Hey, Amtrak: don't shelve that $151b HSR plan just yet

In 2012 Amtrak released their "vision" for passenger railin the Northeast Corridor (NEC), and it came with a price tag that shocked even the most ardent American rail supporters: $151 billion. I recall laughing to myself at the guts it must have taken to put together a report like that at the same time your organization is begging Congress for $400 million just to maintain operations at their current, generally low, level of service. After taking a closer look though, maybe the plan isn't quite as crazy as it seems.

To understand why, we first need to take a moment to understand the scope of the proposal. Broadly speaking, it involves two large projects: 1) upgrades to the existing corridor and 2) construction of a new, truly high speed corridor mostly parallel to the existing tracks (as well as trains to run on those new tracks). The former accounts for $33.5 billion of the total cost, the latter $117 billion. Here's what they they'd look like next to each other:

And here's the cost breakdown in greater detail:

The focus of this post is going to be on the NextGen HSR component of this proposal, the $117 billion part. The Master Plan's upgrades and Gateway program are both valuable, but less controversial and, frankly, less eye-popping in terms of cost. We'll take a look at the costs and benefits of a new HSR corridor in the Northeast, as well as some musings on how we might cobble the money together to build it.

Let's start with the benefits. First, and most important to most of us, is travel time: NextGen HSR, with top speeds of 220 mph, would cut travel times roughly in half. The trip time from New York to Boston would drop by 56%; New York to D.C. would drop by 41%. Traveling all the way from D.C. to Boston would take just over 3 hours, compared to the current six.

These times would make rail faster than air travel, door to door, and rail already has the edge for businesspeople (and anyone else) who want to work as they travel. This also relieves pressure on airports, both in terms of congestion and by reducing the need for low-profit, short-haul flights. Compared to air, rail already has the lion's (market) share of travel in this corridor; high speed rail would reinforce its position as king in the NEC.

Beyond travel times, HSR has a whole host of other benefits: fewer travel-related deaths and injuries,  reduced congestion along the I-95 corridor and other connected highways and arterials; investment and growth in second- and third-tier cities; integration with local transit, making car ownership even less essential; and, of course, reduced pollution compared to planes, cars, and even most buses.

It's also helpful to compare this investment to one likely alternative: widening highways along the corridor, especially I-95. This would undoubtedly reduce congestion, although, thanks to induced demand, only temporarily. More importantly, all of the externalities of highway widening are negative: increased pollution, greater strain on local roads, neutral or negative impacts on development, more deaths and injuries. And gasoline is only going to get more expensive. For HSR, on the other hand, all of the externalities are positive.

The costs associated with this plan are also great. $117 billion is a huge sum of money, and even a region as rich as the NEC will struggle to pull it together without an incredible act of cooperation and willpower.

The sticker price isn't the whole story, of course. To calculate the true cost we also need to take into account how much revenue is expected to come in, and this is where things get interesting. In China, despite the incredible amounts of money invested in high speed rail over the past several years, four of their lines are already profitable, and this includes capital costs. This means that, in the long-term, these lines (and others as the system matures) are likely to actually turn a profit for the Chinese government--and that's before taking into account the many other economic, social, and environmental benefits that were the real driving force behind these investments. Can we do the same?

Here are the revenue and operating expense projections for the NEC with NextGen HSR (this includes the increased ridership from Master Plan upgrades, but I believe the total operating profit would remain roughly unchanged, since nearly all profit comes from HSR):

The 2012 Vision is the one referred to in this blog post

At $1.65 billion in operating profit per year it would take nearly 71 years to pay off $117 billion. It's likely that as ridership continued to rise profits would increase as well (just as they are now on the Acela line), but for the sake of simplicity, and to be as conservative as possible, we'll assume that those levels would remain the same indefinitely. And while 71 years may sound like a very long time, rail is a very long-lived piece of infrastructure. For reference, it seems that much of the track in the Northeastern Corridor was built between the 1830s and 1917; most modifications since then have been things like electrification, crossing alterations, and so on. These would of course be provided up front in this case, and the technology is well-proven in markets across the globe. Operating expenses also already take all maintenance, including the tracks, into account.

You can also look at it this way: construction of NextGen HSR would be complete in 2040, which comes out to about $4 billion per year in spending while it's being built. That's about a tenth of the amount the federal government spends on highways every year, and half of what it spends on mass transit, and those recipients aren't expected to pay the money back. It's a sixth of what we spend every year just on the TSA and FAA. The federal government makes these investments not because it expects to make a profit, but because mobility is important. Critically important. NEC HSR would not only drastically improve mobility for tens of millions of people every year, it would also recoup a huge portion of its cost--possibly the entire amount--in ticket sales over the coming decades. How is this a difficult choice?

Some might argue, "if high speed rail can be so popular, why not just let the private sector take care of it?" I'm sympathetic to this view, but based on the experience of places like the U.K., also quite wary of such private sector takeovers.

Tanya Snyder at Streetsblog just addressed this, noting that without an established HSR success in this country, private industry is unlikely to take the chance. For investments of this magnitude, government has to lead the way. Snyder quotes European rail consultant Jim Steer, who made the case before Congress:

[A] rail line needs to prove itself before the private sector steps up. In his testimony, he talked about a 189-mile line currently under construction between Tours and Bordeaux in France, an extension of an existing high-speed line between Paris and Tours. 

