Improving the Efficiency of America’s Transportation With Better Planning and System Management

Testimony of Michael A. Replogle

Transportation Director, Environmental Defense

1875 Connecticut Ave NW, Washington, DC 20009

telephone: 202-387-3500; mreplogle@environmentaldefense.org

before the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit,

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, U.S. House of Representatives

May 21, 2002

Good morning Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. I have been invited this morning to discuss how we might improve the efficiency of American’s surface transportation system with better planning and system management, speaking on behalf of Environmental Defense, an organization with 300,000 members that seeks to integrate law, science, and economics to find practical solutions to environmental problems.

How we price, manage, and operate transportation sends powerful signals to consumers, affecting our travel choices, shaping our cities, and quality of life. For much of the last century, government funding for transportation, tax policy, and transportation pricing policies promoted private motor vehicle use and worked against other means of travel. This created unprecedented mobility, but it also led to sprawl, induced traffic, increased air and water pollution, and reduced access to opportunities for those without cars. By managing our transportation system to favor motorists, we have reduced transportation choices and imperiled the historic human right of being able to walk safely where we live and work, causing Americans to be far less physically active. Recent research shows our transportation management decisions have a profound effect on individual and public health, contributing to asthma and other respiratory diseases, cancer, obesity, and impaired mental health. Changes in how we manage, price, and operate transportation can improve our health, boost transportation system efficiency, protect our environment and natural resources, and reduce the costs of our very expensive system of mobility, while expanding travel choices, employment opportunities, and economic productivity.

Atlanta’s experience during the Olympic Games in 1996 is illustrative of how much transportation system management can cut traffic, boost system efficiency, and protect public health. By leasing 1000 added buses, focusing on transportation system management, and marketing improved non-driving travel choices during the Olympics, Georgia officials cut the number of cars in the morning rush hour by 23%. This reduced traffic led to lower air pollution emissions, with a 28% drop in smog concentrations even as the region accommodated over one million additional visitors. This in turn caused the number of asthma acute care events to decrease 42% during this period.

Planning studies by various other metropolitan regions suggest that similar benefits can be achieved elsewhere with pragmatic steps to manage traffic, expand traveler choices, and provide smart transportation pricing incentives. My extensive review of the research and my experience over the past 25 years suggests that with the right mix of policies, better transportation system management can cut forecast traffic growth by 20 to 30% over the 20 year time horizon of most regional long-range transportation plans. Many of these strategies can deliver traffic relief quickly without extensive public investment, through public-private partnerships, marketing, and improved service delivery. Taken together, these management strategies can provide more effective and long-lasting congestion relief at a lower cost than most highway system expansion proposals.

Moreover, improved traffic operations can enable us to more efficiently accommodate the remaining traffic on our existing highways, rendering unnecessary a significant share of proposed new highway expansions. Where modest expansion of highways is warranted, it must be viewed as a critical opportunity to improve how we manage both the existing and new capacity, by enabling strategies like fully automated time-of-day facility pricing. Pursuing these smarter management strategies will require some retooling of our transportation agencies and industry, but will provide major opportunities for economic growth with better environmental and fiscal stewardship and protection of public health.

The 1991 ISTEA reforms - reaffirmed and extended in the 1998 TEA-21 law - expanded opportunities for state and local governments to pursue smart transportation system management to curb traffic growth. States have flexibility to use Federal transportation funds to support transit, pedestrian safety, and market incentive programs, such as promoting employer-paid transit benefits and cash-in-lieu-of-parking benefits. There is greater accountability for states and regions to consider the short and long term effects of transportation decisions on air quality and transportation system performance. Transit ridership has grown faster than the number of miles driven by motorists for the past three years, reaching its highest level in 40 years. In many cities, transit agencies are straining to keep up with ridership growth as many urban areas regain residents and vitality. Last year, for the first time in the U.S. since the 1970s, the number of miles driven per person declined.

But while some states and regions are making greater use of these opportunities for smarter system management, others are making little progress and continue to devote a large share of their attention to the failed strategy of trying to build their way out of traffic congestion. In a third of the states, archaic constitutional restrictions limit the ability of states to use their own gas tax resources for anything other than road investments. In many metropolitan regions the transportation planning process expends little effort to consider transportation and growth management strategies that could provide attractive alternatives to the current plan of business-as-usual road system expansions that accommodate and support sprawl and subsidize driving while neglecting the needs of pedestrians, bicyclists, and those without cars. Improved data collection and impact analysis tools and stronger planning requirements are needed if state and local agencies are to comprehend, identify, and invest in better system management. By improving integrated performance-oriented planning at the state and regional level, we can address demands to streamline the project review process in a manner that delivers better projects that also protect the environment, public health, and the ability of the public and local officials to know about the effects of major decisions before they are final, a core principal of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).

