Sunday, January 16, 2011

With More Federal Funding, Florida in Striking Distance of New High-Speed Line

In sinking $800 million more into the Tampa-Orlando line, Obama Administration is making clear its interest in making this the nation’s model program for fast trains.

In terms of high-speed rail funding, the thinking of the current Department of Transportation is easy to understand: Of the dozens of projects proposed across the country, only one could offer true high-speed service and open before the end of President Obama’s second term, all within a relatively tight budget. That is Florida’s 84-mile Tampa-Orlando link, expected to be complete by 2015 at a cost of less than $3 billion. It is therefore no surprise that in the latest round of grants for fast train services, the project has been awarded enough money to virtually ensure its construction.

The DOT’s announcement, expected to be formalized on Thursday, will hand Florida $800 million of the $2.5 billion in total allocations from the Congress’ FY 2010 budget. The Sunshine State now has $2.05 billion in federal funds to complete its $2.7 billion project, including the $1.25 billion it received in January. A further $300 million is expected to follow in 2011 thanks to the $1 billion in additional funds expected to be earmarked for high-speed rail nationwide in the FY 2011 budget. This would be enough to pay for the whole line.

Of the remaining $1.7 billion to be allocated this week, $902 million will go to California, primarily for the construction of a new line in the state’s Central Valley, between Merced and Bakersfield; Iowa and Illinois won $230 million for a link between Chicago and Iowa City; Michigan received $150 million for the Dearborn-Kalamazoo line; and Connecticut landed $121 million for the New Haven-Hartford-Springfield connection. Several other projects, like Virginia’s Washington-Richmond corridor, Oregon’s Eugene-Portland line, and the Atlanta-Charlotte connection, won smaller planning grants. Of these projects, only Florida’s and California’s plans would produce true high-speed rail, operating at maximum speeds above 150 mph.

Unless Republican political foes of high-speed rail shut down these projects after November’s elections (likely in Wisconsin, possible in Ohio and Florida, unlikely in California), these funds are likely to be spent on actual construction, as were the $8 billion in funds distributed earlier this year. Once the DOT makes this week’s allocations official later this week, I will discuss their national implications.

But Florida is the biggest story here: In almost fully funding the state’s first line, the federal government is hoping to produce a model for the rest of the nation to eventually emulate. The Obama Administration, despite inducing a sea change in thinking about the role of intercity rail in American society, also has been rather incrementalist in its thinking. The government has steadily embraced the concept of high-speed rail but the Administration has not been particularly successful in making the issue big enough to ensure a massive Congressional allocation — yet.

Florida, because its project will be the first true high-speed rail line in the U.S. and will be done relatively soon, will be judged on its effectiveness and therefore serve as the standard for future U.S. fast train projects. That means the state has a particular obligation to ensure that the program is implemented with few or no cost overruns and that it is able to attract high ridership once it opens. If it is successful in the eyes of the media and the political class, increasing funding for this transportation mode will be virtually assured. Otherwise, far more ambitious schemes like California’s San Francisco-to-Los Angeles line, will likely remain on the sidelines.

The Florida line will include five stations, in downtown Tampa, Lakeland, the Disney resorts, the Orange County Convention Center (pictured at top), and the Orlando Airport, and is expected to attract 2.4 million riders in its first year. Though trains will accelerate to up to 168 mph, express trains between Tampa and Orlando Airport will make the trip in 50 minutes — roughly 100 mph on average. The majority of the line will be built in the median of Interstate 4 by a public-private partnership responsible for construction, rolling stock, and operations. It is expected to be chosen at the end of next year, after an RFP review beginning in March.

A future extension to Miami would come next; this week the federal government also provided Florida several million dollars to study that project.

As I’ve argued several times before, Florida’s high-speed line is far from perfect. Most problematically, it includes no station in downtown Orlando; its highway alignment also limits associated development possibilities in Lakeland.

Nevertheless, the Obama Administration is right in its focus on this project. Florida’s interest in attracting foreign investors in the line’s construction and operation means that the corridor is likely to be well-run and offer a surprising alternative to the mediocre (and under-funded) Amtrak intercity service too many Americans think is as good as it gets. The fact that this link will be operationally profitable won’t hurt, either. By ensuring that the state gets its corridor up and running as soon as possible, the Obama Administration will be providing a model for the quality and undeniably exciting benefits of true high-speed rail, no matter its limitations in this context.

ARC Project Definitively Cancelled, But There Are Other Ways to Improve New Jersey’s Transit Future

Capacity on New Jersey Transit can be expanded by transforming the system.

Access to the Region’s Core was to be the nation’s largest investment in transit, ever: At a cost of $8.7 billion, the project would have dramatically expanded rail capacity between New York and New Jersey by doubling the number of rail tracks available for use under the Hudson River. The result could have been a large increase in service on New Jersey Transit’s commuter rail and Amtrak’s intercity rail operations.

The project is now dead. After a two-week review demanded by Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has reaffirmed his decision to stop all work on a scheme for which he argues the state has no money. In other words, the ARC tunnel is low on the Governor’s priority list and certainly not worth raising taxes for: Instead, he has increased transit fares by more than he has road tolls and has done nothing to shore up the major deficits looming in the state’s Transportation Trust Fund. In consequence, Mr. Christie has shown himself to be uninterested in investing in infrastructure for the state’s future.

It’s a disappointing coda to a month of suspense about a project that plenty of New Jerseyans assumed was guaranteed after construction began a few months ago. And it means that it will be virtually impossible to add any more New Jersey Transit or Amtrak trains between New Jersey and New York — for several decades.

All hope for the future of transit connections between the two states, however, is not lost.

New Jersey Transit and Amtrak have a unique opportunity to take advantage of the limitations in tunnel capacity to reform the way they do business, to improve and speed up operations in ways that will bring some benefit to their customers but also seriously increase the number of people that can travel under the Hudson River to work every day. Without making changes, trains will become more and more packed and the total ridership of the services will be limited.

Here’s a comparison worth taking in: Whereas New Jersey Transit carries roughly 275,000 riders a day on its entire rail system, Paris’ RER Line A — one corridor, running through the center of the city using just two tracks — is able to handle a million users daily. It’s a squeeze, and the region is planning to build an relief line, but it still works. How can New Jersey Transit be facing such constraints with so many fewer riders?

The explanation is the agency’s steadfast adherence to the rule that commuter trains are different than rapid transit ones — primarily, that they have to offer each and every one of their riders a comfortable seat. This limits maximum train capacity to about 1,400 passengers when using ten multi-level cars such as the ones pictured above. While this may seem like a lot of people, with only limited tunnel capacity there are only so many trains that can make the trip into Manhattan during peak hours. If the agency were to simply remove a dozen seats or so per car and replace them with standing areas, trains would be capable of carrying up to 2,000 people apiece. There’s a huge bump in capacity, at virtually no cost. The RER A has a relatively even mix of standing and seating areas, and that’s one of the primary reasons it’s able to move so many more people.

Of course, this would come at a comfort cost to the people who now ride the trains, since what had once been a comfortable ride may be replaced by a standing-room only train. But that may be the price to pay if New Jersey Transit wants to ensure that it can transport all the people that need to get into New York City every day.

Amtrak would not be able to make a similar compromise, since it would be unreasonable for any intercity rail service to force its riders to stand, but the lack of additional Hudson River capacity should encourage the national rail operator to expand the length of its trains so that it can carry a larger number of people using the same amount of tunnel space. It is outrageous that the Acela Express service — which hogs 20 of the slots through the Hudson tunnels in each direction daily — only has six passenger cars, one of which is half-filled by a cafe. All of the stations at which these trains stop have the ability to handle at least two more cars per train; if Amtrak desired, it could add these cars to its current rolling stock.

In other words, neither New Jersey Transit nor Amtrak need more capacity under the river right now. They simply must find a way to adapt their existing operations to these newly imposed constraints. Will they be able to do so, or will they leave some potential customers behind?

Governor Christie has been a weak proponent of transit, as is manifested by his decision to cancel ARC. Yet the sudden availability of $3 billion in Port Authority funds once dedicated to the project and the theoretical availability of a similar amount of state money once designated for the program mean that this is also an intriguing moment for thinking about new ways to invest in New Jersey’s transit system. If Mr. Christie obliges, rather than insisting that local dollars go to roads and encouraging the Port Authority to spend away in New York City, some of the funds could go towards the rehabilitation of the Northern Branch and Passaic-Bergen corridors; others could be spent on improvement projects in the Philadelphia suburbs. These would have a minor effect on overall travel patterns compared to the ARC tunnel but would be far less expensive and still worthwhile.

While harping on the importance of ARC has been an essential effort — how else to defend it? — at this point Governor Christie is not going to change his mind. Thus transit proponents have a responsibility to find constructive, helpful ways to define a different mobility future for New Jersey that does not include it, at least for the next few decades. They have a choice: Should they let Mr. Christie control the transportation agenda entirely by refocusing the state’s funds on roads? Or can they play an important role in demanding that the limited funds are spent on prioritized investments that will benefit the state’s public transportation network?

