From: bobp@xxxxxxxxxxxx
To: dpolhill@xxxxxxx
Sent: 4/11/2022 12:25:44 PM Mountain Standard Time
Subject: Surface Transportation Newsletter #222
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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
April 2022 |
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This issue of Surface Transportation News is also available online here.
In this issue:
- Pandemic, migration patterns changing U.S. transportation
- Convert freeways to boulevards or deck them over?
- How not to introduce road user charges
- Puerto Rico considering more toll road leases
- Could automation replace most long-haul truck drivers?
- Let’s emulate Canada on commercial rest areas
- News Notes
- Quotable Quotes
Transportation Planners Need to Adapt to Changes in Remote Work, Migration
It’s still something of a cliché to say that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed
America, especially via the large increase in remote work. Several recent
reports provide facts and figures on these ongoing changes, and transportation
planners and funders in state legislatures, Congress, and elsewhere need to
increasingly take the transportation implications into account.
Let’s start with a study by Adam Ozimek of Upwork, released in March. The new
survey of 23,000 respondents found that remote work is still a significant
factor in people’s decisions about where to live and work. It found that 2.4%
of those surveyed have moved because of remote work since 2020. And 9.3% said
they are “planning on moving because of remote work,” compared with only 6.1%
saying that in Upwork’s first survey during the pandemic, in Oct. 2020.
Significantly, 28% of those who say they are planning to move would be four
hours away from where they live now, and another 13% said they will move
two-to-four hours away from where they live now.
These potential moves reflect the ideas of hybrid and remote work embraced by
many employers, with employees splitting their time between home and workplace.
This leads to a kind of “donut effect” in which the catchment area for an
employer spreads widely. For example, using a housing prices map centered on
New York City, the donut may include the Poconos, Allentown (PA), and southern
New Jersey—places far beyond the metro area (and outside the territory of its
metropolitan planning organizations MPOs).
A detailed article, “Internal Migration: Movers and Shakers,” in The Economist
also discussed these trends and the potential impacts on the economies of major
cities. It quoted Harvard economist Edward Glaeser cautioning city leaders
about “the completely understandable urge for progressive action in cities
running into the buzz-saw of heightened geographic mobility,” but warning that
if they increase taxes on business and the rich “and fail to offer basic
services like public safety, then something that was a modest economic
disruption could turn into something much more severe.”
It also quoted Chapman University’s Joel Kotkin saying, “People go where they
can achieve the American dream. It’s increasingly difficult to do that in the
cities that created the American dream, like New York,” because of their high
cost of living.
Demographer Wendell Cox has a new report out, reporting on census data on
population changes for the 15 months ending July 1, 2021. While there was a
record low amount of population increase, there was a “perhaps unprecedented
rise in net domestic migration,” Cox writes, accelerated by the increase in
remote work. Metro areas above one million people with the largest one-year
population gains topped out with Austin at 3%, followed by Raleigh, Phoenix,
and Jacksonville. Those with the largest population losses were San Francisco
(-2.6%) followed by San Jose, New York, and Los Angeles.
Putting these pieces together, Kotkin has published a long article called
“Exurbia Rising.” Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, there was already
significant migration from older, high-cost-of-living cities to urban counties
in states such as Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Those making such moves were
“young people in prime family formation years.” The suburban and exurban
counties experiencing the highest growth had 3.5 times as many children per
household as in places like Manhattan and San Francisco. As one major home
builder, Robert Schottenstein, CEO of M/I Homes, told Kotkin, “This is a flight
to safety and security. The millennials are getting older, and they are
transitioning as they start families.”
Some of the original exurbs have turned into suburbs, as population growth
spreads outward. Kotkin cites places such as Irvine, CA, and The Woodlands near
Houston as examples. More recently, such planned communities farther from major
metro areas include Summerlin, NV, Tres Lagos, TX, and New Albany, OH. Contrary
to the stereotype of lily-white suburbs, Irvine is 40% Asian, The Woodlands is
30% non-white, and Tres Lagos is 75% middle-class Hispanics. New Albany, over
the past 20 years, has grown from 3,700 to 10,000 and has 15,000 employees in
its business park—prior to the opening of Intel’s planned $20 billion chip
manufacturing project.
The key to housing affordability, says Kotkin, is taking advantage of
lower-cost land on the fringes of metro areas—the exurbs. And contrary to the
notion that the need to create services like roads, water, and sewers makes
housing there more costly than infill development, utility needs are largely
being met by cost-effective municipal utility districts (MUDs), of which Texas
has more than 900 and Colorado more than 1,800.
