Last month, we published a list of some of the country’s least appealing new roads projects, as a follow-up to our spring discussion of potential “highways to nowhere.” One thing the more recent list lacked, however, was projects east of the Mississippi.
And so, here are four more costly, less-than-worthwhile projects located in the eastern(ish) U.S.
Northern Virginia’s I-95/I-395 Toll Lanes
After the construction of the Washington Metro system beginning in the 1970s, suburban areas such as those in Northern Virginia have experienced a veritable renaissance, departing from traditional forms of single-family development to newly-urbanized environments clustered around transit stations. With major spending on an extension of Metro to Dulles Airport by 2016, the state is hoping to repeat that success.
Unfortunately, the Richmond-based DOT is also trying to push highway expansions along I-95 and I-395 — even though the projects are opposed by some of the affected municipalities.
The state argues that the addition of one new lane for 28 miles between the Pentagon and Dumfries and two more lanes 28 miles further south to Spotsylvania County is all about encouraging efficient use of transportation resources. Using private capital, these new lanes would be paid for with automatically adjusting congestion-monitoring tolls on all vehicles with one or two passengers; people driving in vehicles with three or more occupants would continue to move freely once the lanes open in 2013.
The new lanes will then force drivers into three options: one, get two other people to join you and take the express lanes; two, pay a high user fee and use the express lanes even if you’re by yourself; or three, drive in the slow lanes for free.
For those willing to pay the price, the new lanes will mean vastly improved travel times — but for those who aren’t, the situation will get worse. The difficulty with this scheme is that it allows single-occupancy cars to use the express lanes and therefore won’t do much to reduce congestion on the other parts of the road. It will encourage wealthier drivers to use the fast lanes by themselves and push poorer people into the slow ones.
Virginia has a rail corridor that closely parallels I-395 and I-95, and it’s currently serviced by the Virginia Railroad Express commuter train, which runs to Union Station in downtown Washington. But VRE only offers six trains heading north in the morning and seven trains heading back in the evening — hardly enough to keep up with demand or compete effectively with the roadways. That’s part of the reason transit has a low market share on travel from the far suburbs to inner-city D.C.
Instead of concentrating on adding lanes to roads for the limited advantage of the wealthiest commuters, Virginia should be spending on improving its rail operations. This year, it took a step forward, choosing to invest $17.2 million over three years on improved Amtrak trains to Richmond and Lynchburg. It’s a start, but not enough.
New Mississippi River Bridge Project
Sometimes, you wonder whether highway builders ignore the details in their pursuit of a grand scheme.
That certainly seems like the case for St. Louis’s new I-70 bridge over the Mississippi, connecting Illinois and Missouri. The project will include the magnificent 1,500-foot cable-stayed span pictured here, providing the city a second major monument to compete with the Gateway Arch just down the river.
In the process, the city could eliminate the freeways currently running in a trench between downtown and the riverfront (and the Arch) as they will no longer be needed for commuters needing to get between the two states. The result? A better connection between a revitalized memorial grounds and the Old Courthouse, for instance, would improve the neighborhood’s livability. But there are no such plans.
Rather, the main goal of the new bridge is to reduce traffic. Each state hopes it will clear up congestion on existing roadways by freeing up space on the Poplar St. Bridge, a mile south, which currently carries I-70 in addition to I-55 and I-64. At a cost of $667 million, traffic flow will be reduced on the older structure with the new bridge and also create a massive three-level interchange between the three freeways in East St. Louis.
The end result will be useful for the city’s car commuters, but provide no benefit to the pedestrians using the urban core. It’s time for highway builders to take them into account as well.
East Atlanta Intown Interstate
Atlanta may be known for its auto-oriented sprawl, but compared to many other American cities, its downtown is surprisingly un-freeway’d, with just one north-south highway. That north-south Downtown Connector, in spite of its 12 to 16 lanes, is overloaded with cars at rush hour.
For years, politicians have been talking about building a parallel corridor that would connect Georgia Route 400 and I-675 through East Atlanta. The problem with the idea is that it would run through some of the city’s oldest and wealthiest neighborhoods like Druid Hills and Beulah Heights, making its construction virtually impossible.
Yet in summer 2009, Gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine (R) announced that he wanted to push forward the 10 mile long project — in a tunnel. Defying all expectations, the state DOT has chosen to study the project, which would cost $3.7 billion, include tolls, and be developed by a private corporation.
The state claims that the freeway could be built without requiring taxpayer funds, since it would be sponsored by future driver charges. But it would have incredibly negative side-effects. The double-decker tunnels would require huge ventilation structures every few hundred feet sticking out into the surrounding communities. And for reasons no one at DOT can easily explain, in order to save costs, the road might exit from the tunnel south of I-20 and run at grade — just as it enters a poor black community. There’s nothing equitable about that idea at all, no matter the traffic relief that might or might not come.
The DOT is currently holding meetings on the road’s construction, but it faces major resistance from new Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, who opposes it wholeheartedly. Rather than spend billions on a new highway, he’s been a strong supporter of improving the metropolitan area’s transit offerings.
Indiana Illiana Expressway
In planning for the future of Chicago more than a century ago, Daniel Burnham proposed a massive outer loop to speed the city’s vehicles between new housing areas to be built on the far outskirts.
Though that project was never completed, one section at the southern edge in Indiana is currently being studied by the State of Indiana (though it has yet to receive any dedicated construction financing). This new Illiana Expressway would connect the small towns of Crown Point and Monee, paving a new connection between I-57 and I-65, separated by roughly 30 miles.
Even the Illiana’s proponents admit that the vast majority of land area to be served by the new road is currently covered by cultivated crops, not people. And the surrounding roads, though they’re not freeways, offer an excellent level of service according to the state. So why spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a big new freeway corridor? It’s unclear.
But perhaps most scary about the potential completion of the road is that it could pave the way towards the construction of a new airport on the region’s southern edge, just off I-57, that would be the area’s third new international departure point. Combined with the highway, the airport would produce both job and housing sprawl, further de-concentrating an already vast region.
January 12th, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Are there any road capacity expansion projects that you favor?
Are there any transit additions that you think of as boondoggles?
You don’t even see the need for road capacity additions in metro areas like Atlanta and the I-95 corridor in VA, that are rapidly expanding in population? A metro area of 10 million people should make do in perpetuity with the roads it had when it consisted of 2 million people? Does that logic apply to its school system, hospital system, etc.?