New Transit Plan for Indianapolis Emphasizes Frequency Over Splash

With the exception of a relatively cheap commuter rail line, local advocacy group encourages the city to ramp up bus services and improve the customer experience.

Living in a big, dense, old city, it’s easy enough to criticize the decisions of policy makers in sprawling regions like Indianapolis, where a “generous” budget for investments in public transportation means spending one fourth of the amount to be dedicated to roads. But for a place where only 2% of people commute by transit, a long-term plan that does just that can be downright revolutionary. Outcomes — manifested in changing travel behavior and the densification of inner-city areas — depend on how it’s implemented.

After almost a year of outreach to thousands of citizens in the entire metro area, Indy Connect, a pseudo-public organization, released its report yesterday for 25 years of expenditures on roadways, bike paths, bus routes, and rail corridors. The recommendations are roughly similar to those unveiled in February, with $2.4 billion suggested to be spread over 25 years on transit and $8.4 billion on road expansion and maintenance. A tripling of bus service, the development of bus rapid transit, and the creation of a commuter rail corridor would require the implementation of a local sales tax. A light rail line once considered has been put on the back burner.

The local metropolitan planning organization is likely to endorse the recommendations in December.

On the face of it, Indianapolis’ new plan will provide valuable improvements for the city and its nearby suburbs. Average wait times for local bus service will be condense to just 10 to 15 minutes on most lines (down from 30 today), and most will continue to run on the weekends and late into the night — evidently not true in the past. Ten crosstown routes designed to bypass downtown would be set into play, as would fifteen express routes directly into the center. Four bus rapid transit lines would link the city’s most popular destinations, and a 38-mile north-south rail corridor would link Noblesville in the north to Franklin to the south.

This, however, is less than Indianapolis will need to expand transit mode share significantly. And it is less than those who participated in the process to define the plan suggested they wanted. As the charts below show, there was public support for significantly less roadway funding than the proposal advocates.

Nevertheless, the huge predominance of automobile-based commuting in the region may make impossible a situation in which more spending is committed to transit than to highways, such as in regions like New York or Washington.

But that does not mean that the Indianapolis transit plan as currently proposed is perfect. Indeed, though its expansion of bus frequencies will increase the mobility of bus users dramatically, the proposal fails to consider radical and relatively cheap ways to ensure that all those expenditures on operating funds will be well-spent.

Most egregious are the routes that extend north of downtown to 38th Street: The plan would have local buses running on three separate roads — Capitol Avenue, Illinois Street, and Meridian Street — all within 600 feet of one another, run a bus rapid transit line on Meridian Street, and have express buses running on two of the three. In other words, customers would have a wide diversity of choices for where to pick up a bus, but would not be able to benefit from high frequencies due the fact that multiple bus lines run through the area and would be confused as to which bus runs where. Imagine an alternative: Between downtown and 38th Street, all buses headed roughly north-south would use a two-way segregated busway created in the median of Meridian Street, replete with dedicated stations. Anyone needing to hop downtown would know to go there to find a bus every five minutes or less.

But that points to another problem with this proposal: Though it suggests a network of four bus rapid transit lines — east-west along 38th Street; Keystone Avenue between Carmel and the University of Indianapolis; north and south along College and Madison Avenues; and Washington Street to the airport — it would provide only minor improvements for them over regular bus service. Only signal prioritization and fewer and better bus stops would be on offer, and frankly, these should be standard for all bus routes, not just the “rapid” ones. No one seems willing to take the step to argue for replacing car lanes with transit capacity, but when you’re talking about a region that is pledging to spend billions on road capacity increases, perhaps that’s not particularly surprising.

Frustratingly, the proposal recommends significantly delaying the funding and implementation of the proposed light rail line along Washington Street, the only really rail-ready corridor in the region because of its relatively higher densities. But light rail is considered too expensive here. Bus rapid transit would be built in its place.

Instead, Indy Connect suggests a 23-mile commuter rail corridor northeast from Union Station downtown to Noblesville and a 15-mile link south to Franklin. A northwest line to Zionsville would follow later. These could be built at a relatively low cost, since they would rely on existing rail infrastructure and have limited two-track sections. But their utility should be put into question because of their awkward station locations and limited service; though the plan promises “frequent stops in Indianapolis,” it is difficult to see how that will be achievable unless costs are increased substantially, and that will be impossible because of the limited spending available for transit in general.

The rail lines would terminate outside of the primary downtown core, miss the University of Indianapolis, and fail to serve many dense areas of the city at all. What if Indianapolis chose to take the funds it wants to dedicate to rail and focus them on bringing to all of its bus lines the improvements the plan would reserve to its bus rapid transit routes?

One of the bright points in its proposal is its focus on — and spending commitment for — bike and pedestrian amenities in all parts of the region, from the center city to the suburbs. This suggests that these forms of transportation, usually considered the sole domain of urbanites, are increasingly being recognized as good investments for every part of the country.

The sponsors of Indy Connect will have to make their argument for better transit convincingly and encourage the Indiana legislature to allow citizens in the nine regional counties to vote on a tax increase to pay for local contributions to the projects. They face a major potential critic in Governor Mitch Daniels, however, who has repeatedly stated his hostility to raising taxes. In an era of continued economic recession and austerity-minded politicians, that may be unlikely.

eBART Now Under Construction, Extending Rapid Transit Far from San Francisco

Effort to extend BART across the region continues, even as roadway expansions pursue their course.

The San Francisco Bay Area is one of the nation’s case studies in regionalism, with one metropolitan planning board determining local transportation spending in cities from San Francisco in the west to Antioch in the east, from Richmond in the north to San Jose in the south. The existence of Metropolitan Transportation Commission, while theoretically designed to distribute resources to the most effective projects, has in fact erred in the opposite direction, prioritizing geographic equity over efficiency or high ridership.

The groundbreaking of the eBART line from Pittsburg to Antioch, in east Contra Costa County, is indicative of this trend that also includes the extension of BART to Livermore and San Jose. eBART would bring diesel multiple unit (DMU) train service from the existing BART Pittsburg/Bay Point Station to Hillcrest Avenue in Antioch, via a new station at Railroad Avenue in Pittsburg, providing customers new rapid transit service along 10 miles of track wedged into the median of Highway 4. The $462 million project is being built in conjunction with the expansion of that road from four lanes today to six and eight. Completion is expected by 2015.

10,100 daily riders are expected to use the line by 2030, up from 3,900 in its opening year. This is expected to relieve the current crowding at the Pittsburg/Bay Point terminus. Including a timed transfer between DMU and BART trains across a new platform, customers hoping to get from Antioch to San Francisco’s Embarcadero Station, the first in that city, will have a 68 minute ride. Thus the region’s ambitions for transit connectivity stretch far into the suburbs.

How worthwhile is this project? At a cost of less than $50 million a mile, it is relatively cheap compared to most recent rail programs; forty miles away, the 3.2-mile Oakland Airport Connector, for example, will be three times as expensive per mile. The choice of DMU technology rather than BART, which requires more infrastructure because it is electric, seems like a reasonable choice, since extending the latter would have likely come in at about $1 billion. The cross-platform transfer already works well across the BART system, so customers shouldn’t be much inconvenienced by the need to change modes in the middle of their ride. Moreover, the project offers the possibility of relieving the terrible traffic congestion along Highway 4.

The eBART line could eventually be extended 13 miles further east to Byron. A three-mile extension to Laurel Road in Oakley alone could increase ridership by 40%.

It is clear, though, that the primary motivation behind the line’s construction is the need to serve a part of the region that has contributed to metropolitan transit funds for decades but has received no rapid transit in the process. Considering the need to maintain unity in political support for public transportation, extending rail out to areas that have low densities may be the reasonable course of affairs — even when investing the same amount of money in, say, a bus rapid transit line in center-city San Francisco would result in much higher ridership.

But the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s decision to coordinate investment in eBART even as Caltrans (the state department of transportation) expands the adjacent highway is counter-intuitive and counter-productive. Streetsblog San Francisco quotes Bijan Sartipi, a staffer for the agency, claiming that “We need major improvements to address the growth in East Contra Costa County… It will take a multi-modal approach, also being mindful of the environment and smaller carbon footprint.” While that sounds nice, unfortunately expanding highway capacity will increase car trips in the corridor substantially and limit the ability of eBART to compete effectively. In this part of the region, though, it may be politically infeasible to invest in transit without spending a corresponding amount on roads.

The project is intended to spur a great deal of transit-oriented development — massive parking lots to be initially constructed around the Antioch station are eventually planned to be replaced by a project that includes 650 to 2,500 residential units and 2.15 million square feet of commercial space. At the new Pittsburg Station, a similar amount of new construction is proposed. These aren’t drops in the bucket and they collectively reaffirm the Bay Area’s intent to push much of its new growth into areas near public transportation.

