2004-03-23_PWETC_AgendaPacket - Laserfiche WebLink

Home

\\1',1;., \--/cu,,, ij~)II'1 /eLf Steve . fiffg. No-transit theory doesn't add up A dozen yeaIS ago, Ross Perot declared that the American econ.. omy could be saved if we "just got under the hood and fixed it" His homesplll1 remedy sounded great for about five minutes, af- ter which deeper reflection took hold and Perot, as the campaign proceeded, revealed himself as a simplistic crank David Strom and the Taxpay- ers League now occupy similar ground in Minnesota Their dec- 1aration that norrnaIlevels of con- gestion in the midst of a bus strike prove the irrelevance of transit as a congestion reliever makes for an appealing piece of garage logic But it's demonstrably wrong. Start with Euclid (300 B.C.) and the development of mod- ern geometry, manifested in the chart from metro Phoenix on the next page. A single light-rail car at rush hour, or 3.25 buses, moves as many people as 100 cars. Continue with a series of detailed studies under actual conditions. The Texas Trans- portation Institute, the nation's leading authority on traffic congestion, last year studied five methods used by 75 cities. Transit far outpaced other rem- edies, reducing congestion by 29.9 percent Rarop meters cut congestion by 4 percent, co- ordinated traffic signals by 1.5 percent, accident and hreak- down removal by 5 percent and HOV lanes by 0.5 percent. @ How about ditching tran- sit and adding freeway lanes, as Strom suggests? It hasn't worked. "Roads cannot be the only solution in most cities," the study concluded. "ft will be difficult for most big cities to address their mobility needs by only constructing more roads." Atlanta has been a top proving ground. In the 20 years after I 980, it doubled its freeway capacity and con- fined transit to the poor. Traf- fic got mucb worse. Finally, in 2003, it scrapped the idea of an outer beltway for a more modest approach that com- bined roads, transit and infill development. Why? It saved an average household nearly $700 a year in taxes, provided $2 billion more in economic development and moved people more efficiently. It's the same conclusion the Bush administration reached earlier this month hy advocat- ing (cover your ears) "smart growth" as the best way to save taxpayers money on trans- portation and infrastructure. A study of 13 metro areas by the Environmental Protec- tion Agency found that transit combined with more compact development strategies pro- duce less traffic congestion, but that adding more roads alone doesn't help. Here are the Bush adrninis- tmtion's own words: "Regions with more characteristics of a smart growth transportation system experience more ef- ficient vehicle travel and mod- est improvements in traffic congestion. ... Lane additions and lower densities do not, by themselves, prevent worsening congestion .... Indeed, there is little correlation between the supply of lane mileage per per- son and system performance. instead, it seems that greater connectivity, transit availability and pedestrian-friendliness are at least partiafly responsible for superior transportation and en- vironmental performance."