From the Wayback Machine: 1992 was the year when everything changed (but not really)

I'm doing a bit of research on historical trends in transport planning, and part of this is trying to figure out the periods when we thought we figured it all out and things were going to change. Every few years we go through phases with lots of claims about how Things Are Different Now For Our Cities. Back in 1992, according to the Wall Street Journal, New Jersey was at the forefront of the nation's shift towards mass transit:

NEWARK, N.J. -- The conventional wisdom for solving the nation's transportation problems, from traffic jams, to deteriorating highways, to pollution, has always been simple: throw money at them. So why has New Jersey canceled $1.2 billion in new highway projects?

Backed by $5.65 billion in federal funds from a new six-year, $151 billion transportation bill, New Jersey officials are making an all-out effort to wean commuters from their autos and the crowded highways. Instead of spending on road projects, they have decided to gamble on mass transit, doubling the state's investments to $580 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1. They plan to tie the state together with low-pollution rail systems-and hope that tens of thousands of commuters use it. And if commuters don't, they'll find the highways even more crowded due to the lack of spending.

Despite Americans' longstanding love affair with the car, some say New Jersey is showing the way to a nation increasingly fed up with traffic and pollution. "We are watching New Jersey closely," says A. Ray Chamberlain, executive director of Colorado's Department of Transportation.

The story goes on to note that Colorado had just cancelled a large road project and did build some bike infrastructure.  There was also a description of the "life style changes" that were occurring and a new penchant for some ridesharing services:

Nonetheless, New Jersey's optimistic planners contend that the changes in its transportation policy will bring big changes in life styles. More people will share rides to work. Others will become telecommuters, linked to their offices through computers and telephone lines. And as more people use improved mass transit, suburban families may be able to shed their second cars.
The planners cite life-style changes in Portland, Ore., which froze the number of parking spaces downtown and built a light rail line. Since opening in 1986, the rail line has attracted more than $800 million of office, retail and residential development near train stations. "A lot of people are riding transit to downtown, and they are coming downtown not just for work but also for shopping and recreation," says Keith Bartholomew, staff attorney for a nonprofit land-conservation organization in Portland.
Lawrence Dahms, executive director of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission of the San Francisco Bay Area, also points to life-style changes. He says that in the mornings, commuters now line up along streets in Oakland and Berkeley to get rides to downtown San Francisco. By teaming up, the drivers and their passengers can use the high-occupancy vehicle lane approaching the Bay Bridge and save about 25 minutes compared with motorists driving alone. Mr. Dahms also says new Amtrak train service between San Jose and Sacramento has caught on fast, with ridership far above expectations.

These types of stories are compelling, but the above WSJ story could be written today almost verbatim, and there is no shortage of other similar stories from other years. For whatever meager gains we have realized toward transit, walking, cycling and shared vehicles, we haven't gotten very far for the amount of money and effort expended.  

 

Transport Finance without the Feds: The Canadian Model

Transport planning and policy in the United States is dominated by the federal gas tax. Currently 18.6 cents per gallon of gas and 24.6 cents per gallon of diesel, federal gas taxes are used to guide preferred transport investment across the country. For the past forty or so years, the federal gas tax has, in the words of Lisa Schweitzer, been buying everyone’s lunch. Yet all is not well. The federal gas tax hasn’t increased in 20 years, reducing the absolute and relative buying power of the revenue. Increased federal regulations and interest groups limit what the gas tax can be used for, and a steady stream of other people’s money (federal dollars) creates incentives to spend on transport projects that offer few benefits. At an extreme, transportation projects are developed and financed by federal monies withouteven bothering to claim any transportation benefits.

The declining share of federal money for transport finance has many people worried that transportation policy and finance will devolve to the states. Such devolution of authority is viewed as a necessarily lousy outcome, especially by progressives. (Richard Florida even wants a cabinet position for a Department of Cities. We didn't get urban renewal right the first time, so let’s try again, but with even more authority.) From my perspective, the status quo for transport policy and finance cannot be objectively defended as a success. Looking at the period of about 1971 (the year Amtrak was formed is a good marker of the beginning of the current era of federal policy, but just about any year between 1964-1974 works) to present US transport systems declined in nearly all measures of productivity, economic performance, social welfare, or just about anything else you care to measure. For whatever occasional successes US policy has had, the nation has received an extremely poor return on investments made. We can do better.

An experiment devolving transport policy and finance to the states is likely to improve overall performance of all aspects of transport. For evidence we can look to out chilly northern neighbors in Canada, which does not have anything equivalent to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Transport policy is the responsibility of the provinces, and transit policy is the responsibility of the cities. So how do Canadian cities compare?

The table below is drawn from Paul Mees’ work. The city regions are sorted by transit mode share. Every major Canadian region has higher transit mode share than US cities except New York, Chicago and San Francisco. The simple correlation between density and transit share is .48, so density does not adequately explain the differences. (Paul Mees wrote the book on this issue.) Canadian transit systems also have much higher farebox recovery ratios than in the US. The Toronto system has to maintain greater than 70% farebox recovery is order to receive subsidy for the balance.

Last week a new report on Toronto area transport finance was published that explains the financing structures in place there and potential future monies. Here is a link to the report. The authors promote many taxes and fees, all of which are economically sound and focus on raising money for transport by charging those who benefit from a well-functioning transport system. Essentially, if the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area needs new transport investment to maintain and improve economic competitiveness then they can and should raise the money locally.

 Local control can also lead to service innovations. David Levinson highlighted TransLink in Vancouver. Here is how he described the agency’s service:

TransLink is the multi-modal transportation organization for Greater Vancouver, BC, and it is unlike what we see in the States. It is in fact, closer to the idea described in Enterprising Roads, a transportation utility with autonomy constrained by oversight.One of the key points to consider is that metropolitan Vancouver has a transit mode share of 21%, comparable with much larger Toronto and Montreal (though behind metro New York's 30%, it is well ahead of Seattle's 9%), despite ranking 34th in population. Some of that has to do with institutional factors and governance.

In addition to service innovation and the ambitious expansion plans in Toronto, British Columbia instituted a carbon tax a few years ago, though this may not survive a scheduled vote in May. There are certainly problems with the decentralized system. Some Canadians want a national transit agency. Fragmented governance in regions makes coordination difficult, and perhaps a stronger regional agency is needed. Most difficult, perhaps, is that many cities forego transit service all together.* However, eliminating unproductive transit so that resources can be used elsewhere is actually good policy. But by nearly every measure Canadian transport policy outcomes are superior to US outcomes. Whether US transport finance and policy devolves to the states remains to be seen, but it certainly isn’t something that should be dismissed as inferior to what we have now. It may well be better.


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*This sentence was removed as it is incorrect (I had bad info on this case, but the larger point remains):"The city of Guelph, for instance, has 120,000 people but no bus service. "