“The most problematic section of the overall route (access to central Paris) has been built,” Steer said in his written testimony, “the market for services is proven; now it’s a matter of shortening an already improved journey between Paris and Bordeaux. This project (worth $10.3 billion) has been privately funded through a PPP structure. As an extension to what is now a core national network, the perceived risks are much lower.”

If this still seems like too much of a financial and political hurdle to overcome, don't give up yet. We have options.

First, even if the private sector can't build something of this size and complexity on their own, they can certainly still contribute. This could take many forms, but one that really appeals to me is the following: government entities sell off land near HSR stations, along with very generous development rights in terms of height, floor-area-ratio, etc., and then collect a share of the income over the next several decades. Investors profit from increased demand and land values around train stations, new housing and businesses get built (which is good for everyone), and the government offsets some of its construction costs. It also lets us keep all the ticket revenue for ourselves.

Or, in the spirit of "proof of principle," we could start with just phase one of the NextGen HSR project: New York to Washington, D.C. Referring back to the projected costs table above, this section of the NEC corridor would actually be less expensive than the NY-Boston section by about $6.6 billion although they're roughly the same distance. It also stops at larger and more important cities along the way, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, and to a lesser degree Newark (and the airports for each of these cities). NY-DC is also better established as a rail corridor, controlling over 3/4 of the market relative to air, while rail accounts for just over 1/2 of trips between New York and Boston. In terms of federal support, this could be a considerably easier sell.

The inevitable success of HSR in the New York to D.C. corridor would help to galvanize support for expansion of the network, both from politicians in Washington and their constituents throughout the region. The population from New York to D.C. is also greater than that of the NY-Boston corridor, so putting together local funding to cover a share of the investment might be easier there.

Realistically, it will probably take all of the above to get things moving. NY-DC would cost about $60 billion--if the federal government covered half they'd be contributing just $2 billion per year, barely 5% of what's spent every year on highways. The remaining $30 billion might be raised through a combination of private investment and local funding, not an unreasonable prospect for the governments of D.C., Baltimore/MD, Philadelphia/PA, NJ, and New York combined, especially over a 15+ year period.. Under Amtrak's plan, New York to Boston construction would start long after New York to D.C., so the key is to get a commitment on the first step. By the time that first phase is nearing completion the case for expansion will be obvious, and irresistible.

What do we get in return for ultra-strict train safety regulations?

Transit projects in the United States are known for being unreasonably expensive compared to their European and Asian counterparts, but the reasons for the discrepancy are far from clear.

As this Bloomberg article notes, some of this may be due to poor incentives and little transparency for private contractors, conflicts of interest between engineers and builders, and legal roadblocks. Over at Systemic Failure, they dug up some recent press release quotes from the San Diego-area transit district to make the case for one more cause behind those exorbitant costs: incredibly redundant and over-the-top safety regulations.

BEEFCAKE.

Case in point: The North County Transit District needs to replace the brakes on a bunch of their trains (they had worn out much more quickly than expected), and this is how they plan to do it:

The next step is for us along with our contractors, Veolia and Bombardier, to determine the proper procedure for the installation of the new 100g split disc rotors. Together we will take all safety factors into consideration. Once all parties approve this process, we will begin the installation of the new rotors onto the Sprinter test vehicle. FRA and CPUC officials will observe the installation. We have invited representatives from Siemens (the Sprinter manufacturer) and certified California engineers to observe the installation and the testing and to review the data.

So not only are the contractors joining up with the transit agency to replace the brakes, they're also going to be "observed" by two additional government agencies, one federal and one state-level. And they're bringing in a third corporation as well engineers from the area to "observe" even more. One has to wonder if they might also need to rent some stadium seating to ensure that all these men and women are able to see over each others' heads.

He also notes that "testing is expected to go on for months," presumably with representatives from these myriad institutions all hanging around getting paid to watch trains roll by over and over, sagely nodding their heads at each pass. According to the NCTD's own web site, the current round of testing is only the beginning. Not until late April do they expect to start the real testing, which will take another 24 days. And just to prove they're serious, even though no one appears to have ever been in danger due to the accelerated wear on the old brakes, these tests are going to "go above and beyond the testing of the original brakes required by the state." What additional gains in safety will result from this over-achievement are unclear. What is made clear, however, is that the trains might not be back in action for upwards of four months.

The one thing they've done that seems to be reasonable was to take the trains out of service when they discovered the unexpected wear-and-tear on the brakes in late February. Safety is the highest priority from a public service perspective, and although no cracks or other dangerous circumstances seem to have resulted, it was probably correct not to take any chances. The trains were shut down on March 9th though, so perhaps a full month wasn't needed just to get started on the replacement testing...

All sarcasm aside, this is insane. While this is an example of operations being catastrophically disrupted by an overbearing regulatory environment, Systemic Failure has frequently documented exactly the same type of hyperventilating, leading to vastly-increased capital costs.

What's behind these regulations? Is there an epidemic of passenger train-related deaths sweeping across the country? Not even close. From 1999-2008 about five passengers have been killed in trains for every ten billion miles traveled [PDF, page 144]. This, compared to 72 per ten billion miles traveled by car and truck, a rate that is more than 14 times higher and a total fatality count that is almost 2,400 times larger. (Yes, twenty-four hundred.) The vast majority of people killed by trains are pedestrians, about 70-85% of them trespassers, and an estimated 20-50% of the total number (including trespassers) are suicides, not the result of an accidental collision.

From the National Safety Council's report, Injury Facts, 2011 edition.

