Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Running as Hard as They Can

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Ed Risse uses a term “RHTC” as short-hand for a broad swath of Americans he describes as “Running as Hard as they Can” — the vast middle class between the underclass and the winners in the “winner take all” globally competitive economy. Ed contends that dysfunctional human settlement patterns explain why they are running so hard. His analysis gains support from a new report by the Center for Housing Policy, “A Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families.”

In the nation’s 28 largest metropolitan areas, working family households earning between $20,000 and $50,000 a year are spending 58 percent of their income (60 percent in the Washington metro area) just on housing and transportation. The housing bubble has garnered ample attention for the housing part of the equation. Less widely recognized is that working families spend just as much of their income on transportation. (See the data comparing metro areas.)

And the problem is intensifying. While incomes rose 10.3 percent between 2000 and 2005, transportation costs rose 13.4 percent and housing costs 15.4 percent.

Of particular interest to the ongoing discussions on this blog is the fact that housing and transportation costs are intimately entwined. The high cost of housing in the metropolitan core, where most of the jobs are, forces working class families to live farther out — in effect trading their time and transportation costs in exchange for lower mortgage payments. What many families fail to understand is that when they add up the diffuse costs of transportation — auto ownership, maintenance, taxes, insurance, gasoline, etc. — they are not only sacrificing their time but losing money.

(One of the goals of Ed’s Property Dynamics project is to educate consumers about these and other costs related to human settlement patterns: dispelling prevalent myths and enabling people to make more rational economic decisions about where to live.)

The authors also identify community impacts:

As more and more working families commute to distant job centers from their homes, clogged and congested roads become the norm in surrounding communities. A growing number of communities are identifying the lack of
affordable housing and the increase in commute times and traffic congestion as priority issues. But they haven’t always linked these two sets of issues…

Clearly, there is a huge supply-demand imbalance of housing in Northern Virginia and, to a lesser extent, Virginia’s other metro areas. Developers are building high-end housing, but little that working families can afford. Does that mean developers are “greedy” and “heartless”? No, it suggests that there is an acute shortage of developable land in the metropolitan core — much of it attributable to local government restrictions on development and re-development. Given the scarcity of vacant land and the difficulty of re-developing underutilized land at higher densities, developers will serve the most profitable segment of the market — the high end — first.

The study recommends:

  • Infill development “that expands the supply of affordable housing in inner city and older suburban neighborhoods that have good access to traditional job centers.”
  • Development of affordable housing “near transportation hubs and suburban employment centers.
  • Reliable transit for suburb-to-suburb commuting, and for transporting workers from the outer suburbs to the metropolitan core.
  • Car sharing, to reduce the cost of car ownership for those lacking access to transit.

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38 responses to “Running as Hard as They Can”

  1. James Atticus Bowden Avatar
    James Atticus Bowden

    Don’t forget the tax bite. Harvard did a study comparing 30 years ago to today. The results are interesting…http://www.american
    civilization.net/articles/2006/
    Harvard_Tells_the_Truth_on_Taxes.htm

  2. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “Given the scarcity of parcels to build upon, developers will serve the most profitable segment of the market — the high end — first.”

    Same holds true for the rural areas. As long as they have a choice,why wouldn’t government prefer to have high end residents?

    And it isn’t just a matter of affordable housing, it is a matter of suitable housing – places where people can live rather than just exist.

    People are not stupid. They know tha money spent on travel is a throw away compared to money invested in their homes, if they are spending as much on travel as on housing, there is a reason.

  3. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Here’s a simple calculation that demonstrates the problem with regard to commuting to cheaper housing.

    Let’s take a guy who has a car that gets 20 miles per gallon and he commutes 100 miles a day round-trip.

    Here’s what his contributionis to transportation revenues for his daily trip:

    100/20 = 5 gallons x .35 (tax) = $1.75

    Let’s say he shares that highway with 100,000 other drives (like I-95).

    1.75 x 100,000 = $175,000 per day

    or … $ 45,000,000 per year.

    Adding one lane to I-95 for 50 miles is on the order of 500 million to 1 billion dollars or more.

    It would take between 10 and 20 years to generate enough money for the new lane even if you never paid a penny for maintenance.

    Let’s say.. that you want the gas tax to go up enough so that the 500 million would be generated in .. say 5 years.

    500,000,000 / 5 = 100 million per year

    100 million / 100,000 (drivers) = $1000

    $1000 / 260 days of work per driver =

    $3.85 per day / 5 (gallons) = 77 cents

    per gallon (tax required to build a new lane on 50 miles of I-95 for 100,000 daily drivers.

  4. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Jim:

    Thank you for the reinforcement!

    My first thought was: Just think of the price tag if ALL the location variable costs were fairly allocated!

    My partners reaction was: “We could have written this 15 years ago. In fact we did write it 15 years ago but no one would pay for the data to support our efforts.” Those efforts were in advocating Telework as an interum measure while comprehensive changes were mate to foster what we then called “functional land use patterns.”

    We suggest a carefull rereading “Five Critical Realities that Shape the Future” at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com.

    Until governments stop subsidizing and regulating to create dysfunction and citizens create strategies and processes to provide the sort of places the market supports, the present trajectory will continue.

    More and more will be “running as hard as the can” (RHTC) and the economic, social and physical fabric of civilization will continue to fray and shred.

    EMR

  5. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    One Other Thing:

    Sustainable New Urban Regions must consist of Balanced Communities.

    There is no concievable way to proivide access and mobility for randomly scattered origins and destinataion regardless of how many shared-vehicle systems there are or how close people live or work to the stations.

    Of course, as we all know by now, Autonomobility is a dead end. But shared-vehicle systems (aka, “mass transit”) cannot overcome random distribution of origins and destinations.

    We did not realize that 15 years ago, but we do now.

    EMR

  6. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Larry:

    That’s more like it. That is the kind of thinking we need to see more of. I would only add that a reasonable amortization for an additional lane on 95 would be more like 20 years than five years.

    Even if it needs to be repaved in ten years, that is a maintenance item that pales in comparison to the construction costs.

    Also, gas tax is not the only source of revenue, just as reale state tax is not the only source of revenue for residential services, some of which include roadways.

    We can put all the available revenue (which can only come from income and sales) in one big pile and then set priorities. No doubt we will argue about the priorites forever, but at least we will know how much money there is to work with.

    Or, we can endlessly say that X isn’t paying its share, when we already deliberately created a system whereby X wouldn’t have to pay his share. We can have an unlimited number of user fees, like my land use fee, that have no relationship between source, ability to pay, cost, or end use.

    Either way it is a logical and financial shambles, unless we can decide what it is that we are really about.

    I don’t have any children in school, and never have had. I willingly pay to support schools, even though I think they are terrible and should be privatized. Bad as they are, they are the best we have, unless you are wealthy enough to pay for schools twice. Even so, those that are able to do that, take a considerable load off of the rest of us, so I can’t complain about that, either.

    But, I have a very limited attention span when it comes to someone else complaining that they are paying for something they don’t use. My reaction is, fine, let roads pay their own way, and Metro too – see which one closes down first. Fine, let Fairfax pay not only the full allocated costs for all the jobs it supplies, but also for all the housing that the employees require, and then let’s talk about the “efficiency” of urban areas.

    Despite my longstanding disagreement with EMR, my underlying feelings are in agreement with his: we are headed for a disaster of unprecedented proportions. I’m not sure the time frame is as imminent as he suggests. I have a lot more confidence that we will develop other options when we need them. I’m not even convinced that we have to do anything about it.

    As a scientist, I’m willing to accept the idea that a disaster is one solution, and a pretty common one. There is nothing quite like a disaster to foment fundamental change.

