Comments on the Research & Development Plan for the FAST Act

President Obama signs the FAST Act -photo courtesy of Alex Wong/Getty Images

Those of you who follow transportation issues in the US probably know that at the end of 2015 President Obama signed the so-called FAST Act (Fixing America's Surface Transportation). This measure authorizes $305 billion over a period stretching from 2016 to 2020 for a variety of modes and purposes. What you may not know is that the Department of Transportation is seeking public comment on the strategic plan for research and development called for by the act. 

The request consists of seven questions, which I list below along with my responses. As you will see, I focus on the enduring problem of a road-centric mentality that pervades the transportation planning establishment, primarily at the federal and state levels. At the local levels, where NACTO's (National Association of City Transportation Officials) mindset prevails, it's a very different matter due to demographic changes I discuss below.

If you find my responses useful, please use and share them as you like.

1. What research strategies and priorities should the U.S. DOT adopt to achieve the primary purposes cited in the FAST Act?

Too many projects are built using traffic and usage models that are based more on faith than on systematic, scientific research. In order to prevent the waste of limited taxpayer resources, a systematic inventory of the long-term (i.e.- at least 5 years) effectiveness of previous, similar projects must be required of agencies seeking FAST Act funds. This inventory study must be verifiable by both US DOT and independent observers. Projects that lack such support for their claimed benefits must be discounted.

2. How can the issues raised in the U.S. DOT document “Beyond Traffic 2045: Trends and Choices” be strategically addressed by RD&T activities over the next five years?

As the projection for population growth focuses on mega-regions with high populations, prioritization for any efforts must sift out areas outside of these regions. However, great care should be exercised to ensure that old assumptions about growth don't contaminate the process. In the case of growth of suburbs and exurbs in mega-regions, the standard warning on mutual funds comes to mind: "Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results." That is especially true now that the so-called Millennial generation is forsaking car ownership and the suburbs for life in downtowns. 

3. What emerging challenges or opportunities in transportation warrant additional Federal RD&T activities or investments?

Priority should be given to how growing central cities can be re-adapted for local commutes, as opposed to commutes from far-flung suburbs. These cities have street grids developed before the advent of the car, but they were adapted for motorist use throughout the 20th century. The challenge now is to figure out how to put them back in something like that earlier state, albeit with greater use of technology and consideration for environmental impact. This means pedestrian and bicyclist traffic needs will have to be addressed ahead of, or instead of, declining motorist uses.
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4. What current and planned RD&T activities sponsored by the federal government should be continued or revised in the future?

A quick review of the statistical analysis shows a bias towards an assumption that all road users are in a car. Examples can be found here:

http://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/north_american_transportation_in_figures/html/table_2_3.html

http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/hf/pl11028/

In order to meet the challenge posed by a demographic shift towards urban population centers where heavy car use is impractical, this institutional bias must be eliminated. Otherwise, considerable taxpayer resources will be wasted on efforts that create little meaningful benefit.

5. What strategies could improve the cost-effectiveness of U.S. DOT research investments?

Reach out to the political and planning leadership within large urban centers. Coordinate with the US Conference of Mayors and NACTO. Their concerns will help focus US DOT efforts where they will be most useful, because they are at the center of the demographic shift I previously described.

6. How can U.S. DOT best coordinate its RD&T activities with Federal, State, local, private sector, non-profit institutions, and international partners?

While reaching out to individual agencies and groups would seem ideal, the odds are that someone will be overlooked. Boost US DOT's social media presence (Facebook, Twitter, or even Instagram) to get the word out about forthcoming efforts. The first step in coordination is to alert those you want to coordinate with, and social media is now a ubiquitous tool.

7. What knowledge gaps merit additional exploration by the USDOT?

Most transportation agencies have a generational divide between those in senior ranks who grew up in the suburban heyday of the car and those in junior ranks who know a different lifestyle. It is difficult, though not impossible, for someone who never has thought of pedestrians and bicyclists as a high priority to focus on their infrastructural issues. Such individuals must be retrained and tested so that they implement the new multimodal, Complete Streets paradigm.

Thanks

A Note to VDOT that One Alleged Transportation Advocacy Group Won't Like

Thanks to David Alpert at Greater Greater Washington, I was recently made aware of an effort by the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance (NVTA), an organization hopelessly mired in old-school transportation thinking,  to mount an email (or letter-writing, as they're VERY old-school) campaign to push the state of Virginia to cut spending on transit and nonmotorized modes, such as bikes and pedestrians. NVTA wants this money re-tasked to highway widenings.

