-way stops that half of the drivers ignore.

One final problem for the transportation grid occurs when downed power lines block streets entirely. In the aftermath of the July 2012 storm, some streets in the Washington region remained blocked by wires nearly a week later. This demonstrates the fundamental issue with the power grid: exposure to inclement weather.

In the United States most utility companies prefer to place their transmission lines aboveground. The appeal is obvious. It’s quick and cheap. Unfortunately, that leaves wires exposed to lightning and winds from thunderstorms, hurricanes and derechos. A tree falls on the line, pulls down a couple of poles, and a surge travels through the line overloading transformers. Replicate this over a wide area, and the utility is facing a large bill. If the outage area is big enough, line crews will have to be brought in from out-of-state to assist with rebuilding the electrical grid. Expensive as this is for the utility, the solution---burying the lines--- is worse.

How expensive is putting the lines underground the way they often are in private developments? Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit funded by the utilities, estimated an astronomic sum between $5 million to $15 million per mile. The Washington Post reports North Carolina came up with a number of $41 billion that would have to be spent over a 25 year period to bury its lines after a particularly bad winter storm. Private developers can more easily afford this option because of the relatively short distances involved.

However, if the price tag for widespread burial sounds unaffordable, consider the costs of an unreliable power grid and paralyzed transportation network. The gross domestic product of the Washington metro area is approximately $425 billion per year, or about $1.16 billion per day. Therefore, a week’s worth of outages could conceivably cost the region over $7 billion. Suddenly, North Carolina’s supposedly crippling $41 billion cost spread out over 25 years to bury wires doesn’t look so bad.

Cost isn’t the only factor in this equation. A lack of willpower is probably the biggest impediment to improving power supply reliability. Electricity providers in the US are mostly publicly-held companies with stock held by large, institutional investors. These investors focus on short-term profitability in the company they choose to invest in, not long-term costs for the economy as a whole. That weakens any incentive on the part of utility company CEOs to endorse a massive improvement to the power delivery system, even if their companies are amazingly profitable and could endure the cost. It would entail adding a big expense to the bottom line. It’s easier to justify the expense of repair, since that involves a necessity---it’s hard to charge customers for power they aren’t getting.

Utilities certainly are amazingly profitable. PEPCO reported a net income of over $250 million in just one year; previous years have been as high as $400 million. Dominion Power, which is responsible for supply (and outages) in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, clocked in a net income of $1.4 billion in 12 months. That’s a little over $100 million per month. So, if the utilities aren’t hurting for money, why aren’t politicians able to require improvements?

The main reason is the massive lobbying that utilities engage in. In one year PEPCO spent $3.8 million on lobbying elected officials in the District and Maryland. That buys a lot of persuasive power that can easily overwhelm the diminishing complaints of an apathetic electorate.

I know it seems odd that voters would forget the hassle of an outage and not turn up the heat on the political class, but that’s exactly what happens. Voters are angry when their power goes out, but quickly get over their anger once it comes back on. Without voter anger driving political action, the pressure for change falters. Without this pressure, rate increases keep getting approved by the controlling authorities. Life goes on as before until the next outage. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But let’s suppose someone else adds up the damage from outages caused by exposed transmission lines. What action can they take? The weak spot for utilities is their profitability: cut into it, and they will react. The institutional investors will demand as much.

Putting a cap on rate hikes doesn’t address the issue by itself. Plus, any cap will weaken over time as public memory of a blackout fades. A permanent solution that targets lax behavior is needed. Ironically, that solution is the same one used to keep you and me from parking our cars in the middle of a travel lane: assess a fine. Only in this case, the fines would hit whenever an overhead line fell and blocked a route.

This directly punishes a utility for failing to anticipate risks their systems pose to the transportation network. The fines could escalate according to the importance of the route blocked. The lowest would be for obstructing a driveway, since that affects one household, while the highest would be for blocking a high-capacity road or transit line affecting potential thousands of commuters and deliveries. If a utility allows their lines to be exposed to the risk inherent in aboveground placement, those fines will add up to a level that will cause a few shouting matches in their boardrooms.