Current federal, and some state, transportation planning ignores these
developments and trends. Rather than figuring out the transportation needs of
increasingly decentralized urban/suburban/exurban metro areas, many
transportation planners and the U.S. Department of Transportation continue to
focus a lot of efforts on getting Americans out of their cars and into
high-density housing that can be served by transit. The metro areas where
transit works relatively well are those that still have large job centers
downtown—mostly legacy transit cities such as New York, Chicago, Boston,
Philadelphia, and San Francisco. But planners’ focus on density and transit
ignores the suburbanization and exurbanization that has been accelerated by the
pandemic and the rise of remote work.
Kotkin suggests that a major change is long overdue. Congress and many MPOs
that continue to expand funding for rail transit projects and attempt to
restrict housing developments at the urban fringe ignore this country’s rapidly
changing geography. He notes that a study of 23 completed rail transit systems
found that in those locales, “the percentage of commuters driving alone has
increased…and even in the largest metropolitan areas, the average transit
commute takes about 75 percent longer than the average auto commute.”
Moreover, as access studies from the University of Minnesota have documented,
in metro areas with more than one million people, “cars can reach almost 55
times as many potential jobs as transit in less than 30 minutes,” Kotkin writes.
We need transportation policies that match our evolving urban/suburban/exurban
geography. Rail transit and forced densification are not the answer.
» return to top
Convert Freeways to Boulevards or Deck Them Over?
In its proposed American Jobs Plan, the Biden administration included a $15
billion program to “reconnect neighborhoods” that had been divided when the
original urban freeways were built in the 1960s. In enacting the bipartisan
infrastructure law, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Congress cut
back that funding to $1 billion over five years, split into 25% for planning
and 75% for capital spending. Those metro areas with potential candidates for
this program face a major decision. If the freeway in question is not a vital
link in long-standing travel flows, replacing it with an at-grade boulevard may
be desirable, though the cost of tearing out the freeway and building the
boulevard may be daunting. But if the freeway is serving as a critical link in
the transportation system that serves, cars, buses, and trucks, decking over
the freeway may be far wiser and less costly, assuming the freeway section in
question is already below grade.
In Chapter 10 of my book, Rethinking America’s Highways, I summarize several
cases of freeway teardowns, which have mostly occurred in places where the
removed freeway was a never-completed stub rather than an important network
link. I also discuss a growing number of cases where portions of urban freeways
have been decked over—in metro areas such as Dallas (Woodall Rogers Freeway),
Denver (under way on I-70), Phoenix (I-10), and Seattle (I-5 and I-90), as well
as a major project in Hamburg, Germany. Decks are far less costly than tunnels
such as the Big Dig in Boston and the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle (though
tunnels, financed via toll revenues) may be a solution where the existing
freeway is above-grade)
Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Jeffrey Brinkman
and Jeffrey Lin, released a cost-benefit analysis of “burying” an urban freeway
rather than converting it into a boulevard. They recognize the economic value
of freeways that are key links in metro-area mobility and factor that into
their analysis, “The Costs and Benefits of Fixing Downtown Freeways.” They
understand that the amenities for freeway users are dis-amenities for those in
adjacent neighborhoods, and show that urban population declines are greatest in
Census tracts nearest to freeways. Freeway access is a benefit to suburban
commuters going downtown but does not help most near-downtown workers get to
their jobs.
Drawing on some urban economic models that separately assess people’s value of
job access and the quality of life benefits of neighborhoods, they model a
hypothetical project that would deck over a 4.5-mile stretch of I-95 in
Philadelphia, along the riverfront. In passing, they note that portions of
Philadelphia’s I-676 and a portion of I-95 have already been decked over,
creating parks and reconnecting divided communities. They then model the
estimated amenities and productivity of neighborhoods affected by the potential
project, with the assumption that the transportation benefits of I-95 would
remain the same as before it is decked over. Their model predicts that the
population near the freeway would increase dramatically along with modest
increases in land values. They estimate that the net present value of lifetime
benefits (using a 7% discount rate) would be around $3.5 billion.
They also estimate the project’s cost, at $500 million per mile (no source
given), at around $2.25 billion. Obviously, the actual cost would depend on the
specifics of the freeway in question, but this is an encouraging preliminary
finding that decking over a depressed freeway may well have real economic
benefits exceeding its costs. That would be a win-win solution, for at least
certain kinds of downtown freeways.
