December 19, 2002

(1) Call off the Jihad against Satanic Sprawl

Gov Glendening and the Smart Growth planners have abandoned the notion of mobility as the aim of transport

"We have made our entire budget a tool for Smart Growth. Every project must pass a Smart Growth test. We have a Smart Growth sub-cabinet that examines every budget item. With every proposed project we ask the question: Does the project promote sprawl…? Maryland's $9.1 billion six year transportation budget has become an incentive fund for Smart Growth… transportation investment is one of the most powerful tools we have to implement Smart Growth…" (Gov Glendening speech at TRB's "Smart Growth Conference", Baltimore, 9-9-2002)

So transport policies and motorist gas tax dollars have been conscripted into the holy war against Satanic Sprawl (known as the suburbs by the infidels)

• shifted $s to new rail projects many horribly cost ineffective (Fred MARC $60m and $3m/yr for 300 riders/day vs 75k on I-270 which grows 1,500/d per year - $60m+$3m/yr buys max 2mths I-270growth)
• doubling transit ridership objective (tho actually share of commute continues to fall - census data)
• providing "an alternative to the auto" (We don't have a practical alternative. Transit is for the other guy, so his car is gotten out of my way.)
• blocking road capacity enhancement (blocked ICC, numerous bypasses, blocked by interminable study extra lanes on I-270, US-301, MD-32, or by simply not considering extra capacity Bay Bridge, Second Potomac River Crossing etc)

No wonder mobility as the objective has disappeared.

"Let the infidel suburbanites stew in their congestion," is the unspoken theme

It (the Jihad agst Sprawl) ain't working anyway. Suburbs and ex-urbs still growing, Baltimore City and DC still declining. People don't want higher density. And sure they want alt. transp, but for the other guy. To get him off the road. They will continue to drive their car. C'mon let's get real!

There is a positive opportunity for less ideologically driven politicians to ask:

* What does this smart growth stuff do for people sitting in traffic?

And to say:
* The proper objective of government transport policies is not some Holy War on suburban living, not some 30 year Vision so-called, but the mundane objective of helping people get themselves and their stuff around by organizing a system responsive to their needs

RECOMMEND: Re-establish mobility and congestion relief as the central objective of transportation policy.

(2) Assert and reassert user pays principle

As far as possible users should pay the costs of the service. Financing with taxes should be last resort.

1. Metrorail system is grossly overcrowded, short on capacity, short on maintenance-$s. The solution cries out: Raise the stupid fares, at least when the system is crowded - in the rush hours. That will reduce overcrowding by getting more people to travel offpeak, and it will raise money to support capacity enhancement.
2. Give the poor transport vouchers they can use for the transport mode of their choice but get others to pay full fare.
3. Toll the new Wilson bridge. Never before in US or international history has such a hugely expensive crossing project ($2.4b) been attempted without tolls. In the heart of Baltimore and elsewhere on expensive crossings we toll. Why not the Wilson bridge? It is principally for the convenience of Virginia commuters, long-distance traffic. No reason why Maryland's transp budget should be tied to that bridge. 180k/veh/dayx300x$2=$108m/yr

(3) Privatize

Transportation is service business. Make them more businesslike by making it a business directly answerable to its customers for its survival

1. Privatize the seven toll facilities (Kennedy Hwy, 2 balt tunnels, Cheapeake Bay bridge, FSK br, & 3 other bridges), maybe privatize MdTA. Privatized toll facilities: Ontario Canada privatized 407-ETR, Autostrade SpA in Italy. Australia, UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Grece, many Asian, S American countries, Eastern Europe, China, India, Malaysia… Japan is privatizing its four large state owned toll agencies. We have a few: D Greenway, Ambassador Bridge, Camino Columbia TR, San Diego CA-125-S starting, 91X Lanes (being counticized). MdTA probably bring about $2.5b based on its $200m/yr in toll revenues and prospective op costs.
2. Privatize MAA (BWI mainly). Heathrow, Sydney, Rome, Auckland (NZ) many airports have been privatized. MPA, smaller but worth study. More efficient, less pork, asnd most attractive - big globs of cash for the state.
3. Transit more difficult to do because the biggest one WMATA is multi-juisdictional and all are such lossmakers. Difficult but full fare plus voucher policy might get them into shape for privatization later. Start by killing extravagant loss-making megaprojects like the Purple Line as rail. Not properly studied for busway. More economical. Privatize and make competitive carparking at WMATA stations.

