The U.S. Needs To Build More Roads
Conservative columnist George Will slams urban planners and says that because less than five percent of American workers use public transportation, the U.S. should put money into building more roads.
Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters says that the highway trust fund, largely filled by the federal gasoline tax (18.4 cents per gallon), will go into deficit in 2009. In spite of the deficit, George Will advocates building more roads stating: "Los Angeles has the least pavement per person; Dallas has twice as much per person and half as much congestion. Furthermore, when new schools are built because old ones have become congested and then the new ones fill up with children from families attracted by new schools, who argues that building the new ones was a mistake?"
New roads will be combined with congestion pricing to keep traffic flowing by those who pay for the privilege: "The congestion crisis requires joining an old material -- concrete -- with new technologies. Toll highways or lanes can do what restaurants and movie theaters do -- use differential pricing to draw traffic to off-peak hours." An example is Interstate 15 in Southern California where the price to drive on it can change as often as every six minutes to prevent congestion.
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Just a thought if we keep
Just a thought if we keep building more road and use congestion priceing are we going to then artifically lower the prices of homes near work so those of us who would preffer to live near work and not pay any tolls can. In this example were are making people drive further, pay an additional however much for tolls, and gas going up. The roads don't always make sense. As for the school exapmle, people love new schools, but they always complain when taxes go up to pay for one.
George Won't...
...tell you exactly where he gets his numbers, but I Will:
"San Francisco is among the cities with the highest use of public transit, according to a U.S. Census Bureau report released Tuesday. San Francisco tied with Boston, where about 31 percent of workers commute on public transportation.
The only U.S. cities with higher public transit use were New York, with 55 percent, and Washington, D.C., with 37 percent. One-third of the nation's 6.4 million people who travel to work on public transportation use systems in New York, according to the report."
San Francisco Business Times - March 2, 2004, citing the American Community Survey
http://www.census.gov/acs/www/index.html
Transit use can be made to appear low - if one includes all of those workers who don't have access to it. Just another example of 'Fair and Balanced' journalism at work....
Edward Sullivan
a confusing mess
Will writes: "Los Angeles has the least pavement per person; Dallas has twice as much per person and half as much congestion." Of course, since Los Angeles and Dallas are only two of out of many American cities, this fact proves almost nothing.
Moreover, Will overlooks that Dallas is rapidly catching up with Los Angeles in the congestion derby. In 1982, Los Angeles had 47 hours of delay per peak period traveler, and Dallas had only 13, a gap of over 3-1. In 2003, Los Angeles led Dallas by only 93 hours to 60, only a 1.6 to 1 gap. Whatever Dallas is doing may not be working out so well.
Will's comparison of roads to schools is silly. There is no risk of system-wide school congestion, because a child can only go to one school at a time. By contrast, people can and do travel on multiple roads at a time. As a result, when govenrment builds a new road, both the new road AND the old road can become congested.
Will's reliance on the low "market share" of public transit is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When government builds roads to lots of destinations and doesn't let transit serve many of them, of course roads will be more popular. From the early 1920s to the mid-60s, the federal government supported roads and did not support transit at all. If the federal government defunded roads and supported only transit for 40 years, I bet you would see a slight change in the figures. (Indeed, high gas prices are already causing transit ridership to rise, as Will would have noticed had he read yesterday's USA TODAY).
Very Confusing
LA has half the freeway centerline miles per person of the average US city. Comparing it to Dallas is but a datum that illustrates the point that LA does not have enough roads to serve its population.
Using the TTI old RCI and new TTI (Roadway Congestion Index & Travel Time Index) is a mathematical construct that among other flaws counts commute time on transit as zero. Indeed the formula used in 2006 for the 2005 data actually subtracted transit from road use despite 85% of that transit being roads based.
Comparing roads to schools is certainly an imperfect analogy but not silly. My little darlings #s 1 & 2 both attend multiple educational institutions. #1 will, in June, briefly be attending either 3 or 4 depending upon your view. The situation in US schools with instances of declining use and overcrowding elsewhere is indeed analogous. Perhaps and example of a driver translocating simultaneously could clear up the confusion.
From the early 1920s to the mid-60s, the federal government supported roads and did not support transit at all.
Not according to the same government that reports collecting more from roads users than it spent over that period while at the same time having collected nothing from transit users despite multibillions of direct subsidies.
reply
"Comparing roads to schools is certainly an imperfect analogy but not silly. My little darlings #s 1 & 2 both attend multiple educational institutions. #1 will, in June, briefly be attending either 3 or 4 depending upon your view."
It does occur to me that occasionally children go to multiple schools (a day school plus some sort of afternoon supplementary program). Nevertheless I still think the road analogy stinks. In the road situation, the driver drives on two roads instead of one precisely because the new road causes his home and/or job to relocate. By contrast, most K-12 children would (I would guess) attend the same number of supplementary schools no matter which K-12 school they attended.
"From the early 1920s to the mid-60s, the federal government supported roads and did not support transit at all.
Not according to the same government that reports collecting more from roads users than it spent over that period while at the same time having collected nothing from transit users despite multibillions of direct subsidies."
Actually, until the 1950s and 1960s, transit was private- then the federal government drove it out of business and into the arms of the public sector through subsidized competition from highways. Until government made transit unprofitable, there were no subsidies and no need for them. Moreover, the "roads pay for themselves" line is rubbish for a variety of reasons:
1. Externalities: costs of driving not reflected in gas taxes (e.g. environmental).
2. Cross-subsidization: not all road users benefited equally, because government taxes users of existing roads to pay for new ones, and the two groups are not always the same people. (To his credit, Will wants to eliminate the problem by focusing on toll roads).
3. Road spending not always financed by gas taxes: roads are often financed by sales taxes etc. (Though to be fair, this is not true at the federal level).
A Decent World For The Little Darlings
Those little darlings will not have a very livable world to grow up into if everyone follows the principle that "LA does not have enough roads to serve its population."
If China's, India's, and Europe's cities all follow this principle, what effect will it have on energy prices, and what effect will it have on global warming?
Charles Siegel