    At last, EMR has conceded a point I have been trying to make. He has crystallized succinctly a thought that I have been circling and haven’t brought to focus.

    “Shared-vehicle systems (aka, “mass transit”) cannot overcome random distribution of origins and destinations.” No matter how you design shared vehicle systems, there will always be some other destination that has not been fulfilled. We are not going to instll Metro in the back country of Yellowstone (I hope). That is why we need to stop arguing against automobiles and in favor of Metro. What we need to do is design a SYSTEM that has the best attributes of both, and the worst attributes of neither. And we can include all the other options wherever they make sense, even including Amish buggies.

    The only place that EMR and I really disagree is what would happen if the costs of public services were fairly allocated.

    He thinks that the reason urban areas are so expensive is because so many people are bidding up the price. He thinks the price would come down if we had still more density, because such places are inherently nore efficient.

    I think that suburban and rural sprawl is a reflection of the fact that people are unwilling to pay the price. They don’t see the “value” in the price that urban spaces require. One reason that thyey require higher prices is that, in fact, they are inherently less efficient, OR, they are supplying goods that people are unwilling to pay more for, as in less space.

    Not to mention crime, pollution, fear, and bad schools.

    In order to allocate the costs fairly, you must also be willing to allocate the benefits fairly. As I see it, urban areas are requiring more and more services and benefits from rural areas, without paying for them.

    Maybe, EMR is right, and my views are jaded on account of percieved opportuinty losses on the order of between five and thirty million dollars. I’d like to think I’m not that jaded or greedy. What is more important is that I recognize, that under a free market much of those “opportunity costs” would evaporate.

    The only reason they are as high as they are is the reasons Bacon so often numerates – unreasonable restrictions. Both in the city and in the countryside. Only by eliminating distortions in ALL the markets will we be able to determine who is right, and where the costs and benefits really lie.

  7. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “Autonobility” is not a dead end. Cars are not going away. Segways and bicycles are not going awy either. Neither is nuclear power or nuclear weapons.

    The choice of what we do with them is up to us.

    We can make cars smaller, more efficient, solar-electric powered. We can make them into shared vehicle-flex car-PRT systems if we wish.

    But the idea that they are a dead end, or the idea that random distribution of origins and destinations will sudenly end, simply indicates a lack of imagination, in my opinion.

  8. Toomanytaxes Avatar
    Toomanytaxes

    Why would a study conclude that in-fill housing in already developed communities is likely to be less expensive, i.e., affordable? The more developed the area, the more expensive the land.

    I can see this occuring in an urban renewal environment. But not everyone wants to live there. Indeed, I’ve read numerous articles where existing residents of a community being renewed or “gentrified” often complain that the community transformation often comes at the cost of affordable housing.

    Large cities tend to be more expensive than rural areas for many, but not all, things. I’m not arguing against in-fill development, unless the infrastructure is inadequate, or even smart-growth. But so many of these proposals seems to defy basic economics. In those instances, I presume that people have a hidden agenda.

    We need more places in Virginia with good jobs. Preserving Fauquier County at the cost of driving up taxes and driving down the quality of life in Fairfax County is not worth it, IMHO.

  9. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    I feel that Ray’s post is …. it couldn’t hit the nail any better.

    For instance:

    “There is nothing quite like a disaster to foment fundamental change.”

    but to quibble.. it’s sometimes a bit subjective as some disasters are breathtaking instantaneous events that happen in a flash while others unfold slowly ..like a cancer until the final stage .. can no longer be denied by anyone.

    Then Ray sez:

    ” That is why we need to stop arguing against automobiles and in favor of Metro. What we need to do is design a SYSTEM that has the best attributes of both, and the worst attributes of neither.”

    ON TARGET! congrats! and thanks 🙂

    There is a fundamental tension between what can be planned/imposed on people verses what happens if people are left alone to make their own choices –

    EXCEPT – the economic playing field needs to be NEUTRAL – and citizens are choosing between options that all involved economic costs to THEM and not the public.

    This is not the case right now with publically-funded roads that are the result of general taxes and not direct fees.

    In other words, the amount of tax that one pays does give each buyer the same level of service.

    Clearly driving a 10 mile stretch of road at rush hour has very different impacts than driving that same stretch of road at 2 a.m. and yet the cost to the driver for doing so – are the same and are NOT allocated on the basis of what it costs to provide that rush-hour level of service.

    METRO is not about money at the fare-box – paying for just METRO.

    It never was but folks continue to insist that METRO has nothing to do with Roads and therefore should be judged stand-alone in it’s cost-benefits.

    METRO is about moving people at rush hour while maintaining cleaner air and mitigating the need to build very expensive road infrastructure that will be used mostly at rush hour.

    So the question is – is METRO more cost-effective and less-polluting than building roads to serve rush hour demands.

    If it is – then it is a benefit to ALL taxpayers regardless of the actual fares charged by Metro.

    In fact, it could be argued that if EVEN lower fares would result in even higher useage.. AND less pollution and less need to build rush-hour road capacity that doing so may, in fact, be even more cost effective.

    Congestion-pricing – actually results in LESS driving at rush hour – and, in the process, delivers MORE capacity (as documented in the USDOT article) – AND less polltuion.

    If BOTH Congestion-pricing is combined with other strategies (like METRO/VRE) that actually result in less congestion, less pollution, and more rush hour capacity, are folks going to OPPOSE that goal?

    Well.. people DO apparently oppose this.

    Why?

    And forgive me – I’m not sure how New Urbanist Regions fit into this.

    I KNOW there is a connection but beyond that my brain is too small to adequately fathom if the above goals are “enough” to drive us towards New Urbanist Regions.

    Perhaps EMR can tell us what is lacking and needs to be done in addtion to actually see New Urbanists Regions.

  10. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Well, part of the plan for a better region, promoted by PEC, points out that PG county has a distinct lack of jobs and the longest commutes in the area, so they do promote the idea of creating more jobs in the places where people live.

    As long as it is not only not in my back yard, but in some other state.

    My only point with Metro funding is that you should use the same standards to judge a roads value as you do metro. If Metro isn’t required to pay its own way, why should roads pay not only their own way but Metro’s, too? If Metro gets credit for the development it spawns, why shouldn’t roads?

  11. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “So the question is – is METRO more cost-effective and less-polluting than building roads to serve rush hour demands.

    If it is – then it is a benefit to ALL taxpayers regardless of the actual fares charged by Metro.”

    Maybe.

    I think there are other questions.

    Is Metro more cost effective and less polluting at meeting ALL rush hour demands? Probably not. We would never consider building Metro to take us everywhere we all need to go.

    That means that roads must be more cost effective and less polluting than Metro for most of our destinations, and by your argument that means that those roads which are more effective at what they do than Metro is or would be, are also a benefit to all taxpayers. If we shouldn’t worry about the fares charged by Metro, then we shouldn’t worry about how roads are paid for either, both systems benfit us all.

    Considering that Metro is jammed to the doors at rush hour, everyone who drives and doesn’t use Metro offers a benefit to everyone who does, just as much as everyone who rides metro takes another car off the jammed highways.

    The Metro fare box isn’t even paying for metro, let alone contributing to all the other modes of transportation.

    What we have is a system that consists of homes, jobs, other places, and transportation. The goal is to find the lowest cost, least polluting answer for the system.

    EMR says the answer is to move homes closer to the jobs. But he ignores the very real costs associated with that plan: the homes he advocates are not equivalent to what we have now.

    But if that is a partially valid answer, then so is moving jobs closer to homes, a strategy he rejects. The opening premise of his argument is that jobs are where they are and they aregoing to stay there, and this argument is echoed in PEC’s plan for a better region. But even the data they show to support the argument show that jobs are migrating outward and inner jobs are declining. BRAC shows us that this argument isn’t necessarily cast in stone. And if moving jobs to PG county is good, then why not Loudoun, or F’burg?