I’m not sure I understand the reason for the pose that tunnels are some sort of science fiction idea. There are entire networks of train tunnels (often referred to as “subways”) that run under major cities. I’m not sure why subway expansion is deemed appropriate and road tunnels deemed fanciful. They just built a huge one in the Paris suburbs. Look it up.
None of these projects comes within a country mile in cost terms of NJ transit’s tunnel, the NY MTA’s Second Avenue Subway or the NY LIRR’s “East Side Access” tunnel or NJ Transit-Amtrak’s PORTAL Bridge project, all of which are being constructed simultaneously, right now, as we speak. Those are all ok though, right?
January 12th, 2010 at 2:36 pm
Yonah, I couldn’t disagree with your more regarding you characterization of of HOT lanes and congestion pricing. To state that the situation (traffic in the general-purpose lanes) will become worse and will disproportionately affect less well-to-do motorists is simply without foundation or logic. If you’re adding capacity to an existing facility, as is the case with the I-95/I-395 HOT lanes, how in the world could this make current traffic congestion worse? We’re talking about additional lanes here, not the tolling of existing lanes. Basically, infrastructure that would not be built but for toll financing. Unless this is supplanting a government-funded option, motorists are only gaining something they would not have otherwise.
With respect to your argument that all of the poor folk will be stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the GP lanes, that’s an unsupported and disproved argument. Let’s begin by calling attention to something that we agree on; HOVs can use the facility for free. Even accepting the argument that many HOV vehicles would have two people in them anyway, and that HOV does not increase vehicle occupancy, we’re talking about HOV 3+. Put three folks in a vehicle and you’re opening up the market to everyone who has the ability to plan ahead (eg carpooling). You’re increasing vehicle occupancy (good), decreasing congestion (also good), emissions (check), and the demand on parking (terrific). The efficiency introduced here benefits everybody, from those who pay, those who ride free by taking advantage of HOT 3+, and those in the GP lanes. Those drivers in the HOT lanes came from the GP lanes. There is now more available capacity in the GP lanes, thereby benefiting even those who did not pay.
The idea of HOT lanes filling up with the wealthy while the commoners suffer is a fallacy, and irresponsible hyperbole from a transportation journalist or professional. I have personally conducted studies showing that under the right circumstances, people from all walks of life use HOT lanes. Everybody has been late to the airport and might be willing to get there on time. A few dollars to save a few hundred buck in airline fees? Sure! Lots of people are running late to pick up little Johnny at daycare before they’re charged for extra day care hours. The amount they save may well be worth far more than the $2.50 they pay for the HOT lane usage. Gonna get fired if you’re late to work one more time? What’s a $12 toll? The point is, not everybody will use it every day. It’s an option available to all and most people will find it beneficial and worth the cost at one time or another.
Lastly, by building additional capacity through toll financing, you’re taking the burden off of the general fund (all taxpayers) and placing it on only those who use the facility. Moreover, if it is developed under a PPP, then a private organization is taking all of the financial risk.
I fail to see how this makes things worse. Unless you believe that the induced demand will simply refill the GP lanes (in which case you’re no worse off than before with respect to traffic conditions and are, in fact, moving more people than before) or you assume that all road projects are bad because they induce sprawl, I don’t know how you could argue such a thing. With respect to needing to become more transit oriented and develop in a sustainable manner, I agree. And to the degree that more roads contribute to that, again, I agree that more roads are a bad thing. But sustainable development is a long-term goal, and many people need short-term solutions today.
January 12th, 2010 at 2:45 pm
You don’t even see the need for road capacity additions in metro areas like Atlanta and the I-95 corridor in VA, that are rapidly expanding in population?
No, I don’t. Because when project builds a road below grade for the wealthy neighborhood and switches to at-grade when it reaches a black ghetto, I look at the people proposing it and know they lie when they say he project is “needed.”
January 12th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
“You don’t even see the need for road capacity additions in metro areas like Atlanta and the I-95 corridor in VA, that are rapidly expanding in population? A metro area of 10 million people should make do in perpetuity with the roads it had when it consisted of 2 million people? Does that logic apply to its school system, hospital system, etc.?”
I think the point, at least with the Northern Virginia example, is that there already exists a railroad service, that if it received more investment to allow for greater capacity and higher speeds (such a plan exists for high speed rail between Richmond and Washington, it just needs funds), then an alternative to more roads exists and there are greater choices for commuters.
January 12th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
That comment is completely unresponsive. So if it was below grade or above grade the whole way, it’d be fine?
But what does that have to do with the idea that a growing metro area would need additional capacity and connectivity?
There are plenty of wealthy areas of pallor with at grade or elevated highways running through them. You’d build a tunnel primarily to reduce property acquisitions. That’s why the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels are tunnels, not bridges, even though they went through what were hardly wealthy areas when they were built.
January 12th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
…I look at the people proposing it and know they lie when they say he project is “needed.”
Omri, are you the author? Based on what you have told us about the project (which is the extent of my knowledge regarding this particular proposal) I agree that the project lacks a passing grade in environmental justice to say the least. On its surface, it appears to have a blatant (if not intentional) disregard for disproportional impacts. But to assume that the entire project and all those involved are liars and frauds due to their abject failure on one front is not only small-minded; it’s unnecessary. You can judge the merits of the project based on quantifiable data. You can look at demand, capacity, and regional growth and see for yourself whether or not the the project is needed. Have you done that? Have you actually researched the project before listing it amongst the most wasteful projects on the east coast, or are you completely comfortable branding the entire project a “waste” because it insults your personal politics ex facie?
January 12th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
I usually enjoy reading articles on this site but the facts about the I-95/395 HOT lanes in Virginia are a little skewed towards the cons. Needless to say that it was going to be primarily a privately built and operated series of toll/HOV lanes. One major pro for this project was the inclusion of “in-line bus depot’s” along the corridor integrating park and ride as well as carpooling in the Region. Local MPO planners in the study region are calling for these “transportation centers” to be located at most of the access points along the corridor.
There have been studies to expand rail in the area as well. Some call for an expansion of Metro south to Fredericksburg but this is unrealistic and would severely alter the usage of VRE which is already in place. Another problem when it comes to rail is that VRE and Amtrak share the line with the owners, CSX, who do little to improve the rail operations in the area. Funding is limited in the “Old Dominion”, give ‘em a break!
