From: bobp@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To: dpolhill@xxxxxxx
Sent: 1/6/2022 12:05:01 PM Mountain Standard Time
Subject: Surface Transportation Newsletter #219
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| Surface Transportation Innovations |
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| By Robert W. Poole, Jr.
Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow and Director of Transportation Policy
January 2022 |
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This issue of Surface Transportation News is also available online here.
In this issue:
- FHWA vs. the bipartisan infrastructure law
- Beware the “induced demand” calculator
- Amtrak expansion and freight rail
- Traffic congestion is back, INRIX documents
- Mobile River toll bridge back in play
- Automated big rigs hauling freight
- News Notes
- Quotable Quotes
FHWA Versus the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Anti-highway and “smart growth” organizations lobbied hard for any new federal
transportation infrastructure law to focus on “fixing it first” when it comes
to highways, for expanding transit and passenger rail funding more than highway
funding, and for interpreting highway safety mostly as protecting bicyclists
and pedestrians using the roads. These groups would have cheered if the House
version of the surface transportation reauthorization bill had passed, but it
got dropped because it had no chance of passing in the Senate. Instead, the
House eventually agreed to the Senate-generated Infrastructure Investment and
Jobs Act (IIJA), which became commonly referred to as the bipartisan
infrastructure law (BIL).
The BIL includes a relatively traditional five-year reauthorization of the
federal highway and transit program (albeit with larger-than-usual increases
for transit and Amtrak). The anti-highway folks consoled themselves with the
law’s large increase in the number and funding of discretionary programs, which
enable U.S. Department of Transportation (US DOT) to define the criteria for
projects it likes—which turn out to be anti-highway, fix it first, more
transit, and an emphasis on bicycling and walking. That caused shockwaves at
state transportation departments and at AASHTO, their association. As David
Harrison reported in The Wall Street Journal (Nov. 7), AASHTO Executive
Director Jim Tymon said, “We’ve never seen anything on this scale before . . .
the number and scale of discretionary programs. . . [They] are going to allow
the administration to pick the projects that really fit their policy lens.”
But then the other shoe dropped. On Dec. 16, Federal Highway Administration
(FHWA) Acting Administrator Stephanie Pollack released a six-page guidance memo
on how state DOTs should interpret the enlarged formula-funded programs. In
effect the memo said, we advise you to interpret the formula programs as if
they were based on “fix it first” principles, and that state DOTs should make
sure to allocate some of their funds to local and tribal governments to fix
their streets and roads, too. They should “prioritize projects that move people
and freight by increasing the efficiency of existing roads and highways over
projects that expand the general purpose capacity of roads and
highways”—something that is nowhere in the bipartisan infrastructure law. The
memo also reminds state DOTs that projects that add capacity for walking and
biking generally get a free ride from National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)
regulations, unlike projects that add highway capacity (hint, hint).
A state DOT director sent me a memo prepared by the AASHTO board (and sent to
all state DOTs before Christmas) raising a number of questions about this
unprecedented FHWA “guidance.” The memo reminds recipients that the actual
bipartisan infrastructure law “provides state DOTs with full flexibility in how
investment decisions are made. The FHWA memo can be read to suggest that FHWA
has the authority to require states to invest Federal funds in certain types of
projects and the authority to restrict them from investing in other types of
projects.” That is decidedly not so. AASHTO will be developing a formal reply
to FHWA and is seeking inputs from its member DOTs.
Not mentioned anywhere in the AASHTO documents I’ve seen—and this is solely my
own view—is that the combination of this “guidance” memo and the huge expansion
of discretionary programs hands FHWA a powerful tool for intimidation. It can
basically convey to state DOTs the following: ‘If you guys want to have any
chance of capturing some of the vast new sums of discretionary grant money,
maybe you’d better allocate your formula funds in accordance with our guidance.’
This is clearly not what Congress intended. The actual law that was passed by
both houses is bipartisan and represents a carefully worked-out consensus in
the Senate, which the House eventually agreed to. The Senators who forged this
bipartisan law should rein in what appears to be FHWA running amuck, as if
something like the discarded House bill had been enacted. FHWA should comply
with the law as written and rescind this intrusive “guidance.”
» return to top
Beware the “Induced Demand” Calculator
By Baruch Feigenbaum
Recently, the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) created the State Highway Induced
Frequency of Travel (SHIFT) calculator that purports to measure long-run
induced vehicle miles traveled and emissions impacts from capacity expansions
in urban areas. The calculator uses lane miles and vehicle miles traveled (VMT)
data from FHWA. It was modeled on a calculator the group created for Colorado.
