Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Has the Time for Bus Rapid Transit Finally Come?

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

In a welcome show of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans have come together to patron HJ 98, which would authorize a joint subcommittee to study the establishment of Bus Rapid Transit corridors in Northern Virginia.

While the chief patron is Del. Vivian Watts, D-Annandale, other patrons include conservative Republicans such as Delegates Bob Marshall, R-Manassas and Tim Hugo, R-Centerville, and Sen. Ken Cuccinelli, R-Fairfax. States the resolution:

In conducting its study, the joint subcommittee shall look into the cost, efficacy, and relationship to the regional transportation network of establishing bus rapid transit corridors in the Northern Virginia Transportation District, including the need for and issues related to establishing dedicated lanes, location of stations, accessibility and station parking, ridership projections related to levels of service, cost-benefit analysis with other transit options, and other relevant considerations.

I don’t know if this comes as a response to the demise of the Rail-to-Dulles project, but it’s good to see that Northern Virginia legislators are showing signs of moving on rather than trying to fight a battle that’s already been lost.

My only concern is that BRT should not be considered in a vacuum. It should be viewed in a larger context that includes human settlement patterns and congestion pricing. The subcommittee needs to ask itself, do certain densities and streetscapes lend themselves to supporting BRT better than others? Also, to what extent would congestion pricing in heavily traveled corridors and districts encourage people to ride the buses?

One last question: Why limit the study to Northern Virginia? Isn’t BRT a potential option for the Hampton Roads and Richmond regions as well?

With those provisos, the study sounds like an excellent idea. (Hat tip: Too Many Taxes.)

(Cutline: Bus Rapid Transit in Bogata, Colombia. Photo credit: the Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space blog.)

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  1. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Here’s the question of the day.

    What problem does BRT solve that regular bus transit cannot

    .. and why (what are the obstacles?)

    and .. answer the question without mentioning rail or METRO not even once.

    Just address BRT in terms of the problem it solves… and what needs to be done to make BRT “work”.

    batter up….

  2. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “What problem does BRT solve that regular bus transit cannot”

    I am not a BRT expert but here goes….

    BRT would have dedicated lanes(s) so the buses would not be sitting in traffic like they do now. They would be the only vehicles allowed to travel in the lanes that would be built for them. The lanes would likely have barriers around them so no other vehicles could even attempt to enter them.

    Current bus routes must deal with the same things every other car on the road must deal with….traffic lights, accidents, pedestrians, etc. This is why most people would just as well drive their own car….what’s the point of getting on a bus….it’s not much faster then sitting in your car.

    BRT is a mass people mover using buses. The station design, routes, arrival/departure times, etc. would likely be the same/similar as they are for other mass transit systems but the mechanism that actually moves passengers is a bus as opposed to something else.

    The things needed to make it work are the same things that are needed to make other mass transit systems work. You would need to plan the routes, build the stations, obtain right-of-ways, connect the system with existing mass transit systems such as airports and price the trips so that the system pays for itself.

    I would not think of BRT as something that would get you from Dulles to Downtown DC in a straight shot. I would think of it as something that would get you from Dulles to an existing mass transit system which would then take you to your final destination.

    I was listening to a radio show and the person being interviewed said the worst thing about BRT is that it uses the word “bus”….buses have a very poor image associated with them and it’s hard to get people to think out of the box when it comes to using them.

    RBV

  3. John Lewis Avatar
    John Lewis

    Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is a relatively new concept here in the United States although it has been very succesful in Europe and South America. BRT offers high quality high-capacity transportation solutions for an affordable price. BRT systems are among the least expensive high capacity transit systems costing less than $3 million per mile. By comparison, a typical light rail system can cost up to $50 million per mile to construct.

    BRT systems combine the unique characteristics of high tech high capacity transit vehicles, special transit stations rather than bus stops, and features like dedicated bus lanes and signal prioritizaiton to speed passengers along existing roadways and thereby operating faster than the car along the same corridor.

    GRTC has been working with the City of Richmond and the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation to establish a BRT corridor in Richmond. Our proposal would connect the rapidly developing Route 5 corridor through Main St. Station and along Broad St. to Willow Lawn Shopping Center (phase 1). A second phase would eventually connect to Short Pump Mall.

    Other advantages of this project include:
    – supporting the transportation goals of the Downtown Master Plan
    – improved commutes and quality of life for patrons
    – improved land use opportunities
    – more efficient allocation of GRTC vehicles to better serve Richmond’s neighborhoods and important destinations.

