» When cities, states, and even regions consider how to improve transportation connections, they should be forced to evaluate a whole range of modes.

If, as I have suggested over the past few days, states are to take an increasingly important role in the transportation funding process, they must similarly become more implicated in the planning program for all modes, not just highways, typically their reserved domain. Though there are some exceptions, like New Jersey and Connecticut, most states currently assign decision-making about public transit to separate local or regional authorities, which receive direct funding from the federal government.

This separation of powers produces a system that perpetuates spending on individual modes rather than the mobility network as a whole; it’s a compromise between automobile and transit interests that frequently results in waste and overspending on certain corridors and underinvestment in others. With intercity rail regaining prominence and states acting in the primary role, though, it is time for the middle level of the American federal system to take a greater interest in ensuring that the right modes are selected and funded for each corridor — at the municipal, metropolitan, state, and regional scales.

The current system — in which state departments of transportation advocate highway capacity expansion while local transit interests push bus and rail improvements — is extremely problematic, because its most common result is an all-in-one approach in which all modes get funded on major corridors, even when expansion of only one mode may be necessary.

The clearest example of how this works is in new urban freeway projects. In Denver’s T-Rex program, the highway department improved service on Interstate 25 and 225 by both adding two to four lanes to the existing highway and implementing light rail service. Why were both necessary? “We weren’t going to spend over a billion dollars on this project without involving more highway capacity. It couldn’t be a predominantly transit project,” said about the project Bill Jones, then the Federal Highway Administration’s Colorado Division administrator. “This was the turning point when we realized together that the transit part of the project couldn’t be built without the highway part.”

It was a political solution, not a technical one. Much as, for instance, Los Angeles built the Green Line light rail corridor as part of the construction of the Century Freeway. Or, as the new Columbia River Crossing between Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington will incorporate both several more automobile lanes than the existing bridge and a light rail extension.

But states should be forced to be more clear about their goals for investment in each corridor, and they should be more willing to pick non-automobile options when they’re choosing to invest in capacity enhancements to existing roads. As Peter Rogoff, head of the Federal Transit Administation, said at an American Public Transportation Association conference Monday in Vancouver, “We’re all trying to accomplish the same goals here. We’re all trying to achieve the same efficient, decongested transportation network.” In other words, there are a whole variety of modes that can be implemented to serve similar purposes.

This applies at a number of different scales. State-owned urban roadways — more common in some states, such as my own North Carolina, than others — should be approached from a multi-modal perspective. If they’re too much traffic, the solution cannot always be an increase in the width of roads, especially in sensitive inner-city areas. It would be helpful if DOTs could take a predefined amount of money and then allocate it to the appropriate project. If roads expansion serves that purpose, then so be it; on the other hand, if better bus service presents itself as a more acceptable option, than state DOTs should be able to allocate those capital funds to local transit agencies to institute improved operations over a long time period. Yet no stable system currently exists to promote such transfers of money.

Similarly, on intercity corridors, it would be helpful if states could actually compare the costs of highway expansion with that of instituting convenient, frequent intercity rail — rare throughout most of the country. There are a number of corridors where the share of traffic that could be diverted to transit from automobiles is significantly high as to warrant a de-emphasis from road construction. Unfortunately, such a reallocation would be very difficult to promote in most cases because there is rarely cooperation between state highways and rail departments, and each usually sees itself as serving its own compartmentalized market, when in fact they’re competing for users.

This would, of course, require significant changes in the way state DOTs work. For one, they’re too often constrained by their own workforces, which are heavily slanted towards highway engineers. This means that these agencies typically act as if road investments are the only “realistic” way to go about solving transportation dilemmas, even though their peer transit agencies would suggest just the opposite. States must make an effort to encourage consideration of a variety of transportation modes when evaluating each project.

But the bigger problem still is that the majority of projects undertaken by state DOTs — new interchanges, repaving, etc — are relatively small, making investments in other options impossible to consider. These small projects add up into a major program of roads repair and expansion that could be replaced by more sustainable options if there were political will to do so. Thus states must promote master planning for each corridor, considering travel needs across a variety of modes. By developing concrete ideas about how both inner-city and intercity corridors should look in twenty or fifty years, states can be better prepared to implement the best solution for each place.

Image above: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, from Flickr user Little Miss Cupcake Paris

» States already generate the majority of transportation revenues locally, so perhaps the imperative for increased spending should come from them rather than Washington.

One of the frequently undermentioned aspects of the transportation funding debate is that while the federal government’s Highway Trust Fund is the source of a significant percentage of overall highway and transit expenditures in the United States, state departments of transportation raise most of their money from local sources. For advocates of alternative transportation, whose focus has been almost exclusively on policy in Washington, this fact should serve as a wake-up call. In order to produce truly effective change in the way Americans get around, it will be necessary to promote changes in the way states collect revenue for and spend on transportation.

An examination of the taxation sources used by states to fund transportation is in order. I’ve taken Oregon and Illinois as examples here; further comparisons with other states may be useful in the future. I’ve also excluded from this brief review municipal, county, and regional expenditures, which typically constitute the majority of public transit spending.

