05-25-2002
TRANSPORTATION: Road Test
It has become the new American ritual. Each morning, millions of motorists
back out of their driveways, cruise onto the highways, and brace
themselves for the wait that's ahead. Indeed, traffic congestion is
getting worse in even some of the smallest metropolitan areas. According
to the Texas Transportation Institute, a research group that studies urban
mobility, drivers in 68 urban areas spent 4.5 billion hours in traffic
delays in 1999, costing them a combined $78 billion in extra travel time
and wasted fuel. But if you think congestion is bad now, fasten your
seatbelt.
In the next 20 years, the U.S. population will increase by an estimated 50
million, from about 280 million today to 330 million. In addition, the
number of registered vehicles is expected to grow by a similar amount,
from 225 million to about 275 million. And by 2013, the total number of
commercial trucks will increase by a third, from 6 million to 8
million.
Next year, when Congress begins work on legislation to reauthorize the
federal government's surface transportation programs, it will engage in
one of Washington's most heated transportation debates: What's the best
way to reduce congestion and foster future mobility-by building more
highways or more mass transit? At the moment, transportation experts seem
to agree that the answer is both. A lot of both. "We need more
investment in all forms of transportation," said William Millar,
president of the American Public Transportation Association. "We have
underinvested in highways, and we have way underinvested in
transit."
But meeting both of these mounting needs won't be cheap. The Federal
Highway Administration has estimated that it will cost more than $50
billion per year just to maintain the nation's highway system. That's an
increase of almost $20 billion over current annual federal spending.
Meanwhile, the Federal Transit Administration says that it will take
almost $11 billion per year-$4 billion more than the present spending
level-to meet transit's maintenance needs. To actually improve these
transportation systems, the agencies bump up the annual price tags to $83
billion for highways and $16 billion for transit.
Not surprisingly, Washington's leading highway and transit groups have
used these estimates as starting points for their requests in the upcoming
reauthorization bill. Last year, the American Road & Transportation
Builders Association announced it wants at minimum a $300 billion bill-$50
billion a year over six years-to meet America's highway needs. APTA wants
to reach $14 billion per year in transit spending. And both groups seem
eager to help each other meet those goals.
"The documented needs for highways and transit are there," said
Matthew Jeanneret, a spokesman for the road-builders association. "In
our view, the effort should be focused on growing the overall program so
that there is additional investment for highways and mass
transit."
But there's a hitch: There might not be as much money available as these
groups were expecting just a year ago. When the Bush administration
unveiled its fiscal 2003 budget in February, it proposed cutting highway
spending by nearly $9 billion, mainly because of a decline in the gas-tax
revenues that flow into the Highway Trust Fund. And because the 2003
numbers will serve as the baseline for the upcoming reauthorization bill,
any large increase in highway and transit spending is now in doubt.
(Congress, however, is working diligently to restore a large portion of
the $9 billion cut.) Add to that a less-than-buoyant economy and the
federal government's focus on tax cuts and higher spending for defense and
homeland security, and it seems likely that Washington interest groups
will be vying for a smaller pot of transportation dollars.
Given the likelihood of limited resources, what's the best way to meet the
country's future transportation needs? What's the right funding mix for
highways and mass transit?
Although most transportation experts favor a mixed approach, many of them
believe that spending should be skewed toward highways because people use
them more than transit. Others think that mass transit should receive more
emphasis because it conserves energy, limits urban sprawl, and does less
damage to the environment. And some argue that individual metropolitan
areas should decide on the right mix.
But one thing's for sure: The government needs to invest more in the
nation's transportation infrastructure. "You're never going to meet
all the needs," said Rep. Thomas E. Petri, R-Wis., who chairs the
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee's Highways and Transit
panel. "But hopefully we can get pretty close to providing the most
[funds] that we can."
The Successes-and Limits-of Transit
Questions about how best to meet America's mobility needs have been around
for a long time. With the explosion in automobile usage after World War
II, the federal government decided that the country needed more roads, so
in the 1950s it embarked on its greatest public works project: the
creation of the interstate highway system. To pay for it, the government
established the Highway Trust Fund, which was financed by federal taxes on
gasoline. More than four decades and $130 billion later, the government
has virtually completed this 43,000-mile web of roadway. Today, the
interstate system stands as a symbol of the nation's power, size, and
freedom of movement.
