Mass Transit Does Not Reduce Traffic Congestion
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Commentary
Wendell Cox:
Mass transit does not reduce congestion
Wendell Cox, The Examiner
Jan 9, 2007 3:00 AM (4 hrs ago)
WASHINGTON - Transit advocates must be elated. Voters in places as
diverse
as Seattle, Kansas City and Salt Lake City approved new taxes for
transit
improvements.
No doubt the electoral victories depended on expectations that transit
improvements would reduce traffic congestion, but nothing could be
further
from the truth.
Traffic congestion and transit are completely different subjects. No
level
of transit investment, anywhere in the world, has materially reduced
traffic
congestion.
In Washington, more than 100 miles of high-quality Metro has been built
-
more than in any world urban area over the past three decades except
for
Seoul, South Korea. Altogether, the miles of Metro built in Washington
equal
the total built in all of the other U.S. urban areas.
Yet what about traffic congestion? Washington's ranks fourth in the
nation,
and could challenge number two and three - transit rich Chicago and San
Francisco - at any point. Over the past 20 years, traffic congestion
has
nearly tripled, despite the miles built for and billions spent on
Metro.
Yet, transit advocates tell proverbial "stories from over the
mountains,"
about successes achieved in other urban areas. Invariably, the transit
"successes" never show up in overall urban area data.
In fact, transit market share does not exceed 5 percent in any U.S.
urban
area except New York. Only a few exceed 3 percent, with "over the
mountain"
favorites such as Portland, Seattle and Denver, not among them. It
would
take a miracle of massive proportions to push transit to a 0.5 percent
share
in Salt Lake City and Kansas City.
Further, no urban area - not in the United States and not in Western
Europe
- has plans to materially reduce automobile use or traffic congestion.
(London charges peak rates to enter a certain zone, but it costs nearly
$15.
This would kill any U.S. business area where it was implemented, except
possibly Manhattan.)
The facts, however, do not keep transit officials from promising the
impossible in their pursuit of more money. In the private sector, such
behavior is subject to truth in advertising laws. In transit, it wins
accolades.
Why can't transit reduce traffic congestion? Geography. It can only
effectively serve the urban core. For example, nearly 40 percent of
downtown
Washington commuters use transit for the work trip. However, downtown
Washington accounts for less than 20 percent of the area's employment.
More than 80 percent of destinations lie outside downtown and outside
the
ability of transit to compete. This is why the large majority of travel
in
all American and Western European urban areas is by car and why no hope
exists for this situation to change. It is, as noted above, so hopeless
that
not even the planners can concoct a vision in which car travel would be
reduced.
At the same time, accompanying the mindless preoccupation with transit
and
its futility outside the urban core is a misunderstanding of the role
the
automobile has and will continue to play.
Research indicates the superior mobility of the automobile is one of
the
reasons affluence has spread so widely in American and Western European
urban areas. Around the country, programs to make available cars to
low-income households are increasing their incomes by significantly
increasing the geography of their job options.
Anyone genuinely interested in solving the transportation problems of
the
modern urban area will do well to discard the rhetoric and focus on
reducing
congestion. The Governor's Business Council approach, recommended in
Texas,
sets a maximum congestion level based upon the Travel Time Index and
then
plans roadway expansion and traffic management strategies to make it
happen.
If we want to reduce traffic congestion, we need to focus on it as a
goal
and get beyond the hopeless ideology that has passed for transport
planning
in so many areas.
Wendell Cox is principal of Wendell Cox Consultancy, a visiting fellow
of
the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a visiting professor at the
Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris and author of a new
book, "War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality
of
Life."
Examiner