    For these reasons I believe Richmond is primed and ready for rapid transit.

  4. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    thanks. there’s a pretty good writeup at Wiki:

  5. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    My question for anyone who knows is how BRT is any better financially than light rail or just something simpler like bus/HOV lanes. I can understand the cost savings from heavy rail since there are major capital outlays for the rails, the stations and the cars are more expensive.

    As far as I can tell in the BRT v LRT it would seem that both need similar right of ways, both need similar size stations, and both need a surface to operate on. The difference I can see is that LRT would be able to put in more cars / per operator so that should lower some per passenger operating costs, increase capacity beyond the limits of a single bus, and the rail cars should have a longer life than a bus. Also add in the sexiness factor that tends to attract more riders and businesses to rail lines than buses, though the one BRT I saw was fairly attractive.

    I would think from an NPV perspective that LRT would be a little better though I think there are a little higher capital outlays. Heavy rail would definitely be different as there are more complicated unknowns in looking at its returns.

    As far as BRT goes there is a lot of promotion for it as a panacea to solve the mass transit problem at a cheap price. I guess I don’t see how looking at a BRT project over its useful life, say 30-40 years, where the savings are vs other mass transit systems.

    ZS

  6. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    How do you build dedicated BRT lanes for $3 million a mile when car lanes are said to cost far more than that?

  7. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    you don’t…..

    the right-of-way costs the same no matter what you put in there.. rail or road… and in an urban area the r/w costs can be substantial because you buying already developed land or undeveloped land that is valuable for development.

    That’s not appreciated when we talk about highways either. We not only lose the taxes but we lose the opportunity benefits also.

    I think BRT can “work” but probably no better/worse than any other form of transit that needs a dedicated right-of-way and grade-separated intersections.

    If you put BRT on surface streets.. by definition.. it’s no longer BRT.. but just ordinary bus transit…that must compete with other traffic and at-grade intersections.

    and that brings us to… transit that avoids the surface streets…

    if you read the WIKI article..
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_rapid_transit

    they claim that BRT can have headways of 10 secs verses rail headways of one minute…

    But BRT has the same issues that buses and rail have and that is none of them offer door-to-door service… and all of them, instead, offer station-to-station or stop-to-stop service … and for that reason.. they’ll never compete on a pure convenience basis with Personal Rapid Transit… also in Wiki…

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit

    bottom line: folks will not give up door-to-door convenience until it becomes …. inconvenient…

    🙂

    I’m not kidding.

    Only when the personal auto option becomes inferior to the other choices will folks pick the other choices… willingly…

    🙂

    I’m betting that HOT lanes will play a role in this… if they charge on the order of a buck a mile during rush hour…

  8. Groveton Avatar
    Groveton

    Buses vs. trains – who cares? Not me. It seems like both would accomplish pretty much the same objective.

    The big issue is the honesty of the politicians. Just allocating one lane of the beltway as the “bus lane” would be a lot different than adding a new lane that is only for buses. However, allocating one of the existing lanes would be cheap, expedient and let the politicians take credit for something that was really nothing. Care to bet what the politico will do?

  9. Avenging Archangel Avatar
    Avenging Archangel

    BRT could work here in Hampton Roads. When it was on the table in Virginia Beach, there was discussion of it blossoming into a regional system.

    Well, it was killed here in 2005. In the interim:

    1. Norfolk’s light rail Starter Line got Federal funding.

    2. There’s planning in Newport News for a LRT line.

    3. Portsmouth wants light rail accomodations in the planned second tube for the Midtown Tunnel.

    4. LRT is back on the front burner in Virginia Beach.

    The bottom line is that it looks like LRT will be the future of mass transit in Hampton Roads despite it’s warts.

    As has been mentioned, the huge advantage of BRT is dedicated lanes. Buses regularly get slowed up in traffic here.

  10. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    For the benefit of Bacon’s Rebellion readers, John Lewis is CEO of the Greater Richmond Transit Corp. John, thank you for participating in this blog.

    As a Henrico County resident, I am very interested in the BRT plan for Rt. 5 and the Broad Street corridor in Richmond. I have a number of questions about how it would work.

    Question #1: Would you create a dedicated lane for BRT, or would you equip the buses with transponders that communicated with traffic lights to ensure they don’t get bogged down in traffic?

    Question #2: If we go with the dedicated lanes, would we carve them out of the existing Broad Street lanes, or would we acquire right of way to widen the streets and roads? If we dedicated an existing lane, what would that do to automobile congestion along the corridor? If we acquired right of way, how much would that cost?

