The
Shape of the Future
E
M Risse
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The
Perfect Storm
Virginia
has the ideal combination of a strong state
transportation agency, uninformed municipal control
over land use and a clueless public officialdom to
ensure a dysfunctional road and rail system get
worse with each passing day.
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This
is the transportation story so far: Current
strategies to provide mobility and access (aka,
transportation infrastructure and services)
are tragically flawed. Building more
facilities without a Fundamental Change in
human settlement patterns costs billions of
dollars and makes traffic dysfunction and
congestion worse.
The
flawed mobility strategies are perpetuated by
fraudulent claims that new projects will solve
congestion problems. (See “Self
Delusion and Fraud,” June 7, 2004.)
Besides not meeting citizens’ mobility
needs, current mobility strategies kill tens
of thousands of individuals every year and
contributes to the United States'
non-renewable energy consumption, its
dependency upon foreign oil and its balance of
payments deficits. (See “Death
and Taxes,” June, 21, 2004.)
With
results like this, why have U.S. citizens not
demanded that their governance representatives
develop better strategies to achieve
mobility and access? The answer is clear:
Citizens have been hearing the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth for 80 years from those who
profit from auto-mobility. No public official
with the authority to change Business As Usual
has been willing to openly speak the truth --
certainly not here in Virginia, as I will
document in the last half of this column.
The Responsibility for Providing Transport
Mobility
and access are a public/community/communal (aka,
“government”) responsibility. In a
democracy, mobility and access must be
provided in a way that serves the interests of
the majority of citizens. By any objective
test, the current mobility system is a
failure. Current auto-mobility
strategies favor those at the top of the
economic food chain yet, ironically, not even
the elite is well served.
Transportation
is a government responsibility due to the
profound impact that mobility and access have
a on the public welfare. A government agency
does not always have to provide the service
directly. But, as with public health and
safety, government does have the
responsibility to ensure that citizens'
transportation needs are met.
In
Virginia, state government is the entity
responsible for transportation, retaining
virtually all relevant powers reserved to the
states under the federal constitution. At
the same time, the state has
delegated -- or relinquished, if you prefer --
to municipalities the power to regulate land
use. Perversely, by hewing to the Dillon Rule,
the state simultaneously limits local
authority to intelligently shape human
settlement patterns. The Dillon Rule is used
as both a reason and an excuse for inaction.
By
these actions, the Commonwealth of Virginia
has established the “perfect storm” of
congestion, immobility and lack of
accountability.
Road Planning and Road Building
Virginia
has one of the three most powerful
transportation agencies in the United States.
The state controls essentially all roadways,
highways and expressways and most of the other
modes of travel within the Commonwealth. To
describe the state's role in transport, one
can start with the proposition that “there
are no significant municipal transportation
responsibilities.” In addition, there are no
federal funds or mandates that do not pass
through state hands. One can list
exceptions, but they are minor.
State
and municipal governance practitioners are
happy with this system as long as citizens do
not come to fully understanding the situation
and short circuit governments’ blame game.
State officials can blame municipalities for
the land-use decisions and reap all the
political benefits of running a big
transportation agency. Municipal
officials can say their hands are tied, blame
“the state” for not providing adequate
transport facilities and look like heroes when
they provide small amounts of money for a
construction project here and there.
The
disconnect between land use and transportation
has led to horrendous results. In the mid-70s
after completing an exhaustive and
award-winning re-planning process, the Fairfax
County transportation staff calculated that
there would be four times the number of trips
generated by the planned land uses as could be
accommodated by the transportation system
specified in the Comprehensive Plan. And
that assumed supporting land uses surrounding
METRO stations and funding for a number of
transport facilities not on the state agenda.
No one disagreed with the County staff’s
assessment: not the citizens who had helped
allocate the land uses, not the state
transportation staff.
Since
those calculations were made three decades
ago, the disparity has widened significantly.
In most cases, the planned concentrations of
development in METRO station areas were
abandoned. Many of the transportation
facilities were never built. Continual
amendments to the comprehensive plan have
resulted in a "build out" that
exceeds that shown on the comprehensive plan.
