[an error occurred while processing this directive]

On Point

Vincent Carroll, editor of the editorial pages, writes his On Point column most weekdays. He is also an author and freelance writer. Reach Vincent Carroll at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

LATEST POSTS

MONTHLY ARCHIVES

Carroll: Mobility miscues

Thursday, August 16 at 12:00 AM

It’s true that metro Denver’s proposal for traffic relief along the U.S. 36 corridor isn’t as bold as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to charge motorists a fee to enter busy parts of Manhattan from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. No doubt that difference has something to do with New York making the cut this week for federal funding and metro Denver receiving a meaningless pat on the head.

But if federal officials had been truly interested in enhancing mobility as opposed to merely charging for it, they’d have found a way to grant this region its request for up to $235 million to extend the car-pool- and-bus-lane system up 36, with an option for solo drivers to use it by paying a toll.

After all, the northwest metro project would create badly needed highway capacity even as it benefited mass transit.

The New York plan, meanwhile, would do nothing to enhance traffic capacity, since tolls would be diverted to transit. It would mainly fleece residents of other boroughs, as well as commuters from farther afield, in the name of easing congestion.

Don’t get me wrong. Congestion pricing is an attractive option for unclogging some central cities, with New York high on that list.

But as Robert Poole, the director of transportation studies at the Reason Foundation and an MIT-trained engineer, told me recently, any such system should be designed to ensure that there are more winners than losers. And he doesn’t think New York’s plan qualifies on that ground.

Poole, by the way, is a longtime advocate of congestion pricing, tolls and other market-based answers to transportation problems.

In order to salvage the New York plan, he recommends it be revised to conform more to the model in place in Stockholm, Sweden. There, funds generated from congestion pricing (which has reduced traffic by more than 20 percent downtown) benefit both urban and suburban residents and are used for both mass transit and highway improvements.

Not surprisingly, the Stockholm system has wide public support — which is far from the case with the Bloomberg scheme for New York.

But maybe that’s because Bloomberg doesn’t seem all that interested in enhancing mobility for all; rather, he seems mainly eager to squeeze people out of their cars.

Along with a growing number of planners and environmentalists, he would exploit government’s monopoly of highway ownership to impose the equivalent of a tax on mobility in the pursuit of goals that go far beyond curbing congestion.

Delusional about rail

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a hundred times from local political and civic leaders: We’re going to use rail transit stations to shape development and living patterns in our communities for generations to come.

Any bets on whether their confidence is justified?

Here’s my bet: They’re deluding themselves. Some transit hubs will indeed thrive but the overall effect on land use and housing in the metro area will be small or even negligible.

For evidence, let’s turn the narrative over to Eric Beaton, author of a study published last September by the Rappaport Institute at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He carefully examined all areas “within five- and 10-minute drives of all current or former commuter rail stations in greater Boston” to see “how these areas changed between 1970 and 2000.”

The verdict: “The data show that development patterns are governed by the dominant forces of the day. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, commuter rail service played a major role in shaping the land uses in the communities it served. But that does not seem to be the case today. Rather, the large investments in commuter rail have had, at best, modest positive impacts on ridership and land uses. . . . .

“Looking to the future, this means that providing new commuter rail facilities is not likely to produce significant changes in travel and land-use patterns.”

Of course, by the time a similar study 20 years from now reaches similar conclusions for Denver, most of those who sold us the myth regarding transit’s allegedly miraculous effects on land use will have long since moved on.

Vincent Carroll is editor of the editorial pages. Reach him at carrollv@RockyMountainNews.com.

READER COMMENTS

Vince

Good to see you back. Where have you been? I was afraid that you were being purged as was Peter Blake from the op/ed section of the paper.

Posted by SlouchingtowardBoulder on August 16, 2007 08:24 AM

My neighborhood (Southmoor) is changing in a hurry, and I suspect that it has a lot to do with transit improvements.

Posted by robert zimmerman on August 16, 2007 03:50 PM

Why should NYC increase traffic capacity? Why should any metropolis?