The urban mobility discussed here yesterday found that the Washington DC urban area has the fourth-worst congestion in the nation, costing more than $4 billion a year. That congestion will continue to get worse thanks to the efforts of anti-highway groups who appear to have successfully stopped the construction of high-occupancy/toll (HOT) lanes along I-395.
HOT lane opponents convinced Arlington County to oppose the new lanes, arguing that they would increase air pollution. In fact, by relieving congestion, they would reduce air pollution.
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Meanwhile, a new book by Brookings Institution economist Clifford Winston argues that many of these issues could and should be resolved by privatizing transportation facilities. Pointing out “that transportation services and infrastructure in the United States were originally introduced by private firms,” Winston says the case for public ownership is “weak” and that “privatization and deregulation [would] greatly improve Americans’ satisfaction with their transportation systems.”
The Brookings Institution is an amazing place, simultaneously housing smart-growth advocates such as Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes while it also supports skeptics such as Anthony Downs and outright privatizers such as Winston. Like the Antiplanner, Winston thinks the idea of an infrastructure bank is a sham, deficit spending on transportation will do little to stimulate the economy, and that infrastructure should be funded by the private sector, not tax dollars. Too bad Winston isn’t running Arlington County.
Surely Dan, aka Highwayman, thinks that HOT/congestion pricing is a bad idea, unless the money goes to pay for Real Congestion Relief, aka light rail/high speed rail/traffic calming, red-light synchronization, densification/mixed use nirvana, and urban renewal.
I395 is an illustration of congressional meddling. It goes to the Senate parking garage and then ends shortly afterward. Basically it looks like it was designed to serve the Virginia residents that work/serve in Congress. Maryland doesn’t have a highway option to get into DC. So where has all the private sector (private sector that depends on the government) growth been in the past 40 years??? Virginia, of course.
metrosucks,
What’s the issue with red-light synchronization? I’m not very familiar with the practice, but a quick search (on google) has led me to believe that it’s regarded by traffic engineers as a way to calm traffic patterns and reduce congestion and car idling. What’s the dark side to this?
I think it’s very easy to be critical on US transportation infrastructure expenditures. I’ll be interested to read about how building a highway can 1. be void of subsidy or government investment, and 2. be profitable.
For the most part, academics like Winston need to stay in their ivory towers and not bother those of us in the real world. Contrary to his claims, there has been widespread experimentation in privatization of transportation in the English-speaking world: England.
Since the forced privatization by Thatcher et al of urban transit in English cities except for London, patronage has falled by nearly 50%, despite very favorable circumstances such as gasoline prices three times higher than the U.S., much lower incomes, and much higher density cities. Of course, they must have thought transit in London was important, so they de-privatized the London Underground after the operator went bankrupt. Similarly, they never “deregulated” bus service in London, though some efficiencies were obtained through putting service out to bid, in the same vein that U.S. county and city public works departments routinely place projects out to bid for construction.
Similarly, British Rail was chopped up into various railway “operating companies,” destroying what integrated services had been provided. British rail privatization has been an utter, costly failure; it would have been cheaper just to keep British Rail and buy out labor to eliminate the most egregious job inefficiencies.
The record is also crystal clear from Australia and New Zealand, except of course to “free market” ideologues like Cliff Winston. In both his books, A Very Public SolutionTransport for Suburbia, Paul Mees documents the utter and complete failure of privatization of transit in Melbourne and other Australian cities. In Melbourne, privatization has proven to be a financial disaster, as the “deregulated” providers kept coming back for more subsidies. In fact, the State Government was recently thrown out over the poor performance of the privatized rail operator.
In Auckland, New Zealand, a new agency providing oversight and coordination of transit has been established, though they retain contracted operations. In brief, if Winston wants to argue that more contracting should be undertaken, I’ll agree with him–but it’s hardly an original point, made by Wendell Cox many years ago. On the other hand, at least for urban transit, and in the face of the $1 trillion+/- in negative automobile externalities driven by massive government funding and accommodation of the act of driving, full privatization appears only feasible in monopoly situations, e.g., where no competitive market exists.
bbream
red light synchronization is the practice of timing traffic lights so that drivers go from red light to red light. It is entirely different (the exact opposite) of regular green light synchronization. It is the equivalent of driving hell and has nothing to do with congestion relief or idle reduction. Quite the opposite, in fact. In my hometown of Portland, nearly the entire metro area is timed in this fashion, adding significant time delays to commutes and helping to pump more pollutants in the air.
