What the Transportation Agenda of the Future Should Look Like

[M II A II R II K]

Freight, cities and opportunity


July 2015

By ROBERT PUENTES and ADIE TOMER

Read More: http://www.politico.com/agenda/story...-policy-000160

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The focus on money can make it seem like the big problem with American transportation is how we fund it. But that’s really just a symptom of the deeper problem: For a generation, maybe more, the U.S. hasn’t really figured out what its transportation policy is supposed to do.

- The Interstate Highway System that resulted was the largest single public works program in American history, and became a touchstone for the rest of the world. That system was declared completed in 1992, and to an extent most of us don’t realize, America has never really figured out what should come next. Our approach to transportation has been running on autopilot for two decades. Whatever funding schemes Congress comes up with, tax money is still paying for the same 1950s vision, with occasional changes when a new transportation bill moves through Congress.

- As a result, transportation policy is littered with small, precious, ill-funded efforts to deal with the important national problems that transportation can address, from metropolitan congestion and deteriorating air quality to basic job access for Americans, as well as the freight movement that helps our economy hum. It’s long past time for Congress to throw out its Eisenhower-era transportation policy and replace it with something new, a vision that reflects the reality we inhabit now.

- Our world is faster-moving, more competitive, far more volatile, and more metropolitan-focused than the 1950s economy was, and the U.S. needs a transportation program that reflects it. Today, the legacy of the mid-century transportation program is the focus on “mobility,” essentially just increasing speed and velocity for moving vehicles. If you can move more vehicles faster, that counts as success. This approach brings with it a built-in bias toward building new roads, largely for higher-income drivers, and fails to deliver on broader national goals.

- If we started to think about transportation as a way to build the kind of country we want in 50 years, we wouldn’t just talk about moving people and goods faster. Instead, we’d lay out our bigger priorities and figure out how transportation can help us achieve them. Our tradable industries need physical access to goods, services, and workers so they can compete in the global marketplace.

FIX IT FIRST.

- Now that America’s vast interstate highway network is complete, overall maintenance should be a much higher priority than new construction. Our highway system set the global standard when it was built, and it needs to be kept to that standard. But that’s not how we allocate money: a recent study found that between 2009-2011, 55 percent of roadway spending nationally went to expansion, with only 45 percent for repair.

- At minimum, that ratio should be flipped. As a matter of national policy, it would make sense to restrict the money from federal gas tax receipts to fixing, updating, and modernizing the existing system. That doesn’t mean states can’t build new roads if they need them, but the federal government should give them stronger incentives to repair.

FOCUS ON FREIGHT.

- With more than 77 percent of goods crossing state lines, federal transportation policy should be intensely focused on creating smooth freight connections between large trading centers, rural production hubs, and international ports. It’s crucial to our global economic competitiveness, and a clear example of a place where Washington’s national-level view can bring huge value to the country’s economy. Yet the federal government largely delegates freight policy to the states. We need a national freight policy that cuts across all modes – truck, air, rail, and sea—and considers everything from local community impacts to international supply chains.

DIRECT FUNDING FOR CITIES.

- With the federal government focused on areas of national concern, there are other aspects of transportation policy where localities should naturally lead. One of the most important changes in America since the 1950s is the growing centrality of cities and metropolitan areas. The country was only 56 percent metropolitan in 1950; it’s now over 83 percent. These places often think very differently than state transportation departments.

- Cities need to consider high-frequency transit, economic development in dense areas, and safe streets for pedestrians and bicyclists. The problem is that despite their disproportionate role in the economy, they control only about 10 percent of transportation money. Washington should direct more straight to them, particularly for programs that focus on urban needs like improving air quality and transportation alternatives.

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[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

Personally I think the focus should be on trying to shift as much freight as possible off of the roadways and onto the railways. The number of large trucks on a highway tends to be the main factor in determining the amount of maintenance it requires. Cars have practically no effect. Railways to much more resilient since they're steel and made for the extremely heavy loads. To shift even 5% of the current freight off of roads would save billions of dollars in maintenance. It would also reduce carbon emissions.

[Hatman]

I dislike the whole idea of a government having an 'agenda' in transportation (other than, of course, ensuring that it is provided fairly to everyone) because that word usually means that certain modes get favored (subsidized) and others do not.

Financing is thing that must change.

The government should not subsidize any transportation mode at all. It should not pick favorites and allocate a certain amount to roads, a certain amount to transit, ect. Instead the government should subsidize the service provided. A simple formula of move X people (or lbs of cargo) for Y distance means your vehicle gets Z mount of money for doing so.