    Question #3: How many stations do you envision along the route?

    Question #4: How would people access the stations? Would they drive to the stations and park? Or do you envision the stations being located in New Urbanist town centers (along Rt. 5) and people walking to them?

  11. Jim Wamsley Avatar
    Jim Wamsley

    “they claim that BRT can have headways of 10 secs verses rail headways of one minute…”

    Headways are only one issue. Stations are another. If you have one dedicated lane, all the buses have to wait. If you add unloading bays you end up with something like the Port Authority Bus Terminal. It is served by subways.

    The cheapest magic bullet is – congestion toll existing lanes or areas within cordons.

  12. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I believe that “heavy infrastructure” solutions like heavy rail/subway, light rail, or BRT are solutions of the past. The future belongs to ideas like jitneys, which should be legalized, and ad-hoc ride share arrangements. I can see the ride share idea evolving in some manner from social networking sites.

  13. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    All these comments assume the discussion of BRT vs X is about transport.

    It is not.

    It is about settlement pattern within 1/4 mile of the platform.

    What the most successful BRT applications have proven is that if the station is “fixed” and the ridership grows, then BRT does not have the capacity to serve the resulting station-area land uses.

    There are no transport hardware “solutions” to congestion problems, none.

    EMR

  14. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    P to K2

    …

    checkmate…

    QED

  15. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Ed – Fairfax County’s studies predict that, at best, only 20% of all trips to and from Tysons, will be on rail. Yet, there are proposals to add as much as 166% of the current developed size of Tysons Corner. What will that do to traffic? Several Task Force members have argued that we need to accept LOS F on Tysons Corner roads. And for this you want to pay billions for rail?

    TMT

  16. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    TMT:

    I am sure your are right about the Fairfax studies.

    I am just as sure they are not worth the paper they are written on because they assume that there will be little change in settlement patterns.

    If there is not Fundamental Change in settlement patterns, you and I would likely agree that spending money on METRO or almost anything else is a waste of time and money.

    EMR

  17. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “they claim that BRT can have headways of 10 secs verses rail headways of one minute…”

    They can claim all they want. Such numbers are utter nonsense.

    Walmsley is right. It looks like Port Authority or the Pentagon. Now there are a couple of examples of what I want in my neighborhood.

    EMR is right. Transportation is about land uses.

    If the station is “fixed” [Or the destination is fixed] and the ridership grows, [because the destination grows] then BRT does not have the capacity to serve the resulting station-area land uses.

    “There are no transport hardware “solutions” to congestion problems, none.”

    Not Metro, not BRT, not infinite highway lanes. It is all about land use. And congestion problems are always associated with overdevelopment, AND/OR an unwillingness to fund and provide adequate infrastructure.

    Cordon tolls are a recognition of this fact, and they are a subsidy for sprawl.

    “Only when the personal auto option becomes inferior to the other choices will folks pick the other choices… willingly…”

    So don’t expect people to willingly vote for fees to make the auto option inferior artificially.

    “The future belongs to ideas like jitneys, which should be legalized, and ad-hoc ride share arrangements.” [ad hoc ride sahre arrangements facilitated by information and sfety considerations.]

    Anonymous 10:29 has the only rational idea here.

    RH

    RH

  18. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I would assert that HOT lanes and Cordon Tolls are actually ANTI-Sprawl in their effect because it will make it more expensive to not live closer to where you work,

    TOD will become a tremendous economic generator of weekend homes for those that decide to live close to where they work and then on weekends escape to their country homes in Piedmont Va.

    🙂

    It’s a REALLY BIG win-win!

    The developers in Tyson win and the developers in rural Va. win.

  19. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    HOT lanes and Cordon Tolls will in time just shift job centers to other areas where they can attract employees that don’t pay a huge toll daily. The only way that you could avoid that is if you made every highway lane HOT so that there would be no avoidance; of course the jobs could just shift to another metropolitan area.

    Nothing will change in NoVa or DC metro in general without policies that run region wide. If you want to slow sprawl and de-congest the roads a bit you can’t have one county doing one thing and others doing another that is counter-productive.

    The ad hoc ride share seems to work pretty well on I-95/395 HOV lanes, but isn’t implemented anywhere else. It seems to utilize existing resources or if it requires new capital resources they don’t seem to be as expensive. Would definitely be worth looking at, but I’m not sure how salable it is to covert lanes to HOV. I always hear complaints about I-66 being HOV even though that’s the only way to keep the highway free-flowing.

    ZS

  20. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “will in time just shift job centers to other areas”

    really?

