Today, the Cato Institute released a new report, Roadmap to Gridlock: The Failure of Long-Range Metropolitan Transportation Planning. Based on a review of more than 75 long-range transportation plans, the review has two major findings.
First, only two of the plans reviewed bothered to follow the “Rational Planning Model” that is taught in every planning school. This model calls for the identification of goals, the development of alternative ways of meeting those goals, evaluation of those alternatives, and selection or development of a preferred alternative that best meets the goals.
The other 75 plans used what an “abbreviated planning model” (which could also be called the “Irrational Planning Model”), failing to consider any alternatives and often not even evaluating the effects of the proposed plan.
The causes of this type are not clear yet. online order for viagra continue reading that It is not possible to get an erection without struggling with issues identifying with the body tadalafil cialis losing control. It brings them humiliation and so many hold it for adequate time throughout sexual interaction- erectile dysfunction [ED]; absence of interest in viagra brand 100mg sex- reduced libido; early ejaculation and Delayed or nil ejaculation. It works effectively to boost libido, check address now levitra prices strength and stamina. Second plans fell into two major categories: plans that relied on technical solutions to transportation problems (signal coordination, new roadway capacity) and plans that relied on behavioral solutions (land-use regulation, construction of rail transit and bikeways). Although decades of evidence indicate that technical solutions are far more effective than behavioral solutions, at least a third of the plans rely heavily on behavioral solutions and up to half rely at least somewhat on such solutions.
The failure to use the Rational Planning Model provides people with no assurance that the plans are cost effective. Reliance on behavioral solutions practically guarantees that plans are not cost effective. It is possible that some planners avoided using the Rational Planning Model in order to disguise the fact that their plans are not cost effective, but it is more likely that they simply did the least that the US DOT requires them to do.
Interestingly, Salt Lake City was one of the two regions that did use the Rational Planning Model (the other being Jacksonville), mainly in response to a state law. Yet Salt Lake City’s MPO deliberately picked an alternative that the plan revealed was not cost effective. Or, to be more precise, a state auditor discovered that the planners had cooked the books to make it appear that the plan was cost effective, and when this was revealed, the MPO said it was picking that plan anyway.
Based on this, the report recommends that Congress drop all long-range planning requirements from the next surface transportation reauthorization. Interestingly, it concludes that the Rational Planning Model might still be appropriate to short-term planning.
The report also recommends that Congress not simply include performance standards in the law, but that it tie federal funding to those standards. For example, transit funding should be in the form of block grants that depend on a region’s actual transit ridership (or, to ease measurement problems, total transit fares). Finally, the report recommends that Congress urge states and metropolitan areas to rely more on user fees for transportation funding and less on property, sales, or other general taxes.
Can you help me out? I am trying to convince a group of students that it’s a silly idea to spend $40 billion on a high speed rail line from San Francisco to LA.
I’ve tried pointing out how much congestion $40 billion could ease on California’s highways, and how we could provide a free, nice bus service from San Francisco to LA indefinitely for under half the cost, how if there was enough demand for high speed rail that some company would build the darn thing, and how the residents of the state would probably prefer to have $800 than a high speed rail network from San Francisco to LA, but I keep getting confronted with arguments like,
“have you considered what the cost of NOT building HSR is? In having to expand airports and freeways? In higher fuel prices? The cost of HSR isn’t nothing – it is in fact cheaper to build HSR than to do nothing.”
and,
“corporations are conservative in practice. They’re not going to spend $40 billion on a venture they would consider to be very radical and financially risky. Only the government has the backbone and the weight to carry out the project.”
The Sacramento MTP report claims “Even though gasoline prices are at an all-time high, the total amount of driving has more than doubled since 1980.” O’Toole gives no reason for including this quote or in what context it was given in the MTP report. It seems bizarly irrelevant to any study of transport issues.