Unfortunately, the calculator makes questionable assumptions, has major
limitations and calculates induced demand incorrectly. Its real goal seems to
be to prevent the construction of any new urban roadway miles.
The calculator treats all new travel as bad. Yet, increasing roadway capacity
in urban areas has at least three benefits. First, new road capacity creates
economic benefits. It allows employees to reach a larger number of employers in
a given time, creating a better match between employees and employers. It
promotes economic activity by increasing the number of consumers that can reach
businesses in 15 minutes.
Second, new roadway capacity has safety benefits. Many suburban roadways are
widened from narrow, curvy two-lane roads to four-lane divided highways, partly
for better mobility but also for increased safety.
Third, new roadway capacity can reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it allows
free-flowing traffic to replace stop-and-go traffic (free-flowing traffic
generates less greenhouse gas emissions).
The calculator has other limitations. It examines principal arterials
(including Interstates and other freeways) only. That’s not ideal because
widening a collector may impact a parallel arterial. But since the calculator
does not have data for the collector, it would be unable to explain how a
widened arterial might decrease travel on the collector. The diversion of
traffic from a more-local to a more-regional highway would be considered a
positive by most neighborhood groups. And the calculator is unable to analyze
rural areas. While induced travel is a bigger problem in urban areas, it also
exists in some rural locations.
Further, the calculator fails to differentiate between priced and non-priced
capacity. Adding variably-priced express toll lanes to an Interstate has been
proven to reduce induced demand compared with adding general purpose lanes.
Further, express toll lanes encourage solo commuters to switch to vanpools or
buses, a policy that opponents of new VMT should want to encourage.
But the calculator’s biggest problem is that it is technically inaccurate.
Instead of separating existing trips made at a different time or on a different
roadway from new trips, the calculator assumes all new travel that happens at a
given time at any given point is induced demand. I’ll use the proposed addition
of two express toll lanes in each direction to I-35 in Austin, Texas, to
illustrate the point. Anti-roadway groups label five types of roadway travel as
induced demand. (A more in-depth commentary on induced demand by Arizona State
University professor Steve Polzin is available here).
The first type is demand attributed to growth in population, employment, or
activity. I-35, which has not been widened in more than 30 years, is much
narrower than similar Interstates in Texas’ other major metro areas: Houston,
Dallas-Fort Worth, and San Antonio. Between 2010 and 2020, Austin’s population
increased by 34%. TxDOT has proposed widening I-35 to accommodate that new
growth, not create new demand.
The second type is demand associated with redistributing existing travelers.
Let’s assume that TxDOT is able to widen I-35 as planned, and some traffic
switches from Loop 1 (aka the Mopac expressway) to the I-35 express lanes to
travel from downtown to Round Rock. Those vehicles switching highways do so
because I-35 is closer to their origin and destination. In fact, using I-35
leads to fewer vehicle miles traveled and fewer greenhouse gas emissions.
The third type is demand associated with travelers changing their commute
times. For example, let’s say that a commuter would prefer to leave work at
5:30 pm local time, but chooses to wait until 6:30 pm due to traffic
congestion. With the new variably-priced toll lanes, she chooses to leave at
5:30 pm and is able to cook dinner instead of ordering take-out. Switching the
time of her travel does not increase VMT. In fact, the ability to cook at home
instead of ordering take-out reduces overall VMT.
The fourth type is demand associated with shifting from alternative modes and
the fifth type is demand associated with new trip generation. Both of these
types can be induced demand.
When I entered each of the five scenarios into the RMI induced demand
calculator, the calculator indicated that each one would induce the same amount
of travel. They would each create 801 to 1,201 million new VMT per year, burn
53 million more gallons of gasoline, and create 6.4-12.3 million more metric
tons of carbon dioxide. Yet the increase in population, changes in travel
routes, and changes in travel times are not inducing any new travel. Shifting
alternative modes induces some new travel while the new trip generation is the
only scenario that induces significant new demand. The calculator should
produce at least three (and ideally five) different sets of numbers for the
five scenarios but it produces only one set. Since the calculator makes so many
assumptions, it functions as a black box using faulty inputs. A simpler
description of how it works might, unfortunately, be—garbage in, garbage out.