    ALL the jobs and no matter what the tolls?

    HOT lanes will run from DC to Spotsylvania Va along I-95.

    they’ll cost you no matter what direction you go in and the tolls are adjusted in real time to deal with congestion.

    The ICC will have HOT lanes as well as the I-495 Beltway.

    So.. where will the jobs “shift” to?

    Remember.. the HOT lane tolls ARE adjustable per the congestion.

    You could make the Cordon Tolls adjustable also per the number of available parking spots.

    Both of these were allow the use of actually enforceable performance standards.

    If the claim is that TOD will only generate half the traffic then fine – set the Cordon Toll to be free or almost free until the available parking runs out then set the tolls are a market basis.

    The folks who REALLY need to use a car to do business WILL PAY the toll and the folks who want to go for Pizza will think twice.

    We need a system that allows people to decide the difference between what they want and what they need because in the end – what we build or don’t build in the way of infrastructure has to be done on the same basis.

    HOT lanes for the DC Area is not an “idea” that is under debate.

    The decision has already been made.

    What has not been discussed nor decided in large part is the potential use of Cordon Tolls but Cordon Tolls could be an excellent way to allow traffic up to a certain limit… to allow commerce but to prevent gridlock.

    We need to be thinking about transportation in these terms IMHO.

  21. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    There is some toll price that will cause all the jobs to leave.

    Below that it is just a matter of degree.

    Some people will choose to live closer to work over time. But the tolls will need to be pretty high to make moving a rational option. And the tolls willl make it possible to charge more for close in housing which will just reset the cost trade off.

    If cordon tolls allow traffic up to a certain limit, what happens when those people need something and can’t go where they want to get it? They will go someplace else to get it, and that will result in jobs moving to supply those needs.

    Cordon tolls are simply a recognition that you can only do so much in a limited space: a refutaton of EMR’s ideas.

    The people who want to go for pizza will think twice, and that will hurt business. The decision for HOT lanes has been made, the decsion ot keep them because the offer so many tangible benefits has not been made.

    Regardless of what you say, tolls will shift money from one use to another. If the money spent for tolls is used less productively than the alternatives, then tolls will hurt the economy.

    So far, no one is saying how the toll money will be used, but I’d suggest it should go back to the communities it came from. My father got involved in the same idea once, and it nearly got him shot. Eventually he decided it wasn’t worth the battle, and simply moved away from that community.

    So, what will all that toll money be used for? It looks like people will be required to pay because we don’t have adequate infrastucture, and then they still won’t get it.

    Charging more for something you won’t provide is a good deal, if you can pull it off.

    RH

  22. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “..what needs to be done to make BRT “work”….”

    If BRT worked, you wouldn’t have to do anything to make it work.

    One suggestion that has been made to improve the usage of transit, is to make it free. And even that hasn’t worked in some places.

    So, here you have a location that’s a pain in the rear to get to, and the idea is to raise the price of getting there so that people will want to live there. Right, that should work.

    We already have roads that people pay to drive on, and they pay so that they can be unfettered in their diving. It is call Skip Barbour Raciing School.

    EMR has some strange ideas, but in this case he is right. Given that (for some reason) you want people to go and live in such places, you would make travel free there (where it is a pain in the rear) and charge for travel where the service is good. Where you have actully built more roadway than you need for peak travel purposes.

    Like Skip Barbour does.

    Charging prices based on demand when there is no desire or intention to meet the demand is a perversion of market theory.

    The real problem here is that we have no idea how to make a static economy work. We tied rail to Tyson’s to density that would allow the economy to grow.

    If we don’t allow and encourage it to grow there, then it will grow someplace else. Unless we become like Japan. Part of the Japan story is that they put a lot of restrictions on home construction. Part is that they are an aging economy. Whatever the reason, it will become increasingly marginalized – by growth someplace else.

    RH

  23. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “They will go someplace else to get it, and that will result in jobs moving to supply those needs.”

    I think the thing to keep in mind is that the tolls ARE adjustable and the intent is not to ban all business activity but to strike a balance between healthy commerce and gridlock.

    The Plan B fallback is to do away with the tolls altogether is they fail at their intended purpose and believe me is they truly hurt business.. they WILL go away.

    Besides aren’t you one of the guys that is saying there are too many jobs in one place and we need ‘more places”?

    Isn’t this a way to get “more places”?

  24. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “The people who want to go for pizza will think twice, and that will hurt business.”

    Think of this as businesses that, if they had control would put their own exits on the interstates or put cross-overs on medians of divided roads that are not interstates.