    The hidden cost in that argument is that it makes Metro less valuable.

    Congestion pricing will make roads come closer to paying their full costs, but, as you say, it will also reslt in fewer people driving during rush hour, and we don’t know what the cost of that will be.

    Looking at our system we see that homes, Metro, and, roads, all three, don’t pay their full costs. So, how are all the bills getting paid? Some of them are getting paid by excess taxes on businesses (including farms). But where do THEY get the money?

    Whether the money comes to support these things come from the users pockets or the public pockets, it all comes out of our pockets.

    There is no rational way to make economic decisions based on what comes out of our pockets vs the public pockets. All of these things are supported partly by general taxes and not user fees. You can have a level playing field by having all of them supported entirely by user fees, in which case people will have an incentive to make the most economical combination of choices.

    Or you can have a level playing field by having them all supported by general taxes. Everyone would have the same incentive to take advantage of the system, and everyone would have the same incentive not to, knowing that such behavior will only raise their costs.

    But you cannot very well argue for a level playing field by saying that auto drivers and (new) home owners must pay their full costs, but Metro riders and existing home owners don’t, and businesses should pay more than their costs.

    I’m not sure I see that Metro mitigates the need for building very expensive infrastructure that is used mostly at rush hour. Isn’t Metro expensive infrastructure used mostly at rush hour?

    Suppose that congestion pricing results in a situation where roads ARE paying their way, but Metro is still subsidized. What happens to your argument about cost effectiveness then? Couldn’t we just as well argue that if Metro had to pay its own way, then it would only be built where it is truly cost effective? Then it wouldn’t need to be subsidised by those who don’t use it.

    By the way, I know this is heresy, but I’m not even convinced that Metro actually results in less pollution. When I am using my car it pollutes, and when it is sitting it doesn’t. But those Metro trains and escalators, and lights, and employees run all the time, whether they are being used (adequately) or not. They are all (except the employees) built out of steel and concrete and crushed stone, all huge enegry users. Plus electricity is the least efficient form of energy to begin with. There might be less local pollution and and not less total pollution. Besides, experience shows us that whatever pollution Metro produces is in addition to cars and not instead of. NYC has the highest transit use anywhere, and yet it is still among the most polluted cities.

  12. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Cars don’t pay their own way either.

    If they did – there would be no funding “crisis”.

    and the road “solutions”.. .well there are some issues:

    1. – define “solution”. Then ell me which projects are the projects that are needed to provide this – as yet – unspecified level of service.

    Then tell me how much it will cost in toto and what the per capita share is and then show me how these new roads will not result in violating the EPA emissions limits.

    You can actually do that with Metro. You can talk about how many cars, how many stations, etc.. what those costs are .. and where the money might come from AND you know that they can do it without violating the Region’s air quality.

    Show.. show me the road path… as outlined above.

    The usual advocacy is – “we’ve got to build more but we don’t know the where/when/what/and how and we don’t know the cost but if we don’t come up with a bunch of money .. right away… we cannot start.

    So.. first step.. forget about Metro and it’s problems.. show me the roadmap if you will for roads for the NoVa area.

    Find your favorite advocates and provide what they are advocating – specifics in terms of projects, funding and benefits to the region.

    This is why most folks won’t sign on to higher taxes for roads in my view.

    They’re being told “more money” and forget the specifics and if you ask too many questions… bad stuff will eventually happen because of the delays.

    Folks complain about the way that Metro decides expansions – and there are legitimate issues – but compared to the road issues outlined above.. there are childs play.

  13. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “That means that roads must be more cost effective and less polluting than Metro for most of our destinations,”

    Does it?

    How about roads that have so many cars on them at rush hour that they are not even carrying their practical max loads?

    That’s a huge cost-effectiveness issue for roads.

    Congestion pricing is one way to deal with it. Metro is another.

    What would be the cost of operating area roads at rush hour WITHOUT Metro.

    Put all of those metro riders on the road network at rush hour.

    … or tell me what it would cost for the road infrastructure to accommodate all the Metro riders at rush hour
    and then compare THAT cost to the cost of operating METRO..

    then you’d have an honest comparison.

    You could do this also – for future projections…

    look at the projected growth .. then look at the impact on regional roads in terms of the costs needed to operate the roads ..

    do the same for METRO..

    Oh.. and figure out the pollution aspect also…

    look at how much pollution the METRO solution will generate and how much pollution the Auto path will generate and the effect on the emissions budget.

    I’m betting that you will not be able to make a reasonable case and I’m further betting that if such a reasonable case could have been made, it would have already been made by the road advocates themselves.

    The road advocates, in general, are AWOL in term of specific plans.. they basically only bleat about more funds and they end their conversation with what Forest Gump said – “That’s all I’m going to say on that subject”

    To a certain extent.. we have the beginning of such a methodology with the VDOT build-out analysis of the Loudoun Comp Plan.

    If VDOT does that with ALL of the NoVa localities – we WILL get a number and that could be a start….

  14. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Larry, it is your argument. We don’t put Metro everywhere because it isn’t cost effective to do so. In the places we don’t put Metro then roads must be more cost efficient. In those places where it is more cost effective then it is a benefit to all regardless of how it is paid for. It is your argument, not mine.

    I agree cars don’t pay their own full costs, neither does Metro. So what? They both offer public benefits and that is why we subsidize them both. Cars still pay a greater percentage of their own costs than Metro does. So what? Cars do what they do and Metro does what it does. They are not the same and they are not interchangeable. Given the situation we have, we need both.

    The real question is why do we have that situation. Is that situation really so valuable compared to the alternatives that it justifies building and operating Metro, in addition to the roads?

    Now, if a road is so popular that it cannot carry its best load, then maybe that is a place where Metro would be more cost effective, now. But that might not have been the case when the road was built. Doesn’t mean the road was built in the wrong place, or that it didn’t pay its own way. In fact, you could say that part of its vlue is that it enabled Metro, just as 66 did.

    If you eliminated metro, you would still have as many cars as you have now, and not much more. It can’t possibly get much worse than it is with Metro: yesterday I spent 2.5 hours to travel 45 miles. The cost of operating area roads would be the same as now, because we still wouldn’t have more roads.

    Eventually, people would tire of the kind of problem I had yesterday, and go someplace else, just as they are now, with Metro. So what did Metro buy us?

    All Metro does is allow you additional peak capacity over what the roads offer, and the question is whether that peak capacity is really necessary or worth the cost. Why do we need that much capacity? Bad planning led to too many jobs in one spot.

    How much did it cost to put those jobs where we did vs putting them someplace that would not have caused the need for Metro?

    Metro carries 800,000 riders. We could have put 50,000 jobs each in 16 towns that already have roads that are not overused. How is putting 800,000 jobs in one place and then building and operating Metro any cheaper?

    Comparing it to equivalent capacity without Metro is a meaningless argument. You simply could not construct that much capacity in the space allowed. On the other hand, if you allowed enough space, a) you couldn’t afford to build Metro, and b) no one would ride Metro becase the roads would be clear. You need congestion for Metro to work, so you can’t possibly claim that Metro reduces congestion.

    We have built all the roads that are allowed in the region due to air pollution restrictions. That still doesn’t mean that we can build more houses and service them with more Metro. If we are bumping up against the air pollution limits, well, houses and businesses burn fuel and pollute, too. Either way you are over the pollution limits. New capacity has to go someplace else. Had we done that to begin with, we would have saved 10 billion dollars constucting metro and another 40 billion operating it.

