America’s transportation system needs more centralized, top-down planning. At least, that’s what the Brookings Institution’s Robert Puentes advocates in a 2,350-word article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.
If that seems like an unlikely message from America’s leading business daily, perhaps it is because Puentes couched it in terms such as “spending money wisely,” solving congestion, and “adhering to market forces.” But not-so-hidden behind these soothing phrases is Puentes’ real argument: “America needs to start directing traffic” by developing “a clear-cut vision for transportation.” Such a vision “must coordinate the efforts of the public and private sectors.”
“The big question,” Puentes says, “is how much it will all cost.” But this is a diversion from the real big question, which is: who will do this coordination? In Puentes view, the answer is smart people in Washington DC who can best determine where to make “critical new investments on a merit basis” using such tools as an infrastructure bank.
One of the results of that system, Puentes makes clear, will be more spending on transit so that commuters have “more transportation choices.” He specifically mentions the ridiculous Subway-to-the-Sea being planned in Los Angeles. Never mind that, as the Antiplanner has previously noted, Puentes’ goal of extending transit to more jobs is both extremely expensive and will have little impact on actual transit ridership.
The real problem with America’s transportation system is not a lack of vision but too many people with visions trying to impose them on everyone else through lengthy and expensive planning processes. A bridge or road that once might have taken five years to plan and build now takes twenty or more, if it ever gets built at all, thanks to all these visions. (Of course, when it comes to expensive rail transit projects, Puentes thinks Congress should waive environmental impact statements and other expensive planning processes.)
It is best to bring order viagra online Kamagra with a glass of water. Many states lay down the judicial demand of taking an erectile dysfunction drug. tadalafil generic cialis click description now That’s why we are familiarizing you with these pills and make your woman feel proud of having you “such a cheapest viagra professional manly ” man in her life! No wonder a huge male population across the world complains about erection woes during sex. Let it be reminded nevertheless that devensec.com order viagra isn’t use to treatment erectile dysfunction and it can be poisonous for their health and must be stored at a temperature of 25 degrees C which should be away from heat, light and moisture. The real solution is not more top-down planning but a bottom-up system that responds to actual user needs rather than to inside-the-beltway visions. That means funding transportation out of user fees and not out of infrastructure banks, which–no matter how “merit-based” in intent–will alway end up being politically driven.
In a bottom-up system, individual transit and highway agencies (or better yet transit and highway companies) would be funded by their users, so they would have incentives to provide and expand service where needed by those users. Such a system would be far more likely to relieve congestion, save energy, and meet Puentes’ other goals.
Thanks to our heavily planned and heavily subsidized transit industry, the average urban transit bus uses 80 percent more energy per passenger mile than Amtrak. But that’s not because Amtrak is energy-efficient: the average Amtrak train uses 60 percent more energy per passenger mile than intercity buses. Unlike both Amtrak and urban transit buses, private intercity buses aim to meet market demand, not political demand.
Achieving a bottom-up transportation system means getting the federal government out of transportation decision-making. One way would be to have states take over federal gas taxes as proposed by New Jersey Representative Scott Garrett.
To the extent that the federal government distributes any transportation funds to states at all, they should be distributed using formulas, not grants, because formulas are much harder to politically manipulate. Ideally, the formulas should give heavy weight to the user fees collected by each state to reinforce, rather than distract from, the bottom-up process.
Puentes’ top-down vision will waste hundreds of billions of dollars on little-needed transportation projects while it does little to relieve congestion, save energy, or reduce auto emissions. A bottom-up process will save taxpayers money and increase mobility, which should be the real goals of any transportation policy.
Achieving a bottom-up transportation system means getting the federal government out of transportation decision-making. One way would be to have states take over federal gas taxes as proposed by New Jersey Representative Scott Garrett.
A great idea, because it will take away the but it’s free money! excuse used to justify so many of these boondoggles. As far as the other recommendations, anti-car, congestion enhancing devices and strategies are planned into today’s roads, and planners are not going to give up on their secret jihad against the car easily or quietly.
Which planning agency invented the Slug Lines of Northern Virginia???
Well???
Randal proposes:
The real solution is not more top-down planning but a bottom-up system
yet we disparage just words ago
The real problem with America’s transportation system is not a lack of vision but too many people with visions trying to impose them on everyone else through lengthy and expensive planning processes.
So we’ll replace too many people in the planning process…hmmm…lessee…oh, yes: with lots of people in an unstructured, chaotic non-process.
Wait: unless we are simply replacing one funding method with another. Tweaking some stuff. A little alteration, not a radical change.
Since we see nothing about having millions of users with input, we are keeping the top-down and funding from…well…I guess we can call it bottom-up in a blog post so we can say we oppose top-down expansion.
DS
OFP2003 asked:
Which planning agency invented the Slug Lines of Northern Virginia???
I am personally and professionally quite familiar with the HOV (or express) lanes along I-95 and I-395 (Shirley Highway) in Virginia.
No government agency invented the so-called Slug lines (informal car-pooling) of Fairfax and Prince William Counties (especially) in Virginia.