As the chart above demonstrates, these two states have very different transportation funding structures in addition to the revenue each receives based on formula grants from the U.S. Department of Transportation. Whereas Oregon relies on a diverse portfolio of funds, including a state fuel tax, a vehicle registration fee, bonds, and a weight mile tax, Illinois relies mostly on vehicle registration fees, with only about 12% of funds coming from a state fuel tax.

In each of those states, as in almost every state, the majority of overall transportation spending goes towards roads projects.

If the federal government were to completely alter the manner in which it collects funds in reaction to a slow decline in gas tax revenues into the Highway Trust Fund, then, it would only affect a minority of overall national transportation spending.

A movement towards a more progressive General Fund-sourced transportation system at the national level may well encourage an increasing effort by federal officials to promote transit and other elements of a transportation portfolio aimed towards “livable cities.” But if states continue to collect their own taxes with an emphasis on user fees, the vast majority of spending will continue to be on highways, since there is little political support to divert the majority of automobile user fee revenues to public transportation.

Indeed, this is one reason why it might be a good reason to funnel roads user fees into the General Fund, and then use the General Fund to pay for infrastructure through the Highway Trust Fund. The direct connection between user fees and transportation spending keeps the country dependent on automobiles, so cutting the umbilical cord could be a politically beneficial solution.

Eliminating that relationship could also paradoxically provide motivation for the gas tax increases that are desperately needed both to provide funding for new investments and to keep the negative environmental consequences of car use in check. Last year, at least fifteen states were seriously considering fuel fee increases, but only three were able to pass the expansions through their respective legislatures. By making the argument that the gas tax can fulfill government-wide needs, states facing desperate budget situations may find raising the fuel tax less difficult than increasing income tax collections, for instance.

Another point to emphasize here is this: Both Oregon and Illinois get only about half their transportation revenues from fuel taxes. The same is true of a number of other states, from North Carolina to Nevada. Other states, like Wyoming, are much more reliant on state and federal gas taxes. There are a wide variety of funding devices being used across the country, and state governments should make an effort to adopt successful taxation strategies from their peers.

Most states, however, get the majority of their funds from user fees of some sort: If not gas taxes, then vehicle registration fees or drivers’ license fees, which require everyone using a car to pay their part. This connection between direct “use” of the roads and spending — a link that ignores the fact that everyone, car driver or not, is a direct beneficiary of transportation spending — prevents state legislatures from investing fully in their rail and public transit systems.

The widespread adoption of public transportation in the United States is dependent on increasing spending for new investments; if the federal government cannot find an adequate source of new funds for transportation financing, the states — which already raise most money for their respective highway projects — may be able to. But without a strong push at the state level to make public transportation a priority, it won’t happen. And in a country where states are too often dominated by rural and suburban interest groups, it’s unsurprising that we haven’t many serious efforts in that direction.

» After losing bid to install tolls along Interstate 80, state looks to other solutions to impending transportation funding gap. An opportunity to rethink the state role in transport.

Today, Pennsylvania state legislators will meet to fill a massive $472 million gap in the transportation budget — almost ten percent of the overall $6.1 billion in road and transit spending planned for this year. Governor Ed Rendell called the session after his plan to toll Interstate 80 fell apart due to a federal law that makes it illegal to use revenues gained from a Washington-funded road on something else. The I-80 tolls would have generated up to $950 million in annual revenue once the infrastructure was put into place by 2011 as originally planned.

The need to assemble a special legislative session comes at a terrible time for the state. Pennsylvania’s road and transit systems need $3 billion more a year, a 50% increase, just to remain in a state of good repair — and that estimate includes only $500 million for transit, arguably not enough. Meanwhile, the state’s ambitions for improved intercity rail services and better local transit in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh need billions more to be implemented.

Pennsylvania has a number of potential funding options from which to choose: Easiest would be raising its already relatively high 32.3¢/gallon fuel tax. A 10¢/gallon increase would raise an estimated $620 million a year. But other possibilities include tolling state-funded roads, encouraging public-private partnerships, establishing local option sales taxes (currently mostly forbidden in the state), and introducing a vehicle-miles traveled fee (VMT). Wanting to avoid hurting too much of an already weak economy, the state is likely to select some combination of these options.

With inadequate federal aid, Pennsylvania’s situation is likely to become more and more familiar for states throughout the country, all of which are having trouble maintaining planned expenditures because of a decline in tax revenues. But the need to raise revenues locally opens up a number of opportunities that are denied by relying on Washington to fund transportation.

Conservatives frequently make the argument that federal fuel taxes should simply be reassigned to states based on the source of those funds because locals “know better” than Washington when it comes to choosing how to spend the money.

I’m no proponent of lessened federal involvement in choosing how those funds are spent; immediately reapportioning national funds to the states would inevitably mean fewer funds for transit just about everywhere because most state legislatures are dominated by rural factions. And state DOTs are too frequently highway-oriented to take seriously their claims that they would treat all modes equally.