January 12th, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Sadly it seems that the only way you can talk about transportation on this site or on the Internet in general is to bash highways until you are blue in the face and say that transit and high speed rail are our salvation - no matter how much this flies in the face of reality.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:04 pm
Hospitals and schools are needed, every transport infrastructure expansion isn’t needed, logically planners should look at efficiency in design. If the most EFFICIENT, COST EFFECTIVE, LONG TERM offering to the public is a road expansion fair enough, build it, if it is a rail line of some variety build it. In most cases logic dictates to me that 1 train transporting 400 people is more efficient than 1 car transporting 3 or 4. So a mass transit investment makes more sense.
The point that is being missed is that we buy the majority of our oil form nations that have a certain part of their population that hates us with such a passion that they are willing to strap a bomb to their nuts to to kill innocent people. This is a fact. Sorry to harp on the oil imports issue, it is the reality and the sooner we stop giving out billions to sustain our largely inefficient lifestyles the better.
People will then be put in the position to make a choice that will benefit them in the long run and if all they have to choose from is a car ride or a shitty bus service, thats not really a choice. Forms of transit can be built to compliment one another. The US just needs to learn how to do it.
January 12th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
Eric,
It is my belief that spending tax dollars on increasing highway capacity while our public transport system sits grossly underfunded is a mockery of intelligent transport planning.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:02 pm
“Sadly it seems that the only way you can talk about transportation on this site or on the Internet in general is to bash highways until you are blue in the face and say that transit and high speed rail are our salvation - no matter how much this flies in the face of reality.”
Can you point to a reality-based instance in which salvation has ever been achieved through more highway lanes?
BTW, just a note to the site poo-bahs: Infrastructurist, I regret to say, has gotten boring recently. Morning Dig. Evening Dig. Morning Dig. Evening Dig. Only rarely an actual article, like this one, which is not much more than a list. When I discovered Infrastructurist, its salient feature was that it took a “boring” subject and made it decidedly not boring. What happened? From this end, it seems like the people running the site simply aren’t that interested in it anymore.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:40 pm
The VA HOT lanes will be a clusterf***. The contract is terrible will cost Virginians plenty. The only way they will work is to limit the number of HOV users as too many would result in penalty payments to the private company and ensuring that the free lanes are congested making the toll lanes seem attractive. There is also an 80 year non compete clause that will limit the state from improving parallel corridors. Also, outside of Rush hour the lanes are open to anyone travelling in the open direction, providing 5 lanes north or south depending on the time of day. If it goes HOT, it will only be 3 unless you pay. This whole thing is a theft of an already built public asset.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Once again, Yonah lets his half-baked socialist-lite philosophy get in the way of writing something interesting and useful.
January 12th, 2010 at 6:51 pm
The fundamental problem with HOT toll lanes is that they rely on traffic congestion in general purpose lanes to be successful and thereby turn a profit.
It’s not that HOT lanes make the situation worse; they simply don’t resolve the root problem. Their usage, survival, and success is based on keeping the free lanes perpetually congested. The HOT lanes do nothing to reduce car-dependency, nor cut down the number of cars using this highway. But a very small proportion of users are given a convenient alternative at a steep price.
We can look at CA-91 for an example. Although traffic has improved just slightly since the construction of the HOT lanes, it is still one of THE most congested freeways in the LA basin, with average speeds regularly as low as 5mph in the free lanes. Vehicle counts have not been reduced. I am curious to see what happens when LA converts the 110 and other freeway HOV lanes into HOT lanes, to form a network of HOT lanes within its freeway system.
The pros: HOV 3+ being free, for those with the ability and patience to organize a group to carpool (similar origins and destinations, which most dont have), and traffic free roads when you need them most. Even better if you’re willing to pay for the privilege of using them on your own. Personally, I think a better system would be to redesignate the HOT lanes as dedicated long haul express lanes (like the center lanes of the Dulles Toll Road), with no exits and entrances en route. This would segregate commuter traffic (with it’s own HOV lanes) from long haul interstate traffic.
January 12th, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Forgot to add: if you’re interested in the details of the VA HOT lanes contract (it is TERRIBLE for the state), read here:
http://greatergreaterwashington.org/tag.cgi?label=HOT%20lanes&primary=2311
January 12th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
MoDOT just spent $70 million/mile to repave an existing highway that they failed to properly maintain… that’s a another way to get Uncle Sam to pay for 80%. In expanding and rebuilding the New 64 through the heart of the region, MoDOT made sure that auto alternatives took it on the chin and favored pedestrian routes (including pedestrian bridges) were made more dangerous. The destruction of homes, neighborhoods and once walkable environments were destroyed by the Hoffarth-Hassinger combo. Numerous locations on opposite sides of the New 64 now requires walking over 4 miles roundtrip to destinations just 500 feet away.
Now they want to spend more on another bridge and without tolls. Next is the grand plan to build lanes for “Trucks Only” across the state on I70.
January 12th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
So right about the Illiana and the proposed airport — both blathered about in Illinois since 1968. Time to stop the insanity!
January 12th, 2010 at 7:25 pm
The problem that VRE has is that they are sharing tracks with CSX, and there are only so many available slots into which they can put their trains.
That being said, CSX and VDOT have been adding a 3rd track along sections of that route, which will ultimately result in increased capacity.
January 12th, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Catbus:
No transportation project brings “salvation.” I just don’t worship transit to the point where it makes all other transportation investments so horrible that you would look past the specifics of the project simply because it was not transit. There is room for all kinds of investment, and balanced investment that focuses on actual needs, and not just what is trendy, is what is important.
January 12th, 2010 at 9:37 pm
Im against the Virginia HOT lanes, but
“the difficulty with this scheme is that it allows single-occupancy cars to use the express lanes and therefore won’t do much to reduce congestion on the other parts of the road. It will encourage wealthier drivers to use the fast lanes by themselves and push poorer people into the slow ones.”
is completely false. The rich drivers will subsidize the poor drivers, as they will move from the crowded free lanes to an emptier paid lane, thus benefiting all (as the free lanes would be carrying slightly less cars).
If you want to be against the project, then look at the environmental effects of adding significant capacity and widening the highway.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
Wow, I am quite surprised by the anger that is coming from the comments section. I also wonder which decade alot of the commentators thinking comes from. We are in the year 2010, not 1960.
