Obama: Congestion Pricing ‘Thoughtful’ and ‘Innovative’

In an exclusive interview with a New York television station, Senator Barack Obama described congestion pricing as a thoughtful and innovative approach to the problem of congestion. In the interview he described it as a way to reduce congestion, reduce pollution, and invest in infrastructure and mass transit. With an April 7th deadline approaching, New York City appears poised to approve a historic congestion pricing plan. (See Streetsblog for exhaustive congestion pricing coverage.)

> WNYC: “Obama Urges Oversite of Financial Markets, Supports Congestion Pricing“

A Better Solar Power

Huge amounts of American electricity is generated by polluting coal-fired power generating plants. Electric cars and solar cells on private homes are nice, but what technology exists to replace these antiquated workhorses of the electrical grid?

The answer may lie in a new technology that’s already generating power for 380,000 homes in California and sparking a mad rush for venture capital and land. While photovoltaic cells only capture roughly 20% of the sun’s energy, solar thermal technology can capture upwards of 40%. Total costs for solar thermal technology are rapidly approaching the costs for energy produced through fossil fuels (the stated goal of google.org’s renewable energy program), and a large solar thermal plant can produce similar amount of power as a full-sized coal plant.

In a recent article the New York Times counted 10 plants in development in the Southwest, with 17 or more planned around the world:

On sunny afternoons, those 10 [U.S.] plants would produce as much electricity as three nuclear reactors, but they can be built in as little as two years, compared with a decade or longer for a nuclear plant. Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset.

The technology begins with this map, which shows what any visitor already knows: the American southwest is drenched in high intensity sunlight ideal for solar power generation.

FPL Energy employs giant parabolic mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto a liquid-filled pipe, used to drive a large turbine. Stirling Energy uses parabolic mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto sealed Sterling engines.

Here is the relatively straightforward plan of an FPL-type concentrating solar thermal plant. While this design contains a supplementary natural gas boiler, new plant designs will feature mechanisms to store energy for cloudy periods or evenings.

The phenomenon is global, and a new solar thermal plan recently came online in Australia, and an Abu Dhabi firm has announced plans to aggressively invest in solar thermal technology across the world’s “sun belt,” with the American Southwest a primary target for investment.

While it sounds promising, can the technology produce enough power to drive both our homes and our cars, even at night? One enterprising California power company thinks so, even though Wired magazine is a bit skeptical of the hype. At the very least, short huge new power lines the cloudy Northeast and Northwest may have to look to other sources. As Wired points out, “There’s a long road from a prototype plant in Bakersfield to providing 90 percent of the nation’s electric needs.”

> U.S. Bureau of Land Management Solar Power Program
> NY Times: “Turning Glare Into Watts“

Metro’s Underperforming Stations

The Washington, D.C. Metrorail system is a massive investment in regional infrastructure. It’s construction and maintenance requires billions dollars of tax money, but few would question it’s importance to the region. It has shaped growth and kept hundreds of thousands of cars off the road daily, improving the quality of our air and city.

Although the system is famously congested along busy lines at rush hour, many stations operate well below their capacity. Of the system’s 86 stations, 32 (or 37%) had fewer than 5,000 average weekday riders (boardings) in 2007. If the entire system is subsidized by taxes, these stations are the most deeply subsidized. Given the huge expense of the station construction, maintenance, and staff, is it acceptable to let these stations remain underutilized?

The 32 stations with fewer than 5,000 daily riders in 2007 are as follows: Morgan Boulevard, Cheverly, Deanwood, Arlington Cemetery, Eisenhower Ave., Capitol Heights, Forest Glen, Congress Heights, Landover, Waterfront, Benning Road, Naylor Road, Minnesota Ave., New York Avenue, Potomac Ave., Mt Vernon Sq-UDC, Shaw-Howard Univ, Van Dorn Street, West Hyattsville, Virginia Square-GMU, Addison Road, White Flint, Clarendon, Navy Yard, East Falls Church, Braddock Road, College Park, Rockville, Twinbrook, Georgia Avenue, Wheaton, Prince George’s Plaza, Cleveland Park.

A comparison to the system’s busiest stations helps clarify the factors involved:

Clearly, the busiest stations are located in high density areas with transit oriented development, served by multiple lines, connected to other modes (like buses and trains). However density alone is not enough: both Prince George’s Plaza and Crystal City are adjacent malls, but one among the least-used and the other among the busiest.