» return to top
An Example of How Not to Introduce Road User Charges
Dating all the way back to the National Surface Transportation Infrastructure
Financing Commission’s landmark 2009 report, Paying Our Way, the
widely-accepted solution for the long-term decline of fuel tax revenue is to
replace the fuel tax with some kind of per-mile charge. With ever-increasing
federal miles per gallon (mpg) fuel efficiency requirements for new vehicles,
plus federal government and auto company plans to phase in electric vehicles
and phase out internal combustion vehicles, charging per mile will be
sustainable long-term no matter what means of vehicle propulsion evolve.
To date, just about every pilot project to test mileage-based user fees
(MBUFs)—or road user charges (RUCs) as they are known in the west—has stressed
to participants that what was being simulated was the replacement of the gas
tax, not some new charge in addition to it. Many of the pilot project
participants were skeptical prior to taking part, fearing that the
mileage-based user fees would be “yet another tax increase on driving.” But by
the conclusion of the project, they understood, having seen monthly reports on
what they were paying via their current state fuel tax compared with the
hypothetical MBUF had it been real.
All this is by way of context for a recent Time article, titled “This
California City’s Attempt to Charge People for Driving Back-Fired. Here’s Why
That Matters for Everyone.” Although the article zeroed in on the city of La
Mesa, the focus of the piece was the San Diego Association of Governments
(SANDAG), the metropolitan planning organization for the San Diego metro area.
SANDAG’s new long-range plan calls for implementing a road user charge in 2030,
to help pay for the projects in its $160 billion regional long-range
transportation plan. The RUC would be charged in addition to the current state
and federal gas tax, not as a replacement. So it would, indeed, be “yet another
tax on driving,” as charged by conservative Republican activist Carl DeMaio,
who is quoted in the Time article.
DeMaio and his allies have made opposition to the mileage tax a key point in
opposing city officials up for re-election if their city has signed on to the
SANDAG plan. The article recounts DeMaio-led anti-mileage-tax town halls and
the political pressures that have led a number of city officials to reverse
their previous support for the mileage tax. Time reporter Justin Worland wrote
that “SANDAG expects [the mileage tax] to raise $14 billion in revenue over two
decades, which would help underwrite new trolley lines, more efficient highway
lanes, and rideshare programs.” In the majority of states, including
California, gas taxes can only be spent on roadways, consistent with the
users-pay/users benefit principle. Clearly, what SANDAG has proposed is not
only an add-on; it is clearly an overall transportation tax, but the tax would
be paid only by roadway users. Thus, rather than having a debate about why road
user charges are a better, more sustainable option than gas taxes, SANDAG
Here I must confess that I’ve had a minor role in the evolution of the SANDAG
plan. Early last year I accepted an invitation (along with Prof. Michael
Manville of UCLA and Brianne Eby of the Eno Center for Transportation) to take
part, as subject-matter experts, in a Zoom meeting with the SANDAG board. My
talking points for that session were:
- Express toll lanes control congestion and can generate revenue;
- All lanes of a congested Interstate can be (legally) tolled to manage
congestion;
- Transportation equity is very complicated; and,
- We need to replace per-gallon fuel taxes with per-mile charges.
Several months later, SANDAG’s chief planning officer emailed to invite me to
discuss with senior staff “the political calculus of congestion pricing.”
saying they were impressed with the points in my Reason paper, “A Conservative
Case for Highway Tolling.” I accepted and did so on June 10. I don’t have notes
on what I said then, but it was likely along the lines of the above talking
points. Evidently, I failed to stress strongly enough the need to ensure that a
road user charge should be a replacement for the fuel tax, not an addition to
it—and now SANDAG is facing a major political blowback.
» return to top
Puerto Rico Considering More Toll-Road P3 Leases
Puerto Rico gets little respect as a public-policy pioneer. Yet it is one of
the few U.S. jurisdictions that has a dedicated public-private partnership unit
as part of its government (Puerto Rico Public-Private Partnership
Authority—P3A). And it has pioneered some notable transportation P3 projects:
- One of the first U.S. revenue-risk P3 toll projects, the Teodoro Moscoso
Bridge in San Juan;
- The P3 leases of two of its toll roads, PR-5 and PR 22; and,
- The P3 lease of the formerly stodgy San Juan International Airport,
converting it into a world-class airport.
