The Road Worrier: A Time To Stimulate, And A Time To Innovate

May 6, 2009 at 1:29 pm

(Source: Glenn Havinoviski, Columnist @ ITS Virginia)

Glenn N. Havinoviski is an Associate Vice President and ITS Group Director for HNTB Corporation in Arlington, Virginia.  In his recent column on ITS Virginia’s quarterly Newsletter, Glenn discussed his views on the stimulus funding towards transportation projects and their impact on ITS, jobs, etc.  Here is an excerpt from the PDF version attached here.  

You gotta hand it to the new President. In less than four weeks,he got his way, running roughshod over a political opposition unableto develop or convince others of their own vision and ideas. Uncle”O” signed into law a $785 billion stimulus, an ode to the power ofhope, change and the ability to print lots of money. In Virginia alone,some $700 million will be provided for “shovel-ready” transportationprojects, to be selected in the next few weeks by state officials.Among those projects will be several initiatives related to trafficmanagement, operations and ITS. While the purpose of the stimulusis first and foremost the creation of new jobs, closer to home I knowit may preserve some existing jobs.While I believe this example of Federal largesse will end upbeing more a historical exception rather than the rule, we’ve alreadythrown a like amount at the banks and the struggling auto industry,courtesy of Mr. Obama’s wayward predecessor.So far, it is unclear what that money has gotten us. Banks stillwon’t make loans, GM still can’t sell cars, and too many bank executivesare still partying in Vegas and elsewhere. The toxic assets arestill toxic, and still dwindling in value, seemingly by the hour.

With the horrendous transportation funding cut-backs at thestate level and limited support from elected officials, VDOT hasbeen forced to create an austere vision, one which emphasizesoperating what we have, as opposed to ramrodding a programcontaining projects which in many cases have been deferred acrossseveral lifetimes. The new-look Federal government may be seekingto bankroll a future transit and clean-energy vehicle utopia. But Virginia, as with many other states, has been economically forcedto be more pragmatic with their own money and make very hardbut practical choices.

With all the excitement over a suddenly activist Federal government,what is in danger of getting lost in the mix has been theprogress made in the last decade toward innovative use of resources- including partnerships to leverage both government and privateinvestment, using tolling and road pricing both as revenue streamand as demand management tool, and development of a networkof vehicle-roadside communications for both safety and mobilityapplications.Such approaches to transportation improvements heavily dependon collection and monitoring of real-time information, alongwith electronic payment services and dedicated short-range communications(DSRC). They also create new opportunities for jobs,as well as new markets for information and technology services.No question that they could benefit from, but are not completelydependent on, the largesse of the young handsome Uncle “O” anda largely (but not completely) sympathetic Congress. “

G.O.P. Résumé, Cabinet Post, Knack for Odd Jobs – NY times profiles “Professor of Cocktail Situations” USDOT Sec. Ray LaHood

May 5, 2009 at 1:06 pm

(Source: NY Times)

WASHINGTON — Ray LaHood, the secretary of transportation, is not one to toot his own horn over how much he knows about planes, trains and automobile bailouts. On the contrary.

“I don’t think they picked me because they thought I’d be that great a transportation person,” Mr. LaHood says with refreshing indifference as to how this admission might play if, say, he were ever to bungle a bridge collapse.

Yes, transportation is Mr. LaHood’s day job, a post that a few days ago required him to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for a highway in New Hampshire, speak to a group about the dangers of tailgating trucks and discuss “bird strikes” on CNN.

But one of the astonishing things about Mr. LaHood, 63, is how limited his transportation résumé is, how little excitement he exudes on the subject (other than abouthigh-speed rail) and how little he seems to care who knows it. So why exactly did President Obama pick this former seven-term Republican congressman from Illinois to oversee everything that moves?

Mr. LaHood posits a theory. “They picked me because of the bipartisan thing,” he explained, “and the Congressional thing, and the friendship thing.”

The “bipartisan thing” and the “Congressional thing” are self-evident: Mr. LaHood is a Republican with close ties to Capitol Hill. One White House insider described Mr. LaHood as “a master of odd jobs,” whose knowledge of Washington allows him to take on assignments as varied as lobbying lawmakers on the budget and helping political novices in the cabinet navigate Beltway social rituals (“cocktail situations,” as Energy Secretary Steven Chu calls them).

In the White House, Mr. Chu describes Mr. LaHood, a former junior high school social studies teacher, as a source of “fatherly advice” for Washington newcomers like himself.