Despite this reality, the vast majority of safety regulation, and therefore cost, seems to be centered around preventing the 5-10 train passenger deaths that occur every year. Compare this to the 600+ pedestrians struck and killed by trains and the thousands more injured. (The number of pedestrian deaths has been on a slow decline from over 1,200 per year in the early 90s.) Requiring reinforced, super-heavy train cars certainly isn't doing anything to solve that problem.

The financial burden of these cumbersome, ill-targeted regulations very likely reaches into the billions of dollars. Imagine how many more lives could be saved and injuries prevented if that money was reinvested into improving passenger rail service--rather than turning our trains into tanks we could recognize and celebrate the fact that they're already the safest way to travel and commute regionally, and then redirect our efforts into making them a viable, convenient option for a greater number of people.

What should light rail to northwest Seattle look like?

(An article about the merits of a streetcar to Fremont as a complement to light rail to Ballard was recently posted on Seattle Transit Blog, and I wanted to share it in addition to/as an alternative to my own thoughts below. Find it here.)

Before attending this week's Sound Transit/City of Seattle joint open house on high capacity transit to Ballard, I hadn't thought much about the route it might take to get there. I knew I supported it, and given the failings of the Downtown-to-Ballard Rapid Ride line, it was clear to me that it would need to be grade separated, but beyond that I was fairly unconcerned with the specific route it might take to get from A to B. There was a great interactive exhibit at the event that got me actually thinking more critically about this, and I've realized that it's actually a fairly difficult question to answer.

So let's take a look.

The exhibit was actually slightly different from the image below (this one is just more clear), but they used the same map and asked that you draw the path you'd like high capacity transit to take from Ballard to Downtown. This one, by comparison, asked people to put a green sticker where a frequent trip they take starts, and a red sticker where it ends. As you can see, downtown is by far the most popular destination, at least among those in attendance:

Trip start/finish map - green is start, red is end; image from Ballard News-Tribune.

The routes people drew on the other map included 1) following 15th Ave NW to Elliott Ave then downtown, 2) traveling through Fremont then down Westlake to get downtown, and 3) everything in between.

The key concern for me (and one that seemed to be overlooked by most open house attendees) was that Ballard, Fremont, and Queen Anne all have very similar current populations and population projections over the next few decades--serving one or two of these neighborhoods with light rail while failing to serve any of the others would be unjustifiable.

Most people seemed to prefer a straight path along 15th Ave NW unfortunately, which is the Interbay "neighborhood," if you could even call it that, which has very little population and no plans for growth according to city estimates. Hopefully this just reflected the fact that many probably think an at-grade streetcar alignment is likely, and this would be the path of least resistance. I suspect many of those who supported this alignment would change their minds if they were told that a subway was the most likely option (here's hoping), making traffic and the paths of existing roads irrelevant to subway route considerations.

Working from the assumption that a line would need to serve each of these neighborhoods, drawing a single route to cover all three becomes pretty difficult. In the time I had to think about it at the open house, I ultimately went with the path below:

My first idea for a subway route, which I've since disavowed and am slightly embarrassed to have ever considered.

As you can see, the route is very indirect, traveling through the center of Queen Anne, northwest to Ballard (under Ship Canal), then looping back along Market, 8th Ave NW, and Leary to Fremont. I imagined one station at each of these neighborhoods plus maybe one in Belltown and another around Mercer St. and Queen Anne Ave (more than this many stations seems unlikely, given that even Capitol Hill only got one station).

At the time I liked this route because it allowed for an extension of the line to Stone Way, up to 45th St., then east all the way to the station that's planned at 45th and Brooklyn in the University District, all without transfers. Admittedly, I have a strong personal bias against transfers, and much of that is due to the relatively low frequency of most Seattle buses. A 10-minute-or-less light rail headway would make transfers much more bearable. To mollify the Fremont travelers I thought perhaps there could be some kind of dedicated line, either bus or streetcar, between the Queen Anne and Fremont stations. In retrospect I came to the conclusion that this is a mess and have since discarded this idea.

Seattle Subway, the group I think was primarily responsible for getting the planning for this line pushed onto a faster timeline, has another vision:

Cropped from Seattle Subway image.

I appreciate the ambition of this proposal, but not the actual outcome. For one, if these were both subways the cost would be prohibitive for a single ballot measure with other parts of Seattle wanting their part of the action. I could get over that though. More importantly, the two alignments seem to be along 15th Ave NW through Interbay to Ballard, and along Westlake Ave to Fremont. I don't see many prospects for significant development along either of those corridors (nor do they, it would seem, for Westlake--they don't put a station along any part of it). I'm pretty sure this is just a concept on Seattle Subway's part, so I don't want to give the impression that this is their preferred solution or that they should be criticized for it. It's just one possibility for the purpose of illustration.

There might be a case to make for two separate lines to Ballard and Fremont, but I don't think it's a strong one on the merits and I think it'd be nearly impossible politically unless we were doing another line to West Seattle at the same time. Two lines for northwest Seattle while West Seattle remains stuck with Rapid Ride probably would not go over well.

Assuming we can only afford one subway line to the area in this time frame, I don't see much harm in detouring a bit from east to west to capture the largest population centers, and I do like the idea of including South Lake Union. SLU is already served by the streetcar, and a light rail station would make it largely obsolete, but ultimately this region is going to be a big part of the city both residentially and commercially and people will need/want to get to it without having to travel downtown, leave the station, and wait for a streetcar to take them the last mile. The streetcar is a local transportation solution whereas light rail is more regional--currently there are no great regional connections to or from South Lake Union.

