Our new report examines the racist roots of our current transportation system. Most importantly, it demonstrates how today’s policies and practices were shaped by the past, leading to racial disparities today. Without a fundamental change to the overall approach to transportation, today’s leaders and transportation professionals, no matter their intent, will perpetuate and exacerbate the damage.
Beginning in the 1950s, highways devastated communities of color and changed our cities forever. But the consequences continue, even as we begin to acknowledge our past mistakes.
To create a better system, we can’t settle for small changes. We need a total shift in approach.To learn more about the report and our analysis, join our webinar on July 25 at 2 p.m. ET.
Part I examines the damage and inequities deliberately created by and in the federal transportation program from ~1950 onward. It concludes with a unique analysis of both an unbuilt and built highway segment within Atlanta and Washington, DC to quantify what was lost, who bore the brunt of the damage, and what could have been lost with highways that were never built.
Part II examines our current transportation program to demonstrate how the programs, standards, models, and measures have their roots in the previous era and exacerbate inequities—whether intentional or not.
Part IIIoutlines what needs to change—concrete steps we can take to fundamentally reorient the program around unwinding those inequities.
Two cities divided
Divided by Design also quantifies the damage caused by highways in two U.S. cities: Atlanta, GA and Washington, DC. Like hundreds of others in the U.S., these cities are forever scarred by highways that demolished communities of color, robbing them of opportunity and potential.
Atlanta’s I-20 displaced over 7,500 people and destroyed 1,400 occupied homes. In DC, I-395/695 displaced over 5,000 people and demolished 2,200 homes. These numbers only scratch the surface of the full damage and dislocation.
More significant damage was also avoided in these cities. To understand what might exist in these communities if they hadn’t been disrupted by highways, we looked at two planned highway segments that were never built and the hundreds of businesses, office buildings, and homes that wouldn’t exist today. Click to read these stories:
The damage continues
The models, policies, and practices we use today took root in the highway era, and they continue to inflict the most harm on people of color. Our approach leads to worse health outcomes, greater congestion, and deadlier roadways. It leaves millions of Americans without access to reliable transportation options to get where they need to go. We can’t build a better system on a rotten foundation. It’s time for a paradigm shift.
We need a new approach.
Read Divided by Design
Explore the report’s full content—jump to one of the three parts with the graphics below.
The predicted traffic levels on which transportation planners base their decisions are erroneous and rooted in obsolete methods. Here’s how transportation models fail to accurately predict future traffic, and how you can call out their misuse.
The 26-lane Katy Freeway in Houston had worse traffic after its widening than before. Were the traffic models wrong? Photo: Wikimedia Commons
You’ve seen it before. A state DOT claims they must widen a highway through your community to reduce congestion and accommodate future traffic. The transportation agency points to traffic projections that we all take at face value. They might even claim that widening the highway will improve traffic flow thereby reducing emissions. You don’t want the highway widening in your community, but what can you do in the face of experts saying it is necessary and pointing to data that “proves” their case?
Transportation agencies use transportation models to predict future traffic and plan the roadway system accordingly. But the underlying algorithm for these models was developed in the 1980s when the computers in use were less powerful than today’s smartphones. Due to this past limitation in computing power, travel demand models use a simplified approach that doesn’t accurately represent how people make travel decisions.
T4America experts collaborated with our partners to look inside the black box of transportation models (also sometimes called travel demand models or traffic models). We submitted a memo to the US Department of Transportation asking them to apply more accountability to agencies using these models to correct them.
Some of the transportation models’ specific flaws
The proof that transportation models are failing us is plain to see in the long term trends. Over the last 20 years, congestion has increased in every single U.S. metropolitan area regardless of how much they’ve expanded their highways and regardless of whether their population grew or shrank.
In what way have transportation models misled us? It largely has to do with the underlying approach which is too simple, chosen because of limited 1980s computing power. Transportation models use a Static Traffic Assignment (STA) algorithm which is a sort of snapshot in time of how much traffic is on each roadway in a region at a given moment. This static algorithm is problematic, since people make decisions on different factors every day, often in the moment. People are dynamic not static.
What’s more, STAs do not properly account for bottlenecks, or constrain forecasts based on roadway capacity. No roadway can ever carry more cars than its maximum capacity, any more than a coffee mug can hold 110% of its coffee capacity. Yet agencies routinely and confidently make claims like, “without this expansion, the roadway will be at 110% capacity.” If you point out that a roadway can’t handle more cars than it has capacity for, they say that extra 10 percent is “latent demand.” In other words, they are certain that there’s exactly 10 percent more cars and trips out there that must be served.
We call this induced demand—demand created by the new road itself—a concept those same agencies often claim doesn’t exist. (But which the public absolutely understands, as our brand new national polling shows.) By trying to sell the project on all that “latent” demand, they can claim a traffic nightmare if nothing is done without admitting that the project will actually create more traffic—and more greenhouse gas emissions, fine particulates, etc. [USDOT and the Environmental Protection Agency support that approach for some unfathomable reason, never asking if the models used to justify federally funded projects have been right.]
In reality, as congestion increases toward that 100% capacity mark, people make different travel decisions, change their routes, choose to travel at a different time, use a different mode or choose a closer destination to fulfill the same need. If there is a crash, people delay their trip or consult Google maps and choose a different route. But transportation models using the STA approach unrealistically assume people will blindly keep driving a congested roadway, no matter what is happening or how long their trip will take.
Not only does the model assume no changes in behavior, but it will also output results that show drivers stuck at one bottleneck, while simultaneously allowing them to magically pass through that one to also be stuck at another bottleneck downstream.
Compounding these issues, planners rarely, if ever, look back at their past work to see if their predictions were correct. Did the traffic materialize? We’re stuck with decades-old models that are never tested or upgraded to reflect reality, as shown here:
This graphic from the Frontier Group combines past federal projections of future growth in vehicle miles traveled. Every year a new optimistic projection was made that ultimately didn’t pan out, but they kept on predicting the same thing.
How to question your region’s model
We’re hopeful that USDOT will eventually provide accountability to upgrade the state of practice on transportation modeling, but you can also ask questions about the transportation models used to promote road widenings in your community. Here are some things you can ask your local transportation planners to illustrate the flaws of using transportation model results to justify road widenings:
Does your model use Static Traffic Assignment?
What is the maximum volume to capacity in your model runs, and how is that realistic? (If they give a volume over 100%, ask how a road can carry more than its capacity. And ask if latent demand will fill the new capacity they are building then what good will this investment do?)
How does your model account for dynamic changes in commuting patterns, responses to crashes, or the threshold at which people shift to other modes?
What is your protocol for evaluating the accuracy of your past traffic projections and using that to improve upon the model? Where is it published?
Getting our transportation models to better reflect reality will help planners make better decisions about where to invest our tax dollars. Calling on USDOT to upgrade standards for transportation models, and calling out their misuse locally in the meantime will help us turn the corner to more sensible improvements to transportation in our nation.
New nationwide survey shows that prioritizing road repair, improving transit, and reducing driving are more popular options for spending transportation dollars
WASHINGTON, D.C. (June 29) — A new nationwide survey of American voters’ attitudes reveals a significant divide between voters’ attitudes about the best short-and long-term solutions for reducing traffic, versus the actual priorities of their state and local transportation agencies.
In 2021 The Washington Post estimated that highway widening and expansion consumed more than a third of states’ capital spending on roads (over $19 billion). These projects were backed by promises to reduce congestion. The public isn’t buying it. The results of a national survey of 2,001 registered U.S. voters—90 percent of whom own a car they drive regularly—underscores a widely shared belief that highway expansion doesn’t work as a short- or long-term strategy for reducing traffic and that we should invest more in other options.
70 percent of respondents agree that “providing people with more transportation options is better for our health, safety, and economy than building more highways.”
67 percent of respondents agreed that “expanding highways takes years, causes delays, and costs billions of dollars.” The same percentage believes that “widening highways attracts more people to drive, which creates more traffic in the long run.” Only 11 percent felt state DOTs actually deliver congestion relief with highway expansions. In other words, the public understands the concept of “induced demand,” which is widely ignored by state legislatures, DOTs, Congress, and federal agencies.
69 percent of respondents agree that “it’s more important to protect our quality of life than to spend billions of tax dollars on expanding highways. By removing a few miles of highway and adding more transportation options, like trains, buses, bike lanes, and sidewalks, we can have healthier communities.”
71 percent of respondents agree that “no matter where you live, you should have the freedom to easily get where you need to go. Almost all government spending on transportation goes to highways. Instead, states should fund more options, like trains, buses, bike lanes, and sidewalks.”
