Planning our Way into Regional Decline

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Planning our Way into Regional Decline

• American Dream Coalition Conference
• December 4, 2008
• Reston, Virginia

Christopher W. Walker
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WHAT GOOD ARE RECESSIONS?

• Recessions are good for
• Rightsizing activities.
• Taking time to realize what hasnt worked in the
  past, and therefore is unlikely to work in the
  future. Its time for COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS
  rather than Political Correctness.
• Insanity consists of repeating behavior and
  expecting a different outcome.

ADVERSITY INTRODUCES A PERSON TO HIMSELF
Attributed to Stoic Philosopher Epictetus, whose
career led from slavery to advisor of Roman
Emperor Marcus Aurelius.
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Public versus Private Investment

• Private
• Costs are bad, revenues are not the test
• Profit is the goal a sign of good management.
• Public
• Costs are good, revenues good lets expand the
  bureaucracy!
• Profit concept not in lexicon
• Result With political allocation of capital,
  its a benefits regime that distributes jobs,
  contracts and influence the costs are the
  benefit.
• -------- quote James Dunn, Rutgers political
  scientist who studies transit
• Another illustration Federal transportation bill
  reauthorization, which now contains 4,000
  earmarks, almost all of which dont appear in any
  states transportation wish list for needed
  improvements.

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Transportation is one of the few remaining
socialist functions in our economy. We build and
maintain roads the same way the communists
manufactured and distributed consumer goods.
The image is Pyongyang, North Korea. For an
apartment, you apply to a Neighborhood Council.
All real estate is owned by the state. The units
are free, you just pay for utilities. This is
similar to the US road system which is free to
users with the only charge for the utilities of
fuel and vehicle usage. This sustainable model
has a low carbon footprint, mostly because almost
no one can afford to own a car at a per capita
income of 1,000 per year (compared with South
Koreas 20,000 per year). Result plenty of
shared transit (bus, light and heavy rail). This
environmental paradise, with communal thought,
housing, and transport, is the expressed ideal of
many land use planners who regard freedom to live
and work as you choose as wasteful consumerism.
Be careful what you agitate for.
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Just because you can do it, doesnt mean you
should do it.
In the Private Sector, costs are bad. Profit is
to be maximized, and profit equals revenues minus
costs. In the Public Sector, costs are OK. The
cost is the benefit, all too often. 90 of Public
Sector managers (politicians) are either
untrained in management, indifferent, corrupt, or
conflicted by indebtedness to special interest
groups such as public employees unions. Dulles
Rail, as an example, incorporates 500 million in
fees.
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Recessions are a good time to redirect planners
away from the social engineering goals they have
been trained in and are attempting to foist on
others
After eliminating all those without Professional
Engineering degrees, planning departments
should be redirected towards best practices in
roadway design, rational subdivision/collector/art
erial road mix, urban navigation and signage,
nightscape appearance, and performance
specifications for all municipal procurement.
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Sign Entering Tysons from McLean
(Courtesy the Taxpayers League of Minnesota)
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Worst of All Worlds, another illustration
The Congestion Cartel just finished spending
500,000 of your tax money on a public relations
campaign to promote the idea that paying higher
tolls on the Dulles Toll Road on the way to
Service Level F (total gridlock) was a really
neat concept. As part of this Brave New World of
higher taxes, higher tolls, and total congestion,
they published this picture of their ideal
worldhighways so unusable that either walking or
rail are the only practical alternatives. The
rail cars are moving, but the autos arent. Is
this the world we want to live in?
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Impact of No Growthers who oppose all new
development and roads. Loudoun County approved
projects in black, proposed in red
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Back to the Past? With Perpetual Land Easements-
Virginia
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As you enter McLean from Tysons
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Congestion Forecast to be MUCH Worse in 2030,
with or without rail
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New Transportation Technology starved! A
Nationwide Problem.