(4) Problems are opportunity

Any elected official who says "We don't have enough money to build more roads" is talking nonsense, and demonstrating blinkered vision. They are staring myopically at the heavily overdrawn well of fuel taxes and license fees. There are hundreds of millions of potential toll revenue annually in just a portion of the money wasted in congestion.

Costs of Congestion
Metro regions (TTI) Washington Baltimore

DVMT/lane-mile 18,320 15,365
Congestion penalty 1.46 1.29
Lane-miles congested 70% 50%
Hours of delay/driver/year 84 50 84 50
Delay cost at $12.85/hr $2,020m/year $745m/year
Wasted fuel cost $305m/year $115m/year
Total congestion costs $2,325m/year $860m/year
Congestion cost/driver/yr $1,595 $965

Key numbers: $2,325 million/year Washington, $860m/yr Baltimore. People will pay big money NOT to have to endure congestion that is costing them those kinds of sums.

1. New capacity should be tolled. Many toll projects that are needed will be self-financing: Wilson bridge, ICC, 2X-Potomac, Penn Line truckway, I-70-ports truckway west Baltimore, Extra span Ches. Bay Bridge.
2. Premium service lanes (aka HOT lanes, toll-express lanes) I-270, US-50, Beltway. HOV is a failure, but rather than open the HOV lanes to general traffic should convert them to HOT lanes (with HOV-3 or HOV-4 free) Give people a way past the congestion in a lane lanaged with toll rates which will assure free flow. NOT THEORY: this is has been in operation every rush hour for nearly six years on 91 Express Lanes in CA and for about 4 years on I-15 in San Diego. It is successful. It works operationally. Users like it. Non-usres like it too because it takes some vehicles Fiveout of their lanes and it is an option for them too.

Senior analyst at FHWA, Patrick DeCorla-Souza has pointed to the potential of tolls in the Wash DC metro area.

* Proposes building extra lanes (priced) on 200 miles of congested area interstates.
* Cost about $10m/lane-mile or $4 billion.
* Estimates tolls of $600m/year.
* Estimates net benefits to the area as about $2b/yr from reduced delays, reduced air emissions and reduced accidents.

This proposal by senior FHWA official should have been big news this summer but local reporters were asleep at the wheel. See Eno Foundation's TRANSPORTATION QUARTERLY magazine 56-3 Summer 2002, also paper for TRB Jan 2003.

CONGESTION: True we can't build our way out of congestion with free roads. Also true we can't transit our way out of congestion. And we can't land-use plan our way out of congestion either. Some congestion is rational - it would cost more to get rid of it than it costs. Congestion c aused by incidents and by special events are examples of congestion we have to live with. We DO NOT have to live with chronic congestion from undercapacity and mispricing.

MISPRICING: due to our reliance on gas taxes, license fees and fixed tolls to finance roads we underprice peak hour use and over price off-peak use and hence we have serious and chronic congestion on many of our urban freeways. It costs about 30c/mile according to deCorla Souza to provide a peakhour lane while the present user fees are only 2c/mile (40c in fuel taxes/mile divided by 20mpg). And we increase the costs by failing to offer any alternatives to congested lanes.