The survey revealed a deep dissatisfaction with the overall status quo of state and local transportation spending which overwhelmingly prioritizes spending on new roads, often at the expense of keeping roads and bridges in good condition, investing in transit and safe streets for walking or biking, or reducing the need to drive overall. Given seven choices for the best short- and long-term solutions for reducing traffic, the least popular option was “building new freeways and highways,” even as states are poised to spend tens of billions on new highways thanks to the 2021 federal infrastructure law.
“Our country remains on a highway spending spree while requests for basic investments in walkability and transit are given low priority. I hope this survey serves as a wake-up call to politicians that the public is clamoring for reasonable investments in our health, climate and quality of life, not traffic-inducing polluting highways,” said Mike McGinn, Executive Director of America Walks.
Prioritizing the repair of existing roads and bridges first was the top option for how states should be investing their transportation funding (selected by 22 percent of respondents), though Congress has long agreed—in a strong bipartisan fashion—not to institute any binding requirements to prioritize repair first.
“We’re repeatedly told by leaders on Capitol Hill that requiring states to prioritize maintenance first is just too controversial,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “But this survey shows yet again that there’s no controversy among the people they serve—they’re beyond ready to retire the last generation’s playbook when it comes to improving mobility and getting them where they need to go.”
While “reducing congestion” is the top policy goal that shapes the spending decisions of most state DOTs, traffic is not a huge stumbling block for most people to access what they need. Just one in four said they find it difficult to get around.
Survey respondents expressed positive feelings about a range of messages about spending transportation money differently, demonstrating that voters are looking for new ideas, policies, and/or investments that address their problems and deliver meaningful benefits to people and communities—instead of just doing the same old things over and over again. (See attached PDF for full results on pages 19-22, all of which were supported by over 60 percent of respondents.)
“These results are clear: Americans are eager to see the transportation investments that can connect and repair their communities,” said Rabi Abonour, a transportation advocate at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “Federal, state and local leaders should follow the lead of the public and invest in the public transit and related projects that will really improve mobility, clean the air, and address climate pollution.”
Hattaway Communications, a strategic communications firm based in Washington D.C., was retained to conduct this survey of 2,001 registered voters and assess their awareness of relevant issues, attitudes toward transportation projects, and aspirations for their communities. The survey was fielded online, between February 23–March 7, 2023, and reflects the demographic and geographic composition of the United States.
This survey was supported by the Natural Resources Defense Council and a grant from the Summit Foundation.
###
Transportation for America is an advocacy organization made up of local, regional, and state leaders who envision a transportation system that safely, affordably, and conveniently connects people of all means and ability to jobs, services, and opportunity through multiple modes of travel. T4America is a program of Smart Growth America. Learn more at t4america.org
America Walks is leading the way in advancing walkable, equitable, connected, and accessible places in every community across the U.S. We are the national voice for public spaces that allow people to safely walk and move. At the regional, state, and neighborhood levels, America Walks provides critical strategic support, training, and technical assistance to partner organizations and individuals to effectively advocate for change. https://americawalks.org/
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) works to safeguard the earth—its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. https://www.nrdc.org/about
The Transportation Research Board’s Annual Meeting was held earlier this January in Washington, D.C. Despite claiming to be at the forefront of innovation, most of the conference avoided the truth: any system based primarily on moving cars as quickly as possible will leave many people behind.
Earlier this month, I attended portions of the Transportation Research Board’s (TRB) Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. Across all the conversations, committee sessions, and social events, there was significant discussion of using technologies like modeling, automated vehicles, and intelligent transportation systems to solve the most pressing problems in transportation. The overriding ethos of many panels was that through technological innovation and computational analysis, we could address the increasing congestion, worsening traffic safety, and drop in transit ridership that all persist as we get farther from the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is how much of the transportation ecosystem—from engineers and planners to many private companies and public policymakers—has disconnected innovation from progress. Although many of the new technologies presented in and around D.C.’s convention center may be considered “advancements” by those who worked on them, they do not meaningfully advance one simple goal: to move people and goods where they need to go as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible, with a variety of mobility options.
The many innovations discussed at TRB seemed far better ways to avoid confronting the truth—that a system that requires 90 percent of the population to own a private vehicle will never be an efficient system—than serious attempts to ensure our transportation system works better for all.
This did not apply to all of the conference’s participants. Students like Evan Taylor presented posters looking not just at vehicular traffic, but bicycle and pedestrian traffic as well. Organizations like the Parking Reform Network hosted happy hours where they discussed local efforts to improve affordability and efficiency through tweeks to transportation policy. I personally was able to have a great conversation with two planners from Montréal’s commuter railroad, one of whom was presenting on on-demand transit efforts they were undertaking. Perhaps most importantly, even federal government officials didn’t kowtow to automobile autocracy. In the conference’s keynote, panel on roadway safety, and the release of a national transportation decarbonization blueprint by DOT, HUD, EPA, and the Department of Energy, prioritizing cars above all else was described as the obstacle to addressing crises of safety and sustainability.
A panel discussion by state DOT leaders on implementation of the 2021 infrastructure law at the TRB Annual Meeting.
Part of the reason these points of view are exceptions to the rule are policy choices, many of which administration officials have limited wiggle room in implementing. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act did increase funding for passenger rail and complete streets to historic levels. But at the same time, it allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to worsen the same sprawl, pollution, and safety problems that rail and active transportation investments are supposed to fix.
Policy isn’t created in a vacuum, though. If there’s any field where that’s true, it’s transportation, where a century of greed-oriented campaigning by the automobile industry and its allies has pushed protecting pedestrians from cars to the background. It has pushed transportation as a field to treat congestion writ large as an enemy, even though many industry professionals experienced the opposite at TRB. Congestion may not be pleasant coming home from the grocery store in a car, but in person it allows for the mingling in bars, impromptu run-ins in hallways and on street corners, and memorable nights at restaurants that give conferences, and cities more broadly, their value. In short, congestion can be a sign of inefficiency, but also of community. Whether it’s a crowded conference or a busy street, congestion can be a clear sign that we’ve created places where people want to be.
TRB and many of its participants have gotten used to instinctively adding vehicle capacity onto every individual problem the transportation system has—and destroying countless communities in the process—instead of asking what tools can move more people, more safely without simultaneously decimating destinations where they gather.
That also means that this status quo isn’t predetermined. During a TransportationCamp session on fighting freeway expansions, one employee at a west coast transportation consultancy described how there are efforts at their firm to make reconnecting communities projects an established team in their organization. The Complete Streets policy passed by Howard County, Maryland, in 2019—which will be reviewed in Smart Growth America’s upcoming Best Complete Streets Policy Report—explicitly described slowing down car traffic as a net positive for the community at large.
At Transportation for America, our three principles are based on the idea that we already have all the tools we need to make sure our transportation system doesn’t divide communities, heat our planet, and kill our friends, family, and neighbors. We don’t need new technology, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we just need the will to better use the tools we have.
For decades, transportation agencies have been trying to “solve” congestion by increasing road capacity, even when doing so can obliterate or divide communities, harm local businesses, and make streets more dangerous. Our latest cartoon shows how our “cures” for congestion are often worse than the problem.
While every transportation agency (including USDOT in their new road safety strategy) will tell you that safety is always the biggest priority, you can see what the real priority is by following the money. It’s usually the same goal: reducing congestion. Our latest cartoon in our ongoing series shows just how shortsighted and bankrupt our current approach to congestion is:
Illustration produced for T4America by visual artist Jean Wei. IG/@weisanboo
Follow the money or tear at the seams a bit on many supposed “safety” projects and you’ll quickly find that reducing congestion is often the real consideration.
While the Texas Department of Transportation is certainly on one particular end of the spectrum, this story from last week highlights just how deeply they consider reducing congestion their most important charge. In this case, TxDOT transferred a city street from state control to the City of San Antonio years ago, which is now deep underway on a project (supported by 70 percent of voters!) to increase the value of the corridor and make the street safer by slowing traffic and reducing the number of travel lanes. The project will “allow for protected bike lanes, wider sidewalks for pedestrians, and the planting of shade trees,” according to the San Antonio Report.
So how did TxDOT respond to those plans, after a questionable legal move this week to seize control of the street and put it back under state control? (Bold and italics ours.)