Firstly, gasoline prices are only marginally higher than in 1980, and for most of the intervening period they were two-thirds lower than those two peaks. Are the authors seriously suggesting that returning to 1980 prices should have caused a return to 1980 traffic volumes? Why not pick some other year when real gasoline prices were close to today’s? 1920 for example.
Secondly, New Zealand has also doubled its traffic since 1980. But it is notable that the number of male drivers involved in crashes reported to the police has increased by only 75% whereas the number of female drivers has almost trebled. According to my calculator that means that two-thirds of traffic growth has been due to increased motorization by women. In fact while vkt per capita has increased by 60%, vkt per worker (20hrs or more per week) has increased by only 20%. By contrast the doubling in traffic during the 1960s was the same per capita and per worker. But that doubling was the result of a 50% increase in worker commuting and a 300% increase in intra suburb travel. This was the decade when we had a quarter acre housing policy and saw the arrival of suburban supermarkets and shopping malls and satelite CBDs.
Take these land use and socio-economic changes into account and very little of the traffic growth can be attributed to road building. Something which the authors of the MTP report seem to acknowledge.
Curiosly those who oppose rail building on the basis that CBDs are no longer the social and commercial hubs of cities don’t seem to see that freeways suffer from the shortcoming. Generally freeways are too dispersed to efficiently handle the complex modern intra-suburban traffic flows. Unless there are sites suitable for redevevopment along either a freeway or railway there is little to be gained from investing in them as future transport corridors. It is entirely possible that modern cities have morphed into something in which arterial corridors are becoming reduntant in much the same way that ARPANet has more into today’s internet. The shift from landline telephones to cellular networks may also be a good model of what will happen to urban transport systems in the near future. Whether the morphing will lead to cities in which walking, cycling and telecommuting are as commonplace as auto travel is now may largely depend on how local government deals with zoning issues such as density minima and land use segregation.
gocards:
Here’s an arguments:
“It’s too risky for corporations to bear” – ask them why is it risky? Is it because it might not work? Because the costs to build might be far higher than expected, and the “return on investment” might be far lower than expected?
If they generally agree to those concepts, then tell them that you don’t believe that the government should be involved in large scale high-risk projects. If necessary, point to Iraq as a large scale, high-risk project.
They will almost certainly respond with “But it’s too risky not to do it.”
This is where you say – “How risky? What are the alternatives? What are the costs of doing nothing? Quantify these things for me.”
They will not know the answer. They may even object that you are being unreasonable to demand metrics. Point out to them that if one doesn’t demand metrics, one gets things like the war – with little accountability and a huge price tag.
They will almost certainly respond that “this is different.” You should agree and say – “What if, instead, we just pay people to stay home and not work. That will reduce traffic, and is both measurable and manageable, budget-wise.”
They will respond that this won’t be as effective at reducing carbon/pollution/congestion – and this is where you pounce and say “But you just said that you don’t know how effective the high speed rail would be at any of those things either. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to consider unorthodox solutions to these problems, and just because you have a little voice in the back of your head telling you that we (California) need to “Display our feathers like a peacock” by buying a high speed train doesn’t mean that I have to listen to that voice as well. You can also point out that “Showing off” is not a basis for good government.
At this point, they will say “its not about showing off, it’s about what works.” and you can again point out that since they have no metrics, why not consider your idea instead? Keep driving the metrics argument, until they either give up or tell you that you’re being unreasonable.
At which point you say “I’m not being unreasonable, I’m being logical. Shouldn’t our government make its decisions based on logic?”
At least, that’s what I would do.
Every transportation plan is a long-range plan. And as for the difference between technical solutions and behavioral solutions? Technical solutions advance the status quo, while behavioral solutions attempt to change the status quo. But given that the status quo is a highly regulated and highly planned skewed market which is already a radical modification of previous behavior, why is the status quo preferable to another alternative? Shouldn’t the real dichotomy be between planning and not planning? (And I don’t understand how the government building and regulating anything can count as “not planning,” though the Antiplanner seems to think that furthering the status quo means not planning. Applying this logic to other problems – the drug war, US military presence overseas, etc. – would mean that the laissez-faire solution to all these problems is just to keep chuggin’ along as we have been, which somehow to me doesn’t seem to cut it.)