Some state DOTs are carrying through on the mandate of TEA-21 to integrate the Major Investment Study requirements into NEPA project reviews and the transportation planning process, and by doing so are considering smart system management, pricing, partial build scenarios, and smart growth strategies as they consider major new investments. Some states are pursuing stewardship initiatives to change the culture of state DOTs and to foster closer planning and operational partnerships with state resource agencies and key stakeholders. Other state DOTs are seeking to scapegoat environmental laws for their own administrative failures, which are manifested in a lack of local consensus on proposed projects, insufficient state and local funding match dollars, and stalled reviews due to inadequate consideration of alternatives, inadequate mitigation and avoidance of adverse impacts, and efforts to end-run federal requirements. Proposed arbitrary deadlines, circumscribed public involvement, and short-circuited transportation project review procedures would erode accountability and threaten to divide the diverse coalition that has long supported federal transportation funding programs.

As TEA-21 is reauthorized, a new TEA-3 law should strengthen accountability, transparency, and performance-oriented planning requirements. It should assure timely consideration of opportunities for improved transportation system management, pricing reform, and stewardship. State and metropolitan areas should be required to develop and periodically update integrated transportation, natural resource protection, and growth management plans that consider at least one alternative scenario that considerably reduces traffic growth through better system management. Agencies should annually report on the current and projected performance of their transportation system management, investment, and proposed programs and plans, accounting for cumulative and secondary impacts on growth patterns, public health, greenhouse gas emissions, the achievement of natural resource planning goals for air, water, and habitat protection, and the provision of equal access to jobs and public facilities for all residents, including those without cars, without undue time and cost burdens.

California’s recently enacted AB2140 law provides a model for this, (1) establishing a standardized set of basic transportation performance indicators related to safety, congestion, road repair needs and public transit that each region must begin to track; (2) establishing a standard method of financial reporting to help the public and local officials know what their money’s being spent on; and (3) requireing an "alternative planning scenario" in the development of each region’s 20 year transportation plan in order to provide a clear alternative to present growth patterns that could minimize future demand on transportation infrastructure while reducing congestion, protecting open space, and saving taxpayers money. As part of TEA-3, this analysis should also be required to consider market incentive and transportation system and demand management strategies.

Across America, we are on a crash course with worsening traffic congestion, crumbling roads and bridges, and investment levels that can't even keep up with maintaining the infrastructure we've got. Adopting a federal version of AB2140 in TEA-3, with mandates to consider and provide this information, would allow us to plan for better transportation projects, help us judge how effectively we're spending transportation funds, and help us target resources on reducing congestion with management strategies, providing more convenient alternatives to being stuck in traffic, fixing our roads and bridges, and better coordinating future transportation and growth needs.

Federal and state tax policies are a part of the recent story of transit resurgence. For the vast majority of working Americans, a free parking space at work has for decades been the sole commuter benefit offered by employers because that was until recently the only tax-free commute benefit worth speaking of. So if you drive alone to work you gain the benefit. If you take transit, carpool, walk, or bike, you lose the benefit and likely pay your own daily transit fare. With this kind of incentive, it’s no surprise that on any given day nine out of ten American commuters drive to work and nine out of ten of the cars driven to work have one occupant. Yet the 85 million "free" or subsidized employer parking spaces actually cost American business more than $36 billion per year. By spurring more driving, these subsidies exacerbate traffic congestion and air pollution. A congressional study found that "free" parking of all kinds costs our society over $250 billion per year.

In 1998, Congress took steps to make tax policies more equal for all commuters, allowing employers to offer tax-free transit and vanpool benefits of up to $100 a month, with taxable cash-in-lieu-of-parking benefits allowable for the first time. Tax-free benefit limits for employer-provided parking were set at $175 per month – a practice which still leaves solo drivers at an advantage. Allowing employee-paid pre-tax transit benefits saves transit-using employees over $400 a year while saving employers a smaller amount on withholding. Having employers pay for transit is a bigger incentive for employees. Offering such a benefit to federal executive agency employees in the national capital region induced 11 percent of employees who used to drive to work to switch to transit, taking 12,500 cars off the region’s crowded roads every workday. At firms in California and Minnesota offering a $2 a day incentive instead of free parking, one out of eight who used to drive are finding another way to get to work. Such benefits help employers attract and retain employees and provide the greatest help to low and moderate wage workers who spend the largest share of their incomes commuting and often ride transit, carpool, bike, or walk to work.

The cost of such employer provided transit benefit programs to employers is very small and can easily be fit within the scope of ordinary cost-of-living increases offered by most employers to their employees on a periodic basis. State tax credits can make this cost even smaller. For example, in Maryland, if an employer offers an employee a cost of living increase, for each $1 in after-tax cost to the employer, the employee typically receives $0.53 in after-tax income. If that same $1 in after-tax employer expense is instead devoted to an employer-paid qualified transit benefit of $60 a month, the typical Maryland employee who receives it ends up gaining $1.76 in after-tax benefits, thanks to the leveraging effect of federal and state tax provisions.