Here’s another example of a much touted privatization rubric failing to live up to its over-hyped expectations:
“Hot Lanes” Not So Hot.
Antiplanner wrote:
“HOT lane opponents convinced Arlington County to oppose the new lanes, arguing that they would increase air pollution. In fact, by relieving congestion, they would reduce air pollution.”
There is no evidence that the use of HOT lanes will reduce air pollution. If the provision of HOT lanes encourages more people to car share then maybe, but if a smaller number of cars than usual uses the HOT lane, and the number of cars stays the same, then by definition more cars will be squashed into the other lanes. Hence more congestion, and more pollution. The opponents didn’t argue that HOT lanes would increase air pollution, but rather that they did not know, and that the provision of HOT lanes should wait until a proper review had been done – and that the effort to exclude HOT lanes on the grounds that reduction in air pollution were obvious was wrong.
“Meanwhile, a new book by Brookings Institution economist Clifford Winston argues that many of these issues could and should be resolved by privatizing transportation facilities”
So, yet again, the economist is the expert, as they are armed to the teeth with the latest fashionable theories. Meanwhile the real experts are useless, hopeless, etc. I would ask Mr. Winston this – does he rent out a toothbrush? Given that he uses it every day, I wonder if he doesn’t own it outright? If so, why wouldn’t the public prefer to own their own roads outright, rather than renting them all of the time?
Next.
Really msetty? I guess you just read the titles of these publications, again. How about reading the conclusions?
“In fact, when you sum up the total benefit to road users created by HOT lanes, it’s likely to be a lot higher than the toll revenue alone: the time savings from congestion relief outweigh the costs to drivers. That’s exactly this comprehensive study of road tolling in the Puget Sound found — the estimated net public benefit from tolling vastly exceeded the projections for toll revenue.”
Here’s another example of a much touted privatization rubric failing to live up to its over-hyped expectations:
Well, no. First of all, this HOT lane project was not privatized.
Second, like most publicly-owned HOT lane projects, the toll is set below the revenue-maximizing rate. This is most likely a political consideration (it could also be an economic consideration if they had chosen the welfare-maximizing toll rate, which would maximize the congestion-relief benefits). So there is probably considerable scope to increase tolls in order to cover operating costs.
Thirdly, metrosucks pointed to one of the last paragraphs in the article, you know, the ones where the author speculates about the project’s likely benefits and costs.
The issue with that highway in this side discussion of HOT is that it is one of the most congested corridors in the Puget Sound and getting worse (I would do anything to avoid driving that stretch during the day back when I lived there). Getting the pricing right is tough, too as the SES of drivers is such that too high and they’ll offload onto the only other highway, which will soon be the most congested corridor in SE KingCo. So as far as sustainability and revenue generation go, I doubt that is anywhere near a good example for anything.
But thanks for that link. I owe Clark an e-mail and that’s a good reminder!
DS
I would ask Mr. Winston this – does he rent out a toothbrush? Given that he uses it every day, I wonder if he doesn’t own it outright? If so, why wouldn’t the public prefer to own their own roads outright, rather than renting them all of the time?
I use the internet every day, but I don’t think it implies I should own my own ISP. I use electricity every day, but I don’t feel the need to own the private utility that provides electric power. I use natural gas to heat my home in winter, but I am not a shareholder in the company that provides it. Why then should “we” own the roads we use, especially when “we” have botched the management and operations of them so badly?
WSDOT is probably the most accountable transportation agency on the west coast, and yet they still waste significant money on total foolishness, such as their obsession with HOV only infrastructure. The HOV exclusive interchanges, for example, are hardly used and are a good example of completely wasted monies that could be used to expand freeways or rebuild interchanges.
And take Portland northbound HOV lane on 1-5. This is an example of pure, malicious fraud. It runs from 3-6pm Mon-Fri, which happens to be the most congested time on this stretch of road. It steals capacity from the general public, because the HOV lane used to be a general purpose lane. It does not accomplish one iota of good. It is used to punish the public for driving alone on their NB commute. And you can bet that they will never convert it back to a general purpose lane.
“British rail privatization has been an utter, costly failure”
Was there just the one way of privatising British rail services? Are we to take away from your statement that privately-owned transport must fail because the British government chose a typically-English (read: Byzantine) scheme to privatise part of the system while leaving the remainder in government’s hands. All the while, of course, political expectations were that the rail system would continue to operate as a “public good”.
It reminds me of how California “privatised” its electric utilities. Wholesale prices would have to rise with the market, but retail prices were fixed. When the utilities went bankrupt, privatisation was blamed.
And so it goes.
