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There has been a plethora of recent media
coverage about the reconstruction of the Woodrow
Wilson
Bridge
and the I-95/I-395/I-495 Interchange at Springfield.
It is comforting that some things are getting
built
rather than blown up. But the reporters,
and the delighted politicians and engineers they
quote, are overlooking the most important
question: Will these expanded facilities reduce
traffic congestion in the National Capital
Subregion?
Are these
facilities milestones on the way to improving
the mobility of the millions of Virginians who
will use the bridge and the interchange, or
are they building blocks of self-delusion and
fraud?
The answer depends on an understanding of human
settlement patterns and the characteristics of
the transportation systems needed to provide
mobility and access in urban areas. This is the
first of three columns that address the
dysfunction of current attempts to provide
mobility and access.
Pictures of soaring fly-over ramps are
impressive to the National Capital Subregion’s
editors, producers, viewers and readers because
they are not often seen here. Long fly-over
ramps are common in many places such as
Texas
where, in spite of the graceful engineering and
large construction budgets, urban area traffic
congestion is among the worse in the United
States.
Research shows conclusively
that these soaring new ramps and bridge spans
are not fail-safe solutions to traffic
congestion. It is, therefore, important to ask:
Will any amount of new expressway and bridge
construction improve mobility and access? This
question is answered in two parts:
o Will
these or other similar projects improve regional
and subregional mobility?
o Will
these or other similar projects improve mobility
in the corridors where they are being
constructed?
Reducing
the Level of Regional and Subregional Congestion
What does research conclude about the long-term
regional and subregional impact of major
projects like reconstructing the Woodrow
Wilson
Bridge
and the I-95/I-395/I-495 Interchange? It turns out that careful
scientific evaluation comes to exactly the same
conclusion that thoughtful citizens do. Consider
these three situations:
o Does anyone think that when these improvements
are completed it will be smart to work in Arlington
or the Federal
District
and live in Loudoun
County,
much less in Frederick,
Clark,
Rappahannock,
Fauquier or Culpeper
Counties?
o Does
anyone really think that reconstructing
the
Woodrow
Wilson
Bridge
and the I-95/I-395/I-495 Interchange will make
it easier to commute from a house in Annapolis
to a job in Silver
Spring
or Tysons Corner?
o With
these new facilities in place, does anyone
think it will it be intelligent to live on an
acre lot, much less a five or ten acre lot,
where almost every need of the family requires
that someone get in a private vehicle, a
delivery truck or a school bus?
In the three examples above and similar
scenarios, the citizens live in the National
Capital Subregion but may not often use the
reconstructed the Woodrow Wilson Bridge or the
I-95/I-395/I-495 Interchange in their journey to
and from work, services or recreation. Upon
thoughtful reflection, few citizens would
suggest any of these scenarios as a choice to
live would be good strategies because of these
two major reconstruction projects.
Common sense is supported by the best science
available. According to the annual Texas
Transportation Institute survey of traffic
congestion in the urbanized areas of the largest
Metropolitan areas in the United States,
traffic and congestion are getting worse
regardless of the number of new projects being
built.
In spite of this reality, many citizens and
organizations are making location decisions that
appear to be based on a belief that these (or
similar big “we must build this” projects
for which there is no funding) will improve
mobility and access region-wide. They are acting
as if “improved” transportation facilities
will make location decisions a matter of
personal preference unfettered by spacial
reality. This is a case of self-delusion with
significant economic, social and physical
consequences for the families and organizations
that make location decisions based on myth.
In this region and across the United
States,
citizens and organizations are betting on the wrong horse. They are
betting their savings, the future of their
children and in some cases their lives on belief
in the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth. In this
case the myth might be stated like this:
If
“they” build enough facilities, then I can
go wherever I want, whenever I want to go
there and arrive in a timely manner relying on
automobility and the improved roadways.
In “No
Context,” (
February
2, 2004
) this column profiled the press coverage of the multi-billion dollar
Big Dig in the core of the Boston New Urban
Region. Since that time, we have searched for
any major roadway improvement –- any bypass,
new or expanded circumferential or radial in a
large urban region –- that would improve
access and mobility across the region or major
subregion without a complementary Fundamental
Change in settlement patterns.
We have
found no example where increasing the capacity
of one roadway, several roadways or even a new
shared-vehicle system has or would have the
long-term impact of improving mobility for the
region unless there is or would be a
Fundamental Change in the settlement patterns.
It may be possible that a theoretical case
could be constructed. It is hard to imagine a
scenario evolving in the real world where the
circumstances could exist, although some very
strange things happen vis a vis mobility at
national and state borders. The reason for the
region-wide growth of congestion in spite of new
facilities is based on simple physics. (See
“The Physics of Gridlock,” SYNERGY/Planning,
Inc. 2003.)
Congestion
and Immobility in Corridors Where New Projects
are Located
Again, it is expeditious to start with a
specific example that is easy to understand.
Start with someone who lives in Stafford
or Spotsylvania
Counties
and wants to drive their private vehicle to work
at the Internal Revenue Service in New
Carrollton. This worker would drive through both
the reconstruction of the I-95/I-395/I-495
Interchange at Springfield
and the reconstruction of the Woodrow
Wilson
Bridge.
