Below are 10 brief summaries of reasons to reject Austin’s proposed urban rail. Each needs further expansion for one to have a more in-depth understanding. This COST site has several hundred ‘news articles’, reports and references which further address each subject and more. Several, recent, articles are referenced below. You are encouraged to read these and further peruse the site for additional detail.

This will be a living document and will be updated from time to time for clarification and as new information develops.

1. Austin’s proposed urban rail is not cost-effective and its exorbitant costs will result in major risks of ongoing tax increases along with degrading mobility and quality of life.

Cap Metro spent several years and millions of dollars studying a downtown urban rail trolley. These studies stopped in late 2007 as commuter rail cost overruns almost bankrupt the agency. At that time, Austin’s Mayor Wynn announced sketchy outlines for a new and expanded urban rail to replace Cap Metro’s abandoned rail trolley which was estimated to cost about $230 million. The City’s current urban rail estimate is more than $1.3 billion (VERY BAD) or 5-plus times this early Cap Metro estimate and it is still not based on detailed engineering. Experience with many rail systems world-wide would indicate costs will be closer to $2 billion (WORSE).

There are no viable, identified sources of funding for this ‘largest-in-history,’ Austin project. Nor, is there a source of funding for its operations and maintenance which will be several tens of millions of dollars each year (DISASTER).

And, this is only the first 16.5 miles of a vision. Pressure for much more rail which will cost many more billions and become less cost-effective with each link, resulting in major bond debt which will bankrupt the city and starve key, high priority services.

Our one local experience with passenger rail is consistent with that throughout the nation: major cost overruns in both construction/implementation and in annual operating costs. Cap Metro’s commuter operating costs are running about 6 times their promise to voters. Austin’s urban rail is on this same track.

Austin is proposing to take huge taxpayer risks by planning to fund the start of urban rail with the assumption major federal funding will follow later. In the current federal budget environment, it is very unlikely Austin will receive rail funding for a very long time, if ever. The Federal Transit Administration has indicated this by announcing it cannot support all requests and suggesting bus solutions are much more cost-effective for many proposed rail applications.
See: Austin’s Light Rail cannot be funded and cannot meet needs
Austin planning ignores vast majority of citizens
Austin Urban Rail: Wrong solution for ill-defined problem.

2. High costs and low ridership result is poor cost-effectiveness requiring massive taxpayer subsidies for the very few train riders.

The City’s ridership estimates for urban rail are greatly exaggerated as are most rail ridership estimates. Generally, more than one-half of public transit ridership is for work commuting. Austin’s proposed urban rail route will serve very few potential home-work commuters and a declining percentage of the region’s workers. More important than the city’s ridership estimates is the cost-effectiveness and this has never been discussed.

The Dallas, Houston and Austin regions have spent billions of dollars to promote and encourage public transit ridership. Each region has made and is planning further major investments in fixed-rail transit. While each region’s population is among the fastest growing in the nation, total public transit ridership is flat or less than a dozen years ago. Public transit ridership is generally less than one percent of the passenger miles traveled in these and similar regions.
See: Austin’s Light Rail Plan: The Bottom Line

This region’s current 25 year transportation plan has increased its non-roadway spending to almost 50% of total estimated costs. The plan’s allocation of a huge proportion of taxpayer dollars to fixed rail transit to serve a tiny percentage of travelers is not sustainable and will result in major degradation of mobility and quality of life.

The most cost-effective public transit solutions can be achieved with rubber tire transit on roads such as Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and demand response bus/van systems such as Cellular Mass Transit (CMT). Austin’s first BRT system is at least 6 years late due to Cap Metro’s focus and cost overruns on commuter rail. This first BRT will significantly improve transit for 20 times more riders than the commuter rail and for one-tenth the costs.

3. Providing huge taxpayer subsidies for a small number of urban rail riders is not responsible public policy in any economy.

This ineffective, low priority urban rail is especially irresponsible at this time when Austin is facing budget shortfalls in providing basic, high priority services while citizens are experiencing increasing property taxes, water rates, energy rates and other fees. This all combines to disproportionately impact low income citizens resulting in reduced quality of life for many.

There have been no responsible alterative studies and analyses to determine urban rail is the most cost-effective solution to a well defined, top priority transportation problem. Austin’s urban rail justification is based on superficial studies designed to reach a predetermined outcome without responsible consideration of cost or effectiveness. Numerous cities, including Ft. Worth, Detroit, and Nashville have recently concluded bus and roadway solutions are much more cost-effective for similar mobility needs and have rejected rail transit.
See: Nashville Selects Bus Rapid Transit, Rejects Streetcars/Light Rail
Detroit rejects light rail, favors bus rapid transit
Bus Versus Train: A Dying Debate

Austin’s first priority must be to establish sound fiscal operations focused on providing priority needs efficiently and providing the opportunity for all citizens to prosper.

4. Urban rail will not improve congestion or air quality. It makes them WORSE.

This rail is proposed to use downtown streets which will reduce vehicle capacity, increasing congestion and air pollution. Implementation of rail, in conjunction with reducing lanes and converting from one-way to two-way streets, will significantly increase downtown congestion and safety hazards; discouraging citizens from visiting, working and living downtown as well as discouraging companies from locating there.

Areas outside downtown Austin will continue to stagnate with increasing congestion for 99% of passenger miles because precious and limited transportation funds will be depleted by rail to poorly serve much less than 1 percent of passenger miles. The very long list of major mobility needs will be further delayed with huge negative impacts to the quality of life of all citizens. Examples include: 1) Congested roadway segments such as Mopac, 183 in East Austin, 360, 620, I-35, 290/71 through Oak Hill, North Lamar, Loop 1 South, East-West improvements; 2) Interchanges including Mopac & 360 (North and South), Mopac and Lake Austin to Downtown, 360 and 183, 71 & 183, 5th and 6th & Lamar; 3) Many local street bottlenecks.

5. Safety hazards and injuries are increased by street congestion as heavy train cars reduce street vehicle capacity.

Heavy trains, mingling with people and private vehicles on streets, cannot stop quickly or swerve to avoid accidents. Also, many studies have shown two-way streets are more hazardous than one-way streets.

6. Urban rail degrades social equity, making a mockery of Austin’s stated goals.

Rail’s high cost and low ridership result in two major negative impacts which disproportionately impact lower income citizens: 1) All taxpayers highly subsidize every train rider. All public transit is subsidized at many times subsidy levels for private transportation modes. Cap Metro’s Red Line high cost and low ridership results in average taxpayer subsidies of more than $20,000 per year for every daily, two-way rider. Each of these riders could be given a free taxi pass or a new car, with gas, each year for less cost. Congestion and pollution would also be reduced. 2) The reality is: 40,000 daily bus riders, mostly lower income citizens with no alternative, are helping to subsidize less than 1,000 train riders, mostly with alternatives and higher incomes, by paying higher fares and suffering reduced bus service.

Public transit is a vital community program for those having no alternative. However, confining a person’s transportation range of destinations to that of public transit substantially limits access to better job opportunities, most economical shopping, education, health care, recreation, entertainment; all of life’s offerings. Cost effective transit is critical to serve the maximum number of people needing it in their daily lives and to provide a major stepping stone in assisting them to raise their standard of living. Poor cost effectiveness of rail results in major limitations to transit service as experienced in many cities, including Austin.
See: RAIL TRANSIT: An Increasing Drain on Social Welfare and Society
Austin Urban Rail: A blow to social equity and justice

7. The City’s creation of another transit organization similar to Cap Metro will significantly increase overall taxpayer’s costs for this region’s transit.

Cap Metro has a long trend of increasing costs to serve fewer riders. Its costs per rider have increased at almost double inflation rates. Creation of a duplicate transit agency structure within the City of Austin will require major, frequent coordination with Cap Metro, significantly increasing costs. In addition to the one penny sales tax limit which funds Cap Metro, the City will be required to increase property taxes and fees to fund its transit agency as there are no other realistic, viable funding sources.

8. Fixed rail is inflexible and is expensive to meet changing demands and needs.

There is little current demand for downtown trolleys as demonstrated by the previous free Dillo bus circulators. Austin is a growing, adolescent city and no one knows the shape it will take as it fully develops. Fixed rail systems are very difficult and expensive to modify as changes in demand occur. Austin needs flexible, cost-effective bus transit which can easily adjust to changing demands and routes. For example: The new Waller Creek ‘River Walk’ being implemented near Red River Street may be a major development area and current proposed trolley rail routes do not support it.

9. The downtown trolley and its supporting structures are ugly vision pollution.

The trolley’s maze of overhead power cables, connecting structures, support poles and boarding platforms will destroy cherished Capital views as well as deny the use of Congress Avenue and other key streets for traditional civic events such as parades, charity runs, etc.

10. Urban rail is not “cool” or “weird.”

Urban rail’s 19th century technology is not becoming of a first class, high tech, forward thinking city and is not in keeping with Austin’s meaning of “weird.” Cool is antithetical to supporting train transit which is not cost-effective, increases taxes, degrades social equity, increases congestion, is dangerous, reduces mobility, creates visual pollution and is not sustainable.

Austin’s major “take-away” from Cox’ article might be:

“The Need for Stewardship: Before Nashville commits hundreds of millions or billions of tax dollars to expensive transit projects transit in hopes of reducing traffic congestion or travel times, local officials should consider reality. Reducing traffic congestion and travel times are objectives generally beyond transit’s capability. Further, new lines can attract only a small share of commuters, because such a small share of jobs are downtown.”

Cox appropriately used “Tilting at (Transit) Windmills” in his title. This means “attacking imaginary enemies” as used in the story of Don Quixote. The Nashville Ledger editorial which Cox is addressing gives one a sense that people in Nashville are wringing their hands and running in circles to find a solution to their perceived mobility problems. However, they express little fundamental knowledge of the real problems and the solutions which will improve their mobility. So, they suggest needing a number of “alternatives” and traverse a gamut of ideas: logical and illogical, realistic and unrealistic, cost-effective and unaffordable. Some suggest an incremental, steady approach starting with more bus lines and BRT. Some would move more aggressively into rail.

Segments of Nashville’s population have seemingly bought into the dream or “sales pitch” that expensive rail transit will significantly relieve congestion. As Cox points out, transit generally does not reduce traffic congestion. There are no bases for this perception. Congestion and Transit are two almost seperate issues. As we have found with the commuter in Austin and can project for the City’s
proposed urban rail, congestion is actually increased as roadway capacity is reduced.

The population of Austin’s region (Metropolitan Statistical Area or MSA) is slightly larger than Nashville’s Central Tennessee region, the two regions have similar growth projections through 2035 and they are both major music centers.

The city of Nashville recently completed a one-year commissioned study by Parsons Brinckerhoff to evaluate alternative solutions to their growing mobility needs. They selected ‘Bus Rapid Transit’ as the preferred solution and rejected fixed rail streetcars. Nashville Mayor Dean stated: “Bus rapid transit is by far the most compelling case we’ve heard,” even though he had pledged streetcars during his first term campaign. Dean earlier told the Nashville Business Journal on November 10, “but when you look at it in a rational way and look at the costs and you get the same ridership, it’s hard for me to justify. But, I’m going to approach it with an open mind.”

As reported below, Cliff Lippard, board president of the transportation advocacy nonprofit ‘Transit Now Nashville’ says he and other members are disappointed in the rejection of streetcars but are generally pleased the long-gestating corridor plan is finally getting some traction. He says, “A lot of people have a kind of emotional or sentimental attachment to streetcars because of their history.” Still, Lippard calls the BRT plan: ”a first step in the right direction.”

Nashville’s reasons for rejecting rail transit are consistent with the growing list of cities’ which have made BRT the preference over fixed rail. These reasons include:

1. Rail transit is not cost-effective.

Construction and implementation costs for fixed rail transit are significantly greater than BRT, for essentially the same transit capability. BRT implementation costs range from less than 10% to about 50% of fixed rail depending on the type of rail and BRT. The highest BRT costs are for dedicated bus lane systems such as Nashville has chosen. The Parsons’ study indicated the streetcar may have about 150 more round-trip riders per day than the BRT. Taxpayers would subsidize each of these ‘possible’ few added streetcar riders more than $40,000 per year based on additional capital costs of $139 million amortized over 30 years: this is not cost-effective and not sustainable. In addition, rail systems have an average cost overrun of about 45%.

Cities are beginning to embrace the simple, fundamental concept that transit, which is all highly tax subsidized, must be cost-effective to be sustainable and serve the maximum number of citizens who need it the most and have few, if any, alternatives. Austin has not yet accepted this reality that transit must be cost effective to earn taxpayer support; even though Cap Metro’s Red Line commuter has demonstrated a lack of cost-effectiveness, requiring annual taxpayer subsidies of more than $20,000 (capital and operating costs) for each daily, round-trip rider. Each of these riders could be provided a new car with gas every year for less cost.

Austin’s proposed downtown urban rail is doomed to have similar, unaffordable cost effectiveness. Its costs will be huge: approaching $2 billion to install and more than $25 million for yearly operations. Yet, its route will provide meager home to work access, resulting in low ridership. Work commute trips are the “bread and butter” of all transit ridership.