    How many times has the general fund hijacked the transportation money? Even if cars were paying their own way now, that doesn’t mean that they are also paying enough to create the roads for future cars. Even if Metro riders payed their full costs, it wouldn’t mean there was money for expansion. Especially when the funds to do that are hijacked.

    There is no roadmap for more roads or more housing for NOVA. It can’t be done, but that doesn’t mean that Metro is the answer, or that it is cost effective.

    The hidden cost in EMR’s plan is that you get homes that aren’t equivalent to what we have now. The hidden cost in PEC’s Plan for the region is that it sends jobs to PG county, Maryland. Try getting elected on that platform.

    But the hidden cost in more places is that we need more spaces to put the places. And what are we doing with that space now? Nothing. By law, we are doing nothing with it. We are putting it in conservation easements and creating fifty acre tax exempt lawns for rich people.

    Everybody else, though, is expected to pay full costs and full price for their 145 sq ft.

  15. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    There is an excellent organization called “Planning Commissioners Journal” – website: http://www.plannersweb.com/

    They just released a DRAFT article called “Pro Forma”

    The basic premise behind the article is that unless the elected decision-makers know what the applicant knows in terms of return on investment for a given project – they don’t know if it is a good project “fit” or a bad project “fit” in terms of benefit to the jurisdiction.

    They also don’t knowif the project is going to return enough .. to pay for the necessary infrastructure.

    What they advocate is having staff personnel who themselves could qualify to work for a developer doing the same analysis.

    The “backstory” is that developers are Professionals who do know their business and that local governments planning departments are NOT professionals in that regard and thus do not have the level of expertise required to generate a comprehensive analysis that supports making an informed decision about a given project.

    A prime example is traffic studies where the developer PAYS someone to do one that often ignore key impacts that need to be known while the county staff lacks the resources to realize that they have not enough info to help drive an informed decision.

    So.. whether it’s about Tysons or even bigger issues that EMR is articulating – local decisionmakers often lack the tools and the data – to actually know enough about a proposal to make a proper decision and if nothing horrible pops up on a given proposal – the motivation is to move it forward.

    Many citizens inherently realize this – but their “input” is usually along the lines that not enough analysis has been done.. and that they have concerns about … vice showing up with an analysis that proves their point.

    One can legitimately ask WHOSE responsibility is that good analysis and I would not disagree that it certainly is not the citizens but the reality is.. that if the county won’t/can’t do it.. then the tough questions never get asked much less addressed in the approval process.

  16. Toomanytaxes Avatar
    Toomanytaxes

    Couldn’t Virginia’s excellent public universities conduct some honest & analytial studies that present a clearer picture of what’s going on with transportation and development? The facts might well scare us all. But at least we’d be dealing with some form of reality.

    I would agree that Metro is important to the D.C. area because of its ability to move people during the busy hours without putting them on the highways. A network is only as good as its capacity to carry traffic at the period of peak demand.

    But does that necessarily mean taxpayers received a good return on their dollars over the years? Now we are dealing with sunk costs. That changes the analysis considerably. Also, does that mean WMATA is well managed? Does that mean we should spend billions more to extend Metrorail? The decision to starve WMATA and the decision to expand it are quite different in nature.

    I agree strongly with Ray that, at least on a going-forward basis, we should evaluate all transportation facilities and systems by the same standard. I’m not going to argue that we should never consider factors other than pure numbers. For example, we probably could never justify having any special transit for handicapped people on the basis of numbers alone. But we, as a society, probably still believe that we need to address the transportation needs of this segment of our population.

    But, at the same time, I quickly tire of those who use puffery from PR firms to substitute for analysis and data. Whether it’s “economic development” for I-73; “transit oriented development” and “walkable communities” for the Silver Line; “keep Virginia moving” for more roads and higher taxes in general; they are all hollow substitutes for facts and analysis.

    The existence of the PPPA and its basic non-use for transportation speaks, indeed, screams loudly that we are not spending money wisely.

  17. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: Metro vs Roads

    We’re looking at a snapshot in time with respect to Metro AND Roads whereas the actual question is –
    what should Metro AND Roads look like 10, 20, 30 years from now and how do we get there from NOW?

    At one time – subways in NYC, LA, etc were very small.. smaller than the current Metro but if they had not planned explicitly for future growth – their future expansions would have been precluded – never to occur.

    So .. instead of arguing about whether Metro can “go everywhere” or not RIGHT NOW or even in the future – just tell me where the roads in the future need to be. That’s a much more positive argument than essentially ANTI-Metro.

    .. Move ON.. to what the mobility network needs to look like 10, 20, 30 years from now and what THAT mix of Metro/Roads should look like.

    Blind Road advocacy – yes.. BLIND is the right word because there is NO PLAN from road advocates to begin with – just Anti-Metro rhetoric.

    If one wants to advocate for more roads and less METRO .. put it on the table in the form of projects (even if they violate the air quality).. get them on the table.. and show how they will do it better than Metro.

    Show how congestion levels and travel delay will be improved by buildling those roads.

    Otherwise.. folks have to presume that the road advocates are really little more than Anti-Metro and really want to continue the status-quo of mega-funding roads on an ad-hoc basis where we really have no clue about how the network will be improved ..or who will pay and how much… and really don’t want a discussion of such issues the first place.

    The Mantra is: Build more roads – anywhere you can.. for whatever it costs ..by taxing everyone and something good HAS to come out of just adding more roads… I don’t mind saying.. this does not appear to me to be a “smart” concept.

    At LEAST Metro … HAS A PLAN, ditto VRE, AMTRAK to Richmond, etc… that can be debated… Where is THAT plan for roads in the WASH METRO area and ESPECIALLY where you say that METRO cannot go? What is the road plan instead?

  18. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “what should Metro AND Roads look like 10, 20, 30 years from now and how do we get there from NOW?”

    Well, now you are talking. This is an excellent post and well worth thinking about.

    My offhand thoughts are that we are through building roads in the Central Wash Metro area. End of story. If EPA air quality attainment rules apply, then they could shut down almost any further construction. At the same time, housing emits almost a third as much as transportation, so under that argument, even additional housing may be limited.

    Downtown Houston, for example is almost 75% streets, so there is an obvious limit to how much road building you can do, and how much highrise can be supported by a street network.

    Such rules might not apply if you depend on transit or pedestrian motive forces. But, you have only to see the high rise slums of Hong Kong, Maylasia, or Mexico City to see that there are also limits in that direction.

    “folks have to presume that the road advocates are really little more than Anti-Metro”

    His where we part company. I don’t know of any “road advocates” that are anti-metro. If anything, they favor Metro in the mistaken belief that it will alleviate traffic congestion and make THEIR drive easier.

    Instead, Metro is merely another dimension of what Anthony Downs calls triple convergence. For every new Metro rider that vacates a space on the roadways, there will always be another driver eager to occupy that space.

    Therefore, “Show how congestion levels and travel delay will be improved by buildling those roads.” is a moot point. Neither more roads or Metro will reduce traffic congestion. In fact, Metro RELYS on traffic congestion, othewise everyone (who could afford it) would drive. Lets agree to agree on this and not argue the point any more. Reducing traffic congestion is going to take something other than Metro or roads.

    On the other hand, there are plenty of people willing to attack autos for no other reason than it is politically popular. As the Boston Globe put it:

    “Homeowners form the largest interest group. For them, unaffordable housing is not a problem; it increases the value of their portfolio. Moreover, since any new development brings some inconvenience, most homeowners prefer new construction in any community but their own. Antigrowth homeowners get ideological cover from environmentalists who do not care if housing is cheap or expensive as long as new homes don’t eliminate green space. They don’t much like cars, either.”

