Sustainable transportation: New fundamentals require new approaches

The following are comments of David Beach of the GreenCityBlueLake Institute to the Ohio 21st Century Transportation Priorities Task Force (July 12, 2008).

Thank you for the opportunity to offer some observations on the future of transportation in Ohio. As a member of the task force, I have spent the past few months doing a lot of listening — listening to the presentations made to the Maximizing Public Investment subcommittee and to testimony at several of the public input sessions. I have also been studying many national sources on the future of transportation.

At a recent meeting of our subcommittee, I was particularly struck by the comments of Pete Rahn, president of AASHTO. Reflecting on how dramatically and rapidly the transportation landscape has changed, he said, “We don't know how high fuel prices will go. We don't know how low revenues will drop. We don't know where transportation demand will come from. I feel like I’ve been dealt a new hand of cards, but no one told me what the game is yet.”

Changing fundamentals

Indeed, it’s astonishing how much the fundamentals of transportation are changing. Here is a brief summary of the forces that are making the present transportation system unsustainable in Ohio:

• The end of cheap oil — Much of the design of American society, including the transportation system, is predicated on abundant, cheap energy. However, increasing demand from developing nations and the possible peaking of global oil supplies are convincing many people that expensive gasoline will be a permanent fact of life. Already, $4 gas is creating an affordability crisis for many households. People are cutting back on driving, buying more fuel-efficient vehicles, and demanding more affordable transportation choices. Although gas prices have fallen in recent weeks, the long-term trend is for greater demand for scarce supplies around the world. 
• The ODOT funding crisis — ODOT’s financial capacity is eroding faster than most people realize. Not only are construction costs skyrocketing, but gas tax revenues are declining as motorists react to high gas prices and cut back on driving. This is an historic shift. Already there are concerns about ODOT’s ability to maintain the existing transportation system, much less build new projects. Incremental increases in gas taxes won’t plug the widening funding gap, even if such increases were politically possible.
• Climate change — To stabilize the Earth’s climate, we will need to act quickly to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent or more. A large share of the reductions will have to come from the transportation sector, which accounts for about a third of greenhouse gas emissions. What kind of transportation policy in Ohio will help produce this result? This is serious. We will have to do it. And it will require a very different transportation system.
• Air quality nonattainment — Metropolitan areas in Ohio are having great difficulty meeting national air quality standards, in large part because of vehicle emissions. Increasingly, the transportation sector will be under pressure to reduce pollution so economic development will not be constrained.
• Public health problems — Ohio’s obesity epidemic is related in part to people’s lack of daily physical activity. Our automobile-dependent transportation system, with its streets designed for speeding cars rather than pedestrians, contributes to the problem.
• Urban sprawl — Ohio is covered with cities big and small, and all of them are sprawling outward into the surrounding countryside. As a result, we have a constant demand for expanded infrastructure all over the state. At some point, someone has to say that this low-density pattern of development is not fiscally sustainable.
• Changing demographics and real estate markets — Smart developers know that today’s hottest real estate deals are in vibrant, walkable, transit-oriented neighborhoods. Yet our transportation investments are not focused on producing such environments.
• The affordability crisis — The foreclosure crisis is not just a product of bad home loans and over-extended credit. It’s also a product of the high costs of driving. The cost of housing is really the cost of the home plus the cost of transportation at that location. The lack of transportation choices is draining wealth from many Ohio households.

These are not small changes. The present transportation system – characterized by reliance on the automobile and the promotion of steadily increasing demand for greater mobility through sprawling suburbs – is being undermined in fundamental and permanent ways. I would argue, therefore, that our response must involve more than incremental reforms in the way the state manages or funds transportation. It won’t be enough to tinker with funding formulas or tolls (although I would agree that the state and federal governments do need to invest more in critical infrastructure). A one-shot surge of funds from leasing the Turnpike will only provide temporary relief. A more efficient ODOT administration will only be marginally better at perpetuating an unsustainable system.

Instead, we need to rethink transportation on a fundamental level. We need to imagine a transportation system that will be sustainable in an age of higher costs, climate change, and the other big changes.

Questions for a more sustainable transportation system

Here are the kinds of questions we should be asking if we are serious about developing transportation for the 21st century:

• How do we give people affordable transportation choices now that cars are increasingly unaffordable? This will mean making transit, bicycles, and trains real transportation options for more people, which in turn will require sustained investments in these modes.
• How can transportation investments promote the development of great places where people can drive less, walk more, improve their health, and save money? This will require an integration of land use planning and transportation planning.
• How can we focus on giving people access to what they want (family, friends, work, shopping, recreation, education) through smarter land use choices and urban design (access by proximity) rather than greater mobility?
• How can we replace demand inducing transportation (e.g., highways) with demand managing transportation (e.g., transit-oriented neighborhoods)?
• How can we break down the silos between funding sources (highway, transit, rail, air, water) so we can do integrated capital planning for the best mode of transportation that meets our needs?
• How can we start to think of transportation as a cost (money, time, pollution, etc.) to be avoided where possible instead of a good to be promoted?
• How can we design a transportation system that is carbon neutral?
• What should be ODOT’s new measures of success? Reduction in vehicle miles traveled? A more balanced mode split? Lower household costs for transportation? Lower cost for freight shipments?

Example of new transportation thinking

The questions above are really about how we invest transportation funds to create healthier communities while saving money. But it’s very hard to ask these questions within the current transportation planning culture — the regime of rules and worldviews within which ODOT operates.

I experienced how hard it is to pose such questions during the scoping process for the Cleveland Innerbelt. I was a member of the Innerbelt Scoping Committee, and I observed how ODOT and the engineering consultants viewed the project through the lens of traffic throughput. The main goal was to increase the flow of traffic through the city of Cleveland, and the only ways to accomplish this were to increase the capacity of the highway and surrounding roads by adding lanes and removing bottlenecks. The whole project became an exercise in computer modeling of traffic flows.

As an alternative, a number of us on the Scoping Committee tried to reframe the problem in terms of demand management — with solutions to be found in land-use planning and downtown housing. We argued that since the big problem with the Innerbelt is peak-hour congestion, the goal should be to provide more opportunities for people to live close to downtown jobs. Housing studies have shown that a large percentage of downtown residents work there and walk to work. Thus, one of the best ways — and the most sustainable way — to reduce traffic congestion is to promote downtown housing. This also would be one of the best investments for the long-term health and vitality of the city. Transportation funds could support such development in many creative ways, such as land assembly, city street improvements, and the building of parking structures. The concept would be to view these investments as transportation control measures that help meet the region’s transportation goals. The result would be a transportation solution with multiple benefits, including urban revitalization, economic development, improved air quality, better public health, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the potential benefits, this concept was never studied by the ODOT project team. I don’t think they could even imagine it, given the rigid constraints of the planning framework in which they operated. But this is the type of thinking we need if we are to create transportation solutions for the 21st century.

Closing comment

As a member of the Maximizing Public Investment subcommittee, I have listened to numerous ideas about how to get more funding for transportation. I want to emphasize that, while I agree that more funding is needed, it would be a mistake to think that more funds alone will solve our problems. Indeed, more funding to expand the current unsustainable transportation system would be detrimental. It would just dig Ohio into a deeper hole.

With this brief document, I have tried to frame some broader questions about transportation priorities. In the coming months, I look forward to working with task force members to answer these questions and develop a plan to implement a vision for sustainable transportation.