50-50 on transit

U.S. Representative Tom Davis from Fairfax County, Virginia is the leading proponent of dedicated tax streams to support WMATA, the local subway and bus transportation authority for the DC region. As a sweetener, he proposes that the federal government provide $150 million/year for the next ten years in additional funds to support the system.

In today's Examiner, Congressman Davis has a long letter in response to a couple of editorials in last week's Examiner that liken this proposal to "the biggest earmark in history." In "Funding Metro is a good investment for the federal government," he discusses the importance of the subway system to the transport of federal workers, and the fact that these 300,000+ riders don't use a car reduces demand for and congestion of roads.

Speaking of cars on the road, there is a fascinating letter to the editor, "More Lanes, Longer Commutes," in today's Post about induced demand from adding more roads. Ernest De Corte from Lovettsville, Virginia writes:

In 1968 I traveled 40 miles to work, going east on two-lane Route 7, in Loudoun County. There were two signal lights, and it took me 55 minutes.

In 1980, on four lanes, it took one hour and 25 minutes. I don't remember the number of signal lights. I recently drove the same route on six to eight lanes, and it took me over one hour and 45 minutes. I was too busy dodging traffic to count the number of signal lights. But there were plenty!

As has already been shown in Los Angeles, you cannot build enough roads or lanes to accommodate the number of cars brought on by development ["More Houses, More Traffic," editorial, July 18].

While I would say that you can accommodate more development, if land use complements a transportation and mobility infastructure that works to reduce the number of single occupancy vehicle trips. This is something that A. Barton Hinkle discussed in an op-ed piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch earlier in the week, "Transportation, Cont'd: State Can't Fix Its Roads Without Changing How It Uses Land."

There's a lot of good stuff in his piece, but here's something to think about:

Several years ago a study of traffic in Northern Virginia found another equally astounding datum: 74 percent of the vehicle trips from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. have nothing to do with the daily commute. In fact, the only hours when commuting accounts for the majority of drivers on the road in Northern Virginia is the two-hour stretch between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. The rest of the time drivers are attending not to business, but to the business of life. That's because, in many places, you have to go 10 or 15 miles just to get a gallon of milk.

But in other news, Congressman Davis, along with his colleague Congressman Wolf, still demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding of transit-efficiency and design and land use policy that is urban and compact, along the lines of Arlington County Virginia or Washington DC.

Both Congresspeople are pressuring the State of Virginia to not consider underground tunneling of the Dulles Corridor subway extension, fearing that delays will limit the ability to garner funding from the Federal Government. See "Wolf, Davis Say Tunnel May Delay Dulles Rail."
Illustration of the guideway on Route 7 at Spring Hill Road, 27 feet above street level. Photo Credit: Dulles Corridor Metro Project.

Frankly, I have no desire to help Tysons Corner fix itself. My concern is for the District of Columbia foremost and primarily. If it's easier to get around in Northern Virginia, then it makes it that much more difficult for DC to compete. These days, I think we can hold our own nonetheless. But it's important to have a great transit system. DC depends on it. In fact, it's one of the city's primary competitive advantages.

Baltimore Maryland should prove that if you design a crappy transit system, people won't ride it. For example, the light rail system has many problems. It doesn't go where a lot of people want to go. Many of the stations are not located within neighborhoods, but require a distant trip. For many years, many sections of the line were single-tracked which reduced frequency. Then, when they double-tracked the system, the construction process led many people to stop riding the system.

The result is that few people ride light rail in Baltimore. The busiest bus lines in Washington, DC transport as many or more passengers daily, compared to the 28-mile Baltimore light rail system.

And the Baltimore subway system has similar issues. It is like a private transit system for the Charles Center urban renewal project and for the Johns Hopkins Hospital in East Baltimore. It doesn't go to enough places where people want to go, or where they live, to have much impact.

The result is that the ridership on Baltimore's subway system equals about 2-3 of DC's busiest bus lines. (I am not even going to bother comparing Baltimore's subway ridership to the ridership of the DC-area subway system.)

Similarly, both the Washington Times and Steve Eldridge's Sprawl and Crawl column, "VRE sees recent ridership downturn," in the Examiner discuss the declining ridership of the Virginia Railway Express commuter rail line. It's happening because of service declines, and these declines result from the necessary "satisficing" of using the CSX railroad lines, and CSX is primarily concerned with freight operations and will not make upgrades to the line above and beyond their freight carriage requirements. According to an AP recounting of the issue:

VRE ridership declined about 2 percent, or by about 178 passengers, in the fiscal year that ended June 30 compared to the prior year. That dip is a marked change for VRE, which saw ridership jump an average of 13 percent each year from 2000 to 2005.

So ridership is dropping.

(Due to an indexing problem, the Washington Times article, "Decline in ridership costs commuter rail; VRE cites track work, heat rules" is not retrievable from the online website.)

Both the Baltimore and VRE lessons should be prominent in the minds of people like Congressmen Davis and Wolf when they make pronouncements.

One of the biggest reasons transit doesn't carry as many riders as it could is because bad decisions to reduce costs make it much harder, less comfortable, or less efficient to use, in comparison to other forms of mobility.

But focusing on roads and single-occupancy vehicles as the way to go is an endgame with no real end in sight.

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