Your dichotomy between long range and short term plans is a false one. All infrastructure and all plans, be they a continuation of the status quo or something a bit difference, are going to effect the economy and consumers’ decisions for years to come (unless they’re built out of a special auto-degrading material). Isn’t that precisely the point of Mises’ and Hayek’s economic calculation problem, that no form of planning can ever hope to approach the efficiency of the market? Why not just take the strict antiplanning position and oppose all government interference (regardless of the level of government involved) in land use and transportation policy? Or does the Antiplanner have so little faith in markets that he believes that only pseudo-private initiatives in transportation will actually work?
Although decades of evidence indicate that technical solutions are far more effective than behavioral solutions, at least a third of the plans rely heavily on behavioral solutions and up to half rely at least somewhat on such solutions.
A third of plans rely on behavioral solutions…? From what I understand, almost every community in the US has zoning and land use regulations. But I guess if you’re blind to every regulations other than those which mandate high density, you could come up with that number.
“Can you help me out? I am trying to convince a group of students that it’s a silly idea to spend $40 billion on a high speed rail line from San Francisco to LA.”
Access Magazine has the answers! This edition (free) has a pro- and con- take on exactly this problem.
http://www.uctc.net/access/access04lite.pdf
My conclusion was that it was bad idea – I found the con- argument much more convincing, which was the opposite opinion with which I started. :o)
Saying that the rail project ought to be built with private money or not at all isn’t a very compelling argument considering there are no transportation projects that I know of (rail or road) that are built without either government funding, or government subsidies in the form of tax-free bonds or whatever. The crowding out effect will ensure that any industry that the government sticks its hands in will forever be dominated by the government. You see it in healthcare, you see it in transportation, you see it in security, you see it in education, you see it in some sectors of the finance industry (especially the mortgage market).
Well for around $40 billion that sounds like a 1000 mile HSR system. Though if you are going to complain about HSR then you might as well press for the closure of the freeways in California.
Just help them convince themselves. Get them to start talking about how many passengers it will carry. Not pie in the sky stuff but from previous studies done by USDOT, Cali DOT and such. Get them to compare that to other options. For example, what it California just gave away $4 billion in electric cars instead of spending $40 billion on the so-called high speed train? The other key is getting them to compare it to other govt. spending priorities. For example, I like to ask people in Denver if they’re rather spend $6+ billion dollars on a few choo-choo trains or if it would be better spent on schools.
Francis,
That was exactly the article I was thinking of. You beat me to the punch.
I made a mistake. Actually, the article I was thinking of was here (same author):
http://www.uctc.net/access/access11lite.pdf
This piece addresses the social cost issue, which is the standard fallback argument for HSR advocates.
Well just look at Amtrak’s funding percapita for the whole USA, it’s less than 2 cents a day.
If you go to McDonald’s only once a year and purchase a Big Mac, a fry & a drink. You have already spent more money then what Amtrak gets from you as a tax payer!
“If you go to McDonald’s only once a year and purchase a Big Mac, a fry & a drink, you have already spent more money then what Amtrak gets from you as a taxpayer!”
I derive much more utility from McDonald’s.
I go to McDonald’s too, though MJ you’re a few fries short of a happy meal.
For HSR one good location would be right down the middle of I-5.
prk166, “what it California just gave away $4 billion in electric cars instead of spending $40 billion on the so-called high speed train?”
Then they’d probably have to spend $40 billion on new power stations. Although if they were really smart they’d bulkbuy Humdinger’s Windbelts and mount them on the interstate median barriers to capture the energy in the air pushed aside by the intercity traffic.
HSR costs are about the same as freeway costs, though people move 3 time faster.