    That is to say, any car but their own. Let’s be reasonable about this, there is a lot more anti-auto rhetoric than anti-transit rhetoric. Even I actually like Metro, I’m just not convinced its benefits are all that are claimed.

    I recall the woman that posted here and pointed out that there is no way she could do her grocery shopping via Metro. I have yet to see someone loading a roll of carpet from home depot onto Metro. I think Metro costs far more than its advocates admit. But I still like it for what it is. My view of WHAT that is very jaded, however.

    Let’s forget all that. Suppose that Metro had freight cars where you could roll on your grocery carts and lumber dolleys, bicycles, kayaks.

    How would you get them down the broken escalators?

    OK, Imagine that all those problems were fixed, what does Metro do, on its own? There are 83 Metro stations and each metro station serves, at most, a one mile radius, and that is being generous. So, there is almost 2000 sq miles in the area “served” by metro, of which 260 sq miles is within one mile of a station. (actually it is a lot less than that because some stations are less than two miles apart).

    Metro cost $10 billion in capital. To multiply it by eight would cost $600 billion, today. And you would still have to walk on average a half mile (at each end) for every trip you take.

    Where is the plan for another $600 billion?

    That still only covers the existing Metro area: Vienna to New Carrollton, White Flint to Springfield. And a lot of Metro ridership comes from outside that area, by car. It is a SYSTEM, neither of which works without the other.

    And that is just capital costs. You would also multiply the operating losses by eight, and multiply the maintenance by eight. AS soon as Metro grows, then all the problems that you think roads have apply to Metro in spades.

    I’d say that if there was a Mantra these days, it is build more transit for whatever it costs and something good has to come of it. And remember that Metro is ALSO asking for a dedicated funding stream, taxing everyone for its existence.

    I have a pet peeve about Metro, that applies to all transport: everyone should have a seat, and the seat should face backwards, except for the operator. I’ll accept seat belts as a poor second.

    I figured this out, from of all things, traveling by sailboat. Traveling in a boat that is leaping off the back of a fifteen foot sea and slamming into the back of the next one every seven seconds, for two or three days, is a punishing experience. Pretty soon you find yourself wedged into the lowest spot you can find, braced against some kind of backrest.

    And that’s at seven miles an hour. When you think of the Japanese high speed train crash or the Spanish tran bombings, or the recurrent Indian derailments, you have to wonder how many of those people died because they were not properly restrained.

    So, maybe this is a little bit of a stretch, but I consider that allowing standing room only on trains amounts to a huge subsidy that cars and planes are (rightly) denied.

    We send bomb sniffing dogs aboard VRE for safety reasons, but, whether the dogs are successful or not, a lot more people are going to get hurt because they are standing up, than because of a bomb blast. This makes no sense to me, when we can prevent the standing problem with 100% certainty, but not the bomb blast.

    Like I said, pet peeve. I’m sure no one else cares.

    Bottom line. I agree with you, there is no road plan that works. There is no Metro plan that works for all purposes or everyone’s purposes, either.

    Think of the worst possible scenario for widening a road: I-66 inside the beltway. Tear down a bunch of expensive homes, the soundwalls and all the overpasses, widen the roads, fix the overpasses, rebuild the soundwalls.

    That’s a nightmare of such expense you would never think of doing it. You’d be better off to build a new Tyson’s corner in Warrenton or Culpeper.

    But what if you had to two-track Metro instead? First you’d have to do all the above stuff, only more so, because you’d have to move the entire highway out to accommodate. Then you’d have to reubuild all the metro stations.

    Now, given that the Orange line is already standing room only (at an enormous risk), you tell me what the plan is.

    I like Metro. I like the Boston MTA even better, but I’m also not blind to the limitations, inconvenience, and the expense. Besides, they don’t send bomb sniffing dogs to check out my car. And ny car provides a seat, and a seat belt. Plus an air bag. And the car has regenerative braking, which Metro doesn’t.

    I’ll say it again. We can improve our use of roads, immensely. We can improve our use of transit, immensely. But I’m convinced that this means using transit only where it makes sense. It means using regional trains only where they make sense. For everything else, we have cars. They may not make any sense, either, but they are still the best bargain for the money, and, we still need them even where transit does make sense.

    In the end, I couldn’t get my local airline started because it really didn’t make sense. I was lucky that my proposed investors slapped that into my head, finally. I’d hate to tell you what their analysis of Metro would be.

    I think the only answer that makes any sense, is to have more places.

    I’m pretty much convinced that the Culpeper, Warrenton, Front Royal Winchester, Dulles, Middleburg, Marshall Metro-Rural area makes a lot more sense than the apartment- living-only plan for a better region that PEC promotes.

    Under this concept the “Metro” areas and the “rural” areas would be combined into one concept, each supporting the other with mutually recognized benefits and costs. Open space, clean water, outdoor experiences, vibrant downtowns, affordable housing, convenient shopping.

    Likewise, in the Central DC area the “MetroRail” areas and the “auto” areas also support each other, it isn’t us or them in either situation. That is whare PEC is screwed up, in my opinion. We are all going to hang together, or surely we will all hang separately.

    The trick is to find the right balance. But, as I have said, balance is a dynamic state that requires a constant input of energy. In our society that means cash, and a constant input means you need cash flow. A dedicated income stream. Taxes.

    The metro parts of the metro-rural area these can be “smart” places if you like. But at some level we will have to accept that part of the costs we will pay is in terms of land.

    It is going to take land, and it is going to take money. Get over it.

  19. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Ray – you’re right .. this one has some “meat” on it.. I’ll handle each with a “re:”

    re: “If EPA air quality attainment rules apply, then they could shut down almost any further construction”

    no true – if the road can be shown to work without increasing air pollution then it can be approved”
    DO THINK about what KIND of road will meet this criteria .. there are several

    re: “For every new Metro rider that vacates a space on the roadways, there will always be another driver eager to occupy that space.”

    Ray – for every new lane of road – the same thing happens – would you agree?

    re: “Lets agree to agree on this and not argue the point any more. Reducing traffic congestion is going to take something other than Metro or roads.”

    well.. not true.. for example.. they’ve found that by finding and removing bottlenecks that travel time delays can be improved.

    They’ve also found that highways that use congestion pricing can IMPROVE congestion AND travel time delays.

    So – the FACTs .. ARE . .that YOU CAN.. but NOT by merely buildling new capacity…

    re: “Where is the plan for another $600 billion?”

    Indeed .. for METRO or roads… My guess: sales tax for METRO.. TOLLS for roads AGREE?

    re: “I’d say that if there was a Mantra these days, it is build more transit for whatever it costs and something good has to come of it. And remember that Metro is ALSO asking for a dedicated funding stream, taxing everyone for its existence.”

    Ray… You’re hearing MORE mantras for METRO and not roads? We gotta get together and do some serious adjustments of our hearing aids… 🙂

    I’m really no more an ADVOCATE of Metro than I am a skeptic of roads. I disagree sharply with both sides of key issues especially the criteria/process of determining where Rail (heavy or light) should go and roads should go and how to two are connected (intermodal).

    You point out that we have, in fact, a NETWORK – a Mobility Network and I totally agree but how do we maintain and expand this network in a cost-effective way?

    Ask that question of METRO, VDOT, VRE, etc and you’ll get 3 different, separate and independent answers rather than “our part of the network vision is….. “

    re: “boat that is leaping off the back of a fifteen foot sea and slamming into the back of the next one every seven seconds, for two or three days, is a punishing experience.”

