Matthew Yglesias » Learning to Think Like a State DOT

May 9th, 2009 at 2:27 pm

Learning to Think Like a State DOT

One substantial problem in transportation policy is simply that the institutional culture at many state departments of transportation is rotten. Basically, they exist to find ways to make the case for building more highways, and perhaps to make decisions about where new and wider highways should go. Other considerations often aren’t on the table at all.

Thus, Dave Alpert’s flow chart:

Things are changing, though often not fast enough. In my neighborhood, a dense walkable area, we had a movement a little while back to change how one intersection worked so that cars would go slower and it would be safer to cross the street. We were told, basically, that the change couldn’t be done because it would make the cars go slower.

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19 Responses to “Learning to Think Like a State DOT”

Tyro Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
Think about why this is: “Build more highway lanes” == get easy money from congress out of the highway fund.

“Build transit” == recruit a study group to examine transit possibilities. Solicit input “from the community.” Release proposal. Wrangle over the competing proposal by a community group. Solicit funding from the state and the feds. Compete for attention with the community group’s alternate plan who refuses to concede defeat. Get buy-in from every single neighborhood dealing with a new transit line going through there. Attend congressional hearings. Wait for DOT report.

Then maybe, maybe federal funds will go through and you can start building sometime between 5-10 years after you make the “expand mass transit” decision with completion a few years after that.

Adding more highway lanes is relatively straightforward in comparison. Heck, in a single gubernatorial term, Maryland Gov. Ehrlich forced through a new highway (granted, one that had been 30 years in planning). Meanwhile, the purple line is still a relatively well-regarded hypothetical.
Marshall Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
You underestimate this: state DOTs exist to generate public contracts for powerful state construction interests. The problem is not enough American firms have expertise in public transit, either rolling stock or track construction or whatever, for obvious reasons.
Kolohe Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
we had a movement a little while back to change how one intersection worked so that cars would go slower and it would be safer to cross the street

You’re talking about the new york avenue thing you’ve brought up a couple of times, right?

I would contend that the road plan on the right is *exactly* how your neighborhood is ostensibly designed (with new york avenue being nominally the north road)

Building roads like New York avenue instead of the SE-SW freeway is precisely what John Norquist was talking about in the piece you linked to.
fostert Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
I think Vietnam has the best solution: everyone rides a motorcycle. And crossing a street is easy, you just walk right across and the traffic avoids you. It’s a little disconcerting at first, but you get used it. Once you realize how much it’s going to hurt any driver to hit you, you understand that they really will try to avoid you. Just don’t make any sudden moves.
southpaw Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
The fascinating thing to me is that there’s obviously a tremendous amount of money to be made from a transit boom, and plenty of opportunities for fat cats and grifters and the like. The robber barons themselves, the high pinnacle of rapacious capitalism, made their money building the first railroads. And yet, hardly any of our current crop of monied and powerful interests have any appetite for another round of railroad investment. I’m at a loss to explain it.
Snowman Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 4:46 pm
As you point out at your neighborhood level, we treat cars as more important than people.

Of course, some people want to get places fast. But why do they get primacy over those of us who want to be able to walk safely, or have our kisd bike safely, or not have to hear cars whoshing by at high speeds.

Just who’s interests are being served, and why are they not really accountable to we who live in the impacted place??
James Gary Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
And yet, hardly any of our current crop of monied and powerful interests have any appetite for another round of railroad investment. I’m at a loss to explain it.

During the last ten years, they got to harvest money directly through “financial product engineering.” My guess is that they’re looking for more financial products to engineer. Actually investing in concrete things is just way too risky by comparison.
Dan Berkman Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Part of this is certainly due to long standing mandates to move more vehicles. Since sensible transportation policy is often completely absent from the equation state DOTs get put in the position of trying to solve congestion and traffic issues exclusively though the building and widening of roads since those really are the only arrows in their quiver.

