Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Henrico: Doing It Their Way

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by

James A. Bacon
in

One of the main threads of controversy in the transportation debate right now is the propriety of devolving responsibility for building and maintaining secondary roads to local governments. Many local officials have objected to the transfer of authority, fearing that the state won’t send along the money to match. Remarkably, no one has seen fit to ask local officials in Henrico or Arlington Counties what they think of the idea. They would seem to be logical people to ask — after all, they have been handling their own roads for the past 75 years.

So, that’s what we’ve done. Bacon’s Rebellion dispatched Bob Burke to look into the experience of Arlington County and Peter Galuszka to take a look at Henrico.

Peter has filed his article about Henrico: “Doing It Their Way.” One message came through loud and clear: Henrico County officials like having control over their secondary roads. They say they can make better decisions and faster decisions, and that they can be more responsive to local constituencies than VDOT can. Henrico officials also like to set their own standards, which often exceed VDOT’s.

However, there doesn’t seem to be any way to quantify whether or not Henrico is doing a better job than VDOT would. Has the ability to align transportation and land use planning resulted in less traffic congestion? Can’t say. We asked for “levels of service” data, but Henrico hasn’t compiled it. Has local control resulted in more efficient expenditure of road dollars? Can’t say. Henrico hasn’t done the studies.

Bottom line: We can’t get answers to fundamental questions. Little wonder. No one in local government seems to be asking the questions, so no one is collecting the information. Meanwhile, lawmakers in the General Assembly — both those in favor of devolution and those opposed — are flailing in the dark. They’re basing their positions on hunch, intuition and anecdote, not hard data. We don’t have a prayer of solving our transportation problems in Virginia without the basic information we need to make informed decisions.

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10 responses to “Henrico: Doing It Their Way”

  1. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Interesting.

    I’ve just been reading a paper entitled

    “Testing the Conventional Wisdom about Land Use and Traffic Congestion:
    The More We Sprawl, the Less We Move?”

    by

    ANDREA SARZYNSKI
    HAROLD L. WOLMAN
    ROYCE HANSON
    George Washington University Institute of Public Policy

    It is a survey of what is known about land use and traffic generation along with some new research. According to the authors:

    “Although widely debated in the planning and policy literature, few studies have quantified the statistical relationship between land use patterns and congestion using comparative data across urban areas.

    Thus, the magnitude and significance of a relationship between land use and
    congestion remains unclear.
    Two major impediments to statistically sound, comparative studies of land use and
    congestion exist: a lack of good measures of congestion; and the difficulty in modeling
    the complex inter-relationships between congestion, land use and transportation infrastructure.”

    In other words, it is no wonder Henrico county is in the dark.

    “Scholars and casual observers have long asserted a connection between land use patterns and traffic congestion in urban areas (e.g., Burchell, et al., 1998). Conventional wisdom argues that sprawling development characterized by highly dispersed, low-density housing or employment patterns leads to more frequent and longer trips requiring motorized vehicles (especially automobiles), and thus to more overall traffic congestion (Downs, 1992; Gillham, 2002).”

    Even congestion itself is hard to measure, although, everyone recognizes it when they see it.

    “Despite being discussed by transportation planners for over fifty years, little consensus exists as to the appropriate way to measure traffic congestion for entire urban areas (Meyer, 1994; Burchell, et al., 1998). A review panel assessing the feasibility of congestion pricing argued that “there is no good measure of urban traffic congestion that is comparable across areas and that has been collected consistently over time” (Wachs, et al., 1994, p.104).

    The authors go on to present their methodology for overcoming previous problems and scolarly disagreements. In particular they present six methods of representing urban patterns, of which density is only one.

    § Density: the degree to which development occurs in an intensive manner relative to the land area capable of being developed (termed “developable land”);

    § Continuity: the degree to which developable land has been developed in an unbroken fashion throughout the metropolitan area;

    § Concentration: the degree to which development is located disproportionately in a small number of square-mile cells comprising the metropolitan area;

    § Centrality: the degree to which development is located nearer to the core of the metropolitan area, relative to the total land area;

    § Proximity: the degree to which a given land use (i.e., housing or employment) is located near to other land uses across the metropolitan area, relative to the total land area;

    § Mixed-Use: the degree to which different land uses are located within the same squaremile cells comprising the metropolitan area;

    § Nuclearity: the degree to which employment is disproportionately located in the core, as opposed to dispersed in a multi-centric fashion.