To its credit, RMI noted that the calculator is “…(B)est used to understand
order-of-magnitude impacts, rather than precise, project-specific outcomes.”
Unfortunately, that did not stop some of RMI’s partners from making
unsubstantiated claims. Streetsblog claimed, “A groundbreaking new calculator
gives advocates the tools they need to instantly show the real impacts of
proposed highway expansions in their communities — and the experts behind the
project hope that transportation agencies will someday be required to use it,
too.”
For highway users, Streetsblog’s comments show that some groups are likely to
use this faulty tool to try to prevent state transportation departments from
building any new urban highway capacity. Project experts need to explain the
flaws and limitations of this calculator so that transportation agencies are
not hoodwinked into using this flawed tool.
» return to top
What Does Amtrak’s BIL Windfall Mean for Freight Rail?
By Marc Scribner
November’s enactment of the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law (BIL)
was unprecedented in many ways, as was discussed in detail in last month’s
issue of this newsletter. Perhaps the biggest winner was struggling intercity
passenger railroad Amtrak, which currently serves less than 0.1% of person
trips in the U.S. As Jeff Davis of the Eno Center for Transportation pointed
out, the $66 billion in BIL intercity passenger rail funding is equivalent “to
the total amount appropriated by Congress for the Federal Railroad
Administration (including all pass-through grants to Amtrak) for fiscal years
2004 through 2021, inclusive of the [Obama administration’s] ARRA stimulus and
all the recent COVID aid.”
Much attention has been given to the unique opportunity for Amtrak to finally
address long-standing infrastructure needs along its principal Northeast
corridor, for which it will receive $30 billion of that $66 billion in total
rail spending. But what Amtrak chooses to do—and what regulators allow it to
do—outside the Northeast corridor may have the biggest societal impacts due to
the potential for negative interactions with freight railroads.
The BIL appropriated $16 billion for Amtrak’s national network, which operates
on tracks owned by host freight railroads. These routes are heavily subsidized
by state and federal taxpayers and carry a vanishingly small share of America’s
passenger traffic. But because this 20,000-plus-mile network snakes through 46
states, it can always count on majority support among the 100 U.S. Senators—the
primary “customers” of Amtrak’s national network.
In the May issue of this newsletter (“The Coming Conflict Between Freight Rail
and Amtrak Expansion,” May 12), I discussed an ongoing dispute between Amtrak
and freight carriers CSX and Norfolk Southern between Mobile, Alabama, and New
Orleans. Amtrak suspended Gulf Coast service after Hurricane Katrina washed
away much of the track in 2005. Restoring service without negatively impacting
freight traffic has been estimated to be extremely costly, with a mid-range
estimated cost to freight railroads (commissioned by the Florida DOT and
conducted by HNTB) coming in at $1.2 to $1.3 billion in 2018 dollars.
In 2020, CSX, Norfolk Southern, and Amtrak agreed to jointly commission a new
Rail Traffic Controller (RTC) modeling study from HDR that was supposed to be
completed by December of that year. But when HDR encountered a software problem
that delayed its final analysis, Amtrak unexpectedly pulled out of the study
and in March 2021 petitioned the Surface Transportation Board (STB) to compel
the freight carriers to grant Amtrak access to their facilities so passenger
rail service could be restarted in 2022. The railroads, freight customers, and
passenger railfans have been battling before the Board ever since. In November,
the STB granted Amtrak access to CSX’s Choctaw Yard in Mobile for planning
purposes, but a hearing has yet to be scheduled on Amtrak’s service restoration
petition, casting doubt on Amtrak’s ability to restart Gulf Coast service in
2022 even if it prevails.
The Gulf Coast dispute between Amtrak and host freight railroads is viewed as a
bellwether case in Amtrak’s goal of launching dozens of new passenger routes on
freight tracks across the country. Amtrak has a strong ally in the Biden
administration, which has committed to “sparking the second great railroad
revolution.” While certainly not pocket change, $66 billion in federal
intercity rail spending over five years is less than what private freight
railroads invest in their networks with their own funds. This suggests that
whatever happens with the $16 billion in Amtrak national network taxpayer
subsidies will be neither great nor revolutionary.