What’s truly infuriating is how receptive communities tend to be towards highway expansion(more room for cars = less traffic!) and how opposed those same communities are towards safer smaller streets and transit. If I was a DOT rep and I had to go tell a suburban community that instead of widening the interstate we were adding BRT and a bike lane, I’d bring a body guard.
Jeremy Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I think Vietnam has the best solution: everyone rides a motorcycle. And crossing a street is easy, you just walk right across and the traffic avoids you. It’s a little disconcerting at first, but you get used it. Once you realize how much it’s going to hurt any driver to hit you, you understand that they really will try to avoid you. Just don’t make any sudden moves.

I have fond memories of that. Though, riding a motorcycle down the highway was the scariest time I ever had.

On topic, I went to a couple planning meetings in Indianapolis to discuss light rail on the northeast corridor. Quite a few people wanted rail transit, but the majority kept wanting to expand I-465, even going up to 12 lanes across. Madness!

A few of the opponents were upset because they’d bought houses along th disused rail corridor that was proposed to be the basis for the new rail, gambling that it would be turned into a bike/pedestrian path.

And Indy still has no mass transit.
fostert Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
“Though, riding a motorcycle down the highway was the scariest time I ever had.”

Yeah, roller coasters just aren’t any fun anymore. Once you’ve gone through a five point intersection with no traffic signals at 40mph in downtown Hanoi, nothing really scares you anymore. Even a “Bangkok helicopter” ride is tame compared to that.
JonF Says:
May 9th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Re: But why do they get primacy over those of us who want to be able to walk safely, or have our kisd bike safely, or not have to hear cars whoshing by at high speeds.

Every city is going to have a handful of major arteries where there will be lots and lots of traffic and where the goal is to keep it moving at a decent pace (and note: this is environmentally sound to do– cars idling in congested backups are spewing lots of extra CO2 into the atmosphere!) If you have children you want to play safely then for goodness sake do not live or next to one of these major arteries. Common sense 101. That’s easy to do after all, since the vast majority of urban streets are not major arteries. We have no kids, but do have cats and avoiding any sort of dangerous traffic area was one of the non-negotiables in choosing our abode when we moved here.
As I type this I can hear children playing in the street outside. It’s quite safe for them to do so; ours is a narrow, one way residential street, three blocks long. The occasional car (almost always a neighbor or someone visiting) travels at slow and safe speeds.
A few blocks away is MLK Blvd, which takes the traffic north and south around the edges of downtown Baltimore. I do not expect that to be a safe road for children to play in. And having a wide, six lane boulevard with lights reasonably timed to keep the cars moving is very much in my interest too; I live here and MLK Blvd is one of my main arteries when I travel north or south.
David Alpert Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 8:29 am
JonF: Keeping cars moving at a high rate of speed does not in the long run help pollution. Instead, it increases it. That’s because, if states keep adding highway capacity to keep cars moving quickly, it creates a strong economic incentive for people to move to distant places at the end of that freeway. The land is cheaper, but the government subsidizes transportation out there. That creates lots of sprawl at long distances from jobs.

Then, more people drive, adding traffic. The cars start to slow down, so the government adds more lanes. They speed up, and people look at how nice and speedy the freeway is and conclude that it’d be fine to live 60 miles from work since there’s such a fast drive. They move there, creating more traffic, slowing down the road, and start pressuring the government to speed up their commute. In the long run, you have a lot more vehicles driving a lot more miles and polluting a whole lot more than if the government had just left the road alone.

A better solution would be to congestion price the road network, so that people pay for the cost of building and maintaining the freeways they use and also internalize the cost of their emissions. The one trap with this is that if you just use pricing to build new roads instead of funding alternatives, it increases economic inequality and also many of these toll-related roads don’t actually end up paying for themselves after all, which defeats the purpose.
Vidor Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 11:22 am
On behalf of myself and everyone else who enjoys driving automobiles, allow me to say this:

Ha ha! Ha ha ha!
Vidor Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 11:25 am
“Just who’s interests are being served”

Ours!
JonF Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Re: Keeping cars moving at a high rate of speed does not in the long run help pollution. Instead, it increases it.