Eric, J.Hart: atleast 2 of these 4 propositions dont address whether they are actually needed or not. This Indiana proposal is clearly not needed, while the Atlants proposal remains to be seen.
Eric F. said: “That comment is completely unresponsive. So if it was below grade or above grade the whole way, it’d be fine?
But what does that have to do with the idea that a growing metro area would need additional capacity and connectivity?”
Omni is merely pointing out how questionable their plan is, and if the plan is questionable, its fair to also question the reason for having the plan in the first place. Quite reasonable thinking when it comes to Government spending i would think.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:22 pm
I grew up in the Midwest, and lived by the car. After moving to DC, then NYC, and now living in Tokyo, I laugh when ever people complain and drag their heels on mass transit. An experience driving a car on the open road is a wonderful feeling. Sitting in traffic is not. Transit revitalizes cities, makes people healthier/more active, creates culture, and makes people more connected.
My 8th grade science teacher said, “Building more highway lanes, just creates more traffic.” I didnt understand it then, but it makes complete sense now, and I wish some of the commentators would learn it.
January 12th, 2010 at 11:50 pm
@ The DukeofWhite: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Kudos sir!
January 13th, 2010 at 12:21 am
You missed the Niska Isle bridge in Schenectady, NY, a $5 million project to serve 9 households. http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=887041
January 13th, 2010 at 2:44 am
I can’t speak for the other places mentioned in this article but based upon my brief travels in the DC/VA area and the Chicagoland area it seems that the Atlanta area could at least use a little bit more transit expansion to go along with GADOT’s plans (doesn’t mean I agree with the tunnel idea though.)
“And for reasons no one at DOT can easily explain, in order to save costs, the road might exit from the tunnel south of I-20 and run at grade — just as it enters a poor black community. There’s nothing equitable about that idea at all, no matter the traffic relief that might or might not come.”
There is not much equity in our region’s transportation network already.
January 13th, 2010 at 7:52 am
This site should just be called the “antiautoist”. Bashing of all road transportation without exception. Never once have I seen any flicker of road transport support. Just a soapbox for public transit. If this blog was around 200 years ago, it would be calling for anti-horse bollards to protect pedestrians from dangerous horse carriages and trenches to stop carriage wheels.
Road transportation has its place. The public transit bus doesn’t run, except on this blog writer’s fantasy, to a farmer’s cornfield in Kansas. Public transit doesn’t get rid of your garbage. Public transit didn’t deliver the materials to build the roof over your heat. You can’t move a trunk worth of groceries over a bus. Or carry a folding shopping cart worth of cash to refill an ATM over a bus. You can’t take a refrigerator on the bus. You can’t take a mattress on public transit. The city bus won’t drive down your farm’s 400 foot driveway to your house. You can’t delivery diesel fuel to run your public bus on a public bus.
Its true in some areas, adding highway capacity will just shift users away from public transit. But in such areas, public transit vs highway transit to work during rush hour is equal. If sitting in stop and go traffic is 30 mins, or hours faster (especially common on suburb to suburb commuting) than a local public bus for miles all the way downtown then back out again. Or driving 15 miles and then 2 commuter trains, then a public bus running every 30 mins, then walking 2 miles on a sidewalk, crossing lightless road in all weather conditions to get to work, come on! You’d be fired.
Suburban areas that were built for cars will be car oriented forever short of mass seizure and demolition. They are too low density public transit. Buses will never run down cul-de-sacs. Bumper to bumper traffic will always be faster than waiting for 2 or 3 hourly buses each way. Turning cul-de-sacs into a grid or through streets is politically impossible because of the mass demolition and “environmental impact” lawsuits and decreased property values. In these areas, expanding highway/artery capacity is the only choice.
In urban areas that were built for trolleys and public transit from day 1, but later were converted to car land, adding road capacity is wrong. In these areas, you’ll notice commuting to the downtown core by public transit and by road are the same time. If public transit is faster than the road, commuters will always take that, but it almost never is unless car congestion is involved. Buses and light rail can never go faster than the cars on the street. The density for rapid transit rarely exists since car congestion limits density in areas already (it can be induced through a risky come and they will build it policy). Even when heavy rail RT is built, because of “safety” and “cost” and nowadays “energy efficiency” its slower at peak inter-station speed than the car traffic next to it, and it excludes walking and waiting time. NYC has only been decreasing their metro’s speed over the last couple decades in the name of safety (after intoxicated/incapacitated/suicidal train drivers caused accidents which caused record lawsuit payouts) and energy efficiency. Large portions of it were built for a suggest 55 mph operation, with no speedometers in the train and no speed limited signals. Train drivers were told to use personal judgment to drive the trains. In underwater tunnels speeds in the 60s for some seconds used to be possible only 7 years ago, not anymore.
Railroad public transit in the USA suffers from ancient FRA safety rules which guarantee nothing European or Asian will ever exist in the USA. Plus railroad public transit has worse union costs than heavy rail public transit.
In alot of areas of the USA, urban governments gave up on controlling crime, or democracy has voted in politicians who are soft on crime. If your the wrong skin color or dress wrong, using public transit will make you a victim. Waiting for a bus or light rail is very dangerous. Even if your stop is safe, a transfer might not be. If you have a permit, pulling a gun might be too late in an urban area since the criminal walked up to you innocently and is too close. If he has partners, they will pull guns on you and shoot you first. They don’t fear a capital sentence. Better solution is to never stand on the sidewalk and therefore never use public transportation. Rose glasses consultants/lobbyists and politicians and contractors/unions never ride the public transit systems they promote, except in groups or with bodyguards for press reasons.
Bus drivers aren’t law enforcement and can’t intervene by job rules, and law enforcement will take 10 or 15 minutes to show up after being called, offender long gone by then, often through the emergency doors/window, or aiming a weapon at the driver to open the door. Police have no clue who was on the bus’s CCTV, no witnesses know anything, and the police end the conversation with “we only go after big fish”. Now what?
Any person that can afford to never use public transit never will again in that city.
In some areas, highways prevent crime by preventing armed carjackings by “homeless panhandlers” who wait for a low resistance victim and high car value target at red lights. The victim is boxed in at the light, and other drivers will never intervene. Driving through a blighted neighborhood with the wrong skin color or wrong car will get you pulled over by the police and your car searched for drugs since you must be coming to the “hood” to deliver or buy drugs. Highways are the best solution.