Wasteful transportation expenditures are hardly unique to passenger rail
generally or Amtrak specifically. But what makes this move by Congress
especially concerning is the potential for inefficient Amtrak trains to
displace efficient freight trains. Under federal law, Amtrak has legal priority
over freight trains on the freight carriers’ own tracks. Due to the differences
between freight and passenger trains—namely speed and length—increasing
passenger train density on freight tracks will cause significant disruptions to
freight rail operations. Rail shippers in the Gulf Coast have understandably
sounded the alarm to the STB that restarting Amtrak service without additional
infrastructure capacity would negatively impact their businesses.
Faced with less-reliable freight rail service, some shippers would shift their
traffic to trucks. And herein lies the Biden administration’s rail policy
dilemma: trucks produce about 10 times as much carbon dioxide per ton-mile as
freight trains in the U.S., according to 2021 documentation from the
Environmental Protection Agency. Pushing even a small share of freight rail
traffic onto the highways would increase the transportation sector’s emissions
intensity and undermine the Biden administration’s professed interest in
greening transportation. Subsidizing unpopular Amtrak service is not only a bad
deal for taxpayers; it’s bad for the planet.
We’ve been lonely in warning about the Biden administration’s contradictory
rail policy agenda for some time, but the mainstream political press may be
taking notice. A recent editorial from the Bloomberg Opinion Editorial Board
harshly criticized Amtrak’s expansionist agenda (“Don’t Add to Amtrak’s
Boondoggles,” Dec. 29). The Bloomberg editors rightly conclude, “Even on
optimistic assumptions, a decades-long expansion of passenger rail is a grossly
inefficient way to fight climate change.”
» return to top
Traffic Congestion Is Back, INRIX Finds
In December traffic data firm INRIX released its 2021 INRIX Global Traffic
Scorecard. It reports congestion data for the top 25 U.S. metro areas, the top
25 European metro areas, and the top 10 cities in the United Kingdom and in
Germany. Also included are data on the 25 worst corridors in the United States
and the 10 worst corridors in the U.K. and in Germany.
One of the most striking findings is that only four U.S. metro areas make it
onto the table of the world’s 25 most-congested ones: New York (5th), Chicago
(6th), Philadelphia (13th), and Boston (18th). The non-U.S. metro areas in that
top 10 are London (1st), Paris (2nd), Brussels (3rd), Rome (7th), Bogota (8th),
Palermo (9th), and Istanbul (10th). What is common to all 10 most-congested
metro areas? All are what can be called legacy transit cities, with a
concentration of jobs in the traditional central business district and
well-developed rail transit systems. This is the model we are told is “smart”
growth (high density of jobs and residents, ample mass transit)—yet these are
the world’s most congested metro areas.
Here’s another interesting result. Comparing the tables of the 25
most-congested metro areas in Europe with the 25 most-congested U.S. metro
areas, in Europe the average per-commuter delay ranges from 148 hours per year
in London to 65 hours in Berlin. By contrast, the U.S. average delay per
commuter ranges from 102 hours (New York) to just 21 (Phoenix). And the average
delay for the 25 European cities is 94 hours compared with 51 hours in
America’s top 25. What brings down the U.S. average are the much lower delay
totals for lower-density, suburban metro areas such as Houston (58 hours),
Atlanta (53), Dallas (44), Denver (40), Austin (32), Las Vegas (28), and
Phoenix (21). In other words, the very model denounced as “suburban sprawl”
seems to result in decidedly lower congestion than in high-density,
transit-rich metro areas.
One of the reasons for the lower congestion levels in suburbanized metro areas
is the suburbanization of jobs that has followed the suburbanization of housing
over the past 70 years in the United States. The freeway and tollway networks
that have been created to serve these growing areas are an effort to connect
anywhere to anywhere via multimodal (car, bus, and truck) roadway networks.
The INRIX analysts collect billions of anonymous data points each day from
mobile devices, navigation devices, connected vehicles, fleet vehicles, and
road and garage infrastructure, covering all roads. Thus, it is well suited to
cover the trips being made from anywhere to anywhere in every metro area
surveyed.
To be sure, in nearly all the metro areas covered in this report, traffic
levels and delay hours in 2021 were lower than in 2019, since all areas were
recovering from pandemic-induced working from home and shifts away from transit
to cars. By December 2022 we will be in a better position to assess how much
traffic and congestion have returned to “normal.”
» return to top
I-10 Tolled Mobile River Bridge Project Revived
More than a year after the metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) of the
counties on either side of the Mobile River in Alabama gave in to anti-toll
sentiment, killing the original $2.1 billion toll-financed public-private
partnership plan to replace the aging Mobile River Bridge and the parallel
Bayway causeway, both MPOs voted last month to revive the original project.
