Sprawling Cities and New Infrastructure: Highways or Public Transportation?

[SanibelMan]

Here in St. Louis, there are a number of new highway projects in the works, including The Page Avenue Freeway, The New I-64, and The New Mississippi River Bridge Projects. Page Avenue and the new bridge are both brand-new road systems, with Page Avenue being a new freeway link to the western suburbs and the new bridge being a new interstate link in Downtown St. Louis. The New I-64 is a plan for the rebuilding of miles of urban interstate, including flattening of hills/valleys and new interchanges.

There has been a lot of opposition to these plans on the basis that none address a need for better public transportation system in the Metro St. Louis area. While there are plans to expand MetroLink, the area’s light rail service, many people say that we simply aren’t focusing enough attention to the public transportation issue, and that if we build more roads, the traffic, people, and sprawl will only increase, as well as doing nothing to cut pollution.

The engineers at the Departments of Transportation argue that it’s their job to provide safe passage for people, even those in St. Charles County - they didn’t make people move out there, but they did, and now they have to accommodate them. This seems like something of a chicken-and-egg question, but should the focus be put on new highways or new public transportation in cities that already have major sprawl problems, as St. Louis does?

[SanibelMan]

A couple things to add:

There was a discussion about the Mississippi River Bridge Projects on St. Louis on the Air, the local call-in show at the NPR station where I’m interning. Most of the callers wanted to know why public transportation options weren’t being considered. Here’s a link to the program.

Here’s an article I wrote for my journalism class on MoDOT. Most of it deals with funding for the department, but part is the Sierra Club’s position on the Page Avenue Freeway and MoDOT’s response. I’ve highlighted the relevant portion.

There are potholes covered with duct tape, ramps that practically force U-turns, and traffic that’s backed up for miles. Highway 40 / Interstate 64 is crumbling, Interstate 70 is made of potholes from here to Kansas City, and heaven help you if you live in St. Charles and work in St. Louis - you’ve got a long commute over bumpy roads.
Last fall, a proposition was put on the ballot in Missouri to try and alleviate some of these problems. Proposition B, as it was known, would have raised the gasoline tax by four cents to 21 cents, and raised the state sales tax by 1/2 cent to 4.725 per cent, raising up to $550 million each year for the Department of Transportation.
Voters, however, defeated the proposal, for a variety of reasons. Pat Martin, of Missourians for Tax Justice, campaigned against the regressive nature of the tax.
“I think the first reason these taxes were rejected is because they were in addition to the burden middle-income people already pay,” Martin said.
Martin cited an analysis by a Washington tax group which showed the tax burden would be five times greater on lower-income taxpayers than on others.
Christopher Sutton, senior public information specialist at MoDOT, said the failure of a 15-year plan which passed in 1992 probably hurt Proposition B’s chances.
“Most tax initiatives failed (last fall),” Sutton said. “The 15-year plan didn’t happen the way we originally anticipated. This is a completely different department of transportation. We’ve proven our accountability, and most projects come in under budget.”**
Ginger Harris, chair of transportation and amart growth committee of the Sierra Club, said the current construction of the Page Avenue Extension, a freeway from Interstate 270 to Highway 94 in St. Charles, is an example of MoDOT’s poor use of funds and promotion of urban sprawl. The highway goes through Creve Coeur Park and over a new bridge on the Missouri River.
“There were many things we didn’t like about the Page Avenue Extension,” Harris said. “We opposed the fact that the corridor had been set aside for this bridge, but the county executive allowed homes and subdivisions to be built in that corridor, so that all that was left was a park which, according to the law, should not have been breached except in extraordinary circumstances.”
Harris said the Sierra Club also opposes the project because MoDOT was “not willing to use or consider other methods,” such as the expansion of MetroLink into St. Charles County, or tolls on the new highway.
Martin said she proposed tolls for the reconstruction of Interstate 70, but instituting tolls would require a constitutional amendment, and there is not enough support in the state legislature for such a measure to pass.
Sutton said MoDOT doesn’t get nearly the money it needs just to maintain the road already here, much less what is needed for new projects.
“As directed by the General Assembly, a large portion of MoDOT’s funding is diverted to cities, counties and other state agencies. By the time MoDOT receives its share, nearly 40 percent of the funds are gone,” Sutton said.
Sutton said urban sprawl, while a problem in St. Charles, isn’t the fault of MoDOT.
“People move where they want to move. MoDOT has a responsibility to keep up with that growth and provide a transportation infrastructure that handles vehicle traffic,” he said.**
According to Sutton, MoDOT has about $39,000 of revenue for each highway mile, which is much less than other states. Kansas, for example, has $113,000 for each mile, and Illinois has $135,000. As for the fuel tax, Sutton said MoDOT receives only 8.8 cents of the 17 cents per gallon the state collects.
Martin said the reason the state has so little money is that a few years ago, the state absorbed all lettered county roads, because counties no longer wanted to spend the money necessary to maintain them.
Sutton said that because of the failure of Proposition B, there will be no major construction projects in St. Louis in 2004, and projects such as the reconstruction of Highway 40 / Interstate 64 and a new bridge over the Mississippi River in downtown St. Louis are postponed indefinitely.