The local population and their electeds condones crime as “God’s will” or “destiny”. Not every city in the USA is San Francisco or New York or Seattle that can have safe public transit for everyone to use and live a car-free lifestyle.
All the projects mentioned in this post, the “that would be the biggest waste of money”, except for the Virginia project could never be replaced by public transit. The “Atlanta” project is a cul-de-sac suburban only project. The Indiana project provides rural farm transport. So your not stuck driving 20 miles behind a truck going 25 mph from your rural property to get to the nearest major retail area for walmart or farm supplies. The St Louis project is to give a proper interstate standard bridge across the river. The 2 existing bridges are low speed local road bridges that had interstates ramps added, not interstate speed bridges from day 1. The IL side of this bridge is a rural farm area highway. No public transit will ever be here.
But all these facts are irrelevant, this blog is plain anti-road bias, nothing more. Its an insult to civil engineering to call itself “infrastructurist”, when its nothing more than a public transit policy blog.
January 13th, 2010 at 9:32 am
Pete:
The problem is that building more roads just encourages more sprawl which increases the traffic, which of course ends up causing us to try and build more roads. This isn’t just opinion - this has been observed in many places where they tell us that a particular road improvement will have sufficient capacity for anticipated traffic loads for 20 years. And in 3 years the roads are again choked with traffic. People see these new roads and they move further out in the anticipation of an easy commute, and once enough people do this, then the road is filled again.
It is true that many people seem to prefer to live in the suburbs, but it is only cheap oil and the automobile that have even made this possible. And many suburbs are built in ways that there is nothing besides the automobile that is viable transportation in these areas. But we are now reaching the end of the era of cheap oil - barring some major technical advance, people who live out there will be stranded. And regarding many of the potential alternatives (BEV, PHEV, hydrogen, etc) some (H2) I believe to be pipe dreams that will never happen, and others (BEV, PHEV) I believe will just be niche products. I am not yet convinced of this, but some believe that the exurbs will eventually become slums of some sort - so undesirable on account of the isolation that it will be hard to find anyone willing to live out that far.
Regarding the shipping of freight, there are no alternative propulsion technology that I know of for trucks that people are considering. The real alternative is to ship goods by rail as much as possible. It uses far less fuel per mile, and it reduces truck traffic on the highways (where trucks do far more damage to the roads on account of their weight than the much smaller cars). And if oil gets to be so expensive that the railroads start to feel pain, they can just string up catenary wires and switch to electric locomotives.
The road-builders have had free reign for years now - we still have traffic problems, and they are still talking about widening roads. In some cases, it can cost billions just to rebuild a single bridge or interchange. And we tend to ignore trying to maintain the roads and bridges that we already have - some of which are reaching the end of their service life. At least we ignore these things until the last minute..
January 13th, 2010 at 10:06 am
“The road-builders have had free reign for years now - we still have traffic problems, and they are still talking about widening roads.”
As someone who lives in the Ny area, I find this to be so far from reality as to be absurd. An observer with no knowledge of the area would assume that NYC must have 20 lane highway,s continually widened to no effect. And of course that’s ridiculous. NYC’s highways are typically 2 or 3 lanes in ecah directions and none of them have been expanded in over 40 years. The notion that our urban areas have experienced some sort of sustained highway widening binge is simply false. You can most certainly increase capacity and connectivity with additions to the network — same as transit. You need both.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:21 am
Agree with 2.5 of the four.
Contrary to the opinion displayed here, the I-70 bridge is needed. Could the plans at the Poplar St Bridge be improved? Certainly. But building the bridge improves connectivity and regional connections and provides an alternative to the overcrowded Poplar St bridge and the old and narrow Eads and MLK Bridges.
The 95/395 HOT lane project is needed in concept. But where this one should be opposed is with the questionable need for 3 lanes north of the I-495 Beltway (which would largely create a bottleneck at the Pentagon), plus the outright contractual steals that Fluor-Transurban received which have been mentioned by other posters….the one that got me the most is that VDOT would have to pay Fluor if HOV usage increased above a certain percentage, which really defeats the purpose. Address these two items and the project becomes much more worthwhile. Leave them as is and you can count me amongst the opposition.
January 13th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
Wow Pete, what ridiculous hyperbole!
January 13th, 2010 at 4:13 pm
It’s so strange reading the comments from those who bash the site for expressing an opinion in favor of public transit and against continued road building / expanding. What, are they all worried GM employees? Why take it so personally?
bsr says that balanced investment is needed. Agreed. But then we’ve got about forty years worth of public transit projects to build, cause it’s been that long that federal money has been used almost exclusively for highways.
The bottom line is that our transportation infrastructure should be used to safely and efficiently allow people to move from one place to the next. People. Not cars. In some cases, like in rural areas and if you have a lot of cargo, etc then driving your personal vehicle on a road may indeed be the safest and most efficient manner. But if you are simply bringing yourself to work, then why do you need to also bring a ton of plastic and metal?
January 13th, 2010 at 7:13 pm
rsb:
And if balanced investment were what we get, sites like Infrastructurist would not have to keep calling attention to freight and passenger rail, mass transit and bike/ped. But too many of our state DOTs are still in the grip of a Robert Moses mind-set that does see more freeway lanes as the path to transpo-salvation. It takes all the screaming that advocates of alternatives can do to get them to even remember there are things to spend money on besides big-ass highways.
Choice is good. Choice is not what we get.
As for pete, I’d like him to list in exactly which cities his racist Falling Down transit menace fantasy exists. Only once in my life have I ever felt unsafe on public transportation, and frankly, that was at 1:30 AM, and the driver came to my aid when I hit the panic button. Am I charmed? Perhaps I have a drop of negro blood I don’t know about.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:46 pm
@Catbus Baltimore (drug searched by police after taking a local road, followed for 1 miles by police after search until I got on the highway), Washington DC (friend robbed at knifepoint, bus camera caught it, driver let guy off, police say theres nothing they can do without more information), Newark (3 people were sitting on a car parked at the intersection, a second later they ran over, with baseball bats and smashed lights and dented body of my car, I reversed and drove through the red light)
In some areas, you can build all the public transportation you want, but if the city chooses to segregate itself, and let the streets police themselves, driving in a 2 ton armored metal coffin (car) on a viaduct above the anarchy below is the only choice. When you see gated communities and cul-de-sacs you know the urban law enforcement department next door gave up long ago.