This action is needed as a result of local proposals to convert the existing three lanes to two lanes in each direction and remove turn lanes along SL 368. These local proposals would result in a significant increase in congestion. TxDOT remains focused on strategies to decrease congestion and will work with the City and other local stakeholders to develop solutions for SL 368 that serve to maintain the existing three lanes in each direction while addressing the mobility and safety needs of all users.
Safety is still important, you see. TxDOT is still committed to addressing the “mobility and safety needs of all users,” as long as it doesn’t interfere with having as many vehicle lanes as possible. Safety is ok, so long as it is additive. But if it interferes with their ability to address congestion, safety takes a back seat, every time. And so they are attempting to halt the city’s plans by seizing this road to keep the local government from following through on voters and taxpayer wishes by prioritizing safety and creating a productive, valuable place instead.
Residents and leaders of struggling cities or neighborhoods will also tell you that the only thing worse than congestion is no congestion. Denuded, downtown and near-downtown streets in these kinds of places are exhibit A. They are wide, mostly empty, easy to speed on, terrible to walk on, and lack productive economic activity along many of them. What mayors of those places wouldn’t give for some congestion—a sign that a lot of people want to be there. Congestion is both a sign of economic productivity and perhaps counterintuitively one of the few things keeping more people from dying on streets that are designed for much higher speeds:
And as we’ve chronicled heavily in The Congestion Con and our work on induced travel demand, attempts to solve congestion with more lanes and more capacity are both immensely expensive and never bring the promised results. But worse, congestion reduction is sold as a way to benefit the economy, yet congestion is too often solved by obliterating the local economy.
Do you have a story like this one from Texas to share? We’d love to hear your stories about attempts to “solve” congestion that decimated a place, made a corridor even less safe, or went completely against local wishes.
Even if we hit the most ambitious targets for changing our cars and trucks over to electric vehicles, we will fail to meaningfully reduce emissions from transportation without confronting this simple fact: new roads always produce new driving. This costly feedback loop referred to as “induced demand” is the invisible force short-circuiting the neverending attempts to eliminate congestion by building or expanding roads.
Today, Transportation for America is partnering with RMI and the Natural Resources Defense Council to release a new calculator that shows how highway expansion repeatedly fails to reduce congestion and instead increases traffic and pollution. The SHIFT Calculator provides transparency about new traffic created by highway widening and expansion so transportation agencies can make smarter, more sustainable transportation investments. Read the press release.
Imagine a guy who, struck with a wild but charitable fever of generosity, decided to give away 100 gallons of tasty, free coffee every morning at a small downtown stand. During that entire first week, he struggled to give it all away before lunchtime and went home with quite a few gallons of leftover lukewarm coffee. In week #2, he started seeing familiar faces each day from the nearby buildings, because people walking by know a good deal when they see one (the low price of free!) Many of them returned each day and the coffee was gone by 11 a.m. By the third week, the word was out across downtown about the “crazy free coffee guy” and he started running out earlier each day. By the start of week four, people were coming from all over downtown and he had a line queued up waiting for him at 7 a.m. to ensure they got their free cup before work, and it was all gone before 9 a.m.
Say hello to “induced demand.”
Giving something away for free shapes the behavior of those who want it
It’s a fundamental principle of economics: Provide a tangible good at no cost that people value and the demand will outstrip supply.
Yet political leaders and transportation agencies refuse to believe that this same basic principle will apply when they spend billions to widen or expand highways in the name of “solving” traffic congestion in urban regions, and then give away all of that newly created space for free. They refuse to believe that anyone will take new trips on the newly freed-up highway space, that people will shift existing off-peaks trips to rush hour, that someone on transit might decide to return to driving (like thousands of people did during the pandemic), or that developers might take advantage of the new capacity to build yet more houses or retail on land that’s now more easily accessible.
They refuse to believe that this is possible, even when all of that expensive new highway space fills right up in a short period of time, wiping out any benefits and failing to deliver on all those promises of speedy commutes, improved travel times, and money in our pockets from all the “time savings.”
Attempting to “solve” congestion by building new roads or expanding existing ones has been the animating purpose behind billions of dollars of federal and state transportation investment for decades now.
Armed with this single-minded purpose and billions in no-strings money from the federal government, states have spent hundreds of billions of dollars to widen or build new highways. We built enough new roads and lanes from just 2009-2017 to build a brand new road back and forth across our enormous country 83 times. State transportation departments have added 5,325 new lane-miles just since 2015.
All the lanes we’ve built have led to a predictable increase in driving. From 1980-2017, per capita vehicle miles traveled (VMT) increased by 46 percent. In 1993, on average, each person accounted for 21 miles of driving per day in those 100 urbanized areas. By 2017, that number had jumped to 25 miles per day. Every year, Americans are having to drive farther just to accomplish the same things we did back in 1993 every day.
The problem isn’t too few roads
Delay skyrocketed in our 100 largest urbanized areas from 1993-2017, rising by 144 percent. Yet we expanded our freeway system in those areas by 42 percent, while the population only increased by 32% during that time. We built roads like crazy, yet delay just got worse.
Delay increased because new highways, roads, and lanes are proven to induce more driving, which leads to more emissions and ultimately more congestion. The evidence for induced demand is overwhelming. In a landmark study, Kent Hymel at Cal State Northridge suggests the relationship is perfectly correlated—a 10 percent increase in lane miles leads to a 10 percent increase in driving.
If you’re celebrating the notable but small climate and transit provisions in the current enormous infrastructure deal, you should know that this shortsighted 1950s-style deal will provide states with historic levels of virtually no-strings highway funding that they can continue to blow on the same old bankrupt strategy for congestion without even any basic requirements to repair things first.
Profligate spending on highways also undermines the relatively limited investments being made in other lower emission transportation options like biking, walking, and transit.
Why do transportation agencies deny this reality?
The unreliable models that agencies depend upon have a poor track record of success, but they never look backward to consider their accuracy or how they can be improved. When is a state DOT ever held to account for repeatedly making predictions about traffic that fails to materialize? Who even remembers what they predict? This great thread from Kevin DeGood about Texas DOT’s repeated failure to make accurate predictions shows just how rarely anyone looks backward:
1/ TxDOT is pushing hard to widen I-35 based, in part, on traffic forecasts that show doom and gloom. Reader, you should be deeply skeptical since TxDOT has missed the mark for decades. Let’s take a look. pic.twitter.com/9RxLLGmHrI
19 years ago, the Texas DOT predicted that average daily traffic (ADT) on I-35 through downtown Austin would be 330,000 daily vehicles by last year. The reality wasn’t even close: Actual totals in 2019 were only 201,000 daily trips. As Kevin notes, in 2016, with the state totally ignoring how wildly inaccurate their current projections were turning out to be, they projected “that total VMT on I-35 in the Austin area would increase by 50% by 2040.”
Rinse and repeat.
TxDOT is certainly doing their best to make those 2040 projections come true. All it’s going to cost taxpayers is $5 billion to widen I-35 right through downtown.
If the state follows through on this staggeringly expensive project, they’d be creating millions of new trips and increasing pollution, all while failing to make a dent in congestion over the long term and wiping out hundreds of acres of some of the most valuable land in the entire state.
This data comes from the new SHIFT Calculator’s estimates for the I-35 widening project which would add 42 lane-miles to the interstate through downtown Austin
The cynical answer to “why” is that if state DOTs around the country finally admitted that expansions fail to actually solve congestion, they would lose their #1 strategy of continued expansions that allow everyone other than the taxpayer to make more money. They’d be admitting that they’ve placed all of their bets on a losing horse, and they’ve been doing so for years. On top of that, they’d then have to do far more sophisticated work to better understand the complicated reality of our travel needs and rebuild their models from the ground up to focus on moving people rather than just “make cars go fast.”
Our hope is that advocates, local governments, and anyone who cares about finally getting more accurate and transparent data about increases in driving and pollution will use this new tool to hold their transportation agencies to account. And we want transportation agencies to use it to bring a fuller picture to their current transportation modeling that leads them to “solutions” that fail to address congestion, divide neighborhoods, increase pollution, devastate nearby communities, and fail to meaningfully improve our access to jobs and services.
Find a proposed project in your metro area and run it through the calculator.
Some parts of the above post were adapted from Driving Down Emissions, a report from Smart Growth America and Transportation for America which explores how changing transportation policy and land-use patterns are key to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
The SHIFT Calculator provides transparency about new traffic created by highway widening and expansion so transportation agencies can make smarter, more sustainable transportation investments.
A new tool released today provides anyone with the ability to estimate the increased traffic and pollution that will result from proposed highway expansions.
