Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Annual Infrastructure Maintenance Deficit: $1.6 Trillion and Counting

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by

James A. Bacon
in

The Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young have just published the latest must-read on the topic of lagging infrastructure investment in the United States. The U.S. faces a $1.6 trillion deficit in infrastructure for transportation, energy, water and wastewater through 2010 just for maintenance, concludes “Infrastructure 2007: A Global Perspective.”

Says Dale Ann Reiss, an Ernst & Young executive and vice chairman of the ULI, a land-use tank: “At some point, the system is going to grind to a halt.” (The Wall Street Journal summarizes the report today on page B-4. You can acccess the ULI summary here.)

Writes the Journal:

The study urges leaders and planners to reconsider the way U.S. cities are built, with hub-and-spoke systems to better handle mass transit. It also suggests infill housing and mixed-use development to reduce dependence on cars, especially in Sun Belt cities such as Houston, where the average commuter already drives 39 miles a day.

Some interesting factoids…

Transportation costs paid directly by user:

  • Driving—98 percent
  • Transit—36 percent (Urban areas over 1 million)
  • Parking—1–4 percent

Cost of providing transportation:

  • Local bus—$0.76/ passenger mile
  • Heavy rail—$0.49/ passenger mile
  • Driving —$0.37/ passenger mile

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14 responses to “Annual Infrastructure Maintenance Deficit: $1.6 Trillion and Counting”

  1. Richard Jennings Avatar
    Richard Jennings

    You can get free access to that Wall Street Journal article with a netpass from http://www.congoo.com

  2. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    I would love to see the way drivers (cars only? trucks too?) are calculated to be paying 98% of the total cost.

    Does that imclude greenhouse gases, time loss by others due to congestion, losses due to accidents and deaths?

    Since all autonomobile tirps involves parking in two places perhaps the cost of parking and driving should be added together?

    “The study urges leaders and planners to reconsider the way U.S. cities are built,”

    Great idea!

    “with hub-and-spoke systems to better handle mass transit.”

    Sorry, hub and spoke without system wide Balance is METRO and we know that does not work. (Most of the trains leave most of the stations most of the time essentially empty.

    What does work is station-area Balance, a network of shared-vehicle systems and shared-vehicle-system-wide balance.

    “It also suggests infill housing and mixed-use development to reduce dependence on cars, especially in Sun Belt cities such as Houston, where the average commuter already drives 39 miles a day.”

    Without Balance at the Alpha Village and Alpha Community scales “infill housing” and “mixed-use developemt” are not solutions.

    EMR

  3. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    am I hearing correctly?

    METRO does NOT work for hub/spoke?

    Is light-rail considered a valid part of a balanced community concept?

    If so.. and hub/spoke is not the correct configuration – what is?

    next question –

    is METRO and/or bus transit considered “shared-vehicle” systems?

    what else would be considered “shared-vehicle” systems?

  4. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Based on my research those numbers are, in fact accurate. Even if you throw in all the factors EMR mentions, they change very little, provided that you apply those factors equally.

    The reason that auto users pay a high percentage of costs because they also contribute to transit, where the users are paying a much smaller fraction.

    The costs per pasenger mile appear to be opertiong costs only. For Metro busses the cost is more like $0.85 per passenger mile. One reason the costs for bus and rail is so high is that their load factors are even lower than for automobiles. This is hard to believe, but it is true.

    What’s more, when capital costs are included buses and rail look even worse.

    Another reson is that buses and trains are heavy. As I have said before, money is a good proxy for energy and materials used, and these prices suggest that transit is not anywhere near as efficient as some would have us believe.

    Finally there is the issue of labor. For bus and rail you have tremendous labor costs, over and above the operators. For auto use that labor is mostly provided free by the driver and owner.

    None of this means that bus and rail do not have a place, only that we would be idiots to champion them blindly.

    I have seen arguments similar to Ed’s but taken to the extreme that throw in every concievable external cost against the auto. Even then it turns out to be only around a $1.25 per passenger mile. It isn’t a bad trade off compared to bus operating costs of $0.85 per mile, considering the convenience, utility, comfort, and speed.