Suburban car only areas can not be easily fixed today. Whats done is whats done. Public transit can’t be added to those areas. Those areas will remain like that forever. Worst case, they will just turn to empty lots like detroit, and return to nature. Until then, they deserve as much care and funding as any other place people live. Unless you wish to destroy suburban areas with “planned shrinkage” like some geniuses 40 years ago thought about urban public transit friendly areas.
Public transit isn’t the answer to everything. Here is an experiment, how easy it it to ship your car by rail in the USA vs driving it on a road trip paying a truck to drive it? Not happening (excluding that moribund experiment called AutoTrain). The “public transit” freight railroads do everything they can to discourage small customers. They only care about moving a 100 car train from Point A to Point B. If its less than 100 cars from point to point or it has to be split up its not profitable enough for them. American railroads today don’t do branch lines or serve small customers. If your not shipping atleast 20 train cars a month, the railroad will charge you 20 train cars to move 1 car a month. For profit railroads will never take any trucks off the road near any urban areas, they’ve been adding them for decades by abandoning tracks and customers.
How many heavy rail public transit systems do garbage or freight delivery to sky scrapers in urban areas? As far as I know zero. Public transit authorities aren’t interested in getting armies of garbage trucks off the streets at night or armies of delivery trucks each morning. The Chicago Tunnel Company was the right way to run a city.
January 13th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
“Wow, I am quite surprised by the anger that is coming from the comments section. I also wonder which decade alot of the commentators thinking comes from. We are in the year 2010, not 1960.
…
Eric F. said: “That comment is completely unresponsive. So if it was below grade or above grade the whole way, it’d be fine?
But what does that have to do with the idea that a growing metro area would need additional capacity and connectivity?”
Omni is merely pointing out how questionable their plan is, and if the plan is questionable, its fair to also question the reason for having the plan in the first place. Quite reasonable thinking when it comes to Government spending i would think.””
To paraphrase…
Eric F.: A metro area that quintuples in size needs to increase all infrastructure, including roads. Why do you only oppose it for roads, for all proposed road projects nationwide?
Omri: (I know for a fact that) the people who proposed the project are racist (because they are favor roads and are therefore racist and also live in the South and are also therefore racist). The consideration to make a portion of the road at-grade could not have anything to do with the cost of right-of-way acquistions in areas with different land values. Besides, it is much easier to respond to a difficult question by just calling someone a racist instead. And a liar too.
So, since the people who support this tunnel are racist, the metro Atlanta area does therefore not need this project.
Eric F.: You dodged my question, and I call you on it.
Omri: No reply.
TheDukeofWhite: Omri has called the plan into question because the developers are racist. Therefore it is a questionable plan. Since it is a questionable plan, it is therefore a bad plan.
Also, what do 2010 and 1960 have to do with anything? We’re supposed to oppose one kind of project and support another based on fads? Not being very good at predicting the future, but knowing history well enough, I think I can guarantee that our outlooks on life (posters on this blog) and society’s preferences will change dramatically in the next 50 years. Technology will change too. Maybe surface streets will require manual driving but many urban freeways will control the movements of all cars without attention by the passenger(/driver)? And personal vehicles as our preferred mode of transportation will be back in style? Who knows?
Will we look back then and be proud that we tried to logically evaluate everything on its merits and tried to spend our resources well (and maybe were wrong sometimes)? Or will we regret having followed the fads of our time?
January 14th, 2010 at 12:00 am
“Building more lanes only creates more traffic.”
That’s really whiny and defeatist. For people supposedly interested or even dedicated to improving our country’s infrastructure, ostenibly for some *incremental improvement over time*, this seems very out of place.
Why expand and improve drainage and sewage systems? You’ll just have to do it again later!
Why even go to work? If you don’t go, you can just get fired and not have to work. Food … don’t worry about it; isn’t that important either. Every day you eat means another day where you have to look for food again (begging for change can be hard). It’s really not worth it.
Back in the real world, it’s a GOOD thing if more people are traveling to work or other activities. Economies of scale with the widened freeway allow businesses to select from a larger pool of qualified workers. And workers will have more jobs to choose from, and maybe find something that’s really fulfilling from them, and if not, something that pays them a s***-ton of money compared to a smaller town. Also, widened roads or subway systems (or whatever) increase density eventually. They are not just a conduit to reach the suburbs. No, seriously, little known fact: people who live within the city limits (except for Manhattan) actually DO use the freeways. And this density is what is needed for any public transit system to be effective or even just possible in the first place.
And where is this magical place where we keep expanding freeways every couple years and they keep filling up? Even in a car city like Houston, almost all of the freeways in the core at least have the same number of lanes or just one more lane. And the suburbs further out have had one widening since the time they were rural interstates. All this, while the population quadrupled. (In case it needs to be spelled out, yes quadrupling population will of course fill up the freeways with cars.)
January 14th, 2010 at 3:34 am
No, an outside observer would assume that in NYC everyone takes the subway. This isn’t true, but New York does have the highest transit use in the US.
New York is not so congested, either. It ranks in the middle in per capita congestion among large US urban areas, behind Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston. This is due to the fact that, while the total amount of travel delay in the urban area is 379 million hours per year, public transportation saves 319 million hours. In other words, without transit, New York would’ve had double the congestion, which would raise its per-capita travel delay above this of Los Angeles, currently the most congested city in the country.
American suburbs today are often denser and less sprawling than Calgary. They certainly are in the Northeast, where many suburbs have traditional street grids and densities of 2,000-3,000/km^2, compared with 1,400 for Calgary. Even depopulated cities like Detroit are much denser. And yet, Calgary’s transit mode share is higher than this of any US metro area except New York, and is still rising. Clearly, density alone can’t explain why Baltimore and Detroit and Los Angeles have a crappy transit mode share and Calgary a good one.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:35 am
Pete, Eric F:
Infrastructurist and other similar blogs aren’t advocating the complete elimination of cars and replacing them with transit; rather, it’s seeking a better BALANCE of transportation modes. It just so happens that the vast majority of government transportation spending for the past 40 years of so has been directed toward building roads, which explains the huge disparity today between roads and transit in the US.
Also, the suburban developments that are so prevalent today were facilitated by the vast networks of highways constructed by the government, with transit service and pedestrian/bicycle access as an afterthought; however, that doesn’t mean that suburban communities (especially inner suburbs) can’t be retrofitted to become more transit, pedestrian, and bike-friendly.