The savings for employees offered by the federal tax law changes are significant and make a high level of employer and employee participation in the next several years realistic across America. For example, an employee earning $50,000 per year who spends $780 annually on transit ($65/month) could realize a tax savings (at 42%) of $328 as a result of paying their transit cost using pre-tax dollars, exercising one of the new Commuter Choice options, while their employer would gain payroll tax savings (at 7.65%) of $60 per employee (Arthur Andersen). Even if the cost to set up and administer the program equals 2% of the transit benefit, the employer will still enjoy payroll savings of $44. Employers are likely to face new costs to offer transit passes or added cash income in lieu of parking, but these can also translate into substantial cost savings of several types. It is much cheaper for an employer to boost non-taxable employee benefits than to offer added taxable income to retain or attract workers, which is an increasing issue in a tight labor market. If the employer is able to expand employment without adding more parking spaces or to otherwise avoid the cost of building, leasing, or maintaining parking spaces for workers, capital cost savings can amount to $5,000 to $20,000 per avoided space and operating costs can amount to $750 to $3,000 or more per year per avoided space. Such savings are often significant enough to more than pay for a cash in lieu of parking or transit pass benefit.

Commuter Choice programs have been shown to unite the diverse interests of environmentalists, business, labor and transit and highway advocates. Most realize that Commuter Choice is good for business and for communities. Commuter Choice is a voluntary incentive that boosts travel options and supports more efficient use of the roads and transit we already have. It can provide quick relief to traffic-strained communities and will expand market opportunities for new forms of access to suburban jobs. Low- and moderate-income workers benefit particularly, since commuting costs represent a larger relative burden on them, and they tend to be more reliant on ridesharing and transit. The Alliance for Clean Air and Transportation, a national group representing a diverse array of sectors, including the road builders, automobile industry, environmentalist and health groups, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, Highway User Federation, American Automobile Association, the National Association of Regional Councils, and the US DOT and EPA, in February 2000 adopted a consensus goal of making Commuter Choice benefit programs a standard part of the American worker benefit program over the next five years.

However, Commuter Choice will have an effect on air pollution only if people know about it and use it, and if the opportunities for cost savings offered by aggressive implementation of these incentives are made evident and available to developers, building owners and tenants, and commuters. Marketing alone has been shown to be inadequate to win widespread adoption of Commuter Choice incentives. There are many strategies that can be taken by states, regional bodies, and local municipalities to foster rapid and widespread adoption of Commuter Choice incentives so these might become available to the average commuter. Additional financial incentives and support by transportation agencies and other government bodies are essential to rapid adoption of Commuter Choice voluntary incentives and can be highly cost-effective in reducing congestion and pollution.

DOT and EPA are promoting Commuter Choice, but Congressional action is needed to further expand efforts to foster widespread adoption of these voluntary incentives. EPA estimates that if half of all U.S. employees were covered under these commuter benefits, traffic and air pollution could be cut by the equivalent of taking 15 million cars off the road every year, saving American workers about $12 billion in fuel costs. For every 10% of U.S. employees participating, commute VMT would be cut by 3.2%, or 20 billion miles, with emission reductions of 54,000 tons VOC, 480,000 tons CO, 33,600 tons NOx, and 2.36 million tons CO2. In SIP Development Guidance: Using Emission Reductions from Commuter Choice Programs to Meet Clean Air Act Requirements, EPA estimates reductions of 26-30% in commute vehicle trips for a full Commuter Choice program. Los Angeles research shows that those who receive free parking at work drive 72 cars per 100 employees, while those who paid for parking at work drove 53 cars per 100 employees, or 26% less (D. Shoup, "An Opportunity to Reduce Minimum Parking Requirements," Journal of the American Planning Association, Winter 1995, pp. 14-28.).

Congress should take further steps to encourage employer support for such ‘Commuter Choice’ initiatives. We urge your support for the following bills that would do this:

• The Commuter Benefits Equity Act of 2001 (H.B.318) would provide equal tax-treatment for parking and transit benefits.
• The Bike Commuter Act (H.R. 1265) would allow employees who bike to work the same financial incentives as transit users.
• The Mass Transit Tax Credit Act of 2001 (H.R. 906) would provide a 25 percent tax credit to employers for the cost of providing transit benefits to their employees. This is modeled after measures adopted by several states – including Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington, Georgia, New Jersey – that have begun offering tax credits of up to 50 percent and up to $50 per employee per month for employer-paid non-driving commuter benefits.