Yet with a need to find increasing revenues to maintain roads and transit in usable condition, states may have no choice but to increase their local funding commitment above and beyond the federal contribution. Pennsylvania’s special session demonstrates that there is a desire on the part of states to make that happen — they’re not going to simply let their infrastructure resources fall apart.

This requires states and their leaders to take a bigger political role in setting transportation priorities. If states raise their own revenues, they will be able to choose how funds are spent, and it’s up to the legislatures and governors to make those decisions. The specter of even more power for state DOTs should encourage advocates of transportation alternatives to push for increased spending on transit, bike lanes, and pedestrian resources at the state capital, not just in Washington.

This is not an impossible dream; since the Bush Administration, the federal DOT has altered its vision of transportation priorities dramatically — it’s quite clear that the Obama Administration is making a point to emphasize livable communities and alternative forms of transport, a complete turnaround from former Secretary Mary Peters’ road obsession. This kind of change did not come randomly but after years of lobbying from advocates and the resulting decision of the mainline Democratic Party to place itself on the side of those who want alternatives to private automobiles. We need to see similar transformations at the state level, and when we do, there will be nothing to fear from getting the states more involved in raising revenue and spending on transportation.

A funding crisis may thus encourage everyone to think differently about the role states play in choosing what to fund. There is no requirement that states prioritize highway spending. But cities and metropolitan regions need to demonstrate their importance in every state’s economy and show how alternative transportation is an important player in ensuring the viability of those places.

The dream of some livable city advocates that states be “abolished” is immature and completely unrealistic. State DOTs will continue to play the predominant role in determining how transportation spending is distributed in the United States, so we might as well work to get them on our side.

Image above: Pennsylvania’s Interstate 80, from Flickr user dougtone (cc)

» State DOTs spend too many of their funds on road construction, when they really should be focusing on maintenance.

A year ago, the Federal Transit Administration released a report on the state of good repair of the nation’s transit agencies. The study articulated a massive need for maintenance work on the country’s rail systems and suggested that the federal government contribute an additional four billion dollars annually to its fixed guideway modernization program, which funds capital improvements for existing transit systems. In the ensuing months, the Congress made no such effort.

It’s unsurprising, then, that the American highway network is no better off. After more than half a century of major federal investments in new roads for the Interstate Highway System, there is plenty of repair to be done. According to a new report from U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group), 150,000 miles of road, including 45% of federal highways, are in less than good condition, as are 71,000 bridges, about 12% of all spans. Yet the federal government is investing far less than necessary to bring those rights-of-way up to par, and states are often working actively against policies that promote maintenance rather than new construction.

The Federal Highway Administration has suggested that the U.S. would have to spend $100 billion or more annually to maintain roads at their existing quality levels. That’s $30 billion more than is spent on roads altogether today, much of which goes to new highways.

For American transportation advocates, the study’s conclusions should serve as prime ground for a reevaluation of current spending priorities. Nevertheless, lobbying groups such as AASHTO (the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) continue to promote road expansion as the key to the country’s transportation future. But do we have the money to maintain our existing roads even as we build new ones?

U.S. PIRG’s report, Road Work Ahead, puts the country’s transportation conditions in context: “One thing is for sure: the deterioration of our roads and bridges is no accident. Rather, it is the direct result of countless policy decisions that put other considerations ahead of the pressing need to preserve our investment in the highway system.” Authors Travis Madsen, Benjamin Davis, and Phineas Baxandall highlight two principal problems: A political advantage in focusing on ribbon cutting rather than maintenance and a lack of federal oversight to ensure a state of good repair.

These structural problems are compounded by the fact that maintenance costs increase exponentially the longer they’re delayed. It’s better to perform constant, cheap check-ups than to have once-in-twenty-years surgery.

But politicians see immediate benefit from building new roads. More capacity is visible and seen as positive, compared to the often-intrusive work required to maintain existing highways. Meanwhile, while states generally perform maintenance using in-house workers, they typically contract out for new roads; it’s no coincidence that private highway interests gave more than $130 million to state and federal candidates in 2008. The lack of evaluation from the federal government for new road construction — unlike, for instance, the transit New Starts major capital works program — means that there is no interference from above, so a new road will be built if a state decides it wants it.

Meanwhile, though the U.S. Secretary of Transportation has the theoretical right to withhold federal highway funds if states fail to maintain roads, that power is not exercised frequently, according to the report. This means that the DOT will continue to transfer billions of dollars every year to states for new highways even as roads fall apart.

For the study’s authors, a “fix it first” policy is necessary. It’s hard to argue with that conclusion.

Nevertheless, AASHTO, which represents the state departments of transportation, has begun a campaign for massive road expansion. The lobby, which is led by transportation officials from Mississippi, Nevada, and Utah (guess their primary interests), suggests that “Even with strategies to reduce traffic and improve transit, highway system expansion is critical.”