That doesn’t even pass the luagh test. Do I have to spell it out? OK here it is: burning gasoline produces an (almost) constant quantity of CO2. When cars are sitting stopped they are burning gas (hybrids possibly excepted) without making any progress toward their destination. The longer they are sit stopped the more gasline they burn and the more CO2 they produce. Some stoppage is of course necessary in a crowded city. But you don’t want to deliberately create congestion. Insofar as possible the goal for major traffic artories is to havet he traffic move as smoothly and with a minimal amount of stopping. That reduces CO2 outsput per vehicle to its minimum.

Re: That’s because, if states keep adding highway capacity to keep cars moving quickly, it creates a strong economic incentive for people to move to distant places at the end of that freeway.

You are very wrong here. Congestion in the city is what creates an incentive for people to avoid cities and seek wide open places. (OK, one of many factors). Keep in mind that most people do NOT work in traditional downtowns these days so commuting to work is not an overwhelming factor here. I am all in favor of people living close to work (I do), but turning cities in gridlock nightmares will not make them attractive places to live. In fact, even people who live in the cities will tend to drive out to the suburbs to do their shopping, etc. if you make the cities too difficult to navigate and find places to park in. I see this in my own life. It costs $10/hr to park in downtuown Baltimore so even though there are some worthwhile stores, I don’t bother going down there, despite the fact it’s just a couple miles to go. Instead I will drive down to Glen Burnie or even out to Towson or Catonsville where I can park for free and where the roadways are usally busy but moving well. That’s the dynamic you need to address instead of this weird notion that cars pop into existence out of no where like virtual quantum particles the moment there’s space for them on the road.
Tyro Says:
May 10th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
It costs $10/hr to park in downtuown Baltimore so even though there are some worthwhile stores, I don’t bother going down there, despite the fact it’s just a couple miles to go.

My experience with Baltimore is that driving those couple of miles anywhere in the city will take longer than getting to Glenn Burnie or Catonsville.

What’s truly infuriating is how receptive communities tend to be towards highway expansion(more room for cars = less traffic!) and how opposed those same communities are towards safer smaller streets and transit.

While, overall, I’d probably be happier with neighborhoods that were safer for pedestrians, on a day-to-day basis, the things that piss me off over the course of the day will almost invariably involve being stuck in traffic and having trouble looking for parking.

What MattY seems to miss is that you have to have a major atery somewhere, and you have to have parking somewhere. Now, maybe those things shouldn’t be right in downtown, but they have to go someplace, if only to make it easy for people to go somewhere that allows them to get out of their cars and take transit.
Streetsblog » Imagine If People Really Drove the Speed Limit Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 10:29 am
[...] from around the network: Cap’n Transit looks at a new report about the high cost of urban highways; Matt Yglesias contemplates the rotten culture of state DOTs; and Portland Transport wonders if you can really [...]
Boris Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 11:13 am
JonF,

You didn’t understand David Alpert’s arguments at all. He is right, and a lot of research (not nearly as complicated to understand as quantum physics) supports what he says.

Downtowns are congested because people make rational decisions. They choose the transportation option that seems cheapest (a.k.a. the most subsidized), but downtown highways are very expensive to expand. Hence, congestion pricing would work best in downtown areas, but it would also work anywhere there is congestion. There’s no need to expand roads.

Your incentives are amazingly screwed up (through no fault of your own, except in how you voted). What you consider “free” parking is only free because zoning laws mandate that businesses build parking (and add in the cost in the prices of their products). If we subsidized public transit at the level we subsidize driving, plus factored in the environmental costs of driving, shopping downtown would’ve been cheaper.
chris Says:
May 11th, 2009 at 11:18 am
It costs $10/hr to park in downtuown Baltimore so even though there are some worthwhile stores, I don’t bother going down there, despite the fact it’s just a couple miles to go.

Because, of course, driving is the only possible way to reach a point 2 miles away from you that has no parking at the destination. So if you can’t drive there, you have to drive somewhere else.

Buses, taxis, the subway, and your own two feet *don’t need parking spaces*. That means that if people actually use them, you don’t need to waste as much valuable in-city square footage on parking lots and garages.

Matt Yglesias

Learning to Think Like a State DOT

19 Responses to “Learning to Think Like a State DOT”

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