The Balancing Act

There was always that one act at the circus where the clown (I love that commercial on television where the little kid in the high chair talks about making enough money in the market to hire a clown but then says he underestimated the creepiness) spins the plates on top of the sticks until he or she has half a dozen or more going at once. It's an incredible feat that usually ends with the plates crashing to the floor and the clown scurrying away on a miniature bicycle. When it comes to transportation, achieving a balance seems a lot more difficult, if not a lot more serious, and there are a couple examples.

First, I find it amazing how quickly the situation with corn being used to make ethanol for fuel has gotten out of hand. Some on Capital Hill are already beginning to rethink the nation's commitment to this alternative fuel source. On the surface it sounded perfect; corn is rather easy to grow and is a fully renewable crop. Growing corn is one of the things that this nation does very well. Thanks to former Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz and others, this nation uses corn for just about everything that we eat and drink. So who figured that it wouldn't hurt to mandate that corn be used to produce 9 billion gallons of ethanol every year as a way to wean ourselves off of gasoline? The problem is that the balance has been tipped. A global food crisis is being blamed on a shortage of corn although we seem to forget that much of the rest of the world relies on rice which is also in short supply to the point where it's being hoarded.

It seems like everything being considered as an alternative to gasoline has, at least for the near term, some sort of potential negative. For example the increased use of electricity to power cars (and transit trains) may lead to an increase in the use of coal or nuclear plants. Compressed natural gas currently being used in many of the region's buses may emit some dangerous chemicals as exhaust although the level of things like formaldehyde is still being studied. Biodiesel does not burn completely and emits an increased amount of NOx emissions. It's a balancing act.

The other thing that must be balanced is the way that that we budget for roads and for transit. Right now everything comes out of one big pot of money known as the transportation fund. There is little consideration made when it comes to what is new and what is repairing what already exists. It doesn't matter if the money is needed for a new trolley line or for the repair of potholes on an interstate; it comes out of the same pot of money. The "problem" here is that transit, especially heavy rail like Metro, tends to cost a lot more per mile than roads. The leap of faith or understanding is that the payback for these expenditures come many years down the road, pardon the pun. There are also intangibles to transit such as the environmental benefits that don't always get factored into the equation.

We need a lot of new transit because our environment demands it. We also need to make some repairs to our road infrastructure because we will continue to use it for some time. The funny thing that transit proponents seem to forget from time to time is that buses need to use the same road that cars use. It's a balancing act.

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Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.

Comments

[Jim Stone]

Pictou: Railroads can move a ton of freight 423 miles, not one mile, on a gallon of diesel - generally about 3 times more efficient than trucks. Railroads' efficiency at moving freight is grossly underappreciated, and the country would certainly benefit from some targeted public investment in the freight rail network.

On the other hand, most people probably wildly overestimate the fuel efficiency of passenger rail, which is typically about the same as private automobiles on a per-passenger basis. The problem with passenger rail is that trains are optimized for carrying heavy loads and the "freight" on a passenger train doesn't weigh very much.

[BeyondDC]

The comment wasn't regarding who pays, only the amount paid. Those issues are not the same. Nor are the issues of being on a master plan and how long it takes to make it through the federal environmental review process once a project is put forward for actual construction. As I said, the delays associated with the ICC were locally generated. Once it made it to the federal level of review, it was very much fast-tracked.

These are undeniable facts. They have nothing to do with bias. Regardless of where the money is coming from, the Silver Line and the ICC *do* cost about the same per mile in terms of capital construction, and regardless of how many decades it took the ICC to get through Maryland's COUNTY and STATE-level planning, it *was* fast-tracked through the FEDERAL process.

[DCDOG]

BeyondDC (whatever that means) seems to forget that much of the cost of the ICC, a truly high-tech road that includes many environmental enchancements, will be paid for by rather high tolls by the people who use it. The Silver Line is being build largely on land that has been donated by the Airports Authority and paid for, in part, by tolls or taxes by people who drive the TOll Road and may not even use it. After being on the Master Plan for more than 50 years before getting its start hardly qualifies the ICC as being fast-tracked and shows the real bias of this responder.

[BeyondDC]

No, the calcs don't include any of those things. And *even so* they're not true. Eldridge is just wrong on that point.

The ICC (highway) and the Silver Line (Metro) have very similar costs per mile. $174 million / mile for the ICC and $181 million / mile for Silver Line Phase I. That's a difference of about 4%, and it doesn't take into account that vehicles are included in the cost of the Silver Line but not the ICC.

MetroRail is basically comparable to an interstate highway, light rail is basically comparable to parkways or very large arterials (think Fairfax County Pkwy), and streetcars are basically comparable to normal arterial roads.

The problem is NOT that transit costs more; it's that the way the funding tables are set up there's lots and lots and lots of money available for roads and very little (comparatively) available for transit.

Again I'll throw out the ICC as an example. Yeah, it's extremely controversial, but all the controversy is at the local level. When MD decided to build it once and for all the Feds didn't get in the way. They didn't demand value engineering or round after round after round of user projections like they did for the Silver Line. In fact, the ICC was fast-tracked through the federal approval process in almost no time at all. Compare that to the Silver Line, which as we all know has been run through the gauntlet. The Silver Line is almost universally supported and it came this close to being denied funding; the ICC is supported by a much more slim majority, but its funding was never once in question.

Fact is, if you want to build a highway in this country the money is relatively easy to get. If you want to build a transit line, you're put through a much more stringet process.

That funding system is one of a thousand tacit subsidies for the suburban lifestyle in this country. That so many people live in suburbs isn't a function of the free market, it's a function of layer after layer of regulation at every level of government making it easy to live in suburbs and hard to live big cities or small towns. The fact that so many suburbanites seem to wish they lived in small towns should be proof that something is up.

[Pictou]

"The "problem" here is that transit, especially heavy rail like Metro, tends to cost a lot more per mile than roads."

What? Is that true? What is the cost per passenger mile? If a family is able to reduce the number of their cars by one, how does that affect the cost? Does that include the value of the real estate? Roads use a lot more than trains and trains can be put underground or built over. Energy use? The Freight railroads say they can move one ton one mile with one gallon of diesel.

Somehow I don't believe your premiss. I suspect it is how the calculation is made, what variables are used, and what assumptions are made that makes the difference.