Transportation planning today suffers from several common fallacies, including the myth of the great streetcar conspiracy and the notion that we should spend billions of dollars on obsolete forms of transportation to give people “choices.” But the most troublesome myth is the notion of induced-demand, that is, that new roads will automatically become fully congested so there is no point in building any. That myth most recently came up in a recent op ed piece in the LA Times.
This idea makes no sense at all, yet it is widely believed by public officials and transportation planners. Saying that relieving congestion “induces” driving is like saying that building new maternity wards induces people to have more babies. If it were true that roads automatically become congested, then Interstate 80 would be as congested in Rawlins, Wyoming as it is in Chicago, and Interstate 90 would be as congested in Mitchell, South Dakota as it is in Seattle.
What is true is that the quintupling of traffic congestion American commuters have suffered since 1982 has suppressed some driving. This increase in traffic congestion is partly due to the complicity of transportation agencies and planners who have spent highway dollars on endless studies, traffic calming, and anything else they can other than things that will actually relieve congestion.
“Congestion is our friend,” says Florida planner Dom Nozzi, echoing a popular belief that getting a few people out of their cars is worth any cost. My review of long-range transportation plans for the nation’s 72 largest metropolitan areas revealed that more than half of them included policies aimed at increasing congestion rather than reducing it, and a third of them focused almost exclusively of such policies
Even without counting the roughly $200 billion annual cost in wasted time and fuel that congestion imposes on highway users, efforts to suppress travel by increasing congestion are economically harmful. If a new road or some other form of congestion relief leads to more travel, that travel will in turn generate economic benefits, whether that travel is a commuter going to a higher-paying job, a shopper going to a lower-cost retailer, or a recreationist going on a more interesting vacation.
Anything that makes transportation less expensive, in either time or money, generates more economic activity. That doesn’t necessarily mean more congestion, but it does mean more worker productivity, more sales, and ultimately more tax revenue. Anyone who would deliberately limit a city’s economic productivity by promoting congestion is no friend to that city.
Let’s say that relieving congestion does generate more driving: what is wrong with that? Only a government planner would say there is something wrong with a product where, the more you make, the more you sell.
Don’t build new roads, say opponents of congestion relief, because people will use them. Instead, build new light-rail or other transit lines, even though the average light-rail train in this country operates just one-seventh full and the average transit bus is less than one-sixth full.
Urban planners would probably tell Ford to stop making Mustangs and make Edsels instead; or tell Apple to stop making iPhones and make crank-handle telephones instead.
By the way, the next time you feel guilty driving alone in your six-passenger SUV, rest assured that at least your vehicle has a higher occupancy rate than the average transit bus or railcar. Data published by the federal government show that transit buses use more energy, per passenger mile, than the average SUV and light rail uses more energy per passenger mile than the average car.
Don’t take more than viagra sans prescription http://mouthsofthesouth.com/viagra-2168 one tablet per day within 24 hours. Finally, study of data often http://mouthsofthesouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/MOTS-07.9.16-Parker.pdf cialis prices leads to a desire for more information. Acai can help to treat GERD (acid levitra cheapest reflux disease). However, men who find that they cannot get through regular tasks – filing a report, cooking meals, driving a car and learning the fundamentals of how to cialis order avail such services and how these counselors can help you with identifying the correct drug. Robert Cervero is an urban planning professor at the University of California (Berkeley) who strongly supports transit, pedestrian-friendly design, and other programs designed to reduce auto driving. Yet even he thinks that the induced-demand myth is “wrong-headed.”
“Many induced-demand studies have suffered from methodological problems,” says Cervero. They fail to note that new urban highways are usually completed after the roads are already needed, so of course they appear nearly full when they open. The resulting congestion is “more a product of supply chasing demand than demand chasing supply,” says Cervero.
The real cause of traffic congestion, Cervero points out, is that roads are poorly priced. We pay for them mostly out of gasoline taxes, which means we pay the same tax whether we drive on the roads at rush hour or 2 am.
Private businesses that deal with regular fluctuations in demand, such as airlines and hotels, keep their seats or rooms full by charging more during busy periods and less during low periods. Highways can do that today using electronic tolling, and those that have done so, both here and elsewhere in the world, have seen enormous benefits.
