Category: highways

More lanes in Houston, and longer traffic times

Here’s a great example to buttress the point I made earlier today, in “Highways, congestion and a power broker’s lessons.” Which was this: Since at least the 1930s planners have known that adding highway lanes does not reduce congestion, but rather – counter-intuitively – seems to increase it.

As reported by Thursday by Angie Schmitt in Streetsblog.net,  a Houston Tomorrow analysis of driving time on the I-10 Katy Freeway found it took 51 percent more time to get from downtown to Pin Oak on the newly expanded, 23-lane freeway than it did in 2011 right after the new lanes opened. An expansion project that ended in 2010 cost $2.8 billion-with-a-B – which was $1.17 billion-with-a-B more than its original price tag.

Coincidence: The Federal Highway Administration’s 2012 list of projects that details the cost of the Katy Freeway also lists the Monroe Bypass, with a due date of 2016. Better get hopping on that one, guys. Or better yet, don’t.

Jay Crossley of Houston Tomorrow concludes: “Traveling out I-10 is now 33% worse – almost 18 more minutes of your time – than it was before we spent $2.8 billion to subsidize land speculation and encourage more driving.”

N.C. a gas-tax donor state? No more

N.C policymakers for years complained justly that this is a net donor state when it comes to federal transportation taxes paid versus federal transportation money spent in the state.

A new analysis by the General Accounting Office of 2005-09, reported by Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, in “Can highway spending ever be fair?”  finds that, when looking at how much federal highway money each state gets, per dollar of gas-tax revenue that the state’s motorists pay, it turns out every state gets more federal highway aid than it is paying. Here’s a link to the GAO report.
“There’s not a state in the union where federally funded highways ‘pay for themselves,’ ” Klein writes.

I’ve reproduced a map here (via a screenshot) from the GAO report and Klein’s piece. If my count is correct, compared with other states North Carolina remains at a big disadvantage, although it gets $1.09 back for every $1 paid in.  Only five states (Texas $1.03, Arizona, $1.07, Indiana $1.07, South Carolina and New Jersey, both at $1.08) get less. Two other states (Maryland and Colorado) also get $1.09.

Klein muses on whether highway spending can ever be “fair,” in part because what’s “fair” can be construed in different ways. And his commenters point out one of many reasons that’s true: Northern states where hard freezes and salting damage the pavement will need more repair and maintenance money. (Tell that to New Jersey and Indiana.) But even if perfect fairness will always be elusive, for a state that is both geographically large as well as in the Top 10 most populous, it does seem that North Carolina has been on the losing end for too long.

NC wins “honorable mention” grant for Yadkin bridge

Might the N.C. DOT have made a bad call in applying for $300 million in stimulus money to rebuild the Yadkin River bridge on I-85, instead of using the opportunity to try to snag more mass transit money? DOT Secretary Gene Conti doesn’t think so.

The grants – made public Wednesday – were part of the $1.5 billion in so-called TIGER Grant funding, for transportation projects, all part of the federal stimulus bill. North Carolina got $10 million for the Yadkin bridge project.

Here’s a complete breakdown from the U.S. DOT.

I just hung up from a phone interview with Conti, who said in total, 10 projects from North Carolina were submitted, including a request from Charlotte and the Metropolitan Transit Commission to fund the proposed-but-got-no-money commuter rail line between downtown and Davidson. Conti said N.C. projects were worth $845 million. Across the country, he said, $57 billion worth of projects were requested.

Looking at the projects that got the big bucks – and it’s worth remembering that when you’re talking transportation projects, $1.5 billion really isn’t very much to spread around the country – transit and multimodal and rail projects seem to have done better than highway projects. The organization Reconnecting America did a breakdown: highway projects received 23 percent of funding, while transit projects 26 percent, multimodal projects received 25 percent, rail projects won 19 percent and ports 7 percent.

Note that a $45 million streetcar project in New Orleans won – $45 million. A $58 million downtown streetcar project in Dallas, Texas, got $23 million. Tucson, Ariz., got $63 million for a $150 million, 4-mile streetcar line.

You’ll see some language on the US DOT document, if you read it, about North Carolina being eligible for “optional innovative financing enhancements to support a direct loan for up to one-third of the project costs.” I asked Conti what that meant. “That’s a good question,” he said ruefully. It means, he said, that N.C. could cash in the $10 million now for a $100 million loan. But without a revenue stream to repay the loan (such as a toll road might have) it’s best to just take the cash, he said.

The state does have $180 million money set aside for Phase 1 of the Yadkin bridge project. It can start work as early as June, he said. That money will pay to replace and widen to eight lanes the I-85 bridge, the U.S. 29-70 bridge and reconstruct the N.C. 150 interchange. So I-85 will go from eight lanes to four, as it does now, then widen to eight again over the bridge.