Over the past few decades, taxpayer dollars have funded billions of dollars in highway expansions intended to alleviate road congestion, but it usually does not take long for the traffic to return. This endless loop, known as “induced demand,” fails to address congestion while leading to more cars on the road and more pollution from the transportation sector, which is the nation’s largest source of emissions.
Using the State Highway Induced Frequency of Travel (SHIFT) Calculator developed by RMI, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) and Transportation for America, anyone can now project the increases in driving that would result from highway expansions. The Calculator provides transparency and accountability for transportation projects that often do not deliver on promised benefits and instead make traffic and pollution worse. This new tool will enable transportation agencies to account for the principle of induced demand in the planning and implementation of highway projects.
“Road expansion projects have failed to deliver the promised benefits. In fact, the evidence shows that they actually make traffic and pollution worse,” said Ben Holland, manager in RMI’s Urban Transformation Program. “To achieve US climate goals, we must reduce the amount that the average person drives by 20%. This tool shines a light on the impacts of highway expansion and shows how these projects often move us away from our goals.”
The SHIFT Calculator was based on RMI’s Colorado Induced Travel Calculator, which advocates used to show that proposed and in-progress road expansions would increase vehicle miles traveled by up to 3% by 2030, at a time that the state is aiming to reduce those roadway miles by 10%.
“This easy-to-use tool will help advocates make their case to city and state transportation departments,” said Carter Rubin, a transportation strategist at NRDC. “So many of us have seen firsthand how quickly traffic returns when extra highway lanes open up, and this calculator provides the numbers to back up that experience. If cities and states really want to get residents out of traffic and cut down on smog, they should make it easier and faster for people to ride public transit, bike and walk.”
“For 90 years, we have known that building new lanes creates new vehicle trips that fill those lanes, and for 90 years, we have mostly ignored this fundamental law while repeating the same mistakes at great cost,” said Beth Osborne, director of Transportation for America. “We must stop making empty promises about congestion reduction that never materialize. Having the ability to estimate added travel caused by expansions can finally equip decision makers and the public with the data to make the case for something more effective at connecting people to jobs and opportunity.”
###
About RMI
RMI is an independent nonprofit founded in 1982 that transforms global energy systems through market-driven solutions to align with a 1.5°C future and secure a clean, prosperous, zero-carbon future for all. We work in the world’s most critical geographies and engage businesses, policymakers, communities, and NGOs to identify and scale energy system interventions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent by 2030. RMI has offices in Basalt and Boulder, Colorado; New York City; Oakland, California; Washington, D.C.; and Beijing. More information on RMI can be found at www.rmi.org or follow us on Twitter @RockyMtnInst.
About NRDC
NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world’s natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.
About Transportation for America
Transportation for America, a program of Smart Growth America, is an advocacy organization made up of local, regional and state leaders who envision a transportation system that safely, affordably and conveniently connects people of all means and ability to jobs, services, and opportunity through multiple modes of travel. Learn more at t4america.org and follow us on Twitter @T4America.
With Congress writing long-term transportation policy this month, we need to make sure that this bill doesn’t continue the broken status quo. This week, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways just makes traffic worse.
Highway traffic in Seattle. Photo by Oran Viriyincy on Flickr.
With the Senate writing long-term transportation policy right now, our Month of Action is going full-steam ahead. Thank you if you took last week’s action to send a message about the Complete Streets Act to your members of Congress.
For Week 3, we need you to tell your Senators that widening highways doesn’t work.
In the name of “congestion relief,” we’ve spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars widening and building new highways. Even though we widened freeways faster than population grew, congestion got worse—144 percent worse, as we found in our report last March, the Congestion Con.
It’s time to stop wasting billions on projects that make our problems worse.
Use the Congestion Con to tell your Senators how much freeway growth and congestion increased in your urbanized area.
(1) Find the percent growth in lane miles and congestion (technically known as “delay”) for your urbanized area here.
(2) Personalize this tweet to your Senators:
“Our metro area increased lane miles by XX% yet congestion increased by XX%. Expanding highways doesn’t work. Let’s end the #CongestionCon. @your senator @your senator t4america.org/maps-tools/congestion-con/”
(3) Find your Senators’ Twitter handles here. (If you don’t have Twitter, you can send this message as a short email.)
Thank you for taking action! It’s time for a long-term transportation bill that actually connects us to the jobs and services we need, equitably, sustainably, safely, and affordably. Thanks for helping us get there.
We recently hosted a webinar to discuss our new report, Driving Down Emissions. We received many more great questions during the webinar than we had time to address, so we are answering some of the big ones here.
Our report, Driving Down Emissions, recommends strategies to reduce growing transportation emissions by making it possible to drive less. On our recent webinar about the report, Transportation for America’s Director Beth Osborne gave an overview of why reducing how much Americans need to drive is such a crucial—and achievable—step we can take now to address urgent climate needs and make communities more equitable, and how current transportation and land use policies are standing in the way. We also heard from our partner Sam Rockwell at Move Minnesota who worked with us to produce a state-level case study.
Since we weren’t able to get to many of the great questions we received during the Q&A portion of the webinar, we grouped together (and sometimes paraphrased) a few of the big ones and answered them below.
Measuring accessibility to jobs and services came up on the webinar as a key strategy for reducing emissions. Where can I find more info about why and how to do so?
We were heartened to hear a lot of interest in measuring accessibility on the webinar. Transportation is fundamentally a means for getting people and goods where they need to go. Our historical reliance on metrics like traffic speed as proxy measures for accessibility-related outcomes has led to expanding highways whether or not those investments actually improve access—producing unintended consequences like increased sprawl, more driving, and rising transportation emissions. For decades, measuring accessibility has traditionally fallen to academic researchers and advanced modelers, but new computing power and data make it possible to measure accessibility between households, jobs, and services and apply that to transportation and land use decisions.
Here are some resources with more information about measuring accessibility:
The State Smart Transportation Initiative (SSTI’s) work measuring access: A project of the University of Wisconsin and Smart Growth America, SSTI’s team of researchers, analysts and policy experts works with state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, and local governments to conduct meaningful accessibility analyses and incorporate them into decision-making. Their research also helps tie accessibility to other outcomes like vehicle miles traveled (VMT), mode choice, and transportation costs.
Virginia DOT’s use of accessibility in project prioritization: SSTI supported VDOT in pioneering the use of accessibility as a criterion in transportation project prioritization with Virginia’s statewide Smart Scale program. Other states and MPOs have since begun to follow VDOT’s lead. Learn more about how VDOT evaluates accessibility here.
My region continues to fund new and wider highways, with no acknowledgment of induced traffic and the fiscally and environmentally unsustainable trajectory it puts us on. How do we get elected officials to understand that building more roads does not reduce congestion?
Earlier this year, we released our report, The Congestion Con, to help do just that. We analyzed the 100 largest urbanized areas in the US and found that lane-miles of freeway in those regions grew by 42 percent between 1993 and 2017, significantly outstripping the 32 percent growth in population over the same time period. Yet those investments in road capacity have utterly failed to “solve” the problem—delay is up in those urbanized areas by a staggering 144 percent. In some regions, delay even grew substantially despite very low (or even shrinking) population growth.
Using visuals to help explain less intuitive concepts like induced demand can also help make the case to elected officials facing pressures to widen highways.
What about how automobile parking creates induced demand and congestion? It’s not just about adding lanes.
True. And while cities tend to blame state departments of transportation for the role their highway investments play in inducing more car travel, local parking policy and management plays a significant role in how people choose to get around and can seriously undermine other work to manage traffic or increase walking, biking, and transit use. We hosted a webinar earlier this year entirely focused on why and how to reform parking policy. You can read a detailed recap here.
What effect will autonomous vehicles have on vehicle operation and resulting emissions?
That will depend significantly on how they are deployed and regulated, which is why we think it is so crucial to have the right policies already in place as autonomous vehicles begin to come on the market. Autonomous vehicles will hopefully provide real benefits (for example, improving access for those unable to drive), but they also have the potential to undermine safety, exacerbate inequities, increase vehicle miles traveled, and worsen land-use policies that promote sprawl and create congestion—and increase emissions in the process. You can read our recommendations to Congress for addressing autonomous vehicles in federal transportation legislation in this 2019 sign-on letter.
It is very hard to forecast bicycling trip growth if we install networks of safe comfortable facilities. How large of an obstacle do you all think this is in developing these networks, and relying on them as a part of a VMT reduction goal?