More than half the vehicles on the road during rush hour are not commuters. By shifting some of those vehicles to less-congested times of the day, variable tolling can dramatically reduce congestion.
Congestion pricing of roads can actually increase highway capacities. At normal freeway speeds, a single freeway lane can move more than 2,000 cars an hour, but in stop-and-go traffic, capacity can fall to just 1,000 cars an hour. By ensuring that actual use never exceeds 2,000 cars an hour, variable tolling effectively doubles road capacities during rush hour.
Still, commuters may resist tolls if they think it is just one more tax for the government to fritter away. Currently, more than 30 percent of federal gas taxes and an average of 23 percent of state gas taxes are diverted to non-highway programs, including mass transit. Instead of providing efficient transportation, this windfall of money has led transit agencies to invest in high-cost transit systems such as light rail and streetcars.
In 1984, the state of Virginia built the 14-mile Dulles Toll Road connecting Washington DC with Dulles Airport, and commuters happily used this road for 25 years. Then the state gave the road to the Washington Airport Authority, which is doubling tolls to help pay for a rail line to the airport that even the DC transit agency doesn’t want. Washington MetroRail, which can’t afford to maintain the trains it has, wanted bus-rapid transit to Dulles Airport instead.
Auto commuters should support congestion tolling as a way of saving time, fuel, and money. But they should vigilantly ensure that the fees they pay go to the roads they use and not to pork-barrel projects that aren’t really needed.
Another cost-effective way to relieve congestion is traffic-signal coordination. Such coordination is inexpensive and can save travelers $50 to $100 worth of fuel and time for every dollar of investment. Yet the Federal Highway Administration says that only one out of four traffic signals are properly coordinated with other signals, partly because too many cities are focusing on building rail transit and making other expensive transit improvements rather than doing things that will really help people.
Automobiles are one of the most economical and convenient forms of transportation ever devised. They are also increasingly safe, clean, and fuel efficient. While we should end subsidies to driving and other forms of transportation, we should also encourage highway officials to cost-effectively reduce congestion in every way they can.
“THWM: I agreed with you and you’re calling me an idiot?”
No I called you an “Idiot” because your answer suggested that your approval is needed before an individual is allowed to choose his method of transportation, and it must be based upon his perceived roll in the economy, and value to the social structure of the area.
You will have to excuse me, but I live in Portland, Oregon, and that is the attitude of those who plan where, and how we should live based upon income, and our perceived social value to the electorate, and therefore the community.
Our neighborhood schools are no longer a place for the neighborhood to gather around shared social values, and in fact that have been fractured by the school district to purposely divided shared social values in favor of neighborhood associations organized by City Hall, to administer their “planned” agenda upon the population.
Portland, Oregon is a City that manages its population from the Top-Down with directives, and mandates, meant to manage, and control the residents, exclusive of the goals and aspirations of the individual. Opportunity is purposely restricted to force the population to embrace “approved” economic opportunity such as “green”, and business with a “limited environmental impact” to the surrounding area.
As a previous resident of the Portland area, I can confirm Tombdragon’s description of the Portland fiefdom. The “leaders” think the entire Portland metro area is just a sandbox for their social engineering lunacies.
Portland, Oregon is a City that manages its population from the Top-Down with directives, and mandates, meant to manage, and control the residents, exclusive of the goals and aspirations of the individual.
Surely I’ve relayed my experience going to a joint conf in PDX when I practiced in WA. To recap: I was surprised at one panel discussion that attempted to compare-contrast the processes of OR, a top-down model, and WA, a bottom-up model within a defined framework. It was instructive to see the OR planners squirm whilst trying to answer the audience questions – an audience of vast majority graduate education and higher, able to formulate cogent questions and not get distracted by nonsense like Agenda 21 and other clownish conspiracy nonsense. Real questions. Real answers.
At any rate, I agree with the first part of the italicized and disagree with the last part. The objective is not to control the residents exclusive of goals and aspirations. That is simply fear-based talking points absorbed by like-minded individuals. The objective is to create efficient land uses with facilities and spaces that afford a high quality of life in order to try and be sustainable. Clowninsh accusations like Agenda 21 or socialist plannin’ has no part in this issue.