In addition to the much-needed reforms of WMATA’s development program and always-needed reform of local government plans and processes to require good design and high density, there is much that could be done. A ridership SWAT team could analyze each station, and provide recommendations for how ridership could be increased in the short, medium, and long terms. Suggestions may range from better wayfinding, improved usability of feeder bus service, increased police patrols or lighting to address safety, reforms to encourage new TOD, better bus shelters, recruiting local employers to encourage transit use, bike racks, or a host of other changes. Perhaps as a incentive WMATA could begin charging the home jurisdictions fines if they are unable to improve ridership at their stations.

While much of the discrepancy may lie with the region’s unequal distribution of development or poor land-use planning, there are practical ways to boost ridership at every station. The region would do well to take a close look at how to get the most return from our existing investments.

Is PostPoints Worth It?

The Washington Post company recently launched a rewards program called PostPoints. The launch included strange television ads featuring people exchanging anthropomorphized blue point chips for things like pizza. I recently signed up to see how the program worked and whether I too could get some free pizza out of it.

Since I am not a Washington Post subscriber I joined at the “silver” level, earning 500 points for joining and another 125 points for proving some basic information about myself. Members can earn 5 points per day for visiting washingtonpost.com, reading Express and entering a code, or answering a quiz requiring a copy of today’s Post. Other ways to earn points include attending community service events or getting coupons at certain businesses, but I didn’t think I’d be able to do either. Most days I read online or Express, meaning I could earn between 5 and 10 points. With over 600 points already earned, I was off and running.

A quick look at the rewards dampened my enthusiasm. A $10 CVS gift card looked like a useful prize. However, at 3,385 points it would take me 677 days of Express reading or almost one year of reading both a print publication and the website to earn enough points to earn it. If I purchased copies of the Post from newsstands for the $10 gift card, it would cost me $338.50 in newspapers. Taking 1 minute a day to enter the Express daily code would add up to 11.3 hours for the gift card. A $25 Visa gift card was even more out of reach. At 6,325 points, it would take 3.47 years of reading one publication daily to earn enough points for it.

In fact, the only prize available for less than 1,000 points was a points exchange between PostPoints and Amtrak’s frequent rider program: 500 PostPoints for 100 Amtrak points. Since a one-way coach ticket in the Eastern zone costs 3,000 Amtrak points, those 500 PostPoints cover roughly 3% of the cost of a ticket.

And the pizza? At 2,500 points, I’ll have to read both washingtonpost.com and Express for 50 weeks continuously.

Taking the Train in Dallas

Before very recently, I knew very little about Dallas, Texas.

That changed for two reasons. First, it’s the location of the site used for this year’s Urban Land Institute Hines Student Urban Design Competition. I was a member of a team at the University of Maryland that submitted an entry, creating a land use and development plan for a long-neglected district near downtown. Regrettably we did not win, but it was great fun and involved a crash course in Dallas architecture, planning, and history. Second, I was invited to my friend Eric’s wedding, which is to be held next weekend in Dallas, his fiancé’s home town. The trip will provide the opportunity to visit downtown, and if time allows perhaps even the project site.

One of the surprising findings from my ULI research was the city’s extensive light rail system. My previous post on Light Rail in unlikely cities neglected to mention Dallas. After a transportation planning process in the 1990s, Dallas Area Rapid Transit began building a light rail system. The first portion opened in 1996, and today the system carries an average of 63,400 passengers daily over 45 miles of tracks seen in the system map to the right.

However, planned extensions in various stages of planning and construction will over double the size of the system, bringing the total to over 91 miles. (As a point of comparison the D.C. Metro is 106.3 miles) Here’s what the system will look like when planned work is complete.

The full plan officials are working from has even identified additional corridors for transit.

What is the larger economic and social context of this development? A 2004 study by the Dallas Morning News described Dallas at the “tipping point,” identifying underperforming schools, a weak tax base, low quality of life, and a slow economy in the center city. What’s missing from the detailed report is how little the spatial forces are explicitly recognized in the report. Sprawl is made possible by transportation infrastructure and land use policies, and any comprehensive solution must come from these sectors. The symptoms of sprawl are clearly described in a 2005 “update” to the original report:

Unchallenged, the report said, the city will continue on a downward spiral.

It works like this: High crime and cratering schools send droves of middle-class families into communities like Frisco, Rowlett and Garland. Eventually, businesses follow. Dallas sales and property taxes plummet, reducing funds the city needs to fight crime and fix its schools.

Evidence of the outward migration can be seen on a drive north, 25 miles out of the city, through a sea of tri-level trophy homes in communities with double-digit growth.

The light rail transportation infrastructure being developed is necessary but not sufficient to counter these problems — also necessary is the political will to coordinate land use policies, control fringe development, and tackle stubborn problems like crime and education. The agency’s aggressive pursuit of transit oriented developments (a building is already under construction adjacent the future light rail station in the photo at the top) is a positive sign, but with only 63,400 riders a day the system has a long way to go.