Does anyone believe they will get there
any faster or with less stress three years after
the bridge is completed in 2011 than they did
three years before construction started during
the late 90s? How about the congestion during
the 15-plus years of construction?
Recall that the design of the “compromise”
Woodrow
Wilson
Bridge
reconstruction:
Most important there has been no municipal,
state or federal commitment to create settlement
patterns to match the capacity of the bridge or
the interchange, much less to use these
facilities as a catalyst to build Balanced
Communities in a sustainable New Urban Region.
When completed, more people will be able to
drive from Fredericksburg
to New Carrollton at the same time, but will any
of them get there faster or with less stress?
The corridor capacity will be increased by
removing some current bottlenecks. However, the intraregional
traveler (and the interregional traveler
for whom the “Interstate” expressway was
built) will still face growing congestion
without a Fundamental Change in the settlement
patterns in the corridor and throughout the
region.
The reason for the reemergence of congestion in
the corridor after facility expansion is
explained by the “Triple Convergence” axiom.
This axiom was articulated by Tony Downs of the
Brookings Institution 12 years ago in a book
called Stuck
in Traffic. Brookings recently has
announced a revision titled Still
Stuck in Traffic.
In a nutshell the axiom notes that those
who have avoided the corridor because of
congestion will return and establish a new
equilibrium. Congestion
may have caused many drivers to (1) change their
route, (2) time or (3) mode of travel but
they will come back to absorb the new capacity.
Since VDOT and others have instituted
special programs to reduce private vehicle trips
during construction and these programs will be
discontinued upon completion, it may be
“Quadruple Convergence” but Triple is enough
to make the point.
Tony is a gifted writer, and his
rendition of Triple Convergence is a pleasure to
read.
The Triple Convergence axiom explains why the
traffic dramatically grows to fill the new
capacity. It does not directly deal with the
cumulative impact of misguided location
decisions that increase the total miles traveled
in the corridor by far more than can be
accommodated by the added capacity. This growth
is because citizens and their organizations,
under the delusion that new or hoped for
capacity is just for them, make unwise locations
decisions.
The
problem is that while roadway
“improvements” increase the capacity of
the corridor, they do not make the
transportation system “better.”
To make transport systems better, all the
facilities –- new and old –- must be
balanced with the human settlement patterns that
the systems are intended to serve. As has been
stated frequently in this column:
Without
Fundamental Change in human settlement
patterns, just building new transport
facilities makes congestion and immobility
worse, not better.
There is a good example across the
Potomac
River
in
Montgomery
Count, Md.
The widening of I-270 from four lanes to 12
lanes in several stages over the past few
decades has vastly increased the capacity of
this radial arterial. The increased capacity
from all this construction has been overwashed
by an even greater increase in the vehicles
miles traveled in the corridor. At some stages,
there was a temporary increase in the speed and
convenience of drivers. Now more people drive
this corridor with about as much congestion as
drivers faced before the widening started. The
increase in the expanse and complexity of the
roadway also makes driving more stressful and
less safe.
The pattern and density of land use in the
I-270 Corridor has changed dramatically. It is
not, however, the positive Fundamental Change
which is advocated in this column. Many of the
new users of I-270 are going to and from
thousands of urban dwellings that have been
scattered across and thus eroded the Countryside
from Montgomery
County
to the Pennsylvania
and West
Virginia
borders and beyond. In Montgomery
County,
along with the dispersed single dwellings there
are still scattered urban enclaves that have
less balance and/or a lower density than they
must have to be transportable. These places do
not add up to any Balanced Communities. (See “Scatteration”,
September 25, 2003
.)
The I-270 Corridor is an especially striking
example of the futility of project construction
to reduce congestion because there is a METRO
line that runs roughly parallel to the I-270
Corridor. There has not been significant
agglomeration of supportive land uses in the
METRO station areas. A different station-area
settlement pattern would be needed to balance
METRO system capacity, especially for the
off-peak capacity. Is the lack of intelligent
METRO station area development caused by the
widening of I-270 which has diverted the market
to quicker profit projects instead of projects
with long term value that create functional
human settlement patterns? See “Wild
Abandonment”,
Sept 8, 2003
.)
An understanding of the futility of facility
construction must be applied to the entire list
of “we must build” projects: Widening
I-66 inside the Beltway, the “TechWay”
crossing of the Potomac, the Western
Transportation Corridor, Hot Lanes on the
Beltway, widening I-81 and other
“improvements” impacting the northern part
of Virginia.
The failure of “improvements” to improve
mobility is not just a problem in the
Washington-Baltimore New Urban Region (NUR). The
reality that “improvements” fail to improve
mobility and access undermines the rationale for
every “must build project” in the Tidewater
NUR, the Greater Richmond NUR and in small urban
agglomerations as well.
