Ticket to Ride

ISTEA BILLS INCREASE SPENDING 38-40 PERCENT

Now that both House and Senate have passed ISTEA reauthorization bills, attention turns to the conference committee that will reconcile S. 1173 (ISTEAII) and H.R. 2400 (BESTEA) when Congress returns from Easter recess April 21.How do the bills compare? S. 1173 authorized $214 billion for highways and transit over 6 years; H.R. 2400 authorized $217 billion, with another $9billion for 1467 individual projects (about 5 percent of total spending, the same level earmarked for projects in ISTEA). Here's how the bills compare according to criteria important to the STPP coalition:

	ISTEA	S.1173	HR 2400
Enhancements	1.9 %	2.9 %	2.2 %
CMAQ	4.9 %	4.7 %	5.8 %
System Preservation	27.1%	23.3 %	31.3 %
NHS	17.2 %	29.6 %	18.8 %
Project Earmarks	5.0 %	0 %	5.1 %
Transit	20.0 %	19.5 %	19.9 %

While the new bills provide different funding balances, both maintain the important aspects of the original ISTEA: dedicated funding for system preservation before funds can be spent on new roads; dedicated funding for programs that build sustainable communities and reduce pollution; flexibility to spend highway dollars on transit, and enhanced planning for expenditure ofthese flexible dollars; and a fair balance between highway and transitfunding. Of 25 recommendations made in STPP's January 1997 "Blueprint for ISTEA Reauthorization," 22 are either entirely or significantly addressed in one of the two bills.

The House bill has been widely criticized in the media as larded with $9 billion in pork, and environmentalists have criticized the large number of highway projects. But H.R. 2400 also contains $250 million in earmarks for enhancement-type activities including bike paths and pedestrian projects and nearly $1 billion for rail, transit and other intermodal projects. (This represents only the highway dollars used for transit; transit projects earmarked for funding with transit dollars comprise a different list.) The share of earmarked funds going to enhancement type projects is 2.7 percent,more than the 1.9 percent in the original ISTEA. Another $1 billion or so goes to system preservation projects.

Both bills would increase funding for highways and transit well above both the amount presumed in last year's balanced budget deal and the amount provided in ISTEA. S.1173 would provide a 38 percent increase; HR 2400 would equal a 40 percent. Although there is legitimate fear that this new money could lead to a spate of bad transportation projects, this fear should be considered in light of two facts: ISTEA itself provided for a 42 percent funding increase over the bill that preceded it. And while a 40 percent increase in federal funding seems large, federal dollars represent only about a quarter of total public sector spending on transportation. In this context, the increase would boost total transportation spending only by about 5 percent. The biggest problem is how to pay for the increased spending. There is legitimate concern that valuable programs could be deprived of funding. STPP will work to address these concerns.

For a more detailed analysis visit STPP's ISTEA website at www.istea.org.

DO NEW ROADS CAUSE CONGESTION?

(Parts of this are excerpted from Don Chen's"If You Build It They Will Come" in
STPP's March Progress.)

"If you build it, they will come" is a reassuring slogan if you're building a baseball field. But for the highway engineer, it's a disaster. The fact that so many new roads get congested so quickly has long baffled road builders trying to ease gridlock. This phenomenon -- often called "induced traffic" --is well-known to the transportation sector. Studies on induced traffic in the U.S. date back to the 1940s, and it is now widely acknowledged that building more roads does not relieve congestion.

Across the Atlantic, the British government is reinventing its transport policy after an expert panel found that while expanded road capacity enables vehicles to travel faster, time savings are lost because people drive more --results that prompted UK Transport Minister Gavin Strang to conclude that "We cannot tackle our traffic problems by building new roads."

However, the idea of induced traffic has never gained currency in the U.S.,where many transportation planners still work under the Eisenhower-era assumption that travel and vehicle use increase only with population and economic growth and not because of reduced travel times or cost. This is partly because early research was unable to differentiate between new traffic induced by expanded capacity and redistributed traffic or traffic caused by changes in land use.

But empirical research has improved, and new studies designed to make those differences clear have also found that new roads generate new traffic. Even the Federal Highway Administration found in a recent study in Milwaukee that induced traffic accounted for 11-22 percent of the area's increased traffic from 1963 to 1991. One of the most comprehensive new studies covers 30 urban counties in California from 1973 to 1990. The authors, UC-Berkeley researchers Mark Hansen and Yuanlin Huang, found that at the metropolitan level, every 1 percent increase in new lane-miles generates a 0.9 percent increase in traffic over four years.

Their findings showed an even greater induced traffic effect on the regional scale than on individual highway segments because when drivers perceive an increase in either travel time or cost they typically cope by altering travel routes, traveling at a different time or traveling less. When road capacity is expanded near congested routes the opposite happens -- drivers far and wide flock to the new facility hoping for reduced travel times, thereby increasing the total amount of traffic in the region.

U.S. Transportation officials have failed to apply these findings, and evidence of induced traffic is rarely used in travel modeling, where it wouldhave a big impact on deciding whether a project gets built.