James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic that the perception that America is falling behind isn’t confined to our own chattering classes. It’s also a view shared by many in Europe and Asia that’s growing because of our failure to push for improvements to our infrastructure. The Washington power outage of 2012 will almost surely reinforce this impression. Our best hope is to make the status quo more expensive than major change. In truth, it already is for the economy as a whole, but few seem to realize that we are all shareholders in that venture.

Traffic Is Water, and Other Bad Assumptions in Transportation Planning

2012-07-02T21:17:00.001-04:00

Here’s a question for you to consider: if a road is congested, should it be widened? If you answered yes, can you name a major urban highway widening project that didn’t revert within five years to the same average traffic speed as before the expansion?

Widening a road to alleviate congestion is an intuitively obvious solution to most Americans. Generations of planners reinforced this thinking when they told Americans that traffic is like water: if you have too much flowing in a channel, you need to widen it.

You can see this attitude in play all over the US. Whenever a road gets busy, planners and commuters look for ways to widen it, no matter what the effect may be on communities abutting the road. Arlington, Virginia homeowners along Interstate 66 near Washington are constantly under threat of a major widening because commuters further out think a wider road will speed up their drive times.

Too bad it wouldn’t work. Atlanta widened the Downtown Connector (I-75/85 from just north of downtown to just north of Atlanta Airport) from six lanes to twelve lanes in the 1980s. HOV lanes were added in the 1990s. Guess how much faster traffic goes today versus the 1980s? If you answered “no faster”, pat yourself on the back and send your resume to your nearest DOT.

The ever-expanding Downtown Connector in Atlanta, GA. Look, in the distance you can see it growing AGAIN! Photo courtesy of Connor Carey/Wikipedia.

Need another example? Try this: a project infamous for its $15 billion cost is The Big Dig, or Central Artery Project, in Boston. The Big Dig’s main source of fame is the removal of an ugly elevated highway that divided the city, but it’s also supposed to provide some congestion relief. However, the Boston Globe reports that commutes are actually worse than ever with travel times actually doubling several years after completion. Removing one traffic bottleneck, as in this case, does no good for the bottlenecks that remain and may exacerbate the problem by tempting more drivers onto the roads.

One of the tunnels built for the Big Dig in Boston, MA. Photo courtesy of Rene Schwietzke/Wikipedia

This demonstrates the basic fallacy with the traffic-as-water theory: water is not a rational actor. Water can’t be tempted. Likewise, if water’s flow is too great, it can’t opt to move its source closer to its destination. Nor, for that matter, can it move its destination closer to its source.

Human beings do this all the time. That’s why home prices in close-in, walkable neighborhoods around large urban centers throughout the US held steady or increased in recent years, while prices in far-flung neighborhoods melted down faster than a Japanese nuclear power plant.

In the Washington, DC area, home foreclosures in the suburbs form what some real estate experts describe as a “ring of fire”. The center is nice and cool---at least, the fires of foreclosure don’t rage there. But in the outer counties such as Loudoun in northern Virginia, empty McMansions abound. Derelict subdivisions are seldom viewed by young buyers as great places to bring up families.

The inner suburbs and downtown areas were already enjoying resurgence thanks to their vastly shorter commute times, so their vibrancy was a natural lure to these new homeowners. Why live in a depressed area a long drive from work when you can live in a fun place that allows you a multitude of commuting options?

So, the debate is settled: there’s no more need to expand transportation options to the suburbs because they are emptying out, right? Well, not everyone agrees with that assessment. Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire, thinks that the migration into the cities could reverse once the economy recovers. The flight to the suburbs that outweighed central city growth in every decade since the 1920s would restart once mortgages became obtainable.

As a result, some planners think we should expend resources expanding suburban commuter options just as we did in the past, even if the assumptions behind that decision appear uncertain. But is it smart to spend billions of dollars on a scenario that, while once was almost a certainty, seems to be fading into history?

If we look to other developed nations, such as those in the European Union or Japan, where do we see the most expensive real estate? Inevitably, it’s in the urban core where transport links are the most robust. The low-income residential areas are located on the distant periphery.

Perhaps that’s the hidden story here: America’s urban development isn’t taking a pause from its normal pattern of urban rot and suburban boom. It’s resetting to what is the normal global pattern: popular cores with declining demand further out. If so, America’s planning meme is in need of a reboot, or else a lot of money will be wasted.