NEAL PEIRCE COLUMN
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Washington Post
AS WE ADD MILLIONS: HOW DO WE STAY MOBILE?
By Neal Peirce
By 2043, we're being told, there won't just be 300 million of us -- there'll be 400 million. With the roadways around our metropolitan regions increasingly clogged, how will we ever stay mobile? Depending on the tea leaves you choose, some vividly contrasting futures emerge.
Vision No. 1 is "stay the course." Keep driving as we have.
In 1980, 64.4 percent of us drove to work alone; in 2000 it was 75.7 percent, according to the Transportation Research Board's recent "Commuting in America" survey by Alan Pisarski.
The statistics are disturbing. Carpooling dipped from 19.7 percent to 12.2 percent in the same years. Transit use went from 6.2 percent to 4.6 percent. And walking dropped from 5.6 percent to 2.9 percent, as workplace locations exploded out (along with our waistlines). A car-wheeled world is what Americans choose. Argument over, say some.
But wait a minute. Already there's the pain of stretched out commutes; the 16 hours of delay the average motorist experienced in 1982 was 47 hours in 2003. Traffic congestion is costing us, cumulatively, 3.7 billion hours of travel delay, wasting over 2 billion gallons of fuel each year. Plus, if Americans like highways so much, why do we so often and so fervidly resist increases in gas taxes to pay for them?
Which brings us to Vision No. 2. We privatize. We invite the private sector to take over roads -- and then charge us. This is the hottest new trend, discussed intensely by governors, state transportation officials and state legislators. Multi-billion dollar roadway investments by private financing firms are increasing fast. We've reached what transportation expert C. Kenneth Orski calls a critical "tipping point."
Some of the moves are primarily revenue moves. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley negotiated a 99-year lease of the eight-mile Chicago Skyway toll road to foreign investors for $1.8 billion. In New Jersey, there's active consideration of leasing the 148-mile New Jersey Turnpike and 173-mile Garden State Parkway to garner revenue to meet a mushrooming state debt of some $33 billion.
In Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels weathered a storm of political skepticism to lease the 157-mile Indiana Toll Road, again to foreign investors, for $3.85 billion. Indiana is now the nation's only state with a fully-funded 10-year highway building capital program. But the even greater import of the new trend, Orski suggests, will be private funds for new "greenfield projects" including express toll lanes, new stand-alone toll roads (the ambitious Trans-Texas-Corridor is the top example), and multi-state truckways.
The timing for tollways should be perfect -- with today's technology, automated toll collection systems (like E-ZPass on the East Coast) take the daily aggravation out of the process. But still, says Thomas Downs, president of the Eno Transportation Foundation, politicos will have to face deep public doubts about selling off public assets, or explaining why they condemn peoples' homes and farms to build for-profit roads. The negative politics have already registered in this fall's elections. Indiana voters' displeasure with Daniels' tollway lease deal apparently caused the defeats of several of his fellow Republicans for Congress and the legislature. Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell, who made leasing of the Ohio Turnpike a mainstay of his campaign, was decisively defeated in the governor's race.
And then there's backlash when financing projections go awry. A private firm, for example, recently reversed field by telling Virginia officials it would need $100 million in public funds to build and run high-occupancy toll lanes on a 14-mile stretch of the Capital Beltway outside Washington. "These projects come out of the blue, and then they jump to the front of the line," complained Stewart Schwarz, director of the Washington area's Coalition for Smarter Growth.
The vision of privatized roads has more downsides. It assumes there's no problem with continuing to pave over so much of our continent. Given today's heavy auto ownership, 37 square miles need to be paved over, and 1,400 miles of interstate-grade highway built, for every 1 million new people. All too often, the new roads carve up fertile farmlands surrounding metro areas. This country already has some 4 million miles of roads, enough, the Earth Policy Institute calculates, to circle the Earth at the equator 157 times.
And what about oil? In a nation richly endowed with reserves, we've largely depleted that treasure. In 1980, 37 percent of our oil was imported from OPEC and other nations; today figure's 60 percent and rising. Our national security is deeply imperiled.
So is there a Vision No. 3? Yes, there's a set of tea leaves that says so -- the vote of many Americans, earlier this month, to support new and expanded public transit. Transit proposals with cumulative value of $40 billion were approved from Rhode Island to Minnesota, Missouri to Utah to California.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
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