TEA-3 should also require that local and state officials do more to consider integrating Commuter Choice into their transportation plan and program development. In all non-attainment areas, transportation programs should assure that potential air pollution reduction benefits from Commuter Choice will be realized in a timely manner. These would include provision of these benefits to state and local government employees, aggressive marketing of these benefits to employers and employees, inclusion of Commuter Choice programs in local planning, development review, and other decision-making procedures and favorable local and state tax treatment. Such new travel demand management activities and incentives should be given priority by including them in air quality SIPs as Transportation Control Measures.

This promotion should include marketing, technical and administrative assistance, new transit fare products, such as deep-discount bulk purchase transit and vanpool benefits for 100 percent of an employer’s workforce in the region, and new financial incentives for employers and employees that are adjusted annually in an effort to meet stated performance targets. State Implementation Plans should include targets, timetables, and expanded funding commitments for (a) providing different segments of the labor force with Commuter Choice options of various types and (b) achieving increased levels of use of various Commuter Choice incentives by various portions of the labor force. These targets could be used as the basis for estimating SIP credits if accompanied by commitments to reasonably linked funding and policy commitments that could be anticipated to meet these targets.

Municipal, regional, and state agencies within the non-attainment area should identify for priority funding in Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) and Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) Commuter Choice promotion initiatives and related incentives. This could include funding for: (a) additional transit, rideshare, and alternative commute program marketing, paid advertising, and transportation management associations, (b) development of new pre-paid discount transit fare instruments and seamless regional transit fare and service coordination designed to facilitate easy marketing (e.g., an unlimited use $60/month regional transit pass and vanpool pass that can be purchased by or through employers), (b) promotion of pre-paid employer-subsidized transit fare instruments to both employers and employees, (c) transit fare buy-down programs that match employer contributions towards employee transit commute benefits with public sector subsidies (like the Montgomery County, Maryland, Fare Share program) or tax credits (like the Maryland or Oregon State Tax Credits for employers who pay for transit benefits or who offer cash in lieu of parking payments).

Municipalities should consider how to incorporate incentives for adoption and use of Commuter Choice incentives by employees, employers, and developers through additional flexibility in the application of zoning parking requirements. They could require that leases and property transactions separately identify the cost of parking spaces and offer options for reduced parking in exchange for covenants and agreements to incorporate cash in lieu of parking and employer paid transit benefits in building leases and other real estate transactions. Municipalities could agree to require Commuter Choice strategies to be considered in traffic planning, site plan and development review decisions, zoning and parking ordinance revisions, access-to-jobs programs and local tax policy, with timetables for modification of ordinances. These activities are eligible for funding through the TIP under various federal funding sources.

Another promising option for unclogging roads, especially in more congested metropolitan areas, is automated time-of-day tolls and High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes, which allow solo drivers to pay to use High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, while giving a free ride to buses, vans, and sometimes carpools. These can put to work unused capacity in HOV lanes and help pay for expanded transportation choices. A network of HOT lanes on existing highways is likely to provide more effective congestion relief than building new roads. New outer beltway toll roads are likely to bring more sprawl and put more jobs out of reach for those without cars, hurting the poor and the environment. Why not instead give time-stressed travelers a way to buy relief from growing congestion delays in existing freeway corridors?

HOT lanes in existing road corridors can expand both travel choices and equity. HOT lane critics unfairly bash them as "Lexus Lanes," serving only the rich. Real-world HOT lanes look more like "Lumina Lanes," used by people of widely varying incomes who occasionally need to bypass traffic delays that disrupt their social, family, or work life. A working class mom who is facing a $1 a minute penalty for picking her kids up late at day care is happy to pay $4 to save 20 minutes by using the HOT lane on those several days a month when she needs it. The typical users in California spend less than $20 a month on HOT lane tolls, using them on days they are in a real rush. If HOT lane revenues fund new transit, as on San Diego’s I-15 HOT lane, everyone wins. Lower income transit users and carpoolers get access to otherwise inaccessible suburban jobs. Drivers benefit from reduced road congestion and better services and choices. If HOT lane revenues help pay for the road, those who drive most are paying more of their fair share, helping all taxpayers win. The reality is that road user fees don’t nearly cover the full cost of building and operating America’s roads, which remain subsidized by broader taxes. And with new accounting rules forcing fuller disclosure of deferred maintenance, transportation providers need new sources of revenue to maintain systems, expand choices, and cope with growing travel demand.

New non-stop electronic toll technology means motorists don't need to slow down to pay tolls. And HOT lane fees -- higher in rush hour and discounted at other times -- keep traffic flowing without wasting scarce road capacity like HOV lanes do. This makes it possible to contemplate future conversion of some existing general-purpose lanes to HOT lanes, particularly where new capacity is being added to existing roads.