AASHTO’s own report on the future of American transportation, released on Monday, suggests $375 billion in highway investments over the next six years, much of which would be used for the construction of new roads. Following the guidance of its members, AASHTO argues that 90% of funds should be simply transferred to states through a formula without guidance from Washington.

This strategy is disappointing from two perspectives: one, it is clearly focused on system expansion, rather than a renewal of the existing infrastructure in spite of the maintenance backlog highlighted by the U.S. PIRG report; two, though AASHTO claims to be interested in shifting trips to transit, it would spend almost four times as much on roads as public transportation.

What’s perhaps most problematic about AASHTO’s strategy is that it argues that urban areas, more than rural sections of the country, should focus on system expansion. It apparently hasn’t occurred to the organization’s leadership that those places are the prime ground for transit growth, or that the most congested metropolitan areas (L.A., New York, Chicago, and Washington) have little room for more roads. U.S. PIRG’s conclusion that metropolitan areas suffer far more than rural zones from poorly maintained roadways suggests that the focus there should be reconstruction, not new construction.

Like it or not, the United States has a limited pot of transportation dollars. It would be a pity to see so much money be poured into new highways as the old ones rot away.

Image above: Pavement, from Flickr user sfllaw (cc)

» System will carry about five million passengers a day. Dozens of other Chinese cities are spending billions of dollars on similar grade-separated transit systems.

If China’s massive investment in high-speed rail is impressive, its huge spending binge in local rapid transit is remarkable. And nowhere is that record more dramatic than in Shanghai, the world’s most populous city proper.

Just fifteen years after the first segment of its first metro line opened, the city’s metro network has gained the title as the world’s longest with the opening of a section of Line 10 last week. This followed years of continuous construction and the opening of pieces of Lines 2, 9, and 11 over the past month. In anticipation of the inauguration of the city’s Expo 2010 event on May 1st, Line 13 will open sometime in the next two weeks.

Now Shanghai offers 282 stations and 420 km (261 mi) of lines, compared to 408 km in London and 368 km in New York, which now have the world’s second and third-largest rapid transit networks. Unlike those cities, which have only minor line extensions planned, Shanghai’s expansion plans are only half complete: not only does the city have 140 km of more lines currently under construction and intended for service by 2012, but it has an additional 300 km planned to be ready for operations by 2020, by which time this city alone will have more rapid transit mileage than the entire country of Japan.

The Shanghai Metro is now capable of handling about five million passengers a day; the system is likely to become the world’s most-used, passing Tokyo and Moscow, by the time the full construction program is complete.

Beijing is pursuing a similarly extension metro expansion project, but these cities aren’t alone: twelve Chinese municipalities currently have rapid transit, nineteen more have systems under construction, and an additional seventeen new networks are in planning. The national government has committed $150 billion to the projects by 2015, though additional funds originate from the municipalities themselves, such as the progressive and independent City of Shanghai. It’s a country-wide investment in urban transportation unparalleled in human history.

The American government, managing a much wealthier country than China, typically commits about two billion dollars a year to transit capital projects nationwide.

China’s aggressive efforts are a response to the country’s rapid urbanization, which has brought tens of millions of rural peasants into the cities as a result of increasing economic development. Though the Chinese automobile market is now larger than that of the United States, when compared on a per capita basis, it is still relatively small, especially considering that most Chinese car purchases are of first vehicles, not second or third, as are typical American consumer investments. This means that these quickly growing cities must respond with significant spending on improved public transportation — and they’ve chosen rapid transit as their preferred technology.

Specifically, Shanghai’s effort is an attempt to avoid American-style commuting habits even as its population increases in prosperity. With a per capita GDP three times the national average, Shanghai must endeavor to ensure that its growing number of middle-class inhabitants don’t clog the streets with their cars.

The European and North American experience shows that it can be done: In the first half of the 20th century, cities like New York, Berlin, and London reacted to a growing population and densification of land use by constructing extensive rapid transit networks and the results today are cities with high rates of public transportation use in spite of wealthy populations; Shanghai is likely to follow in the same mold.

But the extent and rapidity by which Shanghai is expanding its system reinforces the high-speed rail-driven sense that the West is falling behind, at least in infrastructure investment. Though no American and European cities are growing as quickly as their Chinese counterparts, there are significant demands for transportation improvements that are being unmet in virtually every major Western metropolitan region, with the possible exception of Madrid, Barcelona, and Paris, which are all spending billions to extend their transit networks out of the traditional urban core and into near suburbs. These neighborhoods have for years been deprived of adequate public transportation despite a real demand; most regions, however, aren’t spending on new line capacity.

Unlike the U.S. or Europe, China benefits from strong economic growth, making these investments more feasible, especially since construction costs are lower. Nonetheless, if Shanghai’s construction is so extensive as to be impossible to replicate in the more affluent parts of the world, current efforts in most major American and European cities are modest, doing very little in terms of transportation to respond to significant increases in population since the first half of the 20th century. They’re not making much of an effort to prepare for their increasingly urban futures by building new transit links.