The questionable decision to limit new stations along the ten-mile line to just two, however, puts in question that goal. The majority of people using eBART will be driving to the stations. The corridor will encourage the growth of sprawling land far from the center of the region and make hour-long commutes standard among people living here. Is that the right way forward for the Bay Area?

Understanding Representative John Mica’s Transportation Agenda

Florida Congressman has been a major supporter of high-speed rail in the past, but his approach on the issue appears opposed to that of the Obama Administration.

No one questions just how important the Northeast Corridor is to the American economy. The metropolis that encompasses Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston constitutes the world’s wealthiest mega-region and it is the United States’ densest agglomeration of people, talent, and capital. If there is any one place in the country where true high-speed rail, featuring trains traveling at speeds averaging 150 mph and up, would function effectively, it would be here.

That philosophy has been repeatedly endorsed by Republican Florida Congressman John Mica, who in January is likely to become the chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure after the Republican wave in this week’s midterm elections allowed the GOP to take over the House. Mr. Mica, who has served in the Congress since 1993, will be a major player in discussions on federal transportation spending over the next two years, though he will have to negotiate with the Democratic Party-controlled Senate and the Obama Administration to advance any policy change.

Over the past few years, Congressman Mica has shown himself to be a supporter of infrastructure investments and thus seems likely to be willing to promote increased government spending on the matter. This position, however, has not been rock-solid in the past: Though President Obama’s early 2009 Stimulus included a huge down-payment to improve the nation’s highways and transit systems, Mr. Mica voted against the bill, like the rest of the Republican contingent in the House. His position in favor of transportation spending is likely to be moderated by his otherwise very conservative record, thus he will likely only be able to move forward with legislation ramping up allocations if he can convince most of the GOP to follow along.

Congressman Mica has not been particularly outspoken on most transportation issues, though he was apparently in support of former Committee Chair Jim Oberstar’s proposal for a $500 billion, six-year transportation authorization bill (Oberstar lost in this week’s election). He has also been a modest supporter of alternative mobility solutions like cycling. Yet as committee chair he has an opportunity to play an important role in determining how transportation appropriations are made and how the Department of Transportation moves forward on allocating funds for new highway, transit, and rail programs.

In previous statements, Mr. Mica has argued strongly for the development of true high-speed rail, with trains operating at very fast average speeds. In October 2009, he said “We cannot take the funding to be invested in high-speed rail – $8 billion in stimulus funds, $50 billion in the pending surface transportation bill – and try to fool people by giving them anything less than true high-speed rail service.” Only Florida and California are currently developing plans that would produce service of such quality. Similarly, he has criticized the Obama Administration’s Department of Transportation for being political in its decision-making about who has received rail grants.

From that perspective, Mr. Mica has been particularly upset about what he perceives as the lack of national investment in the Northeast Corridor, since for the reasons stated at the start of this article it would be the ideal route for high-speed rail in the United States. This week, the Congressman repeated his sense that the government had been remiss in its choices about investments. “I am a strong advocate of high-speed rail, but it has to be where it makes sense,” Mica said, according to the Associated Press. “The administration squandered the money, giving it to dozens and dozens of projects that were marginal at best to spend on slow-speed trains to nowhere.” He seems to feel that way about his own state’s project, which he has argued might be shortened from a now-planned (and virtually all funded) 84-mile route from Orlando Airport to Tampa to a 20-mile corridor between the airport and the Disney Amusement Parks.

Because of his interest in the Northeast, Congressman Mica may be a major supporter of Amtrak’s recently released 30-year, $120 billion proposal for the route between Washington and Boston. That project currently lacks funding and Mr. Mica may be interested in developing a national funding source for the project during his time as committee chair.

Unfortunately for the Northeast and Mr. Mica’s agenda, that approach would likely be difficult to undertake in the context of the United States’ federal system. For one, it is hard to imagine congresspeople from across the country supporting a project whose benefits would be concentrated in just one region. One of the major advantages of the Obama Administration’s approach to transportation has been its nationwide scope. For example, the government’s TIGER discretionary grants have been distributed to all but three states; funding for construction and planning of high-speed rail projects has gone to 36 states. In a country that prioritizes geographical equity, this seems to be an appropriate system; how would a focus on the Northeast fit in under those parameters?

Meanwhile, the Boston-Washington region itself lacks a coherent vision for high-speed rail. While states clearly do want faster train services, they have focused most of their energy and local dollars on peripheral corridors like Philadelphia-Harrisburg, Albany-Buffalo, and New Haven-Springfield. Can we expect them to alter their priorities quickly in response to Mr. Mica’s goals?

Mr. Mica has not stated that he is against any funding for projects outside of the Northeast. And his position is not necessarily in contradiction with those of the new anti-rail Republican Governors of Ohio and Wisconsin, John Kasich and Scott Walker, respectively, who on the face of it would seem to be in utter disagreement with the Congressman. In his first post-election press conference, Mr. Kasich announced that his state’s 3C plan to connect Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati via intercity rail is “dead” and that “passenger rail is not in Ohio’s future.” The current Democratic governor of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle, has shut down work on his state’s Milwaukee-to-Madison line following Mr. Walker’s election. Neither of those projects, however, fit Mr. Mica’s criteria of being true high-speed rail; both would have linked cities at speeds of less than 110 mph.

California’s proposed fast train system, which would allow passengers to journey between the huge San Francisco and Los Angeles metropolitan regions in just 2h40, seems more up Mr. Mica’s alley. Thus the federal government’s decision to grant that state billions of dollars for the Central Valley segment of the network, where trains will reach 220 mph, likely won’t be put in question by Mr. Mica. One could even imagine him asking the Federal Railroad Administration to reallocate the more than $1.2 billion in federal dollars planned for Ohio and Wisconsin to California — or the Northeast.

When it comes to developing funding sources, Mr. Mica has repeatedly argued for increasing private spending, rather than augmenting the gas tax, which he has previously labeled “dead.” He asked corporations and consultants to develop proposals for investments in high-speed rail corridors across the country in 2008 and 2009. His focus seems to be on routes that would pay for themselves over time both in terms of operations and construction. From that perspective, his statement on the matter in October 2009 was particularly interesting:

“Successful routes at competitive speeds should attract high numbers of riders and strong revenues. Those revenues could be bonded to help pay the cost of building the infrastructure. This model has been used in many successful rail projects around the world. With the right mix of public and private participation, the United States could leverage this federal investment to build high-speed rail corridors that are economically competitive and actually generate a profit.”

This implies that the Congressman wants the rail transportation system the government is developing to be self-supporting. This has not been a position held by the Obama Administration, which expected states like Ohio and Wisconsin to absorb operating losses. If Mr. Mica sticks to his guns on this matter, it could mean he will oppose future spending on loss-producing Amtrak corridors (including the politically popular long-distance routes) and perhaps also any new intercity rail line that cannot guarantee major profits. This, again, will pose problems for those who hope for a national rail program that would service rural and semi-urban areas that simply do not have the demand to support such lines. His position on these matters — only really beneficial to the biggest cities — is unlikely to appeal to many members of the predominantly non-urban Republican delegation in the Congress. Will he hold the same standard to rural highways, also the beneficiaries of net federal subsidies because of their relative under-use?

Mr. Mica, of course, will not be operating in a vacuum in the 112th Congress, since when it comes to transportation issues he will be sharing power with the rest of the GOP-controlled House, the Democratic Senate, and the White House. Agreement among the three is likely to be difficult to come by on any issue, which means that finding revenue sources to pay for a new transportation bill will be quite difficult. President Obama’s hope for a $50 billion down-payment on transportation spending could pass with bipartisan support, but that action would accomplish little more than assuring next year’s federal commitment to highways and transit. Anything more will be subject to intense controversy considering recent calls for fiscal austerity from both sides of the aisle.

Even as Democrats held control over both houses of Congress over the past two years, no agreement could be concluded about how to pay for transportation spending. Democrats and Republicans alike are hostile to the idea of using general funds (income tax-sourced) for highways and transit; nor have many seriously pushed new fuel taxes or a vehicle miles traveled fee. A protracted period of negotiation over the question of transportation funding awaits us.

Whatever Congressman Mica’s goals for transportation, he will have to operate within a labyrinthine system of conflicting goals and limited funds. Whether he — or anyone — will get anything done under those conditions remains an open question.

As a New Congress Sets Up Shop, Questions About the Future of Transportation Funding

With split power in Congress and a compromised executive, moving forward on transportation will be a delicate project, to say the least.

After the 2010 elections, the future of transportation funding in the United States has been subject to yet another round of questioning. Two years of Democratic control over the White House and Congress led to little serious agreement about how to find federal funding for highways and transit; meanwhile, despite advances in the fields of livable neighborhoods and high-speed rail, those programs may be subjected to considerable rethinking or even elimination after the change in power in the U.S. House.

