TICKET TO RIDE

An analysis of the respected Texas Transportation Institute's (TTI)annual report on metropolitan congestion shows that the most common congestion-fighting strategy -- road-building -- has had virtually no impact on the growth of traffic congestion in major urban areas in the last 15 years. The analysis, by STPP, was prompted by a number of recent studies questioning whether building new roads reduces congestion.

Using TTI data, STPP compared metro areas that added significant new capacity with those that did not and found that while the first group spent roughly $22 billion more on construction, the average of TTI's "roadway congestion index" for each of the two groups was almost identical. ?Widening roads to ease traffic congestion is ineffective and expensive," says Roy Kienitz, executive director of STPP. "It's like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt."

The TTI study also projects the increase in lane miles needed to keep up with traffic growth. STPP's analysis of the data estimates that most urban areas would have to spend thousands of dollars per family each year to build new roads, ranging up to $3,243 in Nashville, Tennessee. The STPP report says the problem may be partially explained by the phenomenon of "induced traffic." Several recent studies have documented that new roads actually encourage more driving. A University of California study of 30 urban counties in the state found that every 1 percent increase in lane miles generates a 0.9 percent increase in traffic within five years, negating any congestion-easing effect. The report did not control for other factors that might influence congestion, such as economic activity or population growth. But the large size of the data set (70 metropolitan areas) and long duration of the study (15 years) make it likely that any relationships between road-building and congestion would emerge.

Washington Post columnist Neal Peirce writes that Interstate 270 outside Washington D.C. may provide fresh evidence of the phenomenon of induced traffic. The highway, widened to 12 lanes 8 years ago, is already "a rolling parking lot," says Peirce, with daily usage now equal to figures projected for 2010.

Peirce -- whose column was reprinted in the Sacramento Bee January 28 -- quotes David Walters, a transportation expert at the University of North Carolina, who explains "The availability of transportation acts as a catalyst for more movement, so that the more roads we build, the more places we can drive, the more we drive." But highway departments, anxious to justify road expansions, are unwilling to feed induced travel into their calculations.

Skeptics argue that induced travel isn?t caused by highways but by increases in population growth and economic activity. But Peirce cites mounting evidence of induced traffic both inside the U.S. and out. He notes that Great Britain is reinventing its transportation policy after a panel of experts concluded induced traffic "can and does exist." These experts also found that an analysis of 60 cases worldwide showed that traffic was reduced 20 to 60 percent where road capacity was severely reduced -- and that it wasn't siphoned off onto other roads.

Peirce points out that traffic jams never materialized after Manhattan's West Side Highway collapsed in 1973, when San Francisco'sEmbarcadero Freeway collapsed in 1989 or when the upper deck of the unstable Central Freeway was torn down in 1996, or when Portland closed the six-lane Harbor Drive adjacent its downtown.

Political columnists have had a field day assessing Governor Gray Davis' appointment of San Francisco County Supervisor Jose Medina to head the 20,000- employee $7.9 billion-a-year California Department of Transportation (Caltrans). It was a sop to San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, they say, who wanted to install a "yes man" at Caltrans and make an appointment to the Board of Supervisors who would be beholden to him.

San Francisco Examiner columnist Scott Winokur quoted an unamed source as saying, "Willie Brown demanded Medina . . . Medina doesn't know a damn thing. Smart money says he'll last a year." Sacramento Bee columnist Dan Walters notes that "By any objective standard transportation should rank near or perhaps equal to education in the pantheon of serious issues." But he concludes that the fact that transportation figures nowhere on the resume of Medina -- a former labor lawyer who ran a small non-profit organization to help the working poor -- means Davis will keep transportation on the back burner. It was an explosive issue when Davis was chief of staff for Governor Jerry Brown. Others take a more sanguine view, however, pointing out that Medina has in the past lobbied for public transit and bike lanes and transit-oriented development. AC Transit District Director Chris Peoples told the Examiner that "Caltrans has been so hostile to transit in urban areas that someone who doesn?t have a background as a Caltrans engineer might be good."

STPP is looking for a sponsor for a "Safe Routes to School" bill that would create a statewide competitive grant program for capital projects that increase bike and pedestrian safety around schools. Before the legislative deadline last month the office of state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa, working with STPP, submitted a "place-holder" bill containing language earmarking one-third of the federal TEA-21 safety funds received by Caltrans to be used for the program. But Villaraigosa has not committed to sponsoring the bill.

