Getting There

The road ahead...

I usually try to work some sort of bad transit or train pun into my titles, but today, I'll very consciously play the asphalt card.  Why?  Because unless newly-nominated Transportation Secretary Mary Peters brings some new thinking to the US DOT, asphalt is all we have to look forward to.

Jon Talton, a columnist with the Arizona Republic, has some experience with Peters.  She headed up the Arizona Department of Transportation, and as Talton points out, earned the respect of pretty much everyone she worked with.
 

Bush Nominates New DOT Chief

The president today announced his nomination of Mary Peters, head of the Federal Highway Administration from 2001-2005, to take over as Secretary of Transportation.   Peters will replace Norman Mineta, the lone Democrat in Bush's cabinet, who resigned in July.

Peters' claim to fame at FHWA was the expansion of the roll of the public sector in developing transportation infrastructure.  As the Associated Press reported,

Peters is an advocate of user fees, or tolls, for building new highways. In a recent interview, she said that the federal highway program will run out of money by decade's end without substantial changes and, rather than raise taxes, some states are turning to toll roads already to fill gaps.

"You just can't depend on the federal government to bring the money in that was around when the interstate system was first built," Peters said.

Well first off, that is the first time I have publicly seen an administration official admit that gas taxes are inadequate.  Secondly, while Mary Peters and the Toll Road Revolution (how's that for a band name...) did some interesting things with transportation funding, tolling and private investment are not a panacea for the congestion and pollution problems that have been looming over this country for years. 

While it is important for drivers to pay for the full cost of their auto use, it would be dangerous for highways to become the chic new investment for Wall Street (or Brussels, considering recent trends) corporations looking to capitalize on newly available infrastructure assets.  A new road or transit system should only be build where there is a need, not where ever a profit can be made. 

To build solely for profit would lead to all kinds of tricky issues with induced traffic, driver access, planning and zoning, equitable funding of other modes, and probably a few others I am forgetting.

Finally, Peters is an asphalt gal, through and through.  The Federal Transit Administration has gotten short shrift over the years, and that needs to change.  It will be up to James Simpson, as the new head of the Federal Transit, to make sure that other modes of transportation more efficient and cleaner than cars are seeing an increasing share of U.S. gas tax dollars.

For the free marketeers!

Some of the regular readers of this blog love to wax poetic about the free market and how government subsidies of rail travel are just the the fat in the fire of a failing transportation system.  Well, putting that debate aside, I am hopping that we can find some common ground on the issue of congestion pricing - charging a toll to drive in certain areas or on particular roads during times of peak traffic.  The idea is that by treating your space on the road like the commodity it is, and charging you for it, you will be more likely to drive only when you need to.  Further, the money raised, which helps close the gap between the price drivers pay (vehicle cost, gas, maintenance, insurance, etc.) and what driving actually costs (road wear, pollution, medical costs from accidents, etc, etc), can be spent on expansions of public transportation to further reduce traffic congestion, pollution, and all the other negative impacts of driving a car.

London has had such a charge in place since 2003, and reports since then have been, er, grudgingly positive.  While no one likes paying a toll, people do admit that it is not a huge inconvenience, especially considering London's extensive system of transit.

Over the past several months, Stockholm, Sweden tested a far more sophisticated system of congestion pricing on their roads.  Unlike most other systems in use, the Stockholm system, designed by IBM, determined each toll based on the time of day and the drivers location, adjusting prices upward for the most congested areas, and downward for the least.  The system uses windshield mounted transponders, similar to the EZ-Pass tags used on the East Coast, to determine the location of each car and charge the appropriate toll. 

During the trail period, traffic in the tolled areas decreased 22%, accidents went down 5-10%, and pollution fell by 14% in the city and 2-3% in the suburbs.  Travel time on Stockholm's notoriously clogged central roadways was reduced by more than a third.  And drivers were not just altering their schedules.  Transit usage went up 6-10% over the 6 month period - a huge increase.

