Walking and the Life of the City Symposium

Here is the abstract to my paper I'm presenting at tomorrow's Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University "Walking and the Life of the City Symposium." Details here.

Planning for Pedestrians within Multi-modalism: A Normative Framework

Abstract

            It is well known aphorism that all transit riders are also pedestrians. Transit stations are planned and built with this truth in mind, though with varying degrees of success for increasing ridership and pedestrian activities.  Though all transit riders are pedestrians is a matter of fact, addressing the pedestrian environment subsequent to transit suggests a casualty that may not be appropriate. A more accurate explanation of the transit rider-pedestrian relationship is that many pedestrians are also transit riders. By focusing on planning and creating walkable communities first demand for transit can guide new transit services and offer true mobility enhancements to pedestrians.

            In this research I examine “chicken and egg” problems with transit investment, specifically with regard to the development of walkable communities. In this I argue that planners should not confuse a premium for walkable communities with a concurrent premium for transit oriented communities. There are multiple reasons for rethinking the relationship between walking and transit investment. Transit is well suited to managing commute trips, and depending on the vehicle technology either short or long commutes. Though transit mode share is quite low as a share of overall travel, as a share of commute trips into and out of the Central Business Districts transit does quite well in cities across the country. Where transit does especially poorly is for non-work trips, which comprise nearly 80 percent of total travel in the United States. It is these non-work trips that also offer the greatest opportunities for increasing walking and non-motorized travel.

            I argue that the largest problem facing pedestrian planning and investment is in financing any investments.  However, the main problem of finance is not one of inadequate resources (though this can be a problem) but one of decoupled revenue generation from expenditure. As pedestrian investment improves local property values property taxes and assessments should be used to finance any improvements. This is not simply for economic efficiency but if pedestrian improvements are financed by gas taxes then officials also have strong incentives and requirements to also improve automobility.

            This research also examines policy approaches to re-orient transport planning to give pedestrians priority over other modes. Local policies that dramatically affect the pedestrian environment include the supply and location of off-street parking, street widths and classifications and sidewalk maintenance. Additionally, efforts to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to improve pedestrian access for all are evaluated. The paper concludes with policy recommendations—some practical and some radical—based on a normative approach to pedestrian planning and multi-modalism.

Queuing, Congestion and Productivity

Slate has a new series on operations, and the first article is about queuing. Queuing is an important part of transport planning because nearly all journeys require waiting in line at some point. From the story, here are the main problems people have with waiting in lines:

There are three givens of human nature that queuing psychologists must address: 1) We get bored when we wait in line. 2) We really hate it when we expect a short wait and then get a long one. 3) We really, really hate it when someone shows up after us but gets served before us.

These apply to traffic congestion, waiting for the bus, negotiating construction zones and other aspects of traffic.   New York City's newish subway countdown clocks are designed to provide information that makes waiting for the train less onerous. People are happier with their service simply by knowing how long their wait will be even though the total journey time remains the same.

In transport planning we think about how onerous various types of waiting are to the travelers, and sometimes we try to do something about it. For instance, the countdown clocks, freeway ramp meters (here is one paper by David Levinson et al. on the difficulty of figuring out how onerous delay from ramp meters and congested traffic is), better bus stops, televisions or other diversions at station are all ways to minimize the negative aspects of queuing without actually changing overall travel time much, if at all. (Ramp meters may have larger effects on travel times for some trips.) Given that queuing is such a large part of transport policy, there are still many misconceptions about it.

Consider congestion, which is simply a slow queue. Congestion is viewed in most cases as a cost to society because it represents lost productivity. Eric Dumbaugh examines this relationship in the Atlantic Cities (story here) and challenges this orthodoxy on the grounds that the most productive cities are also the most congested:

With the help of my research assistant Wenhao Li, I sought to determine whether vehicle delay had a negative effect on urban economies. I combined TTI’s data on traffic delay per capita with estimates of regional GDP per capita, acquired from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. I used 2010 data for both variables, converted them to their natural logs, and modeled them using regression analysis.
And what did I find? As per capita delay went up, so did GDP per capita. Every 10 percent increase in traffic delay per person was associated with a 3.4 percent increase in per capita GDP. For those interested in statistics, the relationship was significant at the 0.000 level, and the model had an R2 of 0.375. In layman’s terms, this was statistically-meaningful relationship.