Whatever the current hysteria over the size of the annual federal deficit and government debt in general, the demand by states and localities for financial aid for the construction and maintenance of transportation projects is unlikely to subside. Repeated warning by groups like the American Society of Civil Engineers about the failure of our public infrastructure today and into the future are not imaginary. Thus at some point, there will have to be some agreement about how to move forward on collecting revenues and allocating grants for the purpose of relieving those difficulties.

If Republican Party candidates campaigned heavily in the 2010 election for fiscal austerity after what they claimed have been two years of Democratic-led profligacy — frequently ignoring the massive budget deficits the party managed to accumulate when it had full control of the government between 2003 and 2007 — their seriousness about the matter has been arguably put to rest this week thanks to the news that the GOP Senatorial delegation is undergoing significant in-fighting over whether to ban earmarks (which the party has been criticizing on and off for years) and the revelation that self-proclaimed budget-cutter New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was a spend-thrift with public funds during his stint as a U.S. Attorney.

Take this hypocrisy as you wish, but the moral of the story is that the Republican adherence to reducing the size of the federal government is less than firm. This could be good news for future investment in public infrastructure — as long as a significant number of the party’s members can be convinced of the importance of such spending over the next two years.

The announcement yesterday by the Co-Chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform of a draft policy for relieving problems associated with the growth in the federal deficit was significant in terms of its handling of transportation issues. Though the draft is unlikely to go anywhere — other members of the Congressional and President Obama-appointed group immediately announced their dislike for many of the measures, especially those that would reduce Social Security payments even as taxes are reduced — its recommendations are indicative of the current thinking about how to solve the problems facing the budget.

Specifically, the proposal advocates moving Transportation Trust Fund spending to a mandatory budget line (currently, with aid from the general budget, it is partially “discretionary”) thanks to a gradual 15¢ increase in the gas tax (from 18.4¢ today) beginning in 2013. In addition, the report would eliminate all Congressional earmarks, many of which go to transportation projects. The net effect would be basically eliminating questions of transportation from debate over the budget and limiting spending to what is earned.

This is an adamantly anti-Keynesian approach that proposes “shared sacrifice” in which Washington should “tighten its belt,” despite considerable evidence that government deficit spending plays an important role in relieving depressed economies. In terms of transportation, the fuel tax increase would correspond to a prohibition on general fund bailouts of the fund and presumably make spending on mobility from any revenue source other than the fuel tax impossible, despite the report’s initial claim that it is in favor of increased investment in infrastructure. This, however, negates the possibility that we need a phase change in thinking about how to move forward on transportation funding and spending in the United States and ignores technology changes that are slowly but surely limiting the value of the fuel tax in general.

Enacting the policies framed in the draft report also would permanently enshrine the idea that transportation funding is generated entirely from automobile user fees, making the transition to an economy in which cars are not the primary mode of transportation very difficult. The effect of using a user fee on cars to fund transportation over the past 65 years has been that the vast majority of federal spending has been on highways rather than alternatives. There are arguments to be made for using user fees on automobiles to compensate for the negative externalities produced by free driving, but for the purposes of envisioning a society that moves in a different manner, separating those revenues from expenditures could be a useful rhetorical device.

The release of the draft report by the Co-Chairs of the Fiscal Responsibility commission comes just two weeks after a new funding idea has suddenly come to the fore: Reforming the fuel tax from a per-gallon fee to a percentage of sales fee. If implemented, such a system could work as following: If a gallon of gas costs $3.00, a 5% fee would provide the government 15¢ in revenues, while a $6 per gallon cost would provide the government 30¢. The current system gives 18.4¢ to the federal government no matter how much the gallon costs. The problem with this idea, of course, is that the price of gas fluctuates wildly through the years — far more so than the total number of gallons consumed — and so revenues into the trust fund would move up and down similarly. That’s a dangerous proposition.

To Replace the ARC Tunnel, a Subway Extension to New Jersey?

A more than $5 billion extension of the 7 Subway could ease congestion into the city center and offer New Jerseyans a relatively painless path to the East Side of Manhattan.

Out with one transit mega-project, in with another.

Faced with the decision last month by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to eliminate state funding for the ARC tunnel — effectively ending the project — New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg silently instructed municipal staff to begin studying the possibility of stretching the city’s subway system into the state across the Hudson River. Now preliminary news on the proposal has surfaced. A roughly four-mile extension of the 7 Subway Train from the West Side of Manhattan to Secaucus Junction would cost $5.3 billion and provide the extra trans-Hudson rail link the New York region has been demanding for years.

The 7 Train is currently being extended 1.3 miles from Times Square to 11th Avenue and 34th Street at a cost of more than $2 billion.

The plan is in the earliest stages of development — no assumptions can be made about the exact route trains would take on their way to Secaucus. The MTA, which runs the subway, has not been consulted on project documents. Engineering efforts and the construction period would require ten years before opening, at least. No funding is secure.

Yet the construction of a subway connection to New Jersey would be unique in the history of the city: Thus far, no MTA-controlled lines have made it past city borders. And though the cost of the project is and will remain by far the biggest obstacle, the potential of a subway line to transform the relationship between the two states involved could be big enough of a vision to inspire radical new thinking about financing.

The important question, though, is whether this is the project the New York metropolitan region needs or even wants.

Put in the context of the ARC Tunnel, an extension of the 7 Train would have as its primary purpose relieving the congestion of commuter and intercity trains traveling along the existing pair of tracks connecting Penn Station to the mainland. Of course, unlike ARC, this proposal would offer metro-type services and would be incapable of hosting mainline trains. This would have two primary consequences: One, it would require commuters to transfer from New Jersey Transit trains to the subway at Secaucus, a connection that would not have been necessary had ARC been built; and two, it would require the 7 Train to absorb all new growth in new commuting across the Hudson, because the existing rail infrastructure is over capacity at rush hours.

While the required transfer at Secaucus would have its major downsides, the ability to jump onto the subway would have some huge advantages, namely allowing New Jerseyans to travel directly to Grand Central Terminal, the East Midtown business district, and the rapidly expanding Long Island City in Queens. Access at Secaucus is ideal because the station already serves as the hub for all of the agency’s Manhattan and Hoboken-bound commuter trains. In addition, the existing Manhattan stations that would be used by 7 Train commuters are far closer to the surface than ARC’s deep-cavern Penn Station terminus would have been, and connections to other subway lines throughout the city would be more convenient.

The project is projected to cost roughly half as much as the ARC tunnel because it would require no significant new tunneling under Manhattan and would not need a major interlocking to connect with the existing rail system. Mayor Bloomberg has suggested that the 7 Train could use the ARC tunnel’s route, but I have yet to see any evidence that the extension currently under construction would fit in with those plans, since its tail tracks would extend south to 26th Street, far below the 34th Street route of ARC.

Nevertheless, this change of route would open up the welcome possibility of improving rapid transit service to the very dense New Jersey “riviera” just across the Hudson from Manhattan, north of where PATH rapid transit services already run. If the 7 Train extension were designed to include a station under the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail at 9th Street in Hoboken or at Lincoln Harbor, for instance, commuters from this relatively isolated — yet central — section of the region would have far easier access to the metropolitan core. A direct east-west subway connection into Manhattan would mean a large increase in ridership along the light rail line’s north-south route.

Neither the states of New Jersey nor New York are particularly well-off from a budgetary perspective; significantly, the Garden State’s Transportation Trust Fund is virtually broke. Plans for a station at 41st Street and 10th Avenue along the currently under construction extension of the 7 Train have been put off due to a lack of funds at the municipal level. How would any local government be able to finance the construction of another massive new transit project?

The Port Authority and the Federal Transit Administration each agreed to contribute $3 billion to the ARC tunnel; in theory, this sum would be enough to complete this new 7 Train project. But Washington’s dollars are likely to be redistributed to schemes elsewhere that could be under construction within the next year or two, not ten.

Yet the direct link between the construction of the 7 Train and the build-up of the Hudson Yards on the west side of Manhattan should not be ignored. This massive redevelopment area is poised to become New York City’s fourth major business district, with dozens of skyscrapers planned, representing a total investment of $15 billion or more. The arrival of the subway to the area and a better link into New Jersey would improve the prospects for this zone. The subway system could be financed through a neighborhood tax increment financing district.

The fact that this project can be envisioned in a realistic fashion, however, does not prove that it would be the most reasonable use of the public purse. Further studies must be conducted to evaluate whether it is even possible from an engineering perspective. Mayor Bloomberg’s imagination today could be forgotten tomorrow.