One “cocktail situation” occurred recently at the annual Gridiron Club dinner. Mr. LaHood was seated at the head table near Mr. Chu, and between Arne Duncan andTimothy F. Geithner, the education and Treasury secretaries. The men asked Mr. LaHood if they could flee the dinner before the interminable speechifying ended. No, Mr. LaHood counseled.

“I said, ‘Look, you’re window dressing,’ ” Mr. LaHood said. “ ‘You’re more of a prop. But it’s part of what we have to do.’ ” Mr. Chu and Mr. Duncan heeded the advice; Mr. Geithner did not.

Job Impacts of Spending on Public Transportation: An Update – APTA study says $1B public transportation spending creates 30,000 jobs

May 4, 2009 at 6:39 pm

(Source: American Public Transportation Association via More Riders)

Many transportation industry minds are wondering what is the tangible benefits from all this investment in transit? After spending nearly one billion dollars through their public transportation agencies, what do the taxpayers stand to reap?

 According to a new report by the American Public Transportation Association, 30,000 jobs (besides better public transportation).   That comes out to one new job for every $33,333 in spending. Not bad at all, as economic development projects go.   

The study report released on April 29th shows that investing in public transportation provides jobs to the American workers who may need them the most.  Job Impacts of Spending on Public Transportation: an Update shows that two-thirds (67 percent) of the jobs created by capital investment in the public transit industry replaces lost blue-collar jobs with “green jobs” in the public transit sector.  The Economic Development Research Group prepared the study for the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). 

Overall, the study shows an investment of one billion dollars in public transportation supports and creates 30,000 jobs in a variety of sectors.  Based on these projections, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which provides $8.4 billion for public transportation projects, will create approximately 252,000 jobs for Americans and help transit systems meet the steadily growing demand for public transit services.  APTA released the study at the U.S. House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing Recovery Act: 10-Week Progress Report for Transportation and Infrastructure Programs.

“The ultimate goal in any economic recovery plan should be to not create just any type of job, but rather to invest in and focus on areas particularly hit hard by the economic downturn,” said William W. Millar, APTA president.  “The investment in public transit not only produces green jobs but also provides for a more sustainable transportation system that will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and lessen the transportation sector’s impact on the environment.”

The study reveals that two out of three (67 percent) of these new construction and manufacturing “green jobs” resulting from public transit capital investment typically fall in the category of Blue-Collar Semi-Skilled (59 percent) and Blue-Collar Skilled (8 percent).  These jobs include positions in manufacturing, service, repair worker, drivers, crew, ticket agents and construction. 

In addition, 33 percent of the new jobs as a result of public transit investment fall in the White-Collar Skilled (32 percent) or White Collar Semi-Skilled (1 percent) category.  These jobs include clerical, managerial and technical engineers.

Some of the key findings from this study are here:

  • The rate for federal funding of public transportation reflects a specific mix of capital investment and preventive maintenance funding as allowable by law.  Under current federal law, an estimated 30,000 jobs are supported per billion dollars of spending.

  • The national rate can vary from of 24,000 to 41,000 jobs per billion dollars of spending, depending on the spending mix.  The lower figure holds for spending on capital investments (vehicles and facilities), while the higher figure holds for spending on transit system operations. In reality, it is not logical to spend money on vehicles and not use them, nor is it logical to operate vehicles forever without any purchases of new equipment.  For these reasons, the average rate is a more meaningful number.

  • Looking across the entire $47 billion spent on public transportation in the US each year, there is an average rate of approximately 36,000 jobs per billion dollars of public transportation spending (i.e., 36 jobs per million dollars of spending).  This figure is based on the national mix of public transportation spending as of 2007.  It includes a direct effect of spending in transportation related manufacturing, construction and operations as well as orders to suppliers or by re-spending of worker income on consumer purchases.

The rate of jobs supported per billion dollars of spending will continue to change every year, as prices change and technologies evolve. 

Click here to read the entire report in HTML & to download a copy of the report in PDF format.  For those who like to stay without leaving this window, here is a read-only copy of the PDF report.

In line with the national trend, high gas prices drive changes in California fuel consumption

May 4, 2009 at 3:08 pm

(Source & Image: LA Times)

Drivers are turning to alternative fuels and cutting consumption.
 