The P3A recently asked for comments on its “Desirability and Convenience Study”
on the possible P3 lease of some or all of its other (non-P3) toll roads:
PR-20, PR-52, PR-53, and PR 66. What apparently motivated the study was
“deterioration and a lack of adequate maintenance” of those four toll roads
combined with the large debt ($5.8 billion) of the Puerto Rico Highways and
Transportation Authority (PRHTA), of which $1 billion is associated with those
toll roads. That would make it difficult for PRHTA to finance major upgrades of
those toll roads, especially given Puerto Rico’s overall debt burden—it is in
the process of emerging from a de-facto bankruptcy overseen by a
congressionally authorized restructuring commission.
Besides retaining the status quo, the study offered three options: an
availability-payment (AP) concession for the four toll roads, a revenue-risk P3
concession for only PR-52, and a similar concession for all four toll roads.
The study favored the last option, on the presumption that this would be large
enough to generate an up-front concession payment that could be used to reduce
some of PRHTA’s current debt. That was the model used for the successful P3
lease of the San Juan Airport. However, the projected revenue from the airport
(fueled by tourism) may be more robust than the projected revenue from the toll
roads (driven mostly by locals).
So-called “brownfield” leases of existing revenue-generating infrastructure
have been used widely overseas, but on only a limited basis in the United
States. The two best-known in transportation are the long-term P3 leases of the
Chicago Skyway and the Indiana Toll Road, both of which generated large
up-front payments due to robust projected revenues and no major near-term
capital improvement needs. Other brownfield toll road P3s offered riskier
revenue projections, including the Northwest Parkway in Colorado and the
Pocahontas Parkway in Virginia; to the best of my knowledge, neither involved a
significant up-front payment.
Puerto Rico’s existing P3 toll roads are being well-run by their private-sector
partner (Abertis and Ullico). The P3 entity added reversible Dynamic Toll Lanes
to PR-22—the world’s first variably-priced lanes added to an existing toll
road. This performance evidentially has given the P3A confidence that further
toll road P3 leases would be good public policy. Comments on the study are due
by April 25th.
» return to top
Could Automation Replace Most Long-Haul Truck Drivers?
By Marc Scribner
In March, the journal Humanities and Social Sciences Communications published a
new study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of
Michigan finding that “up to 94% of long haul trucking operator-hours may be
impacted” by automation (Mohan and Vaishnav, “Impact of automation on long haul
trucking operator-hours in the United States”). This headline finding may
understandably alarm owner-operators and truck driver unions, but the authors
note that this scenario could only occur in the future when automated vehicle
(AV) technology advances to a point well beyond near-term capabilities. As it
stands, policymakers should prioritize safety considerations of AV technology
over highly speculative future workforce impacts.
The Mohan and Vaishnav study examines the truck driver workforce implications
of the “transfer-hub” model of long-haul automated trucking. This entails truck
trips being split into urban and highway legs. The automated tractor would
drive the rural highway miles between urban transfer hubs. At the transfer
hubs, trailers would be switched between automated and human-driven tractors.
Human-driven tractors would bring trailers from an urban origin to a transfer
hub and from the transfer hub to the destination.
Their model found that 94% of operator-hours are at risk of replacement by
automated driving if AV technology is deployed everywhere in the continental
U.S. in all weather conditions. But current AV technology isn’t capable of
operating everywhere in all types of weather that can currently be driven by
human operators. Recognizing these limitations, Mohan and Vaishnav then develop
three additional scenarios to apply constraints on operation that are relaxed
to progressively build to higher operating levels and workforce impacts.
First, they consider automated operations restricted to eleven southern
sun-belt states. Most heavy-duty AV testing currently takes place in these
states primarily because they are unlikely to encounter snow and ice that
current generation AV technology cannot handle. They estimate that this
scenario would impact only 10% of operator-hours.
Second, they consider automated operations restricted to spring and summer
months across all states. They are able to exploit the Census Bureau’s
Commodity Flow Survey dataset, which lists the financial quarters of shipments
in the sample, to focus on trips that would take place in warmer weather. They
estimate that this scenario would impact an additional 43% of operator-hours,
for a cumulative total of 53% of operator-hours impacted by truck automation.
