The Reason Foundation has just published its latest report in its series on congestion. The new report compares the performance of the state highway systems.
Flickr photo by VirtualEm.
According to this interactive Google-type map, my home state of Oregon actually has one of the best highway systems in the nation. And it’s true that, if you avoid the Portland area, you won’t find much congestion, the roads are generally in very good condition, and (unlike California’s twisty mountain and coastal roads) they get you where you want to go in a reasonable amount of time.
Portland, however, is a different story, one that focuses on regional planners’ refusal to do anything that would relieve congestion or even fix bridges that are falling down.
While the stories vary from city to city and state to state, the hard reality is that the nation’s urban highways are not performing very well. Congestion is far worse than it was just two decades ago, and few cities are doing much to fix it.
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The short answer is: inflation. Back in 1919, Oregon pioneered the gas tax and (even though inflation was a big issue in 1919) set it to be on a cents-per-gallon basis instead of (like a sales tax) cents per dollar. As described in the article starting on page 29 of Access #3, when the war-induced inflation of the late 1960s and 1970s hit, highway departments could not build new roads as fast as the growth of driving.
The problem only got worse when high gas prices induced people to buy more fuel-efficient cars. Today, when you fill your car up at the pump, you pay less than half as much (adjusting for inflation) for every mile you drive as your parents paid in 1960.
Also in the late 1960s and 1970s, an anti-auto movement grew up with the environmental movement. A major slogan of this movement was “you can’t build your way out of congestion.” This is a bald-faced lie, as the telecomms industry proved a few years ago. (We now have about a hundred times more telecommunications capacity than we actually use, which is why you no longer have to pay a premium for long-distance calls during business hours.)
But the congestion lie seemed to be proven every time a new road opened: it quickly got filled up. The reality was that inflation had slowed the rate of construction so much that normal quantities of demand exceeded supply even before the supply was in place.
But faith in the slogan rather than the reality led many cities to seek alternative forms of transportation. In 1983, Congress began diverting highway user fees to transit. Today, federal, state, and local governments divert almost $10 billion a year from highway users to mass transit. By an amazing coincidence, that is just about equal to the amount of money (see page 30) spent building rail transit lines each year.
So here we are. How long do we keep building rail lines that cost far more and do far less than roads? When do we realize that heavy use of a new road is a signal that building the road was a good idea? (Can you imagine Apple saying, “We’d better stop making iPods because people buy them as fast as we can make them”?) When do we invest in transportation that people use rather than in pipe dreams?
I like how you prove your congestion assertion by using an example from an industry that’s not germane to transportation, instead of providing numbers or studies. Brilliant.
Another brilliancy is that you’ve “proven” that no Fed money goes to bus transportation and The Market provides a favored alternative to rail. You’re on a roll, Randal.
DS
We can build our way out of congestion if we build things that reduce congestion instead of things that increase congestion.
Things that increase congestion – cul de sacs and dead ends; gated communities; at grade road and rail crossings; big office buildings and schools; at grade public transit; big vehicles such as buses and trucks; concurrent work schedules; sports stadia; parades; narrow roads with no sidewalks, shoulders or bike lanes; collisions and breakdowns.
Things that reduce congestion – grid networks of through streets; overpasses, underpasses and bridges; one-way streets with synchronized traffic signals; telecommuting; staggered work schedules; smaller vehicles (the Chinese are building millions of battery-powered mopeds); arterial streets with left turn lanes; right turn on red laws; underground (too expensive!)and elevated transit; quick tow truck response to clear traffic obstructions; vehicle communications and navigation systems; economic downturns; lower population density.
Almost all the congestion is on limited access highways and arterial streets in metropolitan areas. (Exceptions are ports, some National Parks, stadia events, for example.) Neighborhood streets and rural limited access highways are seldom congested. My answers for the congestion and mobility problems are automated electrically-powered demand-response vehicles in three speed and range classes:
1. Robocabs or cybercabs – small battery-powered vehicles like automated golf cars pick up passengers at their residences and travel on neighborhood streets. Up to 35 mph (57 km/hr) and 10 mile (16 km)range
2. Personal automated transport- personal monorail vehicles travel on a grid network of elevated guideways at up to 125 mph (200 km/hr) and 60 miles (100 km).