2. Train transit reduces higher priority projects and degrades social equity.

Higher train transit costs result in overall transit serving fewer people who need it as taxpayers are required to provide huge subsidies for each train rider. This tends to degrade social equity as those needing transit in their daily lives, mostly without choices, suffer higher fares and reduced service to support those using high cost trains who mostly have transportation choices. Wasteful spending on ineffective trains also reduces funds for higher priority community needs which serve the vast majority of citizens, including both transit and non-transit travelers using roadways. Cap Metro’s Red Line commuter has demonstrated that the high cost of train transit to serve those with a choice is shifted to primarily lower income citizens who do not have choices.

As the articles below report, a remaining concern with Nashville’s BRT plan is that it heavily favors the city’s more affluent and car-owning west side at the expense of so-called “zero-car” households in East and north Nashville. These lower income families depend heavily on public transport for mobility. District 6 Councilman Peter Westerholm stated, “Ultimately, it does need to facilitate zero-car households.”

3. Fixed rail transit is inflexible

Fixed rail transit is very inflexible and not well suited to cost-effective, incremental improvements or adjustments to meet changing mobility needs which occur in growing regions.

Austin can learn from Nashville leadership which appears to be responsible in selecting a more cost effective transit solution which can be incrementally upgraded, over time, to meet growing and changing demands when needed. However, both cities may be outlining transit solutions which jeopardize social equity with disproportionate negative impacts on lower income citizens.

4. There are no viable funding sources indentified.

A Nashville reporter summed up the mayor and other comments with: “How Nashville will raise even the lesser sum ($136 million for BRT) remains a mystery.”
There are also no, viable funding sources identified for Austin’s downtown rail which will cost closer to $2 billion with operating costs exceeding $25 million per year. Significant local tax increases and/or cut-backs in other vital city services would appear to be necessary. It is not at all clear why the city of Austin is spending many millions over several years to study and plan for a downtown rail system which has no apparent funding source.

Recognizing its exorbitant cost and rail’s inability to effectively address high priority mobility issues, it is even more irresponsible to increase taxes to pay for it at a time when the country in an extremely difficult economic period and, here in Austin, citizens are faced with significant increases in taxes, water rates and energy rates.

5. There is little likelihood of US Government funding for rail.

The US government has played a major role in funding earlier rail systems but their role has declined as severe national budget strains have developed. The US Department of Transportation and its Federal Transit Administration (FTA) have already experienced sharply reduced rail funding availability and projections are for even greater reductions. One requirement for FTA rail funding participation is for a transit entity (city or agency) to have dedicated funding sources such as tax increases or tax increment financing identified which the FTA can match.

Austin has not identified viable funding sources for its proposed urban rail without significantly increasing local taxes. The huge gamble of fronting the initial investment for a very small, ineffective starter train segment, while hoping for future federal funds, is more irresponsible with taxpayer funds than Las Vegas gambling.

Summary

There is nothing urban rail transit can achieve that bus transit cannot achieve equally or better. Buses can carry just as many people, just as fast and safer, more cost-effectively and with greater flexibility to address changing needs.

The city of Austin based its proposed downtown rail trolley on the unfounded premise that train transit is required because current roads into downtown Austin are at capacity and cannot support more people into the city center. The City has not revealed a valid evaluation which verifies this priority among all citywide transportation needs and has not conducted a rigorous ‘alternatives analysis’ which evaluates all viable alternatives and selects the most effective solutions.

The basic assumption that downtown congestion will motivate people to drive their private vehicles to a parking facility outside of downtown and catch a train for the short ride into the city center is not supported by any actual experience. There are no precedents or model cities to confirm this premise. The 2010 census data for cities across the U.S tells a very different story. It indicates cities are reducing central density and suburbs are increasing in density. This and the fact that ‘working at home’ is the fastest growing “work commuting mode” (exceeding public transit) are major reasons that vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per resident has been on a declining trend in the Austin region for many years. Total VMT is now increasing at approximately the same rate as population growth but roadway capacity has severely lagged.

Work commuting is the highest use of public transit and about 4% of the nation’s workers commute with public transit. Austin’s proposed $1-2 billion urban rail will provide little access for home-work commuters due to its route. Therefore, it can be expected to have little ridership resulting in exorbitant taxpayer subsidies for each rider similar to that being experienced with Cap Metro’s Red Line commuter.

The idea that government can social engineer massive changes in human behavior regarding living style choices has resulted in failure throughout history. Large, high density living environments were forced upon people in Russia, the U.S., China and other countries during difficult periods. These buildings are now rubble, sand and ashes as people deserted them as soon as they were able to do so.

Austin’s current Comprehensive Plan will increase downtown congestion by reducing street capacity with trains running on major streets and by converting higher capacity one-way streets to two way streets, which are also significantly more hazardous than one-way streets.

The Comprehensive Plan will achieve the opposite of that promoted. It is quite plausible people and employers will be motivated to avoid the central city due to rails on the streets increasing congestion and safety hazards. In addition, the train’s unsightly overhead electric power wires, poles and train connection structures will degrade city views and our beautiful city will be less desirable and less able to support traditional civic events on its streets.

COST urges the city of Austin to reconsider the Comprehensive Plan, with its urban rail, and develop a plan which does not have the terrible negative consequences for the entire community and especially low income citizens, transit riders and taxpayers.

Austin is one of the most broadly “top listed” and rapidly growing cities in the nation today. None of this success was influenced by downtown rail transit. Rail transit would most likely be detrimental to Austin’s future.

As we enter 2012, Austin needs mobility solutions which are bold and creative, which use new technology and reject ineffective 150 year old train technology and which are cost-effective so the maximum number of citizens can benefit from the subsidies of all taxpayers to assist a very small segment of the population. Less than 1% of the region’s passenger miles traveled are on public transit and 99% of the passenger miles traveled are on roadways. Mobility solutions must improve quality of life and not limit people’s opportunities to achieve the “American Dream.” The solutions are many faceted and are discussed throughout this site: They include improved roadways; more efficient use of roadways through road pricing managed for free flow (managed/HOV/HOT lanes) ; improved traffic control through synchronized traffic signals, smart traffic signals, metered on-ramps, rapid response to traffic disruption (incident management); Bus Rapid Transit (BRT); Transit demand approaches such as Cellular Mass Transit (CMT) and jitneys and numerous other solution elements.
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Tilting at (Transit) Windmills in Nashville
By Wendell Cox
Newgeography.com, Posted: 08 Dec 2011 09:38 PM PST

As in other major metropolitan areas in the United States, Nashville public officials are concerned about traffic congestion and the time it takes to get around. There is good reason for this, given the research that demonstrates the strong association between improved economic productivity and shorter travel times to work. As Prudhomme and Lee at the University of Paris and Hartgen and Fields at the University of North Carolina Charlotte have shown, metropolitan areas tend to produce more jobs where employees are able to access a larger share of the jobs in 30 minutes.

Ahead in Identifying the Problem: Moreover, Nashville officials are somewhat “ahead of the curve,” since traffic congestion is far less severe there than in many other metropolitan areas. Among the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, Nashville ranks 39th in the intensity of its traffic congestion, according to data compiled by INRIX, a traffic information firm. Nashville’s traffic congestion is even better compared to large Western European metropolitan areas.

This favorable traffic situation is despite the fact that Nashville has among the lowest overall transit market shares in the United States or Western Europe (less than 0.5 percent of travel in the metropolitan area). The key to this success, like that of other American metropolitan areas in relation to their international peers is low density and decentralization of employment and other commercial locations.

Missing the Point on Solutions: Yet, it is clear from an editorial in the Nashville Ledger that officials are inclined to embark on an expensive program of transit expansion. Judging from past experience, this offers virtually no hope for reducing traffic congestion or for improving economic productivity in the Nashville metropolitan area.

There are significant misperceptions among local officials about the potential outcomes of proposed commuter rail and bus rapid transit lanes. Perhaps the most important is the assumption that commuter rail and bus rapid transit will reduce travel times. In fact, at the national level, commuting by transit takes approximately twice as long as commuting by single occupant automobile, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey for 2008 to 2010. Rail systems, such as subways (metros) and light rail do little better than transit in general, taking 95% longer than driving alone and two thirds longer than travel by car pools. There is thus virtually no hope that building new transit lines will reduce travel times.

As often happens when costly new transportation programs are proposed, boosters often resort to erroneous information. The Nashville Ledger cites sources that indicate, for example, that suburban Franklin (in Williamson County, to the south of the Nashville-Davidson County core) has one of the longest work trip travel times in the nation. The reality is quite different. Franklin has an average work trip travel time (23.2 minutes), which is less than national average (25.3 minutes) and little more than Nashville-Davidson County (23.0 minutes).

Nashville officials need look no further than their own eastern suburbs for evidence of the inability of new rail systems to reduce work trip travel times. In 2006, Nashville began commuter rail service from Lebanon, in Wilson County to downtown Nashville (the Music City Star). Currently, the Music City Star is locked in an intensive (and successful, according to the latest data) competition for last place in the number of riders among the nation’s commuter rail systems, just edging out Austin’s new lightly used system. Despite being the only first ring county with commuter rail service, Wilson County work trip travel times are longer than in the other first ring counties. Door-to-door travel times, which are the only travel times that count, have not been reduced by the rail line.

Transit is About Downtown: Transit cannot be a comprehensive metropolitan transportation solution remotely competitive with automobile travel times, except to downtown. This is because the quicker, direct transit services from throughout the metropolitan area that are necessary to attract automobile drivers must focus on the most dense and largest employment center, which is downtown. The radial routes that may be capable of serving downtown effectively simply cannot be afforded for other areas of employment. Our research has indicated, the annual cost to provide automobile competitive transit service throughout an urban area in the United States would consume a huge share of the gross domestic product of any such area.

In Nashville, downtown represents little more than 10% of the metropolitan area employment. Moreover, downtown Nashville represents a declining share of private sector employment in the metropolitan area. According to the Census Bureau’s County Business Patterns, the core Nashville ZIP codes that are served by shuttle buses from the commuter rail station lost 11% of their private sector jobs between 2000 and 2009 (latest data available). At the same time, private sector employment grew 4% in the balance of the Nashville metropolitan area (Note 1).

Transit to Suburban Destinations: A Non-Starter: There have been proposals to require new suburban office development to be near transit stops. This would accomplish little, because transit access in areas other than downtown is so sparse. Among major metropolitan areas, nearly 65% of major metropolitan area workers are within walking distance of a transit stop, according to research by the Brookings Institution. But being near a transit stop does not mean that transit provides practical mobility to anything like 65% of jobs. The reality, according to the Brookings Institution data, is that only 6% of jobs in the average metropolitan area of more than 1 million population can be reached by transit by the average resident in 45 minutes, a travel time nearly double that of the average commuter in the Nashville metropolitan area (Note 2). It seems likely that 30 minute transit access for commuters would be as low as 3% at the national level. This demonstrates the so frequently repeated fallacy equating access to a transit stop with usable access to the metropolitan area.

Transit’s Large Downtown Niche Market: There is no question about the effectiveness (though not the cost efficiency) of transit in providing mobility along the most congested corridors to the nation’s largest downtown areas. This transit niche market accounts for nearly 75% of commuting to the Manhattan business core south of 59th Street, and more than 40% to the downtown areas of Brooklyn, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston and Philadelphia. Yet even in these metropolitan areas, where transit mobility is so important to downtown, transit work trip market shares to areas outside downtown are more akin to the national average of 5% (Figure), except in New York.

Of course, Nashville’s downtown is not among these large transit-oriented cores. In 2000, census data indicated that 4% of employees commuted to downtown by transit. Even if all of the ridership on the Music City Star is made up of new downtown transit commuters, that figure would be little changed.
The Need for Stewardship: Before Nashville commits hundreds of millions or billions of tax dollars to expensive transit projects transit in hopes of reducing traffic congestion or travel times, local officials should consider reality. Reducing traffic congestion and travel times are objectives generally beyond transit’s capability. Further, new lines can attract only a small share of commuters, because such a small share of jobs are downtown.

The Need for Stewardship: Before Nashville commits hundreds of millions or billions of tax dollars to expensive transit projects transit in hopes of reducing traffic congestion or travel times, local officials should consider reality. Reducing traffic congestion and travel times are objectives generally beyond transit’s capability. Further, new lines can attract only a small share of commuters, because such a small share of jobs are downtown.
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Note 1: County Business Patterns provides employment information that largely excludes government employment. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 53 percent of metropolitan Nashville’s increase in employment was government jobs between 2000 and 2009.

Note 2: Calculated from Brookings Institution data.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

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Metro Magazine, Industry News, December 15, 2011

Nashville study finds BRT half as costly as streetcars

A study of the East-West corridor from Five Points in East Nashville to White Bridge Road in West Nashville found that a bus rapid transit (BRT) system will cost half as much to build as streetcars but still attract the same number of riders.

The report of mass transit options for an East-West Connector by consultants from Parsons Brinckerhoff found that both streetcars and BRT have positive benefits. BRT, however, merits special consideration because it serves the same purpose as streetcars, but it costs significantly less, is faster to construct and likely will be eligible for more federal funding, the report says.

At a Steering Committee meeting of the Broadway-West End Corridor Study, Dean and committee members decided to move forward with BRT as a pragmatic solution for traffic congestion and rising gas prices.

Without any transit improvements, traffic along the East-West Connector is anticipated to increase by nearly 50 percent by 2035, and travelers will be stuck in traffic approximately eight minutes longer than today. Already, the average person in the Nashville area loses about 35 hours and wastes 10 gallons of fuel per year sitting in traffic.