• Of nations 19 largest metro areas, 10 plan to
  allocate more than one half of their projected
  20-25 year surface transportation budgets for
  transit capital and operating costs 7 others
  plan to allocate between one-third and one-half.
  17 out of 19!
• Source Federal Highway Administration, Federal
  Transit Administration 2002

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2005-2030 Long Range Transportation Plan for DC
Area
To address the requirement that the plan be
financially realistic, the TPB hired a consultant
to conduct a study in 2003. The study projected
the revenues that each state would have available
for transportation through the year 2030 and
compared the projected revenues to the estimated
costs of maintaining and operating the current
transportation system together with the expected
costs of implementing the long-range plan. The
total expenditures over the 25 years of the plan
are equal to the total expected revenues or 93.3
billion. Overall, almost 72 billion or 77
percent of the total expenditures is for
operations and preservation of the regions
transportation system. About 22 billion, or 23
percent is for expanding the transportation
system. Transit expenditures are 56 billion or
60 percent of the total and highway expenditures
are 37 billion or 40 percent.
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Transit Share of Future Demand even smaller
Washington COG forecasts that total daily Vehicle
Miles Traveled will increase 40,000,000 by
2030126,000,000 to 166,000,000 vehicle miles per
day (or 32). Average auto occupancy is 1.13.
This is then 45,200,000 passenger
miles. Metrorail Miles is projected to increase
24, or 840,000 (from 3,500,000 to
4,340,000) Metrorail is thus capturing
840,000/45,200,000 or 1.86 of new travel demand
2005-2030. The nonrail share will increase
transit modal share in toto to around 3.0 of new
demand. Thus, the rail share will decline to
1.86 from its current 2.67, and overall transit
share to 3.0 from its current 4.0.
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Congestion ISNT inevitable due to population
growth..
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The True Story of Transit
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What is the Real Issue?

• Mobility!
• Because of the arbitrary proffer system, there
  is no guarantee adequate transportation
  improvements will happen.
• Blind faith in rail a 19th century technology
  which has proven beyond a doubt to be INEFFECTIVE
  in reducing surface congestion in modern cities.
• Why cant we just all get along? common
  attitude.
• Reason

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• Freeways comprise just 6 of our total road
  system yet carry 45 percent of all trips.
• Principal arterials comprise 6 of our road
  system yet carry 20 of all trips.

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The logic behind rail boondoggles

• It dates to Aristotle
• If we dont do something, congestion will get
  worse.
• Building rail is doing something.
• Therefore, lets build rail.
• This is about as far as many clueless pols take
  the process, since they can talk about
  addressing the issue and leave the cost of
  feeding the while elephant to others after their
  watch.
• The fact that the logic is faulty (denying the
  antecedent) is of course irrelevant. (If not A,
  then B, if C, then A, doesnt imply C in a
  rational world.)

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But were more enlightened here Arent we?
the No-Build bus scenario
Location One block off Toll Road, Reston Pkwy,
50,000 cars/day No shelter, no schedule, no
marquis, fortunately water only 2 inches deep
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Its easy to get caught up in the hype of popular
fads and let other people do the thinking for us
otherwise known as drinking the Kool-Aid.
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Faith Based Beliefs
The Religious Faith produces Salvation
The Ethicists The Past Guides the Future
The Rail-igious Rail reduces Congestion
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Religious Certainty plus money is a powerful
combination..
An indulgence was a contract between you and the
Church given for money, not good works.
Off to the Middle East to plunder and riches
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Beware Planning Assumptions

• Chicken and Egg Does transit follow
  densification, or vice-versa?
• In post-automobile cities (built after 1910), no
  successful examples of density following
  expensive transit investment. E.g., Washington
  heavy rail stops.
• Plenty of examples of the opposite Reston Town
  Center, Tysons, Columbia, Houstons Post Oak,
  Dallas North end, Los Angeles nodes such as
  Century City, edge cities all over the U.S.
• Beware the argument that if it is built, they
  will come (Field of Dreams attitude) no
  evidence from WMATA, BART, or elsewhere this is
  true. Transit Oriented Development is a myth,
  much talked about, like Saddams weapons
  stockpiles, but nonexistent