China is.

Image my own work but based on standard Shanghai Metro Map.

» Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn proposes to build a new transit line to West Seattle and Ballard along the street.

The dividing line between what Americans reference as a streetcar and what they call light rail is not nearly as defined as one might assume considering the frequent use of the two terminologies in opposition. According to popular understanding, streetcars share their rights-of-way with automobiles and light rail has its own, reserved right-of-way.

But the truth is that the two modes use very similar vehicles and their corridors frequently fall somewhere between the respective stereotypes of each technology. Even the prototypical U.S. light rail project — the Portland MAX — includes significant track segments downtown in which its corridor is hardly separated from that of the automobiles nearby. And that city’s similarly pioneering streetcar includes several segments completely separated from the street.

In that context, it’s worth considering Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn’s recent argument for a scaled-down transit project that would extend from his city’s downtown to West Seattle and Ballard, a proposal he hopes to get before voters within two years. Unlike Seattle’s Central Link rail line, which opened in 2009, this new rail program would operate in street rights-of-way adjacent to moving automobiles; it would not include the expensive tunnels and viaducts that make Central Link a “mini-metro.”

As a result, some have labeled this plan little more than a streetcar, whose slow pace and minimal capacity make it more useful as a development tool than a transportation one. Others are convinced that the project will morph into a multi-billion dollar mini-metro like Link, a high-cost concept into whose face city budget experts are afraid to look.

But Mayor McGinn’s proposal is neither of those things — it’s an effort to build a cost-effective rail transit line on the model used by cities across Europe, known typically as tramways.

What makes Mr. McGinn’s plan — which, by the way, remains in the very early development stages — so different from those proposed by most cities is that it attempts directly to reduce significant road capacity for automobiles and replace it with space reserved for transit. Most light rail programs avoid that prospect by using existing rail rights-of-way for new lines, or by sending trains underground or above it. That’s because it’s considered treacherous to threaten to remove space now used by automobiles.

Indeed, if he goes forward with the proposal, the Mayor would be doing something that flies in the face of political expediency, since transit-friendly or not, most Seattleites continue to commute by private car. Yet Mr. McGinn claims he’s unworried about the implications of doing so; considering he won last year’s election partially by stridently opposing the construction of a $4 billion road tunnel under downtown, he probably should be taken at face value.

Mr. McGinn’s proposal is a reasonable one: by simply removing vehicle lanes and reserving space on the road for trains, you can build relatively fast light rail systems at the cost of streetcar lines. Other than over major physical barriers (the roughly 15-mile route suggested would require crossing two waterways), there’s little need to move earth or build new structures, saving tremendous amounts of money.

Unlike Central Link, which achieves very high average speeds compared to most urban rail systems, this project would feature only moderate speed improvements over existing bus services. But it would see a very large ramp-up in capacity and time savings over automobiles if intersections are properly designed. And it would encourage more people to ride transit because of clear station stops, frequent services, and comfortable trains.

All this at a much more reasonable price than would be possible if you wanted the type of full-scale, independent right-of-way featured by Link. Unlike equally cheap streetcars, these tram lines wouldn’t held up by surrounding traffic or required to have short trainsets because of limited street dimensions.

As I’ve mentioned before, it’s been relatively easy to implement such street-running rail in a number of European cities, and where it’s been done, it has often improved the quality of the surrounding streetscape, producing exactly the type of livable environment planners love to see around major new transit investments.

None of this is to suggest that there aren’t places where transit corridors requiring full separation of rights-of-way are advisable; building New York’s Second Avenue Subway as a street-running light rail line would be a disaster, simply because it wouldn’t be able to handle anywhere near the capacity required. But in Seattle, land of moderate densities and medium-height commercial corridors, what Mayor McGinn is suggesting is exactly the right investment to make — at the right price.

Image above: Tram in Amsterdam, from Flickr user martin_vmorris (cc)

» Bridge connecting Oregon and Washington planned for construction start in 2012, with light rail link included. But its new road capacity isn’t needed.

In most cities, this debate would have ended years ago, and the results would have been far less pretty. The governors of both states involved are highly supportive of the freeway project, and they’ve unearthed enough financing to pay for it. With state departments of transportation pledging their involvement and money, there wouldn’t been much of margin for substantial change.

Yet the Interstate 5 Columbia River Crossing has been plagued by delays primarily because Portland prides itself on being one of the most ecologically aware North American cities, and therefore one of the least inclined support increased freeway capacity. Something had to be done — the existing bridge is structurally unsound and congested at rush hours — but in this region, the only way to garner support was to ensure the inclusion of a public transit component and reduce the number of traffic lanes.

So the $3.6 billion bridge currently being advocated by both governors and the local trade unions will include ten lanes of traffic (rather than 12) and a new light rail line (rather than buses, as originally suggested) when it opens for service in 2018. It would be a trade-off transit activists in most cities would accept as a grand compromise.