As currently worded the bill would allocate $20 million a year for crosswalks, sidewalk improvements, bicycle lanes and paths, and any other capital projects that increase safety and promote walking and bicycling among schoolchildren. The federal money is a set-aside in the Surface Transportation Program (STP), one of the most flexible funding categories in TEA-21. While historically reserved for more traditional highway safety measures like medians, guardrails and railroad grade-crossings, new STPP-supported language in TEA-21 made bike and pedestrian projects and traffic calming eligible. The funding category is outside the purview of SB45, the recent state law devolving spending decisions to the regions.

Sounding out what may prove to be a prominent presidential campaign theme, Vice President Al Gore has announced a package of several new national "smart growth" measures aimed at preserving open space, promoting infill development, and linking transportation investments with land use. The "livability?" initiative includes proposals to increase funding for several existing federal school, transportation and anti-crime programs in the FY 2000 budget, and new tax credits to promote open space acquisition and urban infill investments.

Gore's package also proposes to double in size -- from $25 million to $50 million a year -- a new federal transportation program aimed at coordinating regional land use and transportation decisions. Titled the Transportation and Community and System Preservation (TCSP) Pilot Program, the initiative was conceived of and supported by STPP throughout the recent TEA-21 campaign.

The Federal Highway Administration received 500 proposals totaling $400 million for the first TCSP funding cycle. The 49 finalists who made the first cut must submit full grant proposals; FHWA will award 20-25 grants next spring.

Seven proposals from California made the cut; none were in Southern California. Missing from the list was the much-ballyhooed $6 million initiative intended to plan for smart growth in Riverside County, where population is expected to double in 20 years.

This year bike and pedestrian projects were made eligible for funding under almost every category of TEA-21, reflecting the greatly increased importance Congress has assigned non-motorized modes of transportation. There's plenty of local interest as well. The City of Los Angeles, for example, came up with $60 million worth of proposals for bike and pedestrian projects to submit to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's biannual Call for Projects this year. The problem is that the MTA only assigned $24 million to the Bike and Pedestrian Improvement funding category, and the City of L.A. is just one of 89 cities competing in the countywide Call.

The Call is the process by which the MTA disperses federal, state and local funding to public agencies for "regionally significant projects."  Most bike and ped projects are funded through the Call, which this year contains $509 million, down $150 million from two years ago. Bike and pedestrian advocates, their hopes raised by TEA-21's 45 percent increase in transportation funding, were expecting more money. They note that the MTA received $215 million in Transportation Enhancements and Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funding alone, the two programs typically used to fund alternative modes.

Bike advocates had mounted a "1 percent for bikes campaign," arguing that since 1 percent of all trips in the county are by bike, bikes should get at least $25 million -- 1 percent of the MTA $2.5 billion annual budget -- in funding each year, or $50 million over the two years of the Call. Using that same argument pedestrian advocates argue pedestrian projects should get another $200 million a year for a total of $400 million, since 8 percent of all trips are by foot. Bike and ped advocates are urging the MTA to double the money in the bike and ped category. But this worries sponsors of other non-traditional transportation projects who fear the money would be transferred not out of the big-ticket funding categories for highway improvements but out of the Call's tiny $10 million " Transportation Enhancements" category, designed to fund a wide array of projects from environmental mitigation to historic preservation to landscaping.

Now that the Blue Line is back on track activists worry that concessions won from the MTA during extensive negotiations two years ago will not be honored by the new Pasadena Metro Blue Line Construction Authority. Highland Park residents in particular had fought to preserve the integrity of their community, which could be split in two by the rail line, demanding that streets crossing the line be kept open to traffic. They had also argued for reduced speeds through the neighborhood, and for aesthetically pleasing fencing, guardrails, paving and landscaping.

The new authority, which at present consists only of a five-member commission, has until the end of March to come up with a plan for financing the $818 million light rail line and its projected $200 million funding shortfall. The MTA's financial problems brought construction to a halt last year, but it is assumed the new authority can shave $100 million off the pricetag simply because it isn't supporting the MTA's huge bureaucracy. The projected completion date is now 2003.