Dick Messer is paying a pretty good price these days to fuel his drive from Riverside to work: the equivalent of about $1.35 a gallon. But Messer, who has collected, restored and raced gasoline-powered cars for more than 50 years, isn’t commuting on gasoline anymore to his job running the Petersen Automotive Museum in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles.
Messer still owns such classic rides as a 1963 Lincoln Continental, a 1953 Cadillac Fleetwood and a Saleen Mustang. Yet the only car Messer wants to talk about is the $24,000 Honda Civic GX that runs on compressed natural gas, which he bought in February 2008 as gasoline prices rose toward a July peak above $4 a gallon.
“I can get to the museum from my home in Riverside and back on one tank easily,” driving alone in the carpool lane, Messer said. “I pay $1.35 a gallon to fill it up, and the price is capped at $1.99 a gallon. I’ll never have to pay more than that. No matter what happens to the price of gasoline.”
Messer is hardly alone in his aversion to steep gas prices. California drivers appear to believe that gasoline shouldn’t cost more than $2 a gallon, and they have been proving it for nearly three years. 

Gasoline consumption in California began falling in April 2006, and for 11 straight calendar quarters dropped below gas use in the year-earlier period even though the state added 790,000 new licensed drivers. First-quarter gasoline use hasn’t yet been released by the California State Board of Equalization, which on Thursday said Californians consumed 1.21 billion gallons of gasoline in January, down 22 million gallons, or 1.8%, from the previous January. 

Agency statistics show the pattern began between January and September 2005, when the average gas price climbed from $1.96 to $3.06. 

That was California’s first brush with $3-a-gallon gas. It lasted just two weeks in 2005, according to the Energy Department’s weekly survey of filling stations, but it was long enough to trigger behavior changes.

For all of 2005, gasoline consumption rose by just 30 million gallons to 15.95 billion gallons, according to the state equalization board, which gathers the numbers from taxes paid by fuel distributors. The pace was well off the boom years from 2000 to 2004, when gas use grew by an average of 343 million gallons a year.

“The tipping point is $2,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, senior energy analyst at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy in Houston. “People start to respond to fuel prices and make changes at $2 a gallon. At $3 a gallon, it becomes noticeable. It really gains in momentum. The longer the price stays higher than $3, the deeper and more lasting the structural changes.”

In 2007, with gasoline prices above $3 a gallon for 34 weeks, California consumption fell 270 million gallons below 2005 levels. In 2008, with gasoline topping $4.58 a gallon in July and the depth of the nation’s economic crisis beginning to sink in, Californians used 910 million fewer gallons than they did in 2005.

Messer turned to a different fuel. Stephen Stone of Norwalk bought an all-electric Zap Xebra. Robert Cruz of Oxnard went back to a 1970 Volkswagen because it got better mileage than anything else he’s driven. Alan Thomas of Oxnard adds a few gallons of transmission fluid to his tank to cut fuel costs.

“Sometimes I just used to go out and take a drive,” Thomas said. “When was the last time you heard anyone say, ‘I’m going out for a drive’? I don’t drive any more than I have to now.”

Millions of other Americans also are parking more. A 2008 Brookings Institution report called “The Road . . . Less Traveled” found that “consistent annual growth” in vehicle miles traveled in the U.S. leveled off in 2004. By 2007, miles driven declined for the first time since 1980 and at the fastest rate since the end of World War II, said Robert Puentes, senior fellow at Brookings’ metropolitan policy program and a co-author of the report.

“Americans have simply been driving less. . . . At the same time driving has declined, transit use is at its highest level since the 1950s, and Amtrak ridership just set an annual ridership record in 2008,” Puentes wrote.

Some experts say Americans are far less likely to accept high fuel prices than their European counterparts.

In the U.S., “we have always had cheap gasoline for the most part and most Americans don’t feel like they have that much of an alternative,” said Bruce Bullock, director of the Maguire Energy Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “The higher prices go here, the more people feel like they are being taken for a ride.”

Another factor in changed driving behavior is anger, said Suzanne Shu, an assistant professor of marketing at the UCLA Anderson School of Business. Price surges in other consumer items, such as milk, tend to get lost in larger grocery bills. But buying gas is often a trip of its own, and the price is “in your face, almost every block,” Shu said.

Click here to read the entire article.

WashPost’s Dr. Gridlock: Train Fight Highlights Flaw In Call-Button Setup

May 4, 2009 at 2:12 pm

(Source: Washington Post)

Dear Dr. Gridlock:

I was on a packed Red Line train shortly after 6 p.m. [Monday] when a fight broke out between two passengers as the train was moving between Farragut North and Metro Center. As the two passengers fought near the forward end of the car, several passengers tried to find the emergency call button to call the train conductor.