An increase in the rail travel capacity between New York and New Jersey is one of the region’s top transportation needs. But moving more commuters does not require the construction of a new tunnel: Cheap changes to rail cars could be simple to implement and eventually a re-orientation of the metropolitan commuter rail system so that it operates more in the mode of regional rail could significantly improve convenience and carrying capacity along existing lines.

Moreover, it is an open question whether an investment in a 7 Train extension to New Jersey should be enough of a priority for the region that it bypasses other long-planned proposals. While the Second Avenue Subway’s first phase is under construction between 63rd and 96th Streets, other extensions of the line — north to 125th Street and south to the Battery — are essential to improve access to Manhattan’s East Side. Direct rail access to JFK Airport from Lower Manhattan has been pondered for decades. And streetcars on the Brooklyn and Queens waterfronts were promoted by Mayor Bloomberg in his last reelection campaign. Whither these ideas? Should they be condemned to the scrap heap as a 7 Train extension moves forward?

Update: In a press conference this morning, MTA Chairman Jay Walder discussed the potential 7 Train extension to New Jersey. He argued that the agency needs to focus on the system’s existing mega-projects, including the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access, and the current (shorter) 7 Train extension. The MTA, he noted, has no funds for this project. Any funding for this project would have to come from another source.

Charlotte’s Once Ambitious Rapid Transit Plan Faces Budget Ax

A significant decline in local sales tax revenue means that long-term plans for transit expansion have had to be reevaluated with an eye towards fiscal reality.
Ridership on Charlotte’s transit system has grown substantially over the past ten years, increasing from an average of 39,100 daily users in 2000 to 103,500 in 2010. This successful ramp-up in public transportation use in one of the nation’s most sprawling regions can be traced to the 1998 passage by voters of a 1/2-cent sales tax for transportation funding; this measure allowed the local transit authority CATS to significantly expand the number and frequency of bus services offered, and construct North Carolina’s first light rail line, which opened in 2007.

That Blue Line was supposed to be joined by a network of six other corridors — light rail, commuter rail, streetcar, or bus rapid transit — radiating from Center City Charlotte. The Metropolitan Transit Commission’s 2030 plan estimated that tax receipts would provide enough funding to complete most of the projects by 2020, with everything in operation by the end of the time period.

The recession, however, has hit Charlotte hard. Most significantly, its biggest employer, Wachovia Bank, was threatened with bankruptcy and eventually bought up by San Francisco-based Wells Fargo. Consumer spending, like in many cities, declined massively. In 2008, revenues collected using the transit sales tax amounted to $71 million; two years later, the total had fallen to $57.4 million. This fall-off, which is expected to produce a total revenue shortfall of up to $1 billion by 2030, has forced the region to reconsider its plans for transit expansion.

In the process, the Charlotte metropolitan area is threatening to derail the positive momentum it has created for transit ridership. And its strategy to connect the whole region via radial lines from downtown is on the skids at least for the next decade, since no one seems prepared to raise taxes to complete the project. This reality is likely to encourage the sentiment that the transit system is only designed to serve some parts of the region, not everywhere.

This week, the Metropolitan Transit Commission, which oversees CATS at a countywide level, made the decision to effectively put two projects on hold indefinitely, including the Silver Line bus rapid transit corridor from Center City to Matthews and the Green Line streetcar from Eastland Mall to Rosa Parks Place and the Airport, via downtown. The two remaining projects — an 11-mile extension of the Blue Line light rail corridor to UNC-Charlotte and the 25-mile Red Line commuter rail from Center City to Mt. Mourne — remain on the books, albeit in underfunded forms. Plans for local bus service expansion will be canceled.

CATS is looking to cut $200 million from the $1.1 billion budget of the Blue Line extension, which is expected to see significant aid from Washington in the form of a New Start grant. If it does, the project could be under construction next year, with an opening in 2016. But the transit agency will have to reduce construction costs for that to happen: In the process, the line’s length may be cut, the number of stations may be reduced, and amenities along the line will have to be minimized.

For the $456 million Red Line, no such federal help is expected because of the limited ridership projected for the corridor. But the region only has 57% of the costs accounted for, so it is now hoping to develop a public-private partnership to ensure completion by 2018. That may be a futile approach, but the corridor remains in the discussion because it would serve several cities outside of Charlotte on its way north; because the Metropolitan Transit Commission’s board is constituted of mayoral representatives of many towns, not just the much-larger City of Charlotte, it has an incentive to promote a project that would serve them as well. Thus its relatively low projected ridership is the price to be paid for regional compromise.

But the 13.5-mile Silver Line has been less lucky, despite the fact that it would terminate in the suburban town of Matthews. Part of the reason is that it has for years been a source of controversy for inhabitants of the southeast sections of the region, who fail to understand why they will receive a bus rapid transit line while the rest of the area gets rail. Yet they will now have to wait much longer for any transit improvement at all.

Meanwhile, the Green Line — a priority of Charlotte proper but relatively unpopular at the regional level because of its lack of connections outside of the core city — is in a peculiar place because its first segment is currently under construction, with service expected to start in the next two years. A $47 million, 1.5-mile stretch between the Blue Line stop at the Charlotte Transportation Center bus terminal and the Presbyterian Hospital southeast of downtown was partially funded by the federal government’s Urban Circulator program earlier this year. But its 10-mile total length, not including the long-off airport link, would cost $500 million, too much for the region to afford. This means that a rail transit link downtown between the Red and Blue Lines simply will not be built.

The end result: The expansion plan, developed just four years ago, now seems more like fantasy than reality. Nothing other than the Blue Line extension is likely to be built unless there is political will to push for a tax increase for the program or a private partner is willing to drop hundreds of millions of dollars on a project, and neither of these seem like particularly realistic prospects.

The question is whether this situation will disrupt the delicate regional structure that Charlotte relies upon to fund its transportation program. The Blue Line extension and the under-construction segment of the Green Line will serve the city exclusively. If financing for the Red and Silver Lines cannot be obtained, will the towns at their proposed termini fight to remove themselves from having to pay the transit sales tax, citing lack of a return on their investment? Will the citizens of the cities involved, who reaffirmed the tax in 2007, claim that they were sold a bigger bill of goods than could ever be expected to be completed? These prospects, which would reduce funds even further, should encourage the region to work like mad to develop alternative financing systems to complete the entire 2030 plan.

A New Political Reality Settling in for National Transportation Financing

Austerity measures that may be introduced in the House could result in significant cutbacks in support for transit.>Meanwhile, the decision by Republican legislators to phase out earmarks may reduce support for a future transportation bill.

Tanya Snyder of Streetsblog Capitol Hill broke the news last Friday that House Republicans are planning to push to “stabilize” the Highway Trust Fund by cutting back expenditures to meet revenues without raising any taxes in the process. The result would be a large decrease in overall federal transportation funding — a potential reduction in spending by $7 to 8 billion a year from around $50 billion today. According to Snyder’s sources, transit financing would be hit especially hard, seeing its annual appropriation cut from $8 billion to $5 billion.

This proposal, though it has yet to be announced publicly (and, indeed, it may not represent the eventual thinking of the House Republican leadership) and though it would likely fail to pass through the Senate, nevertheless adds another layer of difficulty to the already almost impossible process of creating a new national transportation bill.

To make matters even more complicated, Republican members in both houses of Congress followed through last week on their commitment to eliminate their demands for earmarks, a move that will reduce the support of individual members for transportation spending in general. 2011 is likely to shape up as a wild ride in the annals of highway and transit funding.

What was never really in question was the fact that a temporary extension of current federal spending on transportation was coming soon, the fault of a Congress that has for two years been unwilling to step forward in support of improved financing mechanisms for transportation. Departing Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Jim Oberstar (D-MN) recently called for a year-long extension; likely new Chairman John Mica (R-FL) has suggested he would support a six-month lengthening of the current law. No one is clamoring for an immediate shut-down in spending on popular road works. The Highway Trust Fund, filled by fuel taxes, has lacked adequate revenues to pay for all of the highway and transit construction the U.S. has undertaken over the last two years — and even that is just half of what some experts argue is necessary for the adequate maintenance of the nation’s mobility infrastructure.

The Republican proposal as suggested by Streetblog’s Snyder would simply limit spending to what the Highway Trust Fund can raise through the existing federal 18.4¢ gas tax, eliminating the possibility of transferring “general,” income tax-sourced revenues to transportation. But the results of that policy would be devastating; not only has the revenue source not been adjusted to inflation since 1993 — meaning that its value has steadily declined — but people are increasingly driving less and replacing their vehicles with more fuel-efficient cars. The overall effect is a loss in infrastructure-building funding.