Calling for a New Eisenhower

In the 1950s, President Dwight D. Eisenhower championed a program to construct a nationwide network of highways to connect the nation. As a young soldier he had personally experienced the poor condition of American roads, and had seen first-hand on German autobahns how important a system of modern roads was for national defense purposes. The interstate highway system was born.

In 2008, we are in a similar position. European cities have some of the world’s best public transportation systems while Americans struggle with mediocre public transit and traffic congestion. Experts agree both our national security and solving global climate change depends on bold shifts away from oil consumption.

Will the next president step up to the challenge? That idea was suggested to me last night by David from Greater Greater Washington. Perhaps Barack Obama will cite personal experience riding Chicago’s struggling transit, or Hillary Clinton will describe New York City’s overcrowded subway, as they sign historic laws creating world-class transit systems in every American city. Perhaps John McCain, who voted against the last transportation bill because of its excessive earmarks, will sign a performance-based transportation bill to create energy-efficient transit systems nationwide for our national defense.

Does America need a new Eisenhower to champion world-class transit in every American city? After all, they’ve already started, even in McCain’s home state.

‘The genie is somewhat out of the bottle’

The “genie” a Bush appointee at the Department of Transportation is referring to is congestion pricing, or the practice of setting tolls high enough to keep traffic flowing. The quote closed a cover story in today’s Washington Post about both congestion pricing and privatization of the nation’s transportation infrastructure. Long discussed by economists as the preferred solution to highway congestion, the article describes how Bush appointees have provided funding to several congestion pricing pilot programs.

Setting aside the issue of privatization, congestion pricing may prove one of the most-discussed aspects of the debate surrounding Congresses’ next transportation bill. At the hearing where the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Committee unveiled their report the issue was the subject of one of the hearing’s more heated exchanges. The committee’s suggestions include new road capacity, allowing congestion pricing on the interstate system, as well as substantial new investment in mass transit.

U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) didn’t like what he heard. Roughly 1 hour 37 minutes into the hearing he interrupted the presenters to engage in a lengthy tirade about congestion pricing. “I’m particularly concerned about some of the arguments we’re receiving about congestion pricing, I think there are some very substantial equity issues.” He posed the example of a worker whose commute was impacted by congestion pricing. “What are the alternatives as a consumer if there isn’t a viable mass transit option?” he asked, “What’s your choice? Tell your boss you’re coming in two hours later? … Sell your house? Quit your job?” Representative DeFazio went on to argue he believes congestion pricing won’t reduce traffic, just cause traffic to overload local roads. “What we’re talking about is public infrastructure, a public good,” he said, exasperated, “I can’t see how this is some grand solution when people don’t have alternatives that are comparable.”

While Congressman DeFazio’s argument that congestion pricing was a form of rationing was quickly dispelled by a commission member, the other arguments he raised were not discussed will no doubt be heard many times again. I think he has several misunderstandings:

First, implementing congestion pricing does not necessarily mean tolling all lanes. In some cases existing high-occupancy lanes are converted to allow additional drivers for a congestion toll. Elsewhere, it may be possible to add tolled lanes to an existing highway. (Like this project along I-95 near Baltimore) These solutions wouldn’t impact Congressman DeFazio’s worker, only perhaps ease his commute by removing some private vehicles. It would also have the added benefit if creating new options for all drivers — a faster commute would be available when they were in a hurry.

Second, he doesn’t consider some of the issues I considered when examining the ethics of performance parking. One, we know the wealthy are more likely to own vehicles, more likely to own multiple vehicles per household, and also drive more miles per year. While I have not seen any studies on the matter, these facts suggest congestion tolls may in fact be progressive in the aggregate. Two, existing congestion his very high real costs to all drivers in the form of time, pollution, and fuel. With new congestion pricing, Congressman DeFazio’s hypothetical worker may have to pay more in tolls, but be able to clock more hours on the job or even find he can now commute farther to a higher-paying job. Three, new tolls may have additional unintended effects. Congressman DeFazio seems to consider traffic inelastic, meaning it won’t be impacted by tolls. However, according to the National Household Transportation Survey only 19% of travel is commuting to work, and 30% is for recreational and social purposes. It seems reasonable to expect some of the drivers will drive less in response to higher costs, or even use mass transit.

While Congressman DeFazio’s concern with equity is well meaning, we should consider the complex impacts of new tolls in a sophisticated way. While transportation is and should be considered a public good, as riders of public transportation know that good is often provided at a fee.

> W. Post: “Letting the Market Drive Transportation“