HOT lane experience indicates this strategy can garner popular support. On California's Route 91, diversion of traffic onto HOT lanes has reduced congestion on the entire road and increased the number of passengers per car to 1.6, compared to the average of 1.2. Similar incentives have been implemented or are being considered in Texas, Florida, Colorado, Georgia, New Jersey, New York, and other states.

The Port Authority of NY-NJ in March 2001 introduced time-of-day tolls on Hudson River bridges and tunnels and Staten Island bridges, giving discounts for electronic toll payers who avoid rush hours and charging a premium in the time of most concentrated demand, just like movie theaters and many other services. This helps reduce congestion by shifting the time of day of traffic. Toll revenues support better PATH transit and regional transportation infrastructure and services. The NJ Turnpike, NY Thruway Authority, and other tolling agencies have implemented time-of-day tolls to manage traffic.

Congress should encourage states and transportation facility operators to replace obsolete toll booths that cause congestion and pollution with new barrier-free customer-friendly tolling systems using toll transponders and image processing and billing systems. Congress should encourage state motor vehicle agencies to issue toll transponders with motor vehicle registrations to encourage their widespread availability in states where tolls are used. Congress should eliminate restrictions on tolling highways that were constructed with federal aid, which can now only be tolled under limited pilot projects authorized by TEA-21. Automated time-of-day tolls are a very promising tool

for transportation facility management and financing.

Use based car insurance is a very promising near-term voluntary market-based strategy that could save consumers money, cost nothing to the public sector, and cut air pollution and traffic congestion by 10 percent to 12 percent or more (Todd Litman, Distance-Based Vehicle Insurance: A Practical Strategy for More Optimal Pricing, Victoria Transport Policy Institute, August 2001). Unlike Commuter Choice which affects primarily work travel, distance-based car insurance would also help curb emissions from non-work travel, which constitutes approximately three-fourths of all driving.

The state of Texas has already begun taking steps to adopt distance-based insurance, enacting in May 2000 HB 45, a law which authorizes insurance companies to offer distance-based motor vehicle insurance policies. The Federal Highway Administration is supporting research and pilot projects for use-based insurance in Georgia and Massachusetts, and efforts are underway to expand state incentives for this innovation in other states.

Under current term-based insurance pricing, motorists who drive less than the average pay much higher costs per mile for car insurance than those who drive more than average, which encourages more driving and pollution. For example, for an intermediate size car, insurance premiums typically represent a cost even greater than fuel and oil costs, about one-fifth of the typical total financial costs of owning a car. When insurance premiums are converted to distance-based charges, motorists can save money by driving less and combining trips. Newly available data indicate that distance-based insurance pricing is more actuarially accurate, and therefore more equitable and economically efficient than current pricing. Distance-based insurance provides specific benefits including reduced accidents, traffic congestion, and pollution, facility cost savings, insurance affordability, and increased consumer welfare. Vehicle travel foregone consists of low-value trips that consumers willingly give up in exchange for financial savings. Distance-based premiums would use "odometer audits" to provide accurate mileage data, which is estimated to have incremental costs averaging $7.50 per vehicle year. Research suggests total benefits of distance-based insurance to be many times greater than costs, with a benefit:cost ratio of 50:1 estimated for the case of British Columbia. Motorists are expected to reduce their average mileage by about 10% under distance-based pricing, providing net savings to the vast majority of consumers. Even high mileage drivers experience virtually no increase in total vehicle costs if they reduce their mileage as predicted. Higher-mileage drivers would also benefit most from reduced traffic congestion, accident risk, and pollution.

In TEA-3 Congress should provide ample funding – on the order of $25 million a year -- for expanded research and pilot testing of this market based strategy, including risk sharing with insurance companies pilot testing this approach to policy pricing, paying for expanded actuarial research, marketing, partnership development, evaluation, and promotion. The potential payoff – a reduction of 10 percent in traffic while saving consumers money and reducing accidents and casualty losses to insurers – is well worth such up front investment to help jump start this market innovation.

Automobile manufacturers are beginning to offer an array of more fuel efficient vehicle options for motorists, including new higher efficiency hybrid gasoline-electric vehicles like the Honda Impact, Toyota Prius, Honda Civic, and Ford RAV-4. Efforts to develop natural gas, electric, and fuel cell vehicles offer some promise for a reduction in petroleum dependence before the end of the 20-year transportation plans adopted by regions under TEA-21. While these will not immediately impact federal and state revenues from gasoline taxes, which comprise the major source of transportation funding, it would be prudent for Congress to support experiments by states and regions to develop transportation user fees other than the gas tax to assure stable financing of transportation systems into the future. Such user fees, while politically challenging to put into place, could also play an important role in managing traffic growth and congestion.