Democrats, who despite losing control over the House of Representatives remain in power at the Senate, are unlikely to follow through with these efforts to reduce federal spending on transportation, at least considering their collectively pro-investment stance over the past few years. No one, however, seems to have any courage to propose funding transportation by any manner other than through general fund transfers (such as raising the gas tax), and so if Republicans mount opposition to the idea, the whole program could be put into question.*

GOP members have been arguing for months that a huge percentage of spending at the federal level is waste, an argument that is appealing to a frustrated public experiencing the continued negative effects of a long recession. Thus an attempt to keep transportation spending in check may sound reasonable. As does, apparently, the ban on earmarks, which many Republicans and some Democrats argue are equivalent to political advertisements in which an influential congressperson or senator inserts language in a bill benefiting some minor and unimportant project purely because he or she hopes his or her constituents will notice the work being done for their district.

But earmarks have played an important role in producing bipartisan support for transportation bills in the past. As Robert Puentes recently noted, in the last bill passed in 2005 (SAFETEA-LU), there were 6,373 earmarks distributed pretty evenly across the nation thanks to “contributions” from a number of legislators involved in the bill’s writing. The bill was supported by 412 House members, compared to 8 who voted against it; In the Senate, there were only 4 opponents of the bill (mostly opponents of earmarks), compared to 91 proponents. By giving each member of Congress a local reward for the bill, the program becomes virtually universally supported, no matter the specifics of most of the legislation’s language. It may have been coercion, but it resulted in a funded national transportation system. What would happen now?

One solution, suggested by the generally deluded Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN), is to allow earmarks that are related to transportation, since those are, according to her, not wasteful. This in spite of the fact that much of the issue over earmarks was spurred on by the absurdities of the Alaskan “Bridge to Nowhere.” And despite the fact that earmarks make up a very small proportion of overall federal spending on transportation, so bringing them back into the equation wouldn’t help matters much.

A long-term solution to these political disagreements is for now not clear. An extension in federal spending for transportation over the next month is likely, but thereafter, all bets are off.

* A spokesman for Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) contacted me after first publishing this article. He made the very good point that the Senator and Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) proposed a plan three weeks ago to increase the gas tax by 25¢ over the next three years, and that the deficit commission appointed by President Obama had itself suggested a 15¢ rise earlier this month. I should note, however, that neither of these proposals have widespread support from the Congress as a whole.

California Planners Recommend Fresno-Hanford for First Phase of State’s High-Speed Line

Envied the World Over, Strasbourg’s Tram Expands Again

Europe’s most famous tramway network suggests deficiencies in the ways Americans expand transit.

It wouldn’t be much of an exaggeration to suggest that almost every major metropolitan area in North America either already has a light rail system in operation or is planning to implement one. Unlike the metro or commuter rail systems that are primarily confined to the most populated regions, light rail is universally appealing because of its relatively cheap construction costs and the degree to which its implementation is credited with spurring the revitalization of dying city centers. More than any other mode of public transportation light rail is assumed (rightly or wrongly) to encourage “choice” riders to choose transit over driving, so it is often the most politically palatable choice when it comes to capital expansion decisions.

Compared to the tramways that have been constructed or expanded across Western Europe over the past two decades, though, U.S. attempts thus far have generally been more expensive, less productive in terms of urban redevelopment, and less effective in increasing ridership. Are U.S. cities building their light rail lines in an inappropriate fashion, or is there something inherently different about American tastes that make similar investments less effective this side of the Atlantic?

It’s worth considering the case of Strasbourg, which on Saturday opened the latest expansion to its tramway network sixteen years after this modern rail system first began operations in eastern France. Now with 34.7 miles of lines, the capital of the Alsace Region carries about 300,000 daily riders on its network. For comparison’s sake, the City of Strasbourg has about 270,000 inhabitants; the metropolitan area that surrounds it has between 470,000 and 650,000 inhabitants, depending on how far out one wants to measure. The region is planning — and has the funds for — the extension of several of the tram lines, the construction of a new downtown link, and even a connection across the Rhine River into the German town of Kehl.

Strasbourg was the first city to implement a fully low-floor tram system; the Eurotram trains (now Bombardier Flexity Outlook) ordered for the first six miles of line that opened in late 1994 were custom-designed, though their descendants have now become the industry standard. The vehicles’ modern appearance features large windows and projecting fronts. When the decision was made to embark on a modern tramway project, Strasbourg was reversing a previous decision: The city’s 1985 transportation plan foresaw the introduction of automated VAL trains on dedicated guideways in tunnels under the city center, similar to the lines then under development in French cities Lille and Toulouse. The presumption was that a subway and elevated network would minimize damage to local business by preserving road space, while a tramway network on downtown streets would put that activity in danger.

The 1989 municipal elections were largely fought over whether to build the VAL system, which the conservatives in power advanced, or a tramway that the opposition socialists promoted. The victory of the latter, founded on the fact that light rail at the street level is simply cheaper than a completely grade-separated network and that more could be constructed as a result, ensured the development of the system as currently in operation.

The mere fact that a local election fought between representatives of the country’s two major parties, one left and one right, was a haggling match over what form of transit technology was most appropriate for this city — rather than whether anything should be built at all — is an indication of where the politics of transportation fit in France. When one political party in the United States is ambivalent about public transportation and the other is downright hostile towards it, comparing any American city to Strasbourg may be unfair. Still, it is the implementation that matters, since many U.S. cities have been able to assemble financing to fund new light rail projects; finding ways to improve their effectiveness can’t hurt.

In many ways, the tramway was a good choice for Strasbourg. Because the trains run along existing streets, they replaced automobile lanes and provided a political rationale for improvements in pedestrian space. Of the initial costs attributed to the tram line’s construction, roughly half were spent on projects indirectly related to the transit line: The planting of 1,700 trees, the improvement of three bridges, the pedestrianization of a major square, and the renovation of the streets along which the tram would run. Park-and-ride lots were built at outlying tram stops, parking was eliminated downtown, and several streets simply had cars removed.

The results are obvious to anyone who has been to Strasbourg. Boulevards that feature tramways, even in the poorer neighborhoods, are great places to be because of the clear effort that has been put into improving them along with the introduction of the train lines. Outside of downtown, trams glide along grass carpets in the medians of roads that have seen their automobile traffic diminish symmetrically with the large increase in transit ridership that has accompanied the introduction of the tram system. Sidewalks, bike paths, trees, and quality street furniture complete the picture.

In Strasbourg’s downtown, trams run along mostly pedestrian-only cobblestone streets where business is clearly doing well, in spite of initial business opposition to the project. The university is well connected to the network, and so is the main train station, which offers high-speed direct intercity rail service to Paris, Frankfurt, and Stuttgart. (Both the university’s main campus and the station had their connections improved because of changes implemented last weekend.) An entire new district called the Étoile is being constructed along formerly industrial port land around several tramway stations.

Transit planners made a conscious decision not to run the trams along highway corridors, partly because few of them enter the center city, but also because doing so increases construction costs, does little to encourage transit use because cars appear to speed by more quickly than trains, and reduces the potential for using the introduction of a new rail system to improve the aesthetics of the public sphere. Far too many American planners, from Denver to Los Angeles to Portland to San Francisco, have agreed to make a deal with the devil by placing rail lines along highway rights-of-way; doing so is often more politically feasible because it can be done in coordination with roadway improvements and does not appear to prioritize transit over car use, despite the fact that the latter is exactly what you want to do to make a transit system functional!

Moreover, Strasbourg’s system, despite running in or in place of the road, is not a streetcar. In the U.S., streetcars are deemed cheaper to build than light rail because they do not operate in their own rights-of-way but rather along roads shared with cars; this is one of the reasons the push for streetcars has exploded over the past few years. But streetcars suffer the sad fate of being stuck in traffic. Thus the cheaper solution, of course, is to build light rail like a streetcar — and then ban the cars from the lanes in which the trains run. It’s not a difficult solution from a financial perspective.

(Costs for highway-running rail are higher than street-running rail as long as the latter replaces road lanes with transit lanes. This explains why streetcars are cheaper than light rail: The right-of-way already exists. In the case of highway-running rail, stations have to include expensive connections to surface streets, bridges and tunnels have to be rebuilt, and rights-of-way need to be expanded, assuming the highway is not shrunk in the process.)*

As Jarrett Walker has written, however, assuming that the implementation of a tramway will automatically result in improved urban conditions or ridership would be foolish. For one, for aforementioned reasons, there are political obstacles to building a new tram line as it should be done because of a fear of reducing the primacy of the automobile on city streets. Second, a place like Strasbourg benefited from incredible density in both residential and commercial distribution even before the tram line was put in, which means that there was an automatic market for the service. In the United States, you can expect similar results only in very dense cities like Chicago or New York, but not necessarily in more sprawling areas where new light rail lines are likely to run. Whereas Strasbourg’s system attracts some 8,600 users per line mile, the best-ridership above ground light rail system in the U.S., in Houston, attracts only about 4,600 per mile — and that’s along a short, dense corridor. The much-praised operations in Charlotte, Phoenix, Portland, and Salt Lake City all attract less than 2,500 per mile. That means less value per dollar spent.

