Go Ohio Transportation Planning initiative and thinking about DC

States are required to have transportation plans as part of their dealings with the US Department of Transportation. Some time ago, I mentioned the process in the State of Wisconsin, and one of their publications, the Transportation Planning Resource Guide, for use by local communities in drafting local transportation plans.

The State of Ohio is going through this planning process now and is holding meetings across the state. These are the stated goals for the process and plan:

How We’ll Get There

The plan will identify high priority transportation needs that have the potential to dramatically grow business, and elevate Ohio’s position as a national transportation leader. It will be shaped by four key strategies.

1. Increase the State’s Competitiveness

Ohio will be made more competitive by reducing bottlenecks and improving freight connections among air, trucks, rail, and maritime transportation systems.

2. Connect Transportation System Investment to Targeted Industries

Ohio is targeting nine industries for investment that have the greatest growth and job potential. Providing efficient, well-connected transportation networks to support the supply chain for these industries will help Ohio grow its economy.

3. Understand the Impact of Land Use & Transportation Policies

Considering all modes of transportation – including pedestrian, bicycle and transit – when new transportation infrastructure is developed, can improve access, safety, and quality of life, often at a lower cost than adding these options later.

4. Embrace environmental stewardship to advance a green economy.

When decision makers proactively consider environmental issues in transportation planning and project development, they can help ensure positive outcomes for Ohio’s air and water, and preserve a higher quality of life for residents.

This is the kind of discussion that I argue must happen in the DC region, in two dimensions, (1) rebuilding trust in the WMATA system and (2) updating and rebuilding a rough consensus on what a truly metropolitan transportation policy needs to look like and a plan for realizing it. The past blog entry "St. Louis regional transit planning process as a model for what needs to be done in the DC Metropolitan region" discusses the need for this kind of process in more depth.

And note that the announcement of a move of the headquarters from the Choice Hotel Chain from Colesville Road ("Choice Hotels, with more than $4M in incentives, to stay in Montgomery" from the Gazette) in a location with almost no transit connections (a bus line or two) to the Rockville Town Center, with adjacent service from the Red Line subway, the MARC Brunswick Railroad line, and bus service illustrates the concept of locating high traffic generating destinations in areas of high transit service. At its new location, as many as 50% of the trips going to the Choice Hotels headquarters can be shifted to transit.

Today's Examiner has a letter from Stuart Schwartz of the Coalition for Smart Growth, criticizing a recent Examiner article (and cover headline), "Transportation funds move toward transit, away from highways," that averred that too much money is going to transit vis-a-vis transportation spending in the Washington metropolitan area. (I meant to write about that story and didn't get around to it.) [Note that the Examiner hasn't updated its online posting of letters to the editor for about two weeks.]

This is in line with the constant criticism of sustainable transportation policy by DC Watch/themail editor Gary Imhoff, such as in the introduction to this recent issue (themail is the city's e-letter on good government), and lobbying by the pro-automobile lobby the American Automobile Association to defund non-automobile transportation initiatives.

Typically, the argument of people espousing this position is that more people drive, therefore automobility should garner the majority of funds spent on transportation. Well, the fact is that automobility does receive the lions share of funds spent on transportation, and automobility is subsidized at a far greater rate than is transit or walking or biking.

But irrespective of this fact, I always argue that automobile zealots miss the point with regard to transportation policy in the center city. In DC proper, 40% of households don't own cars, and 51% of work trips by residents--a majority--are made by walking, biking, and transit.

(In fact, this point is discussed pretty well in a column by Simon Kuper in the Financial Times, "Two wheels on my wagon" (October 23-24/2010) where he discusses how cars, by maximizing mobility, hurt cities. But that trends are changing, and have been since 2000, when car sales peaked in the U.S. He writes:

Crucially, the trendiest early adopters in revived city centres have begun ditching cars. Cities are regaining status from the suburbs, and the city centres where house prices have remained most robust are the ones with the fewest cars. In these places the car is becoming an outdated mode of transport, like the donkey. Increasingly, a driving city is a dysfunctional city: contrast Caracas with Zurich. The new hip urban mode of transport is the bicycle...

Of course, most westerners still drive. ...

In a center city like Washington, DC, supporting automobility disserves the majority, especially when this is calculated in terms of the number of people moving in, about, and out of the city overall.

Furthermore, the competitive advantage of the center city rests upon the sustainable transportation modes of walking, biking, and transit, both in terms of how these modes optimize movement throughput, but also in terms of what David Engwicht describes as the dual purposes of the city: to promote exchange of all types (social, cultural, knowledge, economic) and to minimize travel. These arguments were first laid out in the book Reclaiming our Cities and Towns: Better Living with Less Traffic.

From a review of the book in the Electronic Green Journal published by the University of California Berkeley:

Engwicht begins by examining the reasons he believes cities exist -- to maximize opportunities for exchange by concentrating people, goods, and facilities within a limited area. Transport should enhance exchange opportunities, but Engwicht finds that it sometimes does the opposite. Consider what often happens as traffic volume increases. First, new roads are built, or existing roads expanded, to accommodate the heavier use. Next, more space is designated for parking and housing the growing number of cars. As more space is taken by cars, opportunities for exchange, whether in the form of the corner store, the local playground or park, or someone's backyard, are soon affected. Stores move to the suburbs, children are transported to sports facilities to play, and people restrict their socializing to a smaller area of their neighborhood. Finally, with the distance growing between exchange opportunities, public transport becomes less feasible and, as a result, many people, particularly the poor, the disabled, and the elderly, are denied access to these opportunities.

How can we change our auto-dependent behavior and correct the auto-induced injustices? Engwicht offers many suggestions, from conservative to radical. ...


19th Century vs. 20th Century Street Design from the Central Washington Transportation and Civic Design Study (1977).

I have lent my copy of the book out, but there is a great diagram that I need to scan, which shows that spaces for exchange are diminished, that the city's ability to foster exchange is diminished, as more space is allocated to automobility. Engwicht's work also extends ideas expressed by Donald Appleyard, which found that as traffic increased on streets, connections within neighborhoods and households decreased precipitously.

Image from Donald Appleyard, Livable Streets. Impact of traffic on community connection.

While it is very difficult it seems for people to grasp the point, cities, center cities in particular, have different transportation needs and priorities than do individuals, and policies focused on individuals and promoting automobility don't adequately serve cities. SO differentiated policies are required, even if people don't want to recognize this imperative.