Now that the trial has ended and the results are in, the city is holding a referendum to let residents vote on whether to keep the system in place.  Current polls suggest 54% of voters support the plan.  What percentage of Getting There readers would theoretically support a similar system in their city?

BREAKING NEWS: Amtrak President Named

Alexander K. Kummant was named president and CEO of Amtrak today.  The Amtrak Board of Directors is expected to make an annoucement later this afternoon.  I don't have much info on Kummant beyond what the Amtrak press release says.  He served in several VP positions for Union Pacific, as well as in various executive position for other companies.  He also worked on a track crew in Lorain, Ohio, when he was 18. 

A quick search of campaign finance records shows that he has donated significant amounts of money to President George W. Bush (which is not really that surprising).

Kummant will assume his position at Amtrak on September 12th.  David Hughes, who has been serving as the interim president of Amtrak since November 2005 and was vying for the job permanantly, will remain with the railroad, though it is not clear in what position.

Worshipping at the Asphalt Alter

Lots of cities have traffic, and each is working to deal with it in their own way.  Some build roads and then more roads, and other look to tolls or transit or other solutions.  Here is DC, we have plenty of congestion, to the point that statewide elections are won and lost on the issue.  One of our prime traffic sites is called the Mixing Bowl (officially the Springfield Interchange), and involves the convergence of Interstate 95, 395, and 495.  The interchange is one of the busiest in the East, sbeing a major thoroughfare for both local commuters and long distance travelers.

The Washington Post ran a lovely article yesterday chronicling progress on the mammoth effort to re-engineer the Mixing Bowl from a slapdash mess of on-ramps, merges, exits, and bottlenecks into 50 graceful bridges and 24 streamlined lanes of traffic. However, as we read the first few sentences of this little human interest-style puff piece, a curious trend jumped out at us.

When Woodbridge resident Kit Oliva first drove across the new Springfield interchange ramp, she was whisked away to a place where the highways somehow seem a little more glamorous.

"It didn't feel like Virginia," she said. "There were so many lanes. It was like 'Wow, I'm in California.'"

Oliva is a postal carrier, and she braves the Mixing Bowl daily. Her sister lives in Southern California — a land of extravagant interchanges and famous freeways. Springfield's new ramp is a smooth ride, she said, with broad shoulders and breezy merging. Just like the ones in Los Angeles.

The rest of the article followed suit, reporting responses from drivers that border on outright giddiness.

I understand that those forced through the Mixing Bowl on a daily basis are relieved to have a safer and less congested commute. However, in a town that complains so often, so loudly, and with such good reason about traffic, I was a little surprised to find this much enthusiasm for the Angelino transportation model. Do drivers in DC or other cities really have such lust for the asphalt spaghetti that ties Southern California together (or tangles it all up, depending on your points of view) or is it just a little Hollywood crush? Even more crucial, could the change cause D.C. drivers to begin to use the definite article (as in "The 405") when referring to our freeway system like they do in SoCal?

Everybody else is doing it!

So why shouldn't I?  I am referring of course, about the blogger-frenzied hyping of the movie Snakes on a Plane.  The movie opens today, and to celebrate, local rail activist Rick Booth has picked up the meme and run with it, creating the website Senators on a Train.  Booth helped to save his local Amtrak station from shutdown last year, and has turned his crusade into a long-term effort to preserve Amtrak as a commuting option for thousands of people who rely on the trains to get to work.

In an effort to protest the massive Amtrak commuter fare increases implemented earlier this year, Booth has bought ridiculously underpriced Amtrak tickets for 18 senators representing Northeast Corridor states.  His goal is to show them the people who rely on Amtrak every day, who now must pay up to $20 more per day for the privlege of commuting to work.  Booth will be updating his site daily during the voyage, so check back to see his progress and the reactions from senate offices.

Wrong Way

Gas prices are still hovering around $3 a gallon, and transit ridership across the country is on the rise.  As this looks less and less like a coincidence and more like plain old economic law, I was more than a little disappointed to see that my neighbor to the west and former home of Virginia were heading in the other direction.