Congestion pricing and road tolls, mileage or emission based registration fees, VMT fees, use-based auto insurance, and gasoline tax increases could all produce significant traffic and pollution reduction. Expert analysis of likely impacts of such strategies in many other metropolitan areas have found substantial traffic and corresponding emission reductions possible as a result of any one of these strategies. For example, a study by the California Air Resources Board found that congestion pricing fees of $0.10 a mile would yield a NOx reduction of 2.5% in the South Coast region of California under 1991 conditions, increasing to 3.6% with a $0.19 per mile fee under 2010 conditions. They found that a $0.50/gallon fuel increase would yield NOx reductions of 3.3-3.8% in various California metro areas under 1991 or 2010 conditions. They found a $.02/mile VMT fee would reduce NOx emissions by 3.6-4.3% in various California metro areas under 1991 or 2010 conditions. They found emission fees reducing NOx emissions by 4.2-17.3% depending on assumptions in various California metro areas. Combining congestion pricing of $0.09/mile in peak, a $1 a day employee parking charge, a $0.50/gallon fuel tax increase paid at the pump, and a mileage and emissions based fee of $40-400/year, with current transit service, they found NOx emissions reduced by 9.9-12.1% in San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego, and Los Angeles under 1991 or 2010 conditions.

Combining the same congestion pricing with a $3/day employee parking charge, a $2/gallon gas increase paid at the pump, and mileage and emission fees of $10-1000/year, with extensive transit investment would cut NOx emissions in these same cities by 32.0-34.9% under 1991 or 2010 conditions. (California Air Resources Board, Transportation Pricing Strategies for California: An Assessment of Congestion, Emissions, Energy, and Equity Impacts, November 1996, Sacramento, CA., tables 7-11 to 7-18.) The EPA Pricing Guidance document, Opportunities to Improve Air Quality through Transportation Pricing Programs, September 1997, states that "VMT fees of $0.01 to $0.05 a mile alone would reduce gaseous emissions and VMT by about 4 to 11 percent, while a VMT fee weighted for emissions was estimated to have a significantly greater impact on emissions, particularly for VOC and NOx." (pg. 32). This report summarizes various studies to conclude that added fuel taxes of $0.40 to $2 a gallon usually reduce NOx emissions 1.2-6.9%. At the pump VMT fees of $0.01 to $0.05 per mile usually reduce emissions 5-8.6%. Traffic reductions correspond closely to these reported NOx reductions.

As part of TEA-3, Congress should assure a well funded broad-based program to encourage state and local research and pilot testing of transportation user fee incentive strategies like these, as well as completely voluntary market incentive strategies, such as use-based car insurance, discussed above.

Transit can also be made more efficient by better management. There are many things that should be done in this regard, including improving fare collection systems and giving buses and trolleys greater priority in traffic.

Enhancing priority for buses and trolleys in traffic can increase average transit travel speeds, schedule adherence, and the number of passenger seat-miles per hour that can be carried by existing transit vehicles. A key part of this strategy involves upgrading traffic signals to support greater priority in traffic for buses, so they can hold a green signal green for a few extra seconds, or advance a red signal to green to avoid an extra stop. The strategy can also include building or configuring bus queue jumper lanes at key traffic bottlenecks to speed bus traffic past congestion, creating dedicated bus lanes, and bus boarding stations. These are often combined to provide "Bus Rapid Transit", which can provide many of the benefits of fixed guideway rail services more quickly at a lower cost.

Across America, buses are slowed by passengers who must file through the vehicle’s narrow front door in order to board and pay an exact cash fare. Encouraging near universal use of pre-paid transit fare instruments and other high efficiency transit payment options, as in Europe and Japan, enhances productivity of existing and new transit services by reducing delays related to fare payment at time of boarding. Instead of having people pay cash on boarding, require that passengers carry a prepaid transit pass, or other fare media that must be validated before or immediately after boarding a transit vehicle, and which at a premium cost could be purchased on board the vehicle. Greater use of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual transit passes helps accomplish this. Fare inspectors roaming transit systems and spot checking to verify that passengers are carrying a valid proof of fare payment or a pass, with large fines for fare evasion assure broad compliance. This enables boarding of buses through both front and rear doors, which boosts transit vehicle productivity.

Congestion can be curbed also by initiating a range of actions to make it safe and attractive to walk and bike to all schools and transit stops, adapting successful strategies from the most bicycle and pedestrian friendly communities in America and abroad. This should include accelerated funding to local governments to enable the build-out of the 20 year bike and pedestrian plans in the next 3 years, planning funds to engage in local area pedestrian and bicycle planning to identify key barriers and safety problems, and delay of some road projects to provide funds to retrofit sidewalks, bike paths, and traffic calming measures within a half-mile of all transit stops and schools. A significant share of traffic is related to parents driving students to schools because it is not safe or attractive to walk there.

