Matthew Yglesias (June 17, 2008) - A Question of Priorities (Domestic Policy)

As a government planner in Maryland (non-transportation), I can attest that these plans are created and move at a stunningly glacial pace. The ICC was pushed through by the last Governor when gas prices were $2.50 a gallon. If the O'Malley administration decides to change course, it will be a five-to ten year process to turn the aircraft carrier a few degrees towards public transit.
-j

Posted by john i | June 17, 2008 9:33 AM

Hell, they were buying up land for the ICC right of way back when I lived in Gaithersburg in 1987. Glacial is right. Nobody needs the ICC.

Posted by staunch_hillbilly | June 17, 2008 9:41 AM

"The Intercountry Connector, a large highway, accounts for an order of magnitude more spending than do all the mass transit projects"

I realize this isn't a factor that you're keen into taking account of, but if that Connector is going to carry an order of magnitude more traffic than all the mass transit projects, it's quite reasonable to build it even if it costs an order of magnitude more than them.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | June 17, 2008 9:42 AM

never underestimate the influence of the road-contracting lobby in this country. you are talking about depriving some very wealthy, very connected men of their livelihood.

Posted by lee hendricks | June 17, 2008 9:52 AM

Before Matt starts pining for a purple line, he should head out and drive on the beltway a few times. Then he can come back and explain how the ICC isn't needed. And no, transit is not a full solution. Lots and lots of people have schedules that make transit utterly impractical when you add in the need to move kids around and make other short trips on the way to/from work.

Transit works great for young single people who live in a city. It works a lot less well for married people with kids who live in suburb A and have to travel to work in suburb B.

Wake me when Matt is capable of wrapping his head around that idea.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 10:02 AM

if that Connector is going to carry an order of magnitude more traffic than all the mass transit projects

I realize this isn't a factor that you're keen into taking account of, but why should I have to pay so much just so all of yous can conveniently move your fat asses from one place to another, and breathe your exhaust too boot?

Posted by Barry Braverman | June 17, 2008 10:08 AM

Re: Robertson

I don't think Matt's saying that we should ignore upkeep of public highways or anything, just that with high gas prices and increasing "overcrowding" in metro areas, we're quickly reaching the point where states need to make some difficult choices toward actually producing long-term solutions to the transit issue.

I imagine even you would appreciate more mass-transit solutions when we start reaching $5.00/gallon+ gas.

Posted by Brandon | June 17, 2008 10:11 AM

While I think they should be investing more in the Purple Line (connecting Bethesda and Silver Spring is a no-brainer), the ICC is a long-overdue necessity. It was delayed only because the delusion that Montgomery County was just a sleepy rural area with a few commuter homes extended past more decades than was warranted.

We complain here a lot about how bus transit is hobbled by antiquated hub-and-spoke route patterns that make using public transit a burden. Highway systems shouldn't be constrained by this mindset, either. The point of the ICC is to create a long overdue link between Baltimore and MoCo without having to go down to DC, first.

Posted by Tyro | June 17, 2008 10:14 AM

never underestimate the influence of the road-contracting lobby in this country. you are talking about depriving some very wealthy, very connected men of their livelihood.

Plenty of money to be made laying rail, as well, as a few gentlemen in the 19th c. happily discovered. (Viz., the building of the El in Chicago was basically one big graft scheme, though I don't know if it actually worked out for the schemers in the end.) No reason corruption can't work as well in favour of transit projects as highway projects.

Posted by ERM | June 17, 2008 10:16 AM

Transit works great for young single people who live in a city.

Ah, there's Jim-Bob and his sad identity politics. Eventually, Lesser Wingnuttia will have to decide whether public transport is for all Those People or for Yuppie Elitist Non-Breeding Bastards. Perhaps a generic 'Eeew, Not Me' will do, as the silly glibertarian boy will presumably say in several dozen times more words when he surely comes along.

Public transport works fine for people who go from suburb A to suburb B, if you fucking well build it in a way that makes it worth using, rather than treating it like a tedious homework assignment.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 17, 2008 10:18 AM

Here is a visual overview showing the relative amounts each jurisdiction (DC, MD, VA) is spending on car-only projects, road projects that benefit people and bikes as well, transit, etc.

Posted by David Alpert | June 17, 2008 10:20 AM

I drive less than 6000 miles a year, so even at $10/gallon, I wouldn't care much on a personal level.

However, I've commuted from Maryland to Northern VA in the past, and the metro system simply wasn't much of an answer (nor was the commuter rail).

Commuter rail was expensive, and time consuming - drive from home to station, take train to DC, connect to red line, connect again to yellow line, finally arrive. Way, way slower than driving, even with the horrible traffic

Using all metro was even slower, involving a drive down to the Greenbelt metro, parking fee, two connections, and a final arrival.

Back then, if my wife needed me home for any reason in the middle of the day, driving was 45 minutes. Metro/commuter rail was 90 minutes minimum.

Now try adding in a need to drop kids off (and pick them up) from childcare, where the being late charge is $5 per minute, and excessive lateness means "you don't get to use this service". If you commute from suburb to suburb, ransit simply isn't practical. Period.

The reality is, many jobs involve commuting from suburb to suburb, and there's no way to build useful transit systems that support that - there aren't enough bodies going from A to B.

You can wish that wasn't the case all you want, but wishing doesn't make it so. We have the built environment of suburbs and jobs outside of cities. That's what we have to work with.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 10:23 AM

Those men should diversify into the public transit sector. As should defense contractors into the alternative energy sector. We need a sustainability-industrial complex. I'd fund that.

"never underestimate the influence of the road-contracting lobby in this country. you are talking about depriving some very wealthy, very connected men of their livelihood."

Posted by john i | June 17, 2008 10:23 AM

Another aspect of families and mass transit is that many family have two parents, and only one need ferry the kids around. The other can get to work on a train.