This is absolutely a challenge for determining how to prioritize investments that support biking and walking, but our tools for forecasting non-automobile travel demand are getting better—for example, the Accessibility in Practiceguidebook mentioned above includes a discussion of how measuring accessibility can help predict mode share.
That said, current models for forecasting car travel generally aren’t accurate either! Transportation agencies just rely on them as if they are. This often prompts highway expansions that induce more traffic and more emissions in the process. Transportation for America has been urging federal policymakers to require the use of demand models with a demonstrated track record of accuracy in the next federal transportation reauthorization bill.
Do you think denying states funding if they do not upzone or reduce car use is a good approach to reducing transportation emissions? What about increasing the gas tax? Or having insurance companies provide a credit for reducing VMT year-over-year?
Requiring that states make progress toward climate-related goals to be eligible for federal funding is a great approach. We are advocating for language in the next federal transportation reauthorization bill that requires state departments of transportation to measure and make progress toward emissions and VMT reduction targets. The House’s reauthorization proposal over the summer, the INVEST Act, took significant steps in the right direction.
Federal policy should also help guide better land use decisions—not by requiring upzoning, but by providing modern zoning guidance to localities and updating federal laws, regulations and procedures that contribute to local land use decisions. While federal decision-makers tend to see land use as outside their purview, the federal government actually played a significant role in many of the outdated zoning codes we still see across the country today by providing model zoning ordinance language in the Standard Zoning Enabling Act of 1925. Federal decision-makers could play a similar role in creating a new template for growth that promotes shorter trips and makes it safer and easier to walk, bike, and take transit between destinations.
Incentives designed to change individuals’ travel behavior can certainly be helpful, whether through insurance companies, employer programs, or other transportation demand management strategies. However, they will have limited impact until we address the policies that are driving sprawling, car-oriented development.
How can we get lawmakers to understand that reducing car use is imperative, and that even the most ambitious climate plans do not go nearly far enough? Climate targets of net zero by 2050 are too little, too late.
Some lawmakers will be more receptive to discussing the urgency of the climate crisis than others. Yet as Driving Down Emissionsdiscusses, there are a number of other benefits to policies that promote walkable, transit-accessible communities where residents can drive less and still meet their daily needs. It can be helpful in some cases to focus on the significant economic benefits. Polling and consumer preference research has consistently shown that millions of Americans would prefer to live in walkable, connected places where trips are short and there’s a menu of options for getting around. Businesses continue to locate in those types of neighborhoods to attract talented workers.
But aren’t we seeing a different housing trend during the pandemic—people and businesses moving away from cities toward more suburban and rural areas?Aren’t inner city properties not selling well right now?
That narrative has definitely taken hold, but it doesn’t match what we’re actually seeing in data so far. For example, research from Zilllow in May and more Zillow research in August show that suburban housing markets have not strengthened at a disproportionately rapid pace compared to urban markets—if anything, both urban and suburban areas seem to be hot sellers’ markets right now. There has been a lot of reporting from the New York Times, Wallstreet Journal, and others about the flight from cities, but it seems to be based on anecdotal data and the fact that they are located in New York City — one of two metropolitan areas (along with San Francisco) that continue to face movement out due to extremely high home prices.
How does advocacy around overturning “jaywalking” laws and addressing the over-policing of people on bikes (see NYPD targeting delivery bikes) play into shifting reliance on vehicles?
Focusing more attention on roadway design instead of enforcement is good in many ways. For one, enforcement is used disproportionately to target Black travelers and other people of color. Further when you design a road well, there is less to enforce. For example, many examples of jaywalking occur in places where there are no crossings nearby. Many mistakes made by drivers are a result of design problems. Having to fall back on significant enforcement is a sign of design failure. Better design means that walking will be safer and more attractive, and police attention can be turned elsewhere.
How do you deal with “global” factors that impact spreading out? For example, what about rural hospital and healthcare access, and the centralization that’s happening in that sphere.
Transportation planners and agencies cannot fix every development and land use decision that creates transportation problems. In fact, consolidations might be more carefully weighed with other options if the transportation impacts—like longer travel times, higher infrastructure costs, higher travel costs and paratransit costs, and more emissions—were actually considered during the decision. Transportation agencies should stop chasing development. We can’t afford to provide unfettered car access at all times of day no matter where destinations are located.
Further, these decisions have extremely negative impacts on those that do not have access to a car—there are more than one million households without a vehicle in predominantly rural counties in the US.
How do you get the general public to understand the gas tax doesn’t pay for all the roads? Around here people seem to think the roads should only be for cars because no one else pays for them.
Show how many non-gas tax funds go into transportation coffers. Here is a useful resource from US PIRG.
Point out that we wouldn’t have a backlog if the gas tax covered the cost of roads. And there are backlogs even in states that prohibit their state gas taxes from being spent anywhere but roads.
What are the biggest factors affecting people’s decisions about how to travel? It seems like GHG reduction does not factor in for most people.
Agreed. People look for travel that is safe, reliable, affordable and convenient. Many people have no mode of travel that provides all four of those factors, but they tend to choose the one that comes closest.
With COVID-19 throwing public transportation into an existential crisis, Transportation for America mobilized to preserve America’s most essential transportation service—and we did, with Congress agreeing to $25 billion in emergency assistance for transit operations last week. But while the news has understandably been consumed by COVID-19, the pandemic hasn’t been the only thing on our plates.
March Madness might have been cancelled, but it’s certainly been a crazy month in America—and crazy busy at Transportation for America. We started the month in report-a-palooza, gearing up to release two landmark reports—and then the global pandemic struck the United States.
Even though we’ve been working from home, we’re still laser-focused on our mission: to work towards a transportation system that safely, affordably and conveniently connects people of all means and abilities to jobs, services, and opportunity through multiple modes of travel. So here’s what else we’ve been up to.
Exposing the congestion con
The U.S. spends billions every year to “relieve congestion.” But building new and widening existing highways only makes traffic worse.
The Congestion Con, our report released earlier this month, found that congestion increased in regions that built new and widened existing freeways, regardless of population growth. Between 1993 and 2017, the U.S. increased the number of lane-miles in the largest 100 urbanized areas by 42 percent on average, significantly outstripping the 32 percent population growth in those regions over the same period. Yet this strategy has utterly failed to “solve” the problem at hand—delay is up in those urbanized areas by a staggering 144 percent.
You can read our full report or check out our webinar on the report with T4America Director Beth Osborne, Strong Towns Co-Founder and President Chuck Marohn, and Los Angeles DOT Transportation Planner Mariana Valdivia.
A Green New Deal for Transportation
The original Green New Deal, released in February 2019 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) and Senator Ed Markey (MA), catapulted discussion about an equitable transition to a carbon-neutral economy into the mainstream. But it had one glaring omission: how federal transportation policy and development patterns make it impossible to reduce transportation emissions.
A new report—A Green New Deal for City and Suburban Transportation—fills those gaps. Co-written by T4America, TransitCenter, Data for Progress and the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, this Green New Deal gives transportation policy the same visionary makeover other sectors received in the original plan to show what we could achieve if our transportation and climate goals were aligned. Download the full report.
New polling shows that Americans support expanding public transit by 77-15 margin
What we always knew to be true is now backed up with polling: Voters want more transportation options. This month, T4America—alongside the same partners behind the Green New Deal for Transportation—released a new polling memo that found exactly that.
The data reinforces many of the same results we’ve seen in our polling over the years: voters are prepared to spend more on public transit and want to orient government spending toward improving existing infrastructure. While many rely on cars, a majority said they want to have other options to get around each day. Democrats and Republicans agree that the government should be prioritizing fixing our roads and helping with congestion in our cities.
You can download the full polling memo here, and get the highlights in this post from Emily Mangan.
In a new report, The Congestion Con: How more lanes and more money equals more traffic, we show how our approach to curbing congestion with new and wider highways has failed. We have spent decades and hundreds of billions of dollars on highways in the name of beating back congestion, yet in all of the 100 most populous urbanized areas examined in the report, congestion has gotten worse as a result. The Congestion Con lays out a comprehensive look at congestion data, why our “solution” has failed, and what the federal government can do to correct course.
Widening I-85 from four lanes to eight lanes. (Image: NCDOT, Flickr)
In an expensive effort to curb congestion in urban regions, the U.S. has overwhelmingly prioritized one strategy: widening and building new highways. We added 30,511 new freeway lane-miles of road in the largest 100 urbanized areas between 1993 and 2017, an increase of 42 percent. That rate of road expansion significantly outstripped the 32 percent growth in population in those regions over the same time period.