The study estimates a BRT system would cost $136 million to construct, less than half the $275 million required for streetcars. The number of trips riders would make on either system would be about the same, 4,500 average weekday trips on BRT versus 4,800 on streetcars in the first year.

In both cases, the vehicles would likely run in dedicated lanes not open to cars and likely stop every ten minutes during peak weekday hours at permanent transit stations. Stations would include real-time arrival and departure information.

Economic development benefits of a rapid transit system are substantial as the areas surrounding the transit stations become desirable locations for companies seeking an easy commute for their workers and ideal locations for coffee shops, condominiums and other types of development that thrive on a regular influx of riders, the report says. Through the use of hybrid or other alternative-fuel vehicles, BRT can reduce emissions and help improve air quality, the report says.

Earlier this year, Dean directed the Metropolitan Transit Authority to initiate a study to identify next steps for mass transit along Broadway-West End. The scope extended to encompass a true East-West Connector from Five Points in East Nashville that connects to downtown via Woodland Street and/or Main Street and continues up Broadway to West End and Harding Road before terminating in West Nashville at White Bridge Road. This vital corridor connects universities, hospitals, businesses, tourist and cultural attractions, key residential areas and centers of federal, state and local government.

The full study will be available in January, and the MTA board will meet and vote on it early next year. A series of community meetings, facilitated by the Transit Alliance of Middle Tennessee, will be held in early 2012.

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Nashville Scene

Goodbye streetcars, hello bus rapid transit as Metro scales back its public transportation plans

Watching the Wheels Go ‘Round

by Jonathan Meador, December 15, 2011 News » City Limits

Gathered before a crowd of transportation officials and business types at the packed Watermark restaurant on Monday, Mayor Karl Dean offered a maxim illustrating the urgency of bringing Nashville’s mass-transit infrastructure up to speed.

“The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago,” he said. “The second best time is today.”

But if the mayor’s arboreal metaphor holds, Dean’s proposed east-west rapid transit corridor — a campaign pledge item dating back to his first term — is a sapling in desperate need of some Miracle-Gro. So far, the only fruit it has borne is a yearlong $1.18 million study commissioned by the city, which evaluates alternatives to existing public transportation systems. The crowd at Watermark got a sneak peek at the study Monday — and with it their first glimpse of Nashville’s likely future in public transportation.

That future, according to the study, is a bus rapid transit (BRT) system. In the model suggested by the study, the system (whose funding source has yet to be appropriated) would run along Broadway/West End Avenue, extending from West Nashville’s White Bridge Road across the river to East Nashville’s Five Points. According to Parsons Brinckerhoff, the New York-based international engineering firm that conducted the study, it would be outfitted with “smart card” fare kiosks, real-time GPS and other high-tech bells and whistles in an effort to make it sexier than its more efficient kissing cousin, electric streetcars.

But BRT’s biggest come-on is its price tag. The firm compared costs between bus rapid transit and electric streetcars — the study’s other chief viable alternative, and one with some historic and sentimental appeal to Nashvillians. Parsons Brinckerhoff found that streetcars, with their dedicated tracks, would provide a greater sense of permanence — and thus more investment incentive. What’s more, they would carry 90,000 more passengers during their first year of operation. At an estimated $136 million, however, BRT would be significantly cheaper than streetcars, whose cost runs $275 million. In terms of political expediency, that’s a significant advantage for the mayor.

“Bus rapid transit is by far the most compelling case we’ve heard,” Dean said, noting the stark $139 million cost difference between the two transportation modes.

How Nashville will raise even the lesser sum remains a mystery. After the presentation — which included members of the Chamber of Commerce-approved Middle Tennessee Transit Alliance, the Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Metropolitan Planning Organization — Dean couldn’t be pinned down about whether and how the city would fund the effort.

“We’re certainly going to need some local revenue source,” Dean said, then reversed by adding, “It’s not necessarily clear to me that [local revenue] necessarily will be required for this project.”

For the record, in order to receive funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation and its subsidiary, the Federal Transit Administration, municipalities must secure a dedicated source of revenue, whether a tax increase or tax-increment financing structure. Against this, the feds can provide matching money.

In recent years, the most popular federal program for funding transportation infrastructure improvements has been the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) initiative. It was created in the wake of the Obama administration’s signature American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the Stimulus. In its first year, TIGER awarded $1.5 billion for projects across the country. The next year, though, the program shelled out only a third of that figure, to the tune of $557 million.

Now, with stimulus money dried up and TIGER funds at the mercy of congressional oversight, the competition for even fewer resources has never been greater. Compounding the funding issue on the local front is the looming prospect of a property tax hike — a maelstrom that may come to dominate Dean’s second term. Additionally, the sales tax for Davidson County is virtually maxed out.

These realities would make it more politically difficult for Dean to ask the council to approve a special tax to fund a pet project, even when it’s needed now more than ever. The study warns that the city’s transit system poses a grave future problem, citing a 850,000-person population increase for the region by 2035. If the city takes no action by then, it will also have to deal with a projected 50 percent increase in traffic along the corridor, which cuts through some of Nashville’s most popular tourist attractions and largest businesses. Its swath includes Vanderbilt University, LP Field and the downtown business district.

Dean is careful to distinguish this BRT initiative from an overarching multibillion-dollar regional transportation plan for Middle Tennessee. But the mayor has certainly walked back the bold vision for Nashville’s transit future that he outlined during his first term. At a meeting with Nashville business leaders at the Renaissance Nashville Hotel in November, Dean essentially pre-empted the Parsons Brinckerhoff study by going all out in favor of BRT a month before details were released.

“There is a sense — you get it from talking to experts — that people just want streetcars,” Dean told the Nashville Business Journal Nov. 10. “But when you look at it in a rational way and look at the costs and you get the same ridership, it’s hard for me to justify. But I’m going to approach it with an open mind.”

In his first term, Dean conducted fact-finding trips to Denver and Pittsburgh, heralded by the mayor as cities whose rail-based transit systems make them more competitive for jobs and population growth. But as the Parsons Brinckerhoff study shows, Nashville has adjusted its sights lower, adopting models such as Cleveland, Ohio; Eugene, Ore.; Las Vegas; and Orlando, Fla. — not exactly hotbeds of the creative class, and whose BRT systems report varying levels of success.

That BRT is the cheapest form of alternative transportation should come as no surprise. But some transportation advocates find its no-frills measures potentially problematic. To warn Davidson County drivers to steer clear, for example, the Parsons Brinckerhoff study envisions dedicated bus lanes designated only by an application of crimson paint. Cliff Lippard, board president of the transportation advocacy nonprofit Transit Now Nashville, doesn’t think that’s enough to preserve the BRT system’s efficiency.

“The whole idea of just painting the street is just not going to be enough,” Lippard tells the Scene. “Some places, like Eugene, Ore., they have a complete lane separated from the rest of traffic. Maybe something as feasible as a curb, some kind of physical separation, might work, but what they’ve presented doesn’t seem feasible if motorists start driving in the lane.”

Lippard says that even though he and members of his group are generally pleased that the long-gestating corridor plan is finally getting some traction, there is disappointment that the city isn’t going big enough. By adding buses instead of streetcars, he says, the city is merely adding more rubber to the road.

“A lot of people have a kind of emotional or sentimental attachment to streetcars because of their history,” he says. “And there is a lot of literature that shows streetcars generate a larger return on investment than BRT.” Still, Lippard calls the BRT plan “a first step in the right direction.”

Another concern is the chosen route, which heavily favors the city’s more affluent and car-owning West Side at the expense of so-called “zero-car” households in East and North Nashville. As identified by MTA, these are lower-income families that depend heavily on public transport to get to work around the city. For them, transportation costs eat up a larger portion of their income.

District 5 Councilman Scott Davis thinks that the proposed route will leave out members of his district — which comprises a large segment of Gallatin Road that is already serviced by a low-grade form of BRT — as well as people living in Antioch and beyond.

“I would love to have it go up Gallatin Road,” Davis says.

Meanwhile, Davis’ colleague, District 6 Councilman Peter Westerholm, is happy to see the route’s eastern terminus at Five Points. In the future, he believes, the BRT line could be extended.

“I really think that the combination of where people, jobs and destinations are at this point, I think it’s great to extend it to Five Points and across the river and connect people who live over here and maybe work on the West Side,” Westerholm says. “I think that once we get into it and see if this is accessible, the more logical expansion would be to go further down Gallatin Road.”

The hope, he explains, is that the existing light BRT “that operates more like an express bus” could shuttle people from farther down Gallatin Road to Five Points, where they could “utilize the true BRT” for the rest of the way.

“It’s not a perfect version,” the councilman says, “but I think that’s something we’ll be willing to work with for now.”

Whatever next iteration the new transit corridor makes in the future, however, Westerholm says it must address the needs of the lower-income riders for whom public transportation isn’t a novelty but a necessity.

“Ultimately, it does need to facilitate zero-car households,” Westerholm adds. “I think we have more of those [households] in East Nashville both by choice and by necessity. I think that to the extent that it can serve those and make that more conducive to more people, I think that it’s going to be a great benefit.”

Email editor@nashvillescene.com.

Detroit joins a growing list of cities which have rejected light rail/trolleys in favor of bus systems. The three articles below describe the considerations and the city’s decision. Key statements from the articles include:

-”Developed in the 1930’s, light rail is an obsolute form of transportation that does not promote economic development, relieve congestion, save energy, or reduce pollution. All it does is cost lots of money.”

-”proposed a less-expensive plan for a network of express buses to deliver worker from the city to the job-rich suburbs.”

-”poor transit remains an obstacle to employment for many”–

-”the People Mover train, which runs largely empty in a 2.9-mile loop around downtown”–

-the formerly planned “more than nine miles” — $600 million (likely much more), 9.3 mile rail system will be replaced with a $500 million, 132 mile, rapid bus system which is:— “a more cost-effective way to cover regional transit needs”–

In Austin, the planned initial Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system will serve more than 20 times the riders for less than one-tenth the costs of the Red Line Commuter train. Sadely, this first BRT will be more than 7 years late due to taxpayer funds being misdirected and wastefully spent on a much less effective train which experienced huge cost overruns.

It is very simple: Buses are far more cost-effective and can serve many times the number of citizens needing transit. Transit must be cost effective to be sustainable because taxpayers subsidize all transit. Fixed rail is the most highly subsidized transit mode.

As Cap Metro has proven, trains result in “bankruptcy” long before the transit agency can serve enough people to make any real difference. Taxpayers subsidize the average daily, two-way rider on Cap Metro’s Red Line Commuter about $20,000 per year including capital and operating costs. This commuter would require a minimum of more than 10 times as many riders to be cost-effective. Cost-effective ridership is an ever increasing number as many tens of millions of additional costs would be required to support greater commuter ridership levels.

The use of ineffective, high cost train transit results in major negative impacts for those most dependent on transit as fares are increased and bus service is degraded. Buses will continue to be Austin’s backbone transit system serving the vast majority of transit riders’ vital needs.

We must focus precious tax dollars to the most effective solutions for well understood community needs. Austin’s so-called “downtown urban rail” is not cost effective and its wasteful spending will preclude addressing priority mobility issues.

The first article below was by Randal O’toole, published just prior to Detroit’s decision to reject rail. The next two are local news articles reporting on the decision.
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Deja voodoo: Detroit repeats Big City rail mistakes
By Randal O’Toole
The Michigan View.com, December 9, 2011

Despite massive losses in similar transportation systems in Portland and Denver, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, and President Obama this fall announced a commitment of millions in federal taxpayer dollars to a Detroit light rail line down Woodward Avenue. “Detroit deserves a world-class transportation system,” Levin crowed.

But light rail is sooo last century. In fact, it is a giant hoax perpetrated on the taxpayers of Detroit and the United States.

Developed in the 1930s, light rail is an obsolete form of transportation that does not promote economic development, relieve congestion, save energy, or reduce air pollution. All it does is cost lots of money.
Although promoters often call light rail “rapid transit,” it is actually very slow.

Nationally, light-rail lines average little more than 20 miles per hour. When operating in city streets such as Woodward, they average less than 15 mph. Such slow speeds entice few people out of their cars. The $60 million-per-mile cost of building light rail is enough to build a four-lane freeway. But the average light-rail line carries only about one-fifth of a freeway lane. Since most of those people would have ridden a bus, light rail offers little congestion relief.

Take Portland.
In 1980, 9.8 percent of Portland-area commuters took buses to work. Since then, Portland has built four light-rail lines, a commuter-rail line, and a streetcar line. Now only 7.5 percent of commuters take transit to work - partly because the high cost of rail transit forced the city to increase fares and cannibalize its bus routes.

Or consider Denver.
The Rocky Mountain city is planning six new rail lines at a cost of $7 billion - or more than half of the region’s transportation spending for the next decade. Denver planners admit that all these trains will take just one-half a percent of cars off the road. Denver could relieve more congestion by simply coordinating the city’s traffic signals, which would cost less than one mile of light rail.

“The rail expansion tax of 2004 will likely go down in Denver history as the greatest swindle ever perpetrated in Colorado,” says Jon Caldara, president of Colorado’s Independence Institute and former Chairman of Denver’s Regional Transportation District. “And given Colorado was a gold-rush state, that says a hell of a lot. The project will drain money from real transportation projects for decades to come.”
Nor is light rail good for the environment. Nationally, light-rail operations use slightly less energy, per passenger mile, than the average car. But building light rail requires enormous amounts of energy that will never be repaid by the annual energy savings.

