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Three
Big Ideas
What's
not to like? These three transportation solutions
are inexpensive, could be implemented quickly and
could make a big dent on traffic congestion.
When
the history of the 2006 General Assembly session
is written, it might be titled “The Year of Big
Ideas in Transportation.” Whether the Big
Ideas translate into Big Improvements is an open
question. Already there are signs of policy
gridlock, such as the looming fights over land use
reforms and tax increases.
But improving
transportation does not require sweeping
legislative changes. There are significant
improvements that can be made relatively quickly,
requiring little more than political will and a
commitment of relatively modest financial
resources. Here are three ideas.
Improve Bus
Service
It’s not sexy, but it works. Los
Angeles is an interesting model. In the late
1990’s, the mayor and other city officials
visited Curitiba, Brazil, a city that has earned
international acclaim for its bus rapid transit (BRT)
system and its land use policies. The
visitors were
so impressed that, in March 1999, the Los Angeles
County Metropolitan Transit Authority ordered a
demonstration of BRT technology in Los Angeles.
Two busy corridors were selected for a two-phased
demonstration: Wilshire/Whittier (a very congested
corridor that runs through the Los Angeles central
business district) and Ventura (a high demand
suburban corridor that serves the Red Line
subway).
A number of
improvements were planned for Phase I, including
reducing the frequency of stops, replacing old bus
shelters with modern stations, installing devices
that enable buses to force traffic lights to stay
green, and increasing the number of buses so that
one is guaranteed to arrive at a station every few
minutes. The Phase I demonstration routes
opened on June 24,2000, just 15 months after
planning began.
Ridership increased by
a staggering 42 percent in the Wilshire corridor and
27 percent
in the Ventura corridor. Roughly 1/3 of the
increase were new riders – people attracted to
public transit for the first time.
The total
cost for the 42.4 mile demonstration was $8.27
million, or roughly $195,000 per mile. To
achieve comparable performance, a rail system
would have cost hundreds of millions of dollars,
if not more, and would have taken at least a
decade to design and build. Based upon the
success of the demonstration, the city committed
to building a 350-mile BRT system.
As of
December 2005, just six years after the decision
to proceed with the demonstration, sixteen Phase I
corridors were open carrying over 140,000 daily
passengers. By comparison, after decades of
planning and construction, the Dulles rail
extension is projected to carry only about 90,000
daily passengers in 2025 at a cost exceeding $180
million per mile.
As the
Washington
Post recently reported, the Washington regional
bus system suffers from severe neglect and
mismanagement, even though it carries nearly as
many passengers as Metrorail. A
demonstration project should be well received and
might be just the thing to attract new patrons.
Moreover, as shown in Los Angeles, the
demonstration can be planned and implemented in
less than 18 months, well before the next General
Assembly elections I can think of no other
significant transportation improvements that can
be accomplished so quickly. Finally, the risks are
very low. We already proved the concept on
Columbia Pike in Arlington, where bus improvements
enable bus service to perform as well as
Metrorail’s Blue Line, according to the head of
the Washington Area Metropolitan Transit
Authority.
The capital costs there: about
$600,000 per mile.
Implement Transit Service
As Part of High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lane Projects
HOT lanes are emerging as the solution-du-jour in
Northern Virginia. They hold much promise,
including attracting private capital and providing
a congestion-free right-of-way. These
attributes, particularly the congestion-free
right-of-way, also make HOT lanes ideal corridors
for operating express bus or BRT services.
Indeed, the Transurban-Fluor team, which is
proposing to build HOT lanes in the I-95/395
corridor, is calling their proposal a “BRT/HOT
Lanes System,” not just a HOT lane project.
They have proposed $65million to help pay the
capital costs for BRT, and they have suggested
that significant excess toll revenues will be
available to support operating costs. The
combination of available right-of-way and private
sector financing make transit a no-brainer in the
I-395 corridor. In Houston, an express
bus/high occupancy vehicle (HOV) system carries
over 43,000 daily bus passengers, roughly 20
percent of the daily passenger throughput.
Between 38 and 46 percent of bus passengers
previously drove alone, according to the Texas
Transportation Institute.
We conducted
preliminary modeling and found that a BRT or
express bus system in the I-95/395 corridor could
achieve equally impressive results. A high
capacity BRT/HOT lane corridor would put Northern
Virginia at the cutting edge of current
transportation thinking and would greatly improve
the transportation performance of the corridor.
Many of the pieces already are falling into place,
including substantial private sector financing.
Del. Al Eisenberg, D-Arlington, has introduced
a bill to require the Commonwealth to plan for
transit in the corridor.
The
Commonwealth now needs the political will to make
it happen.
Promote Telecommuting
The fastest
growing mode of transportation is not a mode at
all – it’s working at home. According to the
U.S. Census Bureau, the number of people working at
home nationally increased by 23 percent between
1990 and 2000. Currently, about 4.5 million
Americans telecommute on most work days and 20
million telecommute at least once per month.
Telecommuting is the only commuting mode, other
than driving alone, that has increased market
share since 1980, according to a 2005 study by the
non-profit Reason Foundation. Telecommuters
currently outnumber transit commuters in a
majority of American cities with populations over
one million, according to the same study. In
Virginia, roughly 115,000 Virginia workers work at
home, according to the Bureau’s 2003 American
Community Survey.
This is just
slightly less than the 131,000 Virginians that the
survey estimates commute by public transit.
In fact, between 2000 and 2003, the percentage of
public transit commuters declined from 4.15
percent to 3.75 percent, while the percentage of
Virginia home workers remained relatively constant
at 3.31 percent
Public transit will
always be an important strategy -- people still
need to get around. But the fact remains
that telecommuting is now roughly on par with
transit as a mode of transportation and it is
likely to continue growing, particularly as the
internet, cell phones, and other technologies get
better and cheaper.
Telecommuting also has
many obvious benefits, including reducing demand
for new transportation infrastructure, easing
congestion, reducing energy consumption, and
improving air quality. The growth and
popularity of telecommuting suggest that it should
be considered a transportation mode in its own
right and that it should be part of any multimodal
transportation plan to emerge from the General
Assembly.
But even in the absence of
Big Idea legislation this session, there is much
the Commonwealth can do to promote more
telecommuting, starting perhaps by encouraging
more state workers and state contractors to
telecommute.
Conclusion
Much is riding on the
outcome of the current General Assembly session.
The stakes are high -- many believe that this year
is our only chance for major transportation
legislation in the near future. It is
important not to forget, however, that much can be
done without major new legislation.
Sometimes, it's the little things that make all
the difference.
--
January 17, 2006
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