The larger question that should properly arise from such a scenario of outcomes of the top-down vs bottom-up is whether sustainable development with an increasing population allocating more and more NPP from the planet is indeed ‘sustainable’ or whether a re-think is needed wrt population growth and consumption. Because surely the top-down model doesn’t deliver some goals. And the bottom-up model doesn’t deliver different goals.
That is the question and the issue framed at scale, trying to address several intractable problems: are these models sustainable? They are the best we have, and this ecologist says no. Time to make plans for your children to be able to cope.
DS
You know, Frank is right. Dan is a religious zealot. He won’t see reason, won’t see past his capitalism-hating bigotry long enough to see that his planning pseudoscience has created nothing but headaches wherever it’s implemented, particularly as in Portland.
Metrosucks you have your own bias as well.
Where should I begin?
So much misinformation here.
I’ll start simple.
Streetcars are not obsolete. Streetcar suburbs were built at the turn of the 20th Century up to WW II. These neighborhoods are streetcar oriented, not automobile oriented, therefore, the streetcar is not an obsolete form of transportation simply because these streetcar neighborhoods are no obsolete. They were designed with use of the streetcar and these neighborhoods are viable today. The transformation of these neighborhoods to auto domination is like fitting a square peg in a round hole.
Don’t you love it watching people drive around these neighborhoods after work looking for a place to park their car overnight? This is especially funny to watch in the northeast when it snows out and people leave chairs, barrels, cones to mark out their spot.
You forgot about the millions of square feet needed to not only park your car (you need about 200 square feet, larger than some people’s cubicle at work, to park your car). You forgot about the real estate needed for roads on which to drive cars. Take away 20 percent of your real estate for roads.
And please, the last paragraph had me rolling. Hilarious stuff “the most economical and convenient forms of transportation ever devised.”
Did you add in the cost of extra reals estate in which you need to park your car? 200 square feet per car, and don’t forget to add in 20 percent more in real estate needed for roads. Thats millions maybe billions considering the fact that there is about 60,000 miles of interstate, and 4 million miles of roads in the USA.
Oh,
my other comment is that you cannot continue to build your way out of congestion by building new roads simply based on the fact that you will eventually run out of real estate in which to place your roads.
Sure, you can do a few things such as stack your roads on top of one another, or dig tunnels and put your roads underground, but if you do, you won’t be bragging much about the auto being “the most economical and convenient…”. Remember Boston’s Big Dig cost about 15 billion.
Therefore,
The travelling public needs choices,
Cars, yes, but also buses, streetcars, passenger trains, bicycle paths, sidewalks.
And we need to build infrastructure and design neighborhoods that support these choices.
GO PORTLAND!
I am reminded of the Neanderthals, who were on the earth about 500,000 years. They did one thing, and they did it well, they survived by hunting big game, but when the big game, like the Whooley Mammoth became extinct, so did the Neanderthal.
Streetcarsuburb, go away, stop shilling for streetcar manufacturers. You’re just embarrassing yourself with your lies. I really like this one:
The travelling public needs choices,
Cars, yes, but also buses, streetcars, passenger trains, bicycle paths, sidewalks.
So let’s just go and spend trillions of taxpayer (mostly, automobile drivers’) money and build all this because You Said So. Yeah, right.
Metrosucks,
well thought out response “go away..shill…blah di blah…”
Do you want fries with your wooley mammoth?
Metrosucks,
I’m not embarrassed because I don’t lie.
You on the other hand, should be embarrassed by your inability to reason.
OK Genius,
You have 100 acres, and you want to build 100 homes, each on 1 acre of land.
How do you create a subdivision with roads for your homeowners to go to and from their homes?
You need at least 20 percent of the land to set aside for streets; therefore, you can only build 80 one acre homes (provided that there are no constraints such as wetland and steep slopes).
Metrosucks, you just flunked basic math.
Get yourself a good public school education.
Dan – says “The objective is to create efficient land uses with facilities and spaces that afford a high quality of life in order to try and be sustainable.” But it fails miserably!
The investment made during good times is tested during bad economic times – like now – and our economic “Quality of life” has been miserable during the recession – and of all the counties in Oregon – Multnomah with the most Light Rail, and compels its residents to recycle – including food scraps now – has not added jobs like Clackamas & Washington County – in fact Multnomah County has lost close to 40,000 jobs since 2000.