Many months of debate, as well as discussions with Alabama DOT, led the MPOs to
conclude that while the original fully toll-finance project was too ambitious
(and was estimated to have required passenger car tolls of $3 to $6), the
prospect of losing a $125 million federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America
(INFRA) Grant, opposition from the trucking industry to a scheme that would
have tolled only trucks, and the drawbacks of first doing only a replacement
bridge with the other needed improvements stretched out over 25 years all led
to a serious rethinking. As a result, both the Eastern Shore MPO and the Mobile
MPO voted on December 15 to endorse a comprehensive solution, but with tolls to
be charged only on the replacement bridge. Other crossings of the
river—especially the Bayway—must remain non-tolled for passenger vehicles. The
existing $125 million federal INFRA grant (which would have expired in
September 2022 unless the project was moving toward construction) must be used,
and the state must put in at least $250 million. Moreover, the project must be
owned by the state, not by any U.S. or foreign private company.
This is good news for east-west mobility in Alabama and Florida, as well as
being an important step toward rebuilding and modernizing aging I-10. And
assuming ALDOT agrees to these conditions, the project could return to the
original concept of being a toll-financed P3. Under such
design/build/finance/operate/maintain (DBFOM) agreements, the state remains the
owner of the infrastructure, but the P3 firm has ongoing stewardship
responsibilities to operate and maintain the project for the life of the
long-term agreement.
Two points about the tolling provisions will need further analysis to ensure a
financeable project. First, an investment-grade traffic and revenue study will
be required, including estimates of truck toll revenue and of diversions by
passenger vehicles to non-tolled alternatives. That will determine how much
additional state funding may be required to make the project viable.
Second, the MPOs’ provision that the tolls expire as soon as the original debt
has been paid off should be open to serious discussion. Assuming 30-year toll
revenue bonds, if issued in 2025 they would be paid off in 2055. By that point,
electric vehicles might have become 40-50% of all personal vehicles and a
smaller fraction of trucks, and ever-higher federal mpg requirements will have
further reduced gasoline and diesel consumption—and hence state fuel tax
revenue. Alabama will need a new highway funding source by that point, and the
bridge will still have operating and maintenance costs. The bridge will have
had a replacement funding source in place for three decades. What sense would
it make to throw it away at that point in time?
Incidentally, a poll of 455 registered voters in Mobile and Baldwin Counties,
conducted after the MPOs’ December 15 decision, found that 75% supported the
new framework for the Mobile River Bridge and Bayway. The poll was commissioned
by the nonprofit Coastal Alabama Partnership.
» return to top
Automated Class 8 Trucks Are Delivering Real Freight
Recent months have seen a growing number of announcements of planned and
under-way examples of big-rig trucks hauling commercial freight for mainstream
trucking companies in Texas. These trucks are equipped with SAE Level 4
automation, which means they can operate without a safety driver on specific
types of roadways (e.g., limited-access Interstates) and in certain types of
weather (e.g., not yet in snow and ice).
Last summer J. B. Hunt announced plans to test Class 8 trucks using Waymo
automation to haul freight between Houston and Fort Worth along I-45. Embark
Trucks, which automates existing trucks which it uses to haul freight,
announced plans to serve a route between Houston and San Antonio, presumably
along I-10. The company has been working with Texas A&M University to test its
autonomous capabilities before putting them into service on public roads.
Aurora, another developer of truck automation, plans to operate a
subscription-based freight hauling system with Uber Freight. That service
launched in December between Dallas and Houston. Uber Freight’s local partners
handle the last-mile portions of these trips. In the shorter-haul sector, Gatik
opened an autonomous trucking hub in Fort Worth for its 20 ft. and 24-ft. Level
4 box trucks, which make “middle-mile” delivery runs from warehouses to
retailers.
I have increasingly come to see freight hauling as the most likely initial
success for vehicle automation, because there are clear economic benefits. Once
safety regulators are comfortable with omitting the onboard safety driver, a
600-mile run that currently takes 22 hours for a driver to complete manually
(due to mandatory non-driving time under federal Hours of Service regulation)
could be accomplished in 12 hours. That’s a major cost-saving. (Without a
driver on board, if the automation encounters a situation it cannot handle, a
fail-safe system must be able to slow and stop the truck out of traffic lanes
and call for help.)
