We Don't Need More Highways

Hugh Pickens writes "When it comes to infrastructure, politicians usually prefer shiny new projects over humdrum repairs. A brand-new highway is exciting: There's a ribbon-cutting, and there's less need to clog up existing lanes with orange cones and repair crews. So it's not surprising that 57 percent of all state highway funding goes toward new construction, often stretching out to the suburbs, even though new roads represent just 1.3 percent of the overall system. Now Brad Plumer writes in the Washington Post that many transportation reformers think this is a wrong-headed approach and that we should focus our dollars on fixing and upgrading existing infrastructure rather than continuing to build sprawling new roads). UCLA economist Matthew Kahn and the University of Minnesota's David Levinson made a more detailed case for a 'fix-it first' strategy. They noted that, at the moment, federal highway spending doesn't get subjected to strict cost-benefit analysis, and governments often build new roads when they arguably shouldn't (PDF). And that's to say nothing of data suggesting that poor road conditions are a 'significant factor' in one-third of all fatal crashes, and cause extra wear and tear on cars."

Different government levels hinder smart growth

[stomv]

Zoning determines "how much" house you can build on a property. Single family only? Up to 2-3 family? Apartment, 3 stories or fewer? Larger? Parking requirements? All of that is determined at the local level in most United States states. Highway money is typically spent by the states. They decide which projects get funding, etc. Additionally, most new highway projects aren't long distance projects -- they're circular ring roads or spokes into cities. The funding for the highway infrastructure is nearly all federal. The US Congress decides how much money to spend on highways.

As a result, there is very little coordination, and we end up with sprawl because of it.

Making matters worse, high speed rail is clearly state-to-state infrastructure in most cases (San Fran to L.A. notwithstanding). However, the rail infrastructure isn't federal -- it's state. That means if you want to improve a rail corridor along five states, you need five sets of funding, five sets of state decision making, etc. That's one federal gov't, five state gov'ts, and dozens of local gov'ts all getting in each others way.

Building new roads is easier. Costs more, wastes more, but there are fewer barriers -- fewer abutters adjacent the road to complain, less pain caused by orange cones and lane reduction during construction, etc.

For better or for worse, our very government structure is designed in such a way that makes road repair/expansion far more difficult and painful on both politicians and constituents.

Re:Government roads

[kbonin]

I read the linked paper, and while interesting, it typifies one of the critical flaws in the extreme Libertarian model - there are a set of cases where for-profit private enterprise is a bad solution, such as where it is not practical to provide an reasonably large number of easements to setup competing infrastructures. Where constraints exist that facilitate natural monopolies, history has shown that it IS in the public interest to preclude predatory practices, as unchecked for-profit private enterprise will always seek maximum return on investment, leading to predatory practices. While it is true that modern government bureaucracies have demonstrated themselves to be extremely inefficient managers of infrastructure, they are arguably better than an unchecked predatory monopoly. Legal mechanisms like the Sherman Antitrust Act, while anathema to an extreme Libertarian, have proven highly valuable in the past. And circling back to the original point, given the critical nature of roads, and the time period required to execute a a negative feedback cycle through the legal system, I personally believe that unfettered privatization of all roads would be a good way to grind a modern civilization to its knees.

Re:Government roads

[alen]

In the USA we have airplanes

When I went to visit family 1600 away two months ago it took me all of 4 hours to fly there

Re:how about high speed rail instead?

[supercrisp]

There are legitimate reasons that high-speed rail won't work in the U.S.. I say this as someone who LOVES high-speed rail when I'm in Europe. But the U.S. is bigger, cities are farther apart, and we have far more autos already. It is often cheaper and more convenient to drive. That's hard to beat. It's also very difficult to find economically feasible routes to create. And to create such routes would require tremendous investments in infrastructure overhaul/creation. And to cap it off, we have a relatively cheap air transport system in place. It's a tough situation. Again, I'd love to see high speed or even moderate speed rail. But. Say there was a moderate-speed train to Atlanta, a trip my family takes a few times a year, three or four hours by car. It would be very unlikely that this would economically better for us. There already exists an extremely cheap bus system, $10 a person to ATL. But gas is cheaper. And even if it weren't, we'd be dropped in a city that has a workable but not great public transport system, so that getting around for a day's recreation, we'd lose hours of time and spend even more money. That's what you're up against in the U.S.: the whole transportation system is designed around cars, and it works well enough that there's a big performance gap between the auto-focused system and a system of public transport that would be economically viable and convenient enough to get people to use it. So we're in a situation where someone like me, who used to be in the Green party when I had one to be in, will drive instead of use mass-transit, simply because it would probably cost me $75 more for a day's travel and would take prohibitive amounts of time, at least for the typical day we spend in ATL now and then.

Do we need gas guzzlers?

[golodh]

Short answer: yes we do.

For those who don't know why, look at this link http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ohim/hs06/htm/nt5.htm [dot.gov]

Average commuting trip length is about 14 miles in rural environments and about 10.3 in urban environments. Now that's short.

With such distances air transport is totally ridiculous, and rail transport is not viable. With one exception: when there are large numbers of trips that run parallel for the main part of the journey.

This is why most of the US is (deliberately or otherwise) impossible to serve by public transport: it's so spread out that you get almost nil overlap, and hence almost nil opportunities for public transport.

Exceptions are big cities (New York (subway), San Fransisco (Bay Area Rapid Transport), Boston) that have a structure that allows public transport to compete.

So: we're committed to cars and we'd better maintain our roads if we want to to use them.