We spend Billions of Dollars on Light Rail and Trolley – yet business leaves because installing Light Rail & Trolley, Urban Renewal, Transit Oriented Development, and Traffic Calming does not contribute the individuals need of finding and exploiting individual opportunity, in fact it is so financially burdensome that he must leave to free himself from the burdens of “sustainability” to grow.
If your are retired, or earn 2-3 times the median income – Portland is less of a burden because you have earned enough for the establishment to not be able to compel your behavior to the point where it impact your ability to earn, because you have the freedom to move outside the influence of these barriers.
Streetcarsuburb – you are funny – businesses are failing, and moving along the new, yet unfinished trolley route faster than it can be built on Portland’s East Side – it is guaranteed to be a “Train to nowhere” for quite sometime. “Go by Streetcar” sounds as stupid as it looks. “Go by Car” takes me to places faster, so I get my business done, so I can “move on” giving me the ability to move my resources more efficiently, and support more people, giving them more resources to do more too. Trolley’s are a novelty, and if they would be used by more than 10% of the commuting public it would be fine, but alas – here the amount of commuters they move is inconsequential to our diminishing economic base.
But it fails miserably!
The topic is more than just ‘train’. Quality of life is measured in more than just ‘train’.
Thanks!
DS
Tombdragon,
you said that “We spend Billions of Dollars on Light Rail and Trolley – yet business leaves because installing Light Rail & Trolley, Urban Renewal, Transit Oriented Development, and Traffic Calming does not contribute the individuals need of finding and exploiting individual opportunity, in fact it is so financially burdensome that he must leave to free himself from the burdens of “sustainability†to grow.”
You speak utter nonsense.
For that matter, the automobile does not “contribute the individuals need of finding and exploiting individual opportunity” (whatever the heck that means.)
Cars are very convenient, Americans are in love with the automobile because of the convenience and freedom that our cars give us. They are almost like one of our rooms, maybe our living rooms on wheels. But, at what price?
Cars are also a curse. They can be like a rolling coffin when stuck in a daily grind of congestion. We can almost hear our arteries hardening as we inch our way forward. Instead of using that time productively, or exercising our bodies, we are imprisoned.
Sorry to use a worn out word, but, there is a synergistic relationship between the economic well being and transportation.
Pollution from cars is horrible, even American cars, which pollute a lot less than in other countries, create too much smog. Asthma is rampant in big cities.
Cars require neighborhoods and development in which people are isolated. What happends to young people, older people, and poor people who have no access to cars and no alternatives? They are isolated and cannot get to jobs, appointments, classes etc.
Traffic congestion in America’s large cities is ridiculous.
You expect streetcars to bring an economic boom? That’s not the way it works.
Right now, there are many people predicting the demise of the commercial highway “auto oriented” plaza because of the increase in commercial activity over the internet. In fact, many commercial strips are barren in this economy. However, I still believe that the commercial strip is not dead. The big box still lives, but many smaller specialized stores with items like books, software, and electronic gadgets are in competition with the internet.
By the way, there is no such thing anymore as “urban renewal”. That went obsolete way back somewhere in the 1970’s. Wake up, this is the 21st Century.
Traffic calming has nothing to do with economic development and everything to with traffic safety. So I don’t even understand why you even mention it?
It seems you latch onto buzz words that are “bad” like sustainablity and Transit Oriented Development and speak against it but you don’t really understand these things.
By the way,
I grew up in a transit oriented neihborhood, as did millions of Americans way back when, as millions of Americans do today.
That “neighborhood” not “neihborhood”.
The Anti-planner wrote;
“My review of long-range transportation plans for the nation’s 72 largest metropolitan areas revealed that more than half of them included policies aimed at increasing congestion rather than reducing it, and a third of them focused almost exclusively of such policies”
This is false.
The federal government requires metropolitan planning organizations to have in place “congestion management systems” to monitor or eliminate congestion. The MPO must develop performance measures and monitor, manage/and or reduce not just traffic congestion, but also congestion on other systems such as mass transit. So basically, it’s against the law to deliberately include policies that increase congestion.
The anti-planner is just making stuff up.
Plus, any one attempting to read 72 of these monstrosities, “Long Range Plans” would have likely been ready to enter the loony bin. But that’s a whole other issue.