Third, they consider automated operations for trips of at least 500 miles. They
selected this minimum trip distance due to potential interactions with federal
hours-of-service regulations that may complicate the economic case for
automating shorter long-haul trips in a transfer-hub model, and posited that
truck drivers could generally complete 500-mile trips in a single day without
stopping. They estimated that this scenario would impact an additional 33% of
operator-hours, for a cumulative total of 86% of operator-hours impacted by
truck automation.
Hence, relaxing the third and final constraint to allow for the operation of
long-haul AV trucks everywhere in all conditions adds just 8% of operator-hours
in Mohan and Vaishnav’s model to reach that 94% headline figure. This has a
couple of implications.
First, achieving automated driving capabilities necessary to automate anything
close to 94% of long-haul operator-hours is likely many years off. The
technology has not reached the point where all highway miles in all weather
conditions can be automated. Even when the technology is capable of handling
snowy Midwestern highways, it is likely to be deployed at the speed of fleet
turnover—so, a phase-in of a decade or more can be anticipated. At this pace,
truck driver displacement may not be much more rapid than attrition through
retirement in a workforce that skews middle-aged.
Second, sizeable workforce impacts could be felt before full deployment of
automated trucks everywhere and anytime. If Mohan and Vaishnav’s model is a
rough approximation of a future AV truck phase-in, there could be many
opportunities to automate highway miles in weather free of snow and ice that is
easier to automate. They estimated that approximately half of operator-hours
could be automated in the warmer months between April 1 and October 1 across
the entire continental U.S. The scale of such an impact would reshape the
trucking industry well before automated capabilities approach that 94% headline
figure.
However, despite the recent announcements made by automated truck developers
such as TuSimple and Locomation that they are expanding their on-road testing,
automated trucking remains in its infancy and will not transform the trucking
industry in the short run. Discussions on eventual workforce impacts have
already begun (the AV industry has formed the Partnership for Transportation
Innovation and Opportunity in response), but these future impacts are extremely
uncertain, and public policy is a blunt tool at best. Until automated trucking
operations expand beyond limited test cases, policymakers should remain
laser-focused on harnessing the road safety promise of AVs rather than
speculating on potential job losses that might occur decades from now.
» return to top
Let’s Emulate Canada on Commercial Rest Areas
By Baruch Feigenbaum
The COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of trucking to the
American economy. Hospitals needed medical supplies and students taking classes
from home needed computers transported by trucks, for example. The supply chain
crisis has reminded us that driving a tractor-trailer is a challenging job.
Long-haul trucking has a near 100% annual turnover rate, among the highest for
any profession.
The American Transportation Research Institute, the trucking industry’s
research arm, conducted a study and found that truck drivers’ two biggest needs
today are ample parking spaces and healthy and quick food options.
A lack of parking is the biggest problem. Some drivers stop driving earlier in
the day—before they reach their hours-of-service limit because finding parking
spots between 4 p.m. and 5 a.m. can be extremely challenging in many areas of
the country. If more parking spaces were available, some truckers could drive
an additional 100 miles per day. Thus, the current lack of truck parking
hinders our supply chain, raising prices and reducing economic activity.
Truck drivers are also looking for healthier food, which can be sparse at many
truck stops. Specifically, truck drivers say they are looking for fresh salads
and fresh fruit. And most drivers do not have the luxury of sitting down for a
meal at a restaurant or finding a place to park so they can shop at a grocery
store every night.
Thankfully, one government has created a plan to solve these issues. But it is
not in the United States; it’s the province of Alberta, Canada. With its
commercial rest areas proposal, Alberta plans to issue a request for proposals
to rebuild as many as 18 highway rest areas on level 1 highways (classified as
freeways and other major arterials in the U.S.). Under the planned
design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) P3, the selected company would
build the facilities, collect the rent from tenants (gas stations, electric
charging companies, restaurants), and pay a monthly fee to the province for 30
years. The new rest areas would offer 24-hour access to basic services such as
parking, restrooms, and climate-controlled facilities. But the facilities will
also offer commercial services such as fuel, electric vehicle charging,
convenience retail, and restaurants.
Alberta’s current rest areas are underused because they lack commercial
services. In addition, they are not always safe, making them a last resort for
many drivers. And they are poorly maintained due to budget constraints.
