New Urban Planning

The question of how to pay for highways has been floating below the surface of the debate on transportation and infrastructure, or the lack of it, over the last couple of years. The problem is simple and twofold. The principal mechanism to pay for highways today is the gas tax, both federal and state. Problem a: the federal gas tax has been the same since 1993, 18.6 cents. Unsurprisingly, that has meant that there is less and less money every year since inflation has been roaring in construction since then. So the net effect is that 18.6 cents go substantially less far today than 1993. It took a while for this to become a problem because there is a budgetary mechanism called the Highway Trust Fund where that 18.6 cents has been deposited for all of these years. As long as the trust fund took in more than it paid out, no problem. But Congress since 1993 has steadily increased transportation spending, without raising taxes to pay, thereby slowing draining the trust fund. Problem b: exacerbating the problem is that people are driving less and buying more fuel efficient cars. Therefore less money is coming into the highway trust fund than ever.

So what to do?

Well the easy answer is to raise the gas tax. Overall, this is the best idea both because it raises the revenue, and taxes a fuel that causes global warming. But there are even more reasons to want to raise the gas tax. Because it taxes behavior that causes sprawl and bad planning. So its an all around win. Except for that group of the population that believes that they should be able to continue to get better infrastructure and more government services without paying higher taxes. They are called Republicans. And they have so scared the democrats regarding taxes that the democrats are now completely scared of offering any new taxes, even when, like the gas tax, it is so obvious that it needs to be raised.

During the eight years of the Bush administration spending was increased while taxes were kept flat, a familiar strategy. So, of course, now the highway trust fund is out of money. Its a damn shame that it finally ran out when it did and not three years earlier when Bush would have been forced to act. Instead, now it has to be done sometime in the next year. So its the democrats problem. And the democrats do not want to raise taxes. Stalemate. What next?

Congress could see the writing on the wall about the lack of revenue for highway programs years ago, and so multiple blue ribbons panels were convened to look into how to raise more revenue. They all came up with the same set of answers. 1. Raise the gas tax in the short term. 2. Move to a distance traveled based revenue system. 3. public private partnerships (to be dealt with in a future post).

What is that you ask? Well it is a way to charge people for the miles they actually travel, and eventually charge based on time of day, type of vehicle and type of road. The ultimate solution to the gas tax question. To do this you need basically an ezpass type device in every car. As you can imagine, this brings up all sorts of privacy and technology issues. But it is clearly the right way to go, and ultimately the only fair way.

Up until recently there were limited systems around the world, but now the Dutch are moving in that direction in a big way.
They are now installing a system across the whole country to do just that. Ahhhh….. The Netherlands, home of so many good things. Check out the article below, where the whole system is described in detail. Basically, public transit and taxis are exempt, and then everyone else pays based on kilometers traveled, with prices varying based on the type of vehicle. And once the system is in place, it will be easy to switch to charging based on the time of day that you drive, type of road, etc. The possibilities are endless. And that is great news, because the only way to drive good planning (no pun intended) is to hit people in their pocketbook.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ggzUbQMWph8GplMdWzjDEnKD7ZJQD9BVD87O1

And of course its on PBS. Where else would it be? It actually part of a larger series about the environment and planning called e2 (e squared). It started out as different kinds of episodes, but now they are doing whole runs on one topic. And they have six episodes about transportation airing now on PBS. They are:

london: the price of traffic – No surprise here, how London got congestion pricing. -http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/307_london_the_price_of_traffic_trailer.html

paris: velo libre – My favorite so far, all about the Paris bikeshare system: how it works, who designed and how it is maintained. Amongst the great nuggets of info in this one is that the maintenance facility is a floating barge on the Seine that travels up and down the river all day picking up broken bikes and dropping off repaired ones and doing the repairs between stops. Brilliant! – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/308_paris_velo_liberte_trailer.html

food miles – I topic I am personally less excited about, but interesting none the less. How everyone’s food comes from far away, and how that is bad across the board.- http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/309_food_miles_trailer.html

seoul: the stream of consciousness – An interesting story about Seoul, SK demolishing an urban highway in a city obsessed with dense modernity. – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/310_seoul_the_stream_of_consciousness_trailer.html

portland: a sense of place – Pure transit and TOD porn here. Love it. – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/311_portland_a_sense_of_place_trailer.html

aviation: the limited sky – frankly, the most depressing of them all. all about how modern aviation as we know it is unsustainable. that does not make me happy. i like traveling. – http://www.pbs.org/e2/episodes/312_aviation_the_limited_sky_trailer.html

Unfortunately I cant post the whole shows, just the trailers. But break out that DVR remote and record these for free on PBS! Or you can buy them at the apple store or on DVD from PBS. Seriously, they are worth it.

Does everyone need a car? And if they dont, or they need fewer, how is all of this going to affect the auto market? The New York Times examines how automakers are reacting to the sales environment they face today.

There will always be people who need cars, and for huge swaths of America transit will be few and far between for a long time into the future. But there are now lots of people who dont own any car at all, and as boomers move from the suburbs into the cities, households are downsizing from 3 cars to one or none. This is great news for America, and the more that the government can encourage cities and towns to build smarter, denser and with more walking and transit opportunites, the better off everyone will be. However the changes are proving to be painful for the automakers.

Earlier this decade, Americans were purchasing in some years over 17 million cars a year. The head of GM recently said that he though purchases would peak at 13 to 14 million per year, and its not clear that 17 million a year will be reached anytime in near future. Its a very different world for the carmakers. And its astonishing considering that the population of America has been growing while these hugh decreases are taking place.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/automobiles/autospecial2/22CHANGE.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

A great article in Time magazine, see below, discusses the possibilities of transforming America’s extensive network of two lane US and state routes into green highways of the future. And what about all the cars on those roads today? Well it turns out there aren’t many at all. Since the interstate highway system was fully built out, many of these roads are rarely used for through traffic and operate far below capacity. Local traffic is all they have left. And as the interstate highway system was built, thousands of small towns all over the country were bypassed, leaving struggling downtowns devoid of passing traffic across the country.

The idea here is that instead of keeping them at the existing level of allowed traffic and speed, they would be converted into zones for low speed electric cars, bikes and pedestrian lanes. Not that cars wouldnt be allowed, but everyone would have to stay under 35mph. Using the highly successful rails to trails program as a model, the idea is to create a network of green highways all over the country, and along the way hopefully bring more traffic into all of those towns that were bypassed by the interstates.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1928997,00.html#WordPress

Fantastic idea, I hope it happens all over the country. But this idea is one that is going to take a while to get traction. In order to really enforce the slower speeds and network connectivity benefits of a comprehensive system, there will have to be standards, which means the best we can hope is a federal program offering matching funds, something that would be great to see in the next federal transportation authorization bill.