    Try paddling a canoe across a lake with a following wind that is kicking up 5 foot waves that are climbing over your bow – you’re miles from the shore.. the water is 45 degrees and your boat is filling up with water.

    moral of story: It can always get worse Ray!

    but yes.. I agree with your Pet Peeve. I wonder also about all the hooray about putting kids in car seats … in your own auto – or be charged with a crime.. .and then.. we do what??? why we put them on a school bus without seat belts?

    That’s the beauty of humans… we can be very smart at the same exact time we’re being very stupid and the same exact thing.

  20. Toomanytaxes Avatar
    Toomanytaxes

    Let’s commidify (supposedly preferred over “commiditize”) commercial parking spaces in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, Prince William-Manassas, & Loudoun. Set a number that is consistent with reasonable traffic conditions — say even a D. Let businesses, government, individuals, nonprofits trade in the spaces. Businesses that could find ways to get their work done without filling their parking limits could sell their excess. They might use some of the proceeds to provide incentives for employees to take transit, telecommute, etc.

    Those businesses that could not live within their quota could purchase appropriate parking. The profits would be taxed, but the proceeds kept in the local jurisdictions and used solely for transportation purposes – road works, Metro cars, timing lights, etc.

    Market solutions have worked for reducing air pollution & I’ve seen where people are trying to use the solution for greenhouse emissions. Why not parking and traffic congestion?

    Happy Monday folks.

  21. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    TMT – how about extending your idea to variable priced parking lots where the market can also dictate their value for a given time period?

    I think you have a great idea actually.

    Do not permit street-level parking at businesses or high-density residential.

    All lots are separately owned multi-story enterprises and/or government authorities – much like commuter lots WITH intermodal services.

    This would be a boon for the environment also – as one of the biggest polluters of area waterways is the runoff of toxic stuff from parking lots.

    Great idea TMT!

  22. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “Ray – for every new lane of road – the same thing happens – would you agree?”

    Exactly my point, Larry, and that is where I started. If you expand Metro and make more seats available, and if the destinations are compatible and the price is right, someone may occupy those seats and vacate a spot on the road, which will immediately be filled: so long as there is a job to go to.

    Increasing Metro capacity allows someone to drive (and gain the benefit of that trip) who otherwise might not have.

    The same thing is true for increasing road capacity, even if congestion is not reduced, someone gets a new benefit that might not otherwise have happened. Clearing out a bottleneck is just increasing local road capacity, so I don’t see that this is any different.

    Increasing capacity anywhere in the system DOES increase benefits even if it does NOT reduce congestion. The question we have to answer is where do we get the most increase in benefit for a given amount of expenditure.

    Because highways have the bulk of users, the most kinds of users, the most places to offer, work 24 hours a day, and carry the most freight, the off hand answer is obvious. But Metro DOES have a special value in the special circumstance where there are a lot of jobs in one location. At the other end of the trip, the workers abodes are still disperse, and the system requires roads to feed the Metro: expanding Metro means expanding roads, and parking.

    However you do it, expanding the system (even bike paths) reduces the pain somewhere. The question is how much and what does it cost, just as in health care.

    Congestion pricing, on the other hand, reduces congestion by pricing the trip benefit out of reach. It increases the pain, by applying a tourniquet. It reduces the economic capacity and the physical capacity of the road, by raising the economic threshold for its use.

    I presume, that if someone wants a loaf of bread, they won’t pay $6.00 extra to get it in town, but they might pay $0.50 extra to get it at the country store. They probably won’t do without.

    Congestion pricing may reduce congestion locally, and that is a good thing by itself, but it may not reduce traffic, or VMT and may increase it. But, this might still result in less pollution and less wasted gas. I submit that we do not know the answers.

    As for our hearing aids, here is a google survey:

    Traffic reduction 21,300,00;
    Traffic Damand management 24,000,000;
    Heavy Rail 13,800,000
    Light rail 26,800,000
    Induced travel 12,500,000

    Improve highways 6,730,000
    Enhance Highways 7,830,000
    Increase highway capacity 7,490,000

    Who would you say is more vocal?

    As for my pet peeve, if Metro had to provide everyone a seat, how long would they be in business?

  23. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    Congestion pricing is EXACTLY like pricing bread.

    When you go into 7-11 to get bread, vice into Giant – you KNOW you’re going to pay more because of the convenience of not standing in a long line ..

    It’s EXACTLY the same as a matinee ticket costing less than the evening show.

    The idea is all cases is NOT to put the price out of reach – but to have a price that balances/optimizes the available resources.

    It’s called market demand.

    It’s the same reason why it costs more to fly to a smaller city or to fly during periods when everyone else wants to fly.

    The major benefit of this cutting the peak off of demand – is that more money is generated .. to build more facilities AND it is paid for by those who have demonstrated with their money that they are willing to pay for more/better facilities.

  24. Toomanytaxes Avatar
    Toomanytaxes

    “The question we have to answer is where do we get the most increase in benefit for a given amount of expenditure.”

    Amen!

    This is the question that few, exept for the ordinary Dick and Janes of Virginia, thinks is important. The other day, I was discussing the Silver Line with a successful Fairfax businessman. He strongly supports extending Metro and would pay more (actually have Dick and Jane pay more) to put in a tunnel. I asked him about the fact that there’s no traffic congestion improvement for spending at least $4 billion. He simply would not address the facts. Magic will happen by spending taxpayer money. If only we tax and spend enough, things will get better.

    I turned the conversation to land use. If Fairfax County increases density and does not restrict parking to levels well below what the Tysons landowners want, we will have more traffic. There are also other infrastructure questions. The response was essentially, I don’t want to talk land use. Let’s just spend the mone to fix things.

    Life in Fairfax County is not a single variable equation.

  25. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    By the way – METRO … ALSO uses congestion pricing – already.

    re: seat on Metro

    Would you prefer that Metro operate like the airlines?

    No seat – no fly?

    The point is.. whether it is Metro, or Airlines, or Highways.. there are peak times where there is not enough capacity.

    How about stop lights on highway ramps that stay red until there is a “place” for you on the road?

    How about movie theaters allowing “standing” patrons during busy times?

    I think you focus on Metro’s congestion issues is not fairly looking around you at how congestion is handled by other facilities.

    You’re judging Metro’s handling of congestion (or lack of handling) without regard to very similiar problems of highways and you’re claiming that because Metro has these problems.. that highways are a better solution.

    Broken Escalators? Yes.

    “Broken” Rush hour highways – Yes.

    Broken Escalators .. means highways are better? NOPE!

    Metro waste and inefficiency means highways are efficient and not wasteful? NOPE!

  26. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Highways are a better solution for more than 99% of all travel and 99% of all destinations. Otherwise we would have trains to all those places.

    We had more trains once, and we scrapped them in favor of cars. Because cars are faster, and more comfortable, go more places, carry more freight, cost less to operate, are paid for by the users, and they are more efficient.

    Metro is a better solution in a small subset of locations and a small subset of travelers.

    Metro IS more wasteful than highways, as a rule. It is less wasteful than highways that are gridlocked. Metro depends on gridlock in order for it to draw customers.

    It is a SYSTEM and you have to look at the SYsTEM performance and not compare one to the other. THEY DO DIFFERENT JOBS, Each with strengths and weaknesses. Cars use parking space when they sit, but they don’t travel around with anywhere near as many empty seats as metro moves. Metro is an old technology, energy wasting gas hog compared to a modern small car.

    Believe it or not.

    But Metro can handle large numbers of people on restricted routes, if they don’t mind traveling like sardines.

    As for looking at how congestion is handled by other facilities, when we have a store or concert or Metro that is crowded, we consider that to be a success, but when a road is crowded we consider that to be a failure.

    We will always have congestion if we just consider roads and Metro.