    VDOT and FHWA refer to these issues as Access Management and there is a tension between unfettered business activity and reasonable restriction s on access..

    Some interstates don’t even have interchanges – they have gas/food plazas run by concession – as a way to provide “reasonable access” but not unfettered access.

    This does not mean that Pizza is not available but it does mean that it is not available except where permitted.

    The goal would be the same for TOD. A TOD version of access management if you will.

    For instance, pizza places might well set up just outside of the TOD boundaries (in addition to places inside of the TOD but designed primarily to serve patrons inside of the TOD). Think of them as snack bars and cafeterias inside of big office buildings vice a stand-alone facility right next door.

    Companies inside of TOD might well utilize the same approach. Inside the buildings will be – concessions.. from McD and Subways, etc but they would primarily serve folks inside of the TOD and not attract folks who had to pay the cordon toll JUST to get pizza.

    This is really no different than if you are hungry and you have a choice to go pay for parking in a parking garage so that you can walk to a pizza place or whether you’ll just go to where a pizza place has on-street parking nearby.

    I think TOD ..can work in tandem with a Cordon Toll.

    It can help deliver the promise to locals concerned about TOD increasing car congestion by providing enforceable performance standards.

    If the car congestion ends up higher than anticipated then raise the cordon toll.

    If it ends up being “too good” and/or hurts businesses then lower the fees or adjust them more precisely for peak hour, etc.

    Have no tolls in the evening or on weekends, etc.

    People will learn that peak hour travel can be expensive both in terms of congestion/time lost but also cost and they will alter behaviors to NOT drive at that time unless they have no choice.

  25. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Isn’t this a way to get “more places”?

    Yes. Which is why I think it may be a subsidy for sprawl.

    RH

  26. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I don’t understand why you would spend money to create transit which requires endless subsidies in order tht you can have an excuse to allow more density, which we KNOW will lead to more traffic congestion….

    AND THEN

    Turn around and charge for traffic congestion.

    RH

  27. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “It can help deliver the promise to locals concerned about TOD increasing car congestion by providing enforceable performance standards.”

    And we are going to deliver that promise by charging the locals tolls?

    RH

  28. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “more places” and sprawl

    is “more places” equal to sprawl?

    I thought “more places” was distributing the jobs and job centers and sprawl was distributing rooftops?

    Isn’t the idea that if you have more job centers then folks can live closer to where they work instead of having to commute?

    no?

  29. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “Turn around and charge for traffic congestion.”

    aren’t you the one who repeatedly states how much congestion “costs” people?

    well here we are.. charging so that folks don’t have congestion…

    isn’t that a win-win?

  30. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: TOD tolls

    You misunderstand.

    Here’s the deal.

    A lot of folks think TOD and higher density is a good thing.. more efficient use of the land… less auto pollution.. more folks living and shopping where they work, etc

    but the concern is that in doing that, people don’t trust that TOD will deliver on it’s promise of having less generated auto trips than more conventional development.

    Cordon Tolls are a way to meet the concerns of those who fear TOD will only make auto congestion worse -not better.

    It’s a compromise approach – a quid-pro-quo..

    higher density in return for guaranteed performance..

    as opposed to promise one thing and end up with people thinking you lied .. and then refusing to entertain any more development …at all..

    capische?

    see.. that’s what you need to be doing..

    rather than blaming those you disagree with.. on development issues… find out what their concerns are.. and make suggestions to deal with the concerns.. so that less folks are opposed to growth.

    either get in the game.. and help find solutions.. or suffer the bad effects of people reacting wrongly to what they don’t like…

  31. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    is “more places” equal to sprawl?

    No, doesn’t have to be, but take a look around.

    I don’t let what I would like to happen interfere with my expectations of what will likely happen.

    RH

  32. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    higher density in return for guaranteed performance..

    But how do you know the the level of performance you can guarantee will be high enough to support the density you built?

    Nissan Center clogs up 66 for miles on concert nights. How does charging tolls guarantee that the concert venue will be filled in a reasonable amount of time?

    It doesn’t. The concert venue is density that was allowed with no way to support it. Tolls won’t fix that problem.

    Do that a few times and people lose trust.

    A lot of people think cities use less energy than other places, too.
    I notice in your data on the other post that Metro France uses more per capita power than the EU in general.

    I don’t see a lot of people who think TOD and density is a good thing actually moving there. The trends are mostly in the other direction.

    Nothing is going to change the minds of those who are opposed to growth. It isn’t a rational condition, it’s a visceral one. The only thing that will change it is when the economy collapses and the government embarks on the next WPA projects.