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Evidence Based Approaches
What do we know about suburban transportation in
a 21st century city?
1) Rail fixed guideway systems cost far more
than rubber tire based solutions with a fully
allocated cost of 40-120 per ride, at an average
speed of 30 mph. They must be heavily subsidized
by the public sector. Consult the Brookings
Institution study at http//www.brookings.edu/pape
rs/2006/08_rail_systems_winston.aspx which
concluded that only one US heavy rail system
increased social welfare.
2) Shared guideway roadways offering service to
anyone who is willing to pay for guaranteed time
travel can be built largely by the private sector
with unsubsidized operations. They can be built
largely or completely by the private sector. So
far, they have been uniformly successful I-5 in
San Diego, SR 91 in Orange County, I-10 in Los
Angeles and Houston, I-394 in Minneapolis.
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Would any megaproject be undertaken if some form
of delusion were not involved, that is, would
projects be undertaken if the true costs and
benefits were known beforehand? Project
promoters appear to think delusion is necessary
to get projects started and they effectively
produce deceptive forecasts Martin Wachs
interviewed public officials, consultants, and
planners who had been involved in transit
planning cases in the U.S. He found that a
pattern of highly misleading forecasts of costs
and patronage could not be explained by technical
issues and were best explained by lying.
In case after case, planners, engineers and
economists told Wachs that they had had to cook
forecasts in order to produce numbers that would
satisfy their superiors and get projects started,
whether or not the numbers could be justified on
technical grounds.
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Dulles Rail-- No Way to do a PPTA
What do we do when our public officials lie to us
and hide the truth? The ugly history of the
Dulles Rail promotion in the Capital of
government by the people, of the people, and for
the people --2001 Secret vote of the
Commonwealth Transportation Board replaces
previously authorized Bus Rapid Transit
demonstration project to heavy rail. No minutes,
no agenda, no notice, no recorded vote in
violation of Virginia Open Government
law. --2004 Special Transportation Tax District
put together by interested private landowners
with no notice nor open meetings, arbitrary
boundaries. Rubber Stamped by Fairfax Board of
Supervisors. -2007. Secret no-bid construction
contract with Bechtel with all important numbers
redacted. -2008 Turnover to Airports Authority
with no supervision of General Assembly. All
meetings of Airports Authority are in executive
session and free from Virginia FOIA law. MWAA has
the ability to raise Dulles Toll Road tolls with
only a notice.
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• To-Do List 1
• Build the Second Crossing Bridge
• --We have 7 major crossings of the Potomac in
  the DC Area
• --Baghdad has 11 river crossings
• --Pyongyang has 7
• Should be tolled, and tolls
• will pay for most of the cost.
• Toll only for new or expanded
• Capacity.
• Can and should be a PPP
• With the public sector
• Contributing the right of way

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• To Do List 2 -Build a Connected Network of
  Congested Managed Lanes
• I-395, portion of I-495 a good start, BUT
• --too many close interchanges drive up
  costs and complicates driving experience.
  Congested Managed Lanes should be designed for
  thru traffic with crossovers to the general
  purpose lanes only every 5 miles or so.
• -- lobbying by Tysons landowners resulted
  in at least one interchange too many (Jones
  Branch Drive) and a confusing, if not terrifying,
  network of lanes east of Tysons Corner
• Interchange with Dulles Toll Road and end of HOT
  lanes at Georgetown Pike will fail and may
  destroy the usefulness of the southern HOT lane
  section

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Why do Express Toll Lanes work?
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The Dulles to DC Loop 122 HOT lane miles at 1
billion cost. All financed by the private sector
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• To-Do list 3
• Give the Tysons Landowners all the building
  potential they want, as long as they pay for the
  public infrastructure to support it

Lower Manhattan, 57 transit stops
Tysons study area, 1700 acres
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• But give the same building potential to everyone
  else.
• Dont get taken into the downtown economic
  engine pitch which inevitably overloads our
  transportation system in one direction during
  rush hours. Plan for a post-automotive, multi
  centric city (eg Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta).
• Dump the proffer system and go to impact fees.
  Zoning and proffers are inherently corrupt ideas
  and increase the uncertainty of development,
  thereby increasing costs to the end user.