Light rail’s big selling point, that it promotes urban revitalization, is also a Big Lie.

When Portland opened its first light-rail line in 1986, planners rezoned the areas around each station for high-density, transit-oriented development. Ten years later, planners admitted that not one single such development had been built.

When asked why they didn’t build around the light-rail stations, developers said there was no demand for such developments. So Portland began subsidizing transit-oriented developments, and to date has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on developmental subsidies. Such subsidies, using tax-increment financing, are now common in almost all cities that have light rail.

Tax-increment financing takes money that would have gone to schools, fire, libraries, and other urban services and spends it subsidizing developers. The schools and other agencies still need to serve the new developments, so other taxpayers must either pay more taxes or expect lower urban services.
Developers, and the politicians whose campaigns they support, win. Everyone else loses.

Cities that build light rail without development subsidies rarely get new development, while cities that offer development subsidies without light rail do get new development. In other words, the subsidies drive the development, not light rail.

Not only does light rail cost a lot, the costs never stop. Construction costs are only the beginning. These are followed by the subsidies to development, which in Portland cost taxpayers $60 million a year. Then there are the maintenance costs - all those tracks, wires, stations, and expensive railcars are far more costly to maintain than buses.

Finally, transit agencies are never satisfied with just one light-rail line, and later lines are almost always far more expensive than the first. Portland spent under $20 million a mile on its first light-rail line. The latest one is costing more than $200 million a mile.
Buses can do anything light rail can do except spend lots of your money, but buses are faster, safer, and more flexible than trains. If traffic patterns change, bus routes can change overnight while moving a rail line takes years of planning and construction.
Rail advocates say you need rail transit to be a world-class city. The truth is that cities that use 1930s technologies to solve 21st century transportation problems are world-class chumps.

Randal O’Toole (rot@cato.org) is a senior fellow with the Cato Institute and author of Gridlock: Why We’re Stuck in Traffic and What to Do About It.
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Wall Street Journal
No Train for the Motor City
By MATTHEW DOLAN, December 16, 2011

DETROIT—After kicking the tires on a shiny new train system, the Motor City has decided to take the cheaper bus instead.

This week, the U.S. Department of Transportation and Mayor Dave Bing suddenly abandoned a roughly $600 million plan to build a light-rail line along a key corridor that supporters had insisted would attract new residents and jump-start economic growth. Instead, they proposed a less-expensive plan for a network of express buses to deliver workers from the city to the job-rich suburbs.

Even the express-bus system would require a level of regional cooperation on transit that has long eluded Detroit and its suburbs. The impoverished city is struggling to maintain its existing transit network, including a rickety, heavily subsidized bus system and a lonely elevated train that courses through downtown.

The uncertain future of mass transit is more than a passing concern in a city where one in three residents lives in poverty, and an estimated 62% don’t own a car. At a time when hiring has perked up in the region, poor transit remains an obstacle to employment for many Detroiters.

“People are losing jobs because they can’t reach them,” said Mr. Bing, a Democrat.

Built by and for cars, Detroit is crisscrossed by freeways, but it has no subway system or commuter-rail line to connect its urban core to the suburbs. The few options for public transportation available to the city’s 713,000 residents are disjointed, unreliable and going broke.

The bus system’s aging, depleted fleet strains to meet demand across the 139-square-mile city, often forcing passengers, including schoolchildren, to wait more than a hour for a bus. A garage fire this month that destroyed six buses didn’t help matters. The city pledges to add 66 new buses to its fleet of about 265 buses on the road, but that will take years.

Meanwhile, the People Mover train, which runs largely empty in a 2.9-mile loop around downtown, will need to tap $9.6 million of a reserve maintenance fund to keep operating for two more years, officials announced this week.

Dependent on this shaky system are riders like 31-year-old Martez Perkins, who works the overnight shift on the cleaning crew at a suburban grocery store. After work one morning last month, he was stranded halfway from home at the Rosa Parks Transit Center downtown by a one-day bus-driver strike.

Mr. Perkins takes two buses to and from work each day—one city bus and one in the suburban system—traveling 32 miles each way. Unsure when, or whether, the city bus will show, he said he arrives at his bus stop five hours before his shift begins. “As long as I have a job, I’m good,” he said. “I just need them to run tomorrow so I still have one.”

Less than two months ago, officials here were much more upbeat about transit upgrades as U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood met with Michigan Republican Gov. Rick Snyder and Mr. Bing to announce a new task force on regional transportation.

Talking about the proposed “M1″ light-rail line—named for the state-highway designation of Detroit’s Woodward Avenue—Mr. LaHood pledged “unwavering” support and lauded its potential to spur job growth and expand mass transit throughout the region, despite sketchy ridership estimates. He vowed $46.7 million in federal transit grants to the city and state.

Local business leaders had a more limited plan in mind, a 3.2-mile privately funded rail line linking two busy commercial and cultural centers. But at the urging of the city and federal officials, organizers expanded the project to extend more than nine miles, from downtown to the city’s northern boundary, sending the construction estimates toward $600 million.

Then, in a swift turnabout, Messrs. LaHood and Bing shifted their support to a 110-mile rapid-bus system connecting Detroit and three surrounding counties. In a briefing for Michigan’s congressional delegation in Washington this week, Mr. LaHood described the estimated $500 million plan as a more cost-effective way to cover regional transit needs, people familiar with the matter said.

Ultimately, it was Detroit’s crumbling finances that made the new rail line untenable. George Jackson, head of the Detroit Economic Growth Corp., who recently reviewed the light-rail project for the city, said in an interview that the project had a $97 million construction-budget gap and no way to pay for the $10 million in annual operating costs. “The state of Michigan basically said, We’re not paying for your operating deficits,” he said.

Write to Matthew Dolan at matthew.dolan@wsj.com

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For less than $500M, a bus rapid transit system could cover nearly 110 miles
Matt Helms, Detroit Free Press, December 15, 2011

Officials decided recently to cancel a proposed light-rail line spanning the length of Woodward Avenue in Detroit in favor of a modernized system of speedy buses crisscrossing the region. Here are answers to some common questions about regional transit issues:

QUESTION: Why did leaders pull the plug on the light-rail line planned for Woodward?

ANSWER: Economics, plain and simple. It would have cost at least $550 million, and probably much more, to build the first 9.3-mile stretch between downtown and 8 Mile. Given tenuous financial conditions in Detroit and Lansing, no one could guarantee that there would be money to run the line once it was built.

Q: What is bus rapid transit, the plan proposed as an alternative?

A: These systems are modernized buses, longer than traditional coaches — including accordion-like middle sections to allow for sharper turns. They’re far sleeker than the buses now used in Detroit. They would operate in dedicated lanes, in many places separated from regular traffic by concrete barriers. The vehicles also are equipped with technology to let them control traffic signals so they don’t have to stop for red lights.

Q: What’s the advantage of a bus rapid transit system?

A: For less than $500 million, a bus rapid transit system can cover 110 miles along routes stretching from downtown Detroit to the suburbs, Metro Airport and Ann Arbor. Though the light-rail line would have started and stopped within Detroit’s limits, the bus rapid transit system would run along Gratiot, Woodward and Michigan avenues and M-59.

Q: What’s the likelihood the bus rapid transit system will actually get built?

A: It has much stronger support among suburban leaders who doubted the rail line, including Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel. Gov. Rick Snyder also backs the bus plan, and senators working on legislation for early next year say the bus rapid transit idea also will make it easier to pass legislation to coordinate and reform transit — key to earning federal funding for the project. It could be up and running in three to five years.

Q: How will it be paid for?

A: U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has indicated he’s willing to offer metro Detroit millions to help build a better transit system — but only if the region’s leaders agree to set up better coordination and oversight of transit. The federal government would pay the largest share of the cost to build the bus system, but its annual operating costs would have to be funded through some sort of regional tax. So far, no one’s saying how much they’ll ask voters to support.

Q: How is this related to new transit terminals that have opened or are planned for Pontiac, Dearborn and Troy?

A: The light-rail line wouldn’t have traveled to those stations, which are hubs for both buses and Amtrak service. Separate from the Detroit transit issue, Michigan is spending about $400 million to upgrade rail lines between Dearborn and Kalamazoo for faster passenger train service between Detroit and Chicago. It’s likely that the bus rapid transit lines would also connect to the Dearborn transit station, but not necessarily Pontiac’s. Troy officials have yet to accept federal funding for the proposed transit station.

RockvillePatch
December 4, 2011
Opinion

Test Driving the ICC

After 50 years, it’s worth the wait.

For nearly 20 years, I’ve listened to every conceivable argument for and against the Intercounty Connector (ICC). Now, after taking my first drive on it last week, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on whether or not it was worth it.

One of the key advantages of the ICC, in all the traffic studies over these many years, was the time savings it was expected to deliver. Studies always showed the ICC would cut the average travel time between I-270 and I-95 nearly in half. So, on the first day it was open, some friends and I, who together helped found the Suburban Maryland Transportation Alliance, did a little test-drive to see if the reality measured up to what studies predicted. As it turns out, it did.

We headed out at 7:30 a.m. on a rainy Tuesday and tried to make it from Gaithersburg to Laurel in time for an 8 a.m. breakfast meeting, a feat unheard of in modern times. Some of us took the ICC, some went down I-270 and around the Beltway, and some navigated the surrounding local roads.

The results: The ICC route took us 27 minutes, door to door (following the speed limit precisely), roughly half the 51 minutes that same trip took using other routes. When it came to saving time on the road, and the reduced gasoline consumption and emissions that come with it, the ICC delivered exactly as promised.

So let’s look at some of the other costs and benefits that may not be so obvious.

It took us five decades to plan and build the ICC, when it should have taken one. The ICC cost $2.6 billion, when it could have been around $400 million, had we built it when the need was first apparent.

It opened to the public last week, when it should have been built in the 1970s. Had it been built then, the federal government would have paid 90 percent of the construction costs, there wouldn’t have been any tolls, and we would have had enough left over to build both the Purple Line and the Corridor Cities Transitway long ago. Those who were responsible for the delays ought to held accountable for these costs, but they probably won’t be.

These are all costs that we didn’t have to pay, but we chose to pay in our collective stupidity. They are the costs of delay, inaction and political cowardice, the costs of letting narrow special-interest groups with a blindly ideological viewpoint on transportation dominate the debate, instead of looking honestly at the facts. In 50 years, there was never a single study that didn’t show the ICC was needed. There was never, at any time in this long debate, a single viable alternative presented by opponents.

The ICC is there today because it needed to be, and because we finally got so fed up with the traffic, we voters demanded it and our leaders delivered it.

Over time, we’ll see more benefits from the ICC, not just in time savings, but in reduced congestion and fuel consumption, lower accident rates, and less cut-through traffic in neighborhoods. The University of Maryland calculated some $7 billion in direct economic benefits to Maryland taxpayers from the ICC, in its first 20 years alone, not a bad return on a $2 billion investment.

In time, the tolls collected on the ICC will more-than-pay for the cost of building and maintaining the road, and after that will yield a significant annual surplus that can help fund other projects around the state.

So, was it all worth it? Yes, but it didn’t have to take this long or cost this much. The real lesson here: Delay is the worst transportation policy of all.

In the article below, Ed Wendler Jr. addresses several areas of Austin’s development and downtown plan which are achieving the exact opposite results of those which are promised, promoted and desired. They all lead to placing greater “tax” burdens on citizens, displacing lower and, in many cases, medium income citizens; depriving them of the living style and life they would choose and reducing their quality-of-life.

Below Wendler’s article is a responding ‘letter to the editor’ by the Chairwoman of the Downtown Austin Alliance. The letter indicates a lack of appreciation for the true impact of public policies which are resulting in higher cost of living for citizens. It states that increased living density in the urban core benefits every citizen. What is doesn’t state is that increased density results in increased congestion and higher housing prices.

The City of Austin is engaging in social engineering to change people’s choice of transportation to public transit. This will fail and the result will be wasteful spending of tax dollars, greater congestion, increased pollution and greater safety hazards. There are no successful models for significant change in people’s priorities and choices of transportation for the simple reason that dependence on public transit reduces opportunities and quality of life. Any public transit which could be competitive with private transportation would be financially unsustainable.

Public transit drawbacks are being proven in almost every city. Texas cities of Dallas, Houston and Austin all have fewer public transit riders than they had 12 years ago while they have spent billions and added expensive, ineffective trains to support and encourage public transit use. At the same time their populations have been among the fastest growing in the nation. And, while transit ridership has declined, the cost per rider has far outpaced inflation; again, unsustainable.

Austin’s Cap Metro recently celebrated the fact that ridership in their fiscal 2011 had increased 1 million over the ridership in 2010. With flagrant lack of transparency, Cap Metro did not mention the 2010 ridership was 1.5 million less than in 2009. So 2011 ridership did not even return to the 2009 level. Nor did they mention that 1 million boardings in a year is less than 2,000 people per day taking round trip rides on the transit system. Cap Metro claims the number of round trip equivalents on the Red Line Commuter train have increased about 450 people to a total of 900 people when they expanded the train schedule to provide more trips throughout the day. What they don’t say is that the train increases congestion, produces more pollution per passenger than if every passenger was in a new car and the taxpayer subsidy per two way rider is about $20,000 per year; enough to provide each passenger a new car with gas every year.