    I understand what the proposed deal is, Larry, I’m not an idiot.
    But when I actually look at such places and visit such places and I see more problems than I see solutions.

    When I look at metro I see q thirty year old system that is falling apart from inadequate maintenance, has never generated the ridership that was used to justify it, and will require an endless stream of subsidies to support it. It now appears they are likely to come from congestion charges on the traffic it was supposed to prevent.

    I would like it to work, I see no reason why it cannot work for those that choose to live that way, except for people who gloss over the difficulties, and the expense, and the sustainability.

    I just see things differently from you.

    You see it as charging so folks don’t have congestion.

    I see it as having congestion that some people will pay to avoid, and some people are excluded from. I see it as having congestion with additional delays, higher prices, and more aggravation.

    As I see it, the underlying problem is still there – too much activity in too small a space. If it wasn’t, you could do away with the tolls.

    Building heroic transport systems to fill up the space faster in the morning doesn’t solve the problem, and charging money to make it less “attractive” doesn’t solve the problem.

    If a bunch of idealists want to make this happen with a pixie dust dance, I wish them luck, hope they enjoy themselves — and don’t send me the bill.

    RH

  33. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    this describes how I feel:

    “DOT Secretary Mary E. Peters said that direct user vehicle fees, like the one proposed for New York, can reduce the congestion-related costs, effectively raise funds better than the current gas tax does, and will help states and cities build and maintain critical transportation infrastructure—a benefit to shippers.”

    http://www.logisticsmgmt.com/article/CA6528025.html

    I just wanted to point out that what I advocate is not just my own idea of how things should work.

    I’m aligning myself with some existing lines of thought…

    there is not unanimous agreement and concurrence.. but my ideas are at least somewhere in the ballpark…with some transportation professionals.

  34. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    I agree, Larry.

    But it still looks like a situation where government created a problem by allowing density it could not, and would not support, and then having created a problem, which mostly benefits the businesses located there, the government now wants to create new charges based on the existence of a problem they created, and then send the bill to the wrong collection of people.

    I think that a statement such as Ms. Peters’ is misleading.

    Yes we have congestion related costs. Imposing a fee on congestion changes how those costs are distributed, but it DOES NOT and WILL NOT eliminate the congestion at the source of the problem. The fees can only exist as long as there is an underlying problem – and NO ONE is addressing that problem.

    Nor does anyone care to admit what addressing that problem might mean.

    She is correct that it will raise more money: so how do youraise more money and still reduce costs? It is doublespeak.

    Why should commuters pay more to benefit shippers? She ignores the benefits to land owners and businesses, and she doesn’t say how or when that critical transportation infrastructure will be provided. Certainly, whatever is provided will be designed so as not to kill the goose that laid the golden egg: congestion will continue, congestion is our friend.

    I think that incentivizing government by paying them to continue a practice that is bad for the economy and bad for the environment is a terrible precedent.

    RH

  35. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    hmmm… government allowed too much density and that’s why we got congestion?

    is this the same Government that you castigate for limiting density and requiring proffers to pay for the additional road infrstruture needed to keep the development from overwhelming the roads?

    The problem is .. IMHO.. that we totally underestimated the amount of traffic that development will generate… and by the time we finally understood.. we were so far behind.. that catching up is .. not going to happen.. even if the EPA was not restricting new roads.

    I find your observation curious on another level also in that.. it’s not density per se that is the problem in Wash Metro.. it’s all of those folks streaming in every morning from the outer jurisdictions.

    If there were not JOBs in NoVa… then you’d not have all those commuters.. right?

  36. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    “…that we totally underestimated the amount of traffic that development will generate… and by the time we finally understood.. we were so far behind.. that catching up is .. not going to happen.. even if the EPA was not restricting new roads.”

    I think that is pretty close to what I think. However, I’m subject to thinking a little bit like TMT: that it was not so much a matter of underestimating as it was of conspiracy. The big urban land users have money and power, and the litlte guys don’t. Politicos sold out to the big land users.

    And, we were told that METRO would solve our congestion problems, but that didn’t happen. So I see it as a combination of underestimated, sold out, and over-optimism about our solutions. There is plenty of blame to go around.

    “it’s not density per se that is the problem in Wash Metro.. it’s all of those folks streaming in every morning from the outer jurisdictions.”

    I don’t understand, where did I say that? I think what I have said is that it doesn’t matter whether they stream in from 10 miles, 20 miles, or 50 miles: if they all try to arrive in the same place and time, we are going to have a problem.

