USDOT "strategic plan" is incoherent sloganeering for green anti-transportation agenda COMMENT

USDOT with a "Strategic Plan 2010-2015" reaches new depths of incoherence and sloganeering on behalf of an extreme green agenda. The inescapable conclusion from this Plan is that an organization that at times has housed decent transportation professionals has been thoroughly debased, and now is run by political hacks - who are anti-transportation, and thankfully, very incompetent.

Their "strategic plan" does acknowledge at the outset "unprecedented fiscal challenges with current dedicated revenue sources no longer adequate to sustain current federal spending levels." (3rd paragraph p1)

But it then proceeds to lay out programs that, far from helping meet those fiscal challenges, would hugely exacerbate them.

You thought, perhaps, that USDOT might be thinking about the potential of tolls in response to the fiscal challenge, the inadequacy of the gas tax? Many state DOTs are. It makes sense. It's the traditional way of funding highways, and with modern toll collection technology, it's now efficient and painless.

Wrong.

Tolling looms not at all

The words "toll" "vehicle-mile fee" "use fee" and "user fee" do not appear anywhere in the 72 pages of this USDOT "strategic plan." (The word "plan" however generates a count of "More than 100 matches" according to my use of the Safari browser's 'find' feature.)

You also search in vain for any discussion of the role of the federal government in transportation versus the role of state, local and private investors.

If the federal government faces fiscal "challenges" you might expect some discussion of priorities and what USDOT does NOT need to do - of what could be left to lower levels of government and the private sector.

Nothing.

Might the private sector be a source of funds for transportation given the fiscal challenges - those P3s?

P3 role… nothing on that either

There is no mention of "public private partnerships" (P3) or "innovative finance." Those terms just don't appear.

If anything this USDOT strategic plan wants the federal government to get more deeply involved in micromanaging and permitting and designing all roads and transit.

A "state of good repair" of all kinds of transport facilities is described as a federal strategic goal. The federal government would have itself involved in the repair needs of every highway, street, road, railroad, canal etc all over America.

So much for a plan designed in the context of "unprecedented fiscal challenges."

Mostly to green America, not move it

The USDOT plan isn't even about improving transportation as such. It is mainly about using transportation monies and powers for advancing the broader progressivist or left/green agenda.

Benefits > costs, return on investment, nah not for us

Among strategic goals you might hope for government to encourage development of a transportation system that would provide benefits in excess of costs.

The strategic plan would stress that transportation should provide the capacity and the modes of travel that customers want as indicated by the streams of use fees (fares and tolls) that they show they are prepared to pay. That kind of a customer-oriented, market-driven system would place emphasis on minimizing delays and costs of congestion, providing extra capacity and service where there is demand, as measured by willingness to pay.

We normally measure organization's benefit/cost ratio by having them raise their capital and pay their operating costs out of revenues paid by users. We expect them to expand capacity or face competitors providing such capacity when there is strong demand.

We see this principle in action with self-sufficient toll operations.

Safety is a safe goal

Safety is always a safe "strategic goal" to have and USDOT lists it first - but large federal bureaucracies are notoriously poor at actually achieving safety. The systems to be regulated are  diverse and remote from the federal regulators. But hope springs eternal, or at least it is an excuse for more power and resources.

Lipservice is given too in the strategic plan to the goal of "economic competitiveness."

Competition, we are told "benefits the economy" (p32) but there is no suggestion that monopoly state DOTs be broken up to allow competing road service providers. And everywhere the emphasis is not on allowing competition to determine investments, but on various National Plans, to be drawn up no doubt by different branches of USDOT.

For USDOT competition and competitiveness are positive words you are obliged to mouth for purely PR reasons but which you must never let get in the way of a good "Plan."

Economic competitiveness is usually advanced by ensuring that your investments get a positive return - that their benefits exceed their costs, that they are profitable in the sense of generating revenues in excess of both operating and capital service costs. Such a basic principle is nowhere recognized in this USDOT screed. Despite fine words about the need to be "data driven" it displays no interest in comparing costs with benefits.

"We can't build enough for ever, so building anything is pointless"

USDOT is now flatly opposed to expanded road capacity explained thus in the strategic plan: "Recent history indicates that expansions and improvements in system capacity are eventually consumed by increased demand for road travel." (p29)

We can't build now everything that might ever be needed - USDOT say - so it is pointless building for the interim, they say of roads. But only of roads.

This is preposterous logic.

We regularly build what makes sense for the next couple of decades, and is affordable.

It is difficult enough to predict what is needed ten or 20 years off but no one has any idea what might "eventually" be needed because that is dependent on so many complete unpredictables.

In any case what we build has a finite life, and will need to be rebuilt in 30, 40 or 80 years, so there is no need to size infrastructure for what might "eventually" be needed.

By USDOT strategic plan's logic construction of the extra road capacity of the Goethals Bridge (NJ Turnpike to Staten Island Expressway) in the 1920s was a mistake because it eventually proved insufficient. This overlooks 80 years of mobility benefits that incentivize truckers and cardrivers together to pay $120m annually in tolls for services provided by the bridge - inadequate though it now is.