    Part of the problem is that patterns of land use in urban areas likely influence the levels of and growth in traffic congestion over time. The time frame over which planning and development take place are different from the time fram in which transportation demands eventually respond to the new realities. Unlike a mechanical control system, there is no feedback to tell you when you have overcorrected or the feedback takes a long time.

    It is like steering a supertanker with an oar. While you might be able to turn the ship eventually, actually steering it is unfeasible.

    The authors describe their methods for “zeroing out” these lag times, and their methods for improved measurement of land uses.

    At the end of the day they conclude that “Except for
    proximity, the results suggest that congestion is not directly related to land use patterns
    as claimed by conventional wisdom.”

    “….we find that: housing-job proximity is inversely related to
    commute time; density/continuity is positively related to roadway ADT/lane and delay
    per capita; and housing centrality is positively related to delay per capita.”

    —————————–

    “…there doesn’t seem to be any way to quantify whether or not Henrico is doing a better job than VDOT would.”

    According to these authors there is a way, but it is difficult and takes a long time to measure. Furthermore, when you get the results, you probably won’t like the answer.

    Their discussion of time lag was particularly interesting. What I took away from it was that people DO have choices and DO act on them, eventually. But from a practical perspective it may take a long time for those choices to activate.

    “…because land use patterns change only slowly over time, the
    speed at which land use affects congestion may be relatively slow compared with the effect on congestion from other variables, such as demographics or transportation supply.”

    So, if you need a solution now, you need to have started on it several generations ago. If you need an answer soon, better not count on land use. If you are willing to wait for land use to take effect then you need to co-locate jobs and housing. You need less density and more space between densities, and don’t put the housing in the center of the urban areas.

    Imagine that.

  2. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    Ray, thanks for posting a summary of that paper. I agree with the major premise that changing land use to ameliorate traffic congestion will take a long, long time. Land use patterns change slowly, and the beneficial impact of more transportation-efficient land use patterns will take a long time to show up.

    But that’s no argument against reforming land use. We have to plan for the long term as well as the short term. If you want short-term relief, I would highly recommend congestion pricing, telecommuting and a wide range of operational improvements.

  3. rodger provo Avatar
    rodger provo

    Jim, Arlington and Henrico Counties
    took control of their roads when the state
    was small and the road
    system was not complex. They have
    been able to grow their system over
    the years with good planning
    in both communities.
    The problem we have today is
    that we have grown so
    fast and fallen so far behind with
    such poor planning many communities
    are not equipped to do what these
    two counties have done.

  4. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Arlington is also the smallest county in the state. They are pretty much in a maintenance only mode.

    As for planning ahead, yes, it will take a long time. It will take a lot longer if we don’t know how to do it right.

    The way I read this, proximity is important, jobs need to be close to homes. Both density and continuity are traffic unfriendly, so you need some density in order to get proximity, but not too much. And that density cannot be continuous, you need breaks in between, which I read as saying, you need more places.

    That seems to be a lot different from what we are currently planning to do, and a lot different from the popular wisdom.

  5. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Ray – yes – thank you for the post and your comments.

    some thoughts about Land Use:

    1. – Changing the way we do Land-Use is like trying to re-configure the acommodations on a cruise liner while it is enroute to it’s destination

    specifically – you likely will not change the “corridors” on that ship even as you remodel the rooms – no more or less than we will dismantle major roads as we rethink land-use.

    2. – land-use IS market-driven as much or more so as it is policy dictated.

    3. – Land-use Policies that ignore market preferences can and do have unintended consequences.

    In other words, how much of the currently-believed dysfunctional patterns are, in fact, the result of previous land-use policies?

    Finally a thought on that dastardly evil – Congestion.

    The conventional wisdom repeated ad nauseum across the main stream media and in this and other blogs is that

    “If we don’t do something about this crisis – it will strangle our economy and literally cook the golden goose”.

