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"The toll road of denial is a long and dangerous one. The price? Your soul" - J Peterman

Knew It Was Gonna Happen

I've been waiting for that day. The day when the Busway in Miami is handed over to the cars. We knew it was gonna happen...somewhere.

Now they might get their wish if county commissioners and other local elected officials approve a proposed plan to convert the Busway into -- among other alternatives -- a four-lane highway with express toll lanes where private vehicles would share the road with buses. The revenue would then be used to fund the cash-strapped county transit agency.

This is one of the things I fear with BRT boosterism, that eventually the road will revert to cars. To some degree my fears are unfounded, but this should give us caution.

How About Something Besides Cars?

Quotes like these kill me.

"If you're late for work, and you might get fired if you're late one more time, it might be worth the (toll)," said Scott Haggerty, an Alameda County supervisor and commission chairman.

How about creating a transportation system that can get everyone to work at the same time every day?? I bet that would help more than paying a single toll because you're perpetually late.

Is This Proof...

that the subsidization of roads to sprawl are costing us a lot of money?

The Federal Highway Administration reported that motorists drove 108 billion fewer miles last year, a 3.6 percent drop from 2007 levels. While significant, this reduction — which has an impact on gasoline tax revenues — is far less severe than the reduction in travel experienced by toll roads across the country. The continued drop in toll road use on well regarded facilities like Orange County, California’s 91 Express Lanes brings into question the long-term sustainability of tolling as a form of revenue collection compared to the more modern gasoline excise tax.

Roads & Bridges

Everyone remembers the constant repeating of Roads and Bridges during the campaign and during the process for the stimulus package. I'm pretty sure when he was discussing this he meant existing roads and bridges instead of new ones. Well this wasn't so clear to the road warriors:

"The President's strong support for roads and bridges serves him well. Despite the controversy over the Economic Recovery package, 94% of Americans supported the President's call to increase infrastructure investments. Roads and bridges rank #2 in importance among infrastructure priorities for the American people. And while Congress only provided 3.6% of the Economic Recovery funds for roads and bridges, the President's consistent promotion of highway infrastructure made his views crystal clear.

I think its funny that when roads and bridges are discussed, people on the road side automatically think highways. It's like a dog whistle but in this case it might not mean what they think it does, which to us should be heartening. There are also plenty of complaints about tolling and the feeling that there won't be enough money to build the highway system all over again.

1. The proposal implies that the 87-year old budgetary mechanism known as "contract authority" be deleted from the budget. Without contract authority, multi-year highway projects cannot be fully-funded.
2. There is no mention of President Obama's support for roads and bridges anywhere in DOT's budget framework.
3. "Road pricing" is discussed as an option in the budget framework, despite Secretary LaHood's opposition to tolling existing roads.
4. There is no room in the budget for any substantial increase in highway funding, despite the President's recent call for investment levels that would rival the funding for construction of the Interstate Highway System.

Perhaps Mr. Obama tricked us during the election with the whole roads and bridges comment on repeat. I for one would welcome the trick if it meant we are changing the way we're funding new capacity and alternative transportation modes. We will see.

Thinking Inside the Box Left at DOT

Yonah as usual has a great post up on the confirmation hearing of future Secretary Lahood. There were a few parts that bothered me, including the repackaging of old ideas as innovative. When Senator Klobuchar of Minnesota asked what kind of innovative ways to replenish the highway trust fund, he said:

Public/private programs… Tolling of new lanes, tolling of highways, is a different way of thinking about it… We need to think of those kind of opportunities… Differently than just the gasoline tax… We know that people are still using Amtrak even though gas prices went down, we know people in places like Chicago are still using mass transit.

While I like all the nods to transit that were mentioned, and there were a lot of those, the idea of taxing cars alone as the only way to get things done, even if it is tolling is a bit one sided. What about how the Red Line in Portland was financed by trading property in exchange for Bechtel building the line. Or the Seattle Streetcar where property owners taxed themselves for half of the capital cost.

We need to somehow tie transportation investments to land use and that could mean funding based on true costs and things like tolling for suburban roads, but also other ideas that are floating around out there that could change the way we think about these investments and their value (H+T). Let's start to think harder. It's like we don't know how to be super innovative anymore. Or maybe I'm just hoping for too much.

Things We Could Have Told You

Sometimes studies are funny things.

However, very few road projects are 100 percent “toll viable” — meaning, profitable and thus enticing to the private sector...