"Managing the demand for road travel and the associated problem of traffic congestion consists of strategies such as congestion pricing or telecommuting to reduce the growth of and periodic shifts in demand during peak hours; providing reliable and timely information for users to make more rational trip planning decisions; and providing a full array of modal choices as affordable and practical alternatives to road travel." (p29)

Thus USDOT thinks the role for road pricing is solely to "manage demand" overlooking completely the potential role of pricing in raising revenues to pay for road service and overlooking, equally recklessly, the signals that potentially high prices send about the strength of demand for road service.

Why not manage transit demand?

It would apparently not cross the mind of the current USDOT policy writers to suggest managing demand for overloaded transit service. That of course is unusual.

You had to love the report that Chicago's finagling Metra chief, Phil Pagano, deciding to die May 7 stood in front of one of his commuter trains in morning rush hour that in its four rail cars, staffed by a crew of three carried a grand total of 24 passengers, six passengers per railcar! (see http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=38143)

But despite Chicago's sparsely used commuter rail there ARE some overstretched transit systems - notably in New York City and Washington DC. They could well "manage demand" with higher fares, and if at those higher fares the extra capacity can be funded out of future fare revenue streams then, great, let's have that extra rail transit capacity.

Peakhour premium pricing has been used on tollroads and other road facilities. It should also be used on transit and to manage airports with capacity shortages, but USDOT sees it solely applicable to roads, where it is already in use.

The new I-Fund - innovative naming

The USDOT strategic plan's major innovation is naming.

If USDOT gets its way there is to be a new "I-Fund" the "I" being infrastructure and this is to have the fuller name National Infrastructure Innovation Finance Fund and will rely on "grants, loans, load guarantees and access to tax-exempt funding."

Everything but user fees, notice.

Being grant-based, and having no linkage to user fees, the I-Fund is destined to be yet another political "pork" dispenser - exactly what we do NOT need at a  time of fiscal challenges, or for that matter any time.

All we the unenlightened want is that bad ole UNLIVABILITY

The real core of the USDOT strategic plan however is not in transportation but in using transportation funds and regulations to advance a "livable communities" strategic goal. Not many of us are interested in promoting UNlivable communities, but this vague lovie-dovie, rah-rah term has become the new code word for 'smart growth' (denser development) and diverting highway funds to loss-making 'transit.'  

Somehow great far-seeing planners from USDOTare going to "coordinate" transport infrastructure investments with housing and commercial development and get everything in beautiful balance.

The USDOT plan states: "Fostering livable communities – places where transportation, housing and commercial development investments have been coordinated so that people have access to adequate, affordable, and environmentally sustainable travel options – is a transformational policy shift for DOT." (p45)

It sure is transformational because it is nothing to do with transportation. It is national land use planning and administration on behalf of a left/green agenda. It wants controls down to the level of local streets.

We need power to design local streets

Here is their pitch for federal control of local street design on behalf of their particular contemporary ideology of city planning:

"(US)DOT’s Federal-aid roadway design standards are not enforceable on local streets. USDOT can give guidance and publish best practices but cannot require that transportation infrastructure be accessible for safe biking or walking under its current statutory authority. Often, communities and the transportation system have been built to move automobiles, not people. Sidewalks and bike paths are often optional in road construction. Where they do exist, they are often not well-connected or safely designed. Other barriers to livable communities include the lack of crosswalks or traffic signals with insufficient time for crossing; wide roads without medians; fast-moving traffic; long blocks; the lack of gridded streets; and narrow sidewalks. Jobs and services are located separately from housing and businesses are set back from the roadway with large parking lots placed in front. Poor zoning, roadway, bike, and pedestrian design standards could impede achievement of our Livable Communities strategic goal." (p55)

Poor zoning and other standards will be those that don't conform to the views of USDOT.

Sustaining "the environment" while the fisc goes to pot

But the department's plan really departs for LaLa Land under the heading of "Environmental Sustainability Strategic Goal."

This chapter is the whole leftist/green policy agenda, summed up as: "Advance environmentally sustainable policies and investments that reduce carbon and other harmful emissions from transportation sources.”

Prez O sees "vital role" for USDOT to drop CO2

The Strategic Plan informs us: "President Obama has recognized the vital role that DOT can play in reducing carbon emissions, improving energy efficiency, and combating climate change."

But carbon dioxide emissions are not harmful!

The great global warming scare about CO2 is by now thoroughly discredited, and indeed there has been no global warming in recent years. Interestingly this is implicitly conceded by the environmentalists' scare-word shift away from "global warming" to the term "climate change."

There isn't any global warming out there to combat any more, so the new bogyman is "climate change."

But the climate is always changing and we'll just have to adapt as humanity always has adapted - more heating or air-conditioning, or emigration to more compatible climes. It ain't rocket science as they say. We've been doing that most successfully since we came out of caves.

This chapter however demands "increased use of environmentally sustainable practices." Really!

The global environment will be sustained just fine regardless of whether or not USDOT manages to direct money to bike paths and trolleys and away from roads. There is however an issue of whether the policies claimed necessary for "the environment" are fiscally sustainable.

What is clear is they are bad for transportation.

EDITING: This document is irritatingly unprofessional in its incorrect capitalizations - especially Federal and Nation. There is a "United States Government" but a "federal government," the first being a name, the second being a characterization or a description, and therefore lower case. And "Nation" is not a proper noun or a name, so it should be written "nation."

Here is the USDOT Strategic Plan:

http://www.dot.gov/stratplan/dot_strategic_plan_10-15.pdf

Follow-up:

http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/4759

TOLLROADSnews 2010-05-16