Public transit plays a very important and major community role in providing transportation for those who depend on it daily and have no other choice. Perhaps the most negative community impact of wasteful spending on ineffective transit, such as trolley-trains, is that it results in degrading the backbone bus transit system, serving the vast majority of riders and mostly without alternatives, by increasing fares and reducing service.

The letter to the Statesman editor states, naively: “Downtown Austin is an exporter of taxes.” This is true of almost every downtown in the nation. However, there cannot be a ‘Downtown’ without citizens who live outside of downtown, throughout the city and region, who desire to travel downtown for work and private business or to enjoy shopping, dining, entertainment, etc. Few can afford the exorbitant prices of downtown living and few families desire this environment for raising children. Austin’s new Comprehensive Plan is ignoring major lessons from other cities. As shown in the 2011 census, the living choices of citizens across the nation are resulting in the majority of city downtowns declining in density while living areas outside central cities’ are increasing in density. Austin’s path to congesting downtown streets with hazardous trolley trains will degrade the desirability of downtown and result in unsustainable tax increases.

It is absurd for city officials to suggest and for citizens to believe that downtown living will reduce “sprawl.” A few thousand people in this 1.7 million population region live downtown. Downtown population could double tomorrow and the impact on “sprawl” could not be measured. The City’s focus on tiny numbers of affordable housing units in the downtown area is not a productive pursuit in dealing with the major overall cost of housing issue.

The fact is “sprawl” has produced numerous positive aspects of the central Texas community: It has provided homes which would be otherwise unaffordable for many; it has reduced the otherwise major additional increase in congestion resulting from Austin’s lack of attention to adequate road systems to meet the needs of its growing population; it has reduced driving per capita for many years, recognizing the work commute, which is less than 20% of driving, may have increased slightly, but, the other 80% of driving has reduced substantially because living in outer city areas is closer to many daily needs of shopping, medical, entertainment, dining, schools, etc.

City development regulations should fully accommodate market demand for development of appropriate areas of greater living density for those who can and prefer this living environment. It should not be promoted with coercive regulations and the impact on the character and affordability of current neighborhoods should be fully considered.
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Count on higher living costs in New Austin

Ed Wendler Jr., Local Contributor, Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011
Austin-American Statesman

As a born-here Austinite, I keep trying to put my finger on what’s different about the New Austin. It’s similar to the experience of seeing an old friend who looks different. You aren’t quite sure what’s changed. Plastic surgery? New hair style? Maybe just new glasses?

An acquaintance who is active in City Hall politics made the observation that New Austin practices “trickle down economics.” If so, it’s ironic for a city that claims to be the liberal oasis in conservative Texas. I think he is on to something.

I recently read “Urban Fortunes” by John Logan and Harvey Molotch. It’s a progressive, almost radical take on the economics of municipal growth, and it argues that cities are structured to promote increases in rents and property values, most times decreasing existing residents’ enjoyment of their homes and lives and displacing those who can’t pay.

The authors distinguish between “exchange value” and “use value.” “Exchange value” is their broad term for the economic value of land and buildings. The general theory is that the higher the total rent, which includes mortgage payments, the higher the property value. Increasing value can be accomplished by adding units, increasing rent per unit, or a combination of the two. Cities increase “exchange value” by investing in infrastructure to allow more intense land use, zoning land for more units, allowing taller buildings, granting variances to rules or changing land-use patterns, as with urban renewal programs.

“Use value” is the personal satisfaction we get from raising our children in our homes, walking our dogs around the neighborhood or taking the kids to the Trail of Lights (oh, sorry, they canceled it again).
The authors argue that cities always act to increase “exchange value.” In many ways that framework fits Austin. Here are a few examples:

Austin adopted “vertical mixed-use” zoning that allows apartments 60 feet high with a density of about 70 units per acre. As a result, an old apartment with affordable rents will be torn down to build a project with three times as many units at twice the rental rate. Residents enjoying affordable rent are displaced. Existing neighbors’ “use value” might go down because of the impacts of increased population. Supporters call it “good for the tax base.”

Austin has a Riverside Drive Plan with the stated purpose of replacing a “blighted” area with new mixed-use development and urban rail. The idea is to tear down apartments with low rents and replace them with more apartments at higher rents. The demographics change. The elementary school is closed because there aren’t enough kids, and the “use value” of existing residents goes down. Austin calls it promoting “infill development.”

Austin is adopting a Downtown Plan that promotes growth and advocates spending on downtown parks and infrastructure. That $300 million will be used to subsidize the area with the highest rents in Austin, both residential and office space. The city’s website says that “we should care about downtown because its success is central to the prosperity of the city and the region.” Reminds me of “what is good for GM is good for America” and sounds a whole lot like “trickle down economics.”

Austin’s push for higher “exchange value” even applies to parking space. Austin now charges for nights and weekends at downtown parking meters, the same thing as increasing rents. Residents who enjoy downtown but can’t afford parking are displaced. Some have even suggested meters in front of homes in neighborhoods behind South Congress Avenue. The “exchange value” of the retail on South Congress Avenue would increase. The “use value” for the residents decreases. Supporters call it sound economics.

In many ways, this City Council is the most pro-growth, go-go council in memory. Unfortunately, its push for ever higher land values generated by higher densities and higher rents will cause Austin to be unaffordable for many, and many times it will negatively affect existing residents’ lives.

When a politician or advocate says “it’s good for the tax base,” watch out. That means the rent is going up. Now that I think about it, I’m not sure New Austin’s glasses are very flattering.

Wendler is an Austin developer.
_______________________________________________________________________________

Austin’s smart growth
Letter to the Statesman Editor

Re: Nov. 10 commentary by Ed Wendler Jr., “Count on higher living costs in New Austin.”

Wendler suggests increased density results in a less enjoyable and more expensive place
for Austinites. I think it is just the opposite. The bottom line is, Austin is growing. By planning
for and absorbing some of this growth into the urban core and transit corridors through-
out the city, every citizen benefits. Downtown Austin is an exporter of taxes. According to the
Downtown Austin Plan, it would take an area eight times the size of downtown to generate
the same taxable value. The taxes generated in downtown help to pay for quality education,
cleaner parks and increased safety throughout the entire city. All of these things add to the
“use value” Wendler claims is declining.

Austin is changing. However, smart growth and increased density at the right places are the
keys to keeping the character of Austin.

PAMELA POWER
Board chairwoman
Downtown Austin Alliance
Austin

Public transit will always play a vital role in the lives of people early in their quest for higher quality-of-life and those unable to support private transportation. As the article below indicates, assistance to many people in achieving private transportation may be the most cost-effective way to achieve a win-win for the individuals and for the community.
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A car to get them off welfare and improve their lives in Baltimore

TOLLROADSnews, Posted: Fri, 2011-10-07

The Baltimore Sun’s transport report Michael Dresser has a great story this week about a Baltimore charity called Vehicles for Change (VfC) that is enriching the lives of transit-dependent people by getting them a car. 24-year old Karyn Wilmer a single mother with a 2-year old calls a 1998 Honda she got from VfC “almost a miracle for me,” the car has so radically improved her life. The car had enabled her to get work because transit to the workplace was impossible.

Recipients of the donated cars said that their new mobility enabled them look after children better and to shop better.

Vehicles for Change organized a promotional event recently called “Walk in their Shoes” in the car recipients left their cars at home for one day and retracted their walks and transit rides on typical trips they had to make when carless.

Reporters and officials traipsed along on the long walks to the bus stop and then waited around for the buses which rarely ran to schedule, then the awkward routine of folding the stroller and hoisting it and child up into the bus while maneuvering coins and bills for the fare.

The Sun report quotes a survey that showed 70% of recipients of cars said they made thousands increase in income in the year after they’d got a car. Children benefited in less monetary ways, being able to be taken more places than transit makes convenient.

Recipients rent the cars typically for $75/month. Often after a couple of years they’ve made enough extra income to be able to afford their own. A good rent payment record is accepted by local banks as a credit positive.

No comment from the transit enthusiasts or those who want to “get people out of their cars.”

OUR COMMENT: Carlessness in the modern world is a form of transit-slavery, a scourge which true progressives and liberals will oppose. Programs like Baltimore’s Vehicles for Change enabling people of limited means to get cars deserve support.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/features/commuting/bs-md-no-car-20111003,0,1131382.story
http://vehiclesforchange.org/

testimonials from grateful recipients of cars:

http://vehiclesforchange.org/testimonials.html

The five articles below, by three different authors, present a wealth of information and suggest: There is absolutely no evidence to support the mythical trend of people moving back to the central core cities. The fact that US urban population has recently exceeded rural population for the first time has fueled the myth of this “back to the city movement.” As pointed out below, there are counter trends impacting urban growth and a blurring of the traditional distinctions between rural and urban living. While rural population has shifted to urban areas, core municipality (city) populations have shifted to the outer urban areas (suburbs). Meanwhile rural living has become more like urban living in many ways.

The bottom line is that there are no general trends of increasing densification in the core areas which mass transit primarily serves. The vast majority of people’s living choices and actions do not support the often stated rational for building more and more expensive, highly tax subsidized, rail transit systems. In fact, the real trends would indicate, more than ever, the most cost-effective transit systems will be modern bus systems which have: 1) the flexibility necessary to meet changing demands in a timely manner, and 2) the much lower costs necessary to sustain support to a much greater portion of the population needing transit.
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The Ambiguous Triumph of the “Urban Age”
by Robert Bruegmann in Newgeography.com
09/13/2011

In its State of the Population report in 2007, the United Nations Population Fund made this ringing declaration: “In 2008, the world reaches an invisible but momentous milestone: For the first time in history, more than half its human population, 3.3 billion people, will be living in urban areas.”

The agency’s voice was one of many trumpeting an epoch-making event. For the last several years, newspaper and magazine articles, television shows and scholarly papers have explored the premise that because most of the world now lives in urban rather than in rural areas things are going to be, or at least should be, different. Often the conclusion is that cities may finally get the attention they deserve from policy makers and governments. This optimism dovetails nicely with a sizeable literature of urban advocacy chronicling the rejuvenation of central cities and extolling the supposed virtues of high-density city living, even predicting the withering away of the suburbs.

This supposed triumph of the urban is fraught with ironies, however. The first is that, rather than a simple rush of people from the hinterlands into the centers of high density cities, there has also been, within almost every urban area in the world, a significant move of the population outward, from dense city centers into peripheral suburban areas and beyond them into very low-density exurban regions.

We can use Paris as a typical example. The city of Paris reached its peak population of nearly 3 million in the 1920s. It has lost nearly a third of its population since then. What remains in the city is a smaller and wealthier population. At the same time the suburbs, accommodating both families of modest income forced out of the city as well as a burgeoning middle class, have grown enormously, from two million to over eight million. And this does not count a great deal of essentially urban population that that lives in a vast ring of exurban or “peri-urban” settlement. Certainly the majority of “urban” dwellers in the Paris region do not live in the elegant apartment blocks along the great boulevards familiar to the tourist. They live in houses or small apartment buildings in the suburbs and use the automobile for their daily transportation needs.

In fact, Paris is a good example of an even more fundamental irony. At the very moment when urban population has been reported to surpass the rural, this distinction has lost most of its significance, at least in many parts of the affluent world. Two hundred years ago, before automobiles, telephones, the internet and express package services, cities were much more compact and rural life was indeed very different from urban life. Most inhabitants of rural areas were tied to agriculture or industries devoted to the extraction of natural resources. Their lives were fundamentally different from those of urban dwellers.

Today the situation has changed radically. Most people living in areas classified as rural don’t farm or have any direct connection with agriculture. They hold jobs similar to those in urban areas. And although they might not have opera houses, upscale boutiques or specialized hospitals nearby, the activities that take place in these venues are available to them in ways that they never were before.

I can confirm the way the distinction between urban and rural has broken down by looking out the window of the house in Omro, WI where I am staying this weekend. Omro, population about 3000, is located 8 miles west of Oshkosh and is legally a city under Wisconsin law. It is also an “urban” place according to the Census Bureau which, like those of other countries, defines urban largely by density standards. In the case of the US, this means, in simplest terms, a density of at least 1000 people per square mile or just under two people per acre.

At one time this 1000-people-per-square-mile figure did provide a logical demarcation line. Above those densities were places that could afford urban services like public water and sewers, sidewalks, streetlights, municipal fire departments and libraries. Below that level were places that either didn’t have these services or had to depend on faraway county governments. Unless you were closely associated with agricultural production or other rural economic activities or you were wealthy enough to provide your own services, it was quite inconvenient to live in rural areas.

Today, the automobile, rural electrification, the internet and the rise of alternate and privatized services has transformed what it means to live in rural areas. “Country living” today has few of the drawbacks that made it inconvenient for middle class residents as recently as fifty years ago, and the migration of so many urbanites into the country has blurred the distinction between urban and rural.

The view out my window bears this out. When I look one direction what I see are city streets and houses on land that is technically urban. Of course, Omro, with a single main street, two traffic lights and only a handful of stores, is not at all the kind of place that most people associate with the words “city” or “urban.” Like the majority of small urban places in this country, its densities are lower than those found in the suburbs of larger cities. When I look out the other direction I see mostly fields beyond the city limit. But, unlike the case in the past, there is no sharp divide. There has been a significant increase in the number of houses out in the area that is technically “rural.” Some of these used to be farmhouses, but there are few farmers anywhere for miles around. Most farming is now done under contract or as a large industrial-scale operation.