But beginning in the early 1980s, with the interstate system mostly
finished, policy makers began to turn their attention away from pavement
and asphalt and toward buses and light rail. In 1982, the federal
government raised the federal gasoline tax by 5 cents, and it devoted one
penny of this increase to create an account for transit projects. Since
then, 20 percent of each gasoline-tax increase has been set aside for
transit.
Then, in 1991, Congress passed the landmark Intermodal Surface
Transportation Efficiency Act. This legislation, for the first time, gave
states and localities the flexibility to use their federal highway funds
for transit, bike paths, or pedestrian walkways. While the act didn't
result in a huge shift in transportation spending, it contained provisions
that favored investments in transit. For example, it established air
quality regulations prohibiting polluted cities from building new roads,
and it also took some transportation decision-making powers away from
state transportation departments (which many people believe had
historically favored road-building) and gave them to local metropolitan
planning organizations.
Most recently, in 1998, Congress passed the Transportation Equity Act for
the 21st Century, which provided mammoth increases in both highway and
transit spending. Today, federal transit spending stands at about $7
billion per year-an increase of almost 80 percent since 1990. In addition,
transit makes up 17 percent of all government expenditures for surface
transportation, compared with 82 percent for highways. (Amtrak receives
the remaining 1 percent.)
In fact, with this increased investment, transit is enjoying a sort of
renaissance. According to APTA, transit use has grown 22 percent since
1995, more than any other transportation mode. During that same period,
highway use has increased 14.7 percent and air travel had increased 19
percent before September 11. In all, Americans used transit for 9.5
billion trips in 2001.
And transit supporters maintain that investing in an even larger system is
the best way to meet America's future transportation demands. For one
thing, they say, transit is better for the environment and uses less
energy than automobiles do. Transit "may not be the best way to
solve" air pollution problems, Millar said, "but we're a great
way to do it. [And] we may not be the best way to reduce energy
dependency, but we are a great way to do it." Transit's proponents
also point out that it benefits those people who will never use the
systems. "Even people who choose not to ride public transportation
benefit from the more vibrant, healthy community that it fosters,"
Jennifer L. Dorn, head of the Federal Transit Administration, recently
told Congress.
Other supporters argue that the federal government should concentrate on
transit because the highway system has reached its capacity. David
Burwell, president of the pro-transit Surface Transportation Policy
Project, points out that nearly 80 percent of the U.S. population resides
in urban areas. "There is just no more room for roads. Transit is the
solution," he said. Additionally, Burwell notes, polls show that an
overwhelming majority of Americans favor expanding transit over building
new roads: "The public is saying, `Give us more choices.'
"
But transit has one gigantic shortcoming: Even with its recent gains in
ridership, relatively few people actually use it. Indeed, transit accounts
for just 1 percent of all surface transportation passenger miles in the
United States, and just 5 percent of all commutes to work. By comparison,
automobile use makes up 99 percent of passenger miles and 88 percent of
trips to work. Even in urban areas, transit accounts for a small fraction
of passenger miles traveled.
Therefore, transportation experts warn, increasing investment in transit
isn't going to significantly reduce traffic congestion. "If you are
looking for transit to solve congestion, you are barking up the wrong
tree," said Robert D. Atkinson, vice president of the Progressive
Policy Institute, a centrist Democratic think tank.
Furthermore, Alan Pisarski, a leading authority on commuting behavior,
notes that work commutes-by far the biggest use of transit-will become a
declining share of transportation activity over the next 20 years as the
Baby Boomers retire. "That makes it difficult for transit to compete
[with highways]," he said.
The bottom line on transit is inescapable: Despite its benefits and
America's concerted effort to boost spending on it over the past 20 years,
few people use it. And there's a good chance that an even smaller share of
the population will use it in the future. "Transit now gets 20
percent of the public spending on transportation ... and provides between
1 and 2 percent of the trips," said Anthony Downs, a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution. "That's a fairly impressive
subsidy."
The Case for Highways
William Fay enjoys telling a story to explain just how lopsided the focus
on transit has become. Fay, who is president and CEO of the American
Highway Users Alliance, recalls attending a forum last October hosted by
the Illinois Growth Task Force, a group of state legislators formed in
1999 to look at transportation and land-use issues. During the event, one
legislator told him that she wanted to devote 40 percent of the state's
transportation budget to transit. She then added: "Why shouldn't we
make it 60 percent?"
