Samuel R. Staley

Sam is the Director of Urban and Land Use Policy at the Reason Foundation, and co-author, with Ted Balaker, of The Road More Traveled: Why the congestion crisis matters more than you think, and what we can do about it (2006)

Sam is working on Mobility First: A New Approach to Congestion Relief and Transportation Policy, to be published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2007, and co-authored with Adrian T. Moore.

Website: www.reason.org and www.urbanfutures.org

e-mail: samuelrestaley@aol.com

14.00 to 15.30 on Friday 18 May 2007

Developing Infrastructure: Markets, Administrative Planning, and the Limits of Democracy

Summary

Developing Infrastructure: Markets, Administrative Planning, and the Limits of Democracy

The Road More Traveled - Why the congestion crisis matters more than you think and what we can do about it

Ted Balaker and Sam Staley

For most of us, traffic has gotten so bad that it impacts nearly all of our decisions, big and small. Traffic is a major consideration when we choose where to live, work, shop, and even who we'll date or what time of day we'll leave the house to run errands. Things have gotten so bad that the average American spends over 45 hours a year, over a full work week, stuck in traffic.

Yet, in a disturbing violation of the "can-do" American spirit, most politicians and planners have simply thrown in the towel and surrendered to gridlock. "We can't eliminate traffic and we can't build our way out of congestion," they lament. So should we all just accept the daily grind of traffic as a modern-day fact of life?

An emphatic "No!" is the answer presented in The Road More Traveled. 'We don't accept failing schools and we cannot accept congestion,' say the authors Ted Balaker and Samuel Staley. They add:

'If we're sitting in traffic we aren't playing with our kids or enjoying our hobbies. Businesses are raising prices to make up for wasted fuel and lost productivity. Our time, money, and quality of life are too valuable to just give up. We have the ideas, technology and capital to eliminate congestion. We just need the willpower.'

Through the years our cars and highways have provided unprecedented door-to-door mobility that helped America become the most prosperous nation in the world. But The Road More Traveled warns that bottlenecked roads pose a serious threat to this prosperity. Congestion robs the U.S. economy of over $63 billion a year and traffic delays are expected to increase by more than 65 percent over the next 25 years.

If we don't make up for years of neglect and prepare for future growth, our economy will be crippled by our inability to move goods or people.

In The Road More Traveled Balaker and Staley detail 10 steps that nearly every city and state can take to reduce traffic significantly:

1. Add Lanes to Congested Roads and Highways

Many say we can’t build our way out of congestion, but we haven’t even tried. Over the last 30 years, vehicle lane miles traveled have increased by over 143 percent, but we’ve added just 5 percent in new capacity. If we removed all of the pork and light rail projects from existing transportation plans and instead built roads and added lanes where they are most needed, we could eliminate severe congestion for less than we are currently planning to spend on transportation over the next few decades.

2. Public-Private Partnerships and Toll Lanes

Cash-strapped governments lack the political resolve to cut spending in nonessential programs that would free up money for much-needed infrastructure projects. Enter the private sector. Private companies have recently committed over $25 billion to construct or upgrade toll road projects in six states and stand ready to build roads the government can’t afford to.

3. Traffic Signal Optimization

Surprisingly, many cities have yet to do this, despite huge potential benefits. Traffic signal optimization can reduce stop-and-go traffic by 40 percent, cut gas consumption by 10 percent, emissions by 22 percent, and travel times by 25 percent. A study of 26 such projects in Texas found benefits outweighed costs 38 to 1.

4. Creative Construction

Today’s technology offers countless options that weren’t available when our Interstate system was born 50 years ago. For example, Paris is building a double-decker tunnel deep beneath historic Versailles to preserve the area and reduce congestion. And the world’s highest bridge, the Millau Viaduct, a 1 1/2-mile long, 800-foot high, $536 million project was built using private funding last year.

5. Freeway Ramp Metering

By controlling the flow of traffic entering highways, California has been able to increase freeway speeds by 22 to 89 percent in some cases.

6. One-Way Streets

One-way streets are able to carry 50 percent more traffic and reduce traffic accidents by 10 to 50 percent. Yet, many transportation planners haven’t taken advantage of this often-simple option.

7. Incident Management

For each minute that traffic is blocked by an accident, five minutes of congestion are added to a commute. In most urban areas, much more can be done to rapidly and effectively manage accidents.

8. Telecommuting

Telecommuters outnumber transit commuters in 27 of the nation’s 50 largest cities. With communication technology constantly improving, companies and governments should encourage more workers to skip the commute and work from home.

9. Parking Reform

Eliminating free parking and parking subsidies has reduced driving by up to 24 percent in some cities.

10. Improve Key Intersections and Access Roads

Overcrowded streets near highways create a negative domino effect that ripples through our entire road system.

What priorities do we want reflected in land use planning?

Has the notion of a distinct town and country become unsustainable?

Can planners reconcile government policies with where and how people actually want to live?

Is it justified to describe policies based on constraining building activity as "planning"?

Introduction

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