So, I set out to write Virginia's Department of Transportation a note of my own. But as I did so, I realized that what I was writing was applicable throughout much of the U.S. Too much, really.

Most regions have organizations stuffed with wealthy, generally older, business owners and CEOs frustrated by congestion created largely via previous plans that they, themselves, advocated. Rather than read up on the field of transportation, or even notice what's going on around them, they advocate the same failed solutions they tried before.

So please read the note below and, if you like, cut and paste to suit your own needs. The only way "Dumbgrowth" organizations like NVTA will be thwarted is if those who favor "Smartgrowth" speak up. If you'd like to submit a comment to VDOT, click here.

Here's my note:

"I understand that the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance is asking its allies to push VDOT for more emphasis on reducing road congestion via widenings. As a realtor and a northern Virginia resident, I strongly DISAGREE with this approach.

One need only look at the congestion on newly-widened roads in northern Virginia to realize that our state's reliance on road widenings has utterly failed. I see the result firsthand in the staggering residential price premiums near transit stations. Nobody pays a premium to live within easy reach of a highway these days.

While that's good for me, as a realtor focused on areas close to DC- and therefore close to transit- it's bad for Virginia. Those areas without good, rail-based transit and high levels of walking and biking infrastructure are doomed. Their prices have already stagnated as Millennials stay away; soon they will drop as their neighborhoods age.

The ONLY way to stop this is via a full embrace of transit and Complete Streets by VDOT. Anything else will merely add to Virginia's legacy of transportation failure."

Wider roads worked great in Atlanta! Here's downtown at 4 PM on a Monday.
They might as well get out and start walking.

Will Bikes Eliminate the Need for Big-Ticket Highway & Transit Projects?

I like innovation. Creative thinking to me reflects intellectual vigor. When we become afraid of change, we age all too quickly.

Miami, a beacon of youthful vigor in a state with the opposite reputation, is the site of an idea that takes poorly-used space and makes room for one of the most sustainable transportation modes available: bikes. The proposal, which unsurprisingly comes from consultants from the Dutch Cycling Embassy, is to build a linear park and bike path under Metrorail elevated transit in the southwest corner of town. This Metrorail line already has a pockmarked, bumpy, sorry excuse for a path underneath it called the M-Path. However, like so many similar asphalt afterthoughts built by DOTs in the latter part of the 20^th century, it’s hardly used. The new path, entitled the Underline, would seek to recreate the same allure and excitement that the High Line created in Manhattan in these early years of the 21^stcentury, except the addition of a proper bike route makes it far more useful.

A usable, attractive corridor is bound to attract economic growth. Witness the sustained boom taking place in the intown areas of Atlanta, particularly near the still-unfinished Beltline. The Beltline may seem to be a bit grandiose, with its promise of light rail transit, redeveloped neighborhoods, and multiuser paths. Expensive light rail projects are getting harder to fund as infrastructure spending throughout the US withers under conservative pressure.  For example, Arlington, Virginia, surrendered to such antipathy when it chose to kill a streetcar project in a low-income corridor after strenuous objections from right-leaning county board members, Libby Garvey and John Vihstadt.  Luckily for Atlanta, the economic benefits of the Beltline are already coming in with only multiuser paths in place in some areas.

That raises a rather unsettling question for transportation and city planners: is the key to neighborhood vigor and economic growth a combination of low-impact, low-cost transportation infrastructure and parks? If the High Line, Underline, and Beltline are all successful in injecting vitality into close-in neighborhoods, with the latter two offering new connectivity, should we re-task funding away from elaborate road and transit projects designed to expensively move people between outlying areas and the central cores of metropolitan areas? If a rail transit system is too much for Arlington to stomach, for instance, should the county look to a long corridor of bike paths and parks paralleling the route of the defunct streetcar as a replacement?

Some signs of a new trend in this direction are starting to appear. In the early 1990s, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) finally realized its collective dream of building an expresswaythrough the heart of north Atlanta after years of opposition during Atlanta’s Freeway Revolt. Georgia 400 was initially built as a toll road with an expensive MARTA heavy rail line in the center. The road recently lost its tolls (cue massive backups).

In a glaring oversight, GDOT chose not to include a bike path alongside the new road, as Virginia’s DOT had done years earlier along I-66 inside the Beltway (the Custis Trail).  GDOT is now going a little way towards rectifying that error by donating right-of-way along part of GA 400 to Atlanta’s PATH organization. PATH is part of a consortium constructing a multiuser path through north Atlanta’s Buckhead community that will connect to the Atlanta Beltline. The beginnings of a citywide bike network are starting to form.