The Columbia River Crossing replacement project has been in planning for decades as an essential reinforcement of the primary road link between Portland and Vancouver. The $829 million light rail project is part of Portland’s planned large transit network expansion and recently received a “medium” rating from the Federal Transit Administration, allowing it to move ahead with federal funding. There has recently been a dramatic change of heart in favor of rail on the part of Vancouver’s leadership, who represent a population that defeated a transit extension from Portland in a referendum fifteen years ago.

But much of the Portland region’s citizenry remains concerned about the construction and future effects of the new bridge, and rightly so. Does the I-5 corridor need more road capacity? How can the cities be sure that the project will reduce congestion, rather than induce more demand?

Portland Mayor Sam Adams and Vancouver Mayor Tim Leavitt sent a letter last month to their respective governors asking for the project to be run by local authorities, rather than by the state highway department. Each has asked for fundamental changes to the project, which may include reducing the number of traffic lanes and eliminating planned toll lanes to be used to pay back the cost of the bridge over the long term. They want to prevent the project from becoming a financial nightmare — a possibility considering the debt each state will take on to pay for the scheme.

On the other hand, neither municipal leader is a full-on bridge opponent, nor is either interested in restarting the project entirely.

But grassroots opposition continues unabated. A number of local groups have demonstrated some of the principal flaws of the proposal: It will increase sprawl by encouraging faster and longer commutes into downtown Portland; it will reduce congestion for a period of just 12 years, after which traffic will slow down again because more people will choose to drive at rush hours because of increased capacity; it will enable a 34% increase in automobile traffic, exactly the opposite of what a self-proclaimed environmentally friendly region would want; and, if it’s tolled, as planned, it will simply encourage the greater use and eventual congestion of I-205, which runs parallel to I-5 just up down the river.

The Crossing’s environmental impact study claims that overall traffic on the corridor would actually fall with the completion of the bigger bridge — a bizarre outcome predicted by an evidently skewed traffic forecasting model. Experience across the United States over a period of decades has demonstrated concretely that more highways almost universally produce more roadway use.

The expansion of the Columbia River Crossing also fails to address traffic choke points elsewhere along I-5, meaning that congestion will simply move to other parts of the roadway, not actually solving many existing problems with the highway’s capacity.

A series of excellent videos produced several months ago by Nick Falbo promote a series of alternatives to the multi-billion dollar project. By ramping up transit options and enforcing congestion pricing on the existing bridge, the states could limit traffic while also encouraging a modal split to transit. A bigger, faster-flowing highway as currently envisioned would actually be a disincentive to the use of transit, no matter how nice the light rail line is. The bridge, though currently structurally deficient, could be reinforced and last decades more without a problem — at a far cheaper price.

What no one seems to be taking seriously enough is the potential for transit to take a higher modal share of existing traffic using the bridge.

The planners at the Columbia River Crossing project conducted a study of the origins and destinations of drivers using the corridor last year, and the results are compelling — if anyone chose to take advantage of them.

Based on my understanding of the data, of the 70% of drivers using the bridge for local purposes (30% of trips are through-trips, according to the environmental impact study), a full 25% of southbound automobilists are headed downtown, where there is already excellent transit available, and to which light rail from Vancouver would run directly. Meanwhile, 27% of driver destinations are within the zip code covered by the Yellow Line light rail, the same corridor that would head into Washington state. A full 15% more are headed to destinations just east of downtown, where the Red and Blue Lines light rail corridors provide easy access.

If you were to assume that the new bridge was not built and that instead congestion pricing and the light rail extension were implemented on their own, the current 3,300 weekday transit trips over the bridge could expand exponentially. Many of the current congestion woes could be alleviated simply by transferring downtown and near-downtown-bound drivers to a different mode of transportation. If the transit component of the bridge is a given, shouldn’t it be designed to work well? How can it attract the maximum number of riders when the highway bridge just adjacent has been expanded massively?

Building a new light rail line even as you’re expanding the highway next door is no rarity in the U.S., where the road and public transportation lobbies are mutually dependent. Sadly, policies that encourage transit even as road construction continues apace do little to affect commuting habits, as has been demonstrated by Portland over the years. The city has seen little increase in transit mode share despite huge investments in new light rail lines.

Nonetheless, even if the existing plan were implemented, Portland would still be getting a far more generous project than typically results from road expansion. The degree to which a pro-transit mentality in the city has encouraged the inclusion of light rail in the project should be replicated elsewhere — road projects like this should be required to incorporate a major transit component, and that’s exactly what Oregon and Washington’s highway planners have agreed to do here. When compared to state department of transportation elsewhere, that’s something to celebrate.

Image above: Potential look of bridge, from Columbia River Crossing

» $500 million project speeds trips and ensures ADA compliance at all stations.

With its century-old rapid transit system, Chicago has a huge maintenance backlog: almost $7 billion in unfunded capital needs, in fact. Fortunately for the city’s commuters, after four years of construction work, the reconstruction of the Brown Line was completed this week. The $530 million renovation program was the largest in the CTA transit system’s history and will provide relief to the corridor’s roughly 100,000 daily riders.