Yet this strategy has utterly failed to “solve” congestion as our new report—The Congestion Con—makes abundantly clear.
All those new lane-miles haven’t come cheap. States alone spent more than $500 billion on highway capital investments in urbanized areas between 1993-2017, with a sizeable portion going to highway expansions. And the initial construction costs are just the tip of the iceberg. For roads that are already in good condition, it still costs approximately $24,000 per year on average to maintain each lane-mile in a state of good repair, creating significant financial liabilities now and for years into the future.
We are spending billions to widen roads and seeing unimpressive, unpredictable results in return. In those 100 urbanized areas, congestion has grown by a staggering 144 percent, far outpacing population growth. Further, the urbanized areas expanding their roads more rapidly aren’t necessarily having more success curbing congestion—in fact, in many cases the opposite is true.
First, the average person drives significantly more each year in these 100 urbanized areas. Vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) per person increased by 20 percent between 1993-2017. This increase in driving is partially due to how we have allowed these urbanized areas to grow: letting development sprawl, creating greater distance between housing and other destinations, and forcing people to take longer and longer trips on a handful of regional highways to fulfill daily needs. We should be addressing those sources of congestion, but instead, we accept more driving and more traffic as unavoidable outcomes that we must address through costly highway expansion. This is a significantly more expensive and less effective approach than reducing the need to drive or length of trips. And unfortunately, spending billions to expand highways can actually make congestion worse by encouraging people to drive more than they otherwise would, a counterintuitive but well-documented phenomenon known as induced demand.
Eliminating congestion is also simply the wrong goal. While severe congestion can have real negative impacts, congestion is also generally a symptom of a successful, vibrant economy—a sign of a place people want to be. Instead, we should be focused on providing and improving access.
The core purpose of transportation infrastructure is to provide access to work, education, healthcare, groceries, recreation, and all other daily needs. Congestion can become a problem when it seriously obstructs access, but may not be a major problem if it doesn’t. Car speeds—the main proxy measure for congestion—don’t necessarily tell us anything about whether or not the transportation network is succeeding at connecting people to the things they need, as efficiently as possible. Yet a narrow emphasis on vehicle speed and delay underlies all of the regulations, procedures, and cultural norms behind transportation decisions, from the standards engineers use to design roads to the criteria states use to prioritize projects for funding. This leads us to widen freeways reflexively, almost on autopilot, perpetuating the cycle that produces yet more traffic
What needs to happen: Five policy recommendations
We need to face the music: we are doubling and tripling down on a failed strategy. We cannot keep relying on the same expensive and ineffective approach. With discussions underway about the next federal transportation legislation—a process that only happens every five years—now is the critical time to make changes before we pour billions more into a solution that doesn’t work. This report recommends five key policy changes, many of which could be incorporated into the upcoming transportation reauthorization:
1) Reorient our national program around access—connect people to jobs and services instead of focusing narrowly on speed and delay.
2) Require that transportation agencies stop favoring new roads over maintenance.
3) Make short trips walkable by making them safe. Roads surrounded by development should be designed for speeds of 35 mph or under to create safer conditions for walking and biking.
4) Remove restrictions on pricing and allow DOTs to manage congestion.
5) Reward infill development and make it easier for localities. Stop rewarding sprawl with public highway investments and instead reward localities that seek more efficient ways of moving and connecting people.
The new requirements released last week by USDOT for how states and metro areas will have to measure traffic congestion were just part of a larger package of all-new performance measures. Catch up on what you need to know about them with our detailed webinar unpacking all of it.
Many thanks to our Beth Osborne for sharing her knowledge and wisdom about performance measures with us on this helpful session. FHWA was unable to participate due to the regulatory freeze now in place preventing federal agencies from communicating further about any new regulations in process or not yet completely finalized, but we were able to roll on ahead. (2:20)
The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) required transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. USDOT’s final rule for measuring traffic congestion was just one part of a much larger package of new performance measures, including measures for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system. (4:00)
On this webinar, we walked through the last of three final rules that cover road, bridge and pavement condition, and overall system performance. We discussed what’s missing in the new measures (8:00), what changes we asked for along the way (10:30), what comprises the final package of rules (15:20), the changes made to the final package (18:05), the dates that states and metro areas will need to be aware of over the next year (18:50), some other helpful resources from T4America and others (20:20) and answered a handful of really smart questions from those who participated (24:00).
The new requirements released last week by USDOT for how states and metro areas will have to measure traffic congestion were just part of a larger package of new performance measures. Join us next week to unpack the congestion rule and the rest of the suite of new measures.
Updated 1/26/17: Thanks to everyone who was able to join us on the webinar. Here’s the archived recording if you missed it or want to revisit. -Ed.
The 2012 transportation law (MAP-21) required transportation agencies to begin using a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent. And it was indeed big news last week when USDOT — responding to thousands of your comments we submitted — backed away from most of the outdated measures of traffic congestion that were proposed. But this was just one part of a much larger package of new performance measures and with last week’s release, USDOT has now finalized all of the new measures for safety, the state of repair, congestion, air emissions and other aspects of our transportation system.
Join us next Tuesday on January 24th at 10:00 a.m. EST as we walk through the second two (of three total) final rules that cover road, bridge and pavement condition, and overall system performance (the latter is what includes the traffic congestion measures.)
T4America experts will be on hand to unpack these final rules, discuss what states and metro areas need to know about this crucial first step toward more performance-based and data-driven decision-making when it comes to transportation investments.
We’ll also be announcing a new opportunity for technical assistance on performance measures, as well as some survey results on the state of the practice at metropolitan planning organizations across the country. Be the first to hear about both.
How do we justify transportation expenditures? To many people, the perception is that project decisions are made in a murky, mysterious process, or, even worse, through a political process where only the projects with the most connections get funded. Further, it is not clear to the average person what all the spending gets them. With public confidence in government at low levels, it’s more important than ever to quantify the public benefits of transportation investment and let voters know what their money is going to buy — especially when attempts are being made to raise new money for transportation to fill the gap.
Transitioning to a more performance-based system of transportation investment was one of the key reforms of MAP-21 and these newly finalized measures could represent the beginning of a sea change in how funding decisions are made and our transportation system performs.
At long last, USDOT has finalized new requirements for how states and metro areas will have to measure traffic congestion and in the final rule — responding to the outpouring of comments they received — they backed away from most of the outdated measures of congestion that were proposed.
Updated 1/26/17:See the bottom of this post for a video of our webinar explaining this rule and the rest of the final package of performance measures. – Ed.
Wait, what congestion measures? First, let’s take a moment to catch up on what’s happening here, since it’s been months since this was in the news.
For two years, USDOT has been working to establish a new system of performance measures to govern how federal dollars are spent and hold states and metro areas accountable for making progress on important goals, including how states and cities would have to measure (and address) traffic congestion. (Why does how we measure congestion matter? Read some background here.)
As first written, USDOT’s proposed measures would, as we said back in early 2016, “induce sprawl, harm the economic potential of our main streets by treating them like highways, punish cities investing in public transportation, completely ignore people walking, biking, carpooling or telecommuting, and push local communities of all sizes to waste billions of dollars in vain attempts to build their way out of congestion.”
Here’s what 5,000 letters looks like next to a terrific book about Complete Streets for scale purposes since USDOT allows digital submissions.
We’ll be reviewing this newly-released 300-plus page measure in closer detail in the days to come, but our first take upon reviewing it is that FHWA heard the extensive feedback on a complex rule and responded positively to most of the requests that we made.
“Tens of thousands of commenters, through campaigns from T4America, the American Heart Association, and others, raised concerns about the vehicle-focused nature of the eight measures proposed in the NPRM,” FHWA wrote in their comments accompanying the new rule.
The changes are complicated and difficult to quickly enumerate, but four changes are worth highlighting quickly here.
First, we complained that FHWA’s singular focus on delay “paints an incredibly one-dimensional picture of congestion. Focusing on average delay by simply measuring the difference between rush hour speeds compared to free-flow 3 a.m. traffic fails to count everyone else commuting by other modes, rewards places with fast travel speeds at the expense of places with shorter commutes and less time spent behind the wheel overall, and completely ignores how many people are actually moving through the corridor.”
In response, FHWA dumped this peak travel reliability measure, more commonly expressed through the Texas Transportation Institute’s travel time index (TTI), which mostly is a measure of the difference between speeds in the middle of the night and rush hour. This peak travel time measure is gone.