(5) Innovative lanes

Ideally we might abolish taxes and institute pricing of roads by road service providers, but that is not going to happen for the foreseeable future. We need to offer road options and go for evolutionary change:

(a) Take HOV lanes HOT

Most of the planning for road widening In Maryland is adding HOV lanes to the Beltways and I-95. HOV lanes don't make sense. It is quite unclear that they do encourage any significant amount of carpooling. Mostly they are just a bonus to people who would be driving together anyway. Carpooling made some sense in an era of very large workforces in large establishments all working the same shift. That era is passing. Establishments are smaller, working hours more flexible. It is very tough to assemble groups of people wanting to go the same place at the same time morning and evening day after day. Carpooling suffers the same problems as traditional transit.

We should:

1. At a minimum take the HOV lanes to HOT lanes, raising the occupancy requirement to 3 or 4 and allowing toll buy-in metered with flexible toll rates to maintain free flow conditions but to fill some of the wasted capacity, or go further and
2. Convert them to toll-express lanes to allow development of a regional network of premium service toll lanes to enable people to buy their way past congestion when they have an especially urgent need to get places fast, while maintaining free lanes for those prepared to put up with congestion
3. If we can get away from mass transit (trains and large buses) to more customer responsive cabs, vans and mini-buses we may need dedicated transitlanes

(b) Truckways

People can walk to the Metro. Supermarket supplies can't, nor can UPS, FedEx, the van picking up the lab samples from the doctors office, the guy who comes to fix the copy machine, office supplies, food and drink etc. So there's a sound argument that private automobiles cannot be fully accommodated inside the Beltway. But if the District and surrounding Maryland inner suburbs are to sustain economic viability they need better truck mobility. Inside the Beltway we need to do something special for trucks, delivery vans etc The problem is most acute from DC to the northeast and to the north.

Truckways are needed, like a mini-expressway, perhaps just one-lane each direction but properly grade separated and access controlled. It should be possible to fit such in by locating it right alongside rail lines, in high voltage electric line reservations or by buying up industrial buildings. In places it could be tunneled if necessary. It would be toll-financed.

POINTLESS LAMENTATIONS:

Many transportation planners, activists and others argue we must have alternatives to cars and roads on which they say we are "excessively dependent." But lamenting excessive dependence on the automobile is a bit like farmers lamenting their excessive dependence on the weather. It is absurd. Farmers no doubt would like to be less dependent on the rain and the sun. It would be nice for them to have a spigot and to be able to turn on the rain! Or a thermostat switch for the sun. Similarly it would be nice to have some transit vehicle that would take us door to door, directly, and with comparable speed, cost and convenience to a car. It hasn't been invented.

We almost all have cars, and we use them for almost all our trips - over 90%. Within our cities roads do 99 percent or so of freight commercial and service movements since almost no one these days has their own rail siding. We are almost totally dependent on roads and motor vehicles. It is not "excessive." It is because the motor vehicles on roads are the most flexible, convenient, economical, and sensible way of getting around for the overwhelming majority of our trips. The road system is ubiquitous. It goes everywhere within our metro areas via a hierarchy of streets from alleys, driveways, loading docks and parking lots up to expressways and freeways. And the road system accommodates an array of different vehicles from motorbikes and cars up through trash trucks and fuel trucks and mobile cranes. It is flexible. And for all the trendy contemporary chatter about the need for inter-modalism and multi-modalism every mode transfer costs something, and within cities the costs are usually more than it is worth. The road has a natural monopoly for a large part of the transport task.

It is not as if reducing dependence on roads hasn't been tried. For 30 years we have had continuous government programs to move people from roads to rail, to get people out of their cars and onto trains. It hasn't worked. It will never work. In the end talk of reducing dependence on roads is denial of reality and an evasion of responsibility.

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Special to Maryland Taxpayers Association

Peter Samuel, editor & publisher TOLL ROADS NEWSLETTER, adjunct scholar transportation policy REASON PUBLIC POLICY INSTITUTE, 102 West 3rd Street Unit One, Frederick MD 21701-5333 tel 301 631 1148 fax 301 631 1249 tollroads@aol.com or petersamuel@mac.com

REFERENCES: on congestion and what can be done www.rppi.org/ps250.htlm on tolls see www.rppi.org/ps274.html on truckways www.rppi.org/ps294.pdf