Josh S sums it up pretty well: “…balanced investment is needed. Agreed. But then we’ve got about forty years worth of public transit projects to build, cause it’s been that long that federal money has been used almost exclusively for highways.”
January 14th, 2010 at 9:11 am
More like about 15 years and not 40, since a portion of the federal gas tax has been sent to the Mass Transit Account since 1983.
January 14th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Thank you Froggie; sadly, that view that all federal dollars support is highways is set in stone of the minds of some transit advocates. Indeed, the House highway bill will make it next to impossible for federal dollars to be used to conduct necessary highway expansions. You can replace a bridge, but you can’t use federal dollars to add extra lanes to that bridge even if traffic volumes demand it.
As for freight rail, the industry has done a fantastic job of working with shippers and the trucking industry to bring about greater use of intermodal. At least before the downturn I know trucking companies, and not coal or the autos, were the largest customers of almost all of the Class I rails in the country. Sure we can do more because this is an investment that we as a nation need to make to support interstate commerce, yet the source of those dollars should come from the general fund, not the federal Highway Trust Fund.
Indeed, I support increased investment in transit, bike/ped, and other forms of transportation, but feel that the right place for those investments is from the general fund - not off the backs of drivers. Now some will argue that this investment benefits drivers - however, look at hard data from programs like CMAQ and you will find out that is not always the case. Sure we can do a lot to improve how we prioritize investment, but the same could hold true for transit agencies as well (light rail in Charlotte is a perfect example). There are a great number of transit investments that are nothing more than monuments to an elected official just like a great number of highway projects. I just wish that there would be some intellectual honesty about how much money something like a high speed rail line between LA and Vegas really would waste instead of this blind agreement with its prefection simply because it isn’t a highway project.
January 14th, 2010 at 3:41 pm
There are several things that have not been touched upon yet.
First, how much does gasoline actually cost? If you check the publication and website “Highway Statistics” (US DOT site), and look into Section IV, you’ll find that fuel taxes at best pay only 2/3 of our roads’ costs. As a typical example, in 2004 all the road entities in this country spent $148 billion on roads, but only collected $76 billion in fuel taxes and another $6.5 billion in tolls. The difference, spread over 175 billion gallons of motor fuel consumed, worked out to a subsidy of 37 cents per gallon then, and that didn’t include deferred maintenance, poor construction, and poor design problems such as new bridge in Shepherdstown, W.Va. that leads to a bottleneck 4-way stop. Include other things, like air pollution, unrecovered accident cost, and, let’s admit it, an oil war (ok, just half of the war), and you are looking at a real cost of about $7.00 or so per gallon right now. And make no mistake, you are paying the $7.00 in your income taxes, your insurance premiums, property taxes, and so on.
Secondly, a lot of Pete’s complaints sound like they might be generational in nature. About 18 years ago, I tried to promote the idea of a light rail system–a modern interurban, actually–in my section of West Virginia, which is the part that is close to Washington, D.C. (Martinsburg, in fact, is at the end of the commuter zone, and is a former division point on the B&O with an 1866 roundhouse currently under renovation, and also has the oldest in-use station building in America, which is a former hotel, replacing the actual station that was burned in the Civil War.) In promoting the trolley system, I noticed a pattern. People who like the idea were, at that time, under 40 or over 70. The ones who hated it, including my political misrepresentatives, one of whom called me a Communist, were between 40 and 70. I was also a member of Main Street Martinsburg at the time, as was an Amtrak employee from that company’s marketing department. He told me his marketing department had measured the same pattern nationwide in regard to Amtrak.
Now, this was 18 years ago, and everyone has gotten older. My low-end break point is now about 55; I assume the high-end has moved up to 85 or so. I first noticed this when it seemed like everyone on the commuter train was getting younger. On the Washinton metro, there are so many younger passengers I felt like an old geezer when I was only 50 (I’m presently 54). An aquaintance of mine has noted a similar pattern on Amtrak regional trains in Chicago, and of course this has also been noticed in recent comments about the shrinkage of the automobile fleet here on the Infrastructurist.
My own hunch of this is that the old folks–over 70 before, over 85 now–remember what we had, and are sorry we let it go. The young crowd–under 40 before, under 55 now–are environmentally aware, don’t appreciate cars like some might say they should, and this comes from too much traffic and hassle with driving, plus the fact that driving isn’t the big thing it used to be (”What’s the big deal? My grandma drives. . .”). The group in the middle would have come of age between about 1950 and the first oil crunch of 1973. The future, as it was imagined then, was supposed to look something like the Jetsons, and that didn’t include trains, trolleys, etc.
Now, I should put in a disclaimer–I happen to be a strong rail enthusiast. To paraphrase Thomas the Tank Engine, “Proper locomotives are painted black and burn West Virginia coal!” ((:-)) Despite this, I think we need to get away from cars. We have had too much of a good thing, and among other problems, it has made us dependent for a fuel we, and the world, largely get from some other people who don’t particularly like us for various real and imagined reasons. And forget the “drill, baby, drill” bit; there isn’t enough to last more than a couple of decades or so if we used our own and cut off the imports. And finally, even if you did get all your cars to run on solar power, how would you even get the part of the money you now get from fuel consumption? How do you charge for roads if cars don’t use gas?
Pete also questioned how to move packages, refrigerators and so on. Not everybody knows this, but passenger trains and trolleys used to handle a lot more than just passengers. Mail was a classic example (and sorted in transit, by the way), along with a lot of package business (Fed Ex is the successor to Railway Express Agency, and its employees are still under Railway Retirement Act provisions). Most interurban cars were “combines,” or combination cars, carrying passengers in one end, and packages and small freight in the other, which had large sliding doors, like a railroad baggage car. There were postal trolleys, too, and trolleys that handled milk (one system used to bring the milk to Hershey, Pa., where it went into all those candy bars), and they even handled garbage in Philadelphia until the 1970’s or so; one of those garbage trolleys is in the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum in Washington, Pa. (near Pittsburgh). And in Mason City, Iowa, is the last trolley freight railroad, still using 1920’s vintage Baldwin-Westinghouse motors to pull modern freight cars.
For these and other reasons, I think we need to turn the clock back. If we are lucky, it won’t go past 1912 or so as far as transportation is concerned. On the other hand, what was so bad about transportation by train and ocean liner in 1912?