Congestion
does not stem from any lack of planning. The
state highway agency planned a lot of roads in
the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Most of the roads, however, were in the wrong
location to serve the urban, metropolitan
population which has emerged over the last 50
years. Some roads were removed from state
plans at the insistence of municipalities
under pressure from angry citizens.
By
the 1970s, smarting from the lances thrown by
angry citizens and posturing politicians,
state transportation officials adopted a
strategy of building only roads to which
municipal and state politicians agreed. This
resulted in the overbuilding of roads in some
parts of the Commonwealth. Most of the
overbuilt areas have been in scattered,
low-density jurisdictions far from the core
mobility needs. There is one exception. The
Greater Richmond New Urban Region, the home of
VDOT, was showered with asphalt. (See “The
Shape of Richmond’s Future,” Feb. 16,
2004.)
A
companion problem is that the Virginia
Department of Transportation and its
predecessor agencies have constructed roads
that have made urban areas more dysfunctional.
In Northern Virginia, VDOT has improved roads
on the fringe while neglecting those serving
the core. The resulting congestion in the core
has driven residents and businesses to migrate
toward the periphery. The removal of a 1930s
culvert here and there on primary roadways in
the core would have yielded far more
congestion mitigation than four-laning farm
roads into the hinterlands.
From
the 1950s through the 1980s, the
over-politicized succession of transportation
agencies VHD/VDH&T/VDOT built Lemming
Roads. “You want to run off that cliff?
Let us build you a nice wide road so you can
get there faster.” Now the state has run out
of money and has no understanding of the
Fundamental Change necessary to achieve
mobility and access for the citizens of
Virginia.
How bad are the current road plans in
Virginia? Two national organizations recently
listed the 27 most wasteful, unneeded road
projects in the United States (Road To Ruin).
Virginia has six times its per-capita share of
really bad road projects, eight times its
per-jurisdiction share and fifteen times its
area-served share. A quick analysis of the
projects suggests that none of the Virginia
roads on the list would serve the citizens of
the region where they are located or benefit
the Commonwealth as a whole.
Private
Help for the Government
A
solution frequently touted by conservatives
who oppose raising taxes to build more roads
is to expand the role for the "private
sector".
Public/private
“partnerships” can help government meet
its responsibility with respect to public
mobility and access. The private sector
frequently can cut design, construction and
operating costs. However, the "what, when
and where" of the transportation
infrastructure is inherently a public
responsibility that cannot be delegated.
In
many
cases, the problems generated by private money
far outweigh the benefit. First, it is
critical to keep in mind that, by definition,
the private party in the public-private
partnership plans to make a profit. There is
no free lunch. If the private sector can
provide a transportation service or facility
much cheaper than the public sector, that is
prima facie evidence that the public system
needs fixing.
Second,
too much “private” interest in the
public/private partnership results in a push
for projects that benefit private interests,
not public interests. If the private sector
can execute a project for much less than it
costs the public sector, it may be because the
private sector is more efficient. But it also
may be because private investors are
benefiting in some way not readily apparent to
the public, or because the public sector is
shouldering some of the financial risk.
A
third problem with public-private partnerships
is that they provide an easy way to cash in on
political connections, thus distorting the
specifications and location of transport
infrastructure. Halliburton in Iraq is not a
unique problem. Consider the Cambridge
Systematics/American Highway Users Alliance
program to locate and remove “bottlenecks”
(“Study Catalogs the Worst Traffic
Nightmares,” Leslie Miller, Associated
Press, Feb. 19, 2004) and then reread “Self-Delusion
and Fraud”.
It
is axiomatic: When private money goes to build
public infrastructure, benefits accrue to the
private investors -- often at the expense of
the public interest. Zoning proffers, for
instance, put private money into the pot to
build roads, but almost without exception the
construction directly benefits the land owner.
Rarely do the new facilities improve the
neighborhood or village where the project is
located, and almost never do they move towards
the creation of a Balanced Community in a sustainable region.