Contrast Alberta’s approach with what Florida is now planning. The Florida
Department of Transportation (FDOT) is proposing to add 11 truck parking areas
on I-4 across four counties. In the corridor, an estimated 40% of truck drivers
spend more than one hour looking for parking. Between the Osceola County-Polk
County line and I-95, a distance of more than 100 miles in the corridor with
more than four million people, there are only 36 truck parking spots. By 2025,
FDOT estimates that the corridor will need 750 spots. Between 7,000 and 20,000
trucks use I-4 every day. That Interstate corridor has one of the largest
parking space deficits, but almost every Interstate corridor in the country
needs more parking. FDOT has identified 11 locations for new parking. But
unlike Alberta, which is using a P3 to add commercial services, FDOT is merely
adding parking spaces, not offering other amenities.
Florida DOT has typically been a leader in U.S. P3s, with three of the largest
(by dollar value) transportation P3s in the country. Why won’t these truck
stops offer fuel, electric vehicle charging, retail, and restaurants? Federal
law makes offering any of these services illegal. When the Federal Aid Highway
Act of 1956 was passed, one of the compromises was to prohibit commercial
services at Interstate rest areas, even though states own their Interstate
highways. As a result, the only food available comes from vending machines. The
National Association of Truck Stop Operators (NATSO) has lobbied relentlessly
to keep the ban in place. At a 2009 congressional hearing, the association’s
president suggested that the commercial service ban was the only policy in the
surface transportation reauthorization bill that the group cared about.
For some reason, NATSO thinks that all truckers who now patronize truck stops
would switch to the commercial services at rest areas instead. Yet, the
evidence on I-95 in Delaware and Maryland, which is a toll road that was
grandfathered into the Interstate system and allowed to offer commercial
services, is just the opposite. Many truckers and other motorists use the
commercial service plazas, while others exit the highway to eat at restaurants
or purchase fuel.
Further, the commercial service plazas can offer more than more parking and
better food. The plazas on tolled Interstates (exempt from the federal ban)
increasingly offer electric vehicle charging. High fuel prices have increased
the demand for electric cars and trucks. Yet many travelers will not consider
an electric vehicle due to range anxiety. The typical lower-priced EV needs to
be recharged after 100 miles. Placing electric vehicle charging stations at
rest areas will be a game-changer, encouraging long-distance travelers to
purchase an EV.
Further, these improved Interstate rest areas can offer convenience retail,
basically a 7-11 on steroids that will allow customers to get healthier food to
go or basic clothing if they forgot to pack something.
It is time we move past the short-sighted views of NATSO. Congress needs to
find a legislative vehicle to allow states, which own their Interstates, to use
P3s to expand and offer commercial services at their rest areas. Service plazas
need to offer 21st-century solutions such as ample parking, higher-quality
food, and electric vehicle charging instead of remaining stuck in a
20th-century mentality.
» return to top
News Notes
Reason Seeks Additional Transportation Policy Analyst
Reason Foundation, the publisher of this newsletter, has an opening for an
additional member of its transportation policy team, to work with me, Baruch
Feigenbaum, Marc Scribner, and Vice President Adrian Moore. This is a full-time
position, starting in the late spring or early summer of this year. A detailed
description is available on the Reason Foundation website.
PennDOT Selects Winner for Major Bridge P3 Program
From among the four shortlisted teams, Pennsylvania DOT selected the team led
by Macquarie and Shikun & Binui Concessions for its project to repair or
replace up to nine bridges on its Interstate highways around the state. The
first step will be a pre-development agreement under which the winning team
will finalize the design and packaging of the bridges. The intent is to follow
this with a long-term DBFOM agreement. Tolls will be charged to provide the
revenue stream on which the project will be financed, but PennDOT will take the
revenue risk and will compensate the P3 entity via availability payments. Late
last year Gov. Tom Wolf (D-PA) vetoed a bill aimed at preventing the rebuilt or
replaced bridges from having tolls.
Is It Time to Start Thinking About NEPA Reform?
In my column in the March issue of Public Works Financing, I discussed research
that attributes much of the difference between very high U.S. highway and
transit project costs (compared with other developed nations) to “citizen
voice”—the ability of NIMBY and environmental groups to litigate endlessly to
delay projects they oppose. The column suggests a potential bipartisan
political opportunity to revise NEPA and other federal statutes to continue
environmental impact studies but to limit or prevent endless litigation. The
column is available on the Reason Foundation website.
World’s Longest Suspension Bridge Opens in Turkey
Thanks to a $2.7 billion long-term P3, Turkey now has a 6,637-foot suspension
bridge across the Dardanelles Strait, linking the Asian and European shores of
this important waterway. The new bridge’s name honors a battle in 1915 that
took place in this area, hence the name “1915 Canakkale Bridge.” Travelers will
pay a $13.60 toll to cross the channel on the bridge in six minutes, compared
with the current 1.5-hour ferry trip. The P3 company is a consortium of Turkish
and South Korean companies.