Posted by Chuck | June 17, 2008 10:24 AM

It works a lot less well for married people with kids who live in suburb A and have to travel to work in suburb B.

Indeed. I suggest you move to suburb B and make life easier for everyone -- yourself included.

I'm not the one who picked a home miles away from my place of business, expecting gas to stay cheap forever. Why should I subsidize those who gambled and lost?

Posted by Matt B | June 17, 2008 10:26 AM

Barry, the people who use highways pay for a far larger percentage of the cost of building and maintaining highways, via gasoline taxes, than the users of rail pay for construction and maintainence of rail. Now, I'd support raising gas taxes even further, to fully cover the cost of road construction and maintainence, and to also cover a good chunk of the budget for the DOD, given how much of those expenses are tied to our involvement in the Persian Gulf, but the fact is people who use highways pay for their use a lot more than the people who use rail. Perhaps you should endeavor to be less obnoxiously insulting.

Posted by Will Allen | June 17, 2008 10:34 AM

James Robertson, you gave a lot of good reasons for why there should be more investment in public transport-- the public transit system in DC is ineffective for travelling between DC's Maryland suburbs and DC's Virginia suburbs just as the highway system is ineffective for traveling between Baltimore and MoCo. We're spending $2 billion to resolve the latter problem. We should address the former, as well.

Posted by Tyro | June 17, 2008 10:37 AM

None of this makes any difference. I remember hitting the Beltway from the Eastern Shore 10 years ago at 6:00 a.m. and running into bumper-to-bumper traffic. Anything they build will be just as crowded from the git-go, because the bottom line is that there are TOO MANY PEOPLE living there!

We got the hell out and took an initial 80 percent cut in income to live where the population density is 14 people per square mile. There aren't even any divided highways here. We don't lock our front door, and all I hear in the morning are birds.

Great God Almighty, free at last...

Posted by John H. Farr | June 17, 2008 10:38 AM

The Purple line really doesn't do much to help the people in Rockville, Gaithersburg, and Laurel. Outer suburbs need efficient transportation options too.

The Hub and Spoke System that we currently have is burdened by too much Spoke and a far away Hub. Connecting the spokes via the ICC would make a lot of driving trips become a lot shorter, and take significant traffic pressure off of the beltway.

Posted by Spike | June 17, 2008 10:38 AM

Here's what I don't get about the ICC. I assume, the biggest expected commuter trip is from Balitmore/I-95 to Rockville, Bethesda, or Western areas of D.C.
Right now a lot of that traffic goes down I-95 and then west on the beltway. After the ICC, it will then go down 270 which is already clogged. I can't see how this project won't make I-270 grind to a halt.
If a quality purple line could pull 10-20% of commuters off the northern stretch of the beltway, that would do more than anything to improve everyone's commute.

I do see the purpose of the ICC and when I was commuting from Baltimore to Rockville, it would have benefitted me, but it's mind-numbing to look at the cost of this project compared to everything else in the area.

Posted by bsci | June 17, 2008 10:49 AM

"Indeed. I suggest you move to suburb B and make life easier for everyone -- yourself included. "

I work out of the house, and - as I said - I drive less than 6k miles per year. However, that's not true for everyone in my neighborhood, and moving to the same suburb where the jobs are isn't always possible. Why? Well, cost of living has a lot to do with it. You live where you can afford to.

I know plenty of people who work in Silicon Valley, but who live far, far away from there - because it's nearly impossible for a non-rich person to buy anything in a non-crap neighborhood there. It's like that a lot of places. Add in a desire to have non-crappy schools for your kids to attend, and it gets even more complex.

Add in another factor - lots of the people I know are contractors, so they don't have fixed worksites. This year, they commute from suburb A to suburb B. Next year, it's off to suburb C, the year after, suburb D. Should they move every year? Yeah, there's a plan for kids - swap schools all the time.

The thing is, we don't have large numbers of people living in one area, with most of them trying to get to one other spot to work. We have a spider web - people live all over, and they work all over. There's really no way to build an efficient mass transit system for that use case.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 10:49 AM

Transit works great for young single people who live in a city. It works a lot less well for married people with kids who live in suburb A and have to travel to work in suburb B...

Even if that's the case, why should only "married people with kids who live in suburb A" possess good transportation options? Last time I checked, young single people (and older ones, and married ones) who live in cities pay taxes, too, and need to go places that aren't always within walking distance.

Posted by Jasper | June 17, 2008 11:07 AM

There's really no way to build an efficient mass transit system for that use case.

Well, we'll either have to figure one out or change living patterns, because I can't imagine that spending $400/month in gasoline is a good use of one's income. What you claim is "just the way things are" is actually just the result of people who took losing gambles in where they chose to live and what kind of development demands they made of their local politicians.

Posted by Tyro | June 17, 2008 11:07 AM

"when you add in the need to move kids around"

news-flash; children have these things called feet, I grew up in a pretty spread out suburb: I didn't get a ride anywhere after age 10. Used to bicycle cross town to football practice. Maybe a little of that would affect that obesity problem.

Posted by The Pale Scot | June 17, 2008 11:15 AM

the same solution -- decide we want to improve mass transit services.

So thats... the Green Lantern Theory of Transportation, then?

Posted by Al | June 17, 2008 11:16 AM

My commute from Silver Spring to NW DC runs right over the proposed purple line route. With a purple line, I could probably take the train to work. As it is now, i have a 30-minute drive. To take the train is a 90+ min commute because I need to go all the way into DC and part of the way back out. So I drive.

I'd love the purple line.