Fay couldn't believe what he had just heard. In Illinois, only 9 percent
of state residents use transit for commuting to work, and the percentage
of people who use it for trips on a daily basis is smaller than that. Even
in Chicago-the state's most transit-dependent city-transit accounts for
just 13 percent of all commutes. "There is not a rationale to argue
for 40 percent," he told the task force. "And there's certainly
not a rationale to argue for 60 percent."
The San Francisco Bay Area is another place where transportation
investment is tilted sharply toward mass transit. In December 2001, the
Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission approved a 25-year, $87.4
billion transportation plan. And here's the kicker: 77 percent of the
money is dedicated to mass transit, even though transit there accounts for
only 6 percent of all daily trips and 10 percent of all commutes. Doug
Kimsey, a senior planning analyst at the commission, says that the area
simply doesn't have room for more roads: "Our system is fairly well
built out. We just don't have the capacity to expand our system much
more."
But Ethan Veneklasen, the transportation policy director at the California
Alliance for Jobs, a group that supports more road investment in the Bay
Area, contends that the commission is ignoring the fact that the
overwhelming majority of people in the area rely on their cars.
"There needs to be a closer relationship between mode choice and
where we are spending our money," he said. Moreover, while the
western part of the area is landlocked, there is plenty of room to grow in
the east, Veneklasen says. He adds that the Bay Area's population is
supposed to increase by more than a million over the next 25 years.
"With congestion as bad as it already is ... it is only going to get
worse."
Indeed, many transportation observers have come to the same conclusion:
Despite record levels of investment in transportation, the United States
needs more roads. "If the transit numbers are right [where they are
supposed to be], then the highway numbers need to be a whole lot
bigger," Pisarski said. The highway users alliance, in fact, reports
that since 1970, the U.S. population has grown by 32 percent, the number
of licensed drivers by 63 percent, the number of vehicles by 90 percent,
and the number of miles driven each year by 132 percent. Yet the number of
miles of roadway has increased by just 6 percent since that time.
James A. Dunn Jr., a professor of public policy at Rutgers University
(Camden), attributes this dearth in highway construction to an
"anti-auto vanguard" consisting of liberal and environmental
groups (such as the Surface Transportation Policy Project). Over the past
several years, these groups have exerted a tremendous power in
transportation planning at the local, state, and federal levels. This
"vanguard" sees the automobile "as a voracious consumer of
irreplaceable energy resources, a major source of greenhouse gases, a
killer of tens of thousands of accident victims, and a destroyer of calm
and cohesive communities," Dunn wrote in his book, Driving Forces:
The Automobile, Its Enemies, and the Politics of Mobility. "They urge
enactment of policies to discourage people from using their cars. They
want Americans to take public transit, ride-share, pedal bikes, or
walk."
The Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission admits that such
opposition to the automobile is another reason why its transportation plan
is skewed so heavily toward transit. "There's a lot of local and
political resistance to expanding roadways," said Joe Curley, the
commission's public information officer.
Dunn contends, however, that the anti-auto groups underestimate the love
that millions of Americans have for their cars. He argues that Americans
consider the automobile the best way to perform multiple tasks in one trip
(such as taking the kids to school and picking up the dry cleaning); that
they believe it's the most convenient and comfortable way to travel; and
that they see it as a symbol of personal freedom.
In addition, highway supporters contend that the anti-auto groups misjudge
the potential impact that additional highway capacity could have on
reducing pollution. Cars, they say, emit much of their pollution as they
idle during bottlenecks; increasing road capacity will improve mobility
and therefore help minimize pollution. Thomas J. Donohue, president and
CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has recently taken a leading
role in lobbying for higher transportation investment for all modes,
argues that the anti-auto groups are misguided in their belief that not
building roads will help stop congestion: "They have said if you
don't build them, they won't come. We didn't build them, and they sure as
hell came."
Burwell, though, denies that the STPP and others like it are anti-car.
Instead, he says, they want more transportation choices. "We're
anti-enforced-dependence on cars."
Because of the overwhelming number of Americans who drive and enjoy their
cars, Dunn believes that the best way to address traffic congestion is
through a policy anchored by the automobile but supplemented by transit
and other transportation innovations (such as improving fuel efficiency).
He calls this approach auto-plus. "You don't try and attack the
automobile head-on," he has said. "You don't try to get people
out of their cars when they don't want to get out of their cars. You look
at reality, and you improve around the edges."
