Will highway construction make traffic worse?

Much like with energy in the 1970s and solid waste in the 1980s, our priorities are upside down. WSDOT and legislators spend billions on highways while starving transit and cutting trip reduction.

By PETER HURLEY
Tranportation Choices Coalition

In the 1970s, we were told we needed to raise taxes to build nuclear and coal-fired power plants to meet demand for electricity. A few activists suggested it would be less costly, less polluting and more effective to invest first in energy conservation.

Many utilities and cities ignored the activists, dismissing conservation as “impractical” and “a waste of money.” Instead, they invested in five nuclear power plants. Within a few years the Washington Public Power Supply System was bankrupt, ratepayers were saddled with enormous costs and energy conservation had been adopted by mainstream policy makers as the region’s number one energy priority.

WSDOT's project evaluation criteria measure "driver delay," not "person delay," so a driver in a single-occupancy vehicle counts as much as 60 people in a bus.

In the 1980s, we were told we needed to raise taxes to build landfills and incinerators to beat the garbage crisis. A few activists suggested it would be less costly, less polluting and more effective to invest first in waste reduction and recycling. Many cities and counties ignored the activists, saying “no one would be willing to separate their garbage.” Instead, counties like Snohomish built an expensive new landfill.

Today, the landfill sits as empty as the ratepayer wallets still paying for it. Families across the state separate their recyclables, companies reduce waste at the source and state policy mandates waste reduction as the number one priority, recycling as priority two and landfilling/incineration as last.

Now it’s 2000 and many well-meaning people are telling us we need to raise state gas taxes 55 cents a gallon to pay for 15 big highway widening projects to “meet demand.” Transportation Choices has a different, more affordable, cleaner vision for our transportation system.

We believe we first need to understand the root of our traffic problems:

Sprawl. One story office and retail strips, surrounded by acres of free parking, with people forced to live far away, is social engineering at its worst. Many suburban and rural residents have no real choices in the way they travel. They are forced into their cars by zoning codes that require sprawl, prohibiting the “smart growth” of pedestrian and transit-friendly neighborhoods.

Bad investments. The 1999 – 2001 Washington State Department of transportation budget allocates 95 percent of its $2.6 billion to highway and auto ferries while slashing spending for rail, buses and trip reduction. This despite the fact that a recent University of California (Berkeley) study of eight national highway widening projects showed that, on average, 90 percent of the new lane capacity was used up within five years by new trips. Often, highway widening encourages commercial and residential growth in rural areas, increasing sprawl and auto dependency, worsening traffic jams, leading for calls to further widen roads, creating an ever-worsening, ever more expensive “traffic spiral.” Forty years of over-investing in highways and under-investing in rail, bus and trip reduction is coming home to roost.

So, if sprawl and bad investments are the problem, what’s the solution? Transportation Choices believes in a simple three-part solution:

Prevent traffic. Every weekday morning, the State Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) program removes an average of 18,500 cars from our roads (enough cars to fill three lanes of Interstate 5 for an hour). CTR is probably the single most cost-effective transportation investment the state makes. Despite the success, earlier this year legislators cut back the program by eliminating a popular tax credit that allowed businesses to provide employees with discounted bus passes. At least 10 major employers have dropped out of the bus-pass program, putting more employees, and more cars, back on the road. Instead of cutting CTR, legislators should dramatically expand the program, increasing the pitiful $6 million budget (less than $1 for every $400 in the transportation budget) to at least $50 million (still less than 2 percent of the transportation budget).

The second part of preventing traffic is encouraging “smart growth.” Redmond, Kirkland and Bellevue are all doing a good job of zoning to create neighborhoods where residents can walk, bike or take the bus to work, recreate and shop. These “smart growth” communities cut traffic by providing people real choices and building great places to live. But far too many communities prohibit smart growth with zoning laws that require huge parking lots surrounding single-use strip malls and business parks.

Just as Seattle City Light will spend $17 million this year in incentives for developers to include energy conservation in their new projects, state and regional transportation budgets should include at least $50 million a year to reward developers, cities and counties that meet and exceed smart growth standards. One has to question whether spending state transportation dollars in communities that ignore smart growth should be prohibited as a waste of taxpayer dollars.

Expand transit choices. Many of Sound Transit’s new regional buses are standing room only. Most of Puget Sound’s Park & Ride lots are full. A vanpool market analysis indicates that several thousand cars could be taken off the road by expanding vanpool marketing and incentives. Trains to Portland and Vancouver are sold out on holiday weekends. Thousands of people want to use transit, but end up driving alone because there aren’t enough rail trips, buses or vanpools. We could take thousands of cars off the road tomorrow with relatively modest investments in providing people the choices they want.

Effective capacity. According to the Washington State Department of Transportation, 60 percent of congestion-related delay is caused by accidents. For a fraction of the cost of a highway widening project we could buy more tow trucks to rapidly clear accidents. On I-5 a single HOV lane carries nearly as many people as three general purpose lanes. Signal prioritization allows buses to keep signals green, speeding traffic along major arterials. So, why do we invest relatively little in these low cost, highly effective investments?

WSDOT project evaluation criteria measure “driver delay,” not “person delay,” so a driver in a SOV counts as much as 60 people in a bus. On I-405, WSDOT is proposing to add two general purpose lanes (likely to worsen traffic) while refusing to study an new transit-only lane.

Much like with energy in the 1970s and solid waste in the 1980s, our priorities are upside down. WSDOT and legislators spend billions on highways while starving transit and cutting trip reduction. The system is broke and it’s time to fix it. Throwing billions more into a dysfunctional system won’t do the trick – it would likely worsen traffic.

Just as with energy and solid waste, it’s time for the state to adopt a new three-part priority system, starting with prevention. Investing in prevention and transit will reduce traffic to allow those who need to use their cars more capacity to do so. Before any new taxes are raised we must “fix it first” by reforming our spending and policies to:

1. Prevent traffic
2. Expand transit choices
3. Effective capacity

Please join us in calling for government to “Fix it first” with “prevention and choices.”