We all know we need to halt our dependence on oil. But knowing this and doing it are two vastly different things. Few people are more aware of this fact than Federal Transportation Policy Director (and blogger!) Deron Lovaas. As the member of a new coalition on the future of U.S. transportation, he is working to put initiatives in place that will do more than just preach the dangers of foreign oil — they’ll get us to stop using it. He has kindly agreed to explain his work:
Driving on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway with my family, I marvel and fume at the horrible traffic. It isn’t just annoying — it’s also quite costly due to aggregate time lost and fuel burned. In fact, a 2007 study by the Texas Transportation Institute found that total congestion costs in Maryland alone amount to more than $3 billion a year – a number that doesn’t even include health and environmental damages from vehicles, which a recent National Academy of Sciences study pegged at $56 billion annually (and this doesn’t include climate change). Nor does it include the cost to our security of boosting revenue for a handful of hostile or unstable oil-rich nations. These costs, the environmental damage they bring, and the resulting energy insecurity add up to a serious threat to the nation.
Last week the Institute for the Analysis for Global Security launched a new coalition to tackle our transportation challenges, motivated especially by the need to cut our nation’s perilous oil dependence. I’ve joined the group, the purpose of which is to provide consumers with more choices in transportation, since that’s what accounts for the lion’s share of our oil use.
Our mobility choice agenda is underpinned by four broad goals:
• Align price signals to consumers closer to a full and transparent reflection of costs;
• End federal bias for any particular transportation mode by basing investments on performance criteria and allocating costs based on use;
• Push responsibility down to the metropolitan level; and
• Aggressively deploy technology to improve operations in each transportation mode.
From these goals, we have derived a 10-point plan for boosting mobility choice:
1. Ensure that the price of fuel better reflects oil’s security impact;
2. Deploy “HOT” lanes and congestion pricing;
3. Allocate transit dollars to optimize oil savings (this means focusing on high-load and potentially high-load routes and deployment of more bus-rapid transit);
4. Increase insurance choices (i.e., pay-as-you-drive insurance);
5. Offer transit vouchers as a mobility choice for low-income households, in order to allow agencies to charge more realistic fares and to encourage competition in transit;
6. Unburden the trip not taken (i.e., enact policies that make telecommuting more attractive to workers);
7. Return gas tax revenue to areas with the most traffic and oil savings potential;
8. Liberalize local land-development rules;
9. Deploy smart traffic management (for all modes of transportation); and
10. Deploy electric rail if justified by cost efficiency and oil displacement potential.
Some of these policies are novel, such as pay-as-you-drive insurance and transit vouchers, while some are known for their effectiveness, such as investments in better technology to improve traffic management, bus-rapid transit, and well-sited rail lines. Deployed as a package, they would yield a transportation system with effective public transportation and telecommuting options, better traffic flow, and pricing of goods and services which does triple-duty by financing the enhanced set of travel options, sending more accurate signals to consumers, and boosting overall market efficiency. We think these ideas add up to a “sweet spot” for transportation policy, which would knock our oil addiction out of the park.
Moreover, our agenda takes us away from pork-barrel politics and back to fundamentals. A half-century ago, President Eisenhower pushed successfully for the enactment of an Interstate and Defense Highways Act, launching an era which festooned the nation with ribbons of asphalt and helped make our country prosperous. Now is the time for a new focus on national security in transportation, by facing and fixing our Achilles heel: America’s dangerous oil dependence.
December 8th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
“6. Unburden the trip not taken” So, I have to ask, if you need to explain what this sentence means via a parenthetical, why not re-write it in plain English?
December 8th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
I’m a bit surprised that encouraging walking and biking is not one of the ten items in the list. I think it’s a particularly American condition to think that all trips require some sort of machine, either a car, bus, train or plane. Most of what I do every day I do by foot. I usually only take the subway to work or to a meeting. I go shopping, to bars, to restaurants, to the vet, to friends’ places all by foot. Mandate changes to land-use policies by withholding federal transportation funds from states that don’t force municipalities to encourage walkable, dense development.
That said, I’m glad that the cost of protecting oil shipments from the Middle East is mentioned. How about a gas tax hike that’s targeted at paying off the debt from the two Irag wars and the Afghanistan war? It should make fiscal conservatives happy since it will be paying down the debt and it should make environmentalist happy since it will reduce energy consumption.
December 8th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
And I am surprised that bus-rapid-transit is mentioned. To me this is far from proven - people generally will prefer light rail over a bus any day of the week. Transit-oriented-development will occur along a light-rail line but generally not on a BRT route as BRT can be re-routed at the whims of the people in charge.
Finally, another petroleum cost is the cost of the asphalt that we use to pave many of our roads. A continued emphasis on roads doesn’t break this dependency.