This is consistent with Brian Taylor's arguments laid out in "Rethinking Traffic Congestion," published in Access. Congestion occurs in socially and economically vital places. Of course, congestion occurs in lousy economies, too, which is one of the reasons we always hear of congestion as a cost.

(In the period after World War II queues were viewed as a failure of socialism by people like Winston Churchill and eventually queues were viewed as a sign of economic decline and malaise. (See Joe Moran's work for more on queuing in the UK. Here is a link to one paper and here is a book.))

Ultimately, however, not all queues are created equally, and in some cases congestion queues demonstrate economically vibrant areas, and in some cases congestion queues represent scarcity, lack of options and wasted opportunities. The optimal amount of congestion is not zero. If there isn't any congestion or queues in an area the area will seem dead, so we do want some congestion and waiting. A more nuanced understanding of the challenges presented by queues and congestion is needed.

The Productive Value of Transport Infrastructure

Gideon Rachman writes in the Financial Times that:

Spending on infrastructure – “shovel-ready” projects, as President Barack Obama has called them – is, of course, a standard Keynesian solution for an economy that is caught in a downward recessionary spiral. Under normal circumstances, such spending might be a great idea.

In Europe, however, there are plenty of reasons to be sceptical. If building great roads and trains were the route to lasting prosperity, Greece and Spain would be booming. The past 30 years have seen a huge splurge in infrastructure spending, often funded by the EU. The Athens metro is excellent. The AVE fast-trains in Spain are a marvel. But this kind of spending has done very little to change the fundamental problems that now plague both Greece and Spain – in particular, youth unemployment. 

Worse, in some ways, EU funding for infrastructure has created problems. In Greece, milking the EU for subsidies became an industry in itself: and political connections were a surer route to wealth than entrepreneurial flair.

Story at this link.

We often hear about the productivity and economic benefits of large transportation investments. In the US the California high speed rail line is touted as a boon to employment, the environment and the economy. It's worth considering under what circumstances transport infrastructure investment will actually achieve some of these goals.

Transport investment leads directly to jobs in construction and manufacturing sectors. These are the direct employment benefits that people love. These jobs are also the direct employment costs of the project, so employment related to building infrastructure is not an unambiguous good. If the public spends money to support employment, which is common and popular policy decision, then we should try to focus investment where it is most cost effective. It's plausible that European countries are somewhat better off because of the employment infrastructure investment provided, but that's far from certain and the debt costs are now crushing.

Outside of direct employment gains, where are the expected productivity gains? All of the new rail and road (and airport) investments were not enough to avoid financial catastrophe. This is likely because the incremental gains from new investment were not sufficiently great to overcome the incremental costs. What is the economic value of shifting travelers from air or car trips to rail trips? Travel time savings are not an obvious productivity gain even though travelers may be individually happier. Since the air and road connections were already high quality the shift from air to train or car to train shifted existing economic activity rather than create much new economic activity. Some areas gained while other areas declined as new infrastructure improved or reduced accessibility. The net benefits are small.

In countries with poor or non-existent infrastructure the potential gains are huge. China, for instance, has poor quality roads and much of the country lacks reasonable access to the wealth of the eastern part of the country. In such cases high quality transport networks can unlock economic gains by lowering transportation costs. This was the case with the US Interstate system, which fostered cheap, reliable transport by truck.

When we invest in transport infrastructure to goose economic activity or realize productivity gains (I'll leave environmental issues for another time) we have to evaluate the costs and benefits based on current conditions. Transport infrastructure isn't magic, but it is critical, and money spent on glamour projects is money that can't be invested elsewhere. Supply side trickle down economics doesn't work for income taxes and doesn't work for supply side transport investment. Much transport investment redistributes economic activity rather than increases economic activity. Such investments may be net positive but is often net negative. It's important to understand clearly what happens with investment and invest wisely.