It’s congestion day at Portland Transport! All three posts today will be on various aspects of the issue of roadway congestion.
Jim Mayer has a niece piece in the Sunday O (“Car-choked highways certain to get worse“) about the current and likely future states of auto congestion in the region.
It does a nice job of identifying the dynamics, and the choke points that are unlikely to be cost-effective to address.
The conclusion is that in many cases we will manage congestion by letting people wait.
I continue to suspect that pricing the freeway system (with appropriate investments in alternatives to create choices, and some system for managing equity for those for whom tolls are a hardship) would be a much more rational approach.
25 responses to “Local Congestion 101”
managing equity for those for whom tolls are a hardship
I don’t understand this. We don’t “manage equity” re the price of gas…why tolls? If you can’t afford to drive then, well, you can’t afford to drive.
Part of what’s driven our auto-centric development is the huge government subsidies (sorry Karlock, but its true) given to make that auto-centric lifestyle “affordable.” I’m not the least bit interested in even more subsidies to keep people in their cars. What’s next…gas-price subsidies to commuters in Vancouver?
“(with appropriate investments in alternatives to create choices)” Are you suggesting that more money needs to be spent on light rail, streetcars, etc? If so why?
Would it be possible to develop alternatives by simply opening the market to private buses, vans and jitney services regardless of whether they be corporate, or mom and pop businesses? What’s the problem with private, non tax supported alternatives?
MW
Alternatives to the freeway system could include better arterial and local connections as well.
I’m not opposed to private transit service. There does need to be some provision however to make sure that private operators don’t skim the most profitable routes leaving public agencies with the money losers. There should be some concept of universal service, just as there is for example with telephone service.
The following is a letter I submitted to the editor but was not published:
More and better bus service is the answer to car-choked highways. (“Car-choked highways certain to get worse” Feb. 11). TriMet, which has aggressively expanding its downtown oriented light rail system has been lax in addressing the growing inter-suburban travel needs.
These needs are best served with buses. Unfortunately, bus service has actually dropped in the past two years and is about the same as it was at the turn of the century.
A network of bus routes interconnecting suburban communities on existing roads and freeways with frequent daily service would attract many commuters out of their cars and would be far less expensive and environmentally responsible than constructing more road capacity.
Here is the continuation of Mayer’s introduction:
HEAVY TRAFFIC – Cash can’t fix all problems
Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
February 11, 2007
Author: James Mayer; The Oregonian
Estimated printed pages: 4
Q: Can the worst bottlenecks be uncorked?
A: Engineers say they can do anything, given enough money. Solutions to some of the worst choke points are on the books, in the minds of planners, or awaiting financing. But money won’t solve some problems.
A project has been funded to fix the Delta Park bottleneck on Interstate 5, where the freeway narrows from three lanes to two, and construction will begin in 2008.
And the $300 million widening of U.S. 26 west of downtown is nearly completed after 15 years of construction.
But that leaves the Vista Ridge Tunnel. Additional tunnels could be built to carry more traffic to Interstate 405, I-5 and downtown Portland, but at tremendous cost to businesses, neighborhoods and the environment.
The same goes for the Terwilliger curves on I-5.
A task force studying the I-405/I-5 freeway loop suggested burying the southern end of I-405, I-5 on the Willamette River’s east bank, and the I-84 interchange in a tunnel, at a cost of $3 billion to $5.8 billion.
Closer to reality is a proposal to replace the Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River. But the $2 billion to $6 billion needed to build the bridge has not been found, and engineers acknowledge that it would only push the choke point farther south, to the Rose Garden area.
Congestion is a fact of life in a thriving community such as Portland, says Jason Tell, Oregon Department of Transportation manager for the metro area.
“As long as you have people wanting to move here, you are going to have congestion. We are not going to solve it. We’re going to manage it.”
Q: Will mass transit ease the increasing suburb-to-suburb congestion?
A: Portland-area residents ride buses and trains more often than residents of other cities our size, and ridership has increased faster than driving. But public transportation carried fewer than 7 percent of all commuters in 2000.