Just as important, the tramway mode choice isn’t necessarily the deal breaker when it comes to increasing transit ridership. Take the example of Rennes, a French city 430 miles west of Strasbourg. These, municipal leaders chose to build an automated VAL metro under the downtown and elevated above outlying streets rather than invest in a tramway. The first line, which opened in 2002, increased overall local transit ridership massively, pushing it from 160,000 daily users to 250,000 between 2001 and 2007. Now the city is building a second, €1 billion line that is expected to double rail ridership and put 73% of the city’s population withing 600 meters of a station.

Rennes’ center city is less remarkable than Strasbourg’s and the streets below or above which the VAL runs have not been substantially improved. Nevertheless, the large increase in transit use that has been experienced there suggests that it isn’t the tramway per se that makes transit in these cities successful. Rather, it can likely be attributed to the focus of both systems on serving only sections of the region that have adequate density to support heavy investments in rail transit. It may be hard to believe, but the furthest station from downtown Strasbourg on the tram system (Illkirch Lixenbuhl) is less than four miles away as a bird flies from the central station downtown (Homme de Fer). In other words, the region has focused its investments on a dense network with multiple, intersecting lines downtown, rather than a series of long, suburban extensions.*

Does this mean that efforts to build new transit lines in the U.S. cannot be successful? Of course not. But it does indicate that if we’re serious about taking the most advantage possible of the investments we make in new transit corridors, we must find ways to concentrate growth in the existing urban cores of our cities and find the political will to limit rail expansions to the areas that would respond most directly to its introduction.

Growing Conservative Strength Puts Transit Improvements in Doubt

The next few years are likely to be difficult for advocates of public transportation because of increased hostility to government investment.

1987, 1991, 1995, 1998, and 2005 share a significant feature: In each of those years, members of Congress were able to come together to pass a multi-year bill that codified how the U.S. government was to collect revenues for and allocate expenditures on transportation. Not coincidentally, in each of those years, one political party controlled both the House and Senate.

In the 112th Congress, set to enter office in just one month, Democrats will run the Senate and Republicans the House. This split control will make passing any legislation difficult. Unlike in those aforementioned years, there is little chance that this group of legislators will be able to pass a multi-year transportation bill either in 2011 or 2012.

These circumstances, combined with increasingly strident conservative rhetoric about the need to reduce government expenditures, may fundamentally challenge the advances the Obama Administration and the Democratic Congress have been able to make over the past two years in expanding the nation’s intercity rail network, promoting a vision for livable communities, and reinforcing funding for urban transit. Continuing those efforts would require identifying sources of increased revenue and a steadfast commitment to reducing the role of the automobile in American society.

But there is little support for increased taxes from any side of the political table and there is a fundamental aversion from the mainstream Republican Party to the investments that have defined the government’s recent transportation strategy. Meanwhile, declining power of the purse resulting from a fuel tax last increased in 1993 means that the existing situation is unacceptable, at least if there is any sense that something must be done to expand investment in transportation infrastructure. Gridlock — and myopic thinking about how to improve mobility in the United States — will ensue.

The opening shot in this game was fired this fall by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose decision to cancel the ARC tunnel connecting his state to New York City was framed in the rhetoric of fiscal conservatism, his fear of cost overruns evidently outweighing the massive economic gains his constituency would have received thanks to improved connections to Manhattan. Now Mr. Christie is suing the federal government to prevent it from taking back the $271 million it granted to the state for the project, despite the fact that the New Starts grant agreement New Jersey signed with the Federal Transit Administration to receive funding clearly states that entities that fail to complete the projects for which they have received federal aid must return the grant in full to Washington.*

Governor Christie, of course, is not alone in his approach: His colleagues in Wisconsin and Ohio, newly elected Republicans soon to enter gubernatorial offices, have promised to shut down their local federally funded intercity rail corridors that they fear will overwhelm them with future operating expenses. Of course, those complaints are patently absurd when put in context of each state’s respective overall transportation budget. Wisconsin, for instance, spends more than a billion dollars on roadway construction annually and would have been asked to contribute a mere $7.5 million to train operations. Is such a small contribution really such a huge price to pay for a transportation alternative?

Members of Congress have been all too ready to support these efforts to close the book on the nation’s nascent intercity rail program before it can begin. A Republican Congressman introduced a bill this week that would rescind stimulus funds not yet obligated, a move that would pull $6.3 billion out of state hands, most of it designated for passenger rail.

Common across this discussion is the claim that investing in transportation infrastructure can be wasteful — this is an argument that has been made successfully since Alaska’s “bridge to nowhere” achieved national notoriety during the 2008 presidential campaign. And indeed, there are plenty of examples of spending on projects that are less than economically beneficial. Yet it has become clear that the preponderance of criticism is being heaped on infrastructure that is designated for non-automobile transportation, in spite of the fact that the Alaskan bridge was, after all, for cars.

Mr. Christie is considering allocating to road improvement $1.25 billion once supposed to help to pay for the ARC tunnel. Outgoing Ohio Senator George Voinovich is hoping to change the law before he leaves to allow his state to transfer to highway construction funds once designated for the Cincinnati-Cleveland intercity rail line. The expected new speaker of the House, Ohio Congressman John Boehner, simply doesn’t think the federal government should be getting involved with funding bike and pedestrian improvement projects, which are at the heart of the Obama Administration’s livable cities goals. Cutbacks to the overall federal transportation budget, at least according to preliminary reports on GOP efforts, are likely to hit transit far harder than highways.

Some have suggested that this is acceptable policy, that the Obama Administration was failing to address the needs and desires of the U.S. population in its focus on developing new and better modes of transportation. I would suggest that the alternative is disastrous: More sprawl, more environmental devastation, more repetitive, identity-less cities.

Thus the issue here is not so much fiscal sanity as it is remarkably differing visions about how Americans should get around in the future. Whereas the current Congress and the White House have staked out relatively progressive policies in terms of providing adequate and equal funding to non-automobile modes of transportation, the incoming House leadership appears poised to take advantage of fears about increases in the federal budget deficit to reduce spending on everything but roads.

There is, as always, an alternative. The bipartisan — though ideologically more right-wing than centrist — National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility suggested in its plan for reducing the nation’s debt a 15¢ per gallon increase in the fuel tax, though it said little about how exactly those new revenues would be utilized. A more progressive group called Our Fiscal Security released a far more equitable program for reducing the U.S. deficit that would introduce a carbon tax (or cap and trade) and expand the motor fuels tax by 25¢ or more per gallon. These revenues, the group notes, could go towards expanded public transportation for the purposes of “reduc[ing] our dependency on fuel and increas[ing] productivity by reducing the amount of time people sit in traffic.” Neither group’s ambitions, however, appears to be supported by enough members of Congress to be taken completely seriously.

This adds up to a thoroughly inconvenient situation for the future of U.S. transportation. Despite a well-documented need for more spending, the newly Republican House is unlikely to authorize any new revenue source for the purpose. Based on recent decisions by party members at the state and national level, that will mean a renewed emphasis on roadway projects and less proposed funding for transit. How will the GOP delegation be able to compromise with the Democratic Senate? Any effort to make 2011 replicate the achievements of past years in which transportation bills were passed seems bound to fail.

* See U.S. Code Title 49, Section 5309 (G)(3)(B): “If an applicant does not carry out the project for reasons within the control of the applicant, the applicant shall repay all Government payments made under the work agreement plus reasonable interest and penalty charges the Secretary establishes in the agreement.

An Extensive New Addition to Dallas’ Light Rail Network Makes it America’s Longest

» New Green Line runs 28 miles from Carrollton to Southeast Dallas via downtown, but only every 15 minutes even during rush hours. To ensure its success, the DFW Metroplex must start taking the land use side of the transit equation more seriously.

Want proof that a massive light rail system doesn’t necessarily produce massive ridership? Look no further than Dallas, where 44 miles of DART light rail extending throughout the region and a rapidly growing population weren’t enough to prevent a decline in public transportation boardings between 2000 and 2010. The network carries about 60,000 riders a day — a pittance in the context of the city’s 1.3 million inhabitants. The most recent U.S. Census data show that the city’s transit mode share stands at less than 4%; the metropolitan region’s share is just 1.5%. Both are down from 2000.

Yet the city and the other member municipalities of DART have thus far been relatively steadfast in their commitment to the expansion of the local rail system. Today, with the commencement of service on the full extent of the $1.8 billion Green Line, the region features the largest light rail system of any in the United States, with 72 miles of train operations. The 15 stations opening today extend the short segment that opened last fall northwest into Carrollton and southeast into South Dallas; they are expected to add roughly 30,000 daily rides to the system. The project was completed on time and on budget.

Still more is coming soon. Though a decline in sales tax revenue has limited opportunities for future construction, the 14-mile Orange Line is planned to open in phases over the next four years, eventually reaching Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A commuter rail shuttle connecting the northwestern extend of the Green Line into Denton County will open for passengers next summer. A streetcar and two Blue Line extensions are still on the books.