Secondly, they added a “person-hours” measure of delay, which will consider how many people are using the road instead of just how many vehicles are delayed. This was one of our primary critiques of the draft rule, because simple vehicle delay is blind to how many people a corridor is actually moving — it only looks at the number of vehicles. If one corridor moves three times the amount of people as another corridor because of a carpool requirement or a lane dedicated to high-capacity transit, it shouldn’t score the same for congestion just because the travel speed or average delay is the same.
This is a significant change. This means that a congested road that’s full of single-occupant vehicles will never be viewed the same as a corridor that is congested but also multimodal or otherwise carrying more people.
Thirdly, and responding clearly to feedback, FHWA added a new carbon dioxide emissions measure to track the percent change in CO2 emissions generated by on-road mobile sources on most bigger roadways. (Specifically roads on the National Highway System, which, as this graphic reminds us, aren’t always just highways.)
Fourth and lastly, on the topic of multimodal corridors, “…after reviewing these comments, FHWA has decided to include a new multimodal measure — the portion of non-single occupant vehicle travel.”
How did FHWA explain their reasoning to add a measure requiring states and metro areas to set a target for moving people via modes other than single-occupant vehicles?
“Because transportation in urbanized areas is inherently multimodal, it is important to account as much as possible for the options that are available to travelers in those urbanized areas.”
How we measure congestion does matter. It is important to look at congestion and its connection to economic activity. This post from a department within FHWA on Twitter today highlights this connection and it isn’t what most elected leaders and transportation officials believe. Congestion is bad for economic success, right?
Especially after the collapse of the recent Bakken-fueled oil boom of the last few years there, do you think that North Dakota’s leaders would trade ten minutes on their average commute times for ten percent of New York State’s GDP? Does the lack of congestion equal economic success?
This final performance measure from FHWA and USDOT would suggest otherwise. They are to be applauded, and it wouldn’t have happened without your support. By FHWA’s own admission, the letters that you and thousands of others sent were responsible for pushing FHWA on these critical points.
Nearly 5,000 individuals and 150 organizations — including dozens of local chambers of commerce and elected officials — joined with T4America to oppose USDOT’s flawed proposal for measuring traffic congestion and urge them to rethink their approach.
Since USDOT allows digital submissions and we didn’t have to waste any paper for your letters, here’s what 5,000 pieces of copy paper looks like next to a terrific book about Complete Streets for scale.
Almost 5,000 of our supporters sent letters urging USDOT to rewrite the department’s new requirements for measuring (and addressing) congestion — requirements that, as written, would induce sprawl, harm the economic potential of our main streets by treating them like highways, punish cities investing in public transportation, completely ignore people walking, biking, carpooling or telecommuting, and push local communities of all sizes to waste billions of dollars in vain attempts to build their way out of congestion.
“There’s a direct connection between how we measure congestion and the ‘solutions’ that we invest in,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America, in our full press release yesterday. “And by prioritizing vehicles over people and completely ignoring a diversity of transportation options, this proposed rule would fail the communities that our transportation investments are intended to serve.”
USDOT has been undertaking a welcome and necessary shift toward measuring what our federal transportation spending actually accomplishes by establishing a new system of performance measures to hold states and metro areas accountable for making progress on important goals.
The measure would fail to reward places that use existing streets more efficiently — particularly in urban areas where space is at a premium.
Take for example the 16th Street NW corridor in Washington DC. The street is often clogged at rush hour but, since it’s in the middle of the city, it can’t be widened. So how should transportation engineers address the congestion? One solution would be to add priority lanes for buses, which already carry more than half of all rush hour trips along the corridor. Prioritizing 50-passenger buses over single-occupancy cars would vastly increase the carrying capacity of the street and allow it to move even more people per hour than it does today. But under the Department of Transportation’s proposed rule, if this strategy succeeded in moving more people but had an even slightly negative impact on average travel speed per vehicle, it would get low marks.
Part of the 16th street corridor in question, referenced in the above op-ed, is at right in the above graphic. During rush hour, buses carry more than half of all trips taken on this corridor.
That’s just one example, but in case you haven’t been following along recently, we’ve outlined the scope of the rule’s problems several times over the 120 days of the comment period, which closed on Saturday, August 20th.
In addition to the nearly 5,000 letters we delivered to USDOT last Friday night, an impressive and diverse coalition of business groups, local elected leaders and national and local organizations also signed a single letter proposing concrete ways for USDOT to fix the rule. Over the last four months, we convened more than 30 local elected officials, state DOTs, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and transit agencies, national and state trade groups and advocacy organizations to develop a better measure to recommend to USDOT that has buy-in from practitioners on the ground.
The first recommendation in that letter is a simple one that gets to the heart of what needs to be fixed: “Travel time/delay is felt by the people who travel, not by the vehicle, and U.S. DOT should propose a measure that focuses on people and not vehicles.”
21 chambers of commerce from across the country also signed a separate letter signaling their concerns about a measure that would punish cities and regions investing in public transportation and walkable downtowns to stay economically competitive:
The proposed rule focuses on vehicle speeds only, which discourages local decision-makers from investing in transit, pedestrian, and bicycle infrastructure and impedes progress towards the walkable, accessible, and vibrant business districts that we are striving to achieve. A comprehensive mix of strategic transportation investments is necessary to allow American businesses to remain competitive. Hundreds of companies across the United States are moving to and investing in walkable downtown and business district locations. Companies want their location to be accessible by a range of transportation options in order to attract and retain talented workers. Performance measures included in this rule should account for all modes of transportation to both capture and encourage important investments that support resilient, strong local economies.
USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx has embarked upon an ambitious effort to repair the damage of poorly-planned highway projects that divide communities and ensure that future transportation investments do a better job of connecting all people to economic opportunity — especially low-income communities and communities of color. Advancing a proposal that would prioritize high traffic speeds at all times of day on all types of roads would undermine the Secretary’s own efforts.
We are hopeful that USDOT will heed this call and change the rule to count everyone and support the local, metro and state leaders planning ambitious, smart transportation investments to better connect all people to opportunity.
Nearly 150 organizations — including dozens of local chambers of commerce and elected officials — and nearly 5,000 individuals spoke out in opposition to a flawed proposal from USDOT.
WASHINGTON, DC — Led by Smart Growth America (SGA), Transportation for America and the National Complete Streets Coalition, a broad coalition of business groups, local elected leaders, national and local organizations and thousands of individuals filed formal comments last week urging USDOT not to incentivize transportation projects that would punish cities investing in public transportation, treat main streets like highways, ignore the needs of people walking or biking, and push local communities of all sizes to waste billions of dollars in vain attempts to build their way out of congestion.
The comments were in response to a proposal from USDOT that will, when finalized in 2017, govern how states and metro areas are required to measure and address congestion and other metrics like freight movement and emissions, on a large share of our nation’s roadways. The 120-day public comment period closed on Saturday, August 20th. (The letter from the full coalition is here, a separate letter signed by 21 chambers of commerce is here, and the comments submitted by individuals are here.)
For two years, as required by 2012’s MAP-21 transportation authorization, USDOT has been working to establish a new system of performance measures to help govern how federal dollars are spent and hold states and metro areas accountable for making progress on important goals — a welcome shift toward measuring what our transportation spending actually accomplishes.
But this proposed rule would lead to negative outcomes in communities and billions of dollars wasted due to its singular focus on moving single-occupancy vehicles as fast as possible while failing to count the benefits of carpooling, public transportation, telecommuting, bicycling or walking. (T4America outlined the problems with the rule in detail here.)
“There’s a direct connection between how we decide to measure congestion and the ‘solutions’ that we decide to invest in,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America (T4America). “And by prioritizing vehicles over people and completely ignoring a diversity of transportation options, this proposed rule would fail the communities that our transportation investments are intended to serve.”
To develop a stronger alternative measure to submit to USDOT, SGA convened a working group of more than 30 local elected officials, state DOTs, metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) and transit agencies, and national and state trade groups and advocacy organizations.
This work was supported by numerous state DOTs, MPOs, transit agencies and advocacy organizations; Oregon Metro (Portland) and Indy MPO; Trimet; Metro Atlanta Chamber and Indy Chamber; and the Transportation Equity Caucus, League of American Bicyclists, Safe Routes to School National Partnership, People for Bikes, PolicyLink, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Center for Neighborhood Technology and many others.
