Traffic
congestion and regional mobility are important
topics in the northern part of
Virginia. Most citizens get their
in-depth perspectives on these complex issues from
the region’s dominant newspaper, The
Washington Post. Just what can they learn
about access and mobility by reading The Post?
This
column provides an informal survey of key articles
and editorials on transportation and land use
carried by The Post during 2002. This
summary can be used to achieve a better
understanding of these issues and help interpret
coverage in 2003.
THE
NEWS SIDE
In
anticipation of the Fall 2002 vote on increasing
the sales tax to fund transportation, The Post
provided extensive coverage of transportation and
land use. Many of the articles focused on soft
news -- the impact of congestion and long commutes
on individuals and families. Some articles, however, addressed technical
and substantive issues. Stories in The Post
provided the anti-tax advocates with some of their
best material.
The
September 2002 Post article “Roads
Projects Wouldn’t End N. VA.’s Misery” (B-1,
19 September 2002
by Katherine Shaver) documented that the proposed
tax would generate a only drop in the bucket of
need. No amount of money would “solve” the
problem of traffic congestion. Widely circulated
by anti-tax advocates, this article helped
citizens understand that, as we emphasize below,
building more roads or other infrastructure will
not eliminate congestion.
The
Post’s
substantive coverage of access and mobility issues
also provided information upon which intelligent
longer-term decisions could be made. Here are some
examples:
Acknowledging
that the “reverse commute” is now almost as
bad as the normal peak flow (“A Reverse Commute
No Breeze,” Lisa Rein, A-1, 6
July 2002
)
establishes a context for understanding a
fundamental reality:
It is not physically possible to
design a regional transport system that pumps a
full cycle only once a day -- in during the
morning peak, out during the evening peak.
Human
settlement is an organic system controlled by the
laws of physics and biology. Because of the same natural laws, it would
also not be possible to design a mammal whose
heart beat just once a day.
It
is also good news that parking perks were back on
the front page as a major cause of transport
dysfunction. (“Area Parking Perks Keep More Cars
on Road, Experts Say,” Katherine Shaver, A-1,
8
July 2002
.) An understanding of free parking and other
subsidies that encourage private vehicle use opens
the door to exploring the real solutions to
traffic congestion.
Level the playing field and let economic competition
balance travel demand with transport system
capacity. Drop the counterproductive subsidies on
single-occupant vehicles (and private vehicles in
general) and thereby improve access and mobility
for all citizens.
This
perspective is critical. The current
United
States
ground-transport policy is centered on the myth of
“freedom” provided by the private automobile.
The surface transportation policy was forged in
the 1920s and reinforced in the 1950s. What was
good for 5 percent of the population in the 1920s
and for General Motors and 30 percent of the
population in the 1950s is not good for all the
citizens -- individually or collectively -- in the
21st century.
It
should
have been front page news that the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth crafted by special interests in the
20s is still controlling public transport policy.
Some media and governance practitioners support
the transport facility design/build lobby and the
myriad land development interests in perpetuating
the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth. (Our December 23, 2002
Bacon’s Rebellion column, “Too
Little, Too Late” articulates the Private
Vehicle Mobility Myth in the context of what Gov.
Mark Warner can do immediately to improve
transportation in the Commonwealth.)
The
most common form of this myth is related to
residential decision-making. Since World War II,
the transportation design/build lobby, along with
many politicians, have been telling individuals,
families and organizations that in this great
country universal mobility is akin to freedom of
speech. Those who benefit from wide-spread belief
in the myth reinforce it with advertising, public
policy and news coverage. The myth when fully
stated as below is obviously just that, a myth:
Individuals and families can live
wherever they can afford and work wherever they
can find a job. They can seek services and
recreation wherever they choose. It is
government’s obligation to build a
roadway/highway/expressway system that allows them
to drive a private vehicle wherever they want to
go, whenever they want, and to arrive in a timely
manner.
This
myth is richly supported by The Post’s
advertising and reporting. A June 2002 Post
story highlights the enterprise-oriented Private
Vehicle Mobility Myth. (“Clogged Roads Cost Area
Firms Billions: When Employees Get Stuck in
Traffic, Profits Can Stall, Too” Neil Irwin,
A-1,
21 June 2002
.) This article documents that businesses base
investments on the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.
Entrepreneurs can start an enterprise wherever they
want and seek customers wherever they want. It is
government’s obligation to build a
roadway/highway/
expressway system that allows companies’ vehicles
to deliver goods and services wherever the
enterprises want, whenever they want, in a timely
manner.
Of
course, if the business’ vehicles run into
congestion, it is someone else's fault.
Employers also believe they have the right
to have their workers drive to work and arrive on
time without regard to the location of the
workplace. These variations of the Myth are as
preposterous as the citizen/family location
variants.
There is no basis for any
form of the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.
It is a fiscal and physical impossibility
in a large New Urban Region such as
Washington-Baltimore, the fourth largest in the
United States
,
to create ubiquitous private-vehicle mobility.