Streetcarsuburb, you are a liar and probably a sockpuppet. Please go away and don’t come back.
Metrosucks, (or shall I call you just “sucks” for short?)
You need an education stat.
I am here to provide you with one.
You and the rest of the anti-government, right wing nut-jobs have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to planning. Many of you are weak minded, and therefore succeptable to the propaganda eminating from the right wing scream machine led 24/7 by Fox and people like Limbaugh. You need someone to school you regarding the discipline of planning as practiced in the USA since at least the turn of the 20th Century.
It’s fairly sad and pathetic for you to tell me to go away, which means you only want to hear a one sided screed, much like the snarling Dick Cheney in his undesclosed location surrounded only by TV’s that pipe in Fox propaganda 24/7.
As they once said in the movie “Animal House”, “…fat, lazy, and stupid is no way to go through life son.”
By the way, Mr. Sucks,
There are no lies in what I wrote,
Federal statute (ISTEA, TEA-21, SAFETEA-LU, and subsequent CFR’s), requires that MPO’s with population over 200,000 (and most likely the 72 largest MPO’s in the USA qualify) must create congestion management systems to manage and DECREASE congestion. Therefore, the anti-planner’s assertion, that planners actually include policies that increase congestion IS patently FALSE, it is against the law.
The federal government’s monitoring and certification of the MPO’s would publically show that any policies increasing congestion are against the law, and the federal government would then require the MPO’s to stop such policies, else the feds would hold back highway funds from the state.
The anti-planner needs to come up with real evidence and proof to back his assertion, otherwise, it is complete nonsense.
Mr. Sucks,
consider yourself schooled on the subject.
Mr. Sucks,
consider yourself schooled on the subject.
You are a liar. Saying “consider yourself schooled on the subject” changes nothing. Government does all kinds of things it says it doesn’t. I’d say Randal knows a little better about what he claims than you do.
Note: if I ever met you, I’d punch you in the face.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” — WB Yeats
DS
Yeats would have also added, if he lived today:
“And the planner called Dan is a liar”
Dear Mr. Sucks,
You haven’t actually, nor anyone else thus far, submitted anything to counter what I wrote regarding the un-verified assertion that MPO’s have policy that actually encourages congestion.
Thus far this is a right wing fairy tale.
I have sourced the statute in which I stated that the federal government acts as a watch dog to ensure that MPO’s are conforming to the law in which they must manage congestion, reduce congestion, and develop performance measures in which to measure it and monitor it.
All you can do is say that I’m a liar, yet you provide nothing to back that assertion.
It seems you called someone else a liar too, this Dan planner guy.
So that it seems to me all you can do is repeat “liar…liar..liar…” instead of actually having an intelligent discourse reagarding the issues of transit, auto traffic, and planning in general.
You are like a parrot, repeating; “liar, liar, liar”.
I think thus far I can conclude that you are either a parrot, repeating right wing propaganda, or actually a human with a parrot-like bird brain, unable to reason for yourself.
By the way, if you attempted to punch me in the face, I would do one of two things, if you have a lot of money, I’d press charges and sue you for asault.
If you are the bird brain that I think you are, I’d likely kick you in the nuts to defend myself.
Pardonnez mois;
it is “assault”, not “asault”. The actual part of you hitting me in the face is battery, the offer to do violence upon me, “..if I ever met you, I would punch you in the face…” on the part Mr. Sucks is assault.
The anti-planner said that it is a myth that the auto companies conspired to buy up streetcars to dismantle them and replace them with bus lines, with buses manufactured by those very same auto companies.
And so, the antiplanner provides a wikipedia link to prove his point.
So I hit the link, and here is what I found in that piece:
“Only a few US cities have surviving effective rail-based urban transport systems based on tram, metro, or elevated train; notable survivors include New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. There is now general agreement that GM and other companies were indeed actively involved in a largely unpublicized program to purchase many streetcar systems and convert them to buses, which they often supplied. There is also acknowledgment that the Great Depression, the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, labor unrest, market forces, rapidly increasing traffic congestion, taxation policies that favored private vehicle ownership, urban sprawl, and general enthusiasm for the automobile played a major or possibly more significant role.”
Read it closely, because the article that the antiplanner thinks proves his point about the myth, actually confirms that it was not a myth. That people are in agreement that it actually did happen that GM and other auto companies bought up streetcar lines to replace them with buses.