Bicycle-hostile street environments near most U.S. schools, transit stops and stations also pose a significant barrier to more widespread use of bicycles. The majority of U.S. cyclists are not comfortable riding in fast or heavy traffic unless offered separate paths or lanes. A large, but not well connected, network of low-speed, low-volume, relatively bicycle-friendly streets exist in most U.S. suburbs. However, without bicycle paths connecting major transit stops, employment, residential areas, and shopping centers, only a minority of cyclists will consider it attractive to bicycle to transit. Marketing, education, and promotion programs are also needed to encourage greater and safer use of bicycles for short utilitarian trips, including transit access, particularly in conjunction with initiatives that reduce the current barriers of theft, security, safety, and legitimacy which impede non-recreational bicycle use in America.

About 40 percent of Americans own bicycles, and many of these people live one-quarter mile to two miles away from express transit stops. Few of these people now use transit to get to work, in part because of the lack of an inexpensive, convenient, safe, and fast transit access system suited to trips of this distance. In the Silicon Valley of California, 40% of those using bicycle lockers at rail stations leave bicycles in them overnight and use them to get from the station each morning to their nearby schools and employment, just as in the Netherlands.

Another means of reducing traffic is to implement neighborhood traffic calming to reduce motor vehicle speeds on many streets to improve safety for pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists, and reduce emissions from car travel. Traffic calming has been shown by research to reduce idle times by 15%, gear changing by 12%, brake use by 14%, and gasoline use by 12%. A Federal Highway Administration report, Project for Public Spaces, The Effects of Environmental Design on the Amount and Type of Bicycling and Walking, National Bicycling and Walking Study, Federal Highway Administration, October 1992, Washington, DC, discusses the German experience with traffic calming demonstration projects in six cities and towns in the early 1980s: ‘The initial reports showed that with a reduction of speed from 37 km/h (23 mph) to 20 km/h (12 mph), traffic volume remained constant, but there was a 60% decrease in injuries, and a 43% to 53% reduction in fatalities. Air pollution decreased between 10% and 50%. The German Auto Club, skeptical of the official results, did their own research which showed broad acceptance after initial opposition by the motorists. Interviews of residents and motorists in the traffic calmed areas showed that the percentage of motorists who considered a 30 km/h (18 mph) speed limit acceptable grew from 27% before implementation to 67% after implementation, while the percentage of receptive residents grew from 30% to 75%.’ This experience of initial skepticism of traffic calming, followed by its widespread popularity after implementation, has been experienced in hundreds of communities across Europe, Japan, and Australia, along with the a large number of U.S. communities which have adopted such strategies in the 1990s. The widespread acceptance of traffic calming in recent years by U.S. traffic engineers (particularly with promotion by the Institute for Transportation Engineers) and by many communities makes this strategy a reasonably available to metropolitan areas across the U.S. today.

Street space needs to be allocated to the bicycle in areas where traffic volumes or traffic speeds are high if bicycles are going to be used to reach these areas. The majority of all urban and suburban streets and roads are already quite suitable for bicycling, with relatively low traffic speeds and low traffic volumes. However, such residential streets usually lead to bicycle-hostile major roads before reaching major activity centers and schools. Frequently, development of a few small missing links can make the difference between safe bicycle access and lack of bicycle access. Without separate bicycle paths or bicycle lanes, only the small share of cyclists who are more highly skilled will be attracted to use this mode of transportation to make day-to-day trips. Experience in many cities and towns in America and elsewhere shows that high levels of bicycle use only occurs where the street system is bicycle-friendly. Where well-connected networks of bicycle friendly streets, bicycle paths, and bicycle lanes have been provided -- such as Davis, Palo Alto, and Santa Barbara, California, Madison, Wisconsin, and Gainesville, Florida -- bicycle mode shares of 10-25% are common. Where such networks are not available, only the hardiest of cyclists take to the roads for purposeful travel, leading to bicycle mode shares of 2% or less. These relationships can also be observed in other affluent countries in Europe and Asia. (Michael Replogle, Bicycle and Pedestrian Policies and Programs in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand, U.S. Federal Highway Administration, Washington, DC 1993).

Metro areas can elect to complete their 20-year bicycle transportation plans on an accelerated basis. In non-attainment areas, a bicycle and pedestrian SIP commitment might also include funding of a program for community-based bicycle and pedestrian planning and improvements. In a very large share of communities there is significant unmet demand for the retrofit of sidewalks, for pedestrian traffic safety improvements, for enhanced connections of neighborhoods to schools, and for better pedestrian and bicycle access to public transportation. Added funding for planning and public involvement to identify, design solutions, and address local needs such as these is a critical part of assuring effective additional efforts in this arena.