However, I also welcome the ICC, and would be much happier if MD and VA could actually cooperate and extend the ICC all the way across the river towards Tysons. As it is the ONLY way to go from the 355 / Rockville Pike corridor to the Rt 29 / I-95 corridor in the county is the Beltway. (I exaggerate only slightly, there are about 3 major roads that run sideways in MoCo). There needs to be another way to drive from here to there.

traffic and commuting is a systemic problem that doesn't have any one silver bullet solution. We need more and better roads, more and better public transit--rail and bus--and more and better alternative work-life policies that allow people to telecommute and afford to live closer to work. No one thing can solve all the problems, but enough avenues give people the opportunity to structure a better path to navigate the complexity that is daily life living here in our nation's capital with a dual-career couple with a kid or two in day-care.

(and, as an aside, Matt never mentioned that some of the biggest opponents to the purple line are the save our bike trail people. I love that trail. biking is nice, the purple line would be nicer).

Posted by PH | June 17, 2008 11:17 AM

Tyro,

It's hardly that simple. You can assume that a given set of suburbs is inefficient, but actual people live there. In order for them to relocate, they need to sell (or else they can't afford to buy somewhere else).

We spent the last 50 years creating this living pattern. It's not easy (and may not even be desirable to many of us) to change it. I seriously doubt that people are going to pack up and move to the cities en masse. I also don't see employers deciding to pack themselves into central locations.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 11:18 AM

Matt's not entirely wrong, and the ICC certainly is a white elephant project... but speaking as someone who spent several months commuting from Eastern Montgomery to Rockville, the lack of East-West roads here is appalling.

The road system was designed for roughly half as much traffic. Thousands of drivers go South on 29 or 95, West on the Beltway and then go back North on 270 every morning, clogging all the North-South roads for everyone who's actually going North or South. Countless others clog the back roads. The problem with the ICC is it either should have been built 40 years ago or sprawl should have been restricted. A little late for that. The situation requires new roads AND new transit options AND denser housing developments.

My solution was to move 5 minutes away from my office and within walking distance of a Metro Station. Not everyone can pull that off.

That said, I found this comment by James Robertson to be amusing:

"Transit works great for young single people who live in a city. It works a lot less well for married people with kids who live in suburb A and have to travel to work in suburb B."

The entire point of the Purple Line, as should be obvious from glancing at the map, is to move people from Suburb A to Suburb B without having to loop around through the city center. And most of the people clamoring for this train are (gasp!) married suburbanites who would like to spend more time with their kids.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 17, 2008 11:30 AM

The problem with James Robertson's argument is that suburbia is crap. Businesses stay a few years, maybe a few more if you don't count a move under two miles as a move, people come and go, and generally nothing is more confusing than revisiting a suburban neighborhood ten years later, because, without being really improved, everything is different.

And that was at the height of prosperity. James is subscribing to the Maypo Theory* that what we want, we must have! Move over, world, the US built suburbs and now all must obey because we like our cars!

There are actually three possibilities for all of the big road-building projects in the US-

One, that the road is clogged with traffic and congestion remains the same, as has happened in the past.

Two, that the road becomes a subsidy to land developers who are turning farmland into sprawl housing, increasing commuter distances, and worsening our greenhouse gas picture. This is actually a good example, repeated thousands of times over already, of the local corruption Matt referenced in a post yesterday. With the help of people like James Robertson, it's all legal and aboveboard!

Three, that the freeway is built, but high fuel costs mean only the super-rich can afford to use it.

Lucky us! Young people today will probably get to experience all three possible outcomes in turn- first, the subsidy to land developers, second, the continuing congestion, and finally, the wistful view of freeways almost empty of traffic, recalling the bygone days when we were too stupid to change and too rich to care.

All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

*In case this ad has disappeared, there used to be a tv commercial where a three-year-old refused to eat anything else and shouted "I WANT MY MAYPO!"

Posted by serial catowner | June 17, 2008 11:31 AM

sure, build more highways, they always solve the traffic problems. but i guess if we keep building them eventually its going to happen. right?

Posted by ron | June 17, 2008 11:36 AM

"...but speaking as someone who spent several months commuting from Eastern Montgomery to Rockville..."

wow, that must have been the worst traffic jam ever.

Posted by cha cha cha | June 17, 2008 11:37 AM

Umm, many businesses are transitory, regardless of location. Many of the investment houses that used to be in lower Manhattan are now in Jersey, Conn, or further away. Does that mean that it's time to tear down the subways?

As to the rationale for the purple line, I don't know that I oppose it - I can see both it and the ICC coexisting nicely.

As to farmland, lol. My wife has friends whose parents have sold farmland. Why? Simple - none of their children wanted to farm, and the only interested buyers were developers. It's kind of hard for farmers in the greater DC area to compete with the midwest farms.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 11:37 AM

the result of people who took losing gambles in where they chose to live

Sadly, those people tend to be a coveted political constituency and will, reliably, continue to drain precious resources to maintain an unsustainable lifestyle. And its hard to blame them, really. For most of their lives cities and dense, inner ring suburbs have been equated with poverty, crime, and general squalor.

They will cite over and over again how their children's safety would be threatened should they leave the leafy suburbs, ignoring that automobile accidents pose the greatest statistical threat of death and injury for anyone under 40. Its not racist entirely, though race is a factor. Mostly its a problem of perception. A middle or upper class neighborhood in the city is as nice as middle and upper class neighborhoods in the suburbs, but not on TV.

There are other factors, but the sad sack suburban American Dream was branded and sold to generations of Americans by automobile and energy companies; and undoing that kind of psychic damage will take a lot of time. Transit, and indeed any endeavor that favors the community over the privileged will continue to suffer.

Posted by RoboticGhost | June 17, 2008 11:40 AM

Of the items listed, extending the Green line to BWI does seem to be a mistake. There is already an Amtrak station and (IIRC) a MARC station, plus a 2 dollar Metrobus service (which when I have ridden has plenty of spare capacity) to Greenbelt.