 Apparently, the button was at the rear of the train car, but the train was so crowded it took some time for word to get to the passengers within reach of the call button. In the meantime, passengers in the center of the car, desperate to do something to get the attention of the train operator, opened the emergency box, which only has an emergency brake lever that stops the train, but no call button. A passenger pulled the lever, which stopped the train.A few moments later, the train operator, as if unaware of why the train stopped, asked passengers to stop leaning on the doors. About five tense minutes later — during which time a couple of good Samaritans kept the two combatants separated — two Metro police officers boarded the train and got it moving (after some struggle with the now-extended brake lever) to Metro Center.

No passengers were harmed, but the fact that there were no call buttons at the center of the train — where there was an emergency box — led to some unnecessary anxiety, delays as the train was stopped between stations, and may have further endangered passengers if the fight had continued while the train and passengers were trapped inside the tunnel.

— Isaiah J. Poole, Washington

Passengers can easily get confused about the purpose of the red boxes on either side of the central doors. They don’t control the brakes. Pulling the lever releases the central door so passengers can evacuate the car. Open that box only in an emergency, and on the instructions of the train operator after the train has stopped. Leaping from a moving train into a darkened tunnel is not an option.

The emergency door boxes are not a substitute for the intercoms. But on a crowded train, the intercoms are hard to get to at the ends of the cars, and sometimes — as we saw when train operators were inadvertently stopping with some rear cars still in tunnels — passengers don’t think about using them in time.

There’s a better setup on the newest cars: Call buttons and intercoms are in the middle of the cars as well as at the ends. And the boxes with the emergency door levers are colored beige, rather than red. The lettering says “Emergency Door Release.”

When the Red Line train’s lever was pulled by a rider in the fifth car on Monday, the train operator up front got an indication that there was a door problem. At the same time, Metro spokesman Steven Taubenkibel said, the train’s fail-safe system was bringing it to a stop. Transit police responded to the incident, located the fighters and removed them from the train at Metro Center, Taubenkibel said. They declined to press charges against each other.

A Word of Advise from TransportGooru:

1).  Dear Fight Club Members, it is already a painful experience commuting by DC’s Metro rail during the peak hours.  And you people make it worse by getting into such silly fights without knowing that we are all terribly inconvenienced by your immature behavior.  If you really feel like duking it out, wait till you get to your stop and start jumping at each other.  

2). Dear Dr. Gridlock,  for your kind attention the suggestion to dial 9-1-1 or to use a cellphone to call out from a DC metro tunnel is “INVALID”.  The metro system didn’t realize the concept of “security” when it leased out the licenses only to Verizon, which means cellphone users with other carrers like AT&T, Sprint, etc are sitting ducks until they resurface from the tunnel to an above ground station or section of the track.  Talking about Social Equity and DC Metro makes me mad!  All damn tax payers paid for the system and how come Metro decided to lease out the lines only to the previleged Verzion customers?  This is a DUMB policy and only validates eagerness to remain out of touch and incredibly partial & discreminatory!

Damning Report on State of Good Repair Needs Released

April 30, 2009 at 5:42 pm

Federal Transit Administration’s study indicates that the nation’s largest rail systems have a long way to go before they’re ready for prime time

(SOurce: FTA via The Transport Politic)

In December 2007, several senators asked the Federal Transit Administration to study the capital needs of the nation’s largest rail systems, and the government agency has released its report today. To put it bluntly, its conclusions are damning and indicate that the United States must invest far more in maintaining its existing transit infrastructure than it is currently, or suffer the consequences of rotting tracks, vehicles, and stations.

Notably, the report indicates that the seven systems studied (Chicago’s CTA, Boston’s MBTA, New York’s MTA, New Jersey Transit, San Francisco’s BART, Philadelphia’s SEPTA, and Washington’s WMATA) have a total $50 billion backlog of repairs necessary to upgrade equipment to a state of good repair. Based on current funding, that backlog will stretch on for decades if nothing is done. The existing fixed guideway modernization programprovides about $5.4 billion annually for capital upgrades on the nation’s older lines at an 80% federal share.

The report recommends that the federal government increase spending on funding repairs to existing fixed guideway systems, arguing that it remains necessary for these agencies to upgrade their vehicles, tracks, and stations to an adequate quality. Importantly, the study suggests that the current formula for distributing funds – based on an insane 7-tier process – is inappropriate, and that more money be distributed directly to those agencies most in need of improvements.

