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 21^st 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.