Posted by Kolohe | June 17, 2008 11:40 AM

"...but speaking as someone who spent several months commuting from Eastern Montgomery to Rockville..."

wow, that must have been the worst traffic jam ever.

Posted by cha cha cha | June 17, 2008 11:48 AM

"Of the items listed, extending the Green line to BWI does seem to be a mistake. There is already an Amtrak station and (IIRC) a MARC station, plus a 2 dollar Metrobus service (which when I have ridden has plenty of spare capacity) to Greenbelt."

I agree about the BWI extension, but extending the Green Line at least as far as Laurel is long overdue.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 17, 2008 11:52 AM

Robotic Ghost - you forgot the prime reason couples with kids leave cities (or never move in to begin with) - the quality of the schools. I did a fairly intense study of school quality when we looked for a house in suburban Maryland, and - based on the quality - neither DC nor Baltimore got looked at as possible locations (not to mention that neither my wife nor I work in either city).

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 12:10 PM

James,

Point well taken. The local high school in my urban neighborhood is fantastic, so I tend to forget that most are not. There are myriad reasons for this and not every reason would go away just because the tax base moves back. Funding is an obvious issue, but so is culture. The trend toward specialization in schools might help a lot (see Ezra's well written article). It has worked pretty well in the few examples I can call to mind, but I'm certainly no expert. One might expect schools to improve as yuppie kids start attending, but there are no guarantees.

Posted by RoboticGhost | June 17, 2008 12:34 PM

The broader problem of funding projects in order from largest to smallest is this: cost overruns on the ICC will probably be larger than the entire cost of the Purple Line. The Purple Line is a small project that will generate a large benefit relative to its cost. I would like to see get some priority, since the ICC will probably hoover up whatever money is available.

Posted by mark | June 17, 2008 12:41 PM

Columbia Country Club.

Village of Chevy Chase.

Once you get past those two obstacles, talk to me about the Purple Line.

Posted by bdr | June 17, 2008 12:48 PM

Matthew writes,

The Intercountry Connector, a large highway, accounts for an order of magnitude more spending than do all the mass transit projects (i.e., everything else except the Montrose Parkway) on that list. Meanwhile, the Purple Line has to be light rail rather than a faster, higher-capacity system because heavy rail is "too expensive." But if Maryland politicians are really concerned about the current gas price situation, they'd drop the ICC and use the savings to fund the Purple Line for the medium term and to improve their bus service for the short term.

Why? If there's much greater demand for the ICC, it makes no sense to cancel it and spend the savings on transit instead. Your whole approach to transportation policy is just completely irrational. You want to ignore road and highway projects for which there is clear demand, and spend the money instead on transit projects that are vastly more expensive per passenger-mile, on the basis of "build it, and they will come" wishful thinking.

Good transit projects are expensive, but highways are expensive, too -- we live in a rich country and can afford to build the things we decide it's important to build.

There's vastly more demand for highways than for transit, and highway users pay their own way. In fact, highway users actually pay more to the federal government than it spends on road and highway infrastrucuture. In contrast, transit users are massively subsidized.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 12:54 PM

the building of the El in Chicago was basically one big graft scheme, though I don't know if it actually worked out for the schemers in the end

Yerkes gifted an observatory to the U of C, flipped Chicago the bird and split for London where he formed the Underground Electric Railways of London Company Ltd.

Posted by PanAmerican | June 17, 2008 1:04 PM

There's vastly more demand for highways than for transit

Not exactly. There's a vast amount of demand for more transportation infrastructure, of which highways are a subset of solutions to fulfill this demand.

Posted by Tyro | June 17, 2008 1:15 PM

Tyro,

Well, we'll either have to figure one out or change living patterns, because I can't imagine that spending $400/month in gasoline is a good use of one's income.

Way to go with those made-up numbers again. The average annual mileage of cars and light trucks in the United States is around 13,000 miles. The average fuel economy is around 20 mpg. Even at $4/gallon, that works out to average fuel costs of a little over $200/month. Half your made-up number. As reported here, Americans on average now spend about 4% of their after-tax income on transportation fuels. This is less than they were spending in 1981 (4.5%), and only about 2% more than they were spending at the lowest point since World War II (1.9%, in 1998). Furthermore, average fuel economy of passenger vehicles is now increasing. In 20 years, the most fuel-efficient car currently on the U.S. market (the Toyota Prius, which averages close to 50 mpg) will look like a gas-guzzler.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 1:19 PM

Tyro,

Not exactly. There's a vast amount of demand for more transportation infrastructure, of which highways are a subset of solutions to fulfill this demand.

As I said, there's vastly more demand for highways than for transit (and highways are of course used by transit buses, anyway). Transit provides only about 1% of total surface transportation passenger-miles in the United States. Passenger cars and light trucks provide about 96%. The market share of transit has been in long-term decline for a century.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 1:32 PM

Mixner, they're numbers based on the real-world experiences of others. If you're in a position described by James Robertson where you're driving from suburb to suburb and constrained by living in outlying areas and a low-mileage car, you can easily get up to spending $100/week on gasoline. And that's as things are now. As things change, it will become even more expensive, particularly if your fantasy world comes to fruition and there is no change in living patterns and sprawl increases.

The "average annual mileage" includes James Robertson, who puts on 6000 miles/yr, remember. Lots of people are commuting by car and paying dearly for it. These are the people who took a gamble and lost.

Posted by Tyro | June 17, 2008 1:36 PM

Mixner, the demand for a highway is the demand to get from point A to point B effectively and efficiently. That could involve flying or taking a train, also.

The market share of transit has been in long-term decline for a century.

I would guess that the market share for air travel has increased quite steeply over the past century. Once again, people don't have a demand to fly, they have a demand to get from point A to point B quickly, a desire that can also be fulfilled by rail... sometimes better-fulfilled, given the security and traffic delays associated with air travel.

