Albuquerque BRT: More Harm Than Good

The Federal Transit Administration’s 2017 New Starts report recommends funding for 22 different bus-rapid transit projects in cities ranging from Lansing to New York. Many of these projects propose to convert existing street lanes to dedicated bus lanes, which the Antiplanner thinks is usually a waste. In particular, the Antiplanner has criticized such proposals in Albuquerque and Indianapolis.

Now a new report from a surprising source confirms the Antiplanner’s conclusions about Albuquerque’s proposal and provides a model that skeptical citizens can use in other cities. The report is by Gregory Rowangould, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the University of New Mexico whose research focuses on sustainable transportation. Rowangould formerly worked for the Natural Resources Defense Council and is a strong transit advocate. However, like the Antiplanner, he is very skeptical of Albuquerque’s proposal to convert two of the four-to-six lanes of Albuquerque’s Central Avenue to dedicated bus lanes.

In order to be eligible for federal funds for the project, the city hired Parsons Brinckerhoff to do a traffic study and HDR to do a travel demand analysis. The city’s grant application reported to the FTA that the proposed project would relieve congestion, significantly increase transit ridership, and in particular help low-income people. Rowangould’s review of the traffic and travel demand analyses found, however, that the opposite would be true: the project would severely increase congestion, it would do little for transit ridership, but it would especially hurt low-income transit riders.

Albuquerque’s Central Avenue is currently served by the number 66 local bus, which is heavily used by residents of low-income neighborhoods; and by Red and Green RapidRide buses, which have limited stops and are aimed at serving middle-class neighborhoods. Rowangould discovered that the models used to do the analyses were poorly calibrated. For example, the calibration of the travel demand model overestimated ridership on the Red and Green buses by 20 and 28 percent while it underestimated ridership on the 66 bus by 23 percent.

When the model was run for the proposed project, it predicted 50 percent more (over the already overestimated) RapidRide ridership and 63 percent less (below the already underestimated) route 66 ridership for a net increase of less than 5 percent. In other words, nearly all of the new RapidRide riders are predicted to come from route 66 buses. But, as Rowangould notes, RapidRide “is not a substitute for the local 66 bus.” If route 66 riders haven’t switched to RapidRide, why would they switch just because those RapidRide buses are going on dedicated lanes?

HDR compounded this error by adjusting ridership by University of New Mexico students. Of all of the areas along the route, the model’s calibration came closest to accurately estimating ridership at the University. But HDR wasn’t satisfied with the calibration, so it arbitrarily added 750 trips per day to the University stops.
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Rowangould also found that the city’s claims about the impacts of the dedicated bus lanes on traffic congestion were contradicted by the Parsons Brinckerhoff analysis. While the city claimed there would be little impact on congestion and the businesses on Central Avenue, Parsons Brinckerhoff’s analysis found that dozens of intersections would end up significantly worse off than if the project isn’t built. Some intersections that would be at level of service A if the project isn’t built would go all the way to level of service F if it is built.

Central Avenue isn’t very congested today, says Rowangould, so it isn’t clear that creating dedicated lanes for the RapidRide buses would significantly speed service. But the models showed that the project would significantly degrade service for local route 66, which carries more riders than either the Red or Green RapidRide buses. This raises an environmental justice issue if one of the costs of slightly improving speeds for a few middle-class bus riders is greatly decreasing travel speeds for more low-income riders.

Rowangould concludes by saying the “project as currently designed will do more harm than good.” He suggests that the city improve bus service by simply increasing bus frequencies on heavily used routes. The city could also ask customers to pay before they board (a part of Albuquerque’s proposal) on any buses, not just buses that have dedicated lanes.

Rowangould’s report was commissioned by a law firm that is representing local businesses who fear they will be harmed by the increased congestion caused by the project. They have asked a federal court to require that Albuquerque do a complete environmental assessment rather than be “categorically excluded” from such an assessment. The group’s motion for a preliminary injunction (10.2-MB) includes Rowangould’s report as well as a declaration from Paul Lusk, who was a former principle planner for the city Albuquerque, and several other people who object to the project.

Albuquerque’s problem is that it designed the project to get the grant, not to improve transportation. As one local resident noted in a declaration, city planners said at a public meeting that the project aimed to get “free federal money.” More particularly, Lusk concluded that the project “focused on optimizing the performance of the transit system without paying comparable attention to the broader issues of sound urban design and the many other functions of an urban street.”

People who find themselves confronted by similar proposals in other cities should use Rowangould’s analysis as a model for their own reviews. While not everyone may have the resources to take these projects to court, they may be able to mobilize political opposition by showing that proponents of dedicated bus lanes are misrepresenting the results of their own studies.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

4 Responses to Albuquerque BRT: More Harm Than Good

  1. Henry Porter says:

    Business people should not have to raise money to hire law firms to commission engineering consultants to call shenanigans on junk science that is commissioned by their own cities. “People who find themselves confronted by similar proposals”–whether or not they have the resources–should not have to “mobilize political opposition” or take their cities or states to court.

    Proposals such as this should never make it through the front door of the Federal Transit Administration. The fact the FTA so often accepts obviously flawed justification for such obviously flawed projects points to the real problem. The problem is FTA.

    Only sheer incompetence and/or total malfeasance can explain why such flawed studies are not immediately rejected by FTA.

    FTA wears two hats. It is charged with promoting transit and stewarding public funds. Too often, the former trumps the latter. FTA is not protecting our backs.

    Don’t blame the City of Albuquerque or the consultants. Blame the federal agencies that create a world where federal money is perceived to be free money.

  2. Maddog says:

    Henry, also understand that corruption always corrupts those it contacts. While the corruption here may emanate from the FTA, it corrupts the individuals, state, and local entities which it contacts. It is also cumulative, so over time it becomes worse.

    The City of Albuquerque, and the consultants are at fault, perhaps not as the genesis of the corruption, but as facilitators. They knew what they were doing and acted intentionally to achieve the outcome, regardless of the human costs, or the financial costs. They found it expedient to line their pockets at the expense of others, and to lie while doing so.

    While I lived in Mexico I realized exactly how difficult it is to address corruption. We are treading dangerous waters here. We need to address this issue whenever found, and remove it to the root. The alternative is too dystopian to contemplate.

  3. JOHN1000 says:

    “Albuquerque’s problem is that it designed the project to get the grant, not to improve transportation.”
    But they used the fraudulent claim of “helping the poor” when applying for the “free federal funds.”
    Unfortunately, the community “leaders” and organizers join with and support the same politicians who push these policies that benefit their cronies while hurting the poor. The poor are then misled into voting for the very politicians who use the poor for their own benefit.
    A vicious circle.

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