by Jeffrey Zupan, Senior Fellow for Transportation, RPA
Ponder this. We drive 3 trillion miles a year on our streets, highways and bridges, up from only 1.1 trillion just 35 years ago. Each of us drives on average 10,000 miles a year, up by 85 percent of the 5,400 miles per person driven 35 years ago. This is compounded by the fact that there are more of us doing all that driving - 205 million of us in 1970 and 300 million people today.
And more of these miles are driven by more and heavier trucks carrying more weight. The number of trucks is up by almost three times from 17 million to 49 million, the number of heavy trucks is up by three-quarters, and the ton-miles they carry have doubled since 1980. And over the years we are allowing heavier trucks to use our highways, with a maximum weight allowed of 40 tons. And, by the way, even the passenger cars have gotten heavier with the well-documented shift to SUVs.
Meanwhile, our highways are getting older, and just like our house, our car or ourselves, require more intensive (meaning money) maintenance. For example, among the 1,900 plus route-miles of highways ever built in the New York - New Jersey - Connecticut metropolitan region, 94 percent are more than 30 years old and half are more than 50 years old.
The recipe for more common disasters then was set - more driving, with more heavy vehicles driving on ageing infrastructure. So it should come as no surprise that a major bridge collapsed recently in Minneapolis with tragic consequences. Not in the sense that we should have known that that particular bridge would fail, but we should have known that some bridge somewhere in the United States was bound to fail.
What then should our response be to this situation? Of course we should conduct more frequent inspections of bridges and other key pieces of infrastructure, but that's a stopgap measure. It's no use inspecting a bridge if you don't have a budget to make the necessary repairs.
For a long-term solution, it makes sense to focus our highway funding on fixing what we have rather than trying to squeeze more highways into our built-up urban and suburban environments. You don't add a wing to your house when you can't pay to fix the hole in your roof.
Finding the funding for this change in priorities will not be easy in our tax adverse climate. But it is heartening to hear the Governor of Minnesota contemplating gas tax increases he previously rejected. We simply cannot afford to allow our past investments crumble, much less put our live in jeopardy because we are unwilling to add a few, mostly unnoticed cents a gallon at the pump.
Part of the money could be found by shifting funds from building new roads to fixing those we have. But this fix-it-first mentality will require a political change. Right now, developers and other interest groups push new road construction because they like to make money off the new development around it. Putting that money instead into repairing an old bridge will be difficult for politicians and state DOTs, but it will be the right thing to do. This mentality shift is needed both nationally and regionally.
Another way we can tackle our crumbling roads and bridges is to give people an alternative to driving on them. This means investing in good mass transit, as well as things like bike paths.
This is why those who suggest we find money to repair our bridges and roads by taking money from mass transit are particularly wrong headed. Recent investments have led the way to a 26 percent growth in transit ridership in the last ten years. This is the wrong time to turning away from the best method we have to divert drivers off crowded highways and bridges.
As detailed in the August/September issue of Planning Magazine, more driving is driving our carbon emissions up, swamping the gains in fuel efficiency. Better mass transit would give people an alternative to driving more.
Bottom line: inspect better, fix the highways we got rather than build more of them, and invest wisely in transit where it can do the most good.
Ponder this. We drive 3 trillion miles a year on our streets, highways and bridges, up from only 1.1 trillion just 35 years ago. Each of us drives on average 10,000 miles a year, up by 85 percent of the 5,400 miles per person driven 35 years ago. This is compounded by the fact that there are more of us doing all that driving - 205 million of us in 1970 and 300 million people today.
And more of these miles are driven by more and heavier trucks carrying more weight. The number of trucks is up by almost three times from 17 million to 49 million, the number of heavy trucks is up by three-quarters, and the ton-miles they carry have doubled since 1980. And over the years we are allowing heavier trucks to use our highways, with a maximum weight allowed of 40 tons. And, by the way, even the passenger cars have gotten heavier with the well-documented shift to SUVs.
Meanwhile, our highways are getting older, and just like our house, our car or ourselves, require more intensive (meaning money) maintenance. For example, among the 1,900 plus route-miles of highways ever built in the New York - New Jersey - Connecticut metropolitan region, 94 percent are more than 30 years old and half are more than 50 years old.
The recipe for more common disasters then was set - more driving, with more heavy vehicles driving on ageing infrastructure. So it should come as no surprise that a major bridge collapsed recently in Minneapolis with tragic consequences. Not in the sense that we should have known that that particular bridge would fail, but we should have known that some bridge somewhere in the United States was bound to fail.
What then should our response be to this situation? Of course we should conduct more frequent inspections of bridges and other key pieces of infrastructure, but that's a stopgap measure. It's no use inspecting a bridge if you don't have a budget to make the necessary repairs.
For a long-term solution, it makes sense to focus our highway funding on fixing what we have rather than trying to squeeze more highways into our built-up urban and suburban environments. You don't add a wing to your house when you can't pay to fix the hole in your roof.
Finding the funding for this change in priorities will not be easy in our tax adverse climate. But it is heartening to hear the Governor of Minnesota contemplating gas tax increases he previously rejected. We simply cannot afford to allow our past investments crumble, much less put our live in jeopardy because we are unwilling to add a few, mostly unnoticed cents a gallon at the pump.
Part of the money could be found by shifting funds from building new roads to fixing those we have. But this fix-it-first mentality will require a political change. Right now, developers and other interest groups push new road construction because they like to make money off the new development around it. Putting that money instead into repairing an old bridge will be difficult for politicians and state DOTs, but it will be the right thing to do. This mentality shift is needed both nationally and regionally.
Another way we can tackle our crumbling roads and bridges is to give people an alternative to driving on them. This means investing in good mass transit, as well as things like bike paths.
This is why those who suggest we find money to repair our bridges and roads by taking money from mass transit are particularly wrong headed. Recent investments have led the way to a 26 percent growth in transit ridership in the last ten years. This is the wrong time to turning away from the best method we have to divert drivers off crowded highways and bridges.
As detailed in the August/September issue of Planning Magazine, more driving is driving our carbon emissions up, swamping the gains in fuel efficiency. Better mass transit would give people an alternative to driving more.
Bottom line: inspect better, fix the highways we got rather than build more of them, and invest wisely in transit where it can do the most good.
@RegionalPlan
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