  5. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “If so.. and hub/spoke is not the correct configuration – what is?”

    Get rid of the hub, which is the core of the problem. Do as Ed suggests and have a more balanced development. However, despite his claims to the contrary, such an arrangement will take more space, not to operate efficiently, but for the sake of liveability. The idea ought to be to live well, not like Spartans in cubicles.

  6. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Larry:

    “Hub and Spoke,” introduced to the regional planning vocabulary by the 1960 “Year 2000 Plan for the National Capital,” does not work as originally sketched out.

    I will work much better if each of the nodes along each of the radial spoke is a Balanced station-area. Under this condition, the entire journey to work load is not on the radials. See “Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO” at http://www.baconrebellion.com and the heart pump once a day analogy in that Backgrounder.

    A large New Urban Region needs a network of several shared-vehicle systems e.g. such as Paris, Stockholm, Toronto, et. al. The trains may all be in the same system and be track compatible as for most except Dockland Light Rail in London, but lines some serve radial and some serve circumferential demand and some serve diagonal movement (e.g. the Jubalee Line).

    The biggest requirement is that all the station-areas be as Balanced as possible and that the entire multi-system network be balanced.

    That way most of the trains do not leave most of the stations most of the time essentially empyth.

    Hope this helps

    EMR

  7. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Larry:

    Sorry I missed your last question.

    Any system (demand responsive or timed schedule, tracked /fixed stations or variable routed) is a shared-vehicle system if riders share the car. The only exception I can think of of the top of my head is a PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) system that has very small vehicles with a premium “ride alone” option.

    For example Publicos in Puerto Rico and Jitneys the world over are shared vehicle systems.

    The important variables are:

    Does the system have fixed stations and thus station-areas that can rely on continuing service and thus safe investments

    The capacity of the system per hour at any given point.

    These two factors determines the “native” settlement pattern that the system will support in a station area and system wide.

    Light Rial and commuter rail have lower intensity “native” station-area settlement patterns.

    Large New Urban Regions require some high capacity shared-vehicle systems.

    Hope that helps.

    EMR

  8. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Correction of earlier paragrph:

    The Hub and Spoke configuration would work much better if each of the nodes along each of the radial spoke corridors evolved to become a Balanced station-area.

    Under this condition, the entire journey to work AM and PM load is not a one-way surge on the radials. See “Time to Fundamentally Rethink METRO” at http://www.baconrebellion.com and the heart pump once a day analogy in that Backgrounder.

    EMR

  9. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Two more thoughts on the silly assumption that drivers of Autonomobiles pay their own way and that the total cost of mobility and access to the driver is lower in private vehicles:

    Forbes carried a recent note on the cost of driving. Over half the cost of driving is the depreciation of the investment in the autonomobile.

    If the owner / driver is a business, then they can write off the depreciation. Private drivers cannot.

    Depreciation of the vehicle is included in the shared-vehicle system cost calculations.

    That means an Autonomobile drivers true cost is far higher that advertised.

    Joe Passonneau has documented that the Interstate system was built on the backs of adjacent owners and communities (from Dooryard to Subregion in scale).

    This was done by the 1956 legislation limiting the payment for impacts from severance and almost anything beyond pre-construction per acre land values.

    The Interstate system would have cost twice or three times as much to build had the land owners and the residents of Dooryards, Clusters, Neighborhoods, Villages and Communities been compensated for negative impact. This means the true cost of Autonomobile travel would be far higher but for the subsidy extracted from adjacent land owners and communities.

    EMR

  10. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    EMR can protest all he wants. If the figures given are not accurate, they are at least in the correct relative ratio. You simply cannot make facts untrue no matter how you spin it.

    “Does the system have fixed stations and thus station-areas that can rely on continuing service and thus safe investments

    The capacity of the system per hour at any given point. “

    I’m sorry, but this is utter nonsense.