Posted by Tyro | June 17, 2008 1:43 PM

Don't forget the multi-decade debacle of getting real mass transit to Dulles.

Also bear in mind that the logical endpoint of the ICC is another Potomac River crossing above the American Legion Bridge (the "techway") that would *worsen*--not improve--commute times and Montgomery County congestion (see, e.g., http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?ContentID=2386)

Posted by Ken | June 17, 2008 1:50 PM

Don't forget the multi-decade debacle of getting real mass transit to Dulles.

Also bear in mind that the logical endpoint of the ICC is another Potomac River crossing above the American Legion Bridge (the "techway") that would *worsen*--not improve--commute times and Montgomery County congestion (see, e.g., http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?ContentID=2386)

Posted by Ken | June 17, 2008 1:58 PM

I don't know enough about the ICC to really comment on its overall utility, but I do know that if you incorporated an effective dedicated bus lane into the project you could likely increase total commuter capacity, improve commuter efficiency, benefit in terms of net externalities, and so on.

Posted by DTM | June 17, 2008 2:02 PM

Tyro,

Mixner, they're numbers based on the real-world experiences of others.

They're numbers that aren't remotely representative of the gasoline costs of Americans in general. You're exaggerating that cost by about 100%.

And that's as things are now. As things change, it will become even more expensive, particularly if your fantasy world comes to fruition and there is no change in living patterns and sprawl increases.

On the contrary, the gains in vehicle fuel efficiency, and the switch to fuel sources other than oil, are likely to reduce the real cost of transportation fuel in the future. Even if the cost increases, transportation fuel is such a small share of total spending (about 4%), that the increase would have to be enormous, and persist for decades, to have a significant effect on infrastructure density.

I would guess that the market share for air travel has increased quite steeply over the past century.

The market shares of both air travel and private motor vehicles have increased enormously. The shares of intercity rail and transit have plummetted. In the early 20th century, virtually all travel within and between towns and cities was by train or bus. By the early 21st century, virtually all of that travel was by airplane and private motor vehicles.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 2:24 PM

OK, I generally resist this urge, BUT Mixner:

If we were spending 1.9% of our after tax income on fuel in 1998, and now we're spending 4%, then we are NOT spending "2%" more, we're spending 110% more. And I predict that if the trend continues such that, ten years from now, we're spending 8%, even you will be very, very unhappy about it.

Posted by mark | June 17, 2008 2:46 PM

Shorter James Robertson: "There's not enough transit right now, so let's not build any more of it."

People always talk about driving vs. transit as a binary thing. But in many places, it's very simple to combine transit use with short car trips that keep you off the highway and using less gas while still allowing you to do your suburban duty. My commute, for example: Get in car, drop kid at school, park at Metro, ride into city, spend day reading blogs while pretending to work, get back on Metro, back in car, stop at grocery store, home.

This was enabled by the smart public investment of building a big new parking structure at Grovesnor. It wouldn't have been as feasible a few years ago.

Posted by Potomac Guy | June 17, 2008 2:47 PM

"Also bear in mind that the logical endpoint of the ICC is another Potomac River crossing above the American Legion Bridge (the "techway")"

I'm not sure what a link to a page about endangered songbirds says about more traffic congestion in Montgomery County.

I think part of the problem is that there is only ONE bridge across the Potomac between Montgomery county and Virginia--the Beltway's Legion Bridge. that's it, that's the list. The point of a Techway would be to have multiple ways from Maryland to Virginia.

Back in the day, when the 3 parts of the region were relatively separate, the lack of river crossings might have been fine. But now we're an integrated region, with major job centers--both public and private--in suburbs across the region.

The bridges serve as horrible traffic choke points, with no redundancy.

And, the logical extension of the Purple line is an extension to Tysons, so you have a suburb to suburb outter ring rail line. And that would be great.

And require another bridge.

Posted by PH | June 17, 2008 2:52 PM

"Also bear in mind that the logical endpoint of the ICC is another Potomac River crossing above the American Legion Bridge (the "techway")"

I'm not sure what a link to a page about endangered songbirds says about more traffic congestion in Montgomery County.

I think part of the problem is that there is only ONE bridge across the Potomac between Montgomery county and Virginia--the Beltway's Legion Bridge. that's it, that's the list. The point of a Techway would be to have multiple ways from Maryland to Virginia.

Back in the day, when the 3 parts of the region were relatively separate, the lack of river crossings might have been fine. But now we're an integrated region, with major job centers--both public and private--in suburbs across the region.

The bridges serve as horrible traffic choke points, with no redundancy.

And, the logical extension of the Purple line is an extension to Tysons, so you have a suburb to suburb outter ring rail line. And that would be great.

And require another bridge.

Posted by PH | June 17, 2008 2:54 PM

If we were spending 1.9% of our after tax income on fuel in 1998, and now we're spending 4%, then we are NOT spending "2%" more, we're spending 110% more.

We're now spending only 2% more of our after-tax incomes on transportation fuel than we did when fuel was at its lowest real price of the last 60 years. And we now spend a smaller share than we were spending in 1981. Such minor effects on total spending are unlikely to provoke large-scale changes in basic lifestyle preferences. There are obviously many simpler and less disruptive ways of accommodating rising fuel costs than changing your job or moving house. If real gasoline prices remain at their current level or go higher, the most likely large-scale effects will be an acceleration in the shift towards more fuel-efficient cars and trucks, and increased use of conservation measures (telecommuting, carpooling, etc.).

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 3:04 PM

Geeze Matt, you're really being deceptive here. You make the purple line look like such a bargain.
That money is to actually build the ICC. The money for the purple line is to buy a bunch of paper. It will cost about the same amount to build the purple line.