TriMet struggles with how to serve the suburbs with its hub-and-spoke transit system, with all lines leading downtown.
Officials point to the Washington County Commuter Rail, connecting Beaverton and Wilsonville, as a start. Other lines are in the planning stages.
But Portland-area suburbs don’t have enough population density to support cross-suburb light-rail lines, TriMet General Manager Fred Hansen says.
Hansen points to his agency’s successes. One-third of riders on the westside MAX trains don’t go downtown, but travel, for example, from Hillsboro to Beaverton.
Q: Can Oregon’s new clout on the House Transportation Committee in Washington make a difference?
A: Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., says his position as chairman of the subcommittee in charge of highways and transit has already made a difference. Last month, James Simpson, the federal transit administrator, visited Portland to learn about the city’s streetcars, partly because DeFazio is chairman.
But how the veteran Democrat’s new clout will benefit Portland and the rest of the state depends on how Congress deals with the same financial crunch facing Oregon. Federal highway spending will exceed revenue by 2009. DeFazio says he will spend much of his time looking for innovative ways to bridge the gap.
While charging tolls to pay for new roads holds promise, DeFazio doesn’t favor tolls on existing highways, such as the recent Macquarie Infrastructure Group proposal to toll Oregon 99W in addition to a new bypass around Newberg and Dundee. He calls it a nonstarter.
Q: Is there a limit to how much traffic we can stand?
A: Maybe.
Researchers have long suspected there may be a limit to commuting, somewhere around a half-hour, says Robert Bertini, director of Portland State University’s Center for Transportation Studies.
But recent studies cast doubt on that theory, suggesting that travel times have grown and that people will tolerate it to get where they need to go.
Looking only at the average misses the expanding range, Bertini says. The 2000 Census showed that while Portland’s 22.3-minute average remained stable, more people commute longer than 30 minutes –and more people commute less than 15 minutes.
Some people might be able to make adjustments, move closer to their jobs, work at home or travel at different times, he says.
Q: Expanding highways and adding transit are limited, but there are other promising ideas. What solutions are closest to reality?
A: If Oregonians won’t support a statewide gasoline tax increase, maybe local voters will. The state’s 24-cents-a-gallon gas tax was last increased in 1993, and voters soundly rejected a nickel-a-gallon increase in 2000.
The Tigard City Council, however, this year imposed a 3-cents-a-gallon gas tax increase to address traffic problems on Oregon 99W. Many expected gas station owners to challenge the tax at the ballot box, but they were unable to collect enough signatures.
The state is exploring a mileage tax, charging a few cents for every mile you drive in the state, to replace the gas tax, but whether the public will accept satellite tracking of cars remains to be seen.
Over half of congestion is caused by crashes, stalled cars, weather and construction. Only 40 percent is the result of traffic exceeding the road capacity.
Portland City Commissioner Sam Adams has looked into ways the city can help clear cars out of the way faster, including assigning priority to traffic-clearing tows and giving tow trucks a police escort.
Finally, there is this solution: Live with it.
Anthony Downs of the Brookings Institute, author of the books “Stuck in Traffic” and “Still Stuck in Traffic,” argues that expanding the road system is impractical and too expensive.
“There is only one way to accommodate excess demand for roads during peak periods –by having people wait in line.”
James Mayer, 503-294-4109; jimmayer@news.oregonian.com
Edition: Sunrise
Section: Local News
Page: C07
Copyright (c) 2007 Oregonian Publishing Co.
Record Number: MERLIN_9354492
What’s the problem with private, non tax supported alternatives?
There aren’t any. No one seems to have a clear, realistic economic model that works to create and maintain such a private competitive system. Without that, the idea is just fanciful musing. We have public transit systems because the private ones failed.
I don’t understand this. We don’t “manage equity” re the price of gas…why tolls? If you can’t afford to drive then, well, you can’t afford to drive
The problem is that the roads that are tolled aren’t being paid for just by the people using them. Nor are the streets they use to access the tolled roads. So you are building a public facility paid for by everyone and then reserving the benefits for those willing to pay a little extra for the privilege of using it.