[hawthorne]

It is a bit of a chicken and egg problem, isn’t it? Without urban infill the population’s not dense enough to sustain a public transport system that’s attractive enough to take a lot of cars off the road without losing a great deal of money. But without decent public transport…

I doubt the answer is more money to public transport and less to road funding: IMHO what will do the trick is developer levies. If it’s more expensive to extend the infrastructure to service the spawl than it is to connect people to the existing infrastructure, charge them for it. That’ll diminish the appeal of moving to the outskirts, and the resultant urban infill will make public transport an appealing option.

[Pergau]

Don’t worry, you’re not alone with this, we have the same problems in Ireland and the same arguments. I personally believe that it is the payback period or method that is the problem:

A very simplistic view of it:

If you build a road - it’s either state funded or via a PPP (public private partnership) State funding is simple - the contractor gets paid on completion or whatever and it’s a simple building job but if it’s PPP the road will probably become a toll road and then there is a simple monololistic method of generating revenue.

With Public transport, there are all sorts of extra ongoing costs - Spread infrastructure, rolling stock, ticketing, staff (unionised to the hilt), evasion etc. The revenus often doesn’t cober the costs and there is a need for government subsidy so there is a massive cost associated with obtaining the revenue.

Developers will go for the fast fix i.e. a road whilst the public will go for the Public transport - Bus, rail, Light rail etc.

Hawthorne has mentioned the two biggest problems with Public transport , Cost and critical mass.
It’s an age old argument about whether you build the transport infrastructure first or wait for a cost-effective critical mass of people to amass. The obvious solution is to front load the infrastructure but this is the costly one and governments teend to shy away from it.
People develop transport habits very quickly after moving to a location and these habits are difficult to break once formed so if you move to an area with no public transport, you will get a car and once you have this, it is almost impossible to get you to take the bus or train to work - even if it is cheaper than using a car. But if you start off on public transport, you are far less likely to start driving to work, even if you get a car.

Developer levies is a way to help spread the cost of infrastructure . In Ireland, developers now have to pay a levy to fund the amount of public infrastructure that their homeowners will use. (There is a formula for the cost of roads
(per individual) divided by the percentage of people who will use the roads etc etc) If the development is beside a rail line, for instance, the levy is higher as the value of the houses will also be higher by virtue of their proximity to Public Transport.

This helps, but there is still a mental block with planners over providing infrastructure before the users are there.

It makes me mad.

[yoyo3500]

Don’t forget the political aspect of the “chicken and egg” example. Why should a politician approve funding for a project that will cost lots of money (which is bad politically) when the benefits (which are good politically) won’t be seen for years to come, and would not benefit a politician. On a local scale, a politician is more likely to seek to improve his/her community and make such decisions. But the more “political” a politician is, the less likely public transportation will be supported. Add to that the general public perception of public transportation, that it does not affect them (most folks in the U.S. outside of NYC do not take public transportation), and public transporation becomes something most people do not want to pay for, even with taxes.

Ultimately, I beleive most planners would agree that there needs to be a mix of transportation types. Though there are certainly many arguments supporting the idea that highways and automobile reliance have done much damage to communities (I will spare you all a lecture from my planning education), a look at the seeds of sprawl make this an interesting issue (and one that will likely never find any sort of resolution given the complexity of the issue and dynamic nature of transporation technology and methodology of study). The early suburbs (e.g. Riverside, IL) were for the purpose of wealthier folks having a means to commute to a large city without having to live in one. This still is a primary motivation for living in suburbs today, though now that suburbs have matured, there are pull factors to suburbs such as school districts, suburban jubs, etc. But suburbs became much more accessible after WWII with the government efforts at making housing affordable for returning GI’s. From the transportation angle, highways also became much more abundant with government spending, though it was not for the sake of the suburbs, but for the sake of defense and the government’s desire to have a highway system to ransport military accross the country effectively. This effort made sprawl much more virulent (to look at it negatively).

Later, environmentalists began to notice how bad the smog had gotten and how far humans had impeeded on nature, and sociologists began to notice the effects on communities (in the cities and suburbs), police began to notice how many automobile accidents were occuring, etc. Hence, focus on alternative modes of transportation as a necessity is a relatively new idea, and many new issues keep arising. For example, if we really do focus our energies on public transporation and succeed increating a mass transit-dependant society, will this make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks? (Anyone who travels daily through Grand Central Station or Penn Station in NYC has certainly thought about this on some level.)

Anyway, I’m starting to lecture here, so I’ll leave off here.