Another promising approach may be truck platooning, in which only the lead
truck has a human driver, with several others trailing behind without drivers,
under control of the lead truck’s automation. One of the pioneers in this
approach is Locomation, which last June announced an eight-year agreement with
flatbed carrier PGT Trucking. Under the agreement, Locomation will deploy 1,000
autonomous relay convoy (ARC) systems on more than 30 of PGT’s routes.
As with robotaxis and automated air taxis, these are still early days for truck
automation. But major truck original equipment makers (OEMs) are nearly all
investing in automation platforms, as Daimler is currently doing with Waymo.
They see the potential for increased trucking productivity which Level 4
automation can bring about.
» return to top
News Notes
Virginia Considers Adding Missing Link to Beltway Express Lanes
Over the past 20 years, Virginia DOT has used long-term, revenue-risk DBFOM P3s
to build a network of express toll lanes in the Virginia suburbs of Washington,
DC. The network includes most of the I-495 Beltway—but not all of it. In
December VDOT launched an environmental study of closing that 11-mile gap
(between I-95 and the Woodrow Wilson Bridge to the east). Counting both
operational express lanes and others already under construction, the network
will reach 90 route-miles by the end of 2022. VDOT will consider using another
P3 for the 11-mile addition, assuming the new study shows it to be feasible.
Recharge an Electric Vehicle in Five Minutes?
A new kind of cable for charging electric vehicles (EVs) is under development
by engineers at Purdue University, with patent protection pending. The problem
with fast charging today is the heat generated by energy traversing the cable.
The Purdue invention uses a new way to cool the charging cable that reportedly
can deliver a current 4.6 times that of the fastest existing chargers. If this
pans out, it could lead to fast charging in as little as five minutes. The
research is part of a joint Purdue/Ford Motor Co. R&D program. The Purdue news
release notes that, as of November, the prototype had not yet been tested on
EVs. But laboratory tests show that it can handle a current of more than 2,400
amps—far more than the 520 amps delivered by today’s fastest chargers. If this
proves to be both feasible and affordable, it could dramatically change EV
charging.
P3 Express Toll Lanes Get BBB Ratings
Fitch Ratings has upgraded its ratings of the financing used by LBJ
Infrastructure Group for the express toll lanes P3 project on the LBJ Freeway
in Dallas. Senior secured notes, Private Activity Bonds, and the project’s
TIFIA loan were all upgraded from BBB- to BBB. Fitch noted that “the facility
has recovered from the pandemic broadly in line with Fitch’s projections,” and
that “above-average population and employment growth is expected to drive
traffic growth at solid levels over the long term.” The $2.6 billion project
added up to three express toll lanes each way to what had been a highly
congested stretch of I-635 in Dallas, using an innovative design that did not
widen the freeway’s footprint.
$2.5 Billion Tunnels Project in Melbourne
As part of an $8.35 billion P3 project called the North East Link, a
construction consortium (Spark) headed by Webuild and John Laing Investors was
recently awarded a $2.48 billion contract to build twin 3-lane tunnels 6.5 km
in length, reports World Highways. Spark will also hold a 7.5% stake in the P3
company that will operate and maintain the North East Link project once it is
completed. The overall project fills in a missing link in Melbourne’s freeway
network between the M80 and the Eastern Freeway.
India Continues Highway Asset Recycling
The National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) announced plans to raise $400
million via a new Infrastructure Investment Trust announced last month. Either
two or three existing highways will be up for monetization in 2022. In its 2021
monetization, NHAI offered a set of five operating toll roads totaling 390 km
in the states of Gujarat, Karnataka, Rajasthan, and Telangana, with lease terms
of 30 years for each tollway. Investors in that round included Canada Pension
Plan Investment Board and Ontario Teachers’ Pension plan, each holding 25% of
the investment trust. Other investors include insurance companies, banks, and
other financial institutions. That monetization yielded $675 million.
Millennials Power Housing Market
Despite a later start in going from renting to owning, the millennial
generation is now the largest participant in home-purchase loans, according to
a front-page Wall Street Journal article on December 15. The pandemic and the
expansion of remote work appear to be factors motivating the shift to home
ownership by this generation. The article cites CoreLogic data showing that
millennials in 2021 accounted for 67% of first-time home purchase loan
applications and 37% of repeat home purchase applications. So much for the
notion that, unlike their predecessors, millennials prefer to rent downtown and
avoid car ownership. They are now becoming suburban homeowners like previous
generations.