A
fourth problem is that two major
private-sector investments in Virginia
transport facilities have been busts. The
Greenway Toll Road in Loudoun County, which
has just received permission to raise tolls
again, has never made a profit for the
investors. The bonds for the Pocahontas
Parkway near Richmond are on a ratings watch
list. This toll road is also underperforming
projections, and there is a request on the
table to build a new interchange to generate
traffic by encouraging development in an
unsuitable location.
This
last point reinforces the axiom that
transportation facilities and land-use must be
planned together. It is not just imperative
public policy, it is good investment policy.
There
is an overarching reason for the current
popularity of “public-private
partnerships” among governance practitioners
in transportation: There is no public money
for new “projects.” There is a good reason
for this lack of funds. Citizens do not trust
the government to spend the money wisely to
achieve mobility. Given this fact, is tossing
private money where public money will not
solve the problem a smart choice? Only the
Business As Usual crowd thinks it is a good
idea. This brings us to the issue of what
governance practitioners have to say about
transportation and money to support the
construction of new facilities.
What
the Government Says...
Having
established that mobility and access are a
government responsibility, what do those in
government service tell citizens about
mobility and access? What do state
transportation planners say to dispel the
delusion that just building “improvements”
solve transportation problems? Recall that it
would be fraud to perpetuate the self-delusion
of the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.
Here is a brief collection of recent, typical
statements.
Secretary
of Transportation Whitt Clement says...
After
the Governor, Secretary Clement is the person
chiefly responsible for ensuring mobility and
access in the Commonwealth. In a Richmond
Times-Dispatch piece published in May 2004
and distributed to Media General papers around
the Commonwealth, Clement gets about as close
to the truth as a politician ever does:
“...improving
Virginia’s transportation network requires
far more than simply building more roads.”
That
is absolutely true, but instead of following
up with a comprehensive statement about the
need to balance land-use trip generation with
transport-system capacity, Whitt and his staff
launch into a paean on the importance of
transit (aka, shared-vehicle systems).
Their message is that the Commonwealth must
build roads and build/support
shared-vehicle systems. This is true, of
course, only if there is a comprehensive
regional plan for land use that the
shared-vehicle system can actually serve.
Clement implies that if we build both roads
and rails, that will solve traffic
dysfunction.
Clement’s
opinion piece never once mentions that
spending money on shared-vehicle systems where
there is not a supporting human settlement
pattern, especially in the station areas, is
like shoveling money off the back of the
aircraft carrier with a really big shovel.
Building
a new shared-vehicle system like the National
Capital Subregion’s METRO was sold as a way
to solve/prevent transport congestion.
Congestion is less severe now than it would
have been if the same houses, jobs and
services were distributed in the same
locations as they are today and there were no
METRO system. But what percentage of
citizens face less congestion now than they
did in the early 1960s when METRO was
conceived?
The
reason METRO does not work better is that
there is no comprehensive
land-use/transportation plan for the National
Capital Subregion.
METRO
proves the importance of functional settlement
patterns. The citizens who now enjoy lower
levels of congestion live and work in
fundamentally new and different human
settlement patterns -- exemplified by the
Rosslyn-Ballston Corridor -- that could not
exist without METRO. There are only a handful
of functional state-area locations, so only a
tiny fraction of the Subregion's citizens see
an improvement. Those who do benefit pay a
high premium in home and work place costs for
the privilege. (See “Wild
Abandonment,” September 8, 2003.)
Clement’s
article avoids the reality that building more
roads and/or shared-vehicle systems will not
improve mobility and access without a
Fundamental Change in settlement patterns.
University
Transportation Fellow Ray Pethtel says...
The
second example of a governance
practitioner’s response to the need to
improve mobility can be found in the letter
from Ray Pethtel to Jim Bacon in the May 24
issue of Bacon's Rebellion (See “No
Substitute for Building More Roads”.)
Pethtel, a former VDOT transportation
commissioner, has played a leadership role in
Virginia’s transportation efforts since
Gerald Baliles took office in 1986. He is now
the University Transportation Fellow at
Virginia Tech. Pethtel does a good job of
articulating the thinking of senior state
officials over the past 20 years.