Her is what is meant by money for the purple line:
"Preparation of Conceptual Plans, Alternatives Analysis, Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and Preliminary Engineering/Final
Environmental Impact Assessment (FEIS). The Purple Line will provide high-capacity transit along a 16-mile corridor that extends from the
western limit of Metrorail's Red Line in Bethesda to the New Carrollton Metro Station in Prince George's County. It incorporates the former
Georgetown Branch Purple Line western segment (Bethesda to Silver Spring) and the Purple Line eastern segment (Silver Spring to New
Carrollton) into one comprehensive study. Ridership estimates range from 37,000 to 68,000 daily boardings"

Nobody is riding on what that money is buying.

Posted by Njorl | June 17, 2008 3:19 PM

You're deliberately choosing misleading language to make this change sound "minor". It isn't a "2%" change in amounts, it's a 100% change. Double the money. I could say a lot of things to describe why doubling the percentage of our discretionary income devoted to fuel cost does not cause a "minor" impact, but all you really have to do is look around at all the people who are talking about it.

As far as the likely impacts, fuel spending is unlikely to double as percentage of discretionary spending because it will indeed cause behavioral changes like those you mention: car pooling, more fuel efficient cars, etc. Matter of fact we could start planning now for car pooling. We could get really big cars and call them something else, like "bus" or "train", and begin providing incentives for people to use them. In fact, we could even build special roads for our "trains" to run on. What do you say?

Posted by mark | June 17, 2008 3:29 PM

'Meanwhile, the Purple Line has to be light rail rather than a faster, higher-capacity system because heavy rail is "too expensive."'.

Light rail is completely capable of travelling at the same speed as heavy rail. It generally doesn't because it usually has stops closer together, and sometimes mingles with street traffic. Give it dedicated, clear track for long stretches and it will go faster than the Metro.

Posted by Njorl | June 17, 2008 3:45 PM

It's striking to me that conservatives on this thread are saying that mass transit doesn't work for people with kids-- which is true-- and therefore you just have to keep building the highways because they do work.

That's short term thinking. In the long term, any growing city will get more and more like New York in terms of its traffic. And when you get to that point, I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how big the highways are, the idyll of driving your kids around long distances on your flexible schedules is gone, baby gone. It's getting that way in LA, my home and the city with one of the biggest car cultures in America.

So what happens is that when you approach New York traffic, you would rather have your mass transit built than not built. Because you'd be surprised how many families with children suddenly figure out that mass transit can work for them once the traffic becomes impassible. And that is what has happened in New York. It isn't just the childless hipsters like Matt who take transit. Most people do, including married people who have kids.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 17, 2008 3:56 PM

"...but if that Connector is going to carry an order of magnitude more traffic than all the mass transit projects,..."

And where does that traffic go when it gets off the IC? Right on to surface streets that aren't built to handle the traffic. Of course then you can spend a couple of billion more upgrading the surface streets. If you build it, they will come - with their cars in this case.

Posted by uptown | June 17, 2008 4:02 PM

So what happens is that when you approach New York traffic, you would rather have your mass transit built than not built.

The running theme from the autophile libertarians here is that the key to dealing with congestion is to keep sprawling on out. Time to pay more to rebuild the high school? Time to move on out to the next iteration of exburbia. Traffic getting a little heavy between your house and the Burger Doodle? Time to move. I think they all telecommute. Anyways, this slash-and-burn growth policy is right in line with the typical conservative ideal of making short term returns your long term investment strategy.

Another theme is that it is impossible to raise children in a city without them becoming heroin addicted thieves who run around firing AIDS bullets into baby carriages.

Posted by RoboticGhost | June 17, 2008 4:09 PM

mark,

You're deliberately choosing misleading language to make this change sound "minor".

No, you're deliberately choosing to misread what I wrote. Since I explicitly stated that the 2% increase was in total spending (from 1.9% to 4%), I'm not sure why you had such trouble understanding that.

I could say a lot of things to describe why doubling the percentage of our discretionary income devoted to fuel cost does not cause a "minor" impact, but all you really have to do is look around at all the people who are talking about it.

Well, don't keep me in suspense. Give me that "a lot of things." Why, exactly, do you think a 2% increase in the share of after-tax income is not a "minor" impact? And this isn't a 2% increase from recent or average fuel costs. It's a 2% increase from the cheapest ever fuel of the past 60 years. Why, exactly, are we supposed to believe that this small increase is likely to provoke a large-scale change in infrastructure density and a large-scale shift from private cars to public transportation? Especially given the fact that there are all sorts of other and simpler ways of reducing fuel costs, and that future cars are likely to be much more fuel-efficient than current ones.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 4:14 PM

We spent the last 50 years creating this living pattern. It's not easy (and may not even be desirable to many of us) to change it.

Development happens piecemeal, gradually over decades, but it can definitely take on different forms depending on the decisions planners, residents, and politicians make.

Nobody's saying it'd be easy to change. For one thing, most of the zoning laws on the books still heavily favor suburban-style development. But if you change enough minds you can change enough laws, and then you can set up a framework that allows for non-suburban development again.

So, yes, we're talking long-term plans here, measured in decades. Eventually, land uses turn over.

Posted by Adam Villani | June 17, 2008 4:26 PM

So, yes, we're talking long-term plans here, measured in decades. Eventually, land uses turn over.

But what evidence is there that American residential and transportation preferences have changed, or are likely to change in the future, to yield significantly denser infrastructure, and a significantly greater share of travel by public transportation, even after a period of decades?

It would require the long-standing trends toward bigger housing and more car travel not merely to stop, but to significantly reverse themselves. Even if the share of travel by mass transit doubled over the next 20 years (which I don't think is remotely plausible), mass transit would still provide only about 2% of all surface transportation passenger-miles. The vast, vast majority of travel would still be by car. And our land-use policies would continue to reflect that overwhelming dominance of automobiles.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 4:46 PM

But what evidence is there that American residential and transportation preferences have changed, or are likely to change in the future, to yield significantly denser infrastructure, and a significantly greater share of travel by public transportation, even after a period of decades?