Mercedes Takes Legal Responsibility for New Driver Assist System
A new system called Drive Pilot, available on high-end Mercedes automobiles
comes with a unique provision. It is considered a Level 3 system, which will
not require the driver to be ready to take control. Hence, when Drive Pilot is
in operation, Mercedes says it will assume all legal liability for any accident
that might occur—a step no other auto company has taken. But there are
limitations. Drive Pilot can only be used on certain highways, and the car
cannot exceed 40 mph when operating in that mode. Also, Drive Pilot will
operate only in daylight and in reasonably clear weather. And it is supposed to
be able to give the driver a 10-second warning before it disengages.
New Toll Lanes Under Way in Northwest Austin
Despite a legislative ban on new toll projects in Texas, a project to add
express toll lanes is getting under way on SH 183. This is taking place because
the project is being carried out by the Central Texas Regional Mobility
Authority (CTRMA), which built and operates the existing express toll lanes on
the Mopac Expressway. The legislative ban applies only to projects that use
TxDOT funds or are carried out under long-term P3 agreements. Existing toll
agencies and regional mobility authorities are exempt. The tolls will be
charged only on the newly added express toll lanes, and the $612 million
project is also adding one general-purpose lane each way, along with adding two
express toll lanes in each direction.
Waymo Joins Cruise with San Francisco Robotaxis
Waymo is launching a fully autonomous taxi service in a portion of San
Francisco, initially serving only Waymo employees. Competitor Cruise launched a
similar service several months ago, operating only at night. Both services
currently charge no fees. Cruise is the only company that has a California PUC
license to charge for robo-taxi service; Waymo can only charge for service if
there is a safety driver in the vehicle.
Charlotte Express Toll Lanes Proving Popular
During the long process of getting approval to add express toll lanes to I-77
approaching downtown Charlotte, NC, fierce opposition arose from critics who
claimed either that the lanes would attract so few users that they would not
reduce congestion or that the pricing would not prevent the lanes from getting
congested like the adjacent general-purpose lanes. But by the fourth quarter of
2021, the lanes generated $11.5 million from willing customers and are now
projected to generate $45 million this year—$10 million more than projected
prior to construction (and prior to COVID-19). This is a familiar pattern for
the first express toll lane in a state or large metro area—most people simply
don’t believe they will work. (See “After Slow Start, I-77 Toll Lane Revenue Is
Surging,” Steve Harrison, WFAE, March 30, 2022)
$2.2 Billion Norwegian P3 Bridge/Tunnel Project Financed
The Sorta Link project will design, build, finance, operate and maintain a
9.4-kilometer four-lane highway connecting Bergen and Oygarden. Its large cost
stems from the need to construct 4.6 km of twin-bore tunnels and a major
bridge. The winning P3 team includes Macquarie Capital, SK Ecoplant, and
WeBuild. Financial close on the project was reached on March 16. Once
construction is completed, the P3 entity will operate and maintain the new link
for 25 years. The project is a key portion of Norway’s 2018-2029 National
Transport Plan.
Washington State Budgets $1.2 Billion Toward I-5 Bridge Replacement
Last month, the Washington legislature agreed on a $16 billion state
infrastructure program that includes $1.2 billion for its share of the project
to replace the obsolete I-5 bridges between Portland, OR, and Vancouver, WA.
The replacement bridge’s configuration and total cost have not yet been decided
between the two states, nor has the extent to which toll financing will be used.
Major New P3 Toll Road Financed in Bali
World Highways reported last month that construction will soon begin on the
97-kilometer Gilimanuk-Mengwi Toll Road on the Indonesian island of Bali. The
project will include a parallel bikeway, a first in Indonesia. The $1.72
billion project is being developed as a DBFOM by a team headed by Tol Jagat
Kerthi Bali, which won a 50-year concession to design, build, finance, operate,
and maintain the new link.
MBUF Group Taps Important Data Provider
The Eastern Transportation Coalition last month announced a contract with
Geotab Intelligent Transportation to obtain origin-destination and freight data
for use in its ongoing MBUF research and pilot projects in 18 eastern states.
Geotab’s Altitude data platform enables road providers (and researchers such as
the TET Coalition) to identify problem areas and measure the impact of proposed
policy changes.