More importantly, though, the FTA suggests that the Congress authorize an average of $4.2 billion more annually over the next twelve years with a temporary state of good repair fund (alternatives also provided: $8.3 billion annually over six years or $2.5 billion annually over twenty). That would require the government to commit to a total average of $10.1 billion in funds annually for the program. Thereafter, once repairs are complete, the report suggests that the program should be designed to continue funding agencies at a level of $5.9 billion annually.

Click here to read the entire report.  For those who prefer to browse quickly, here is a Read-only PDF.
 

Video report from London: Wired takes you inside the underbelly of London’s Tube

April 30, 2009 at 10:25 am

(Source: Wired)

US Transportation Secretary LaHood cites stimulus money success

April 29, 2009 at 7:07 pm

The federal government has already committed nearly $11 billion in stimulus money to help get road, bridge and environmental projects off the ground, administration officials told Congress on Wednesday.

“I believe we have already achieved enormous success,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told the House Transportation Committee, giving a progress report on infrastructure money allotted under the $787 billion economic stimulus bill passed in February.

Lahood, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, told the panel his department had made decisions on $9 billion dollars in projects around the country out of Transportation’s $48 billion share of the stimulus package.  However, he was less specific about the jobs directly resulting from stimulus spending.

It was originally estimated that the $64 billion in the stimulus for infrastructure — for transit, high speed rail, aviation, federal buildings and Army Corps of Engineers projects as well as roads and bridges — would create or sustain 1.8 million jobs.

But so far, reports on new jobs were mostly anecdotal. The Transportation Committee said its survey of state and local transportation officials revealed that work had begun on 263 highway and transit projects in 30 states, putting about 1,250 workers back on the job.

D.J. Stadtler, Jr., chief financial officer for Amtrak, said it expected to produce about 4,600 jobs in the first year of the stimulus with investment of $1.3 billion.

Unemployment in the construction industry soared to nearly 2 million in March, about 21.1 percent compared with 13 percent a year ago.

Rep. John Mica of Florida, top Republican on the committee, questioned the job-creation effectiveness of the program, saying some projects might take three to four years to get off the ground. But he said he would withhold judgment, saying, “We have to give folks a pass at this juncture.”

The Government Accountability Office, in a report prepared for the hearing, also raised questions about the ability of states and Washington to track how the money is being spent. But it gave some states high marks for moving the money quickly.

The Transportation Committee said that, as of April 17, states had received approval for 2,163 projects, about 25 percent of the $27.5 billion.

Also:

_The Federal Transit Administration has awarded five projects totaling $48.6 million and has another 109 grants totaling $1.47 billion pending review.

_The Federal Railroad Administration has approved 52 Amtrak capitol improvement projects worth $938 million.

_The administration is to announce plans by this summer on awarding projects for $8 billion in high speed rail development.

_The Federal Aviation Administration has announced more than $1 billion in tentative spending for runways, aprons and terminal improvements.

_The General Services Administration has a plan for investing $5.55 billion, including $4.3 billion for a green building program.

(Source: AP)

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is Not Alone in its Financial Struggles

April 28, 2009 at 5:02 pm

(Source:  The Brookings Institute)

Transit agencies across the US are facing service cutbacks and fare increases in order to close their budget gaps. The largest, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), is no exception. In its 2009 budget, the agency proposes painful service cutbacks and fare increases to help cover a projected deficit of around $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, the state senate failed to unite around a rescue plan last week. And while Washington did provide $8.4 billion in stimulus funds for transit this year (with over $1 billion allocated to the MTA), this money can be spent only on capital improvement projects and not to finance gaps in day-to-day operations.

An op-ed by the Brookings Institution’s Robert Puentes and Emilia Istrate offers recommendations for closing the MTA’s budget gap. They recommend raising state support to national levels and urge the federal government to step aside and empower metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs, such as operating expenses. Over the long term, some form of federal competitive funding for operating assistance also might provide the right incentive – or reward – to states and localities to commit to funding transit.

Extract from the op-ed:

Why the disconnect?

The response in Washington is predictably stubborn: Recovery money cannot be used for operating expenses because operating is not a federal role.

You would think that the pressure of this policy would lead to transit agencies that are self-sufficient – where passenger fares pay the full costs of operating the system. 

But large metropolitan transit agencies generally “recover” only about one-third of their costs from subway riders and about one-quarter from bus passengers. The MTA has the highest cost-recovery ratio among all subway operators – its fares pay for two-thirds of operating costs. 

For large bus systems, the MTA’s New York City Transit ranks second only to New Jersey‘s in terms of the share of operating costs paid for by riders. The Long Island Rail Road is the seventh among the 21 commuter rail systems in the country, recovering from fares close to half of its operating costs.