    Fixed stations mean that the areas connot shift as conditions change. Change is fundamental to growth. The only thing that is necessary for safe investments is continued profits. Those are more likely, and cheaper to obtain, for a jitney service that can pick up and move than for a rail station in a dying neighborhood.

    The capacity per hour has nothing to do with anything. Unless the area is so out of balance that peak load capacity is massively important.

    Let’s face it, there is a concept that equates to “rush hour” even in Marshall. But “rush hour” is 20 minutes, not 4 hours. And you can identify that kid in the pony-tail and the mustang, as well as your fellow church-goers. Teh max capaicity of Main street per hour is of very little importance, as long as you have not reached it.

    EMR is correct about one thing. the Interstate system was built on the backs of adjacent owners and communities and this was done by the 1956 legislation limiting the payment for impacts from severance and almost anything beyond pre-construction per acre land values.

    I know this from personal experience, since 20% of the farm was taken for the construction of route 66, at the princely sum of $200 per acre. The same thing is about to happen again in favor of the power lines. What if, instead of $200 per acre my father-in-law had been able to negotiate $0.001 cent per vehicle? Even $0.0001 per vehicle would have been better than what he got.

    There are a bunch of people about to get hammered by power line construction (and maybe road construction). Maybe it is time for people to start paying for what they get, rather than just what they take, if that.

    If it is OK for private eneterprise to build new tollways and operate them at a continuing profit, then why shouldn’t the (previous) private enterprise share in the profits? How is it that it is OK to use government eminent domain to create private enterprise profits, and not share it among all the members that constitute both the affected private enterprise, and the government?

    Having said that, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference as to the relative costs of autos vs shared vehicles. No matter what arguments you make, provided you make them equally, shared vehicle systems are more expensive, slower, and less convenient.

    If they require fixed stations, then they become monuments as well: they are anchors, rather than sails.

    As far as I can tell the figures above represent typical operating costs. If you want to throw in the book and calculate evry concievable cost, and if you also allow for all the conceivable benefits, then cars still win – hands down.

    I’ll believe otherwise when EMR and a few million others like him adopt a lifestyle that allows them to subsist solely on mass transit -for every conceivable aspect of their existence.

    There are plenty of homesteaders who attempt to live soley off the land. There are even magazines devoted to them. Not very many actually do very well, even if they manage to subsist happily.

    Show me the magazine for shared vehicle homesteaders.

  11. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “If the owner / driver is a business, then they can write off the depreciation. Private drivers cannot.”

    If the owner is a business they can write off the depreciation against the cost of earning profits, on which they pay taxes.

    The private driver has aleady earned his income and paid taxes doing something else. He figures the cost aof depreciation as part of the cost of the benefits he recieves from owning an automobile, after taxes. He absorbs that full cost.

    Millions of drivers do it willingly, even trading in perfectly good cars long before they have used up the depreciation they have absorbed.

    This shouldn’t even be an arguement about the costs, it shoudl be an arguemtn about the public costs vs the public benefits: outside of the costs willingly absorbed privately.

    If you want to have that argument, then transit loses, hands down. Economists claim the best thing you can do for the urban poor is geive them a car, because it increases their access to employment capable of supporting the car – and themselves.

    The thing to do is to eliminate the subsidies, for autos, for land grabs to support the auto (and power lines), for transit, and for co-locating businesses.

    Pretty soon the market will sort out what really costs less, and what is really more desired – even if you throw in some government adjustments to cover non-market valuations.

  12. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I think.. I’m making progress on understanding.. “some” of this.

    The problem with METRO hub/spoke is: what – exactly?

    Even though we called it hub/spoke – is it really a single HUB?

    Isn’t it multiple HUB(s) (NODES) and connecting “spokes”?

    I’m trying to separate out the idea of where the rails “go” (and don’t “go”) – how the rail infrastructure itself is configured.

    verses the origin/destinations of the Trains AND their schedule – i.e. how that infrastructure is used operationally.

    and a acknowledgement of Ray’s point that settlements of people are not static – but ever evolving

    Settlements of ever evolving groups of people – do not alter their need for mobility but rather
    will continue to exercise their options to the maximum extent of their ability to remain mobile.

