—Malcolm Kenton

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

NARP’s Capon appears on CNBC to promote investment in passenger rail

Friday, February 18, 2011

NARP’s President Ross Capon debates the Cato’s Daniel Mitchell about investment in high-speed rail.

Posted by NARP

Study: “Roads Cause Traffic”

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

In a culture that is suffering the consequences of skewed transportation priorities—the US government spent 40 times as much on roads as it did on rail over the last four decades—it is little surprise that the most common way state transportation officials handle traffic congestion is to build new roads or lanes. But as anyone who commutes by car in most US metro areas knows, if you build new lanes, people will use them. Yet another academic study has quantified this phenomenon.

Traffic in fast-growing Phoenix, AZ, where newly-built expressways are already clogged at rush hours. Photo by Clintus McGintus on Flickr.

Two University of Toronto economists analyzed reams of traffic, infrastructure and travel behavior data from many US metropolitan regions and found that the total distance people in a given metro travel by car increases in proportion to the Interstate highway mileage in the region. In other words, as the authors conclude, “roads cause traffic.”  This is because, largely in the absence of viable alternative methods of getting around, people tend to gravitate towards living and working in areas with more highways.

This phenomenon was first explained by Lewis Mumford in the mid-1950s, and again by Anthony Downs in 1962. Downs showed that peak-hour congestion on urban expressways always rises to meet the road’s maximum capacity. Mumford summarized the reasons behind this thusly:

All the current plans for dealing with congestion are based on the assumption that it is a matter of highway engineering, not of comprehensive city and regional planning, and that the private motorcar has priority over every other means of transportation, no matter how expensive it is in comparison with public transportation, or how devastating its by-products.

The challenge, as Mumford discovered, is that the public is often more averse to the consequences of the policies necessary to truly curb congestion than it is to having to sit in traffic. When the total effects of such policies are described, many may see it as social engineering. But when improvements are proposed piece by piece, they are a lot more palatable, even desirable. One of these is additional train service.

» read more...

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Senate Passes 2012 Transportation Funding Levels; House Up Next

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Earlier today, the Senate passed a $108 billion transportation budget by a 69-30 vote that would protect most surface transportation programs from serious cuts.  Passage of this “minibus”—a package of three appropriations bills—is the next step in setting funding for the rest of Fiscal 2012.

Rail is replaced on Norfolk Southern’s portion of Amtrak’s Chicago-Detroit line. Photo from US DOT.

It appears that the Senate’s Amtrak numbers are the best that we can get. It is important that they hold. However, there is a serious danger that House-Senate negotiations could result in a compromise that puts Amtrak below the Senate number even though that number is already very tight and likely to force layoffs and some deterioration of service, though not outright service cuts.

For Transportation Nation, Todd Zwillich writes, in “Senate Approves Austere Transpo Spending Bill; High Speed Rail Funding Plummets”, that a no-increase bill is actually a step back:

It funds most transportation, transit and highway programs at or near levels for the Fiscal year that ended Sept 30. But when factored for inflation, it amounts to cuts to many programs. That’s largely because of new spending caps in place after Republicans and Democrats agreed to cuts during the federal debt limit fight last summer.

…

One big loser: High speed rail. The Senate bill has a mere $100 million for President Obama’s high speed rail initiative. While $10 billion has already gone to the program through stimulus and other spending, Congress is getting set to essentially zero it out for 2012. House Republicans have shown no appetite to fund high-speed rail further.

Zwillich certainly has a point.  As much as NARP appreciates the Senators who fought—and fought hard—to get the $100 million in high-speed rail funding into the bill, it’s a pittance compared to the government investment provided to other modes.  What’s more, this vote came on the same day as the release of the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s new business plan that shows constructing the line would create one million new construction jobs.

And it’s not just high-speed rail.  There are some victories in the rail portion of the bill, including $15 million in preliminary funding for the Gateway Project, which would build new rail tunnels under the Hudson River.  But the $1.48 billion provided for Amtrak ($544 million for operations, $937 million for capital and debt service) barely allows Amtrak to maintain existing levels of service, much less prepare for surging ridership.  Coming in a year when Amtrak broke records with 30.2 million passengers, it raises serious questions about whether the 112th Congress has a grasp on what needs to be done to prepare a foundation for American economic competitiveness in the 21st century.

—Ross Capon and Sean Jeans-Gail

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

Transportation investment is inherently valuable; job creation is an important side benefit

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Hat tip: Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is understandably fond of emphasizing the number of jobs that projects funded by his Department, particularly those under the High-Speed and Intercity Passenger Rail program, have created or will create. He reiterated this case in testimony before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee yesterday.

London’s Paddington station. Photo by dipfan on Flickr

Given the persistently high national unemployment rate, touting job creation is an important way to win the support of Americans and the officials they elect. And it’s certainly true that the construction and replacement of railroad infrastructure and the operation of passenger train systems generates good-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced.

But perhaps job creation should not be thought of as the number one reason to invest in transportation and infrastructure upgrades. Instead, the value to the economy and society inherent in the efficient, reliable movement of people and goods should be enough to justify a consistent, high level of investment in transportation. This is the conclusion reached by five former Secretaries of Transportation of both parties who participated in a panel last week at the University of Virginia.

President Ronald Reagan’s deputy transportation secretary James Burnley put it this way:

We need to convince the American people that we need to invest in transportation infrastructure because we need to invest in transportation infrastructure. If we sell that idea – not as a jobs program, but because it affects the ability of our economy to grow over time, our international competitiveness and all the other things that we believe it affects, then we’ve got a fighting shot at convincing the American people that the resources that we believe ought to be devoted to transportation should be devoted to it.

» read more...

Posted by Malcolm Kenton

©2010 National Association of Railroad Passengers | » NARP website