Auto Alliance Favors EV Charging at Interstate Rest Areas
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which includes nearly all U.S.,
European, and Japanese automakers plus startups such as Argo and Cruise, and
tech companies such as Panasonic and Texas Instruments, issued a three-page
document last month, “Planning for the Electric Future: Charging Station
Attributes.” Among its many sensible recommendations is the following, under
the heading of EV Charging on Federal Highways: “EV charging should be
permitted at federal highway and Interstate properties. With [current] federal
restrictions on the location of EV chargers on federal highways, guidance from
the White House, U.S. DOT, and DOE will be essential for states regarding the
$5 billion in EV charging funding allocated via highway formula.” Incidentally,
the new tolled Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway in India will get 14 EV charging
stations, according to The Times of India.
Cap, Don’t Remove, Freeways that Divide Communities
The Cross-Bronx Expressway is one of the highways that Robert Moses forced
through various parts of the New York City metro area in the 1950s and 1960s.
Its 6.5 route-miles cut the Bronx in two. On the other hand, it is one of the
busiest freeways in the metro area. Fortunately, rather than proposing its
removal, a coalition has devised a plan that would put a deck or “cap” over the
below-grade portions, reconnecting neighborhoods with parks and other local
land uses. The state DOT has recently allocated $2 million for a feasibility
study of capping the two miles that are below grade, at an estimated cost of $1
billion. Projects like this have been implemented in Atlantic City, Dallas,
Denver, Duluth, Phoenix, and Seattle, as well as a number of locations in
Europe.
Nikola and Tesla Close to Introducing Electric Big Rigs
Last summer Tesla’s Elon Musk announced that its promised Tesla Semi will be
produced at its under-construction Gigafactory in Austin. Tesla is also using a
few Semi prototypes to deliver cars from its production facility in Fremont, CA
to Reno, described as a “fantastic test route.” Competitor Nikola in December
delivered its first Tre battery-electric drayage trucks to Total Transportation
Services, a company serving the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. The Tre
has a range of 350 miles and is aimed at regional deliveries, not long-haul
freight. Nikola now projects deliveries of its long-distance hydrogen fuel-cell
trucks in 2023.
Politics Upending Toll-Financed Causeway Upgrade in Miami
Concerns over likely increased tolls are leading Miami-Dade County officials to
rescind the under-way competitive bidding process and possibly start over
sometime in 2022. The original unsolicited proposal from the Plan Z consortium
called for toll-financed replacement and refurbishment of the tolled
Rickenbacker Causeway’s aging bridges and the addition of bikeways and
revenue-generating concessions and event spaces along the four-mile causeway
linking the mainland with affluent Key Biscayne. The project’s future is now up
in the air.
Amtrak Intends to Compete with Texas Central Railway
As part of its $16 billion plan to expand its intercity passenger rail service,
Amtrak is proposing more-frequent service between Dallas/Ft. Worth and Houston,
the sole route of Texas Central, the planned partially-privately financed
high-speed rail service. Since Amtrak is heavily subsidized by taxpayers and
charges fares on inter-city trains far below its operating cost, this proposal
should be seriously questioned. Then again, struggling (non-subsidized)
inter-city bus lines are facing similar threats of highly subsidized
competition from Amtrak. How is this in the public interest?
Useful Overview of U.S. Freight Network
Given all the concern over U.S. supply-chain problems, The Road Information
Program (TRIP) has produced a useful overview, “The U.S. Freight Network’s
Critical Role in the Supply Chain.” Drawing on various federal data sources
(including the still-unreleased 2021 DOT Conditions & Performance Report), it
details where congestion is worst, the top 20 truck bottlenecks, the top 25
domestic freight corridors (ranked by travel time reliability), and recent data
on the condition of major highways and bridges. Go here.
Pennsylvania Legislator’s Plan to “Fix” Turnpike’s Missed Revenue
Since the Pennsylvania Turnpike sensibly shifted from cash to all-electronic
tolling early in the pandemic, it has lost $104 million in revenue due to toll
evasion (about 7% of total revenue). State Sen. Marty Flynn has a proposal:
require the Turnpike to hire back toll collectors to take cash tolls at
“high-density locations.” No cost estimate was provided for this proposed
mandate, but it would make far better sense to spend the money on proven
techniques for getting evaders to pay up, as used by successful toll roads
around the country. And if the Turnpike is forced to hire toll collectors, good
luck getting rid of them once the evasion problem has been fixed.