    To me, the idea that settlement patterns are not fixed but rather evolve – means that they expand or shrink.. or combine with adjacent nodes or break apart, etc.

    The idea that once configured – even if configured as ideally sustainable will remain fixed and unchanged for eternity.. doesn’t ring true to me.

    The only thing that is certain – is change.

    And I would suggest that any concept that does not subscribe to change – as inherent – itself is not a sustainable concept.

    So my interest, concern is to understand:

    1. – how balanced communities can be built .. in the context of an every changing continuum of change

    2. – how such communities themselves would change and evolve over time…

    3. – how do Regional facilities – both public and private operate – in a “balanced community” environment? e.g. Regional Medical Centers that specialize in say Cancer treatment or say.. THEME parks… or Regional water/sewer/stormwater facilities

    If the Feds want to move a thousand employees (Belvoir) or a large company springs up then changes locations or breaks apart or buys up it’s competitors and rearranges it’s physical presence, etc, etc… endless variations of change… change…. that, in turn, affects where people will work .. and live…

    I don’t ever see a “balanced community” as ONLY allowing employers of a certain size and type… in that community…. but perhaps I’m not smart enough to see this… and EMR can show how.

  13. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I generally see the Metro “hub” as being L’enfant, Chinatown, Metro Center, Federal triangle, and all the rest being spokes. You could just as well consider Pentagon, and Arlington, Etc as additional hubs with their own spokes. It seems to me that the right approach fro Metro to Tyson’s is not to branch off from West Fall Church, but to branch off from Bethesda, and Rejoin at West Falls church. Call it the first leg of the Purple line which would create more nodes as it connects the spokes.

    “how balanced communities can be built .. in the context of an every changing continuum of change”

    Good question considering Jim’s comments on overcrowded homes in Fairfax. I think the closest you can come to balance is by permitting the maximum amount of change to happen at will – reduce zoning and building construction regs to true safety considerations. And a primary consideration in safety would have to be an adequate evacuation plan, meaning you have to have adequate transportation. Overcrowding of whatever type, commercial or residential cannot be allowed.

    Freely allowing change means we have to be freely willing to accept it, and change is one thing we hate as investors, but love as entrepreneurs.

  14. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I don’t know about “freely allowing change”….

    … or perhaps there is a context to that thought… that is more limited with more caveats…

    .. for instance .. one could make the claim that the “market” should decide where power plants should locate – and not Fed/State regs and zoning laws…

    ditto with junkyards… rail repair facilities,, etc..

    but.. then … using the same concept… we find ourselves saying that we cannot allow too many people to live in a house that we only intended mom/dad and their two kids to live in.. even if that house could hold more people.

    But you could (and should) make the same argument with regard to employment.

    I cannot think as comprehensively as EMR apparently does so my minds stops at the perception that an alpha community is …. appears to me .. to be a command and control concept that attempts to dictate limits… not only a “clear edge” but within that clear edge – the size, scope, scale of the components that comprise it.

    Until told emphatically otherwise, it appears to me that the concept is essentially master planning – at a community scale .. not just a place that offers perhaps diverse housing choices… but limits on .. say ..how many and what type of stores… food markets, cleaners, etc.

    .. so you’d have a situation .. where the guy who owned the cleaners died or moved away… and you’d have an empty space… that .. cannot be an ice cream parlor.. because it was only intended to be a cleaners… and that community could not have two ice cream parlors.. even if ice cream became wildly more popular and the community could easily support two parlors….

    that would not be allowed.. because then .. you would not have a local cleaners.. and folks would have to make auto trips to another alpha community that had a cleaners .. and that, in turn, would lead to an overload on that cleaners.. that was only designed to handle the cleaning needs of that alpha community.

    This is what I mean – by change – either as a not-unusual consequence of market dynamics… or … command/control planning that trumps the marketplace dynamics.

    By the way – there ARE current/existing examples of this.

    Churchill Falls… is a command and control community where Hydro Quebec basically decides .. rather than individual entreprenurs.

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