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Traffic and Density

• Up to densities of 30,000 per square mile, linear
  increase of roadway use.
• At higher densities, per capita roadway use
  declines.
• Tysons population density is currently about
  5,000 per square mile (20,000 over 4 square
  miles)
• Conclusion Tysons would have to densify more
  than 6 times current level to have any transit
  related effect and 12 times current level before
  significant lessening of per capita highway use
  (60,000 people per square mile)
• Question Who is adding to highway capacity?
• Kemper Freeman research, Seattle
  http//www.letsgetwashingtonmoving.com/pages/Kempe
  rQA.doc

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To-Do List 4 Deregulate land use use,
density, and height of structures built on
private land. --commercial, industrial, retail
immediately --residential, after ten years,
giving neighborhood Associations time to develop
local governmental structures if they want, or in
older neighborhoods selling as a group to
developers proposing more intensive uses --
Goal lower land costs and produce the result in
Houston where real estate related costs are the
lowest in the nation and perhaps in the world.
Houston, adjusted for cost of living, is 1 in
the U.S.
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• To Do list 5 Keep the Tax Structure Sensible
• Taxes should be low, uniform, and with few
  exemptions. Virginia needs to keep sales and
  income tax levels at southern levels. Let the
  states north of the Potomac tax themselves into
  oblivion.
• 2) It is a mistake to have separate classes of
  real estate. The Virginia constitution allows
  differential rates only for agricultural,
  horticultural, forestal, and open space. This
  requirement for uniformity is violated in the
  Commercial/Industrial tax for Northern Virginia
  and Norfolk and the Dulles Rail Special Tax
  district. A challenge to these taxes is pending
  in Fairfax Circuit Court.
• The best transportation tax is a local option
  gasoline tax, provided the money is spent
  according to strict cost effectiveness ratings
  for actual transportation improvements. This is
  not happening with the 0.11/100 Northern Virginia
  Transportation Authority tax, which is being
  spent for politically correct boondoggles by
  their board members.
• Transition towards road metering. Equipment cost
  is nearing 100 per vehicle. This will enable
  time of day and location metering, as used in
  Singapore and Germany (truck traffic). Studies
  are being done for broader use in the Netherlands
  and Oregon.

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To-do List No. 6 Fire all the Planners who
dont have a Professional Engineering
Degree --The pseudo-architects and innumerates
can find jobs elsewhere.
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To-do list 7 --Dump the Rail Why cant we all
just get along- Because there is a limit to
money and the ability to tax for
infrastructure Reprogram the money for
Congestion Managed Lanes. Each dollar invested by
either the public or private sector in HOT lanes
will accommodate 30x the traffic.
For more information on Dulles Rail,
consult www.dullescorridorusersgroup.com
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Total Cost of Dulles Rail-- 25 billion, 95 paid
by local business
Of the estimated 6 billion construction
cost --4.5 billion will be paid from
securitizing the tolls from the Toll Road. At
7.5 total cost giving effect of interest,
amortization, and debt service coverage of a
likely BBB- rated revenue bond, the cost per
annum is 335,000,000 per year. --The Special
Tax District is capped at 625 million, costing
landowners 45 million per year. --Loudoun BPOL
taxes and higher airline tickets will cost 30
million per year. --Operating costs to collect
fares will cost 15 million per year. --The
Silver Line deficits are projected to run
110,000,000 per year, which the transfer
agreement states will be paid for by Toll Road
users. --Depreciation and amortization of
equipment should be budgeted at 90 million per
year (3 of 3 billion). Total yearly costs
will be 625,000,000 a year, or 1.7 million per
day. Over a 40 year FTA project lifetime, this
cost is 25 billion. Only 900 million will be a
grant the project is thus funded locally at a
96 llevel.
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Dulles Super-Toll Road Gridlocked.
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TEAR DOWN THE TOLL PLAZAS
The worldwide design paradigm is free outer
lanes, HOT inner lanes tolled by transponder. No
precedent for free airport access supported by
tolls on local roads. Rejected universally for
good reasons- none of our regional competitors
would tolerate this tax on local business. Cost
of Dulles Rail will be about 1 million per day.
In contrast, the historically depressed economic
conditions are costing local business only
250,000 a day to carry vacant space along the
Dulles Corridor.
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The Gotta Get that rail link to the Airport to
be a real city argument