Unfortunately, with one line you'd have a very difficult time including stations in Belltown, SLU, and  Lower Queen Anne. I'm going to illustrate a possible route in which Belltown is bypassed in favor of SLU, but I realize that that's a debate worth having in detail at some point. With that in mind, here's my current thinking on the best route for light rail to Ballard:

Red line represents subway route, black circles represent station locations.

First, I'm no transit engineer so I have no idea what kind of turning radius these train cars can handle, but I tried to give the route fairly smooth turns--maybe they need to be even less acute, maybe not. Also, this is clearly not the most direct route to Ballard, but the benefits of capturing additional ridership along the way far outweigh the cost of several extra minutes' travel--remember, there's no traffic congestion underground. Beyond that, I'll break things down station by station:

• South Lake Union: I chose the Thomas & Westlake location mostly for the sake of visibility. Thomas & Terry might actually be a little more functional due to the connection to the northbound SLU trolley, but I think locating on the arterial where more people are walking trumps that concern. It's also a bit easier to turn the tunnel toward Lower Queen Anne from this more western station location.

• Lower Queen Anne: This station seems pretty self-explanatory at Mercer St and Queen Anne Ave. Everything is pretty accessible from here; plenty of bus routes travel through somewhat frequently, too. For those interested in getting from a more southerly location on the Link line out to the Interbay area or to north Ballard, they can transfer to the D line here. It might be nice to send the D line along Elliott Avenue--bypassing Queen Anne to speed it up--since light rail will have that area covered, but that ship may have sailed with the infrastructure that's already been put in place along 1st Ave and Queen Anne Ave.

• Queen Anne: I'm least confident in this location since I know very little about the area. I just guessed at what I thought was probably one of the more densely populated parts of the hill, as that should obviously be one of the main considerations. Because of the size of the hill, station location will also probably be determined by what's technically feasible in terms of station depth, route grade, etc.

• Fremont: I think the best location for this would be on the north side of 36th St, west of Fremont Ave. Fremont Ave isn't a very pleasant road to be a pedestrian or bicyclist on with its complicated intersections and relatively heavy traffic, so steering clear of it is probably a good idea. This station would be the place to transfer onto an eastbound train through Wallingford along 45th St toward the University District. (Hopefully that east-west route will end up on the next ballot with the Downtown-Ballard route so all of this can be implemented together.)

• Ballard: Ballard Ave and Market St is probably pretty widely agreed upon as the core of the Ballard neighborhood, but I'm pretty ambivalent about this location. A few blocks to the east might actually be a better solution to serve the many people that live east of 15th Ave NW, but this general area gets the point across. There's a ton of development taking place along Market, and arterials that branch from it have seen quite a few new residential units as well. This growth is sure to continue whether light rail comes to Ballard or not, but as the population grows the case for high-capacity rail transit only gets stronger.

One key thing that was preventing me from seeing this as a viable option was the worry that, when leaving from Downtown, some trains would be branching off to the west toward Ballard from Fremont, while others would be headed east to Wallingford. If you showed up to a Downtown station at a random time, you'd have a 50% (i.e., random) chance of having to transfer in Fremont depending on your destination, and this would be pretty irritating to have to deal with on a daily basis.

The solution, I think, is that all trains to Downtown or from Ballard would only travel this route (the one pictured above), never branching at Fremont. This makes sense heading from Ballard in light of the fact that so many trips are to Downtown; headed north from Downtown it's a bit tougher to make the case decisively, but the greater population density of Ballard wins out for me, and helps to convey Downtown-Ballard as the north-south line and Fremont-University District as the east-west. 

I do foresee some problems this layout might cause for further expansion of the rail network northward, so I'd be interested to hear peoples' input. The Downtown-to-Ballard routing could potentially be abandoned later on if an extension was made northward from the Fremont station, effectively turning Downtown-to-Shoreline into the north-south route and extending the east-west route out to Ballard. By this point more trains would be running due to higher regional ridership, so transfers would be less of a concern.

You'll also notice that I've only marked one station for every neighborhood, and maybe more are justified. None of these neighborhoods really compare in population or density to Capitol Hill though, which only got one station, so I think it's unlikely. The Seattle Subway map in particular, with 5 stations between Wallingford and Ballard, plus another in Fremont, seems unrealistic even under the best circumstances.

I'm really interested to hear what people think of this plan, and especially what they might prefer instead. This is intended as a conversation starter, bringing up some of the salient issues so that we at least know where to start. Sound Transit and the City of Seattle are going to be planning this over the next few years, and if we want to contribute meaningfully to the process we should do our best to understand and consider all the possibilities, challenges, and trade-offs inherent in this type of project. Let me know what you'd like to see!

Is the "man-covery" responsible for 2012's increase in vehicle deaths?

Via Streetsblog (which is via the National Safety Counci), motor vehicle-related fatalities increased for the first time in seven years in 2012--this number includes pedestrians and bicyclists killed by cars. The jump was pretty big, too, up 5% from 2011 to an estimated 36,200 total deaths. There's been a sense of cautious optimism as the number of fatalities has significantly declined over the past five years, tempered in part by worries that the improvement was temporary, due mainly to the recession's impact on peoples' travel and not a result of more permanent changes in road safety. Although we're still far short of the more than 43,000 deaths we saw in 2005, it looks like that caution may have been warranted.

