31 comments on Linking Promises to Funding
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31 comments on Linking Promises to Funding
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Your basic premise seems to be the same old mantra of would-be social engineers: "let's gridlock and immiserate our way into conservation." Regardless of geophysical or geopolitical reality, that just seems out of touch with political reality.
Maybe it would fly in Berkeley, CA, or just perhaps Madison, WI. But generally, few voters want to dissipate their lives stuck in traffic, or waiting in the heat, rain, or snow for buses or trains that can't even be bothered to show up half the time, or cycling in 115F heat, or attempting fruitlessly to cycle on streets slick with glare ice.
I'm not even sure the premise is in touch with civil-engineering reality. Since the interstate system was more-or-less completed in the 1970s, most metro areas have added only negligible arterial road capacity. But most have piled on plenty of population, and the proportion of that population that commutes to work has gone way up - due in no small part to what used to be called "women's liberation", which certainly will not be going away.
I therefore regard the underlying assertion that demand is literally infinite, that we could never ever build our way out of congestion, as neither true nor false, but woefully untested. After all, demand has roughly tripled and supply has barely budged.
Now, if you want to convince the wide general public that additional road space will become useless within its design lifetime - which would seem to be 20-40 years, no more than that - then have at it. After all, the perceived likelihood of that happening is generally taken to be zero. And that would be the main disconnect, wouldn't it?
In the meantime, the votes in Seattle are not being counted yet. Maybe the Seattle tactic - piling expense upon expense until voters perhaps blanch at the magnitude of the required tax increases - will turn out to be the most effective way to create the desired gridlock.
I am not sure where you live but you either haven't traveled much in the US over the last 30 years, or are simply ignorant of the US Highway system.
Many of the main arterial interstate highways were built from 1960 (federal law started funding them in 1957) to the late 1970's with the system being largely complete by 1980. Nearly all portions were built as 4 lane divided highways, except in major urban areas where 6 lanes was the norm. Most major metro areas of the US now have the main interstate highways built to 8 to 12 lanes with lessor highways (not designated as "interstates") often 6 to 8 lanes. These lane expansions came mostly from the early 1970's to the present.
Perhaps you should visit the Los Angeles area, then look at a vintage highway map from about 1972 and see how the system has grown in the last 35 years. By lane capacity many cities have doubled or tripled their highway capacity, besides upgrading many state designated highways to "interstate" standards.
This year the Federal Highway Administration will dole out over 40 billion dollors for highway projects that expand or upgrade the system. On top of that states will spend billions more of their money on non federal highways which will have maintenance and expansion upgrades.
So, we haven't expanded the system much? Check your facts.
Mark in St Louis, USA
Maybe California is different. It usually is.
Not too long ago I had to drive (rather than fly) from the upper Midwest to New York City. With the exception of one fifty mile stretch, my old 1980 road atlas would have done me just fine for the entire trip. A fifty mile stretch in a thousand mile route does not constitute a threefold expansion.
Things are only a little different locally, where rather old maps are perfectly fine except if one is actually in a new development or close to one of two new four-lane 'expressways' (that are upgrades of two-lane roads and therefore do not constitute a tripling.) The main (arterial) streets one uses to get around are much the as they "always were". Because they have not expanded much - and not one has tripled, i.e. gone from two lanes to six - bus service that was once scheduled to take 25 minutes must now be scheduled for 60 or 70 minutes. It's called rationing by queue, or, as I said, conservation by gridlock.
Anyway, yes, some small portion of the interstates and turnpikes, mainly in Ohio, has been widened from four lanes to six. The only significant eight lane stretch was a few miles in Chicago. The interstate in Pennsylvania approaching the Delaware River was still much as it was many years ago, relatively twisty and narrow with wholly inadequate on- and off-ramps. With only a short exception, the remainder in Pennsylvania and New Jersey was four lanes and six lanes in the same places as many years ago.
So I am hardly persuaded that the size of the arterial road system has tripled, as would have been needed to keep up with population increase plus a far higher proportion of the population traveling on business and commuting to work. Now, 25 or 30 percent, I could believe. This idea that the system is growing like some sort of uncontrolled cancer just seems utterly preposterous. Basically, despite the occasional widening here and there, it still looks mostly like the same old cheapskate same old, only getting more and more clogged with each passing year, as we pile in ever more and more people while willfully refusing to build much of anything.