• Rail links to International Airports arent worth
  the money for the following reasons
• The distance from baggage retrieval to train
  boarding is too long typically 1/5 to ¼ mile.
  The Dulles center terminal will be no better.
  Coach service departures are typically located
  several hundred feet from baggage retrieval.
• Trains typically run less frequently than
  optimized direct coach services, which offer
  direct to destination delivery rather than just
  to a train station.
• Trains typically operate at around 35 mph whereas
  coach services on a congested managed highway
  operate at 55 mph. Heavy rail from Dulles to DC
  core is 1 hour. With HOT lanes, time is ½ hour.
• Express coaches always offer seating and baggage
  handling help.
• For near destinations, taxis or hotel vans are a
  better bet, faster and more comfortable.

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Impact on Dulles Airport

• Rail actually bad for airport
• 3 per ticket surcharge for everyone around 3
  of users will take rail. Equivalent to a 100 per
  ride subsidy for trip to airport. Much cheaper to
  give a voucher for 50 of taxi ride.
• Configuration of free and uncongested inner lanes
  encourages commuters to take the extra five
  minutes to drive around the airport and avoid
  tolls and congestion. This is poor design and the
  wrong economic incentive.
• Recent rail links to international airports have
  dismal patronage JFK, Newark, Shanghai, San
  Francisco
• Dulles rated the third-worst medium size airport
  worldwide in terms of passenger satisfaction
  (2004 JD Powers study). Last thing it needs is
  higher cost structure. Airport now gets more
  traffic from congested Route 28 N/S and roads
  west than from the Dulles Corridor.

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Airport Illustrations with todays best
thinking 1) Beijings terminal 3.
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To-do 8--maintain the heavy rail system, but
dont expand it

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• Transit Math 101- Parking costs are the Key. To
  minimize auto use, if you really want to, raise
  the tax on parking spaces.
• Cost comparison
• Add the marginal cost of using a personal vehicle
  (for cars about 15 cents a mile) to parking
  costs.
• For a 20 mile commute each way, thats 6.
• 2) The fare for transit plus the value of your
  extra time via transit. For most urban commutes
  of ½ hour each way, the extra time is equal to
  the personal vehicle time or say 1 hour. Multiply
  the 1 hour times the cost for your time (at an
  income of 50k per year, at 2,000 hours of work,
  25 per hour), add a few dollars for fare, and
  youre at 28 per round trip.
• If your destination provides free parking, its
  almost always better to drive. If parking is
  north of 15-20 per day, transit is worth a look.
  Thats the experience in most urban areas.
• Some commentators try to use average rather than
  marginal cost for personal travel, but thats not
  the way people behave. In wealthy countries,
  people own and use cars, period.

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Who should pay for transit? First, the users.
There should be 100 farebox recovery. To the
extent that the lesser income population needs
help, they should get vouchers. (Note experience
with federal vouchers at 120 a month) In most
of the USA parking must be built (either by code
or by market demand) at about a 11 ratio between
gross building area and parking area (including
circulation), at a cost beginning at 10,000 a
space (excluding land) and increasing rapidly for
smaller decks and underground parking. Therefore,
BUILDERS/OWNERS should pay for transit
construction subsidies TO THE EXTENT THAT IT
SAVED THEM PARKING COSTS (cost minus parking
revenues/fees). If there are NO parking savings
and in suburbia, there are none, owners should
NOT be asked to pay for transit. Note very few
private builders, even at Metro stops, are
building less parking than code.
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In Conclusion Its not what we dont know
that causes problems. Its what we think we know
that isnt true. Thank you.