Pilot projects could include funding for improvements to bicycle and pedestrian safety on routes leading to stations and transit stops especially within a one-mile radius. Funding could be provided for marketing and evaluation. A bundle of such measures, as described above, could be employed to make all areas within a half-mile of transit stops and schools safe and attractive places for walking and bicycling around metropolitan areas. Within a several year period this could result in significant traffic reduction as people gained new options for access without use of a car.

Congress needs to expand funding dedicated to non-motorized transportation programs, promotion, planning and safety so that we can achieve all that is possible from these most friendly and inexpensive travel modes.

U.S. metro areas have invested in costly park-and-ride systems that have made transit increasingly dependent on the automobile. Other regions, especially in Europe but also in some U.S. communities, have been strengthening the potential for people to walk and bicycle to and from transit, boosting ridership at a far lower cost. In much of Europe, the fastest growing and often predominant access mode to suburban express transit services is the bicycle. Despite rapid growth in the number of motor vehicles, suburbanization, and the emergence of polycentric metropolitan areas, bicycle access to most European railways has gained market share at the same time that bus and walk access has declined. Bike-and-ride services expand the potential market area of express public transportation at low cost without the very high air pollution emission and energy use rates per VMT, excessive space requirements, and high capital costs of automobile park-and-ride systems. While park-and-ride enables those living in lower density areas to travel from home-to-transit stop, bike-and-ride systems providing secure overnight bicycle parking can facilitate both access and egress to transit, enabling travelers to get from transit stops to nearby workplaces and schools which are otherwise unreachable by transit. Bicycle access can be invaluable in adapting transit systems to the emergent suburbanized polycentric metropolitan land use patterns found in Europe, Japan, and North America

In many U.S. communities, transit access planning looks only at automobile access. An overlooked congestion relief strategy is to provide guarded bicycle parking centers at all major transit stops in metro areas where there is strong latent transit from travelers who live or work at a radius of more than ½ mile and less than 2 miles from the transit center, where there is inadequate automobile park-and-ride capacity, and where the topography, market demographics, and community climate of opinion and community texture are likely to support some level of bicycle use.

Many people don't use transit because they can't find affordable or available parking nearby when they want it. It costs $5,000-$20,000 to build a single additional parking space, and $750-3,000 a year to operate a park-and-ride space. Providing bike lockers, bike racks, and guarded bicycle parking at transit stops can free up car parking spaces for those who can't bike or who live too far to bike to transit, while offering a low cost healthy way for those 1/2 mile to 2 miles from the transit station or stop get to and from transit. Guarded bike parking at transit has been a predominant part of transit access in European and Japanese suburbs for decades, where it costs 1/10 to 1/100 as much as auto parking at transit to provide and operate. And secure overnight bike parking at transit allows people to get from transit to nearby schools and jobs that are beyond walking distance of the transit stop.

In 1996 the City of Long Beach implemented the nation's first attended bicycle parking facility, or "Bikestation." These facilities provide a range of clean transportation options--including secure, bicycle parking, bicycle repairs and accessory sales, changing and restrooms, and bicycle rentals. Bikestations have sinced opened in the communities of Palo Alto and Berkeley and are under development in San Francisco, Denver, Seattle, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (see www.bikestation.org)

Many people end up living far from work because they cannot find affordable housing closer by. But local zoning codes often impede homeowners from developing invisible infill affordable housing – accessory apartments. This can be a potent traffic reduction strategy, cutting trip lengths, car dependence, and sprawl. Transportation plans should be required to consider how affordable accessory housing units in areas near transit and job centers, more opportunities for live-work space, and more transit oriented development could cut traffic and to identify barriers to these forms of market-based community development. Reforming zoning codes that make it difficult, costly, and time-consuming to create accessory apartments in neighborhoods near transit and job centers and provide technical assistance to homeowners interested in creating such units in these areas can be useful steps forward.

The 1991 ISTEA law, which was reauthorized in 1998 with few major changes as TEA-21, gave individuals, states, and companies greater flexibility to invest in or use what ever means of transportation best suits their needs. ISTEA and TEA-21 began to better align transportation price signals with national and local goals for expanded and more equal access to opportunities, healthful air quality, and efficient mobility. These laws created new incentive-based pilot projects, like the Value Pricing Program. But more needs to be done. Many states have focused increased funds to expand the public’s travel choices, but others have not. Congress should demand more accountability for how funds are spent.

Throwing more money into road building and streamlining project reviews to curtail consideration of environmental factors in transportation decisions won't solve congestion. But better accountability, planning, consideration of alternatives, and support for new smart incentive strategies can help local and state agencies, business, and citizens cut their way through our traffic mess and boost transportation equity. Congress has a key role in helping state and local governments and their private partners make this transformation from trying to build our way out of congestion and into the new information era, where we manage congestion and expand choices and smart incentives.