One has to ask, though, why now? Why, despite the recession ending in Summer of 2009, did vehicle-related deaths continue to fall through 2011? If the recession were really responsible for most of the drop then it should have stabilized around the same time as unemployment, but that's not what we see.

For the beginnings of an answer to this problem, I looked to another report that was released recently: work by Michael Sivak at the University of Michigan showed that for the first time ever more women have driver's licenses than men (they had just 40% of total licenses fifty years ago). Men still drive more than women, accounting for 59% of total miles driven, but that too is an all-time low down from 76%. Men are, on average, relatively unsafe drivers; depending on the age group, they range from 30-100% more likely to be involved in fatal car crashes than their female counterparts, so having a smaller share of total driving being done by men seems like a win for road safety.

I bring this all up because, perhaps not coincidentally, men were also hit hardest by the recession--construction, manufacturing, etc. I wondered, what if the precipitous drop in traffic deaths wasn't just a general product of the recession? What if, in addition to the broadly immiserating effect of the recession, the decline in fatalities was also the result of a pronounced shift in the share of driving between men and women, driven by the disparate impact of the recession on the different genders? And what if that shift is reversing itself?

Unfortunately there's only detailed data up to 2010, but first we'll look at fatalities for just drivers and passengers, so we're excluding pedestrians, bicyclists, and the few people who die every year in bus crashes:

From the NHTSA's FARS Encyclopedia.

As you can see, although fatalities for all four categories have declined, in absolute terms the reduction in male driver deaths dwarfs those of the other groups. Of the ten thousand fewer deaths in 2010 compared to 2006, almost exactly half of those are male drivers. (The reduction in female driver deaths accounts for only fifteen percent of the total decline.) Interestingly, the percentage declines for passenger deaths were actually greater than that for drivers of either gender--those least likely to be responsible for the collision are benefiting most from the reduction in traffic fatalities. I'm using "being the driver" as a stand-in for "being at fault for the collision" because most people drive alone; it's not anywhere near a perfect model, but it should work decently well. If anyone has specific data that includes responsible party, gender, age, et cetera, please let me know!

What's responsible for this gender-specific decline though? To find out, I think it's instructive to look at unemployment rates over this same time period:

Both men and women were hit hard by the recession, but it clearly hit men harder, and we see the greatest declines in vehicle-related deaths in the midst of the worst of the job losses, in 2008-2009. As unemployment leveled out, so too did traffic deaths. But while men had more ground to make up, their recovery has also been notably faster. This is a result of the continued fiscal retrenchment at the state and local level, disproportionately harming women as teachers and other government workers continue to be laid off even as the private sector recovers at a modest pace. Hence, the "man-covery". Women didn't reach the same peak, but they've also barely recovered from that peak since 2010. It wasn't until the beginning of 2012 that the unemployment rates for men and women reached a rough parity: the same year that road deaths began to increase once again.

The fatality numbers are still significantly down from their high in 2005, but we also haven't fully recovered from the effects of the recession. For one, looking at the trajectory of the recovery for both genders, it may be possible that the unemployment rate among men actually drops below that of women as we get closer to a stable level of unemployment. Probably more importantly, the unemployment rate among men age 16-24 is still extremely high, and these are the most dangerous drivers on the road. As the recovery finally starts to take hold for these individuals and more of them start driving to work, it seems likely that the death toll will continue to climb.

Here's the vehicle fatality numbers broken down by age group:

From the NHTSA's FARS Encyclopedia.

Notice that even though the 16-20 and 21-24 age groups are smaller than the older groups (five and four year ranges rather than ten years), they each experienced declines over the past five years similar to the other groups. Combine them into a 16-24 age group and you end up with a decline of well over 3,000 deaths per year compared to 2005/2006, far more than any other similarly-sized age group. And unlike the other age groups, 16-24 year olds are still suffering immensely from the recession's effects--they haven't even begun to get back on the road, and yet in 2012 we've already seen a massive increase in road deaths. What will things look like in the coming years?

On the bright side, it really does appear to be the case that we're doing something right with new drivers--deaths among teenagers have been decreasing since 2003, long before the recession began. Less optimistically, almost every other age group's deaths had been increasing or holding steady up until 2007, and I strongly suspect that as the detailed data comes out for the past two years we'll see those declines for the 25-and-up age groups begin to rapidly reverse themselves. And it's going to be mostly men dying and causing the deaths of others.

This should be a wake-up call to any officials who might have been ready to take credit for improving safety on the nation's roads. It looked like, despite the recovery, vehicle-related deaths were staying relatively low. We're now beginning to see that this was just a self-serving fantasy. The continued improvement was more likely the result of men, and young men in particular, being disproportionately harmed by the recession--and the recovery is far from complete.

We need to do more to provide better, safer, more convenient options for travel and commuting that are inherently safer, not just more costly and therefore more difficult to keep using in the face of financial hardship. As the economy continues to recover and more men and women return to work, are they going to have any other choice but to get in their cars and roll the dice?

Shameless self-promotion: I was on the radio!

My last post was noticed by the local NPR station, and the host, Ross Reynolds, invited me to discuss the results on his show. I've never spoken to such a large audience, and even if it wasn't in the physical presence of anyone but the host, I was pretty terrified. It was too great an opportunity to pass up though, so I went on and everything went well. Thanks to Ross, Arwen, and the rest of the team on KUOW's The Conversation for the chance to speak on your show!

