Before the pandemic, there was a mindset among urban planners that driving was bad and the ultimate goal of all of their policies was to reduce vehicle-miles traveled (VMT). That’s why they wanted to build obsolete urban transit systems like light rail and streetcars instead of freeways. That’s why they wanted more people to live in high-density housing projects instead of low-density suburbs. That’s why they wanted to reduce the amount of parking available to residents, shoppers, and others.
Photograph by B137.
So far, the pandemic has not awakened them to the folly of this mindset. Driving has fully recovered and in much of the country people are driving more miles than ever, while transit is little more than half what it was. Instead of acknowledging these changes, cities and regions are writing plans that never mention the pandemic and relying on pre-pandemic data to justify their policies.
But even without the pandemic, the anti-VMT crusade is a bad one. Instead of complaining about VMT, public officials should be celebrating it as a sign of a wealthier, more egalitarian society. Instead of justifying insane subsidies to transit in the name of helping the 5 percent of low-income people who use it, public officials should be finding ways to give that 5 percent access to the same transportation the rest of us use.
There is clear research showing that faster travel speeds means higher per capita incomes because such speeds give people access to more jobs and employers access to a larger pool of workers, which means more people can do the job that fits them the best. Within any urban area, automobiles are faster than the most rapid rapid transit; only in really dense inner cities such as Manhattan is rapid transit faster than driving, and only a handful of cities have that transit in any case.
Other research — some of which I cite here — has shown that giving poor people access to a car is one of the best ways to help them out of poverty (as opposed to merely helping them survive poverty, which is what most welfare programs do). The car gives them access to more jobs, better and lower-cost housing, and low-cost consumer goods.
Then, of course, there is the indisputable fact that urban transit uses more energy and emits more pollution per passenger-mile than the average car. In 2019, this was true in all but a handful of cities, but in 2021 transit used more energy than cars, per passenger-mile, in every urban area in the country, including New York. New York transit emitted a little bit less greenhouse gases per passenger-mile than driving mainly because New York gets so much of its electricity from nuclear power plants, but everywhere else transit was an environmental disaster.
Even if it was a good idea, no urban area anywhere has found policies, short of war or natural disaster, that can significantly reduce VMT. Yet planners keep spouting the same rhetoric while ignoring the fact that good intentions are meaningless, if not outright harmful, if they don’t produce actual results.
The lesson we need to stress to public officials is that it makes a lot more sense to make better automobiles and highways than it does to try to reduce driving. Since 1970, automobiles have become 50 percent more fuel efficient, 70 percent less likely to be involved in a fatal accident, and 95 percent less polluting of toxic chemicals. If anything, efforts to reduce driving have made these problems worse by forcing people to drive in more congested traffic where cars use more energy and produce more pollution.
I strongly suspect there is some class warfare going on here. Urban planners are by definition college educated and middle class. They probably drive cars, but the cars they drive are likely to be electrics, hybrids, or other high fuel-economy vehicles. The vehicles driven by the working class are more likely pickups, vans, and other large vehicles, partly because they need such vehicles for their work, but the planners see them as the deplorable enemy. So while planners pay lip service to low-income people and the working class, they want to design a society that has no room for them.
Those who truly care about helping low-income people and building healthy, wealthy urban areas need to take a stand in favor of more automobile ownership, more miles of driving, and better roads for those automobiles to drive on.
Just one more lane, just one more…..
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/De2x3UhX4AANTOT.jpg
Your picture shows the only Provincial road going through the rapidly growing city of Toronto. It is the only place in the whole city where capacity has been added. Of course it is busy. Despite 5 decades of war against the personal vehicle, transit share of trips continues to decline. Outrageous expenditures on streetcars have not relieved congestion but have hit taxpayers hard. The pollution and carbon emissions created by the decade long construction of the Eglinton streetcar (still not 1 passenger served) will never be offset in its projected lifetime, despite having a useful underground portion. The city of Toronto is building tranport for the 1950s. They should be providing the services the citizens use.
LazyReader,
That picture is fake, of course. I’ve always advocated congestion pricing before building new lanes.
The Antiplanner,
I’ve always disagreed with congestion pricing. Is there data which shows one approach is better than the other?
More lanes has a similar effective outcome to congestion pricing (in theory), but it increases in overall capacity and throughput in all conditions. Congestion pricing only increases the throughput relative to what it would have been without the pricing in heavily congested conditions. It also does more to shift traffic from local roads onto highways which we know has many positive effects.
WordPress_ anonymous,
Highways are unique in that their throughput declines when their use increases beyond a certain point. A lane that can move 2,000 vehicles per hour at 50 mph may only be able to move 1,000 vehicles per hour at 25 mph. Since traffic slows when more people enter the lane, throughput also declines, which is an inefficient utilization of the resource. Theoretically, string freeway ramp meters could fix the problem but at the cost of moving the congestion somewhere else. Congestion price fixes the problem in an optimal manner: people for whom travel at a particular time on a particular route isn’t that important will shift to another time, thus making more capacity available for everyone else. As I like to say, congestion pricing doesn’t price people off the road, it prices them onto the road.
I love the rationality.
Build additional highway capacity at significant public expense. To which drivers complain of traffic, which they themselves are constituents of.
So called “Free market” individuals advocate government charge people additional fees for what they already paid for.
Traffic concerns go largely ignored.
Fees serve a purpose when discernible benefits are achieved. National parks have fees, despite being tax payer funded because revenue diverts to remote, lesser used parks. Also fees defer neglect to park infrastructure and natural environment like eliminating invasive species or clearing flammable vegetation, fixing trails, plumbing/electrical in campgrounds.
I’ve said before the real solution to traffic is simple. DO NOTHING… As traffic worsens…is inconsequential. Because another lane has to thin somewhere and usually ends. Congestion charges may help Roads that are extensive money lovers, but if they’re extensive money losers…lovers…. why were they built in the first place.
By doing nothing… would Instigate more transit use…. or open private transit providers, more carpooling.
Your picture shows the only Provincial road going through the rapidly growing city of Toronto. It is the only place in the whole city where capacity has been added. Of course it is busy. Despite 5 decades of war against the personal vehicle, transit share of trips continues to decline. Outrageous expenditures on streetcars have not relieved congestion but have hit taxpayers hard. The pollution and carbon emissions created by the decade long construction of the Eglinton streetcar (still not 1 passenger served) will never be offset in its projected lifetime, despite having a useful underground portion. The city of Toronto is building tranport for the 1950s. They should be providing the services the citizens use.