So much for PPPs for all!

Anti-Rail Activist Out of Office

When I heard from friends that Gerald was gone, I was a bit shocked. He was one of the major architects behind killing Austin light rail in 2000 and I don't think anyone should ever forgive him for that. He got pulled out by the Obama undertow. Kinda feel bad for Ben Wear, he lost one of his three sources.

Remember the Alamo

In the back of my mind, this seems like a really bad idea. Should I have a reason not to be skeptical?

The shocker last night wasn't so much that a local toll-road official will take over as chairman of VIA Metropolitan Transit.

It had more to do with a revelation that behind-the-scene talks have drifted toward the possibility of merging the toll and bus agencies into a super agency. The Alamo Regional Mobility Authority, which is banking on toll-road plans but can pretty much do any type of transportation project, recently outlined an idea to create an overarching Multi-Modal Transportation Finance System.

With it, VIA and the RMA would combine to maximize financing capacity while allowing each agency to operate independently, says the RMA document, which was prepared for a city-county transportation task force.

This might be the first shot in a long Texas war that would attempt to combine these recently created mobility authorities with local transit agencies. Not something that is unfamiliar so close to the Alamo. My fear is a region wide transportation authority focused on toll roads will give suburban jurisdictions too much clout over all transportation and leave the more urban areas hanging out to dry. Specifically, Austin's outside pols have been trying to take away Capital Metro's sales tax for as long as anyone can remember. We'll have to watch and see what happens, but color me skeptical.

Doesn't Seem Like a Problem to Me

From the San Antonio Express News Transport Blog:

President-elect Barack Obama's call for sweeping infrastructure investments to put 2.5 million people to work has experts debating just what and how much government should do.

One problem, for some, is that toll roads and privatization could get left behind.

Oh noes! We wouldn't want that. I mean the whole idea of toll roads and privatization is getting money from the government right?

A Blank Canvas

So many people are expecting that their agendas will be possible in an Obama administration. Even folks looking to expand roadway capacity and bring tolling schemes to bear. Now tolling is not all bad, but it's not as some feel, the solution to everything. And bus rapid transit is not the solution to everything just like rail isn't the solution to everything.

Michael Replogle, transportation director for the Environmental Defense Fund, told the group that with revenue from gasoline taxes in constant flux, leaders need to start thinking about adding tolls to existing roads and opening rapid bus transit lines.

The transportation expert also suggested that technology will lead to GPS-based pay-by-the-mile taxes, or an all-toll-road system that changes fees based on real-time traffic volume.

"We're at the cusp of a new era," Replogle said, adding that President-elect Barack Obama's administration will likely embrace such changes.

Do we have any evidence that Obama or his administration would be behind these types of measures? I feel like this is something he hasn't signed on to, at least not that I have seen. But as people had said before the election season even started, folks see him as a blank canvas to project their hopes and dreams. I heard he's going to give everyone a star wars lego set. Can I expect to see that soon?

As an aside, can we stop calling freeway buses in HOV lanes bus rapid transit? We need to define what BRT really is so people understand what others mean when they say BRT.

Pineapple Expressway

The plan in Hawaii that Mayoral candidate Kobayashi pulled together with road warrior and former candidate Panos P is exactly the reason why we're on the wrong track moving towards livable communities in this country. Any time you create a situation where more cars and rubber tired vehicles can dominate the landscape, you kill any hope of developing places for people.

This plan, an elevated highway that would operate as HOT lanes and Rapid Bus lanes is a disaster. All it does it keep people driving in one of the densest cities in the United States and creates a huge scar on the landscape.


This is not transit, this is a sprawl inducing anti urban elevated arroyo for auto and oil coin collection. People need to seriously stop thinking that more concrete will solve their problems. The benefit of rail transit is not just the transit itself, it's the communities that are created and the reductions in the need for auto trips. No one is saying that people need to get rid of thier cars. But for a lot of people, relief from the ball and keychain is what they need long term.

Why is such a beautiful place such as Hawaii even thinking about creating such a scar? They should be instead, investing in thier future, because once this road fills up the Pols will tell them they need to build another one. The island is only going to get denser and growing out is not an option.

Bonds, Road Bonds

Shaking and stirred? But they pay for themselves! As one commenter brings up:

Funny how no one brings things like this up when talking about transit. Transit never has the expected usage and is a waste. Toll roads without expected usage are planning for the future.