Click the image below to visit the web site and listen to the audio (it's brief, less than 7 minutes total):

Proof! From KUOW.org.

Rankings that matter: Which cities save the most time and money thanks to public transportation?

Every year the Texas Transportation Institute releases its Urban Mobility Report (aka congestion rankings) and it's rightly pilloried throughout the sustainable transportation media. The single-minded focus on what's good for drivers of private vehicles, and drivers of private vehicles only, leaves much to be desired, but there's a lot of good information in there if you do some digging. Inspired by this article from the Oregonian, which highlights the amount of time and money saved by commuters due to the congestion-reducing contribution of public transportation, I thought I'd see how other metro areas fared. (Portland came in 12th in the country for total savings, not bad for the 23rd-largest metro.)

Rather than just ranking by total savings, however, I decided to calculate savings per person, so that larger metros weren't gaining an unfair advantage. I divided the total savings by both population and by "commuter," a subset of the total population. Interestingly, while nearly every city's "commuter" population is about half that of the total population, according to TTI, the New York metro is a huge outlier with less than a third of its population being considered commuters. I suspect this might be the result of TTI not counting people who walk and bike as commuters, but I can't be sure.

So without further adieu, here are the rankings for the top 25:

Rank	Urban Area	Population (000)	Commuters (000)	Annual Congestion Cost Increase ($million)	Money saved per person ($)	Money saved per commuter ($)
1	New York-Newark NY-NJ-CT	18,946	6,040	9,586.8	506	1,587
2	San Francisco-Oakland CA	4,101	1,931	775.9	189	402
3	Boston MA-NH-RI	4,320	1,979	809.4	187	409
4	Chicago IL-IN	8,605	3,959	1,542.1	179	390
5	Washington DC-VA-MD	4,613	2,011	711.0	154	354
6	Philadelphia PA-NJ-DE-MD	5,381	2,406	654.9	122	272
7	Seattle WA	3,286	1,659	366.5	112	221
8	Baltimore MD	2,523	1,336	248.6	98.53	186
9	Portland OR-WA	1,925	932	151.1	78.49	162
10	Salt Lake City UT	1,027	538	79.6	77.51	148
11	Pittsburgh PA	1,761	926	124.0	70	134
12	Denver-Aurora CO	2,348	1,396	127.1	54.13	91
13	Atlanta GA	4,360	2,135	232.2	53	109
14	Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana CA	13,229	6,597	695.0	52.54	105
15	San Juan PR	2,333	1,235	113.1	48	92
16	Miami FL	5,482	2,875	248.8	45	87
17	San Diego CA	3,121	1,528	136.0	43.58	89
18	Cleveland OH	1,700	857	72.3	43	84
19	New Orleans LA	1,065	525	40.3	37.84	77
20	Austin TX	1,345	712	50.6	37.62	71
21	Spokane WA-ID	383	201	13.4	34.99	67
22	El Paso TX-NM	739	387	25.8	34.91	67
23	Houston TX	4,129	2,274	144.1	35	63
24	Brownsville TX	214	112	7.3	34.11	65
25	Hartford CT	905	468	30.4	34	65

(Data from TTI's 2012 Urban Mobility Report.)

A few things stand out right away. First is the huge difference between the savings in the New York Metro compared to everywhere else--the savings are so large, in fact, that if you add the $9.6 billion congestion savings to the $5 billion in farebox revenue that MTA brought in in 2011 you exceed the agency's total budget of $12.6 billion by a full two billion dollars.

The next four metro areas, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. all group together in savings per person/commuter, and, not coincidentally, probably represent the four best transit networks in the country after New York. 

Los Angeles stands out for doing particularly poorly here given its population. They're notorious for being car-centric, although that seems to be changing under the leadership of Mayor Villaraigosa, but given the overall density of the metro area this is a bit perplexing. The LA metro is actually more dense on average than the NY metro, but perhaps the key is pockets of much greater density: the actual city of New York is more than three times as dense as that of LA, and those very dense regions are certainly accounting for a disproportionately high level transit use. Count that as yet another case for density--we get our money's worth when it comes to public transportation spending, both in mobility and savings. Still though, the city of LA is only about 35% less dense than Chicago and yet with five million more people it's got less than half the savings. LA clearly has a lot of catching up to do. If only Measure J had passed.

Bringing it back home: Seattle also gets a lot of flak for having a pretty wimpy transit system (also improving, but still far from ideal), but we can see here that we're getting good value from what we've got so far. As the 15th-largest metro in the country we rank 7th for money saved per person, putting us very cleanly near the top of the "second-tier" public transportation systems. With 1.8 cents out of every sales-taxed dollar spent in King county devoted to transit--besides fare revenue, this is the vast majority of metro funding--you'd have to spend over $12,000 a year to pay back the $221 every commuter saves thanks to the metro system.

All of these numbers, as with the report from which they're derived, should be taken with a grain of salt. At the same time, I think they do a good job of illustrating the value of public transportation in our daily lives. There's a whole range of environmental, health, and social benefits to a robust transit system, but for the most successful networks the economic case can be justification enough for continued investment.

A possible solution to the SR 99 tunnel's projected tolling shortfall

As Publicola has diligently reported over the past several years, the downtown Seattle SR 99 bored-tunnel project has been an ill-advised mess from day one. Now, with tolling revenue projections cut in half (at least), the day of reckoning is approaching in Olympia, where rural, Republican, and other generally anti-Seattle lawmakers are making noises about Seattle needing to make up the difference. The state is already paying for $2.6 billion of the $4+ billion project, and the $200+ million tolling shortfall is our problem, the story goes.