Those lanes were once for buses only, but were eventually opened up to high-occupancy vehicles at first, four per car (HOV-4), later reduced to three (HOV-3) per car).
As a result of a governmental decision that led to the opening of the lanes to car-pools in the 1970’s, some drivers decided to “poach” transit bus riders at the bus stops leading to the express lanes, especially, as I understand it, along Va. 644 (Old Keene Mill Road) in Springfield, Fairfax County, Va. (much to the rage of the operator of transit buses there). That led to the first slug lines, also in Springfield.
So in a sense, even though government did not “invent” the slug lines, it did provide the right operating environment (HOV requirement greater than 2, ample (and free (taxpayer-funded)) park-and-ride lot capacity and significant timesavings) for slugging to become a widely-accepted way of commuting.
No transit operating deficits and no transit unions are involved.
Commuter slug lines can now be found at quite a few locations in the I-95/I-395 corridor.
See the informative Slug-Lines.Com site for more information.
How was the interstate highway system developed in the US again?
The Interstate Highway System had been lobbied for by major U.S. automobile maker. championed by President Eisenhower, who was influenced by his experiences as a young Army officer crossing the country in the 1919 Army Convoy on the Lincoln Highway (the first road across America). He gained an appreciation of the German Autobahn network as a necessary component of a national defense system while he was in Europe. Assisting in the planning was Charles Erwin Wilson, who was still head of General Motors when President Eisenhower selected him as Secretary of Defense.
Tis true, government did not invent slugging. They never could have invented something so practical. In order to relieve traffic volume during the morning and evening rush hours, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes that require more than one person per automobile were built in many major American cities to encourage carpooling and greater use of public transport; the first were built in the Washington D.C. metropolitan area in 1975. The new lanes, and frustration over failures of public-transport systems and higher fuel prices, led to the creation of slugging. While passengers are able to travel for free, or cheaper than via other modes of travel, and HOV drivers sometimes pay no tolls, “slugs are, above all, motivated by time saved, not money pocketed”. Concern for the environment is not their primary motivation. No slug line has ever been created by the government. Some Virginia transportation officials assert that slugging has improved the system. Where early efforts at carpooling failed, the ad hoc nature of slugging has a flexibility that drivers and passengers enjoy.
So we’ll replace too many people in the planning process…hmmm…lessee…oh, yes: with lots of people in an unstructured, chaotic non-process.
There is nothing unstructured or chaotic about it; it’s just local. All those people are not engaged in planning for the entire country, simply the areas they live in.
There will be the structure you evidently crave and the results will more closely match the needs of the community.
There will be the structure you evidently crave and the results will more closely match the needs of the community.
You crave structure too. You are human, after all.
But there will be too many people with visions. Randal implied it.
DS
Metrosucks; A great idea, because it will take away the but it’s free money! excuse used to justify so many of these boondoggles. As far as the other recommendations, anti-car, congestion enhancing devices and strategies are planned into today’s roads, and planners are not going to give up on their secret jihad against the car easily or quietly.
THWM: Though there are plenty of “planners” that are hostile to pedestrians, cyclists, railroads & mass transit.
You’ll complain about traffic calming, though even a Cul-de-Sac is a means of calming traffic.
Most of the “infrastructure bank” proposals that have emanated out of Washington have been totally worthless. They are simply new ways of dressing up existing federal spending programs with fashionable language. There has been one recent proposal, ironically sponsored by Brookings, that may have some merit though.
Though there are plenty of “planners†that are hostile to pedestrians, cyclists, railroads & mass transit.
Examples, please.
“So we’ll replace too many people in the planning process…hmmm…lessee…oh, yes: with lots of people in an unstructured, chaotic non-process.” – DS
Sounds like the sort of puerile ignorance I used to hear a lot in the software world about moving from the waterfall approach to scrum or Kanban. It’s an intellectual knee jerk reaction. It’s sad to see.
In software the reaction was that you can’t build great software without lots and lots and lots of planning. The reality was that these projects were axed as often as they were being completed. And that didn’t even get into whether they were great, ok, or mediocre. Often times by the time they were completed new things had made them relatively less efficient, relatively more expensive to maintain, etc.
The idea of having some rough road map of where you’re going and focusing on what you’re building for just the next few iterations (months) was doomed. Yet it’s quite the opposite. Far more excellent, cost-effecient, productive software’s come out of the agile world with things like Scrum than the waterfall world. An example of this that many of use every day is Netflix, http://www.uie.com/articles/fast_iterations/.
Obviously transportation is different. But the claim that without massive centralized planning and funding for it is the only thing that will work is silly. In fact, we’ve had 50 – 75 years of increasing control out of Washington and we’ve ended up with what we have today. There’s no reason to believe it’s just a matter of getting the right guy in there.
Sounds like the sort of puerile ignorance I used to hear a lot in the software world about moving from the waterfall approach to scrum or Kanban. It’s an intellectual knee jerk reaction. It’s sad to see.
Uh-huh. Thanks for the quote-mine to have play.
DS
Go away, stop embarrassing yourself. Isn’t there a traffic calming project somewhere for you to endorse?