What evidence is there that most Americans will be driving magic fart-powered cars in 20 years? Honda's first 200 fuel cell vehicles are being leased at a loss, after an estimated production cost of $100,000 per. While you might be mainlining Ray Kurzweil, even exponential improvement doesn't get you to your silly glibertarian fantasy land.

Either apply the standards you demand of others to your own blue-sky, extrapolated-sociophobe arguments, or shut the fuck up.

And here's the fucking point: land use can change and has changed pretty drastically in response to resources. That's what got us the burbs in the first place. You don't have to be imagining a horse-and-cart future to appreciate that the next decade is going to be marked by the crackwhore stage of sucking on the petrochemical pipe.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | June 17, 2008 5:25 PM

Potomac Guy,

if you happen to live within driving range of the DC metro, and if said metro happens to go anywhere near where you need to go, it's useful. However, if you live well north of Greenbelt (but south of Baltimore), and nearly all of your driving is within about a 15 mile radius (mine and my wife's is), then transit works a lot less well.

For instance - I need to head to the grocery store a few times a week, and it's just over 2 miles away. I could take the local bus, which runs a handful of times a day - based on the routing and schedule, what's now a 30 minute trip (including drive time) would be something like 2 hours (longer if I screwed up the return window, a lot longer if it was midday when said bus system stops running).

Yeah, there's a great use of my time. Not to mention the whole "food going bad in the July heat" problem. In many, many suburbs, mass transit simply isn't an option now, and won't be an option, ever. The people who live in these suburbs aren't fascinated by the idea of spending tons of money on transit, especially when half or more of the money goes to watching factions of the left go to war over it - "yes, rail lines" fights with "no, preserve the trees")

At least when there's a fight over the building of a road, the end product is something we can use. In a nation where the population of city centers continues to decline, and the population of the suburbs continues to rise, don't be surprised to find a lot more fans of things like the ICC than of things like the purple line.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 5:48 PM

> and nearly all of your driving is within about a 15 mile radius

Uh, yeah, that's actually a typical mid-last-century small town lifestyle you're living.

Making it appropos of nothing we're talking about here.

Posted by doesn't matter | June 17, 2008 6:42 PM

Once again, James, you're badmouthing transit spending, but the facts you lay out argue for more of it, not less.

You're right -- living well north of Greenbelt, Metro doesn't do you much good right now. So how 'bout extending the Green Line to Laurel? My neighbor who commutes to Silver Spring would have to be an idiot to take Metro right now. But build the Purple Line and he'll be there.

It's just completely nonsensical to say that we shouldn't build more transit because the transit we have doesn't go to enough places.

It's also completely nonsensical, as I said before, to argue that if you use transit for the greater part of your trip, you can't also use your car when it makes more sense to do this. Avoiding the pain of the Beltway at rush hour doesn't require anyone to lug groceries on the bus.

Posted by Potomac Guy | June 17, 2008 6:45 PM

It's just completely nonsensical to say that we shouldn't build more transit because the transit we have doesn't go to enough places. It's also completely nonsensical, as I said before, to argue that if you use transit for the greater part of your trip, you can't also use your car when it makes more sense to do this. Avoiding the pain of the Beltway at rush hour doesn't require anyone to lug groceries on the bus.

Strawman. No one has argued that. The point is that transit does not go to nearly enough places to be an effective substitute for more than a minuscule fraction of all car travel, and could not possibly be expanded to do so in an economically viable way. We are simply too spread out. All the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. The places where transit makes sense already have it. Even in New York, the most transit-oriented state in the country, 9 out of 10 commuting miles are done by car. Yes, small-scale transit expansions in certain parts of the country where there is sufficient demand may make sense. But the idea that you are ever going to get any kind of broad, large-scale expansion of transit in the country as a whole is a fantasy. The fundamental demographic realities and trends in America just don't support it.

Posted by Mixner | June 17, 2008 7:24 PM

What Mixner said above. And no, I don't live in a "traditional small town" - nothing I need to buy is within walking distance, and transit is unworkable given the layout of the area.

Posted by James Robertson | June 17, 2008 10:22 PM

But again, your criticism of transit as useless because it is not useful all the time misses my point. In most suburban areas, a mix of car and transit use is very workable, and in the public interest. If people still use their cars to go shopping, take their kids to soccer, etc. but use transit to go to work or on other longer trips it will take a lot of pressure off of the highways and be preferable from both environmental and energy perspectives.

Doing this requires some public investment -- more parking at transit stations as well as expansions of transit lines -- but is an eminantly practical approach.

It's also, in my experience, a much better quality of life. I'm much happier sitting on the Metro reading the paper than I was sitting in traffic jams every day when I commuted by car.

Posted by Potomac Guy | June 18, 2008 12:31 PM

In addition to what Patomac Guy said, James and Mixner miss the fundamental point, which is that in growing cities, traffic eventually makes the lifestyle they are expounding impossible to live. As sprawl and density increase, heavy traffic is simply inevitable, both on arteries (which can sometimes be expanded) and on city streets (which generally cannot be). And when that happens, you are then stuck without a good transit system.

Whereas if you build the transit system, traffic becomes easier to deal with because you have other options. Those options don't cover every trip one might need to make-- even in the context of New York City, there are plenty of conceivable trips that are difficult to make using public transit-- but they both relieve some pressure off the highways and make it possible for folks to get around and live their lives even when the traffic makes driving impossible or impracticable.