It turns out that Triple Convergence and
delusion-driven location decisions happens in
regions that spend a lot on road construction
per capita and those that spend much less. As
noted in “No
Context” (February 2, 2004.), the
added capacity of building the Big Dig
“improvement” will fill up soon, but this is
not just an issue involving multi-billion dollar
projects. It impacts every dollar spent on
transportation infrastructure. It is just easier
to see the futility in big projects. Even in
relatively small regions like Greater Richmond,
these decisions exacerbate and compound regional
and subregional immobility and congestion. (See
“The
Shape of Richmond’s Future”,
Feb 16, 2004
.)
Understanding Triple Convergence in a single
corridor and unintelligent location decisions
such as those in the I-270 corridor is a way to
come to grips with what happens to the
settlement patterns and travel behavior
throughout the region unless there is a balance
between the travel demand generated by the
land-use pattern and the carrying capacity of
the transportation system created to provide
mobility and access.
Regional
congestion is the cumulative impact of many
corridor scenarios when there is no balanced
regional land-use and transportation plan and
no commitment to creating Balanced
Communities.
Tony Downs’ answer to improving mobility in
the face of Triple Convergence is congestion.
He has said for years that “congestion
is the solution.” When congestion gets bad
enough, citizens and their organizations will
make more intelligent location decisions. That
assumes that someone whom citizens trust will
tell them why their location decisions need to
be more intelligent and how to make these
decisions support their long-term self-interest.
This is where the issue of fraud reinforcing
self-delusion comes into play.
The position of the current transportation
professionals and governance practitioners on
the impact of transport “improvements”
perpetuates the self-delusion. Stating or
implying the myth that widening and
“improving” roads results in improved
mobility reinforces the companion myth that
citizens who make unintelligent location
decisions have no negative mobility
consequences. Citizens want to hear that they
have the freedom to do whatever they want to do.
They want to go wherever they want, whenever
they want to go there and arrive in a timely
manner relying on automobility. This is a
physical impossibility.
Self
Delusion or Fraud
It is clear that “improvements” in one
place or in many places in a region will not
reduce the level of regional or corridor
congestion without a Fundamental Change in human
settlement patterns. This brings us to the
question: Is the statement “let’s widen some
roads to reduce congestion” self-delusion or
is it fraud? It depends on who says it.
“Self-delusion”
is being deluded by one’s false belief.
“Fraud” is a deception deliberately
practiced to secure unfair or unlawful gain.
Who is deluded, and who is perpetrating
a fraud?
Citizens could understand the causes of
congestion and immobility if they considered the
facts. It is a human proclivity to rely on myth
and self-delusion in situations involving the
cumulative result of individual actions. These
delusion-driven actions will continue until the
myth is refuted by someone whom citizens trust.
Under current conditions, it is easier to blame
“others” for the lack of mobility when, in
fact, immobility results from their own location
decisions.
If governance practitioners were less concerned
with the views and contributions of those who
profit from delusion and myth, they would demand
to have the full story told. Among those to whom
they listen are land owners who profit from land
speculation and those who make their money from
converting land to urban land uses: Developers,
builders, engineers, contractors and
agents–lawyers, real estate, insurance, the
list goes on. This
is not to say that they understand the
transportation consequences of dysfunctional
distribution of land uses.
They do, however, profit from the current
processes that are known as Business as Usual.
These interests have loud voices and deep
pockets for lobbying and campaign contributions
but are a tiny minority of the population. Even
they and their families are negatively impacted
by the dysfunctional settlement patterns and
lack of mobility.
Governance practitioners fail to tell citizens
the truth about access and mobility. They get
reelected, reappointed and promoted, but is it
fraud or the lack of understanding of the myths?
Is theirs an unlawful gain? It is clearly
unfair. Perhaps we should let citizens decide in
the next election.
Most transportation planners know the truth.
Instead of telling the whole truth they tell
only the part of the story –- the part about
increasing corridor capacity. Telling only part
of the story benefits those who pay their salary
or consulting fee. Improving capacity without
matching travel demand with system capacity
results in congestion. Transportation
professionals suggesting that congestion will
decrease in the long term even though there is a
disconnect between land-use trip generation and
transportation system capacity perpetuate a
fraud.
Reluctantly we have come to the conclusion that
much of transportation planning and much of
transportation research as currently practiced
is at best misleading and at worst, fraud. As
you might guess, it is a difficult decision
because some of our best friends were
transportation planners.
Perhaps the way to make the relationship
between transportation and land use clear is to
use a simple analogy:
Building
any transportation facility that is not
designed to create and serve functional human
settlement patterns made up of Balanced
Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions
is as intelligent as loading the
transportation facility funds onto an aircraft
carrier and taking it out to the edge of the
Continental Shelf and shoveling all the money
off into the deep blue sea.
Where to
from Here?
This is the first of three columns that focus
on the tragedy that is the current dysfunctional
relationship between land-use and transportation
systems in contemporary society. The next column
will address two timeless topics: Death
and Taxes. In the third column, the focus will
be on the response one hears from public
officials who are responsible for
transportation. A good example was Ray
Pethtel’s letter to Jim Bacon that was in the
last issue (May
24, 2004
)
of Bacons Rebellion.
Stay tuned.
-- June 7, 2004
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