Land-use and transportation planning is supposed to follow a rational planning process. That process includes defining the problem that needs to be solved, identifying alternative solutions, evaluating the alternatives, developing a final plan based on the best alternative or combination of alternatives, implementing the plan, monitoring the effects to see how well reality matches planning assumptions, and using the results of that monitoring as feedback into future plans.
This 1969 book describes the rational planning process on page 95.
The rational planning model has been around since at least 1969. Yet today, more than 50 years later, hardly any government agency follows this model. Instead, most government plans I’ve reviewed follow what can only be called an irrational planning process.
First, planners identify a solution they want to implement. It might be light rail or high-speed rail, it might be urban densification, or it might be something like complete streets or vision zero.
Second, planners cast around for problems that they think they might be able to persuade people their proposal will solve. These can include childhood obesity, global warming, traffic congestion, or housing affordability.
Third, they use public involvement techniques designed to generate support for their plans. One such technique is the charette, a meeting in which planners strictly control the agenda to make sure that people only consider questions the planners want to answer. At the charettes, planners might ask, “Do you want more congestion or less?” or “Do you want higher housing costs or lower?” Since they assume their proposals will reduce congestion or housing costs, if you answer less congestion or lower housing costs, they will claim that you support their plans.
Another technique is a survey with a limited number of questions. The San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Commission wants to increase taxes to subsidize transit, so it is asking residents to fill out a survey. The survey never asks if people want to pay more taxes; instead the higher tax is a given. Instead, it asks how people want to spend the money. There are five possible answers: transit, transit, bike lanes, transit, and transit.
In order to comply with federal and state laws, step four is to write an environmental impact statement. Planners have a strong incentive to be honest in these statements because they know that nobody reads them anyway. For example,
- The San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Plan Bay Area was supposed to reduce housing costs. Planners were chagrinned to find that their models predicted it would increase housing costs, but officials approved it anyway.
- Maryland’s Purple light-rail line was supposed to relieve congestion, but a technical appendix to the environmental impact statement found it would greatly increase congestion. The introduction to the impact statement nevertheless said the project was necessary due to congestion.
- The environmental impact statement for the Baltimore-Washington maglev found that it would produce far more greenhouse gases than the alternatives, yet when the statement was released proponents still argued the project was necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Hardly anyone noticed any of these conflicts because hardly anyone read the detailed analyses. If planners had dishonestly claimed that their plans reduced congestion or emissions when they didn’t, the plans could easily be delayed by court challenges. But environmental statements admit that the plans will harm the environment will withstand court changes due to the Chevron deference rule.
The next step is to implement the plans and, at the same time, start planning for the next project: the next light-rail line, the next round of densification, or the next set of road diets. Planners don’t bother monitoring the results of their plans because they know that, if the results aren’t what they expected, it’s only because they haven’t done enough. In their minds, more rail lines, more densification, or more barriers to auto travel will eventually solve the problems that were often created by misguided plans in the first place.
Planners get away with an irrational planning process because, no matter how bad their plans are, someone benefits from them, including rail contractors, housing developers, the affordable-housing industrial complex, and anti-auto environmental groups. Those beneficiaries work hard to make sure plans stay in place and that the same mistakes that they benefit from are repeated in future plans. Meanwhile, the costs of those mistakes are spread out among a lot of people who have little incentive to fight the plans, or (in the case of housing) are mainly imposed on people who don’t yet live in the region and so have no say on the plans.
The word is “charette” and you misspelled it twice. Nevertheless, the article is right on.
I would add that a key reason that the irrational process is successful is that so many so-called professionals who know better, look the other way and there are no consequences to doing so.
Okay. For record at 480 kilometers per hour, maglev consumes 0.4 megajoules per passenger mile compared to 4 megajoules per passenger mile of oil fuel for a 8.5-kilometers-per-liter (20 miles-per-gallon) automobile. And Maryland gets almost all its electricity from Nuclear which is Emissionless or natural gas and very little coal. With exception of New York, Maryland has one cleaner electric grids on East Coast.
Running an Electrically powered maglev is not huge deal
Henry Porter, Sorry for the misspellings which I blame on the spell corrector (and my failure to copy edit).
LazyReader, Hypothetical analyses like that are what makes you lazy. The environmental impact statement for the maglev was absolutely clear that it was going to use more energy and emit more greenhouse gases than Amtrak and even intercity buses.
Just because…. I read SCMaglev DC report DEIS
“re, the SCMAGLEV Project will likely result in an overall reduction in
regional mobile source emissions, as a result of significant overall reduction of vehicle
miles travelled over the entire regional affected environment while the corridor wide
emissions within the selected mesoscale network will slightly increase around station
areas. The mesoscale subarea emissions increase particularly around new stations
would be expected to result in a benefit of reducing overall regional emissions
substantially as more commuters shift from personal vehicle within the region to
SCMAGLEV.
The potential effects of GHG emissions are by nature global and cumulative impacts, as
individual sources of GHG emissions are not large enough to have appreciable effects
on climate change. The reduction of overall regional VMT from the SCMAGLEV
Project, as compared to the No Build Alternative, will likely result in GHG emission
reductions on a regional scale.
The SCMAGLEV system will operate entirely on electricity, with the exception of certain
maintenance vehicles. As a result, the SCMAGLEV train will not increase greenhouse
gas emissions. However, as described in Section 4.19 Energy, the SCMAGLEV system
will result in an increase in power consumption in the region. Therefore, an increase in
greenhouse gas emissions from powerplants would likely occur.”
Yes an slight increase in POWERPLANT emissions may occur. Slightly, but unlikely. In old days of rail transportation, SYstems Built their own power plants often out of efficiency as they required no tack on power from the grid. Also because said systems were DC powered, thus no need of inverters or transformers at facility; this eliminated 30% parasitic power losses of grid electricity.
Also I said at 480 km/h or 300 mph Maglev uses 0.4 Megajoules (0.11 kilowatt-hours) per passenger mile. At a reduced speed of 322 km/h (200 mph) energy consumption declines further by as much 30% because the drag equation states as Drag or D is equal to the drag coefficient Cd times the density r times half of the velocity V squared times the reference area or surface in a fluid. translation, Double the speed you quadruple drag and octuple power consumption. A modest speed decrease on a heavily aerodynamic body reduces energy consumption 75%… But even at 150 mph is still means DC to Baltimore transit times of 16 minutes.
So LazyReader didn’t you just prove up the point of The Irrational Planning Process article?
You didn’t start off with a problem to be solved. Instead you started off with the outcome (expensive maglev for Baltimore-DC commuters) and then cast around for “problems” that you think you might be able to persuade people your proposal will solve – just as stated in the article. You make (bogus) arguments akin to “saving the planet” from green house gases or “conserving resources” in order to promote your rail religion.
Like other irrational planners, you tout eliminating green house gas as some justification. At best you might have lowered some locally but you’re creating more elsewhere. It’s not even clear there is any decrease because picking up the riders at one end and delivering them to the other end is neither the beginning nor end of their commute and who knows what is added to their route to get to and from the transit station.