Most of the houses in the “rural” area around Omro have been built in the last decade or two and never housed anyone with any direct connection to farming. They are suburban in appearance and mostly inhabited by people who work at home, are retired or commute some distance to jobs spread across a vast swath of urban territory that stretches from Fond du Lac south of Lake Winnebago to Green Bay where the Fox River meets Lake Michigan.

The result is that today, as you drive outward from the center of Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Appleton or Green Bay, the number of houses per square mile diminishes, but there is no clear break between city and country. It is a crazy quilt of agricultural, residential and other uses. Commuting patterns, if charted on a map, would form a giant matrix of lines running in all directions. Whether one is in the center of Oshkosh or 50 miles away, however, one can still live an essentially urban existence.

This same diffused urban condition holds true for very large swaths of the United States wherever there is enough underground water to allow wells. It is particularly conspicuous in the older and more densely settled eastern part of the country. A state like New Jersey exhibits a pattern of dense older cities, radiating suburbs, vast exurban territories and farmland and open space, overlapping in ways that confound traditional notions about what is urban and rural. In places like New Jersey, the census distinction has lost almost all of its meaning.

I don’t mean to suggest that that the news that the majority of the world’s population is now urban has no significance. In fact this move from the countryside to urban areas has been one of the defining events of world history over the last several centuries. Although this process was mostly finished in Western Europe and the United States decades ago, it still continues in most of Latin America, Africa and Asia and accounts for a great deal of the dramatic upward surge in income throughout the world.

Nor am I suggesting the demise of the great cities of Europe or America. Far from it. Many rich families in particular will probably continue to choose high-density neighborhoods like those on the Upper East Side of New York or the 16th arrondissement in Paris, although often with a rural retreat as well As the world gets wealthier, more people may make a choice to live in this way.

However, current trends give no reason to believe that places like Manhattan or central Paris are going to increase in population and density as part of a “back-to-the-city” movement. As cities gentrify, they undoubtedly become more attractive, but increased demand leads to higher prices keeping out many families who might choose to live in them. Furthermore, the gentrifiers tend to have smaller families than those they replace, and they also tend to demand more room, larger and better equipped housing units, more parks and open spaces. Because of this, the gentrifiers, citing the need to preserve existing neighborhoods, frequently put up all kinds of barriers to new development and increased population and density, particularly by less affluent citizens. For all these reasons, existing city centers in the affluent world are unlikely to accommodate a significantly larger percentage of the population.

Even in the developing countries, as urbanist Shlomo Angel has shown, most cities are spreading outward at ever lower overall densities just as cities have been doing for many years in the affluent West. For those who don’t have a lot of affluence, and even some who do, low density suburban- and increasingly, even lower density exurban- living, remains alluring for many in both the affluent and the developing world. In fact, we might even be seeing the initial stages of a major reversal of the kind of urbanization that characterized industrializing cities in the West in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The sharp increase in houses outside Omro may presage at least a partial return to a pre-industrial condition seen, for example, in nineteenth century America when people were more evenly spread across the landscape.

This continuing urban sprawl is, of course, deplored by many of those who celebrate the supposed triumph of the “urban age. “ Yet as I have argued in my book Sprawl: A Compact History, this phenomenon is by no means as bad as most anti-sprawl crusaders imagine it to be. Continuing to spread the population could conceivably result in a more equitable, more sustainable pattern of living, particularly as renewable energy and other resources are harvested close to home with less need of the giant systems necessary to maintain our dense industrial-age cities. In any case, despite all of the planning regulations put in place in cities throughout the affluent world to control growth at the edge, the periphery continues, inexorably, to expand almost everywhere.

Nowhere does the evidence suggest that we are witnessing the final triumph of the traditional high-density city. In fact, the much-ballyhooed urban majority might be in great part a statistical artifact, a way of counting the population that over-emphasizes the move from country to city and fails to account for the powerful counter-movement from the city back toward the countryside. Indeed the emerging reality of overlapping patterns of high density centers, lower-density peripheries and vast areas of very low density urban settlement, all of them interspersed with agricultural lands and protected open spaces, threatens to upend altogether the traditional notion of what it means to be urban.
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Robert Bruegmann is professor emeritus of Art history, Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
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Cities and the Census
by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox in City Journal
6 April 2011

The new data show urban America neither on the way out nor roaring back.
6 April 2011

For many mayors across the country, including New York City’s Michael Bloomberg, the recently announced results of the 2010 census were a downer. In a host of cities, the population turned out to be substantially lower than the U.S. Census Bureau had estimated for 2010—in New York’s case, by some 250,000 people. Bloomberg immediately called the decade’s meager 2.1 percent growth, less than one-quarter the national average, an “undercount.” Senator Charles Schumer blamed extraterrestrials, accusing the Census Bureau of “living on another planet.” The truth, though, is that the census is very much of this world. It just isn’t the world that mayors, the media, and most urban planners want to see.

Start with the fact that America continues to suburbanize. The country’s metropolitan areas have two major components: core cities (New York City, for example) and suburbs (such as Westchester County, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and even Pike County in Pennsylvania). During the 2000s, the census shows, just 8.6 percent of the population growth in metropolitan areas with more than a million people took place in the core cities; the rest took place in the suburbs. That 8.6 percent represents a decline from the 1990s, when the figure was 15.4 percent. The New York metropolitan area was no outlier: though it did better than the national average, with 29 percent of its growth taking place within New York City, that’s still a lot lower than the 46 percent that the region saw in the 1990s.

This may be shocking to some. For years, academics, the media, and big-city developers have been suggesting that suburbs were dying and that people were flocking back to the cities that they had fled in the 1970s. The Obama administration has taken this as gospel. “We’ve reached the limits of suburban development,” Housing and Urban Development secretary Shaun Donovan opined in 2010. “People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.” Yet of the 51 metropolitan areas that have more than 1 million residents, only three—Boston, Providence, and Oklahoma City—saw their core cities grow faster than their suburbs. (And both Boston and Providence grew slowly; their suburbs just grew more slowly. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, built suburban residences on the plentiful undeveloped land within city limits.)

All this suburbanization means that the best unit for comparison may be, not the core city, but the metropolitan area; and the census shows clearly which metropolitan areas are growing and which are not. The top ten population gainers—growing by 20 percent, twice the national average or more—are the metropolitan areas surrounding Las Vegas, Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Riverside–San Bernardino, Orlando, Phoenix, Houston, San Antonio, and Atlanta. These areas are largely suburban. None developed the large, dense core cities that dominated America before the post–World War II suburban boom began. By contrast, many of the metropolitan areas that grew at rates half the national average or less—San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, New York—have core areas that are the old, dense variety. Planners and pundits may like density, but people, for the most part, continue to prefer more space.

If you do look at cities themselves, rather than at larger metropolitan areas, you’ll see that the census reveals three different categories. The most robust cities, with population growth over 15 percent for the decade—Raleigh, Austin, Charlotte, Las Vegas, Jacksonville, and Orlando—were located within the kind of metropolitan area that urbanists tend to dislike: highly suburbanized, dominated by single-family homes, and with few people using public transit. That’s partly because these cities developed along largely suburban lines by annexing undeveloped land and low-density areas. This has been the case in virtually all the fastest-growing cities. Raleigh has expanded its boundaries to become 12 times larger than it was in 1950; Charlotte and Orlando are nine times larger, and Jacksonville an astounding 25 times larger.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are core cities, mostly in the Midwest and Northeast and often land-constrained, that have continued to shrink. These include longtime disaster zones like Detroit and Cleveland as well as newer ones like Birmingham in the South. They include Pittsburgh, a city much praised for its livability but one that is aging rapidly and whose city government, based disproportionately on revenue from universities and nonprofits, is among the nation’s most fiscally strapped. They even include Chicago, which lost some 200,000 people during the 2000s, its population falling to the lowest level since the 1910 census. The reasons aren’t hard to identify: despite all the hype about Chicago’s recovery and the legacy of Mayor Richard M. Daley, the Windy City is among the most fiscally weak urban areas in the country, its schools are in terrible shape, and its economy is struggling.

Finally, there are cities that have grown, but not quickly. New York City’s population, for example, inched to a record high in the 2000s, but that growth was less than the national average. The population of Los Angeles grew a mere 97,000—the smallest increase since the 1890s. Many of the slow-growing cities (New York, San Francisco, and Boston, for example) suffer from high housing costs, which inhibit population growth. But they also host high-end industries—finance, technology, and business services—and enough well-paid workers in these industries to afford pricey housing and sustain a small rate of growth. The cities also attract already wealthy people from elsewhere.

The census provides information on a smaller level, too, telling us not just which cities have grown, but where the growth has taken place within cities. Often, it has been in and around the historic downtowns. This is a trend in many cities that otherwise differ starkly (New York, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles), and it reflects a subtle shift in the role of the downtown. Rather than reasserting themselves as dominant job centers, downtowns are becoming residential and cultural—a change that H. G. Wells predicted when he wrote that by 2000, the center of London would be “essentially a bazaar, a great gallery of shops and places of concourse and rendezvous.” What may have been an office, industrial, or retail zone morphs into a gentrified locale attractive to the migratory global rich, to affluent young people, and to childless households.

This downtown recovery (which many cities subsidized heavily) was partly why so many urbanists and developers identified a broader back-to-the-city movement; but in reality, the phenomenon was usually limited to a relatively small population and a relatively small area. Since 1950, for example, St. Louis has lost a greater share of its population than any American city ever boasting 500,000 or more residents. The area from downtown to Central West End experienced strong growth during the 2000s, however, adding more people than Portland’s Pearl District, a favorite of urban planners. Yet this gain of 7,000 people was far from enough to offset the loss of 36,000 in the rest of St. Louis.

It’s also worth noting that in economic terms, downtowns are losing their hold. For example, though the residential population of Chicago’s Loop tripled to 20,000 in the past decade, that famed business district lost almost 65,000 jobs; its share of the metropolitan area’s employment also fell. Los Angeles’s downtown, whose population has likewise grown, lost roughly 200,000 jobs from 1995 to 2005. Manhattan is losing employment share to the other four boroughs, as it has been for decades; but as a recent report from the Center for an Urban Future reveals, the process accelerated over the last ten years. From 2000 to 2009, Manhattan lost a net 41,833 jobs, while other boroughs saw net increases. This employment dispersion is even more evident in the suburbs. Of commuters who live in the inner-ring suburbs (such as Yonkers and East Orange), 60 percent work in their home counties and only 14 percent in Manhattan. Of commuters from such outer-ring suburbs as Haverstraw and Morristown, 73 percent work in their home counties and 6 percent in Manhattan.

What, in the end, does the census tell us about America’s cities today? Certainly not that they’re dying, as they threatened to do in the 1950s, but equally certainly that they aren’t roaring back. Cities remain a successful niche product for a relatively small percentage of the population. Most people, though, even in the New York metropolitan area, continue to move toward the periphery rather than the core. That said, New York’s continuing growth over the past decade suggests that its recovery will likely prove durable. As for Senator Schumer’s “another planet” allegations, the census is simply confirming the fact that terrestrial Americans continue to disperse, both within and among metropolitan areas. So far, there’s little that planners, policy makers, and urban boosters can do about that.
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Joel Kotkin is a Distinguished Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in California, an adjunct fellow with the London-based Legatum Institute, and the author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, a public policy firm in the St. Louis metropolitan area, and a former member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.
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FINAL CENSUS RESULTS: CORE CITIES DO WORSE IN 2000’s THAN 1990’s

by Wendell Cox 03/24/2011 in Newgeography.com

Based upon complete census counts for 2010, historical core municipalities of the nation’s major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) captured a smaller share of growth in the 2000s than in the 1990s.

The results for the 50 metropolitan areas (New Orleans excluded due to Hurricane Katrina and Tucson unexpectedly failed to reach 1,000,000 population) indicate that historical core municipalities accounted for 9 percent of metropolitan area growth between 2000 and 2010, compared to 15 percent in the 1990-2000 period. Overall, suburban areas captured 91 percent of metropolitan area population growth between 2000 and 2010, compared to 85 percent between 2000 and 2010.
Total population growth in the historical core municipalities was 1.4 million, nearly all of it in municipalities with a largely suburban form (such as Phoenix, San Antonio and Charlotte). This compares to an increase of 2.9 million during the 1990s.

Suburban areas (areas in metropolitan areas outside the historical core municipalities) grew 15.0 million, down from 16.1million.

Overall, the major metropolitan areas added 14 percent to their populations in the 2000s, down from 19 percent growth in the 1990s. The historical core municipalities grew 4 percent, compared to the 1990s rate of 7 percent. Suburban areas grew 18 percent, compared to the 1990s rate of 26 percent (all data unweighted).

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PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN CORES AND SUBURBS

by Wendell Cox 03/13/2011 in Newgeography.com

Our virtually instant analysis of 2000 census trends in metropolitan areas has the generated wide interest. The principal purpose is to chronicle the change in metropolitan area population and the extent to which that change occurred in the urban core as opposed to suburban areas.

From a policy perspective, this is especially timely because of the recurring report that suburbanites have been moving to the urban core over the last decade. We have dealt with this issue extensively, noting the lack of data for any such interpretation. As of this writing, with data for more than half of the major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population) in, there remains virtually no evidence that people are “moving back to the city” (actually, most suburban growth came from outside metropolitan areas, not from the “cities”).