The crux of the problem is that even small tolls will cause massive diversion onto downtown streets, defeating the whole purpose of the tunnel in the first place, and lowering revenue to boot. From Publicola again, state senator Curtis King (R-14, Yakima) complained that the committee responsible for updating tolling revenue estimates was too "Seattle-centric," and that it's no surprise that they're saying all of the tolling scenarios proposed by the state would lead to unacceptable diversion/congestion and that the state should pick up the difference--"you have an advisory committee that is all from Seattle. What else are they are going to tell us?"

He went on to say "So, the city of Seattle is concerned about diversion because they're the ones that are going to be affected," indicating that he thinks this is a choice between raising the necessary amount of money or accepting more congestion. Take some pain, but pay off your obligations, in other words. 

But while Sen. King can make all the political hay he likes out of this, the committee isn't wrong. Any amount of tolls will fail to raise enough revenue because of the diversion; one problem (of many) at the outset of this project was the fanciful expectation that people would be willing to pay for a trip through the tunnel when there are so many other free options for getting through the city.

This committee, the Advisory Committee on Tolling and Traffic Management, had a meeting in September where they discussed various tolling rates and the diversion this would entail. They produced a pdf presentation that includes some of those numbers, which can be found here. Unfortunately it only includes numbers for mid-day (1:30-2:30 pm) and peak period (3-6 pm), but those numbers are instructive. We'll focus on the peak period numbers because that's when a) the most cars use the tunnel, b) the tolls are highest and the most revenue is raised, and c) when the congestion penalty for choosing another route is largest. Let's take a look.

From the Advisory Committee on Tolling and Traffic Management.

Combining both northbound and southbound traffic for the peak period, they estimate that there would be 21,800 cars using the tunnel with no tolls. 21,800 cars, zero revenue. Now let's add the smallest tolls, $2.25 for southbound travel, and $1.50 for northbound. This diverts about 30% of vehicles, leaving us with 15,300 using the tunnel and many of the rest using other city streets. We also want to know how much it raises compared to other scenarios, so just for the purposes of comparison we'll calculate revenue for the day, which equals $28,125. 

The high toll scenario raises $40,675, but results in almost 50% diversion, spilling over 10,000 vehicles onto nearby roads at the busiest time of day.

Maybe that's just the price we pay though, if we want to do the right thing and cover our $400 million share, right? Wrong. From the same report, even the high-toll scenario raises only $250 million (or as little as $210 million) in actual project funding--the low-toll scenario doesn't even warrant consideration because it doesn't raise enough to bond against:

From the Advisory Committee on Tolling and Traffic Management.

So given the fact that no tolling scenario raises enough money (although I don't think the scenarios from this report are anywhere near optimal), the question then becomes whether the revenue differences are offset by other concerns, economic and otherwise. For example, there's a $40 million difference between the High Toll Benchmark and Scenario 1, but the HTB diverts an additional 1,200 vehicles just during evening peak. Is that money worth the decreased safety and the economic, environmental and psychological cost of increased congestion? If not, maybe we just eat the loss and come up with a different way to raise the money. This question actually suggests the beginnings of a solution.

The solution begins with accepting that the Washington State DOT is probably most to blame for the failed tolling projections. They designed the project and it's alternatives, and they created the faulty estimates from back before the tunnel was actually approved. eattle voted to approve the tunnel, yes. It was a huge mistake, no doubt, but the vote was undertaken with almost criminal levels of misinformation. So while Seattle voted yes, to say that they should be on the hook for a mistake a state department made would be incredibly unfair.

Instead, let's do this: to start, do a better job on these tolling scenarios. Just to start with, the high toll benchmark numbers seem like they should be switched for northbound and southbound. Diversion is way worse for southbound and yet it has a higher toll than northbound--reverse those and you probably end up with slightly more revenue and less diversion. The point is, it can and should be improved, and then those options should be reported to the state. Now pass the report along to the city and the state.

Upon receiving the new scenario plans, the city can choose which tolling regimen they prefer, but all revenue that falls short of the highest-revenue benchmark is covered by the city. The rest is covered by the state. In the case of the existing scenarios, this means that if we choose Scenario 1 with it's $210 million revenue in favor of the High Toll Benchmark revenue of $250 million, Seattle is on the hook for $40 million and the state pays the remaining $150 million to bring us up to $400 million total. 

This allows Seattle to decide for itself on the costs vs. benefits of higher revenue or worse traffic, but doesn't punish them for the original sin of WSDOT's awful tolling projections at the outset of the project. We take responsibility for what we could reasonably be considered responsible for, and the state does the same. Neat.

Thoughts on income tax as a source of transportation funding

How we're going to pay for transportation infrastructure in the face of falling gas tax revenues has been a hot topic lately, with ideas ranging from pretty good to ridiculously bad. The concept that transportation should be primarily funded by user fees (gas taxes, licensing fees, tolls, and other costs that fall specifically on those who use the roads) is fairly unique to government spending and has a lot of merit, but one significant drawback of getting most of your money from drivers is that it tends to overemphasize road capacity expenditures over transit, pedestrian, and bicycling infrastructure--no one likes the idea that they're subsidizing someone else's lifestyle, after all.