After a 20+ year break I’m now a motorist in Portland again. The reality of the congestion is a shock. But the condition of the roadways is abysmal, which doesn’t help, and one visible change in the last 20 years is the type of vehicles using the roads. Way more enormous, heavy trucks and SUVs and way more heavy traction tires out there. I think if users are to be taxed to fund the roadways the heavier vehicles should pay more. They’re arguably “using up” more road. Rigs the size of commercial trucks actually get a tax deduction in many cases, so I think it’s fair that chewing up city asphalt could be specifically compensated for with some kind of vehicle-weight/tire-size tax.
I think the discussion on the Newberg-Dundee Bypass is integral to much of this discussion. It is a test case that deserves discussion. In the meetings I have attended, future direction of ODOT hinges somewhat on the evolution of this project. It is really being pushed. What is evolving is a tolled bypass, with corresponding traffic impediments on existing 99W. This will forced traffic onto the tolled bypass. That eliminates the need to toll both roadways. By doing so, it appeases local citizens by shutting down Highway 99W, so they can regain their downtown areas. The project cost is now pegged at $500 million for the 11 mile stretch (a five minute ride). The push is for ODOT/State of Oregon to fill about a $200 million gap between toll revenue and total cost of project.
Any thoughts? As said previously, this is a test situation that will shape future approaches to construction in Oregon.
“What’s the problem with private, non tax supported alternatives?
There aren’t any. No one seems to have a clear, realistic economic model that works to create and maintain such a private competitive system. Without that, the idea is just fanciful musing. We have public transit systems because the private ones failed.”
well, maybe not in the US, but Curitiba Brazil has a private/public partnership that runs a pretty good bus system.
“Ten private bus companies provide all public transportation services in Curitiba, with guidance and parameters established by the city administration. The bus companies are paid by the distances they travel rather than by the passengers they carry, allowing a balanced distribution of bus routes and eliminating the former destructive competition that clogged the main roads and left other parts of the city unserved. All ten bus companies earn an operating profit.
“The city pays the companies for the buses, about 1 percent of the bus value per month. After ten years, the city takes control of the buses and uses them for transportation to parks or as mobile schools. The average bus is only three years old, largely because of the recent infusion of newly designed buses, including the articulated and bi-articulated buses, into the system.”
(http://www.fta.dot.gov/assistance/technology/research_4391.html)
Peter –
The Curitiba system you describe is in fact taxpayer funded. The bus operators are private, but the original question was about private, non-tax-supported alternatives.
The Curitiba analogy, applied here, would be to hand over TriMet’s operations to private companies but have TriMet continue to plan, organize, dispatch, set fares, and pay for the routes.
Perhaps private contractors could eliminate some waste, but the only way for them to make a real profit would be to cut salaries and benefits for drivers, enact harsher work rules, or charge TriMet more for the same service.
I’m not opposed to private operating contractors — they are a great way to start up a new service, but to switch over TriMet to mostly privately-contracted service on major routes, you’d have to convince a lot of people that there would be significant cost savings without hurting workers, riders, and taxpayers.
– Bob R.
We should nationalize McDonalds too. Seriously. We’ll nationalize them, set the burge prices all at $1.00 and then pay the workers 14.50 per hour, or about 40% more than a liveable wage. That way they’ll never quit. Better yet we’ll unionize the work force, give them great benifits, and make it almost impossible for them to get fired even if they are almost completely unproductive.
If that doesn’t make everyone in the US we’ll just pass some social engineering via subliminal Government certified advertising to encourage everyone to eat McDonald’s hamburgers. If anything it would save the environment because they’re soy right?
Once all that is done we’ll then cover any shortage with general funds from the income tax base. We shouldn’t need to cover the burgers at any more than about $6.00-7.00 vs. the 2-3 bucks they cost now per person. In addition to that we’ll open the stores to everyone, no rights to refuse service or anything. In addition, let’s add some legislation that says, if someone is hungry, McDonalds HAS to feed them.
There. It’s all perfect now and EVERYONE can have McDonald’s anytime all the time.