REMOVE IT AND THEY WILL DISAPPEAR

(Excerpted from an article by STPP'S Jill Kruse in the March Progess.)

Flying in the face of conventional wisdom, a British study released this month is creating a buzz in transportation circles by concluding that closing roads can actually reduce driving. The research team analyzed 60 cases worldwide where roads were either closed or capacity was reduced. On average 20 percentof the traffic vanished, but in some cases an astonishing 60 percent disappeared.

Where does the traffic go? Transportation planning models assume that it shifts onto other roads, causing congestion elsewhere. But experts now say that in many cases it actually does disappear. An earlier British report wenta step further, prompting experts to conclude that closing roads in city centers can actually boost local economies by creating jobs downtown and that,conversely, new roads can lead to job loss downtown.

The U.S. equivalent of the expert British research teams, a panel convened by the Transportation Research Board, excluded empirical evidence on reduced travel from its 1995 "Expanding Metropolitan Highways" report, ignoring several compelling stories: The demise of San Francisco's Embarcadero Freeway, toppled in the '89 earthquake, and the city's Central Freeway, torn down in1995, were predicted to cause gridlock, but didn't. When New York City's Westside Highway collapsed in 1973, 53 percent of trips disappeared. And when citizens in Portland, Oregon replaced their Harbor Drive freeway with a waterfront park there was no traffic chaos. Moreover, San Francisco's waterfront is now booming with residential and commercial activity and Portland's downtown has become a highly desirable location. For a free copy of "Traffic Impact of Highway Capacity Reductions" contact Environmental Media Services at 202-463-6670.

710 PROMISES MORE TRAFFIC

Even without modeling the effects of induced travel Caltrans predicts that the 710 freeway will bring an additional 109,000 vehicle trips through Pasadena from outside the San Gabriel Valley. Caltrans studies indicate traffic will increase from 50 to more than 1,000 percent on Villa, OrangeGrove, Washington, Del Mar and California due to spillover traffic. Traffic isalso expected to increase substantially on the 134 and 210 when the 710 links up the Foothill Freeway with the San Bernardino and Pomona freeways and becomes a major commuter corridor for the quickly growing Inland Empire.

President Clinton may enter the freeway fray following the unexpectedly strong condemnation of the 710 by his own Advisory Council on Historic Preservation last month. A decision on whether to finally issue the formal record of decision could happen by April 21, the date of a hearing in the lawsuit filed by Alhambra that attempts to force freeway construction.

Assemblyman Jack Scott (D-Altadena) has just fired the latest salvo,introducing a bill that could relegate the project to the bottom of the MTA's priority list by requiring that it be fully funded during the four-year State Transportation Improvement Plan (STIP) cycle. And it requires that no other project deemed to be more cost-effective (read: the Blue Line) is impacted by freeway funding.

For updates on the 710 visit www.futuretransportation.org.

HOW WILL WELFARE RECIPIENTS GET TO WORK IN L.A.?

There's no better illustration of the vexing problem of suburban sprawl than the welfare to work dilemma: How can welfare recipients, who live mostly in older urban-core communities, get to available jobs, located mostly in newer suburban communities -- especially when their "reverse commutes" to low-density suburban job sites are ill-served by public transit? Sprawling landuse patterns increase the spatial mismatch between where people live, work, shop and find childcare, and make the provision of services such as public transit more costly and ineffective. As a result even poor people must own cars.

That was the conclusion of professors presenting their research at UCLA's Institute of Transportation Studies' recent "Getting Welfare Recipients toWork" conference. For example, a 1995 study by UCLA urban planning professors Brian Taylor and Paul Ong found dependence on public transit reduced employment access far more than any other factor analyzed, including residential location. They concluded: "The fact is that our policies have made transportation systems part of the American welfare problem, not the obvious remedy for poverty."

One question not answered was whether welfare recipients can afford to buy, maintain and insure a car when AAA estimates this costs $7,500 a year, and a minimum wage job pays $13,000. Nor was there any discussion of livable community strategies linking transportation and land use decisions so that welfare reform becomes an opportunity to revitalize communities where poor people live, creating jobs that are accessible by foot, bike and public transit.

One bright spot was a presentation by Ginger Gherardi of the Ventura County Transportation Commission, which is facilitating the welfare-to-work transition with an innovative mix of measures including the creation of "job to career centers" providing childcare and transit connections, "smart cards" usable on all transit systems, guaranteed ride home programs, a website that plots commutes by transit (info also accessible by calling an 800 number), bike racks on buses, increased hours of transit service, and the creation of car-sharing clubs. STPP co-hosts a welfare-to-work conference in San Francisco June 15 with many other government agencies and non-profit organizations. Call or e-mail us if you would be interested in attending or co-hosting a similar conference in L.A.

Myth #5:

People today need greater mobility than public transit can offer them.

We're the most mobile society on the planet -- no one spends as much on roads as we do -- but our mobility has had unintended consequences, including ubiquitous asphalt, limited green space, air pollution, disinvestment in existing communities, and a spatial mismatch between where people live, work and shop. The concept of mobility is frequently confused with access. We need to focus on providing people with better access, creating livable communities where jobs, homes, transit, shops and other services are within biking and walking distance so that people don't have to drive everywhere.