Many people note that the federal Highway Trust Fund has been reliant on tens of billions of dollars in general fund revenue for years, effectively resulting in subsidy of drivers' infrastructure by those who drive little or not at all. This is portrayed as a bad thing--a case where drivers' hypocrisy is laid bare--and as a justification for public transit and active transportation subsidies. Using federal income tax revenue (the main source of general fund monies) to shore up the transportation fund has been somewhat demonized when compared to user fees, but perhaps there's something to it.

Technically, we already pay income tax into the Highway Trust Fund.

Structured correctly, such a tax could be very progressive and begin to reduce the maintenance backlog we fall further behind on each year. It could move us toward a less car-centric transportation system, and even be enough to catch us up to the many nations currently ahead of us in building a 21st-century infrastructure.

Now, even a very small tax could be devastating to someone with very low income, at or around the poverty line for example. Say we make it a 1.0% tax on all income over $20,000. Most people make over $20k a year, and many of those that don't are students who will make more in the future, and retired seniors who have already paid their dues. Those that earn less than that don't need any additional burdens, and they're a very small share of the income pie anyway, so exempting them wouldn't have much impact.

Per capita income in the US was slightly above $40,000 in 2011--this includes children, infants, retired persons, the unemployed, etc., so obviously the per capita income of the working population is considerably higher. Total personal income in the US was about $13 trillion for 2011. To account for the first $20k of everyone's income being exempt, we'll pretend everyone earns $40k a year and say the tax is assessed on half of total personal income, or $6.5 trillion dollars. (In reality this would be higher, of course, but there are too many variables for me to know exactly how much.) A one percent tax on this amount would bring in $65 billion a year, more than the federal government spends total on transportation each year ($53.5 billion). Add this to the ever-declining federal fuel tax revenues of $34 billion and we're at almost $100 billion per year. (And remember, there's no reason to get rid of the existing fuel tax.)

One appeal of an income tax for transportation is that it's sensible in regard to how people value their time. Even with a flat percentage on all income, people who earn more will pay more money into the transportation fund, and this makes sense: a person earning $100k a year has more to lose (from a financial standpoint) by wasting time in traffic than a person earning $30k a year, so it's fair that they would pay more for a transportation system that actually works. We need to actually a working network if we're going to collect more taxes though--our transportation network is so degraded and ill-suited to our needs that almost no one feels like their money is being put to good use. An extra $60+ billion a year might just get us there--at the very least it'd make a dent in some of that $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog we've been ignoring.

Aside from the first-$20,000 exemption, this also solves the problem of "free-loading," the perception by people on all sides of the transportation debate that the other guy isn't paying the full cost of his or her mode of travel. Everyone pays something, so everyone gets a seat at the table when it comes to decision-making.

Of course, a bunch of extra money to spend on infrastructure doesn't do us any good if it's all just frivolously wasted on new capacity, and that's where things could get really interesting. How do we spend this new revenue responsibly? Imagine if, for example 80% of the new revenue had to be spent on maintenance and repair.

Poor roads cost the average vehicle owner $355 a year, not to mention the injury and loss of life that can result from a crumbling, unsafe infrastructure. Or consider that it can cost 6 to 14 times more to repair roads in the last years of their life than in the first fifteen:

With an extra $65 billion a year we could literally erase this maintenance backlog. Once a state had caught up with their repairs--a process that would no doubt take decades, but without additional spending will worsen rather than improve--they could begin to use this money on other projects, assuming they kept things in a good state of repair. It's unfortunate that states can't be trusted to operate with a "fix-it-first" mentality, but when it's costing us all money in the long term and lives in the short term, it's appropriate for the federal government to step in and demand changes. As more roads fall to poor and very poor condition the costs will only accelerate, and we're so far behind at this point that only a significant increase on transportation maintenance spending can get us caught up.

It would also be true under this system that those who don't drive often, or at all, would be contributing more money directly to the transportation fund. As such, we could expect drastic changes to how money is apportioned, and cities and states could make serious progress on their public transportation, walkability, and bicycling goals--something that wouldn't just improve mobility, but also health, the local economy, and the environment. A growing share of trips is already being made on foot, bike, or transit, so the existing 20% of the Highway Trust Fund devoted to transit would have to increase, especially since much more of its funding would be coming from lite- or non-drivers. This would in turn lead to better options for those who would like to use their car less, and greater support for more investment in alternative transportation.

One last benefit of such a system, when compared to other revenue mechanisms like mileage fees and tolls (which certainly have many benefits themselves), is that it wouldn't cost any additional money to administer. Unlike a vehicle-miles traveled system, which requires GPS or mileage tracking hardware in every car, as well as monitoring of all of this data, an income tax is something we're very familiar with in this country and would be very simple to tack on to existing federal income taxes at little or no cost. Tolls and congestion pricing could be retained in dense urban areas for purposes of traffic control of course, but if generating revenue as efficiently as possible is the goal, an income tax is hard to beat.

There would be upsides and downsides for any income-tax based funding mechanism, but I think there's value in at least giving it consideration and discussing how we might make it as equitable as possible. I still believe strongly in user fees, and I generally favor taxing things that produce negative externalities, like gasoline consumption, alcohol, or cigarettes, over taxing positive things like employment. This isn't what I would choose if my goal were to maximize fairness and social justice, but when the scale of the infrastructure problem is so massive and the cost of waiting is so great, maybe the best solution is just the one that actually solves it, and solves it quickly.