MJ wrote:
“I use the internet every day, but I don’t think it implies I should own my own ISP. I use electricity every day, but I don’t feel the need to own the private utility that provides electric power. I use natural gas to heat my home in winter, but I am not a shareholder in the company that provides it. Why then should “we†own the roads we use, especially when “we†have botched the management and operations of them so badly?”
I said ‘the public’. So you don’t have to own your own ISP if the public owns it, nor do you need to own an electricity station if the public owns it. So the question of whether something should be publicly or privately owned and provided turns on a number of questions, such as – is the market dynamic or settled? – is the objective to deliver the latest product or to deliver a standard product safely and at the lowest price? – whether the profit motive is more reliable a motivation that professional pride by a government agency? – whether people are happy with the choice? – and the degree of government interference?
Telephone privatisation has had a happy outcome. Under the old system you could have a telephone as long as it was red. No choice. You just had to live with it, and wait for it to be delivered. Now, you can go into a shop and buy the latest mobile phone of your choice. Prices are down, choice is up. If the mobile phone (iPhone 4?) has problems, then you can get a refund. The telephone companies make profits on it, but the prices are good, so people are okay with it. Privatisation is a good match with the dynamics of the telephone market place.
Railway privatisation has had an unhappy outcome. Rails are rails, and they have to be provided as cheaply as possible, but to the highest quality and safety. There is no choice possible. The private company had to take a cut off the top to make their profits. So they cut corners, and one day a rail just shattered like glass under the wheels of a high-speed train. Then the inspectors checked out other rails, and there were many problems areas. The lack of professionalism was just staggering, and it took a year to fix the mess. The system has settled into a situation where private companies run over public rails, with higher subsidies than under the old public company, British Rail.
Roads are like rails. They come in one sort – a lump of tarmac. Getting private companies in will mean less professionalism, and higher charges. Even the new gung-ho government in Britain has given up on privatising the roads. But Mr. Winston charges in, shouting the odds, and never mind what the transport professionals think. If it happened once, it might be a mistake, but a lot of economists seem to think that being an economist makes them an expert at everything.
The bodies running the road should be at arm’s length from the government and given veto powers. The British Highways Agency are recognised to be experts at running the British trunk road system, run the roads at arm’s length from government interference, and have a veto over development projects which could harm the trunk roads.
Re:#13
Couldn’t agree more. HOV in the Seattle is a joke. Drivers are punished because they can’t find someone to commute with them, and lanes and ramps are often empty. There’s an HOV ramp 100 yards from my work, but I have to drive through town, often idling for five or more minutes at five lights just to get on the freeway. If I don’t, the cop sitting at the ramp, idling his cruiser, will ticket me. (How much taxpayer money is the state wasting guarding an HOV ramp?)
One of my coworkers lives a mile from me. He has a ton of bumper stickers on his car, a few of them about war, and I agree with the sentiment but also feel like recent US adventures are about oil. Yet when I asked this coworker to carpool, excuses poured out.
When I lived in NE PDX and took a summer job in Tualatin, life was hell because of that ridiculous HOV lane north of downtown. Squeezing all that traffic into two lanes is environmentally irresponsible and aimed at punishing people out of their cars.
It would be interesting to have an intelligent discussion about HOV lanes. They create a market with a lot of incentives for people to car pool, and even create slug lines (which would be unthinkable without HOV lanes).
HOVs don’t create a monetary market, or at least it wasn’t until they started letting hybrids and electric cars in them. Now the mix with tolling also brings up interesting implications.
As a follow up to #16, it seems that the media has found out that teacher education programs suck.
msetty wrote:
For the most part, academics like Winston need to stay in their ivory towers and not bother those of us in the real world. Contrary to his claims, there has been widespread experimentation in privatization of transportation in the English-speaking world: England.
How about another nation in the English-speaking world, Sweden (I admit, Swedish is not English, but very nearly all Swedes do speak English well).
Under Social-Democratic governments, Sweden privatized very nearly all public transportation, with the exception of the intercity passenger rail operator SJ.
But all local transit agencies outsourced all labor to the private sector through competitive tenders, including the highly-regarded Stockholm heavy rail system (tunnelbana in Swedish) and the regional rail systems in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Scania (the latter includes service across the Øresund Bridge Tunnel to Denmark between Lund, Malmö, Copenhagen and Helsingør).
The good news is that in Malmo they opened a new rail line to improve train movements in the area!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Tunnel_(Malm%C3%B6)
Sub contracting isn’t the problem CPZ, your anti-rail/anti-urban political agenda is!