That this is occurring in Georgia is positively earthshaking. This is the same state that gives no money at all to Atlanta’s MARTA transit system. That’s not to say that the Republican governor, Nathan Deal, has turned his back on that most traditional of congestion relief measures, the widening of urban expressways. Years of repeated failures of such projects to alleviate congestion have yet to have an impact on the governor’s transportation policy. However, big changes often have small beginnings.

In this era of diminishing budgets, more regions should look to these innovative ideas from Miami and Atlanta. It’s better to build something cheap that will keep its full functionality many years after completion than waste time on projects that will never get off the ground (Arlington Streetcar) or will ultimately fail to relieve congestion (any given urban highway expansion). If the Underline and Beltline can be completed and grow in popularity, as well as economic impact, the consultants at the Dutch Cycling Embassy will get a lot busier.

Five Steps to Successful Transportation Planning (and how to tell a NIMBY from a Naysayer)

Imagine yourself as a political official with authority over a city's transportation system. Your task is to build an efficient, functional transportation system in your city.
Let's assume that, for external reasons, exponential growth is headed your way. Your current infrastructure can't possibly handle it all. What do you do?

Step 1: Don't freak out.
All too often, planners faced with exponential growth panic. They propose outlandish plans to double, or even triple, the capacity of primary roadways. Georgia's Department of Transportation (DOT) did this with Atlanta's expressway network in the 1980s. For their trouble, they got some of the worst congestion resulting from induced demandthe US has seen.

Step 2: Learn from the failures of your predecessors.
California built a staggering number of freeway lane-miles in the 1960s and 1970s, many of them in urban areas. It was very impressive-from the air. From the ground, it was bad enough to give rise to a new phrase, "road rage." Unfortunately, in the 2000s under Governor Schwarzenegger, California planners went old school and started building urban freeways again.  Neither the former governor nor his advisors connected the dots and realized that their approach had no more chance of success than did their predecessors'. Indeed, despite of the continuing gridlock, the former governor claimed in a recent interview on The Nerdist Podcast that his freeway construction was one of his great legacies. That's an odd way to feel about a collection of what are effectively parking lots during rush hour.

Step 3: Don't just react to circumstances.
If you simply take a reactive approach, you'll end up with a mess. Consider this hypothetical scenario: Main Street is jammed with cars, buses, and pedestrians. So, you decide to add vehicle capacity to the road by widening it. This penalizes pedestrians, of course, but maybe you're hoping to fix that later.
The added capacity induces demand, as it always does in urban areas, so you decide to build a bypass. That induces more demand, so you widen the bypass which induces still more demand. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The reactive approach, wildly popular in the mid-20th century US and currently in vogue in China, is great for keeping construction companies happy, but lousy for actually accomplishing anything. Try to anticipate conditions so that your solutions are sustainable.

Step 4: Get some vision.
This is easier said than done, as engineers and technocrats are seldom trained, or even asked, for creative vision. Vision requires the capability to step back and imagine the best result. Engineers and technocrats are usually expected to just make sure the details are right.
No, you need not be an artist (though that could lead to some amusing results), but you must have knowledge in a broad variety of fields so you can synthesize them into a holistic view of the urban environment. For instance, psychology gives insight into how pedestrian pathways tend to gravitate towards a straight line, even if it leads to walking a muddy track or jaywalking across an expressway. Sociology offers perspective on why Americans tend to shun buses, but ride streetcars, even when there's no difference in travel times. Political Science might give you a clue as to why mass transit is unpopular in the GOP-dominated American South, but highly prized in Democratic strongholds on the East and West Coasts. Bottom line: read outside your professional box.

Step 5: Don't confuse naysayers with NIMBYs.
Naysayers are those who reflexively say no to any change, even if it doesn't affect them directly. NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) are, as the name suggests, directly affected opponents.
However, someone who is adjacent to project doesn't necessarily start out as an opponent. For example, suppose a redevelopment project that will boost homevalues by eliminating ugly, decrepit warehouses ends up with strong NIMBY opposition because someone in a neighborhood association excitedly spread wordthat traffic would be awful. Never mind that the site is well-connected to transit and in a highly walkable area. Professional staff opinions will count for nothing, because those opinions are grounded in evidence. The naysayers who are whipping up the NIMBYs into a frenzy are manipulating emotions and have no need or use for evidence.

If you consider yourself a leader, you will have to be able to disregard dishonest naysayer objections and push forward. Luckily, in politics memories are surprisingly short. Those NIMBYs who want to burn you in effigy today may reluctantly admit you were right tomorrow, especially if the results of your projects are discernibly different from the apocalypse forecast by naysayers. But, this favorable outcome won't happen if you skip any of these steps.