I think the antiplanner ought to read the articles he points to before using them in his diatribes. I really speaks to the credibility of the antiplanner.
Completely left out of this discussion is the impact that new freeways slicing through existing cities have on those cities. The famous adage “All roads lead to Rome, all freeways lead to East Los Angeles” comes to mind. Building new roads to serve the density of development in cities where no alternative to automobile travel is provided has the collateral effect of destroying those very cities.
And yet the Antiplanner does not seem to mention this problem …
Streetcarsuburb, GM through NCL did do what they did, but they took advantage of transport policy that is hostile rail. That is why rail lines are still being lost today.
metrosucks; Note: if I ever met you, I’d punch you in the face.
THWM: If you want to punch some one in the face, then punch that fraud named Randal O’Toole.
You guys complain about government socialism, yet the beloved roads you drive upon depend on government socialism.
Tombdragon: “THWM: I agreed with you and you’re calling me an idiot?â€
No I called you an “Idiot†because your answer suggested that your approval is needed before an individual is allowed to choose his method of transportation, and it must be based upon his perceived roll in the economy, and value to the social structure of the area.
You will have to excuse me, but I live in Portland, Oregon, and that is the attitude of those who plan where, and how we should live based upon income, and our perceived social value to the electorate, and therefore the community.
Our neighborhood schools are no longer a place for the neighborhood to gather around shared social values, and in fact that have been fractured by the school district to purposely divided shared social values in favor of neighborhood associations organized by City Hall, to administer their “planned†agenda upon the population.
Portland, Oregon is a City that manages its population from the Top-Down with directives, and mandates, meant to manage, and control the residents, exclusive of the goals and aspirations of the individual. Opportunity is purposely restricted to force the population to embrace “approved†economic opportunity such as “greenâ€, and business with a “limited environmental impact†to the surrounding area.
THWM: If you want to drive that’s fine, but don’t try to prevent other people from not driving.
metrosucks; Streetcarsuburb, go away, stop shilling for streetcar manufacturers. You’re just embarrassing yourself with your lies. I really like this one:
The travelling public needs choices,
Cars, yes, but also buses, streetcars, passenger trains, bicycle paths, sidewalks.
So let’s just go and spend taxpayer money and (re)build all this because You Said So. Yeah, right.
THWM: Streetcarsuburb isn’t lying, also him & I are not trying to stop you from driving your car. Portland should still have about 200 miles of tram line today.
Metrosucks you can’t go around breaking other peoples windows then complain about having to pay for the replacement costs.
Streetcarsuburb: The anti-planner is just making stuff up.
THWM: Indeed, all you have to do is look at the road in front of you home to realize that 99% of what he writes/says is just bullshit.
Randal O’Toole is a well funded lobbyist for big oil & auto interests.
THWM,
I hear you loud and clear.
I’ve been reading Mr. O’Toole’s publications.
He falsely accuses MPO’s of deliberaltely creating congestion. He says he reviews MPO plans, but ignores Congestion Management, which is designed to improve highway efficiency and therefore reduce congestion through things like signal coordination.
He then advocates signal coordination, as if he discovered it.
MPO investment in transit is proof in his fantasy world that MPO’s create congestion.
Also,
Highway man,
O’Toole in typical right wing ideological lock step calls for utilitarian cost/benefit analyses for transportation plans when prioritizing projects.
He ignores the fact that these transportation bills and Title VI call for equity in ensuring that underserved, minority, and poorer areas are not passed over in regards to the benefits of the bill, and unfairly burdened with the negative impacts of projects, like having elevated ramps and highways through their neighborhoods.
Transportation plans are required to be fiscally constrained, and include projects that efficiently use resources; however, they are also required to be equitable.
And of couse, I’m very skeptical regarding cost estimates, I’d like to see if O’Toole adds in the entire costs in estimating the cost of auto travel, for example, does he take into account the cost of insurance, and medical treatment for the thoousands injured each year in auto crashes? Ho about the cost of parking? Not to mention the human costs of auto travel are pretty high. Do deaths from transit travel come close to the 40,000 or so American deaths per year via auto?
O’Toole him self said roads are there regardless of economic conditions & I agree with there. Though that also shows that the deck is loaded against rail.