The coalition specifically requested the following changes to the final rule:
Focus on the movement of people instead of only vehicles — the rule would treat a bus full of commuters the same as a single vehicle carrying one person;
Remove the duplicative vehicle speed measures that provide marginal benefit;
Provide a timeline for USDOT to implement an accessibility performance measure;
Measure greenhouse gases (GHG) from the transportation sector, which represents the largest GHG emissions sector in the country; and
Improve data sets to incorporate accurate roadway volumes, strategies to develop and implement safe and accessible multimodal networks, accessibility, and trip origin and destination.
In addition, a congressional delegation led by Senators Carper and Menendez in the Senate and Representative Blumenauer in the House also sent letters to USDOT Secretary Foxx requesting that USDOT assess the movement of people, rather than vehicles, as a better measure of congestion and also reward the improvements that can come from transit, toll lanes, or encouraging travelers to choose other options like walking or biking.
We are hopeful that the Obama Administration will heed our call and change this rule to encourage a more holistic approach for measuring traffic congestion that counts everyone and supports the ambitious plans of local, metro and state leaders to make smart transportation investments to better connect all people to opportunity.
—
For immediate release Contact: Steve Davis steve.davis@t4america.org 202-971-3902
These two streets in Nashville, Tennessee are very different and have different functions. Why does the U.S. Department of Transportation want to measure their success the same way?
One is intended to move goods and people, largely in vehicles, quickly between two points. The other moves people — in cars, in buses, on bikes, on foot — while also creating a framework to produce lasting value, economic activity, and a sense of place.
It doesn’t make sense to measure the success of these streets the same way. Yet that’s exactly what USDOT is proposing with new rules for how states and metro areas would have to measure and address congestion — prioritizing vehicle speed above almost all other criteria.
The most successful city streets have to use limited space to move people efficiently, whether walking, biking, taking transit or driving. Yet this congestion rule as it is currently written would count only vehicles.
A street that moves a lot of people should never be considered unsuccessful, even if it doesn’t necessarily move a lot of cars.
The proposed rule would make driving fast the ultimate goal of our transportation system, regardless of what type of road or street you’re on. Should driving fast be the highest priority on main streets where people go to shop or sit and eat at an outdoor café? Should moving cars quickly be the top priority in residential neighborhoods where children might be biking or walking?
A street that creates value, economic prosperity and a sense of place should never be considered unsuccessful, even if it doesn’t necessarily move a lot of cars.
We have a chance to change this rule, but time is running out. Public comments on the rule close this week, and now is a crucial time to speak out.
Updated 7/28 11:50 a.m. Earlier this week, a large group of senators and representatives sent a letter to USDOT Secretary Foxx, requesting that USDOT change a flawed proposed rule for measuring congestion. They asked that USDOT assess the movement of people, rather than vehicles, as a better measure of congestion and also reward the improvements that can come from transit, toll lanes, or encouraging travelers to choose other options like walking or biking.
As we’ve been discussing here for a few months now, a new draft rule from USDOT will govern how states and metro areas will have to measure and address congestion. That proposal as written would define “success” in incredibly outdated ways, and old measures lead to old “solutions,” like prioritizing fast driving speeds above all other modes of transportation and their associated benefits.
The shortcomings in the proposed rule got the attention of some members of Congress, and earlier this week Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) were joined by 64 other members from the House and Senate on a letter to Secretary Foxx about the rule. (19 senators and 48 representatives total.)
“How we measure performance and outcomes directly affects the choice of investments that will be made. If we focus, as this proposed rule does, on keeping traffic moving at high speeds at all times of day on all types of roads and streets, then the result is easy to predict: States and MPOs will prioritize investments to increase average speeds for cars, at the expense of goals to provide safe, reliable, environmentally-sensitive, multimodal transportation options for all users of the transportation system, despite those goals being stated in federal statute. Encouraging faster speeds on roadways undermines the safety of roads for all road users, as well as the economic vitality of our communities.”
We’re encouraged to see this large group of elected leaders on board with the idea that how we measure congestion matters. It certainly matters for the communities — of all sizes — that they represent, and getting it wrong will have real impacts. In the letter, they note that the proposed rule doesn’t quite line up with some of the stated goals of Secretary Foxx, his Ladders of Opportunity program, and the Every Place Counts Challenge intended to help communities and neighborhoods that have been cut off or isolated by poorly-planned highway projects.
Yet, for far too long our transportation investments have focused solely on moving vehicles through a community rather than to a community, and without regard for the impacts to the community. In the process we have created real barriers for millions of Americans to access essential destinations. These barriers are most present for low-income communities and communities of color.
Nail on the head.
Our streets are about far more than just moving people through a community as fast as possible. They’re community assets and the framework for creating value and economic prosperity, and should be treated like more than just a simple pipe moving one thing quickly all day long.
UPDATE: Representative Earl Blumenauer added his personal thoughts to the release of the letter:
Our federal highway system is stuck in the 1950s. By failing to properly evaluate the billions we spend on road maintenance and construction, we’ve created a transportation system that is unsafe, is increasingly harming the environment despite improving technology, and has left a legacy of racial exclusion and segmented communities. We have to do better. The Department of Transportation has an opportunity to make sure that federal spending can help meet our goals of safety, sustainability, and accessibility. I hope these comments are considered.
And in case you missed it, Senator Tom Carper also wrote a short note about the congestion rule for the T4America newsletter yesterday. (Don’t get our bi-weekly newsletter? Rectify that immediately by signing up right here.)
Our federal transportation system’s ability to move people and goods is key to an efficient and growing economy, which is why it’s critical for the Department of Transportation to focus on the movement of people instead of vehicles in its congestion relief measures. In order to improve the safety of our roads, and build a world-class transportation system that revitalizes our regional economies, we need to invest in innovative congestion relief techniques that facilitate the movement of people without encouraging faster speeds or incentivizing costly highway expansions.
Have you sent a letter to USDOT yet? There’s still time to generate a letter that we’ll deliver on your behalf before the comment period closes in a few weeks. We’ve already delivered 2,400 letters, but we’re aiming for far more.
USDOT’s draft rule that will govern how states and metro areas will have to measure and address congestion would define “success” in incredibly outdated ways. In a webinar earlier this week, we discussed better ways to measure congestion and a proposal we’re sending to USDOT.
Nearly 3,000 of you have already sent letters to USDOT telling them that their draft rule takes the wrong approach. But is there an alternate proposal that could get traction with USDOT as they modify the proposal based on the feedback they receive?
In a webinar on Wednesday, July, 13th, our policy team discussed alternative measures for congestion and unpacked the proposal that we’re submitting to USDOT for their consideration, which was developed in collaboration with a handful of MPOs, transit agencies, state DOTs, and advocates throughout the country.
Click the image at right (or here) to view the presentation from the webinar and hear more about the proposal we are submitting to USDOT this week. Update: For those of you who are more technically inclined, you may download our full 12-page proposal (pdf) that we submitted to USDOT on July 14th.
Deciding how to evaluate which projects are “successful” will influence which transportation projects are selected and built for years to come. And the problem with using old measures for assessing traffic congestion is that it leads directly to old “solutions,” like prioritizing fast driving speeds above all other modes of transportation and their associated benefits. We’ve been illustrating this with some simple graphics that show what results when “moving cars fast” becomes the prime or only consideration:
Have you sent your letter yet? There’s still time.
Thousands of you have sent letters to USDOT on their draft rule that will govern how states and metro areas will have to measure and address congestion — a proposal that currently defines “success” in outdated ways. It’s clear that USDOT’s proposed measure doesn’t cut it, but if you want to hear more about a better way to measure congestion, join us next week.
Join T4A’s policy team on July, 13th at 3 p.m. EDT to learn about some proposed alternatives to improve USDOT’s congestion performance measure, as well as measures covering performance of the National Highway System, Interstate freight movement, on-road mobile source emissions, and greenhouse gases.
Nearly 3,000 of you have already sent letters to USDOT telling them that their draft rule takes the wrong approach. But what would a better measure look like, and is there an alternate proposal that could get traction with USDOT as they modify the proposal based on the feedback they receive?
The alternatives we’ll be discussing on this webinar were developed in collaboration with a handful of MPOs, transit agencies, state DOTs, and advocates throughout the country. Join the webinar on July, 13th at 4pm EDT to learn more, ask questions, and engage in this rulemaking process.
Deciding how to evaluate which projects are “successful” will influence which transportation projects are selected and built for years to come. And the problem with using old measures for assessing traffic congestion is that it leads directly to old “solutions,” like prioritizing fast driving speeds above all other modes of transportation and their associated benefits. We’ve been illustrating this with some simple graphics that show what results when “moving cars fast” becomes the prime or only consideration:
Have you sent your letter yet? There’s still time.