3. Evacuated Tube Transport – space capsules use linear motors and maglev suspension to go worldwide at speeds up to 3000 mph (5000 km/hr) in very straight concrete tubes.
Almost all congestion problems are at peak hours only. The highway and street system is underuntilized at least 80% of the time. More flexible work hours would go along way to solving some of the back ups.
Sometimes you don’t need charts and graphs, figures and statistics to make a point. I have no data supporting my belief the sky is blue but I stand by my assertion. Likewise, Randal’s conclusions concerning the “can’t build our way out of congestion” movement and the shift of money into the 19th century technology of urban rail are well founded and generally accepted by those who don’t seek social engineering solutions.
I believe another problem is the increasing complexity of building roads from start to finish. The dollars expended on planning, public input (usually fictitious), and environmental imacts drive up costs immensely over the levels of previous generations.
In Oregon we also see a too cozy relationship between ODOT and the contractors who actually do the work. Many former ODOT employees work for the contractors since they have the knowledge to navigate the complex rules and regulations they put into place.
Politics plays a role in misallocation of transportation resources even it’s road consruction. The south Medford interchange is a good example of a project that will do little to improve congestion but was forced upon us becaue of political influence. The north interchange was similar.
We are not building nearly the amount of roads we did in the fifties and sixties so it shouldn’t take that much money to build and maintain what we need. The special interest parties like ODOT employees, big contractors, and politically conected landowners work together to keep costs high and pockets lined.
The special interest parties like ODOT employees, big contractors, and politically conected landowners work together to keep costs high and pockets lined
Wow. Some blame being shifted away from planners.
…Randal’s conclusions concerning the “can’t build our way out of congestion†movement are well founded and generally accepted by those who don’t seek social engineering solutions.
BTW, some people ask for evidence when they know silly, demonstrably false claims have no merit.
OTOH, some ideologies want no bothersome evidence to get in the way of their pet policy “solutions”.
IOW: demonstrably false to everyone except those with certain ideologies.
DS
Tad,
What evidence is there that cul de sacs and gated communities cause congestion? I have never seen any congestion in or near neighborhoods with these features.
What evidence is there that cul de sacs and gated communities cause congestion
Come now. Either Randal misleads his readers by pretending not to know lack of ped connectivity, lack of travel choice, and spatial segregation increases vehicle ADT, or Randal can’t speak to the issue due to lack of knowledge.
DS
Speaking of congestion, can somebody explain to me what’s gotten into the heads of traffic engineers? For example, at larger intersections they always want to add full signalization with left turn only on the green arrow. It’s their solution to everything. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that these destroy throughput and create huge amounts of congestion. The worst are the “three way” lights, where only one direction of traffic moves at a time rather than both opposing directions simultaneously. The engineers seem to value something they call “smoothness” rather than traffic throughput. At one time traffic engineers concentrated on improving throughput on roads, now they all seem to want to kill throughput.
Randall, I don’t have the numbers on congestion caused by cul de sacs and gated communities, only personal observations and a knowledge of the principles.
The principles are that if there are barriers to walking and biking so that it takes too long or isn’t safe enough then more people will use cars to transport themselves and their children and they will travel farther on arterial streets with congestion instead of shorter distances on neighborhood streets without congestion. The barriers may be natural, such as bodies of water (San Francisco Peninsula and Seattle, for example) or manmade, such as cul de sacs, gated communities, limited access highways and railroads.
One of the most congested arterial streets in Vancouver, USA, is east Mill Plain Blvd. There are few natural barriers (some steep hillsides) nearby, but there are freeways, a now-defunct airport, and neighborhoods with cul de sacs and gated and walled communities which block through traffic and force it onto Mill Plain Blvd.
Some cities and towns have military bases which are large gated communities. These sometimes cause congestion from off-base workers travelling at rush hours and being delayed at the checkpoints/gates. They also block traffic across the base so traffic has to travel farther to go around it.
After a while people are accustomed to the travel barriers and don’t think of them as causing congestion, but sometimes if the the congestion is bad enough and there is a political will transport planners will try to add a new route or increase capacity. An example is the new Narrows Bridge across Puget Sound at Tacoma, WA.
Speaking of congestion, can somebody explain to me what’s gotten into the heads of traffic engineers? For example, at larger intersections they always want to add full signalization with left turn only on the green arrow. It’s their solution to everything. It should be obvious to anyone with half a brain that these destroy throughput and create huge amounts of congestion.