Orlando Toll Road Provider to Add Elevated Toll Lanes
The five-county Central Florida Expressway Authority is planning a $365 million
project to build 2.8 miles of elevated toll lanes to extend SR 414 between U.S.
441 and SR 434 in Maitland, a suburb of Orlando. The project is intended to
reduce congestion on SR 414 and on Maitland Blvd.
New EPA Regulations for Trucks and Buses
The Environmental Protection Agency last month released proposed new
regulations concerning nitrogen oxide (NOx) and CO2 emissions from commercial
vehicles. The NOx regulations apply to all categories of commercial trucks, as
well as school and transit buses. The CO2 regulations exclude heavy trucks but
would apply to school and transit buses as well as delivery trucks and
short-haul tractors. The proposed regulations are now open for public comment.
The Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association appears supportive of the new
rules but hopes to work with EPA on the details.
Correction Regarding TET Coalition Truck Projects
Nina Elter of EROAD wrote to explain that the Coalition’s 2020/21 truck pilot
did not employ a weight-based rate structure, but the motor carrier working
group did conclude that rates based on registered truck weight would be the
best approach for the 2022 truck pilot. Also, the research done on the
International Fuel Tax Agreement and the International Registration Plan showed
enough promise that an interface with IFTA is being set up for the 2022 pilot.
I greatly appreciate these corrections.
Correction Regarding Gondola News Note
John Charles from the Cascade Policy Institute wrote to explain that the
gondola in Portland does not cross the Willamette River. It goes from the South
Waterfront area on the river’s west bank up to the OHSU medical complex,
crossing over I-5 on its way. Thanks to John for this local knowledge.
» return to top
Quotable Quotes
“[T]he [DOT] Secretary does not have much leeway to disapprove projects unless
he finds that a project violates a specific federal law. Had the FHWA
[guidance] document been phrased differently, using much of the same substance
without cutting and pasting directly from the House Democratic bill that never
became law it wouldn’t have drawn much attention. But the direct quotes from
the rejected Democratic bill needlessly inflamed things, to the point that if
and when Republicans take back the House of Representatives next year, here is
what’s probably going to happen. The House version of the fiscal 2024 DOT
Appropriations bill will include general provisions nullifying the FHWA policy
document or denying funds for US DOT if they use any of that language in NOFOs
[notices of funding opportunities] or regulations. Then, depending on how the
Senate elections go, those House riders may get the support of a narrow
majority of the Senate Appropriations Committee, in which case the Biden
Administration would have to trade hundreds of millions of dollars in real
money, or a policy limitation in another area, to get those riders out of the
appropriations bill.”
—Jeff Davis, “Sec. Buttigieg Defends DOT’s Implementation of Infrastructure
Bill Before Senate,” Eno Transportation Weekly, Feb. 28, 2022
“The IMF, in a report published in September 2021, found that fossil fuels are
still receiving [annual] subsidies of $5.9 trillion, or $11 million a minute.
So the same governments signing pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in
the framework of the Paris agreement, as witnessed at the COP26 summit in
Glasgow are, in the same breath, actively promoting the use of carbon to
support the unsustainable growth of our economies.”
—Andre Hoffman, vice chairman of Roche in “Subsidies to Fossil Fuels,” Letters,
The Economist, March 12, 2022
“I do believe that overall, toll payment will become more seamless and less
explicit for the end user. Toll will not be collected directly by authorities
and road agencies any longer, but increasingly via service providers which
offer toll payments as one element of their mobility services portfolios. Those
service providers may be vehicle manufacturers, fleet service providers,
insurance companies, MaaS providers, or today’s toll service providers who will
evolve into broader mobility payment service providers.”
—Peter Ummenhofer, GO Consulting, in “Tolling Industry Discussions, Toll
Insight, March 22, 2022
“We want government to invest in infrastructure that gets a high utilization
(as opposed to roads to nowhere). If they built a new airport runway and it
filled up with flights, people would sing the praises of such a great
investment. Yet if we invest in additional freeway capacity and it fills up, it
was wasted money? How does that make sense? It means the government built
mobility infrastructure exactly where people needed it—where there was unmet
demand—and isn’t that exactly what we want them to do as taxpayers?”
—Tory Gattis, Urban Reform Institute, email to Robert Poole, March 9, 2022
» return to top
The post Surface Transportation News: Pandemic and migration change
transportation plans, supply chain crisis, 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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