    We KNOW that after 30 years of experimentation Metro has not relieved congestion. And don’t tell me it would be worse without Metro, that isn’t the point: Metro has not relieved congestion. More capacity on Metro won’t relieve congestion, more roads won’t relieve congestion. And even if they would, we coldn’t afford it.

    It is not cost effective to provide enough peak transporttion with either roads or Metro or both to eliminate congestion. It is the wong answer.

    If you want to eliminate congestion eliminate the cause of (most periodic and predictable) congestion, too many jobs in one place. Roads are not wasteful by themselves, but we waste the money we spend on them by using them too much in someplaces and not enough in others.

    Highways have metered ramps, Metro slams the door in your face, or on your foot. The methods are different, not better or worse.

    But we could avoid the whole problem if we were not all trying to go to the same place at the same time. You can do that with congestion pricing if you like, but congestion pricing doesnt get everyone to the same place at the same time any more than Metro does, roads do, or the combination together do.

    What congestion pricing does is send some people to other locations and some people to other times. Well, we can do that without more metro, without more roads, and without more congestion taxes.

    All you have to do is stop building crap once the place is full. Go build the crap someplace where it is empty, and the roads already exist.

    But what is our plan? A million more people in 3200 metro acres. What we are doing now, and what is being planned, makes as much sense as brussel sprouts on a bull.

    Arguing about whether metro or roads are better won’t change that. The SYSTEM is much more than its parts, and whether they work or not. AS long as we refuse to see that we are like three blind men describing an elephant: we are all wrong, and all in danger of being dumped on. We are too busy arguing over what we “feel” to consider what the elephant eats, and what happens next.

  27. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I’ll tellyou what, Larry, We both open identical stores selling the identical items, for the same prices, on the same street in the business district.

    You have one checkout line, and youuse congestion pricing. When there are five people in line the total price automatically adds 5%, When there are ten people in line it adds 10%, and so on.

    You could pretty well be guaranteed that you would have short lines at your register, and your customers would always have speedy service. This would work, and congestion pricing is no big secret, Airlines do it. But they will also roll out another airplane if the NY shuttle sells out.

    Right next door, my store will have ten checkout lines.

    Which one of us will have more customers, and which one will make more money? Where do you suppose your customers will go when that price sign changes to +10% ????

    Of course, I will have to pay for all that extra infrastructure for checkout lines.

  28. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “Highways are a better solution for more than 99% of all travel and 99% of all destinations. Otherwise we would have trains to all those places.”

    let’s expand this to : “highways that allow anyone to drive any kind of vehicle anywhere at anytime of the day are a better solution that trains/rail”.

    Okay?

    I agree with everything but the “better” which I ask you to quantify in terms of costs and benefits.

    Show me how much it would cost to accomplish this in NoVA – in terms of specific projects and show me the cost of accomplishing this.

    Then we can talk … about things of subtance rather than absolutist “highways are better”… statement.

  29. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “Right next door, my store will have ten checkout lines.

    Which one of us will have more customers, and which one will make more money? Where do you suppose your customers will go when that price sign changes to +10% ????”

    Ray – you already know the answer to this.

    How does WalMart squash it’s competition?

    They offer BOTH more/quicker checkout lanes (per variable demand) AND they offer the lowest prices.

    and Ray.. does Walmart charge you MORE when they open up new lanes and new stores?

    Do they come back to you and say “because we need to build new stores to serve more customers” – we need to charge you MORE so pay up. This is what VDOT says to us.

    And the planes… no they don’t roll out another plane for 10 people..

    First – the purposely book more than they can carry – then they offer those 10 an “incentive” to arrive at a different time than they wanted – then finally – they unceremoniously boot them…. period.

    Oh.. and you just can’t show up… any old time.. but especially so at rush hour .. try showing up at Dulles ten mintues before a flight leaves at the busiest times and ask for a seat. 🙂

    The point is that almost ANY facility that serves the public has to build and manage capacity in a cost-effective manner (within their budget constraints) – except for roads.

    You cannot build a library that serves 1000 people when 80% of the time – only 100 people need it.

    But that’s exactly what folks say we need to do with roads.

  30. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    “highways that allow anyone to drive any kind of vehicle anywhere at anytime of the day are a better solution that trains/rail”.

    Well, yes, exactly. Metro is no use to me at 2:00 AM.

    I don’t understand why you are beating up on me about Metro. I think Metro is excellent at what it does. It carries 800,000 people in a relatively short period of time each day in crowded, standing room only, unsafe, and unsanitary conditions, at an exorbitant cost that is partly paid for by automobile drivers.

    What’s not to like?

    I’m kidding, of course. Metro does what it does, and does it well. I don’t agree that Metro does everything that is claimed for it. And I’m not sure that it is worth what it costs for what it does.

    But Metro does what it does and roads do what they do. They are different; they have different values, different uses, and different costs. Neither one can do without the other. They are a system.

    I don’t have to show and don’t intend to show that roads are better than Metro. All I say is that they do things Metro doesn’t. Metro does things that roads don’t, but some of what it does, could not and would not have happened without the roads, in addition to Metro. It is a system.

    It isn’t an either or situation.

    Since they are a system, it does no good and has no value to discuss which one is better.

    I really don’t care. By the time the next road or next Metro extension gets built, I’ll be either dead, on sitting on my boat in Nuku Hiva. But here is what I see. Isee roads and Metro being judged differently on the same Metrics. “Metro ridership reached a new high, and it is jammed to the doors, Yay!” and yet “The highways are jammed. See, highways are a failure.”

    When I pick on Metro, it is only to show how silly the arguments are. We need to focus on the SYSTEM.

  31. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Would you agree that since both Metro and the roads are full (at peak periods), that the evidence is that we need more of both? We can disagree as to how much of each, but we still need more of both, unless we decide that more system capacity is not cost effective.

    If that’s true, then we should put an immediate moratorium on all building in Fairfax and DC.

    Maybe not, maybe we don’t need more of both (more system capacity). Maybe you would prefer higher prices (more taxes) for both, in order to reduce demand. What would we do with the money? Can’t spend it on more system capacity, because we can’t afford to supply max capacity for peak hours. Maybe we just let people pay the congestion tax and stew for a couple of hours every day.

    Which brings us to the store argument. The store argument isn’t about Walmart or airlines. It is intended to be a non threatening gedanken experiment: something that lets us think about what happens, as opposed to what we would like to happen.

    My store scenario only illustrates what happens if you raise prices: people go someplace else.

    The way I see it, congestion pricing WILL do what adding more capacity (road, metro,or both) won’t: reduce congestion. And it will do it at less cost than adding more capacity.

    I agree with you about congestion pricing. Sort of. I’m cynical enough to believe that congestion pricing will be managed for maximum revenue and not for optimal traffic flow. I believe the revenue will be diverted to Metro, even if the evidence shows this is not the best SYSTEM result.

    But what I also see is that congestion pricing amounts to a subsidy for my idea that we need more places. Because, just like the store scenario, people will go someplace else, where there is unused capacity.

    Either that capacity exists (as it does in most places), or someone will have to build it. Either way, it will be more attractive and less costly than the same facilities under congestion pricing.

    In my store experiment, consider Fairfax to be your store with two aisles, 66 and 495, under congestion pricing. My Store is everyplace else, with multiple unpriced aisles.

    If you think we shouldn’t build more system capacity in Fairfax, and you put in congestion pricing to discourage congestion, then what will happen?

    You already know the answer to that. The traffic you discouraged and the growth you prohibited in Fairfax will go to the store next door with more unused and unpriced aisles.

    More sprawl, or if you prefer, more places.

    Fairfax lives and dies on peak capacity, the rest doesn’t matter so much. If you don’t believe we can supply peak capacity, then we have to choke off Fairfax. But as you said, growth is a done deal, so which of the other stores have the most vacant aisles?

