Month: May 2012

My Seven Questions for the Transportation Bill Conference

On May 10, 2012

In Infrastructure, Politics, Uncategorized

D.C. Streetsblog had a list of seven questions to ask as the Transportation Bill conference was underway on Tuesday. I think the problem with their questions are that they are too focused on the sausage making rather than the content. It’s disappointing, I suppose, that such an insightful organization such as Streetsblog can fall victim to the back and forth ball game of politics when so much in transportation is on the line. Perhaps I am naive, but if I had the opportunity, these are the seven questions I would like to ask of the Transportation Committees:

How will public transportation fare in the bill after being practically decapitated in the last round of talks?
How do we handle the overwhelming state of good repair issues impacting all transportation infrastructure?
How does the bill recognize the long (and short) term societal trends towards transportation that does not include the automobile.
Does high-speed rail have a future?
How will the bill address critical operational funding shortfalls (not to mention capital) that transit agencies are facing?
How will the bill address the structural financial problems facing the Highway Trust Fund?
Will there be a push towards alternative user fees to fund transportation infrastructure?

That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Olympics Games: Negative Externalities

By Ryan Richter

On May 9, 2012

In Infrastructure, Olympics

London 2012 banner at The Monument. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So far I’ve spent a great deal of effort highlighting the Olympic Games as catalyst for urban redevelopment, transportation and infrastructure investments, and so on. I would be remiss, of course, if I did not point out the negative externalities that the Games can cause. Note that a negative externality is an action of a product on consumers that imposes a negative side effect on a third-party. Such examples may include pollution, climate change, and tragedy of the commons situations.

Negative externalities, in the context of the Olympic Games, can generally impact a host city in three distinct ways: financial, structural and image (Source: Preuss). When discussing finance, I’d be remiss not to mention the 1976 Montreal Olympics, a financial boondoggle that took 30 years to pay off. Montreal is the case in point that when the Olympic profits are smaller than debts, often the host city is making up the difference, financially.

Structural externalities include hard and soft factors. The hard factors are the physical infrastructure developed for the Games, including transportation, telecommunications, tourism, and athletic stadiums. When the cost of developing this infrastructure is too high, such as in Montreal, the host city suffers. The financial liabilities that Montreal faced (and Munich to a lesser extent) was from high investments in transport and sporting infrastructure. In other cases, such as Athens, the sporting infrastructure developed for the Games was vastly underutilized due to lack of demand after the Games.

The image of a host city can also suffer as a result of the Games. While rare, Atlanta has been regarded in many ways to have negatively suffered, largely in the fact that its traffic situation was, and is, horrific. Additionally, security came to be a major issue that damaged Atlanta in the aftermath of the Games.

The above cases represent negative externalities that can happen after the Games have passed. In the case of London, however, one can argue that negative externalities from the Games have already started to appear.

One such negative externality is the scarcity of land in London, generally, and in the London Borough of Newham, specifically, where rising rents due to lack of supply and the significant infrastructure and development investments in and around Olympic Park. In this case the shared resource is land and its lack of availability is causing the Borough to consider new ways of ameliorating the problem: by exporting the poor. It has been argued by some scholars of the Olympics, that certain groups, such as the underclass, the homeless and low-cost rental groups, can be made worse off as a result of an Olympic Games. Its been contended that Olympic legacy benefits accrue to the already privileged sectors of the population’ while the disadvantaged bear a disproportionate share of the burden.

After the Games, keep a close watch on whether the sporting infrastructure is used and whether various transport infrastructure pays off. In a future post, we’ll highlight what some of those investments are.

Congestion Pricing and Transit

By Ryan Richter

On May 8, 2012

In Transportation Policy, Uncategorized

In London, street markings and a sign (inset) with the white-on-red C alert drivers to the charge. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Streetsblog has an interesting article on whether the secret to world-class transit systems is congestion pricing. London, Singapore and Stockholm all have variations of congestion pricing and all are investing heavily in their public transportation systems. The gist of the article is that the incredibly robust transit ridership in these cities is the result of pricing of road space, something no U.S. city has done so far.

If congestion pricing effectively raises the cost of driving to a point where drivers look for other modes of travel, are public transport systems the main beneficiary?

Before we get into this, let’s take a step back to understand what congestion pricing is and is not. What congestion pricing is: a system to charge users of a transportation network during periods of peak demand. In it’s most robust form, congestion pricing uses variable pricing, that is, pricing that varies by time of day or by levels of peak demand. Thus, congestion pricing can regulate demand without needing to add capacity to the transportation network. The main objectives of congestion pricing is congestion management and transportation system financing.

Four types of congestion pricing systems are currently in use: a cordon area around a city center, with charges for passing the cordon line; area wide congestion pricing, which charges for being inside an area; a city center toll ring, with toll collection surrounding the city; and corridor or single facility congestion pricing, where access to a lane or a facility is priced.

London, Singapore and Stockholm all employ a variant of the cordon method of congestion pricing.

The Victoria Transportation Policy Institute (VTPI) has found that pricing roads that would otherwise be free can shift vehicle travel to free routes, alternative modes and closer destinations, and reduce vehicle trip frequency. Thus, depending on how congestion pricing is designed, it may push vehicle travel to other times and routes. But it also may reduce trip frequency. Also, if pricing is used to fund roadway capacity expansion that would not otherwise occur, it may increase total vehicle travel. In Stockholm, it appears that congestion pricing is used to fund roadway improvements.

However, VTPI has also found that the better the travel alternatives (transit, ridesharing and cycling), the more that congestion pricing will cause mode shifts. In London, much of the congestion pricing revenues were poured into its bus system,with notable ridership impacts, as noted in Streetsblog.

And yet, there is something else that supports increased public transportation use. That’s land uses supportive of transit (TOD) and higher fuel prices. Both of these are also present in all three cities. So while I believe congestion pricing is important, it is one of many tools to lower congestion and increase public transportation use.