January 14th, 2010 at 6:32 pm
Interesting perspective, Mountaineer. I too am getting the feeling that driving is not as special. With awesome toys like the iPhone or the coming wave of wireless e-readers driving sucks up time that could be spent more productively and at the very least be much less stressful than grinding your teeth to dust stuck in traffic.
January 14th, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Note that “New Urbanists” advocate breaking up “superblocks” and cul-de-sacs, building a connected road *grid* like Manhattan’s. That is *objectively pro-asphalt and pro-car*.
The criticism has been addressed generally to:
(1) urban superhighways, which tend to be a blight
(2) widening of already-full superhighways, which is simply a waste of time and money. If you’ve actually filled up a two-lane-each-way expressway, you have enough volume to support a busy passenger train, and it will be cheaper to build and maintain.
Regarding tunnels, road tunnels are often a huge waste of money due to the *extensive* ventilation requirements. Tunnels for electric rail require *much much* less in the way of ventilation, as well as allowing narrower profiles (because the trains stay on the tracks). If you’re going to build a tunnel, you probably want to build a railroad tunnel. If the route doesn’t have enough demand to justify a rail tunnel, it will probably not have enough demand to justify a tunnel at all. (There are exceptions: short tunnels which don’t need extra ventilation, road tunnels which constitute a small section of a long intercity road where the road as a whole wouldn’t justify rail).
All the important superhighway projects in the US are *done*. We don’t need more. That’s why people like those at this blog don’t support any new ones. You won’t see support for tearing down the Chicago Skyway, but revitalizing the parallel rail route is badly needed. Unfortunately the US is badly in need of both local roads projects (yes, *two-lane* roads) and all possible forms of rail projects.
Careful professional analysis shows that rubber-tired vehicles without tracks are most efficient for *low volume* movements which cannot be made by walking. As soon as volumes start to get high, steel-wheeled vehicles on tracks are more efficient. This is why well-informed people try to stop highway *widenings*
January 14th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
(continued from last comment….)…. because if a single ordinary highway isn’t wide enough, you’re well over the volume level where trains are more efficient.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:53 pm
Eric F: has quoted me, as saying things are racist. Which I did not write. Please disregard any of his comments.
Thank you
January 15th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Eric F. is not the same person as Erik.
And read the post again. No one said that you were the one that played the race card.
January 16th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
“Regarding tunnels, road tunnels are often a huge waste of money due to the *extensive* ventilation requirements. ”
What about the beneifits of the reduced pollution released into the atomosphere?
Or of the savings in time?
Or even the potential with newly created land and reduced run off into a river as with the unjustly maligned NYC Westway project.
‘New Urbanists’ tend to forget that their no new urban highways program santifies racists-classist decisions from the 1960s to instead divert the traffic disproportionately through pooere areas, as with the botching and cancelling of Washington DC’s North Central- Northeast Freeway and the failure to construct cross town Manhattan tunnels.
Thery also sompletely disregard opportunities
January 20th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
I really enjoyed reading your previous installation of Highway Projects That Would Be the Biggest Waste of Money. So when I opened this article I eagerly began reading until I reached the New Mississippi River Bridge section. I was shocked, not at the inclusion of a St. Louis highway project because St. Louis has a terrible history of planning highways, but rather at the ignorance of the posting. Two glaring oversights jump out at me.
The current bridge also carries Highway 40 and is the terminus for I-44, thus absorbing all traffic from that road in addition to I-70, I-64 and I-55. Not only is that a lot of numbers to put on a single sign, but the current Poplar St. Bridge is only 4 lanes each direction, LESS THAN ONE LANE PER HIGHWAY USING THE BRIDGE. I don’t care where you stand on the place of cars in society but that is a ridiculous situation. I don’t advocate for increasing overall capacity, just removing the need for so many dangerous merge points and short, badly designed entrance and exit ramps in the area where these roads come together. Judge for yourself here
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=38.620061,-90.188978&num=1&t=h&sll=38.89312,-90.923238&sspn=0.005219,0.007017&ie=UTF8&ll=38.619855,-90.188699&spn=0.007645,0.005214&z=16
Also, you fail to mention the Gateway Arch Design Contest which began over a month before this article ran. The contest is very focused on the removal of I-70’s harmful presence from downtown where it completely separates the Arch grounds and riverfront from the city and its people. http://www.nextstopstl.org/1495/gateway-arch-grounds-design-contest-starts-today/
You claim this has no benefit for the pedestrians using the city core, but have you ever been to downtown St. Louis? THERE ARE NO PEDESTRIANS. With the exception of the new, and very beautiful CityGarden and Cardinals games, there are no reasons to visit downtown (I exaggerate for emphasis, there are a few local attractions and restaurants but it is not a place to enjoy walking around for an evening). Busch Stadium, home of the Cardinals and the CityGarden are 2 and 4 blocks, respectively, from the barrier created by I-70 between the city and the Arch. I have no doubt that removing the barrier would spur enormous growth in this urban core and open it up to bikes and pedestrians. However, that cannot be done without a new bridge crossing. The bonus of safety to the highways already sharing the Poplar St. Bridge is also important, but this project needs to happen if St. Louis is to regain any semblance of a thriving urban community.
January 25th, 2010 at 6:04 pm
Just to clarify one point. Public transport systems DID carry packages and mail as mentioned, many through the 1960’s; others, such as Portland’s Rose City Transit Company, had the authority on paper but chose not to use it by the 1950’s.
As public agencies were picking up bankrupt private companies, that service was not seen as a valid function of government. The Regional Transportation District in Denver continued the bus package express service of its private predecessors (Denver-Boulder Bus Co. and Colorado Motorways) until the late 1980’s, interlining shipments with the National Trailway Bus System. The decision was made to drop the service because half of the revenue had come from interline shipments and bus package express was fading nationally. The transit system’s legislative framework was then amended to prevent that sort of service from reappearing.
Bus package express itself was a victim of sprawl, as package delivery services today need to have a broad network of pick-up and delivery options. Ironically, one of the last big users of bus package express has been the auto parts industry and repair shops. The shop has the typical kid with a pick-up truck who can go down to the bus station and collect a replacement fender. The graphic artist or shopkeeper who used to walk over to the local bus station to pick up a shipment is miles away now.
So there’s nothing technically improssible about handling packages on public transportation. Its near disappearance is just another side effect of highways and spraw, combined with legislative policies.
–rwr–