    I think this is caused by too much commercial density. In this regard I agree with EMR about the need for balance. But, if you are going to induce people to live at a density that will support the commercial density already in place, then you need to make it much less expensive and much more attractive.

    Given all the problems, I don’t think you can make it more attractive without making it even more expensive. That’s where I fall off the locational costs turnip wagon: it is already the densest, most expensive, and least sustainable urban places that are NOT paying their full costs, and now we are expected to subsidise them even more.

    “is this the same Government that you castigate for limiting density and requiring proffers to pay for the additional road infrstruture needed to keep the development from overwhelming the roads?”

    No because one is the governments that allowed to much commercial infrastructure, planning on exporting their housing and transportation costs to other outlying communities, with thier own governments.

    Those governments initially planned on certain densities, and when they learned it wouldn’t work (partially because of problems exorted to them by the inner governments) they tried to slam the door. Retroactively.

    My problem is NOT with requiring proffers or limiting density (either residential density in outer areas or commercial density in inner areas).

    My problem is in how the costs and benefits fall. As Groveton says, the NIMBY’s are not paying the opportunity costs they cause: there is no price associated with saying NO!, and any facility that has no price will be used too much. (You agree with that, right?)

    If the government failed to plan properly and underestimated what would be required, then the people living there need to bear (some of) the cost for allowing that mistake. If you simply limit development, after allowing some people to move in, then thos people effectively have the “use” of all the vacant land without paying for it. The “use” being that it protects thme from new traffic and schools.

    If you set proffers on new development, then we have the (well documented, by the way) situation where each dollar charged in proffers raises the value of existing homes by $1.60.

    The same kind of effect holds when vacant land is preserved: those nearby gain in value. And since vacant land pays more in taxes than it uses in services, its owners subsidise the existing residential dwellers, and they suffer the opportunity costs imposed on them.

    So, we have two different sets of governments: urban and suburban/rural. They both act for their own best interests, and in the best interests of those they see as their (most important)constituency.

    Taken together they are not acting in regional interests, let alone interstate interests, and this hurts the state economy. Taken individually, they are helping some of their constituents at the expense of others, and this has led to cries of “User pays” (usually in one direction). I thnk we need to redefine “User Pays” to “beneficiary pays” and then be more diligent about discovering the beneficiaries. Sometimes, it is us.

    But there is a practical limit of where we can go with that. Some (preferably low) level of socialism is cost effective, especially where the market is broken.

    But the real problem is that we don’t know and are not willing to agree when the market is broken. Not even when we have good evidence, as is the case with proffers.

    How do we fix that? Well, we have much better definition of what property rights are, and then enforce them. Then the market will take care of itself. But, we cannot do that by assymetrically creating new property rights.

    Whenever we restrict or raise the cost of other people’s property rights without symmetric and equivalent changes to our own, then we are fundamentally – stealing.

    RH

  37. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “My problem is NOT with requiring proffers or limiting density (either residential density in outer areas or commercial density in inner areas).

    My problem is in how the costs and benefits fall. As Groveton says, the NIMBY’s are not paying the opportunity costs they cause: there is no price associated with saying NO!, and any facility that has no price will be used too much. (You agree with that, right?)”

    I don’t know how you get here with that logic. The two are not connected in an realistic sense.

    People are not looking for “benefits” of not developing land.

    They simply do not want more development if it will further harm their own interests.

    they do not care what happened 20 years ago. The house they live in may have had 3 different owners and they’ve owned it for 3 years.

    Your ideas about this walk and talk like our typical conspiracy theories.

    Yea.. so developers got to develop land without building the required infrastructure and so instead of going after the guys that developed.. you want to go after the current homeowners ….

    what kind of sense does that make?

    Why not go after the folks who got away with selling homes for less than they should have by cutting corners on infrastructure?

    why do you want to penalize the folks who bought the homes?

    Is it because they are the easiest ones to go after?

    there is NO WAY to go back for each house for each purchaser and figure out when they bought the home and how much they benefited from previous inadequate infrastructure charges… the only way to do this would be to convene.. essentially a “Dept of Truth” to figure out for each property owner.. their share of the costs.. including the folks who sold their homes and moved out of the area…

    here’s the reality.

    There is hardly a place in the US that does not have the same problems.

    This is not a problem that is unique to NoVa.

    This is a problem with Public Policy unless you want to believe that government folks in all the urban areas of the US are all dumb or crooked or irresponsible.