What’s gotten into their heads is that little bothersome deal called “safety”. It’s the other thing they look at besides “efficiency”.
Some folks demand safety at the expense of efficiency. Buzz kill, I know.
Tad,
Lack of gridded, connected street networks adds congestion to nearby arterials.
DS
Dan,
Who are you trying to fool? I ask for evidence that cul de sacs cause congestion. You reply with references to a report on mobility in China and a report on transit. Neither report mentions cul de sacs.
This is the difference between planners and engineers/economists. Planners will take great leaps of faith based on almost no evidence. Engineers and economists rely on evidence-based data.
On June 29th, 2007, Dan said:
Some folks demand safety at the expense of efficiency.
As Antiplanners are aware, the two are not mutually exclusive. This sort of nonsense may moisten the panties of sophomore geography students, but will make no headway here.
I haven’t been here in a while, but as I recall, this is where “some people here” get dismissed as ideologues by the truly dogmatic. Buzz kill, indeed.
Randal, you tried to play off the culs-de-sac argument by stating that you’ve never seen congestion by these features. I pointed out that the congestion occurs elsewhere due to lack of connectivity. The first paper was about the rise of autocentric transportation (deemphasizing ped connectivity) and the second paper was about mode choice and pointed out the difference between having a choice (eg gridded networks) and not having choice (unconnected networks) and the result on connection.
I’m sorry you are unable to utilize this information, which is basic to your premise.
==========
Davek,
If you follow the logic in comment 8, you’ll see that safety is deemphasized over efficiency. OTOH, if you approach comment 8 as having an incorrect premise (as you have), then you’ll see that comment 8 can’t stand. All I did was take comment 8 at face value, “assuming” the the premise was correct; you can see, of course, how the argument can’t stand. That’s all I did. I hope this clears it up for you.
DS
On July 2nd, 2007, Dan said:
If you follow the logic in comment 8, you’ll see that safety is deemphasized over efficiency.
I see no grounds for this conclusion. I do, however, see you argue that comment 8 can’t stand when approached as having either a correct OR an incorrect premise. You could, perhaps, avoid sloppy thinking like that if you spent less time trying to win arguments while dispensing snark, and more time engaging in thoughtful discourse.
Hope this helps.
word
You’re right, davek, the passage [a]t one time traffic engineers concentrated on improving throughput on roads, now they all seem to want to kill throughput isn’t a passage that would give grounds to a conclusion that you’ll see that safety is deemphasized over efficiency . Sloppy thinking by me, I guess, to assume that given a binary choice, if not ‘goal a’ then ‘goal b’ is true.
Anyway, IME sites promulgating certain ideological policy fixes don’t engage in moistening discourse*, so my aim here is merely to point out the issues with the ideological arguments.
DS
*That is, the vast majority has long ago learned the futility of pointing out why they don’t want the small minority’s policy fixes.
On July 2nd, 2007, Dan said:
…isn’t a passage that would give grounds to a conclusion that you’ll see that safety is deemphasized over efficiency .
Although your predictable, effete sarcasm indicates you don’t believe this, it is probably the most correct thing you’ve posted here.
Sloppy thinking by me, I guess…
Oops. Spoke too soon.
Like it or not, promoting efficiency is perhaps the same thing as promoting safety, since, as I previously mentoned, they may not be mutually exclusive. None of the antiplanners need this pointed out to them, because, as you frequently say, it’s not that hard. Really.
That is, the vast majority has long ago learned the futility of pointing out why they don’t want the small minority’s policy fixes.
You never seem to tire of it. Yet more evidence that you have no real contribution to make, and your aim here is merely to be a gadfly. Very well. I’ll just be on my way again, and leave you the last word, if you want it. Perhaps yet another unimaginative repetition of a metaphor involving a train pulling away, leaving someone waving and shouting from the station…?
Highways got to be where they are today through nothing but pork spending!
ROT: “You can’t build your way out of congestion.”
THWM: This is known the Jevons paradox.
ROT: So here we are. How long do we keep building rail lines that cost far more and do far less than roads? When do we realize that heavy use of a new road is a signal that building the road was a good idea?
THWM: Most of this isn’t new, this is really rebuilding stuff that the government trashed in the first place. People can’t use stuff that was stolen from them!