The Brown Line, also known as the Ravenswood Line, operates as a local along an 11.4-mile corridor between Northwest Chicago and the downtown Loop, and is the system’s third most-popular service. Sections of the route are shared with the Red and Purple Lines. Most of its track length opened in 1907; much of the line had not been renovated since — until now.

Like the $740 million renovation of the Philadelphia Market Street Elevated, which opened for service in September 2009, and Chicago’s own $483 million Douglas Branch renewal, which was completed in 2005, the Brown Line reconstruction was necessary to shore up the structural integrity of the line’s stations and track, which is mostly set along a viaduct. The corridor was in terrible condition before construction began, with wooden platforms in a state of deterioration, skinny hallways and stairs, and trains slowed by ancient, dangerous track.

The project has corrected many of those issues. Some curves were straightened. Additionally, as is required by federal law, all stations were made handicap accessible, an important step forward for all users, who will benefit from elevators and larger station spaces. All but one of the Brown Line’s 19 stops were completely rebuilt, incorporating wider stairways, additional exits, and more turnstiles.

Northwest Chicago, through which the Brown Line runs, has been experiencing significant gentrification since the 1980s; one result of these changes has been a large increase in ridership on the transit corridor, stressing it to capacity during peak periods. As a result, the Brown Line’s main improvement will come from the fact that all stations have been expanded to accommodate eight-car trains, up from six cars previously. This will expand capacity by one-third, reduce waiting times at stations, and speed travel along the corridor. After the work was completed, travel times from the line’s terminus at Kimball and the primary downtown station at Clark/Lake decreased to 40 minutes, down seven from before.

The CTA was able to take advantage of federal New Starts grant funding, which accounted for 50% of total spending. The work, however, was not easy for those who use the Brown Line daily. Though new stations opened throughout the project’s timeline beginning in 2006, cost constraints required stops to be closed as they were being renovated. This reduced ridership and irritated customers. More seriously, beginning in 2007, the four-track mainline between Belmont and Fullerton, shared between Red, Purple, and Brown Lines, was reduced to three-track operation because of the need to reconstruct tracks and expand stations. The result was a slow down throughout the elevated network. This week’s full reopening will be a relief.

Chicago still has billions of dollars of work left to be spent on renovating its rapid transit system. It is already at work on the reworking of the Blue Line thanks to $88 million in stimulus funds. But with plans for extensions of the Red, Orange, and Yellow Lines, as well as for the creation of a new Circle Line, it is unclear where the transit agency will find the funds for the important program, especially since budget cuts are forcing service reductions throughout the system.

The national government is aware of the disastrous condition of infrastructure along Chicago’s non-renovated transit lines and similar older systems throughout the country, but Congress has not done enough thus far to expand spending on the fixed guideway modernization program, whose needs the Federal Transit Administration estimates at $4.2 billion more annually than currently provided. Chicago’s Brown Line renovation demonstrates the benefits of such spending, and in many ways, it is more important to ensure the state of good repair of existing systems than to move on to the construction of new lines, though of course both are necessary.

Congress is considering another stimulus focusing on jobs creation through infrastructure construction. With transit projects producing twice as much employment as equivalent road programs, the government would do well to increase investments in the reconstruction of existing transit lines.

Image above: Chicago Fullerton Station, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/msig/ | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

» Network will be 67% electrified by 2017.

Andrew Adonis, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Transport, announced yesterday that the government would invest £200 million in the increased electrification of the railway system, adding to a commitment made last summer and furthering the country’s investment in carbon-friendly transportation systems.

According to Mr. Adonis, new funds would be allocated by 2016 to three projects in Northwest England: a connection between Blackpool and the West Coast Main Line; a link between Manchester and Euxton Junction; and a corridor between Huyton and Wigan. This comes in addition to the £1.1 billion worth of announcements made in July, which included the electrification of the corridor between Liverpool and Manchester and the installation of overhead catenary along the Great Western Main Line between London and Reading, Bristol, Cardiff, and Oxford. The line between Bedford and Sheffield may also be electrified by 2020 as part of a larger interest in electrifying the country’s network.

The net effect: an increase in total rail passenger miles traveled on electric trains from 60% today to 67% in 2017, with new service to 22 towns and cities formerly only welcoming diesel trains. Customers will benefit from faster travel between Scotland and Northwest England and from London to Wales. Pollutants from diesel locomotives will be reduced, with a corresponding uptick in electricity usage.

Rolling stock on the newly electric lines will come from the already electric London-area commuter railroads being replaced by the Crossrail regional rail scheme, which in turn will be receiving new trains once its new train tunnel opens under London city center. In addition, the government is planning an investment in 1,300 more cars for the system as a whole.

The recent focus on rail by the U.K.’s Labour government comes at the conclusion of twelve years in power, with elections next year likely to result in a Conservative win. Much of the first decade under the leadership of Prime Minister Tony Blair meant limited investment in the new mode outside of an upgrade of the West Coast Main Line as the government simply attempted to correct the mess that resulted from the privatization of British Rail in the early 1990s; that effort is yet to be completed, as the recent failure of several operating contracts attests.