So what should be done to close the MTA’s budget gap?

For one thing, lawmakers in Albany need to recognize that the state contributes a lower proportion of the MTA’s budget from its general revenue than other states provide to their transit agencies from general revenue. In New York, about 4 percent of all the MTA operating costs are covered by the state budget; in other states, transit agencies are getting closer to 6 percent.

Raising state general fund support to national levels would be a good place to start helping the MTA. 

Another idea is to get Washington to help. Not in doling out more money, but in stepping aside and empowering metropolitan agencies to spend their federal money in ways that best meet their own needs.

Click here to read the entire article.

Why Conservatives Should Care About Transit – A great article by David Schaengold, The Witherspoon Institute

April 27, 2009 at 5:11 pm

(Source: Public Discourse – The Witherspoon Institute)

Public transit and walkable neighborhoods are necessary for the creation of a country where families and communities can flourish.

 When President Obama nominated Congressman Ray LaHood as his Secretary of Transportation, most media outlets paid attention long enough to note only that LaHood was a Republican from Illinois and the single pro-life member of Obama’s cabinet. Social conservatives, for their part, would rather have had an ally in the Department of Justice or the National Institute for Health. No one mentioned that it might be particularly appropriate that the cabinet’s one committed social conservative leads the Department of Transportation. 

It might seem as if nothing could be less important to social conservatives than transportation. The Department of Health and Human Services crafts policies that affect abortion, the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission play crucial roles in determining how prevalent obscenity is in our society, but the Department of Transportation just funds highways, airports, and railroads, or so the usual thinking goes. But decisions about these projects and how to fund them have dramatic and far-reaching consequences for how Americans go about their lives on a day-to-day basis. Transportation decisions have the power to shape how we form communities, families, religious congregations, and even how we start small businesses. Bad transportation decisions can destroy communities, and good transportation decisions can help create them. 

Sadly, American conservatives have come to be associated with support for transportation decisions that promote dependence on automobiles, while American liberals are more likely to be associated with public transportation, city life, and pro-pedestrian policies. This association can be traced to the ’70s, when cities became associated with social dysfunction and suburbs remained bastions of ‘normalcy.’ This dynamic was fueled by headlines mocking ill-conceived transit projects that conservatives loved to point out as examples of wasteful government spending. Of course, just because there is a historic explanation for why Democrats are “pro-transit” and Republicans are “pro-car” does not mean that these associations make any sense. Support for government-subsidized highway projects and contempt for efficient mass transit does not follow from any of the core principles of social conservatism. 

A common misperception is that the current American state of auto-dependency is a result of the free market doing its work. In fact, a variety of government interventions ensure that the transportation “market” is skewed towards car-ownership. These policy biases are too numerous to list exhaustively, but a few merit special recognition: 

-If a state is interested in building a new highway, the only major regulatory obstacle is completing an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). After this, the federal government will typically pay for a large portion of the project, and leave the details of its planning and construction to the state’s Department of Transportation. If a state or municipality is interested in a transit project like a subway, a streetcar, or a bus system, however, not only must it complete an EIS, it must also clear a barrage of regulatory hurdles, including a cost-effectiveness analysis, a land-use impact analysis, and a comparison with other transit systems. None of these requirements is necessarily bad in itself (though many of these regulations were designed only to make it harder to build transit systems), but highways aren’t subject to any of them. Naturally, states therefore find it easier to channel transportation dollars into highways. 

-As a 2003 report by the Brookings Institution points out, “federal funding for highway projects is more secure and generous than for transit projects; making highway projects easier to finance.” The Department of Transportation will typically match 80% to 90% of state funds directed towards highway repair or construction. Those same funds directed towards transit usually receive less than a 60% federal match, and carry further burdensome requirements for local funding that highway projects do not need to meet. 

-Zoning requirements in most municipalities mandate that shops and houses must be separated. It is widely illegal to build the old small-town main street with the mix of shops, houses, and apartments that many find charming (so charming that some of these towns have been turned into tourist attractions). Furthermore, in most states it is mandatory for new schools to be built next to hundreds of acres playing fields, and thus far away from residential neighborhoods (see this report and this paper for a fuller discussion of policies that affect travel to school). These and similar regulations ensure that there are no shops or schools—that is, major household destinations—within walking distance of the average American’s home, which in turn requires the average American to own and use a car, not merely to commute to work but to perform basic tasks like picking up a gallon of milk or sending the kids off to school in the morning. 

Click here to read the entire article.