As far as I can see, you guys have no answer to that. The lifestyle you idealize only works if the metropolitan area you live in stops growing. Here in LA, I am stuck with the results of horrible transit planning-- you can't get around on our freeways anymore, and we have lousy mass transit because we stopped building and tore everything up in the 1950's and 1960's during the heyday of our car culture. And it will only get worse in the years to come, unless $5 a gallon gas gets enough people off the highways to alleviate the traffic. But you guys probably don't like gas taxes and road tolls either.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 18, 2008 1:50 PM

Dilan Esper,

Transit, and especially rail transit, simply isn't a cost-effective or practical solution to transportation needs outside a relatively small number of places and routes. You seem to think that metropolitan areas can only grow by becoming denser, leading to more road congestion. But that's simply not true. Most of the growth is outward. That's why it's called "sprawl." Yes, in some places transit expansion may be an appropriate solution to road congestion. But in general, the solution to insufficient road capacity is to increase that capacity. Investing large sums of money in transit infrastructure for which there is no clear demand, in the hope that the demand will materialize when the system becomes available, is simply not good policy.

Posted by Mixner | June 18, 2008 3:50 PM

Mixner:

Here in LA, we have huge amounts of sprawl. And it increases traffic immensely and makes it impossible to get from point A to point B anymore.

The reason is that the people in the exurbs and suburbs don't just travel around their own neighborhoods. Rather, many of them have long commutes, and therefore use the same roads as everyone else.

Road construction doesn't solve this for 2 reasons: (1) plenty of this traffic spills out onto city streets, which cannot be widened under most circumstances, and which back up onto arteries, and (2) there is a limit to how much you can expand arteries in areas that are already developed. Theoretically, if Interstate 5 were 8 lanes wide between La Mirada and Los Angeles, it could handle all of the automobile traffic. But Interstate 5 cannot be 8 lanes wide in that area. It's already developed. Going from 3 lanes wide to 4 lanes wide is going to be very difficult.

Sprawl, therefore, does not solve your problem.

In saying this, I am not saying that your points on transit don't have some force. But the question, as I said, is when the roads become impassible, would you rather be New York, with good transit, or LA, with lousy transit?

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 18, 2008 4:51 PM

Dilan,

First, you're engaging in absurd hyperbole. It obviously is not "impossible to get from point A to point B anymore" by car in Los Angeles. Yes, there is congestion. Yes, at some times and in some parts of the city that congestion can be very bad. But the idea that LA is not effectively navigable by car is ridiculous. The vast, vast majority of travel within LA is by car.

If congestion has increased in LA it is because of higher traffic density. That isn't the result of sprawl. It's the result of more people and more cars within the same area. There may be parts of LA where transit expansion makes sense. But it's simply not a viable alternative to driving for the vast majority of trips. LA simply doesn't have the population/infrastructure density to support it. That's why your transit system consists mainly of buses sharing public roads with cars, and why your urban rail system carries only a tiny fraction of New York's. Unless you can persuade very large numbers of Angelenos to give up their single-story single-family homes for small Manhattan-style apartments in high rise buildings, which isn't terribly likely, this isn't going to change.

Posted by Mixner | June 18, 2008 5:59 PM

First, you're engaging in absurd hyperbole. It obviously is not "impossible to get from point A to point B anymore" by car in Los Angeles. Yes, there is congestion. Yes, at some times and in some parts of the city that congestion can be very bad. But the idea that LA is not effectively navigable by car is ridiculous. The vast, vast majority of travel within LA is by car.

Mixner, what happens is that you just stop going places. Your kids might have been learning well from that piano instructor in Palos Verdes, but since it takes over 2 hours to drive 25 miles from El Monte over there, you stop doing it. Angel fans in Los Angeles stopped making the trip to Anaheim years ago. Lots of people no longer go to the beach (which was probably as close as LA had to a common culture 30 years ago).

Of course, as long as transit stinks, the vast majority of transportation is going to be by car. Indeed, if I understand your position correctly, even when transit doesn't stink, the vast majority of transportation will still be by car. But the problem is, when people can no longer get to where they need to go, you will lose a lot of the productivity gains and economies of scale that a major metropolitan area is supposed to provide. Further, life simply becomes very unpleasant for those people who have to get from place to place, because they end up getting stuck in traffic.

If congestion has increased in LA it is because of higher traffic density. That isn't the result of sprawl.

Sure it is. As I said in my last post, what sprawl does is dump a lot more traffic onto the roads because people have longer commutes and more and more people jam onto the same roads. You really don't have an answer to this point.

Unless you can persuade very large numbers of Angelenos to give up their single-story single-family homes for small Manhattan-style apartments in high rise buildings, which isn't terribly likely, this isn't going to change.

Look, if the only point you were making is that the benefits of transit are often oversold, I would probably agree with you. And you are right-- we aren't going to see LA become a city of Manhattan-style density at any point in the near or even distant future.

But the point is-- as you seem to now concede-- this doesn't mean that LA doesn't need more transit. Sprawl eventually makes it difficult to get around, because you can only expand the roads so much in developed areas, and because even when arteries have enough lanes, city traffic gets worse and worse and backs up onto them.

The correct reason LA needs more transit isn't because transit is going to magically serve all the needs of its residents-- it doesn't even do that in New York!-- but because as the city grows, the roads clog beyond their capacity, and sprawl doesn't solve that problem, it makes it worse.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 18, 2008 7:56 PM

Dilan Esper,

Your central factual claims (e.g. sprawl causes congestion, sprawl increases travel times, etc.) are simply wrong. The effects of sprawl have been studied extensively and those studies simply do not support your assertions. Here, read this.

But the point is-- as you seem to now concede doesn't mean that LA doesn't need more transit.

"Now concede?" I've said all along, in pretty much every one of Matthew's posts on transit and infrastructure that I have commented on, that more transit may make sense in some places. What doesn't make sense, and is very unlikely to happen, is a broad shift towards transit, or an increase in transit's market share of total travel. The evidence indicates that the car will remain the overwhelmingly dominant mode of transportation for the foreseeable future.

Posted by Mixner | June 18, 2008 9:10 PM

A Question of Priorities

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