This will be possible with interconnected autonomous vehicles. The autonomous car will be in constant contact with the private operator of a road (oh, btw, roadway management should be leased out to private enterprise), so that a fee can be collected by the road operator for every mile an autonomous car travels over the company owned road. Where the road is more costly to maintain, the road can be priced higher. This way the car pays the true cost of the road by mile (or the price per mile the operator feels is the true cost of the road) and receives the same subsidy that any other mode of transportation would receive. Thus it becomes crucial for autonomous taxis to choose the most economical route - which may involve partnering with public transit to offer a joint-bid offering, where your autonomous taxi membership is also good for transit use too.

I realize this is very idealized, but I still think this is what needs to happen. There absolutely needs to be a division between the subsidy and the mode, and the best way I see for this to happen is to subsidize the service, not the actual transportation type. Otherwise people who are not transportation engineers, transit planners, or professional transport people at all (aka politicians) will continue to dictate bad transportation policy that is not the best (cleanest, most efficient) solution for everyone.

[Nouvellecosse]

^ That sounds interesting but I wonder how it would handle an issue that is often encountered with capitalism, which is that while it finds the most cost effective solution it doesn't always address non-monetary costs/impacts. What if a particular mode had the lowest monetary cost but also the highest environmental impact? Or caused the most social disruption such as noise, smell, danger, poor aesthetics, etc.? In some cases these things would reduce their demand and cause them to be less cost competitive, but what about cases in which the customers of the service aren't the ones being affected?

To me, the term transportation agenda means finding the best balance between pure fiscal efficiency, and overall societal and environmental desirability. But of course we all know this doesn't always work the way it should.

[Hatman]

^^^
Yeah there are a lot of un-quantified costs that don't get considered in our current system. Emissions from vehicles don't even get quantified at all. I think that needs to change.
But I am wary of using broad strokes to pay for things. Under current tax rules, gas is taxed and those tax dollars are put into a big pot. That money can be taken out of the pot for whatever the administrator of that pot feels is worthwhile. It could be for expansion, or maintenance, or whatever, but there is no direct link between what we pay for and what we get. That bothers me.
If we decide we want a subsidy for the general service rather than for specific services, we can 'program' the social costs of a mode into the total costs of the service. A really polluting vehicle could be charged more per mile (and the rate will change by mile, as in populated areas are more expensive to pollute in), and the same can be done for noise, ugliness, obtrusiveness, ect.
The point is that neither the government or the public will own the transportation system, so the perceived costs are not borne by them. If all cars are owned by autonomous-taxi corporations, people will love cars a lot less than they do now. Instead of being NIMBY's about only buses and transit (and things that they perceive as doing them no personal good), people will become NIMBYs for many more things, including cars and highways (more than they already are). Remove ownership from the public and give it to big bad evil corporations and suddenly the social costs that people were unwilling to pay themselves (sound, pollution, aesthetics, etc) become moral obligations for the big bad evil corporations - and once that happens, social costs that are not yet quanified will become so, and people will finally be paying costs closer to what the true costs of their transportation is.
I realize that not all social costs are quantify-able, but I'd bet the vast majority of social impacts can be dealt with by simply attaching a price to them. So I say stop micromanaging the specifics, stop subsidizing one mode more than another, and let the smart-network of autonomous vehicles and the 'internet of things' optimize how transportation is done.

[Nouvellecosse]

Well I do like the idea that the people making the final decisions will be separate from the government and will theoretically be making them in a way less encumbered by biases and political dogmas. But I'm curious about what entity would be responsible for the actual programming of social costs? In our society is seems as if the government would be the most likely answer, similar to the way that some jurisdictions add taxes to cigarettes or "carbon" for example. But it seems like that would basically amount to being a reverse subsidy in the sense that although the government would be funding transportation generally rather than a specific mode, it would be artificially making one form of transportation more expensive than another so that the subsidy didn't go as far.

I wonder if there could be some type of non-government executive branch - similar to the court system - set up that would be in charge of determining the levies or taxes added to cover the impact of non-monetary costs. The funds could be kept totally separate from the government and used only to help mitigate such effects such as investing in new technologies. Keeping this as a non-governmental board or committee would theoretically keep it non-political in the same way that the court system is intended (with varying degrees of success) to be non-political. Perhaps this body could also give loans or grants to help with the capital costs involved in creating new infrastructure.

[Hatman]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

But I'm curious about what entity would be responsible for the actual programming of social costs?

Therein is the rub. Your idea is one of the best I've heard so far.

A government might set forth an initial 'program' (set of costs that must be financially accounted for) and an engineering panel can assign the actual monetary values to the costs. If the law-makers 'forget' a social cost, a class-action lawsuit might be filed to get the cost inserted. Sounds plausible enough - I like it.