But transit advocates believe it's shortsighted to concentrate more on
highways than transit simply because more people use them. Millar, for
instance, argues that the automobile didn't become the dominant form of
travel until the government spent billions of dollars and several decades
on highways. "It didn't happen by some free-market accident," he
said.
By contrast, it has been just 20 years since transit received its own
funding account, and just 11 years since the passage of ISTEA. A
build-it-and-they-will-come approach will also work for mass transit-but
it will take time, says Barbara McCann, a spokeswoman at the Surface
Transportation Policy Project. "It's premature to talk [as if] we've
done enough [with transit]," she said. "How long did it take to
build the interstate system?"
Let the Community Decide?
Other observers believe that finding the right transportation mix requires
focusing on more than just highways and transit. The right blend, they
say, should grow out of community decisions about how to meet their
transportation needs. Indeed, that's how the federal highway program
currently operates: Revenues in the Highway Trust Fund are funneled back
to the 50 states, and metropolitan planning organizations have a large
role in how that money is spent. According to Tim Lomax, a research
engineer at the Texas Transportation Institute, this approach works
because it recognizes that urban areas have different transportation
needs. "The right mix isn't a formula you can apply everywhere,"
he said.
In fact, the San Francisco Bay Area and other places should have the right
to devote 77 percent of their transportation to mass transit, says one
highway expert. "They are getting the transportation system that the
people want, and if they didn't get what they want, their elected leaders
would be voted out," the expert explained. "If the people in the
Bay Area want to sit in traffic ... I think that's the system
working."
Nevertheless, this highway expert points out that many areas-such as
Houston-need more highways but can't build them because of regulations
that bar road construction in polluted areas: "It should be just as
easy to have a highway-oriented program as a transit-oriented
program."
Some members of Congress and Washington policy makers who identify
themselves as pragmatists have a different definition of the right
transportation mix. They want to increase the overall spending pie as much
as possible to benefit both highways and transit. Donohue of the Chamber
of Commerce explains that it is pragmatic for the transportation community
to back both highways and transit in order to get as much support for the
reauthorization bill as possible. "We need urban votes to get rural
roads, and we need rural votes to get urban transit," he
said.
And transportation leaders on the Hill seem determined to provide more
investment for both. Rep. Petri notes, for instance, that the current
level of highway and transit spending is inadequate to maintain the
existing infrastructure. "If we don't increase investment in our
transportation infrastructure, then delays and accidents will go up,"
he said. "We don't want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish." In
addition, Petri says that Congress will likely continue the 80-20 funding
split between highway and transit for new gas-tax revenues.
However, because of the tepid economy and the Bush administration's
proposed $9 billion cut in highway spending in fiscal 2003, increasing the
overall pie won't be easy. The transportation community is nevertheless
scrambling to produce a hefty spending bill for next year. "I
wouldn't concede anything yet on the size of the bill," said
Jeanneret of the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.
"We still have a long way to go."
For starters, the House on May 14 passed a bill, by a vote of 410-5, to
restore at least $4.4 billion of the Bush funding cut-an important step
toward boosting 2003 transportation spending and the baseline for next
year's reauthorization bill. Transportation advocates are also kicking
around the idea of raising gasoline taxes to finance a very large bill.
Although the prospects for this kind of tax increase seem quixotic right
now, Millar points out that the government raised gasoline taxes in
1982-during the tax-cutting Reagan administration, the Cold War, and a
stagnant economy.
Yet no matter how much the federal government spends on highways and
transit, and no matter how far it lets communities go in making their own
transportation decisions, one thing is certain: Traffic congestion isn't
going to go away. According to the Brookings Institution's Downs,
congestion is how our society rations its scarce road space. Americans, he
points out, have the freedom to live and work where they choose; they tend
to work the same hours to interact more efficiently with others; and they
enjoy the personal freedom that their cars provide. But that combination
produces traffic-a lot of it.
Still, Downs contends, the United States needs to spend heavily in the
future on road construction to maintain current highways and bridges, and
to build roads in new growth areas. And he believes that transit spending
can also help. But no matter how much the government spends, he says,
congestion is here to stay. "You'd better learn to like it," he
said. "Get yourself an air-conditioned car with a stereo radio, a
tape deck, a portable computer, a television set, a microwave, and commute
with somebody you're really attracted to."
So the next time American drivers back out of their driveways, get onto
the highways, and brace themselves for the wait ahead, they should
probably heed Downs's advice about traffic congestion: You might as well
try to enjoy it.
Mark Murray
National Journal