Houston I-45 Project Moving Forward Again, for Now
Texas DOT’s $10 billion plan to rebuild I-45 and its connections to I-10 and
I-69 on the east side of Houston has received federal permission to continue
design work on a section of I-69 and a nearby interchange, while FHWA continues
its investigation of possible civil rights violations due to the project’s
large planned property takes in low-income and minority communities.
Bullish Forecast for Toll Road Traffic
Rating agency Moody’s Investors Service, in a report released on December 2,
estimates that the median toll road will gain 2% more traffic and 4% more
revenue in 2022. The vast majority of U.S. toll roads report that their traffic
had returned to pre-pandemic levels by the end of 2021, according to the
International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association. One of the few outliers is
the Golden Gate Bridge, still impacted by the large increase in working from
home.
Maryland Purple Line Gets New Design-Build Contractor
The troubled Purple Line light rail project, which has been seriously delayed
by right of way acquisition problems and environmental opposition (leading to
the withdrawal of its original design-build team) finally has has a replacement
contractor. Purple Line Transit Partners, the P3 company doing the project, in
November announced that a team of Dragados USA and OHL USA will be the new
design-build company. The project was financed as an availability-payment (AP)
design-build-finance-operate-maintain P3.
“Environmental Activists Want to Engineer a Utopia”
That is the title of a thoughtful article stimulated by last fall’s Conference
of the Parties (COP26), which aimed to generate commitments from more than 100
national governments on reducing their carbon footprints. Author Michael Sena
explains the important differences between a top-down, centrally planned
approach to this problem and a more pragmatic engineering approach. The piece
appears in the January 2022 issue of Michael’s excellent newsletter on
transportation, The Dispatcher. Go here.
How Behavioral Biases Lead to Cost Overruns and Under-Performance
Megaprojects expert Bent Flyvbjerg has a new journal article that seeks to
explain in greater depth the underlying reasons why such projects nearly always
experience cost overruns and shortfalls in projected performance. He plumbs the
relatively new field of behavioral economics for answers. “Top Ten Behavioral
Biases in Project Management: An Overview” appears in Project Management
Journal, Vol. 52 (6) pp. 531-546.
» return to top
Quotable Quotes
“[O]nly 8% of the distance traveled by land in the EU is by rail. Even in the
most train-happy countries, Austria and the Netherlands, the figures are 13%
and 11%. In [EU] countries, more than 75% of land travel is done by car.
Statistics on cross-border rail are patchy, but EU figures show that people
made only 6.5 million international trips by train from Germany in 2019. They
made 110 million by air, just to other countries in the EU. Shifting a
significant share to rail will require huge investments.”
—”EU Railways: Disoriented Express,” The Economist, Nov. 13, 2021
“In the 1980s and 1990s, special interest groups successfully blocked adoption
of so-called longer combination vehicles. Utilizing those longer
tractor-trailers could have allowed freight to move more efficiently in fewer
trucks. That could have meant less tailpipe emissions from big rigs,
less-crowded highways, and a less-severe driver shortage. But we caved to
special interests and their fear mongering. With autonomous trucks, we can’t
repeat this mistake. We must look past the fear and the special interests’
doomsday scenarios and focus on the competitive positioning of our nation’s
economy.”
—Christopher Thornycroft (Redwood Logistics), “The U.S. Can Be a Leader in
Autonomous Trucks—Or Get Left Behind,” TransportDive, Dec. 6, 2021
“As the firms have discovered, their businesses are less perpetual motion
machines than real-world flywheels that inevitably lose energy to friction,
says Jonathan Knee of Columbia Business school and author of a book entitled
The Platform Delusion. The network effects have proved much weaker than
expected. Many users switch between Uber and Lyft. Drivers also flit between
them, or to delivery apps, depending on which model offers the best pay. This
bargaining power from both sides means the system does not become
self-reinforcing after all.”
—Schumpeter, “The Flywheel Delusion: Uber, DoorDash, and Similar Firms Can’t
Defy the Laws of Capitalism After All,” The Economist, Nov. 13, 2021
» return to top
The post Surface Transportation News: FHWA vs. bipartisan infrastructure bill,
traffic congestion, and more appeared first on Reason Foundation.
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This issue of Surface Transportation Innovations is also available online here.
Previous editions of this newsletter are archived here and all of Reason
Foundation's transportation policy research and analysis is here.
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Robert Poole
Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow and Director of Transportation Policy
Reason Foundation
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