Popular culture would tell the city leaders of Madison that in our current budget we need to focus on providing basic services like expanding roads for driving (which popular culture tells us provides a high return on investment and grows the economy), and cut back on what popular culture tells us are expensive luxuries like transit and bicycling infrastructure. The problem is that popular culture doesn’t consider the fact that infrastructure lasts 40 years or more into the future, during which time we face issues of increasing energy prices, an aging population (which tends to drive less), and the fact that due to the geography of our lakes, Madison does not have the luxury of growing by building an urban highway system with radial spokes that can easily connect outlying regions to its urban core as cities like Indianapolis have.
If we were to listen to the “roads first” crowd, they would have us scrap all plans for improved transit, build a complete Beltline around the lakes, tear out the bike lanes on East Washington and convert them to automobile lanes, and move all State jobs away from the Capitol and out along the new beltline in an effort to reduce the amount of congestion that automobile commuters face. But history has shown that building more roads will increase congestion in the long term, not to mention, is contrary to Madison’s adopted comprehensive plan. Interestingly, the Reason Foundation (a roads-first libertarian think tank) did a nationwide study of the costs of reducing congestion with road building, and it turned out that the Madison Metropolitan region is one of the 5 least cost effective regions in the state to address congestion with road building. Those 5 regions have one significant thing in common: proximity to a large body of water – like Madison does.
Recent trends in traffic levels suggests that total miles travelled is still lower in 2011 than it was in 2005, in part due to the poor economy, and in part due to some other trends that began as early as 2001. Drivers over 65 tend to drive less, so as the baby boomers reach their golden years, we can expect a decrease in per-capita driving. It also turns out that compared to the 80’s young adults are waiting longer to begin driving – in large part due to the advent of social media and the internet. So if we are in the middle of a decline in driving, does it make sense to continue expanding roads like we have in the past? Probably not.
What about that great return on investment that roads are supposed to have? Local talk radio hosts like to say that automobiles literally drive the economy. That may have been true in 1960 when there were very few highways, but as the price of energy increases in the future that return on investment will decline. Since the cost of road building goes up significantly as the cost of petroleum increases, the economic return for road building is going to decline in the future.
What about infrastructure for other modes? Studies have shown that the number of jobs created (per dollar spent) when building transit and bicycling infrastructure is actually greater than for roads because less petroleum products are required. And then there is that fact that if all we build is roads and provide no growth in other modes, more and more money will be leaving the local economy to pay for gasoline (or other energy sources) imported from other places.
The popular view is that since the majority of people travel is by car, we should conclude that more road miles is what people want. But it turns out that if you look a little bit deeper into opinion polls, you find that people do want alternatives. For starters, polls find that about 30% of automobile commuters wish they had an alternative to driving to work. Roughly half of voters want more options for walking and biking to meet more of their needs other than commuting. ther polls suggest that about 70% of voters would like to use an alternative mode to help combat global climate change, but are unwilling to do so if that alternative is not as convenient as their automobile. How do you give the voters what they want so they can combat global climate change? You improve the infrastructure for transit, walking, and bicycling, and focus less on improving the automobile experience.
Economists tell us that Americans are still very much in debt, at up to 300% of their income, and that we are in a period of “deleveraging” where consumers will be cutting back to pay down their debt. That means consumers are looking for ways to cut back on their own spending in these tough times. The average household spends 20% of their disposable income on transportation. If our city leaders could invest in infrastructure that allowed families to get by with one less car, those families could save a significant amount of money. The alternative is the status quo, which means consumer savings will have to come from other places that more directly impacts our local economy. Investing in high quality transit, biking, and walking infrastructure could benefit consumers and the local economy.
Popular culture’s obsession with automobile infrastructure is still going strong today, and no doubt it has had a large influence on what city leaders heard at the public hearing on infrastructure. However, our leaders need to remember that they are building infrastructure that will significantly influence our economy and quality of life for decades into the future. In these tough economic times, we may be tempted to lose sight of that future and simply cut what popular culture doesn’t value today. But instead, we should cut what will be impractical in the future (endless road expansions), and build what we want for our future (Transit, walking and bicycling infrastructure).