    May I politiely suggest –

    BALERDASH!

    Can someone please direct me to the place where this has already happened and serves as a clear warning to NoVa (or supply your own favorite “place”) as to what also will happen to it if it does not heed the warning signs and “fix” this so-called “crisis”?

    Is there a place in the USA or across the world where a city has “shut-down” from gridlock?

    Oh – you say – it won’t actually shut down but it will be “harmed” by some amount and we our proof is the “lost time”…. pardon me while I smile a little…at comptemplating why we don’t use this same standard for airlines…or even subway transit

    I mean.. heckfire… all those folks standing around at air terminals just has to have some quantifiable harm to the economy – right?

    Okay – so now we have concluded that we have no way to accurately characterize congestion (from Ray’s contributions) and

    TA DA .. no way to truly quantify the tangible harm from congestion.

    There are times – like right now – when I think the whole idea of characterizing the current state of affairs as a crisis that needs tax hikes – as a clever ruse from those who think that “opportunity” is never finer than when tax dollars appear as low hanging fruit ripe for the picking…

    The reason I think this is that the non-tax solution is clear and effective.

    gee.. when is the last time the water/sewer folks showed up and said that all this growth and congestion was threatening their ability to provide you with that service?

    When is the last time WalMart stopped you at the door and said they had no more room and you’d have to come back later?

  6. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    There’s one particular thing about Henrico that probably is known and might be useful.

    In the current budget environment, the future is bleak for secondary road funding.

    Let’s characterize this funding as ALLOCATIONS fro VDOT.

    How about Henrico?

    Do they .. instead of receiving allocations.. get a direct cut of the gas tax revenues generated in their county?

    Do they get their cut BEFORE money is allocated to other counties or does Henrico get less money also?

    And why do we consider statistics to be Henrico’s responsibility?

    Seems like to me that this would be a good subject for JLARC to address.

    Why did our GA not have this done as part of their initiative to turn over secondary roads?

    Not doing that – not providing info about the impact of doing so has made most counties rightly suspicious and have legitimate fear and loathing…

    .. which I was posit – was just plain irresponsible for the GA guys proposing this turn-over to then look the other way in terms setting up a transition framework.

    It wasn’t Henrico’s job to gather data and stats… it was the job of the GA guys who wanted to convince the other counties to do what Henrico did.

  7. Anonymous Avatar
    Anonymous

    Would like to point out that Henrico has the lions share of business and commercial development in the region. That is the main factor in the property tax rate being so much lower than surrounding jurisdictions.

  8. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “…how much of the currently-believed dysfunctional patterns are, in fact, the result of previous land-use policies?”

    You hit on a good point which was covered extensively in the paper. the paper follwed a typical pattern: it outlined previous research findings and reported whatever contradicting results, controversies, or failings that resulted. In this case there was quite a bit of previous contradictory findings. The authors also pointed out a kind of statistical anomaly that might skew the results one way if you approached the problem from a land use reference and another way if you approached the problem from a congestion point of view.

    As a result,they said, nobody knows what the truth is.

    The skewness problem was partly related to the time discrepancy you note, and the authors proposed, and used a rather elaborate method to nullify this.

    I’m not sure the method used was justified, or testable, but it seemed at least arguable.

    Using their method the authors conducted the study using government collected data, both current and historical,and produced the conclusions noted above.

    Voila, they claimed, now we know the real, honest-to-god, unvarnished, final truth, because after all, we are the experts.

    Maybe. I still think more study is necessary, but with data sets available only every ten years, and considering the speed at which the process works, we may have to wait a while. Still, from my point of view, and from my observations of daily life, their conclusions seem more intuitively correct than the idea we can solve congestion with more density.

    ————————-

    If you are right, and our current problems are a result of a)previous planning, b) previous politics, and c)market forces, then what are the odds that we can achieve a better result, even if we now have the right model? With three variables, any one of which can work for you or against you, a little Bayesian statistics will give a pretty miserable forcast.

    ———————–

    I think you are right about BALDERDASH. Those locations that are most popular and which are the cause of our current problems will stay that way. We are not going to undo any major highways, even if the Bronx expressway collapse suggests it might be a good idea.