With pressure from the rival Conservatives to develop a plan for high-speed rail, Labourites have pushed their own improvement programs focusing on electrification and the High-Speed 2 program, which would connect London and Scotland in just over two hours. A decision on the alignment of that line will be announced in the spring, just prior to elections. Labour is clearly attempting to use a renewed focus on rail improvements as an electoral point-booster. Whether the citizenry will be convinced is another matter, since Labour suffers from deep unpopularity as a result of its long stay in government, limited ability to improve public services, and involvement in the Iraq War.

No matter, each of these electrification projects is good news for the country’s transportation system, since they will ultimately result in faster, more reliable trains. Electric vehicles provide the benefit of eliminating point-source pollutants, but their implementation may or may not produce overall lower carbon emissions since that depends on the source of electric power. If Britain’s electricity continues to be sourced primarily from coal, gas, and oil, improvements will be minor; a more serious switch to nuclear and renewable sources in compliance with objectives that may be established this week in Copenhagen would make electric trains far more environmentally sustainable.

Earlier this year, Eurostar, which operates trains between London and the European continent, announced that it had met its goal of a 25% reduction in carbon emissions just two years after setting the target for itself. Eurostar, like most high-speed lines, is powered by electric catenary, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the majority of its carbon savings came from buying energy from more environmentally friendly power plants. All the company had to do was buy more of its power from France, rather than England, because the former country relies far more on nuclear plants than the latter, whose electricity is largely produced by dirty coal.

Eurostar’s example is a case in point: transportation systems relying on electricity can be dirty or clean, all depending on where the power is coming from. This point is unfortunately lost on most alternative transportation activists, who cite efficiency to support the claimed ecological advantages of using transit instead of automobiles. Yet efficiency means little when the electricity used is being produced by carbon-generating plants.

This problem is especially relevant today in United States, since public transportation in the form of electrified light rail and streetcars is more popular than ever. Freight and long-distance passenger routes, both of which have relied on diesel locomotion for decades, are being considered for conversion to electric operation because of its environmental, efficiency, and capacity advantages. Meanwhile, plans to encourage the use of plug-in hybrids and eventually fully electric automobiles are advancing rapidly. But how will all this electricity be produced?

Today, the majority of U.S. electricity production comes from fossil fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal. Though the latter has the most serious environmental consequences, specifically because of the strip mining required to unearth underground reserves, the use of all three fuels has negative environmental consequences that cause climate change. Light rail running on electricity may seem clean, because the local point emissions — in the city — are nonexistent, especially as compared to diesel-spewing buses. But if the necessary power is being generated at coal-based plants, the global effect is negative, making some transit systems less environmentally sensitive in terms of per passenger emissions than many automobiles.

One feasible solution is to build more nuclear plants in the United States. GOP leadership in Congress is currently pushing against a carbon cap-and-trade bill in favor of the construction of 100 new nuclear facilities. The U.S. currently has 104 operating plants. The Obama Administration is planning to devote $18.5 billion in stimulus funds for the construction of new plants, but Republicans want a lot more pointed towards an industry that hasn’t produced a new facility stateside since the early 1980s. Though the U.S. is the world’s largest producer of nuclear energy, only 20% of total electricity — also the most produced in the world — comes from the source.

The Republican argument against cap-and-trade doesn’t make much since, as the nuclear industry would benefit from its passage, and there’s no reason that the government couldn’t invest in both nuclear power and reduce our dependence on coal and oil. But the party’s advocacy in favor of nuclear power — yet to be replicated by the Democrats — has its merits. France, which relies on nuclear power for 80% of its electricity production, has less than a third of the per capita carbon emissions of the United States. Compared to GDP, France is three times as efficient as the United States; the two nations, which have very similar per capita wealth, produce incredibly divergent amounts of CO2. The use of French TGVs, metros, and tramways releases very little carbon into the atmosphere compared to U.S. systems.

Yet nuclear is no perfect answer to our energy production problems. It takes decades to build new plants, they’re incredibly expensive, and opposition to their construction — mostly based on unfounded fears about public safety — is rampant. Second, the heat nuclear plants release during electricity production is a cause of climate change, too, even though the plants themselves release no carbon. As a result, investment in renewable energy, such as wind and solar, may be the most reliable option, though those options are limited in their capacity and quite subject to changing environmental conditions, which makes their use in non-windy, non-sunny locations less than optimal. To make matters worse, the U.S. electricity grid isn’t good enough to handle shifting huge amounts of power produced by wind in the Plains states or by solar in the Southwest to the more heavily populated coasts. So more environmentally friendly power will have to come from a mix of both nuclear and renewable sources.

The point, then, is that to suggest that transit is ecologically sensitive is more accurate when the source of that transportation’s electricity is carbon-free or at least carbon-reduced. Proponents of transportation alternatives must also be strong advocates of the remaking of our electricity production system.