Pethtel
apparently was traumatized early in his
service to Virginia by trying to drive to “Loudounville.”
The incident may explain why so few helpful
transportation resources have been focused on
the northern part of Virginia since 1986. The
Virginia Atlas and Gazetteer suggests that
“Loudounville” does not exist in Virginia.
For that reason, it would be hard to drive
there on VA Route 7 or any other road. Let’s
assume he meant “Leesburg.”
Pethtel
uses VA Route 7 as an example of a road that
needed to be widened. Now that VA Route 7 is
four- and six-laned from Leesburg to Tysons
Corner, is it smarter to live in Leesburg and
work in Tysons Corner than it was in 1970 or
in 1986? How about making VA Route 7 into a
10- or 12-lane highway or building a toll road
from Tysons Corner to Leesburg via
Reston/Herndon/Washington Dulles International
Airport to bypass VA Route 7? That would solve
the congestion problem, wouldn't it? Actually,
that's what actually was built -- and
congestion just gets worse.
Pethtel’s letter cites a number of roads
built since the Baliles administration
increased road funding as examples of why we
need to build more roads now. Some roads he
listed were needed and serve a useful purpose
today. Some roads he lists are pure
"pork." The justification for many
of the latter is the hope that if one builds a
wide enough road, some “jobs” will wander
down the asphalt and come to rest near the
urban agglomerations these new wider roadways
divide or bypass.
The
roads that were (and are) needed would be
better investments if they served more
functional human settlement patterns. The pork
roads made mobility worse for reasons noted in
“The
Shape of Richmond’s Future”.
Pethtel
seems upset that Jim Bacon, in his column
"Straws in
the Wind" (April 12, 2004) did not
acknowledge the modest demand management
efforts that have been undertaken by Virginia
over the past 20 years. He asks “what
planet” Mr. Bacon has been on. The short
answer that somehow must have been missing in
Mr. Pethtel’s education is any planet where
the laws of geometry, physics and Human
Settlement apply. Pethtel lists demand-management
actions taken by the Commonwealth to address
congestion dysfunction on his and his
successors’ watch. The bottom line is the
actions do not solve the problems. And they
never will.
Pethtel
concedes that “better relationships between
transportation and land use” would help.
There is nothing in his letter to suggest,
however, that the key to improving mobility
and access is not just a “better
relationship” but a balance between
land-use travel demand and transportation
system capacity.
The
accepted tactic in government and road
advocacy circles today is this: Never deny
there is a transportation/land-use
relationship nor deny there is a need for
station-area land uses to support
shared-vehicle systems. Just do not let on how
important these elements are, and then build
projects to support Business As Usual before
citizens wake up to reality.
VDOT
Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet
says...
Philip
Shucet is the current transportation
commissioner, heads the Virginia Department of
Transportation (VDOT) and chairs the
Commonwealth Transportation Board.
In
the lengthy three-part survey of
transportation problems published in Media
General newspapers in June, Shucet laments the
politicized decision making that took place during
the Allen and Gilmore administrations. There
is a lot to lament. Besides committing all the
same sins of omission and obfuscation as the current administration, Allen
and Gilmore add massive cost overruns
and financial gimmickry. In his discussion,
however, Shucet focuses on the lack of money
to start new projects. The second of three
articles ends with Shucet saying that without
new money, there will be nothing to talk
about. Nothing? How about Fundamental
Change in human settlement patterns?
But
road advocates should not despair, they have
the support of the Commissioner. In an
“alert” distributed by a road building
advocacy group, Shucet is quoted as saying we
need to keep focused on the “future of
transportation,” and that means finding
money to build new, large projects.
Urban
traffic congestion continues to get worse.
More than 95 percent of the citizens of
Virginia are urban citizens based on their
economic and social needs and their mode of
travel. Building more roads without
Fundamental Change in settlement patterns only
makes matters worse. Shucet never lets on that
this is the case.