The Policy Context: Urban Cores and Suburbs

This discussion is not new, and generally pits anti-automobile interests – including much of the urban planning community – who favor the urban development patterns of prewar America (generally the urban planning community) against those who would prefer allowing people to make their own choices about where they live or work.

Over the past 60 or more years, the data indicates that consumers have nearly exclusively chosen less dense and more suburban areas. This is not to suggest, however that many of us, including this author, automatically favor suburbs over urban cores. Indeed, I have enjoyed years of alternating between living in suburban America and the urban core of the (inner) ville de Paris (arrondissements I, II, V, VII and XI). But if you have a taste for urban living, that does not mean high-density cities are inherently superior to suburban living. People, after all, have different preferences.

Urban areas include both urban cores and suburbs. The delineation of urban cores and suburbs is subjective. There was for example a time – say around 1820 – when development to the north of New York’s Houston Street would have been considered suburban. More than two thirds of the present ville de Paris was suburban before the city limits were expanded in the 1860s. Now, no one would consider, for example, Washington Square or Herald Square to be suburban and the suburbs of Paris now extended to more than 80 times the land area of the 1860s ville de Paris.

One overlooked way to approach the current debate would be to look not at municipal boundaries but forms of development. Around 1950 we began the breakneck expansion of automobile oriented suburbanization which had proceeded more modestly for two or more decades before.

The Urban Core:

This analysis defines the urban core consistent with the criteria of the US Bureau of the Census in 1950. Metropolitan areas are organized around urban areas (urbanized areas). We use the “central cities” of the core urban areas in 1950 as the urban core in the analysis. Those portions outside the 1950 urban core are thus considered suburban. Where an urban area did not exist in 1950 (such as in Las Vegas and Tucson), the urban core is the central city of the urban area when it was first established.

No existing specification of the urban core is ideal, though the present one is appropriate for the policy purpose stated above. Clearly, the urban core would be far better defined at the census tract or even census block level based upon the characteristics of an urban core. This would include factors such as high residential population density, high transit usage, walkability and a high percentage of multiple unit residential buildings.

Such an ideal definition of the urban core cannot be measured with municipal boundaries. Yet, municipal boundaries have routinely been used by researchers to delineate the urban core, not least because the data is readily available. However there three notable difficulties with the use of municipal boundaries to define the urban core.

First; some areas with urban core characteristics are outside the core municipalities. As The Infrastructurist notes, municipalities like Jersey City or Hoboken have the characteristics of urban cores. However, since they are not a part of the core municipality (city of New York), they are classified as suburbs in our analysis. It is well to remember that both Hoboken and Jersey City represented suburban development, during their period of greatest growth, before 1930.

Second, other areas with postwar suburban characteristics are inside the core municipalities. For example, Richmond County (Staten Island), a part of the city of New York is principally suburban. Much of it was developed well after 1950 and consists largely of single family homes. The median construction date of owner occupied housing in Staten Island is 1970, which compares to 1965 in adjacent Middlesex County, New Jersey. It is newer than in Morris County New Jersey (1965), much of which is outside the urban area (all median house construction years from the 2000 census). Major portions of core municipalities such as Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, Portland, Seattle, Denver and others are also postwar suburban.

Third, in a number of core municipalities, there is little, if any urban core, at least from a residential perspective. For example, one would be hard-pressed to identify an urban core in municipalities such as Phoenix or San Jose (despite the fact that the San Jose urban area is more dense than New York urban area). In metropolitan areas such as these, it might be preferable to define virtually all growth as suburban, though our analysis still defines these municipalities as the urban core.

Based upon the early results from the census it seems that if the more ideal census tract-based urban core definition were used, the urban cores would be shown to be capturing an even smaller share of growth, while suburban areas would be capturing more. But this analysis will have to wait until all the numbers are in.

Historical Core Municipality

The term “historical core municipality” is used to denote the urban cores using municipal boundaries. The term “city” is avoided because of its multiple definitions. Cities can be municipalities (such as in the city of New York), urban areas (such as the New York urban area), metropolitan areas (such as the New York metropolitan area) or multi-county regions or prefectures of countries like China (such as Wuhan or Shenyang).

This lack of clarity can be routinely seen in media reports that indiscriminately (and without comprehension) make comparisons between cities, using differing definitions. This can even extend even to more technical literature (see pages 12-14 of Urban Transportation Policy Requires Factual Foundations).

Principal Cities: Starting in 2003, the Census Bureau substituted the term “principal city” for the previous “central city” term. The use of principal city designations and the largest municipality as the principal name of a metropolitan area are appropriate for the purposes intended by the Census Bureau.

In its State of Metropolitan America, the Brookings Institution uses up to the three largest principal cities (which it calls “primary cities”) and consider other parts of metropolitan areas as suburbs.

Neither approach, however, is appropriate in analyzing postwar suburbanization. Any municipality in a metropolitan area with more than 250,000 population is considered a principal city, regardless of its urban form. Any municipality with more than 50,000 population but which also has more jobs than resident workers is also a principal city, regardless of its actual on the ground reality.

This leads to a situation in which, for example, Los Angeles has 26 principal cities. Any postwar urban form definition would classify nearly all as suburban (and much of the historical core municipality of Los Angeles, notably the San Fernando Valley, itself is suburban). For example, the suburban city of Cerritos is a principal city, yet was largely filled by dairy farms well into the 1950s and was called Dairy Valley.

Other principal cities hardly existed in 1950. Virginia Beach has become the largest municipality in its metropolitan area, having displaced Norfolk. Yet, in 1950 Virginia Beach had a population of only 5,400, well below the 50,000 threshold that was required of central cities (smaller than Ponchatoula, Louisiana, doubtless an unfamiliar municipality to most readers). Arlington, Texas, the third municipality in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area, had a population of 7,700 in 1950, again well below the central city threshold. Arlington is not an urban core, it is a suburban jurisdiction.

Virginia Beach is a good example of a suburban area that has become the largest municipality in a metropolitan area. Its greater size, however, does not make Virginia Beach the urban core. Otherwise, Contra Costa County in California could, by consolidating with its constituent municipalities (God forbid), replace San Francisco as the metropolitan area’s urban core.

Perhaps the ultimate example of the problem of principal cities being confused with urban cores is Hemet, California, a principal city of the Riverside-San Bernardino metropolitan area that is, in fact an exurb and not in the primary urban area.

Toward the Future

An eventual more precise analysis of urban cores and suburban trends will be welcome. Yet, as our analysis of trends in New Jersey indicated, even the growth in more urban core oriented municipalities was minuscule compared to the state’s suburban growth. Further, much of the urban core growth in the nation came from areas that, although formally located within “city limits” actually were on the suburban fringe. This was true, for example, in Kansas City, Oklahoma City and even Portland. This suggests that the small share of growth reported in urban cores would be even less if it were based on census tract data; and suburbanization, as a way of life, may indeed be even more prevalent than this year’s numbers suggest.
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Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life”

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The Still Elusive “Return to the City”
by Wendell Cox in Newgeography.com
Posted: 22 Feb 2011 02:38 AM PST

Metropolitan area results are beginning to trickle in from the 2010 census. They reveal that, at least for the major metropolitan areas so far, there is little evidence to support the often repeated claim by think tanks and the media that people are moving from suburbs to the historical core municipalities. This was effectively brought to light in a detailed analysis of Chicago metropolitan area results by New Geography’s Aaron Renn. This article analyzes data available for the eight metropolitan areas with more than 1 million population for which data had been released by February 20.

Summary: Summarized, the results are as follows. A detailed analysis of the individual metropolitan areas follows (Table 1).

- In each of the eight metropolitan areas, the preponderance of growth between 2000 and 2010 was in the suburbs, as has been the case for decades. This has occurred even though two events – the energy price spike in mid-decade and the mortgage meltdown – were widely held to have changed this trajectory. On average, 4 percent of the growth was in the historical core municipalities, and 96 percent of the growth was in the suburbs (Figure 1).

-In each of the eight metropolitan areas, the suburbs grew at a rate substantially greater than that of the core municipality. The core municipalities had an average growth from 2000 to 2010 of 3.2 percent. Suburban growth was 21.7 percent, nearly 7 times as great. Overall, the number of people added to the suburbs was 14 times that added to the core municipalities.

Analysis of Individual Metropolitan Areas: The major metropolitan areas for which data is available are described below in order of their population size (Figure 2 and Table 1).

Chicago: The core municipality of Chicago lost 200,000 residents between 2000 and 2010. Suburban growth was 546,000, adding up to total metropolitan area growth of 346,000 people. The suburbs accounted for 158 percent of the metropolitan area growth. The core municipality decline was stunning in the face of the much ballyhooed urban renaissance in that great city. Yet this renaissance was limited enough as to not lead to an expanding population.

The decline in the core municipality population represents a major departure from the 2009 Bureau of the Census estimates, which would have implied a 2010 population at least 170,000 higher (assumes the growth rate of 2008 two 2009).

Instead all of the growth was in the outer suburbs, beyond the inner suburbs of Cook County.

Dallas-Fort Worth: The historical core municipality of Dallas had a modest population increase of 9000, or less than 1 percent between 2000 and 2010. In contrast, the suburbs experienced an increase of 1.2 million, or 30 percent. Thus, approximately 1 percent of the metropolitan area growth was in the core municipality, while 99 percent was in the suburbs, most of it in the outer suburbs. The inner suburbs added 14 percent to their 2000 population, while the outer suburbs added 36 percent.

The population figure for the core municipality of Dallas – consistently among the strong core areas – was surprisingly low, at 9 percent below (117,000) the expected level. The suburban population was 1 percent (71,000) below expectations.

Houston: The historical core municipality of Houston had comparatively strong population growth, adding 146,000 and 8 percent to its 2000 population. However this figure was 8 percent, or 174,000 below the expected figure. By contrast, the suburban growth was 39 percent, more than five times that of the central jurisdiction. The suburban population growth was 1,085,000, more than six times that of the core jurisdiction. The suburban population was 4 percent or 144,000 higher than expected.

The core jurisdiction of Houston accounted for 12 percent of the metropolitan area growth while the suburbs s accounted for 88 percent. This was evenly distributed between the inner suburbs of Harris County and the outer suburbs. The inner suburbs added 38 percent to their population while the outer suburbs added 41 percent.

Washington: Reversing a decade’s long trend, the historical core jurisdiction of Washington (DC) had a small population gain between 2000 and 2010. But the Washington, DC gain of 30,000 pales by comparison to the suburban gain, which was more than 20 times greater, at 700,000. The core jurisdiction accounted for 4 percent of the population gain, while the suburbs accounted for 96 percent.

More than 60 percent of the growth in the metropolitan area was outside the inner suburban jurisdictions that border Washington, DC (Arlington County and Alexandria in Virginia, together with Montgomery County and Prince George’s County in Maryland), while the inner suburbs accounted for 36 percent of the growth. The population increase in the inner suburbs was 9 percent, compared to 37 percent in the outer suburbs.

Jefferson County in West Virginia was not included in the analysis because data is not yet available.

Baltimore: The historical core municipality of Baltimore, the site of another ballyhooed urban comeback, lost 30,000 people, or 5 percent of its 2000 population. Baltimore’s 2010 population was 4 percent or 16,000 below the expected level. The suburbs experienced a 10 percent or 188,000 person increase. The region’s population increase was roughly equal in numbers between the inner suburbs and the outer suburbs, although the exurban percentage increase was nearly twice as large.

San Antonio: The historical core municipality of San Antonio experienced the largest population increase among the eight metropolitan areas, at 183,000, a roughly 16 percent population jump. The city of San Antonio accounted 43 percent of the growth while suburbs in Bexar County and further out accounted for a larger 57 percent. However, the suburban population increase was 248,000 or 44 percent. This is something of a turnaround in trends that favored the city of San Antonio in the past because of its vast sprawl and predominant share of the metropolitan population.

The city of San Antonio population was 5 percent or 65,000 people short of the expected 2010 level. The suburban population was 15 percent more or 104,000 more than the expected level.

Indianapolis: The historical core area of Indianapolis and Marion County (including enclaves within Indianapolis) grew 5 percent and accounted for 19 percent of the metropolitan area growth. In contrast, the surrounding suburbs grew 28 percent, representing r 81 percent of the metropolitan area growth. Overall, the core municipality added 44,000 people, while the suburbs added more than four times as many, at 188,000.

Austin: The historical core municipality of Austin experienced the greatest growth of any core jurisdiction in the eight metropolitan areas, at 20 percent. Even so, growth in the suburban areas was nearly 3 times as high at 56 percent. The city of Austin accounted for 29 percent of the metropolitan area population growth, while the suburbs accounted for 71 percent. Overall, the central municipality grew 134,000, while the suburbs grew 2.5 times as much, at 333,000.

Generally it is fair to say that, so far, suburban areas are growing far faster than urban cores. In addition, most of the fastest growing core municipalities are those areas that are themselves largely suburban, particularly in relatively young cities like San Antonio, Houston and Austin.

Among the eight metropolitan areas analyzed, the older core jurisdictions (with median house construction dates preceding 1960) tended to either lose population or grow modestly. This is illustrated by the city of Chicago, with a median house construction date of 1945, Baltimore with a median house construction date of 1946 and Washington with a median house construction date of 1949 (Table 2). Generally, the central jurisdictions with greater suburbanization (with median house construction dates of 1960 or later) grew more quickly. For example, highly suburban central jurisdictions like Austin with a median house construction date of 1983 and San Antonio, with a median house construction date of 1970, grew fastest. So much for the long forecast, and apparently still elusive, “return to the city”.