Socialism. McDonald’s style. Great parallel to the current funding, legislation, and Government transit solutions to public/mass transit and roadways/autos.
To say that the private sector failed mass transit would be to say McDonald’s in the above scenario failed because they couldn’t turn a profit.
If a business isn’t free to set guidelines and operational criteria, charge rates applicable to services and pay people based on worth of the services then there is obviously a problem. Yeah, then a private sector business would fail. Because it obviously isn’t sustainable.
But I digress, let me get straight to a major problem I have with this whole “private sector failed” myth.
Michael Wilson Says:
“(with appropriate investments in alternatives to create choices)” Are you suggesting that more money needs to be spent on light rail, streetcars, etc? If so why?
Would it be possible to develop alternatives by simply opening the market to private buses, vans and jitney services regardless of whether they be corporate, or mom and pop businesses? What’s the problem with private, non tax supported alternatives?
MW
I hate to say this, but the only logical explanation is the Government & Respective Special Interests don’t want to give up the power. The private market had the industry taken care of, but with intrusion, the private sector quickly gave up any interest (re: history of passenger rail & streetcars, and more importantly the history of private road construction in the US). There are too many contradictions for any other answer to provide a legitimate reason.
Ross Williams Says: There aren’t any. No one seems to have a clear, realistic economic model that works to create and maintain such a private competitive system. Without that, the idea is just fanciful musing. We have public transit systems because the private ones failed.
Someone hasn’t read ALL of the history. Review the documents, research what state, cities, and of course the Feds did during the destruction of the private passenger services (rail, transit, etc). To say the systems failed is a gross injustice. They where generally destroyed, physically, fiscally, and competitively by an entity also known as the “Government”. Regulation killed the last competitiveness and profitable operation of transit in Portland, same issues killed of the attempt at competition with highly subsidized auto oriented roadways with the passenger railroads. When the Government destroys an industry by coming in with income tax based subsidies and such a private industry doesn’t have a chance. They can’t go out and charge people based on income, they can’t collect money on the street corner, they can’t walk up to your house and demand you hand over monies. The Government when operating an entity (roadways for instance, and now mass transit) CAN do ALL of these things.
– Mass transit didn’t fail, it was destroyed, eliminated, and the companies where simply stabbed in the back. The individuals, leaders, and investors lost more than a dollar or two by this and America lost a primary driving force of our economy. It is amazing we still do as well as we do.
Please, everyone read up on this topic. There is a LOT there. Not just on transit, but other industries also. Public education, medical services, private fire and police response, and many more services have been eliminated by Government encroachment (monopoly) and then provided less efficiently, more costly (to society in general), and with less ROI than the private sector.
To repeat one last time, in summary: “Mass transit and the various privately operated passenger services didn’t fail, they where destroyed (Key System), eliminated (Jitneys), or assimilated (Amtrak) into the now existing Government monopoly on such services.”
Excuse the bad grammer above. Long days aren’t my specialty and I’m pushing 20 hrs right now. Everyone should get the point though.
Ross Williams writes: ” We have public transit systems because the private ones failed.”
Not exactly correct. When the jitneys began to compete against the streetcars in the early 1900’s the streetcar companies went to city hall in most of the cities nationwide and got jitneys outlawed. BTW a Mr. Griffith who I believe came out to Portland from the parent company in Philadelphia to argue for the end of the jitneys that were competing with Portland Railway, Light and Power.
In the 1930s the Feds passed the Public Utilities Holding Act. At that time most streetcar companies were owned by the local electric company. The law resulted in the electric companies selling off their streetcar divisions
Those two act, first at the local level and then one on the national level probably did more to ruin private transit in America than anything else.
MW
Bob R. Writes: “The Curitiba system you describe is in fact taxpayer funded”
Bob I would like to know where you get this informnation. The URBS that is the government organization that manages the system is run by the government, but all the articles I have seen including a major one in “Mass Transit” magazine from May/June of 1997 says that the system operates without a subsidy.
Please fill us in. What is your source?
It costs a fraction of what a light rail system. Something like 1.3 million commuters use it daily, or 40% of the population. Buses run about 3 minutes apart. And most people in the business praise it.