The Washington Post reports today that ridership on the Virginia Railway Express commuter lines, which has risen steadily for the past 4 years, fell in 2006.  The reason?  It's CSX, stupid!  The freight rail company, which leases tracks to VRE, makes passenger trains wait while it runs things like coal and corn through.  Now, since CSX does own the tracks, they certainly have the right to set their own rules.  But the company seemingly refuses to make any effort to accommodate the passengers that rely on VRE to get to work in the morning, and back to their families in the evening.

A local Virginia man tells the Washington Examiner about his experience:

An ‘outlaw’ train ([whose] crew was at its maximum authorized work time) was stopped between stations on the inside track, and not on a nearby side-track designed for such occasions. The VRE train behind this outlaw train had to back up to a previous station, switch tracks and go around that stopped train. This maneuver, along with CSX heat restrictions, caused [the VRE] train to be more than two hours late getting back to Fredericksburg. CSX knew this crew was near its time, but did nothing to prevent this from happening, nor did they tell VRE far enough in advance so they could manage their trains.

A CSX rep in charge of dealing with VRE said that they make every effort to clear a path for VRE. Either that is just not true, or CSX seriously need to look at their definition of success.

La vita auto libre

As more and more alternatives to the automobile spring up around the country, reducing auto usage will become more a matter of changing behavior than policies.  You can create all the access you want, but until people have a definite incentive to use it, the only gains you are going to see are around the margins.

That's why I am excited to see companies that offer transportation alternatives teaming up to promote their products, and encouraging people to live la vita auto libre.  Car-sharing company Flexcar has teamed up with transit systems in cities around the country for  for the Low-Car Diet, a promotion that challenges participants to give up their car for 30 days. Armed with an unlimited transit pass and 25 hours of free Flexcar, participants are asked to live their lives car-free, posting their weekly experiences on Flexcar's website.

Here in Washington, the participants represent a fairly diverse cross-section of area residents, each with different commuting needs, which should make things interesting!  I'll be sure to report back if there are any particularly intersting stories from the Dieters.

Oh Dear...

All this time we'd been promoting the myriad benefits of rail travel, and now we find out that diesel locomotives are not exactly clean.  Who knew?

Well, to be honest, I did.  Lots of people did, actually, and have been pushing to clean up locomotives for a while.  However, this most recent revelation puts a much finer point on the situation.  Even though diesel trains are currently as much as three times as fuel efficient as trucks, the benefits are expected to gradually wane as diesel trucks and buses comply with new federal emissions standards passed under President Clinton.  On top of this, recently discovered calculation errors doubled estimates of air pollution coming from diesel trains.

Fortunately, the issue is on the radar screen.  The EPA, which can hardly be described as an agency ahead of the game in most places, has been working on this for two years.  They expect to issue new regulations within the next 12 months.

One important point:  While revisions in air pollution levels from trains need to be addressed, rail remains a far more environmentally sound transportation choice.  There are many others issues to consider that give rail a strong advantage, including land use patterns, global warming pollution, and density.  The rail industry has been able to improve fuel efficiency 70 percent over the last 25 years.  Until we start seeing that kind of commitment from the auto industry, we really don't have much more to talk about.

Senate Punts on Amtrak...Again

Last time we talked, everyone was gearing up for a big win on Amtrak in the Senate.  We had the votes, the bill, everything you need for success.  And then...nothing.  Nothing happened, because the bill was pulled.

Apparently, one senator had a problem with the bill regarding work-rule changes.  Since everything in the Senate is done by a vote of unanimous consent, it will be held until September.  While it is nice to see the bill being rescheduled instead of postponed indefinitely, it is still disappointing.  Without the added momentum of the Senate vote, it will be much harder to work with House members on moving a companion bill forward.

Still, it was good to get Senate staff thinking about this, and hopefully there will only need to be a few hours of work to get a vote in September.  We shall see though...