SPRAWL COSTS: HIGHER TAXES, SLOWER EMERGENCY RESPONSE

A new American Farmland Trust study, "Living on the Edge: the Costs and Risks of Scatter Development," concludes that low-density development leads to higher taxes for residents in surrounding municipalities. In addition, the report showed that people living in areas of sprawling growth face dangerously long emergency response times for ambulance, fire fighting and police services.

AFT found that despite the high assessed values of houses in sprawl developments, the cost of providing services to those homes is often subsidized by residents in more modest homes in adjacent towns. The study showed that homes in sprawl development areas don't generate enough taxes to educate children who live there or to cover the added cost of extended schoolbus routes, fall woefully short of paying to maintain the roads leading to and through their subdivisions, and cost adjoining residents more tax dollars to build infrastructure for sewer and water lines. For more information visit http://www.farmland.org.

SMART GROWTH IN VENTURA AND SAN DIEGO COUNTIES

Citizens in San Diego and Ventura counties are collecting signatures to get initiatives on the November ballot channeling growth into existing metropolitan areas and protecting open space and farmland. The initiatives go beyond most urban growth boundaries, which typically encircle cities, protecting existing open space, ranches and farmland county-wide.

In Ventura County the initiative would "freeze" designations for open spaceand farmland in the county's General Plan so that development would be channeled into cities. The initiative in San Diego would have the effect of drawing a line between the metropolitan area along the coast and county's undeveloped eastern side, where development would be prohibited.

Duncan McFetridge of Save Our Farmland and Ranches in San Diego says there's been lots of opposition from developers and politicians, who contend congestion in the metropolitan area would become unbearable. But initiative proponents filed a Freedom of information Act request to obtain results of a traffic study commissioned by the San Diego Association of Governments. It shows vehicle miles traveled would be reduced by 3.2 billion a year!

For more info call Duncan McFetridge, Save Our Forests and Ranches, 619-445-9638, and Steve Bennet, Save Open Space and Agricultural Resources, 805-653-0831

SMART GROWTH AND THE MARKET

The L.A. Times reported (3/14) that demand for new houses in older, more compact urban neighborhoods has skyrocketed as residents try to shorten commute times by living close to their jobs. And government officials are beginning to look to infill development to accommodate the growing regional population. "We can either continue to develop as we have, which is to keep going farther out, or we can go back and reinvest in our cities and make vacant and under used areas productive once again," Brea City Councilwoman Bev Perry, who chairs the Southern California Association of Governments housing and economic development committee, told the Times.

Home-builders are tapping into this market. Mark Buckland of the Seal Beach-based Olson Company told the Times he's confident that as the economy picks up and traffic gets worse demand for infill housing will grow. And L.A.-based Kaufman and Broad reported that due to high demand and high prices the profit margin on infill housing can exceed that in larger suburban subdivisions by more than 15 percent. "Selling prices are higher at infill locations because they are proven areas where you already have employment," Kaufman and Broad's Glenn Brown told the Times.

BIKE SHORTS

The California EPA and Air Resources Board co-hosted the California Bicycle Summit in Sacramento last month, bringing together a host of advocates to strategize on how to build more infrastructure, promote bike safety, secure funding, and enforce bicycle laws. Also in attendance was the California Department of Health Services, which agreed with the Air Resources Board that the promotion of cycling will benefit each agency's agenda, both increasing physical fitness and improving air quality. Both plan to actively promote bikable neighborhoods. At the summit, the director of Caltrans agreed to meet with the California Bicycle Coalition (CBC) to hear their "bicycle wishlist" .. . . . . . . L.A. DOT will begin installing 1,600 inverted U-bicycle racks throughout L.A. in the next few weeks . . . . . . . . Bike to Work Day in SoCal is May 21. A guide to California Bike Commute Week is available from the CBC and includes a schedule of events, employer participation guide and more. Call 1-800-679-BIKE. . . . . . . . A contract to install bike racks on MTA buses remains stalled in an MTA board subcommittee. The Bicycle Advisory Committee has begun investigating which lines are the most suitable for bikeracks . . . . . . Approximately 17,800 people rode the L.A. Bike Tour May 29, riding along the L.A. Marathon route before runners started the course . . . .. . . .The Long Beach Bike Station recently received an EPA "Way to Go!" award. Meantime, the Chatsworth Depot Bike Station is to open May 18, becoming only the second bikestation in the U.S. . . . . . . The Southern California Bicycle Advocacy Summit May 8 kicks off the Bicycle Expo at the Convention Center through May 10. . . In many large German cities bicycling has doubled or tripled during the past 20 years while the modal split share of automobile travel has fallen. The resurgence of interest in biking is credited to public policies improving safety, speed and convenience while making auto use more difficult and expensive.

the Surface Transportation Policy Project's SoCal newsletter

April 1998 Volume 2 Issue 2

Contents:

REMOVE IT AND THEY WILL DISAPPEAR