But that’s not good enough. Cities shouldn’t spend billions of dollars on a fixed-guideway transit system, only to be rewarded with minimal if any increases in ridership — especially in areas that are growing extremely quickly. What is Dallas doing wrong? Now that it has built itself a massive network, what can it change about its development patterns to ensure better use of its investments?

The clearest answer is that density matters a whole lot more than overall length of rail lines. As demonstrated by Strasbourg’s tramway network, which serves 300,000 daily users on 34.7 miles of track, in terms of attracting ridership it is more important to have a densely packed system in the inner city than it is to have an extensive series of suburban extensions. This, however, requires the existence of a dense urban core.

Dallas’ downtown is filled with jobs — 138,224, more than most cities’ — so it would seem in theory to be a popular place for transit users. But consider parking policies: The city’s downtown district actively encourages visitors to drive there and then park for just a dollar an hour. There’s no need to drive around looking for a space, because virtually every block is consumed at least partially by parking. When it’s this easy to get around by car, the fact is that transit options are unlikely to succeed.

Meanwhile, what Dallas really lacks is residential compactness: The downtown itself has grown from 1,654 residents in 2000 to 10,446 today (that’s pretty impressive!), but neighborhoods immediately adjacent to this area are primarily made up of single-family homes. Moreover, the alignment of the rail corridors, generally following existing highway or rail rights-of-way, often do not reach the densest areas or the biggest destinations. The well-populated (and popular) neighborhoods north of downtown, including Uptown and Oak Lawn, are mostly inaccessible to light rail. An underground station on the Red Line originally planned for Knox Street, which likely would have attracted plenty of riders, was not built because of local opposition. Even Love Field, the city’s second airport, is not directly on the route of the Green Line because a connection would have been too expensive to construct.

Because of the adherence to corridors that are intentionally designed to do as little as possible to challenge the movement of automobiles, trains run in industrial zones north of Love Field and along a forested edge zone along much of the southeast segments of the route. These were wasted opportunities: Those routes could have been designed to run in the boulevard medians in the center of neighborhoods, attracting more users, but instead they’re generally at the periphery of built-up zones.

Each and every decision about station location matters: The best-used light rail networks are those in which people have the ability to walk from their homes to the train and the truth is that that’s mostly impossible to do in Dallas’ system.

Despite all the above, this is not — and I am adamant in writing this — what an anti-transit crusader would argue is an example of Americans simply “not wanting” to living in urban conditions and thus not taking transit. The Dallas metropolitan areas has a total of 570,000 apartment units in multi-family buildings, and over the past four years, an average of about 8,000 of them were added every year, according to a recent real estate market report by the Texas A&M University. This housing is being built by private developers and it is being absorbed by the market. These are, inherently, dense developments.

And yet the Dallas Morning News reports that few major residential or commercial projects are being built in conjunction with the opening of the Green Line. Though several proposals are being considered, they certainly will not represent much of a major percentage of the total investments in new apartments in the area. There are obstacles to new construction in these neighborhoods.

Dallas and all of the cities being served by light rail must make a more serious effort to attract new growth into the transit zones around stations. If people are going to be living in apartments anyway, have them do so in mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods within easy distance of light rail stops. If this means using eminent domain to spur private redevelopment, then so be it: Something significant must be done to encourage increased use of the transit network.

In the meantime, Dallas has responded to the fact that it cannot afford to construct a second light rail route downtown by reducing frequencies on its existing routes to accommodate the arrival of the Green Line trains. Headways have declined from every 10 minutes at rush hour to every 15; at other times, trains will operate only every 20 minutes. This decision, made in good faith and reflecting a fundamental lack of resources, nevertheless will ultimately limit the number of people willing to switch to transit. Why do so when the trains run so infrequently? Yet the declining ridership that that thinking will likely produce will only encourage more service cutbacks in the future: It’s the transit death-spiral, and Dallas has to make sure it can avoid it.

Many of these problems are likely to be resolved over time — we cannot expect rail capacity to be absorbed immediately. As the example of the Washington, D.C. Metro shows, new dense and transit-oriented districts are likely to appear as people become used to the idea of living near the rail system. That, in turn, will result in increasing ridership. Yet the prototypical examples of Dallas rail development — at Mockingbird and Victory stations — are packed with parking and located just next to freeways. In other words, they are ideal environments for drivers. Those patterns must be altered if this region ever expects to profit fully from all that it has spent on its light rail network.

As Ohio and Wisconsin Sink into Self-Imposed Austerity, California and Florida Profit on Rail

» Florida’s high-speed project is now fully funded from the federal government; California is closer to connecting Fresno with Bakersfield. Other states, including Washington and Illinois, also receive major allocations.

Ohio and Wisconsin will not be getting the new intercity rail lines whose construction Washington agreed to fully fund just ten months ago. The November election of Republican governors meant the revocation of state support for projects that would have connected some Midwestern cities to the national rail network for the first time in decades, including along a line between Milwaukee and Madison and another between Cleveland and Cincinnati. These politicians ran successful campaigns partly based on a refusal to subsidize future train operations.

Today, the federal Department of Transportation announced that it would reappropriate the $1.2 billion in funds once meant for Ohio and Wisconsin to thirteen other states, with the large majority heading to California and Florida, which are building the nation’s only true high-speed lines. Wisconsin will be able to keep $14 million, a tiny fraction of its original award, to spend on improving the existing Amtrak Hiawatha service.

California’s High-Speed Rail Authority will receive $624 million in funds, increasing the state’s total take in the national intercity rail program to $3.9 billion. It announced late last month that it would build a 65-mile corridor in the state’s Central Valley for the first phase of what will eventually be a $45 billion network of 220 mph trains connecting San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and San Diego. $616 million of the allocations received today will be dedicated specifically to extend that initial line south to Bakersfield. This should relieve the recently popular rhetoric that the project is a “train to nowhere” because its initial construction would terminate in the little-known city of Corcoran; the new expenditures would connect Fresno and Bakersfield, whose metropolitan areas collectively house 1.7 million people, no insignificant sum. That said, future funding from Washington will be necessary to pay for the whole project, even on top of the $10 billion approved for the project by state taxpayers in 2008.

While smaller, Florida’s $342 million grant represents the last piece of federal funding necessary to pay for an 84-mile line planned for the Tampa-Orlando corridor, along which trains traveling at up to 186 mph will run by 2015 if all goes to plan. As long as the proposal is signed off by new Governor Rick Scott — not the world’s biggest rail supporter, but not fully against it either — construction could begin in 2012. The $2.7 billion project now has $2.35 billion in U.S. funds backing it and $280 million in state funds committed.

Governor Scott is likely to be searching for private partners to cover those latter costs, since he suggested during the campaign that he didn’t want his state’s taxpayers to be on the line for any of the program’s costs. The announcement earlier this week that Japan’s JR Central railroad was willing to offer the state a $210 million loan for the line and that China’s CSR Corp will invest in U.S. manufacturing with General Electric in order to improve its chance to win the right to operate lines in Florida and California should assure him that such aid is forthcoming if a deal that allows the private company to collect ticket revenues is negotiated. Virtually every high-speed rail system in the world is operationally profitable.

The announcement by the Department of Transportation a month before the sitting of the new Congress, in which the House of Representatives will be Republican-led, was likely strategic, designed to prevent the projects in California and Florida from being de-funded, as some have suggested. Incoming House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman John Mica of Florida has previously stated his skepticism about the Tampa-Orlando line, even arguing that it be curtailed to a 20-mile segment between the Orlando Airport and the Disney amusement parks. But the full-funding of the project made possible today seems to have convinced Mr. Mica of the full project’s merits. He was quoted in the Tampa Bay Business Journal as saying that “This means we could probably construct the line (to Tampa) without taxpayers underwriting the cost of it,” and that it is therefore an acceptable investment. I assume he meant the State of Florida when he said “taxpayers,” since the national rail program is of course being sponsored by debt that will eventually have to be paid back.

With full support from the incoming Governor of California Jerry Brown, the federal government has now virtually ensured construction will begin on these two significant projects. They must be undertaken very carefully since they represent the first American efforts to invest in true high-speed rail on new, dedicated corridors. The federal government must monitor each project’s progress with an eye towards keeping costs in line and completion on time.

The Department of Transportation has not, however, abandoned its interest in slower-speed intercity rail projects, despite the abandoning of the Ohio and Wisconsin lines. Washington state received some $161 million to improve the line between the Oregon and Canadian borders. Other states, including Illinois, New York, and Maine, will benefit from smaller grants detailed in the table at the conclusion of this article.

The government is likely to have another $1 billion to spend on intercity rail programs in Fiscal Year 2011, based on the budget bill the House of Representatives passed yesterday. That legislation must be approved by the Senate before it enters into law.