MW
Bob R,
I’m actually not advocating either way, I think Tri-Met works pretty well as it is, and though obviously the Curitiba system is much more impressive, Curitiba is much more dense than pdx, and the politics of automobile use are much less severe, so it’s hard to even compare.
As to your other point, notice i said “a private/public partnership” :), though the city only pays for the stops (unless you want to include the streets) of which there are 200+ at ~$4.5 million, the rest is entirely financed by the fares. I was just trying to show that there are indeed other ways to do it that involve private enterprise. The bus companies there may not compete on price, but they compete on scheduling.
“Please, everyone read up on this topic. There is a LOT there. Not just on transit, but other industries also. Public education, medical services, private fire and police response, and many more services have been eliminated by Government encroachment (monopoly) and then provided less efficiently, more costly (to society in general), and with less ROI than the private sector.”
Adron,
ok, i’ll bite. i actually enjoy reading about the failure and corruption of government policies (though, let’s not excuse private industry, here–if someone is holding a gun to your head and someone else is picking your pockets, you don’t excuse the pickpocket). recommend some reading, preferably by an author without the last name “Rand”.
“When the jitneys began to compete against the streetcars in the early 1900’s the streetcar companies went to city hall in most of the cities nationwide and got jitneys outlawed.”
Michael,
you left out the first half of that story. you know the part where the many interest groups organized under “The Good Roads Movement” to ensure that paved roads were provided at the public expense for the benefit of the few who owned cars (though the movement was originally started by the bicyclists of the League of American Wheelmen). They eventually succeeded in creating the Office of Road Inquiry, which later morphed into the Bureau of Public Roads, finally to be replaced by the FHA–all of which were effectively run by the interest groups in order to fulfill their goal of building more roads at the public’s expense, resisting tolls and gas taxes, and making sure when taxes were eventually applied, their revenues could not be spent on anything other than more “free” roads–where do you think the term “freeway” comes from? it is not “free” as in “freedom”, it’s “free” as in “free beer”. without such public subsidies, jitneys never could have competed, since they would have had no roads to run on.
When the jitneys began to compete against the streetcars in the early 1900’s the streetcar companies went to city hall in most of the cities nationwide and got jitneys outlawed
That was almost 100 years ago. I was referring to the private systems that still existed up until the 1960’s. But the reality is that even those systems required public regulation to work as you make clear. I think the claim that their ultimate failure was a result of those regulations is questionable but doesn’t change the basic point. We have public transit because private providers failed.
“We have public transit because private providers failed”
Please cite the evidence for this. Any evidence.
This is the biggest lie in the entire public transportation business, and a major reason (given by them) that public transport agencies refuse to give up their monopoly power.
Michael, Peter –
It is correct that I was referring to capital costs of the Curitiba system when I stated “taxpayer funded”. If we look only at operating costs, there are TriMet bus lines in dense corridors today that fully cover their costs, and it is arguable (if you exclude capital costs) that the Blue Line covers its costs as well in the central portions.
I did not criticize the Curitiba system, but I want to point out that it would not exist without government intervention – dedicated transit corridors, strict zoning for high density along those corridors (far more density than Portland is trying to achieve), and laws which discourage private parking.
It should be noted that Curitiba’s crowding at peak hours is quite high, beyond what standards in the USA call for, and they do not have to deal with “ADA” compliance.
According to this Transportation Research Board article, the average speed including stops on this system is 12mph, which is less than MAX at 19.4mph or TriMet buses at 15.8mph. This speed difference is primarily due to serving close-in (12km radius), highly dense corridors – MAX moves slowly between Rose Quarter and Goose Hollow, for example.
Currently, the political will in our region is that transit should serve suburban and low-density areas, for reasons of economic justice and to lay the groundwork for future increases in density along certain corridors. I tend to agree with this philosophy, but it comes at a price in the form of large public subsidies.
Were we to adopt the Curitiba model, we would be placing restrictions on auto use that would be politically untenable, increasing densities to the point where most neighborhood associations would rebel, and dropping service to the lowest density areas.