Wendell Cox is a Visiting Professor, Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers, Paris and the author of “War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life ”

Major Federal subsidizes of train transit have enticed state and city officials to allocate greater portions of their tax funds to this ineffective train mode. Because they now have significantly less funding, the Federal Transit Administration has recently suggested cities should strongly consider buses instead of trains as more appropriate in many cases. Major diversions to less efficient rail transit have degraded overall mobility and transit. Transit use is declining and highways are becoming more congested.

The Nation must effectively address two major challenges very soon.

1. The current gas tax approach, which served well for almost 50 years, is rapidly falling apart due to the conditions discussed above. Federal and state highway funding must be overhauled based on the realities of today. It must be a system which prevents diversions and accommodates inflation and technology advancements. One approach gaining favor is to base federal and state highway funding on “user fees” which are directly related to miles driven and other factors such as vehicle weight.

2. Funding at all levels must be more directly related and proportionate to user choices and priorities. Several cities, including Austin, are projecting 40-50, or more, percent of their transportation funds being spent on public transit which serves 2-5% of the trips in the area. This disproportionate funding degrades overall community mobility, including transit. The overwhelming majority of transit trips are on roads. Wasteful spending on ineffective rail precludes adequate road funding and degrades bus transit further with higher fares and reduced/inferior service for the vast majority of transit riders, mostly without alternatives.

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Government Diverts Highway Trust Funds From Highways

By DAVID HOGBERG
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 09/01/2011 05:15 PM ET

The George Washington Memorial Parkway is a “National Scenic Byway,” a special designation to a road for its archaeological, cultural, historic, natural, recreational and scenic qualities. It runs about 18 miles from Washington, D.C., to George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon. It’s especially lovely when the leaves change colors in the fall.

But the Parkway also has plenty of green. In 2007, it received over $630,000 in grants from the Federal Highway Trust Fund to add kiosks, interpretive signs and other enhancements to its Great Falls Park Visitor Center. From fiscal 2005-09, the HTF spent $175 million on the National Scenic Byway program.

The 18.4-cents-per-gallon gas tax is the largest source of HTF revenue. President Obama has urged Congress to renew the gas tax, saying thousands of construction jobs would be lost if Congress fails to act by Sept. 30.

But the reality is that a large share of gas tax revenue isn’t spent on building or repairing highways and bridges.

A Government Accountability Office report found that 32% of the HTF didn’t go toward highway or bridge construction and upkeep from fiscal 2004-08. That rose to 38% in 2009, according to an analysis by Ron Utt, senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“With each passing reauthorization of HTF, more and more groups organized and hired lobbyists to get a piece of the action,” Utt said. “And many of them were successful.”

Since 1983, the HTF has been split in two. The Highway Account funds road and bridge building and repair. The Mass Transit Account supports mass transit projects and the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund.

Mass Transit got $7.4 billion, or 19%, of the gas tax revenue in fiscal 2010. Yet that’s only part of the picture because much of the Highway Account funds go to nonhighway projects.

Highway Account programs from fiscal 2005-09 include:

The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program spent $8.6 billion. CMAQ gives grants for light rail, buses, bike paths, traffic-signal timing and other projects dedicated to reducing air pollution and road congestion.

The Safe Routes To Schools Program spent $612 million. The aim is to make bicycling and walking to school safe and routine.

$370 million to the Recreational Trails Program to build hiking, bicycle and snowmobile paths.

$13.5 million from 2005-09 on America’s Byway Resource Center, which engages in training, information and expertise to improve the byway system.

$37.5 million on a grant program to prohibit racial profiling.

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The Myth That Will Not Die

By Randal O’Toole in ‘The Antiplanner’
August 25, 2011

Transportation planning today suffers from several common fallacies, including the myth of the great streetcar conspiracy and the notion that we should spend billions of dollars on obsolete forms of transportation to give people “choices.” But the most troublesome myth is the notion of induced-demand, that is, that new roads will automatically become fully congested so there is no point in building any. That myth most recently came up in a recent op ed piece in the LA Times.

This idea makes no sense at all, yet it is widely believed by public officials and transportation planners. Saying that relieving congestion “induces” driving is like saying that building new maternity wards induces people to have more babies. If it were true that roads automatically become congested, then Interstate 80 would be as congested in Rawlins, Wyoming as it is in Chicago, and Interstate 90 would be as congested in Mitchell, South Dakota as it is in Seattle.

What is true is that the quintupling of traffic congestion American commuters have suffered since 1982 has suppressed some driving. This increase in traffic congestion is partly due to the complicity of transportation agencies and planners who have spent highway dollars on endless studies, traffic calming, and anything else they can other than things that will actually relieve congestion.

“Congestion is our friend,” says Florida planner Dom Nozzi, echoing a popular belief that getting a few people out of their cars is worth any cost. My review of long-range transportation plans for the nation’s 72 largest metropolitan areas revealed that more than half of them included policies aimed at increasing congestion rather than reducing it, and a third of them focused almost exclusively on such policies.

Even without counting the roughly $200 billion annual cost in wasted time and fuel that congestion imposes on highway users, efforts to suppress travel by increasing congestion are economically harmful. If a new road or some other form of congestion relief leads to more travel, that travel will in turn generate economic benefits, whether that travel is a commuter going to a higher-paying job, a shopper going to a lower-cost retailer, or a recreationist going on a more interesting vacation.

Anything that makes transportation less expensive, in either time or money, generates more economic activity. That doesn’t necessarily mean more congestion, but it does mean more worker productivity, more sales, and ultimately more tax revenue. Anyone who would deliberately limit a city’s economic productivity by promoting congestion is no friend to that city.

Let’s say that relieving congestion does generate more driving: what is wrong with that? Only a government planner would say there is something wrong with a product where, the more you make, the more you sell.

Don’t build new roads, say opponents of congestion relief, because people will use them. Instead, build new light-rail or other transit lines, even though the average light-rail train in this country operates just one-seventh full and the average transit bus is less than one-sixth full.

Urban planners would probably tell Ford to stop making Mustangs and make Edsels instead; or tell Apple to stop making iPhones and make crank-handle telephones instead.

By the way, the next time you feel guilty driving alone in your six-passenger SUV, rest assured that at least your vehicle has a higher occupancy rate than the average transit bus or railcar. Data published by the federal government show that transit buses use more energy, per passenger mile, than the average SUV and light rail uses more energy per passenger mile than the average car.

Robert Cervero is an urban planning professor at the University of California (Berkeley) who strongly supports transit, pedestrian-friendly design, and other programs designed to reduce auto driving. Yet even he thinks that the induced-demand myth is “wrong-headed.”

“Many induced-demand studies have suffered from methodological problems,” says Cervero. They fail to note that new urban highways are usually completed after the roads are already needed, so of course they appear nearly full when they open. The resulting congestion is “more a product of supply chasing demand than demand chasing supply,” says Cervero.

The real cause of traffic congestion, Cervero points out, is that roads are poorly priced. We pay for them mostly out of gasoline taxes, which means we pay the same tax whether we drive on the roads at rush hour or 2 am.

Private businesses that deal with regular fluctuations in demand, such as airlines and hotels, keep their seats or rooms full by charging more during busy periods and less during low periods. Highways can do that today using electronic tolling, and those that have done so, both here and elsewhere in the world, have seen enormous benefits.

More than half the vehicles on the road during rush hour are not commuters. By shifting some of those vehicles to less-congested times of the day, variable tolling can dramatically reduce congestion.
Congestion pricing of roads can actually increase highway capacities. At normal freeway speeds, a single freeway lane can move more than 2,000 cars an hour, but in stop-and-go traffic, capacity can fall to just 1,000 cars an hour. By ensuring that actual use never exceeds 2,000 cars an hour, variable tolling effectively doubles road capacities during rush hour.

Still, commuters may resist tolls if they think it is just one more tax for the government to fritter away. Currently, more than 30 percent of federal gas taxes and an average of 23 percent of state gas taxes are diverted to non-highway programs, including mass transit. Instead of providing efficient transportation, this windfall of money has led transit agencies to invest in high-cost transit systems such as light rail and streetcars.

In 1984, the state of Virginia built the 14-mile Dulles Toll Road connecting Washington DC with Dulles Airport, and commuters happily used this road for 25 years. Then the state gave the road to the Washington Airport Authority, which is doubling tolls to help pay for a rail line to the airport that even the DC transit agency doesn’t want. Washington MetroRail, which can’t afford to maintain the trains it has, wanted bus-rapid transit to Dulles Airport instead.

Auto commuters should support congestion tolling as a way of saving time, fuel, and money. But they should vigilantly ensure that the fees they pay go to the roads they use and not to pork-barrel projects that aren’t really needed.

Another cost-effective way to relieve congestion is traffic-signal coordination. Such coordination is inexpensive and can save travelers $50 to $100 worth of fuel and time for every dollar of investment. Yet the Federal Highway Administration says that only one out of four traffic signals are properly coordinated with other signals, partly because too many cities are focusing on building rail transit and making other expensive transit improvements rather than doing things that will really help people.

Automobiles are one of the most economical and convenient forms of transportation ever devised. They are also increasingly safe, clean, and fuel efficient. While we should end subsidies to driving and other forms of transportation, we should also encourage highway officials to cost-effectively reduce congestion in every way they can.

So, with the Dulles rail in deep financial trouble, why does Austin leadership believe a train transit system from downtown Austin to Austin-Bergstrom International would be a cost-effective or needed priority. It is only a convenient 5 mile transit, rental car or cab ride. Ridership would be very low and costs very high as Cap Metro found in their studies in the late 1990’s. I guess the Rail folks in the DC area ignored the warnings of unacceptable high costs. Now what?

The Dulles rail transit line is only one of many throughout the nation which are not financially sustainable. There are numerous articles on this site with their stories.
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Dulles Rail Phase II headed for death spiral

By: Barbara Hollingsworth | Local Opinion Editor | The Washington Examiner, 08/23/11

Phase II of the Dulles Rail project, which will extend Metrorail to Washington Dulles International Airport, is on the financial ropes, so members of the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board are resorting to panicky “warnings” in a calculated effort to stick local, state and federal taxpayers with the bill for their blundering.

Phase II costs have ratcheted up to $3.5 billion — the original price of the entire Silver Line — and Dulles Toll Road users finally realize they will soon have to pay around $20 per day — or $100 per week — to subsidize this economically indefensible transit project.

The public backlash prompted MWAA to demand $500 million more from Virginia and $1.2 billion more from the federal government — on top of the low-interest federal Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act loans sought by Fairfax and Loudoun counties to build parking garages and the Route 28 station that were not part of the original agreement.

MWAA’s latest scare tactics are inadvertently hilarious. “We are now in the position of being the defender of the toll payer,” MWAA Chairman Charles Snelling proclaimed last week. That’s like Fantastic Mr. Fox declaring himself “defender of the chickens.” MWAA deliberately chose to put toll road users on the hook for two-thirds of all Phase II financing.

“We have given up more than anyone on this,” harrumphed MWAA Board Member Robert Brown, who voted to build a $330 million underground station that was later abandoned because it was too expensive. However, MWAA’s project labor agreement, which will add as much as 20 percent to overall construction costs, is still in force.

“U.S. [Transportation] Secretary [Ray LaHood] talked about this being one of the most important projects in the United States. We’re saying to him, we agree, so show us the money,” demanded Dulles Corridor Committee Chairwoman Mame Reiley.

Using the “people skills” she honed during years of strong-arming Democratic donors for Mark Warner, Reiley threatened “there’s no deal” if Fairfax and Loudoun balked at allowing MWAA to shift the ballooning costs of Phase II onto the backs of their constituents.

County, state and federal officials should call Reiley’s bluff because there’s a very good chance MWAA’s toll-heavy financing will collapse of its own weight.

“I’ve provided a financial analysis to MWAA Board members and their financial adviser, and nobody has been able to refute it,” Great Falls resident Thomas Cranmer, who has an MBA from Columbia University, told The Washington Examiner. “A number of toll roads across the country have gone bankrupt.”

Indeed, Virginia’s privately owned Dulles Greenway and public/private Pocahontas Parkway in Richmond both failed to meet revenue projections. So did San Diego’s South Bay Expressway, which went bankrupt in April despite the same kind of low-interest federal financing MWAA is now seeking. A price elasticity study there found that when parallel routes are available, toll roads lose 75 percent of their traffic volume when tolls double.

The same dynamic was experienced by the bankrupt North Texas Toll Road Authority, which desperately raised tolls 32 percent as traffic declined, exacerbating the problem.

Even if Dulles Toll Road traffic decreases only 50 percent when tolls increase by a factor of 10, MWAA will default on its bonds. That’s exactly what happened to the $300 million Southern Connector in Greenville, S.C.

Meanwhile, the foreign operators of the Indiana Toll Road — who paid $3.8 billion to the state for the right to collect tolls for the next 75 years — expect their reserve fund to run dry early next year, but can’t raise tolls because each penny increase further reduces traffic volume — and revenue.

The real threat is that Phase II is headed for a similar death spiral. Time to pull the plug before it’s too late.
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Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.