AREA'S TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL THREAT BY AARON OSTROM ALT-TRANS Take a moment to think about the environmental qualities that people value: clean air, clear water, trees and parks, a view of the mountains in the distance. Consider the social qualities that people value: lively neighborhoods and healthy, safe communities. Remember the economic qualities that people value: family wage jobs. These are the foundation of a good quality of life, and are a big part of what makes Washington state a great place to live and do business. But Washington's quality of life is unraveling under the onslaught of our current transportation patterns. The environmental, social and economic impacts of our transportation system are tremendous. Washington's transportation challenge is to find ways to connect people with the goods and services they need, at an acceptable cost. The Problem Washington residents drive over 50 billion miles per year. Cars are our largest source of air pollution. They are major contributors to urban sprawl, water pollution, oil spills and global warming. Auto accidents kill around 40,000 people in the U.S. every year and seriously injure 500,000 more. Driving erodes our community life. It consumes public spaces - about 50 percent of the surface area in most cities is directly or indirectly dedicated to cars (streets, parking lots, etc.) And the exhaust, noise and risk makes city streets generally unpleasant places to be. Finally, driving is beginning to strangle our economy. Traffic congestion severely inflates the cost of moving goods and services and hinders our economic competitiveness; congestion is estimated to cost the Puget Sound region $1.5 billion per year. The point is not that all driving is terrible. Cars are very useful and valuable. The problem is that when driving is the only viable option for most people, the system breaks down. Projecting current trends into the future makes the problem even more ominous. There will be nearly a million more people in the Puget Sound region by 2010. At an average of 4.25 trips per person per day, that's almost four million new trips per day in the region. What's the solution? It's a $50 billion dollar question (regional transportation plans call for $58 billion in investments by 2020.) Many argue the solution is better transit and more bicycling, walking and carpooling. Some argue that the way to solve our transportation problems is to build more roads. Needless to say, the stakes are very high. What investments make sense? Regional transit One big opportunity is the Regional Transit Authority's (RTA) Regional Transit Plan. The RTA is offering Puget Sound voters a package of light rail, commuter rail and regional bus improvements. Their $3.67 billion proposal will increase the number of trips people make on transit in the region by almost 50 percent, even by conservative estimates. Rail transit is a smart investment. It offers a predictable, reliable way to travel, in a region where traffic congestion -- already estimated to cost $1.5 billion per year -- is projected to quadruple. It offers the transportation infrastructure required to make growth management work -- a system that can serve the concentrated urban centers called for in regional growth management plans. It also lays the foundation for keeping our region economically competitive: studies show that investments in rail transit create 200 percent more increased value in worker output than investments in highways. But the real advantage is simply efficiency. Rail investments offer real people moving capacity at a far lower financial, social and environmental cost than more highways. The RTA plan also offers vastly improved bus service, serving major regional centers and destinations and providing new direct connections between suburbs. The express routes will free up 300,000 hours of bus service provided by local transit agencies that can be redirected into improved local service. Transit critics claim that public transportation is not cost-effective and that the key to solving congestion problems is to build more roads and highways. But road construction is extremely expensive: major highways can cost $100 million to $120 million per mile (the last seven miles of I-90 cost $1.57 billion). A study recently released by the State Department of Transportation shows that the cost for upgrading an intercity rail line is $90 per passenger mile, 220 percent less expensive than a new freeway lane at $200 per passenger mile. Space is also a significant issue -- people are not dying to turn over more real estate to pavement. But the real problem is that investing in more highways just doesn't solve the problem. More highways mean more driving. The irrefutable evidence of the last 20 years is that new lanes are filled by more cars, creating a vicious, terribly expensive cycle of more roads, more traffic jams and more pollution. Trying to cure congestion by building more roads is like trying to cure obesity by loosening your belt. The opening of the new I-90 bridge in 1989 generated over 40,000 new vehicle crossings per day -- a 60 percent increase! Other solutions Improved public transportation will not solve our transportation problems single-handedly. Investments in bicycling and walking are also essential. Twenty-seven percent of travel trips are less than one mile in length -- easy bicycling and walking distance. Like transit, investments in walking and bicycling offer benefits to the huge numbers of people for whom driving is not an option (an estimated 30 percent of the population is too old, too young, disabled or chooses not to drive). Another important step is to begin reducing the hidden subsidies for driving. We pay only a small part of what driving really costs through gas and other auto taxes. Property taxes, income taxes, and other general fund revenues pay for car-related safety services (like traffic police), for parking (the IRS allows businesses to deduct free parking), and even for much of the cost of building roads. The general public foots the bill for health and environmental costs (like air and water pollution) through higher health care costs, higher food prices (air pollution reduces agricultural productivity) and other penalties. One conservative estimate is that the hidden costs of driving total $700 billion per year in the United States. These are subsidies that encourage people to drive. They need to be incorporated into the cost of driving. We need to develop more and better transportation demand management (TDM) programs. TDM programs use economic incentives to promote alternatives and discourage driving alone. Strategies like increasing parking fees and subsidizing transit passes increase transit ridership and support bicycling and walking. The RTA's transit proposal does include funds for experimenting with incentive programs that reduce driving. Perhaps the most important transportation investment of all is better land use. Low-density development patterns that separate housing, employment centers and commercial districts force people to move about their lives in cars. Compact, mixed-use developments that integrate residential and commercial centers make transportation alternatives much more viable. Sea-Tac expansion The third runway dilemma offers another interesting look at a transportation dilemma. Regional leaders are facing tremendous local opposition to press ahead with a $3 billion Sea-Tac expansion. (Flying is the only mode of transportation that is more polluting and less efficient than single occupant vehicles.) Their only explanation is that they have no other alternatives. But more efficient management of the airport and better inter-city rail offer intriguing possibility -- they might do the job for much less. Commuter and short-distance flights account for approximately 40 percent of Sea-Tac's operations. Over 25 percent of Sea-Tac's flights are short flights in the I-5 corridor, between Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Many of these flights could be replaced with improved intercity rail service. TDM strategies -- charging extra gate fees for peak hour flights and other pricing measures -- would discourage the inefficient overallocation of space to commuter flights and promote switching to rail. High speed inter-city rail service between Vancouver, B.C. and Eugene Ore., with a direct link to Sea-Tac would cost around $1.5 billion. It would provide an efficient, low-pollution alternative for freeway drivers as well as airline passengers. The way to resolve our transportation problems and protect our quality of life is to invest in a balanced transportation system with better transit, improved rail, better facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists, and better land use. Incentives for using alternatives will also dramatically improve the system's performance. The bottom line is that people need better choices. When it's time to invest our transportation taxes we need to ask ourselves what we want and what we'll get. Do we want more pollution, more traffic and less livable communities? Or do we want a comprehensive and reliable system of alternatives that provides an economically and environmentally attractive alternative to increasingly endless traffic jams? It's time to protect our quality of life. Aaron Ostrom is policy director for ALT-TRANS, a statewide coalition of public interest groups, businesses, public agencies and concerned individuals working to promote transportation alternatives. Its offices are in Seattle. (206) 325-9932