    People.. EVERYONE .. from home buyers, to developers, to planners, to highway engineers, etc…

    completely underestimated the amount of traffic that would be generated from developing land.

    further, VMT almost tripled.. so people’s driving habits changed so even if government had properly estimated the original traffic.. they could not have predicted the change in commuting behaviors.

    If they had.. properly understood and planned.. we would have had .. what .. 30 lanes of beltway and pollution 3 times as bad as it is right now?

    It was a mistake. The way to move forward is to properly account for traffic and to collect the fees necessary to mitigate the immediate impacts.

    The wider, regional impacts, everyone has to pay for anyhow.

    so both the new folks and the existing folks have to pay anyhow.

    Much of the congestion problem is people driving to and from work.. everyday at the same time.. usually SOLO in a car.. often in a car that is not small and not fuel efficient.

    No one is every going to give up their car nor should they but for the 80% of trips of to and from work at rush hour.. public (or private shared) transport is one of the few options that ARE viable.

    That is an option used by millions of people around the world…

    we have to face some basic realities and one of them is that if we want to develop land in urban areas that there is no way to build enough roads for all those folks to drive solo to/from work everyday.

    It’s not physically or fiscally viable nor is it either from a pollution aspect.

    We can rail about mistakes… and inequities with respect to past practices but none of that will move us forward.

    If we want our urban areas to be sustainable economically, we have to find a way to provide mobility for a majority of folks in the twice-a-day movement from home to work and back.

  38. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “But the real problem is that we don’t know and are not willing to agree when the market is broken. Not even when we have good evidence, as is the case with proffers.”

    I don’t think the market is broke with respect to proffers.

    I don’t like the implications of adding quite a bit of money to the cost of a home but that is the reality.

    Arguing against proffers is like arguing against a water/sewer hookup fee.

    If.. in both cases, you can reasonably document the costs of the infrastructure -you have to a duty to recognize that reality even if you don’t like it..

    I think it is intellectually dishonest to pretend that a new house does not require infrastructure and it’s also intellectually dishonest to say that because people were not charge enough previously that we cannot charge the correct fee now…

    because to advocate that leaves us with no acceptable solutions…

    New homes need to pay their fees.

    We can argue about how to catch up the rest of the infrastructure but at a minimum new homes should not degrade the LOS.. any further.

    It’s simply not an honest discussion to rail against proffers when it is abundantly clear that new homes.. need… water, sewer, schools, libraries, EMS and roads.

    It’s dishonest to claim that trying to collect for this infrastructure is “stealing”.. ostensibly because of previous wrongs … or in equities because a new home needs these things…and it is not unreasonable to expect that the buyers of these homes needs to pay for these things that make those homes livable…

    A home without water/sewer is not livable .. yet we play this game that ..that same home should not pay for the other infrastructure that it also needs….

    Stealing.. is buildling a new home and then taking others money to pay for the infrastructure that it needs.

  39. John Lewis Avatar
    John Lewis

    Jim,

    We are in the preliminary stages of planning for this project so I can only speak very broadly at this point.

    1.) Would you create a dedicated lane for BRT, or would you equip the buses with transponders that communicated with traffic lights to ensure they don’t get bogged down in traffic?

    Yes, the project proposal calls for dedicated bus lanes along as much of the corridor as possible. You have already noticed that Broad St has already been stripped for buses only between 2nd and 14th Streets along Broad. We will be working with the City Department of Public Works to establish signal preemption protocols for the project.

    Question #2: If we go with the dedicated lanes, would we carve them out of the existing Broad Street lanes, or would we acquire right of way to widen the streets and roads? If we dedicated an existing lane, what would that do to automobile congestion along the corridor? If we acquired right of way, how much would that cost?

    The project proposal calls for taking an existing lane along Broad St for BRT so there would be no new right of way required. As you know, the City’s Master Plan Study calls for creating a more pedestrian friendly Broad St. corridor. The BRT proposal compliments this goal.

    Question #3: How many stations do you envision along the route?

    It’s too early to tell but I would imagine 8 to 12 stations along the corridor.

    Question #4: How would people access the stations? Would they drive to the stations and park? Or do you envision the stations being located in New Urbanist town centers (along Rt. 5) and people walking to them?

    The two end points of the corridor could be park and ride stations. I envision the intervening stations encouraging pedestrian access.

    The next phase of the project development, pending state funding support, is to bring on design and engineering expertise to create a detailed project plan that can be taken to Congress and the Federal Transit Administration. Our goal is to get this project funded in the next authorization of the Federal Surface Transportation funding legislation in 2009.

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