    But, as JB points out, there is no reason to continue whatever subsidies or incentives that have previously caused such places: the market will take care of that.

    We also know that at least some operations are moving away from the center: also a market driven decision. It now appears that a polycentric situation generates less traffic and less congestion than a major league centralized one. This makes sense because in a polycentric situation people have more alternatives or choices.

    So far, we have been resistant to constructing a polycentric transportation network. This is exactly what the FAA is working on, however, along with reducing waiting time through more extensive congestion pricing.

    Speaking of choices, those people standing around at air or Metro terminals have made choices. They apparently figure that their wait (for them) is better than the alternative. It’s not much of a choice as long as the alternaive is an endless traffic jam, yet there are plenty of people that choose that option.

    If the lost time from traffic jams is, in turn, causing us to make bad decisions on mass transport, and the high concentrations needed to support it, then eliminating that mistake and those costs would count on the plus side of a cost benefit analysis of reducing congestion. Rather simply say that everyone has delays, and everyone has peak load problems and ignore the situation we should be looking for a lowest net cost system wide solution.

    That solution will probably result in more congestion than we would like and less transit supporting density than we would like. On the other hand, it might mean you could get a seat on the train.

    We do have ways to measure the harm from congestion, but we also have controversy as to how good they are. The answer isn’t to throw our hands up, but to look for better answers.

    For example, we now have a pretty good network of traffic cameras. We can read license plates and RFID’s ont the fly. Why not build a program or sytem that can measure what is happening in the field of view of the camera in far more detail than we have now: number of vehicles, type of vehicles, number of lane changes, speed, distance between vehicles, time of day, maybe even number of passengers.

    Averaged over all the traffic cameras, we might learn something.

    I agree that the whole idea of characterizing the current state of affairs as a crisis that needs tax hikes – is a clever ruse. But I would say the same thing about those that wring their hands over the FBI and BRAC moves as a crisis in sprawl. Whether either of these is a crisis or not, somewhere there is a balance between building an endlss number of roads to bring an infinite number of people to the same place and time, and never using another piece of empty ground again with the result that new apartments cost $2300 a square foot as I recently saw in Singapore. Whether it is a crisis or not, we owe it to ourselve to at least look for an honest evaluation of what results in the lowest cost and the highest overall net benefit. What prevents us from doing that is politics and the desire to tax the guy behind the tree.

    We might not like the results. What if we decide that the highest net benefit is not destroying the planet, and the cheapest way to achieve that is genocide? Now, that, would be a crisis.

  9. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    “Why not build a program or sytem that can measure what is happening in the field of view…. “

    let me ask you something. Do you think that when you run all your purchases through a scanner at Wal_Mart and then you scan your credit card .. that they are not capturing info about you and your shopping habits?

    They might deny it but I’m betting that most stores, and especially those that provide you with the keychain tab… do .. in fact, mine data about you and your habits and so yes… that would be a legitimate promise of tolling and congestion pricing….

    I note in my reading that there is significant concern among those that would like to go forward with TOlling and congestion pricing… that if it is done in a “wrong” way that there could be a vigorous backlash.. that could derail the concept…. regionally and/or nationaly – especially since some of the private companies involved are not Amercian companies.

  10. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Toll stations RFIDs will work, and I have no doubt that will happen. As long as the data is aggregated and not personal, who cares?

    We have already seen TV stories where the murderer got nabbed because his story didn’t jive with his toll booth info, and also where someone was framed using toll booth info. I still think the privacy issue is overblown, as you say, everybody knows something about you.

    However, the study noted above was based on 50 metro areas. We don’t have 50 Metro areas with good RFID coverage, but most of them probably have cameras. There are probably a hundred other ways to do it.

    The only argument I’m making is that we can’t go on making policy based on bad ideas or ones we can’t measure. If we do, then 30 years from now some blogger will be asking “How much of the currently-believed dysfunctional patterns are, in fact, the result of previous land-use policies?”

    By then we may have redefined dysfunctional to mean something entirely different from the way it is used on this blog.

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