Such friction-free driving is impossible in
a universe controlled by the laws of physics and
biology. Data from the Texas Transportation
Institute’s annual urban mobility analysis have
been making this point for nearly 20 years.
Most
of The Post’s news coverage since the 5
November elections has focused on the fact that
there is no money to build even a few of the
transport system improvements that road and rail
advocates champion. Face-saving stories about how
politicians plan to squeeze blood from turnips
have been the theme. What goes unsaid
is more important:
Unless there are fundamental changes in human
settlement pattern -- and in citizen expectations
-- there will be no end to transport gridlock.
Three initial steps would be to remove the
counterproductive subsidies, rationally allocate
the costs of access and mobility and kill the
Private Vehicle Mobility Myth.
It
also went unreported in 2002 that it is impossible
to know what transport facilities the National
Capital Subregion needs, if any, because the
distribution of land uses is now so dysfunctional.
The Subregion cannot rationally, reasonably or
economically fix the problem of immobility and
lack of access until there is a comprehensive
Subregional land-use plan that balances transport
demand with transport-system capacity. The last
time that
Washington
had such a plan was 1791 – the planner was
Pierre Charles L’Enfant. The closest we have
come since is the Finley/Hoppenfield 1961 Plan for
the Year 2000.
THE
EDITORIAL SIDE
Those
in control of the
Washington
Post’s editorial and op-ed pages demonstrated a clear failure to
grasp the transportation/ land-use issues.
Editorial policy supports the interests of the
publishing company and thus its advertisers --
home builders, lenders, home furnishers, agents,
road builders, land speculators, auto sales and
service and others in the minority who profit
directly from dispersed, dysfunctional settlement
patterns.
As
a general rule, citizens would be well advised to
do just the opposite of what Post
editorials recommend for transportation and land
use. Indeed, that is what the voters did on the
tax referendum. Whatever one thinks about the Post
editorials on national, continental and global
issues, they are deplorable on regional and
subregional ones. This is especially true in
the case of land use and transportation.
On
5 July 2002
,
The Washington Post editorial writers
stated their misperception very clearly. After
citing the recent coverage on the woes of citizens
using roads and rails in the National Capital
Subregion, they stated: “Even the smartest
growth from now on won’t eliminate the need for
massive spending on transit and road
improvements.”
A number of citizens probably agreed with
that statement. The problem is that it is dead
wrong.
Growth is not smart, smarter or smartest unless
the changes in land use that result from this
growth reduces the demand for vehicular
transport, especially in single-occupant private
vehicles. Growth
is not smart unless it helps create a balance
between transport-system capacity and travel
demand.
This
point is made in our Bacon’s Rebellion column
“Wrong
solution, Wrong Problem” (December 9, 2002) in paraphrasing of transportion guru Wilford Owen:
There are
almost no transportation facility solutions to
transportation congestions problems.
Between
mid-May and the November election, The Post
ran 15 editorials, consuming more than 80 column
inches, obscuring this reality. The editorials had
a single theme: Transportation problems can be
solved with more money. On election day, voters
rejected this position.
Moving
from editorials to the op-ed pages, the situation
becomes more complex. Some op-eds such as Hank
Dittmar’s “Next Move for Transportation” on
December 30, 2002, which advocates an integrated
system of air, rail and rubber-tired vehicles to
meet long-distance travel needs, makes a
significant contribution to the discussion and
understanding of the transport issue.
By
contrast, Rob Atkinson’s “In Virginia,
Roadkill from the Start” (November 10, 2002,
Page B-4) which Monday-morning quarterbacked the
sales tax strategy, confused
transportation/land-use issues and provided
“expert” advice that is dead wrong.
Perhaps
the most important step in the right direction was
an op-ed on “congestion pricing.” (“Pricing
the Fast Lane,” Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren,
12
July 2002
,
A-21.) Congestion pricing is a great idea, but not
a silver bullet. There is the issue of equity:
In a democracy with a market economy, a transport
system that leverages the rich to get richer is
not acceptable as a “solution.” Congestion
pricing is a useful tool, but in the United
States, where more and more of the wealth is held
by fewer and fewer citizens and the gap between
rich and poor grows each year, using the mobility
system to reinforce that trend is not good policy
or good politics.
Congestion
pricing has many constructive applications. More
importantly, it opens the window for citizens to
understand the root cause of congestion. The
underlying problem is dysfunctional human
settlement patterns. Congestion pricing illuminates
the need for the fundamental changes in land use
in order to balance transportation-system capacity
with travel demand. It does not eliminate
the need for these fundamental changes.
Failure to rationally allocate the public cost of
providing access and mobility -- including the
failure to implement any form of congestion
pricing -- exacerbates the problem of
dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
However, relying only on congestion pricing
masks the core reality:
Ubiquitous private (or public) vehicle
mobility without a land-use balance is a fiscal
and physical impossibility, period.