December 8th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Just to respond to the comments so far. First, good point on the telecommuting bullet, I’ll ask for a re-phrasing. Second, I’m pretty sure the coalition would support walking and biking investments that can be justified by oil savings. Third, rail investments are part of the agenda, contingent on respectable oil savings. And given the potential for low-cost, high-return outcomes (again, vis-a-vis oil savings), we think bus rapid transit deserves more serious investment.
December 8th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
The best way to avoid the use of foreign oil is to replace it with domestic oil.
December 8th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
BRT doesn’t actually have low-cost, high-return outcomes. Currently, it doesn’t even have lower cost per rider than light rail. And it gets worse as ridership increases, because it has higher operating costs and lower capacity. If gas taxes rise, BRT will become even worse of an idea.
Overall, this 10-point plan underemphasizes the type of policies that work, instead going for untried or bad ideas like HOT lanes, which are usually just an excuse to build more highways, and insurance reform, which is untested.
The TTI study on congestion lists congestion costs saved by smart traffic management and by mass transit - and mass transit saves more even in Atlanta. In Greater New York, the ratio is 8 to 1, and mass transit nearly halves the cost of congestion. Bag the traffic management ideas and concentrate on digging subways - and make sure to build subway networks, rather than glorified commuter rail through the exurbs.
More solutions to traffic include,
- Restricting parking to incentivize mass transit usage: in Calgary, one of the reasons for high light rail ridership is that instead of mandating free parking, the city instead restricted the availability of downtown parking.
- Ending highway construction, to avoid competing with mass transit. Again, take a cue from Canada, or Europe, where freeways don’t plow through downtown.
- Car taxes. In Singapore and Hong Kong, fees and taxes double the price of a car, reducing car ownership and improving air quality.
- Tolling all freeways. In Europe and Japan, freeways are generally tolled, raising the cost of intercity driving by anywhere from 10 to 50 dollars.
December 8th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
[...] * Today at the Infrastructurist: How Can the U.S. End Its Oil Dependence for Good? [...]
December 8th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
“I’m pretty sure the coalition would support walking and biking investments that can be justified by oil savings.”
I’m glad to here that, though it sounds like you have doubts as to the number of projects that can be “justified”. Planning for cycling and pedestrians reduces oil use in two major ways. First is in replaced trips (bike instead of drive). Second is in extending the range and improving the interconnectivity of mass transit. Bikes and well planned pedestrian systems solve the common “last mile” problem for mass transit.
I would point out that a major city can implement a reasonable city wide bicycle lane program for about what it cost to build less than 1 mile of subway. I challenge you to show me a transport oriented bicycle project that isn’t “justified by oil savings.”
December 8th, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Deron, I like your list, but I would add a few other items:
1) End Sprawl/ Utilize Space: Currently, our cities have more than enough space to accommodate the predicted growth that will occur in the future of the United States; we do not need to grow any further out. We simply must use our space more wisely. One easy way to do this would be to…
2) End Parking Minimums: Current zoning laws require merchants to build enough parking for peak periods (Black Friday, etc). Instead, make a new federal zoning policy that requires people to build enough parking space for average traffic times. This would create a large amount of new space that could be used to create dense walkable/ bikable communities (IMO, the most important part of reducing oil dependency). “kvnbklyn” covers this issue well. This goes hand-in-hand with…
3) Make Driving Harder: There is an important correlation between the traffic you discuss sitting in and the high usage of the DC Metro. I like the idea of reducing congestion, but when it’s easier to drive, more people drive. I like the idea of HOT lanes, but I think there should be more of a focus on providing HOV lanes, or lanes that are BRT only. When people siting in traffic see a bus flying by them in a designated lane, a real visual incentive to ride the bus is provided.
Otherwise, I am glad there is finally someone in the Federal Transportation Department that is taking the issue of oil dependency seriously. Keep up the good work.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:10 pm
Uh, wrong again Eric. OIL is the problem. It’s extraction and burning destroy the environment.
Reducing consumption is key and that’s why investment in cycling, pedestrian, and rail infrastructure is crucial.
December 8th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I was surprised electrified rail was at number 10.
I can see why we are all surprised.
BRT is a bad system and I have no idea why the government emphasizes it so much.
Sure, it’s cheap. You want the American public to use a cheap system? Compared to the investments in our highway system, BRT is unjustified. Com’on! Give the people what they deserve!
BRT is low-cost on the short run, high-cost on the long run. Especially since there is a federal mandate that bus lines must be replaced every 9 years (something like that).
Light rail systems however, can last from 35 to 50 years. That’s half a century! You’re not gonna want to miss this opportunity. Get it right the first time. Please!
December 8th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
@ Sean: Not just the environment but oil’s impact on our health!