On a technical level, I think that the Curitiba model could absolutely “work” here, but I don’t think its what most people want for our region.
Finally, on the topic of costs: Eugene, OR recently completed and launched a busway between Eugene and Springfield. It features articulated buses, LRT-style stations, multiple boarding doors, and significant portions of ROW. The system is 4 miles long at a cost of $24 million, including six buses — $6 million per mile. 60% of the system runs in dedicated ROW, much of which is the equivalent of “single tracked”. Significantly less expensive per-mile than rail initially, but not nearly as inexpensive as the Curitiba model would suggest, given US construction costs.
Eugene is coming close to meeting their ridership goals, although they are having trouble keeping on schedule. According to a recent Register-Guard article, “About three times a day, on average, a bus falls so far behind schedule – six to eight minutes or more – that it’s unable to make up the lost time and is pulled from the route”. Unlike Curitiba, the system is 100% subsidized, offering free fares to its 4500 weekday passengers.
– Bob R.
An additional note about Curitiba, according to this paper (which I believe comes from an advocacy organization, so take that into account) claims that Curitiba is embarking on a plan to upgrade its densest bus corridors to light rail due to capacity and quality-of-service limitations.
– Bob R.
Please cite the evidence for this. Any evidence.
Find a successful, profitable transit system that was replaced by a public one. The reality is there aren’t any. And there were a lot of private providers at one time.
Before you complain too much about bus drivers salaries, you need to understand why the government doesn’t pay anyone minimum wage: It costs them too much. If you pay someone minimum wage, (that isn’t 16,) they qualify for various benefits, from food stamps, to public housing, to help with their energy bills, etc… I’m not saying that people earning minimum wage qualify for so many benefits that they effectively earn $14/hr, in fact far from it, (even if you don’t count the time that it takes to apply for all those program.) Mainly, those programs are very inefficient ways of getting money into the hands of people. And while McDonald’s doesn’t have to worry about things like that, the government does, cause ultimately the paychecks and the benefits all come out of the same pot. It is cheaper to just give the bus drivers more money, and so they do… So while cutting wages may indeed make a profit for a private bus company, those profits ultimately will come from society as a whole. In Sweden, it would be considered theft, and would get you arrested. But you know, Sweden is pretty much a socialist country, so you libertarians don’t have to worry about that problem here.
(Delta had a big scandal in 2002 when it was revealed that some of their pilots qualified for food stamps, and everyone was shocked and thought that pilots should make more than that… However, the fact that our bus drivers make more money than Delta’s pilots doesn’t bother me, the average bus driver has a much harder job than the average pilot because you have to deal with all sorts of people, where as the pilot is in a bullet proof room, and has stewardess to deal with the people…)
“We have public transit because private providers failed”
Boy that’s classic, Ross.
Is that your revisionist history of Rose City Transit?
It’s a shame someone would speak with such autority and be so horribly mistaken.
When Rose City asked the city for a fare increase, the city created TriMet. After lengthly debate and lawsuits, and a transit worker’s strike, TriMet assumed all operations of Rose City Transit in December of 1969. They quickly absorbed many of the outlaying suburban bus services over the next few years.
The city killed Rose City Transit.
It’s now one of the most costly, obscured and non-accountable public agencies in the State.
Ben –
I see you quoted directly from an online article by Adam J. Benjamin. (Is that you by any chance – thus the nickname “Ben”? If not, you probably should have credited him or linked to the article.)
The sentence you omitted from the paragraph reads: Rose City Transit was not doing enough to generate ridership and meet federal air quality standards.
Clearly there are multiple dimensions to this story. Does anyone have a link to an authoritative, neutral article on the history of the demise of Rose City Transit?
– Bob R.
PS… The article gets some other facts wrong, such as when the Transit Mall opened, etc… it was written somewhat casually so I wouldn’t want to use it as a primary source.
The official history – and I don’t think anyone really disagrees with this – is that Rose City Transit had been facing declining ridership and was threatening to go bankrupt. They wanted a massive fare increase to continue service. That doesn’t sound like a profitable private model.