  32. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    You aren’t really serious about asking which is better, are you? Cars and Metro are a system where Metro exists and congestion exists.

    Everywhere else, people choose cars by a vast majority. There are many many reasons for this. Do cars cost more? Yes probably they do cost a little more than Metro, per passenger mile. But not a lot more, and not even necessarily so: we can make cars far more economical that they are now, but we have not done that because cost is not the issue.

    Cars offer so many more benefits for the extra cost, that it isn’t really a fair comparison. Go read Winston and Shirley. They are faster, mostly cheaper, more comfortable, (maybe even safer, when was the last time you heard of a hundred or more people dying in a traffic accident?)

    What they don’t do is the one thing that Metro does so well (with the help of cars): provide peak capacity. But, Metro costs so much, to serve such a small area, with such limited amenities, that I’m not sure it is the best answer. I like Metro. But if Metro has a blemish, don’t try to tell me it’s a beauty mark. And if cars have ills, don’t tell me it is terminal cancer.

    Clearly Metro is part of the best answer for the conditions we have, but my question is why do we have those conditions? Why maintain a place where the rents and taxes are high, and we have to supply them with Metro as well?

    I don’t know the cost/benefit answer. But before we go around blindly blowing metro horns, shouldn’t we at least ask?

    For what we pay to subsidize people to park and to ride Metro, how much office space could we put at Vienna, Springfield, White Flint, and New Carrolton, and give away for free to any business that wanted out of the city?

  33. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    I was talking about the old Eastern Shuttle. If you showed up, you were guaranteed a seat. If the plane was full they would, and did, rollout another, and fly it with only a few on board. Maybe it is why they are bankrupt.

    The new model is that they basically auction off the seats, selling early at low prices and raising the price as people with more urgent needs come later. It is congestion pricing based on time: the later you show up the more it costs. No doubt you are right, if they can sell a seat at a higher price, the earlier and cheaper guy gets the boot.

    Yes, my wife tells me that the new Walmart in Warrenton charges higher prices than the old one in Manassas. I imagine it is partly because of newer facility and higher overhead as a result, and partly because their trucks have to deliver the goods farther. Maybe its because of the fancy dance they had to do to overcome objections and build in Fauquier/Warrenton.

    This was a funny story. Both Fauquier and Warrenton had big box ordinances designed to keep Walmart and others out. I think it was 20k sq ft max in Fauquier and 10k sq ft in Warrenton.

    Walmart put up a 30k sq ft store on the boundary line 20k sq feet in Fauquier and 10k sq ft in Warrenton.

    After it was a done deal, Warrenton said, what the heck, and annexed the entire store to get the revenue.

    The whole time this was going on, you could spot no Walmart in Warrenton bumper stickers, at the Walmart in Manassas. Today, for all the “WE” don’t want Walmart rhetoric, at the time, the store is busy and the car decals read Fauquier.

  34. Ray Hyde Avatar
    Ray Hyde

    Actually, you can build a library that serves 1000 people when 80% of the time only 100 people need it. It might not be cost effective, it might be a matter of priorities (My Johnny needs the library when he needs it, not at three AM!).

    For 90% of our roads, that is exactly what we have done. Only ten percent of them are congested, and even then, it is only part of the time. Even though Metro is best at peak capacity, much of Metro is empty much of the time. The difference is that someone has to pay to operate Metro empty, while the roads mostly just sit there empty without (much) cost.

    Whether you have unused library capacity or unused road capacity, how it got that way isn’t the issue. Now you have a marketing problem. You need to generate usage so your investment isn’t wasted.

    Right now, Fairfax is winning the Marketing battle, and its roads are well used. Maybe too much. Everyplace else we have all these underused (overprovided) roads, all over the place, and what do we do? “Nope you can’t build here, we haven’t got the infrastructure.”

    Naturally, there is also such a thing as too much marketing, as the Loudoun CPAM shows.

  35. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “What’s not to like [about Metro]?”

    Go back 20-30 years.. and pretend that they’re talking about expanding
    METRO… did you/would you support?

    Now flash back to now. Is METRO … DONE.. and any further expansion a bad idea
    that is not cost effective?

    Explain why… METRO should not grow now whereas .. looking back… it was
    a good idea to plan to grow so we end up with what we have now on Metro?

    My point here is that I suspect that 20 years ago you would have been opposed also but now that it
    is here.. it’s “good”… but we don’t want “more”.

    Wrong?

  36. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “Would you agree that since both Metro and the roads are full (at peak periods), that the evidence is that we need more of both?”

    Name the projects.. where and when…
    as part of a system upgrade approach – and show me what we get.. in terms of an improved network.

    NO I would not agree that we need BOTH because I think the current approach is to build “something” no matter what.. no matter the cost.. no matter how much we need to raise taxes to pay for it.

    This is DUMB…

    Show me a ranked and prioritized list ordered according to cost-effectiveness and then let’s talk how to fund.

    Otherwise… we’re advocating continuation of stealing more people’s money to have unelected and unaccountable people spending it on things that are not only not cost-effective, but in fact, could actually incentivize personal travel behaviors that will put us even deeper into a hole.

    You see these things as .. inveitable (small) “flaws” that will always be with us so we live with them and basically just continue collecting more money from folks to do the same thing we’ve always done.

    We could not disagree more.

    The status quo is WHY we have the problem in the first place in my view.

    It must change and fundamental to that change is that each of us must become more responsible for the economical consequences of our choices and ideally – the more those consequences directly effect us – the more likely change will occur that will cause congestion to change in drammatic ways without higher taxes.

  37. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “If you think we shouldn’t build more system capacity in Fairfax, and you put in congestion pricing to discourage congestion, then what will happen?”

    Two things: the idea is not to discourage congestion but to fairly charge what it actually cost to provide relatively uncongested roads especially at rush hour.

    Second Point. You do this SYSTEM WIDE – not isolated.

    You operate the NETWORK as optimally as is possible and the funds you derive from charging is used to improve the network that these specific people are using.

    As long as you collect money from people outside of NoVa to essentially be spent in foolish and noneffective ways in which NoVa drivers have no dog in the congestion hunt… it’s just like you’ve giving away free bread at the 7-11 and wondering why cars are spilling out beyond the parking lot and you never can keep enough bread in stock.

    Only when drivers in NoVa have to determine what is in THEIR best interests will things change.

    You term this as PENALIZING people.

    I see it as people CHOOSING who will be penalized.. and it won’t be themselves if they can make a decision that serves their own person interests at others expense.

    You’re claiming that folks have a “right” to do whatever is in their own best interests no matter what the harm is and that if actions are taken to make each of us more responsible that it is an “unfair penalty”.

    This is like arguing that the sewer availability fee is a “penalty” on building a home rather than it being a perfectly justfiable expense that is indeed the financial responsibility of the builder.

  38. Larry Gross Avatar
    Larry Gross

    re: “and what do we do? “Nope you can’t build here, we haven’t got the infrastructure.”

    That’s NOT what’s being advocated.

    What IS being advocated is that you do the CPAM process to determine how much “road” you will need for the decisions you’re making with respect to land-use.

    Then you compute what those roads will cost to build.

    THEN .. you set up a CIP exactly like you have a CIP for water and sewer and schools.. which details the financial plan for bringing that infrastruture online as development occurs.

    To imply that what is being advocated is to essentially “stop development because we don’t have the infrastructure” is wrong and it’s also wrong to claim that APFO is advocating that also.

    The advocacy is to have a plan for development and infrastructure
    that actually results in maintaining minimal levels of service for both existing residents and new ones.

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