December 8th, 2009 at 11:10 pm
Davsot, the federal mandate is that the average age of the bus fleet should be at most 9 years. For a stable system, this means replacing buses every 18 years, not 9. The problem with buses isn’t the equipment costs - it’s the cost of drivers, fuel, and maintenance. In principle there’s also the cost of maintaining roads, since buses cause much more road wear than cars, but usually the local highway department picks up the tab.
December 9th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Perhaps this is just excessively obvious but wouldn’t an effective means to encourage finding substitutes for imported oil be to place a tariff on oil imports? Granted it would have to be at least $15-20/bbl to start having much of an impact on consumption and would have to be navigated around existing international agreements on free trade from WTO to NAFTA that cover oil as one of the relevant traded commodities. But given how inelastic demand for oil generally is this would encourage a number of things: a) increase in domestic production, though since most indicators point to there not being very much untapped oil left in the US it would also help with b) encouraging the most efficient means for reducing oil consumption (and not just in driving cars but all aspects of petrochemical use, including the asphalt for road paving) and of course it would c) generate significant revenue to be directed towards mitigation for consumers or (much better) finance some of the necessary infrastructure investments for a transition away from imported oil. At only $1/bbl it would generate approximately $5 billion/year and could easily be scaled up to generate much higher revenues before having a significantly damaging effect on the overall economy.
December 9th, 2009 at 10:26 am
“”Uh, wrong again Eric. OIL is the problem. It’s extraction and burning destroy the environment.”"
The environment is not destroyed. This is just histrionic. The air quality in the United States has never been better than it is right now.
“”Reducing consumption is key and that’s why investment in cycling, pedestrian, and rail infrastructure is crucial.”"
None of these are realistic ways to move people and freight in quantity in an efficient manner. Anti-car absolutism just leads to a poorer quality of life. But anyway, can’t you just replace the evil gas cars with virtuous electric cars and get where you want to go without taking us back to 1890?
December 9th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Yes, the cost of road maintenance is almost always overlooked by the BRT advocates. In some cases they talk about running the things on regular streets, but then it isn’t BRT - it is just plain old bus service.
A real BRT implementation involves building separate lanes that are separated from all other traffic, but even then they make assumptions about who gets stuck with the check for maintaining the roads.
In some cases, I would say the systems proposed by BRT advocates is “designed to fail”, in the sense that they are trying to do it as cheaply as possible, but in a way that virtually guarantees that it will never get any kind of ridership. Eventually the authorities will throw in the towel and sell off the buses, and then point to the whole debacle as an example of how “people won’t give up their cars”.
December 9th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I agree that an emphasis on BRT is misguided, particularly when it’s offered up as a “cheap” alternative to a higher-capacity, higher-ridership, longer lifespan light rail or subway system. However, I do think BRT has a place as a complement to a rail system, serving crosstown or suburban routes with lower ridership potential. Unfortunately, in the US, what we usually get is the opposite: watered-down BRT on what should be primary lines (Geary BRT in SF and San Pablo BRT in the East Bay) while at the same time building subways to the suburbs (a la BART to San Jose, Livermore, etc).
December 9th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Kvnbklyn: yes, Bay Area transit is run by idiots - that’s why BART underperforms by the standards of the Washington Metro, to say nothing of the Lyon Metro.
December 9th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Just wanted to say that while I can’t speak for our new coalition, personally I think Kvnbklyn hit it on the head. Rail and BRT should be deployed as complements, “fitting” them to the appropriate context for the sake of creating a network of options that can be accessed by a much greater percentage of the population in our metro regions.
December 9th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Thanks for that Alon!
Also, @Alon, How is the Washington Metro financed?
December 10th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Davsot: WMATA is financed from fares and from local subsidies. The subsidy formula, which measures who has to subsidize WMATA the most, is based on population density, ridership, and number of stations. Overall, DC proper contributes a third of the total subsidy, Arlington and Alexandria contribute 15% in total, and the suburbs contribute the rest.
But the main reason Metrorail ridership is merely below-average whereas BART ridership is abysmal isn’t funding. It’s that the DC Metro, while still suburb-heavy, extends less far into the suburbs than BART, and overlays DC with multiple lines serving most urban neighborhoods.
December 11th, 2009 at 9:19 pm
Eric,
First off all let me state that freight is much easier and cheaper to transport by rail than it is by truck. Furthermore trains can be run on Solar and Wind placed next to the tracks.
The air quality in some U.S. cities, whether it is better than it has ever been or not, does not stop the fact that it is still bad. Smog indexes especially in cities with geographic inversion caps E.g. Phoenix, Arizona exacerbate the ‘damage’ that oil does even more. Regions with geographically higher/more frequent winds only serve to disperse the damage not eliminate it either.
Cars should be electric and so should trains. Americans don’t need to drive cars as far as a train can take them. If that train is going 199mph like it should then they get where they want to go even faster to boot.
Europe has no problem with all these concepts so neither should America.