The
failure to own up to the core problem of
dysfunctional human settlement sets the stage
for “shrewd” political tactics such as
eliminating popular services so citizens will
demand more spending. You will recall closing
the DMV offices to dramatize the revenue
pinch. In another recent move, the
Commonwealth Transportation Board removed
funds from the VDOT six-year plan for an HOV
connector between HOV lanes on I-95 south of
the new I-95/I-395/I-495 Interchange at
Springfield and the HOV lanes that exist north
of the interchange on I-395 (Shirley Highway).
That translates to “Let the carpoolers carry
their cars around the new Springfield
interchange. That will serve them right for
not voting for the sales tax surcharge.”
VDRPT
Executive Director Karen Rae says...
Karen
Rae is the current Executive Director of the
Virginia Department of Rail and Public
Transportation (VDRPT). VDRPT is a little
sister department to VDOT in the family of
departments under Secretary of Transportation
Clement. As the name suggests, Rae’s
department is responsible for shared-vehicle
transport systems.
In
a letter to the editor in The Washington
Post on July 5, Rae cites the fact that
there were over 200 public meetings on the
“Rail to Dulles” project since 1994 as
evidence that the extension and the
public-private partnership to implement that
extension is a good idea. (See “Rail
To Dulles Realities,” January 5, 2004.)
[add link]
As
far as we know, at none of these 200 meetings
did Rae or others in her department make it
clear that without supporting land uses
immediately adjacent to the planned METRO platforms, the
extension will make METRO less
functional. The result will be more peak
hour/peak direction demand. This demand
already exceeds capacity.
VDRPT
also did not point out that, without major
changes in station-area land uses, the line
will serve only a fraction of the
Washington-Dulles International Airport-related
travel demand. METRO
does not serve the areas where most airport
workers and airline passengers will be
traveling from.
The
extension is an exceptionally good deal for
land owners in the corridor who have agreed to
pay a small special tax and have played a
key role in setting up the public-private
“partnership” to build the extension.
Do you see a pattern here? It is not a
functional human settlement pattern that you
see.
Commonwealth
Transportation Board appointee Katherine
Hanley says...
For
nearly two decades, Katherine Hanley was a supervisor
or the chair of the Fairfax County Board of
Supervisors. In her terms on the board that
ended early this year, she had key a role in
approving much of the land use now lacking
mobility. She also played a key role in
blocking the development of supporting land
uses near METRO stations. She was recently
appointed to the Commonwealth Transportation
Board, the senior transportation policy board
in Virginia.
What
did Hanley say about creating mobility and
access upon her appointment? According to The
Washington Post, she said: “The fact
that most of the money is now going to
maintenance, and there’s not many new
projects underway to help relieve congestion,
is a concern.”
In
another era, she might have claimed, “If we
just had more straw we could spin a lot more
gold thread, and then the King and his
courtiers would all be able to wear golden
clothes.” Today, most citizens would know
the straw trick was a myth and a fraud. Soon,
hopefully, they will realize that the money
trick is a myth too.
Money
will not “relieve congestion.” A lot of
money spent on the sort of projects that
Clement, Pethtel, Shucet, Rae and Hanley
champion will only make things worse if they
are not accompanied by Fundamental Change in
human settlement patterns. It cannot be said
enough: Money is not the problem.
If
money will not relieve congestion, why the
obsession with it? Because focusing on money
keeps citizens who do not relish paying more
taxes or tolls distracted and away from the
real solutions that take political courage.
It keeps citizens off the backs of governance
representatives and their transportation
appointees for a while longer.
From
what those who are appointed to conduct the
Commonwealth’s transportation business say,
it is easy to see why citizens are deluded
into making bad location decisions based on
what their government is telling them.
In
the next column, we consider the other
“solutions,” the role of the media and
what the path to mobility might be.
--
July 12, 2004
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Ed
Risse, and his wife Linda live inside the
"Clear Edge" of the "urban
enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality
in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban
Region."
Mr.
Risse,
the principal of
SYNERGY/Planning,
Inc., can be contacted at
spirisse@aol.com.
See
profile.
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