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 Jan. 25, 2008 | Vol 7, No. 02 |
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In This Issue: – If the Recession Comes . . .Let The Building Continue If you travel to Tokyo, you might take a ride on the city’s newest subway line, No. 12, the 40-kilometer Toei Ōedo Line. It travels completely underground beneath the city and is one of the longest rail tunnels in the country. The line just opened in late 2000 and cost about $13 billion. Much of that money came from Japan’s national government as part of an economic stimulus program designed to lift the country out of the economic doldrums it suffered during the 1990s and, to some degree, still today. The subway line is not an anomaly. In fact, if you travel around the country you’ll find numerous tunnels, bridges and highways that were built as part of an economic stimulus program. In and around Tokyo they include the Gaikando, a 53-mile ring road around the city that has tunnels 52 feet in diameter, and the Tokyo Bay Aqualine, an $11 billion freeway across Tokyo Bay that includes two artificial islands and a six-mile tunnel. While economists differ on Japan’s overall response to its roughly 15 years of economic doldrums, there is little argument that its infrastructure spending has been an appropriate and useful tool in fighting that recession. It has helped Japan in two ways: it provided immediate spending for salaries and materials that went directly into the economy and it helped build the long-term future of the nation by building vital infrastructure. Nobel Prize-winning economist and former World Bank president Joseph Stiglitz called for an American version of such a program in an op-ed in Wednesday’s New York Times. Unfortunately, we have tended to do things differently in this city and the country. With the large exception of the WPA and other projects under President Franklin Roosevelt in the Great Depression, we have tended to spend less on essential infrastructure during economic downturns. Certainly that is the case here in New York State and City. In the 1970s, which was generally speaking a decade of both high inflation and high unemployment, the city famously stopped construction of the 2nd Avenue Subway, figuring that a city that was about to default on its bonds and whose president had just told it to “Drop Dead” could not afford such a thing. Three decades later, we are tackling the same project, at considerably higher cost. Just imagine if back in the early 1970s, the city, state and federal government had actually come together to spend more on projects like the 2nd Avenue Subway as a way to restart the economy, lower unemployment, and build a better long-term future? Not only would out-of-work folks have gotten jobs, and the total economic recession been lessened, but today’s good times would have been even better because we would be enjoying a much needed subway line along Manhattan’s East Side. Think of not only the more pleasant commuting we would have right now, but the new residential and office towers that would have sprung up around it in the boom of the 1990s. Quite admirably, the region is now embarking on several massive infrastructure development projects. They include the Trans-Hudson Express, the first new Hudson River rail tunnel in a century; the 2nd Avenue Subway; the extension of the number 7 train; a new Penn Station; a direct connection from Long Island to Grand Central, and many other projects. But “a recession is now more likely than not,” said one of the Times’ economic commentators, David Leonhardt, in a very readable essay on Wednesday. If so, might I raise the thought of a preliminary attitude adjustment? If the city or country enters recession, let us pledge to redouble our efforts to get the region’s necessary infrastructure built, rather than the converse. Politically what this would mean is mobilizing various forces to talk to city council members, state legislators, U.S. senators, representatives, governors and presidents about why they should fund the projects. We should sell the logic that it makes sense to spend for infrastructure during economic downturns. If we start to do this now, then it may make a difference if and when the storm hits. While these numbers raised many eyebrows, there is also no doubt that this is the scale of investment needed in surface transportation for robust and prosperous economic growth in the 21st Century. Such an increase in the gas tax would help advance the Commission’s laudable goal of increasing overall investment in the nation's surface transportation network to $250 billion a year for 50 years from all sources. Beyond these big brush strokes, however, there are other recommendations and themes in the report that deserve attention, some for praise, some for the contrary. All of them though help advance the debate around the nation’s next surface transportation bill, which will come up for authorization in 2009. In general, the report underscores the need for real reform. The current transportation program, scorned for its earmarks and regional battles over funding, is likened to a block grant program to the states with negligible accountability. The Commission’s proposed solution is radical program reform, reducing the 108 existing mode-specific funding programs (all siphoned through separate administrations, Federal Transit, Federal Highways, Federal Railroad, etc.) to 10, “mode-neutral”, goal-oriented programs like “Rebuilding America,” “Saving Lives,” “Congestion Relief,” and “Energy Security.” These programs would be guided by national plans and performance criteria developed for each program and used to drive decisions about project selection and measure the progress of each program toward meeting its objectives. A new independent commission, called the National Surface Transportation Commission (NASTRAC) would oversee the development of a national strategic plan composed of the 10 new program plans described above. NASTRAC would recommend the total funding amount for the transportation program to Congress, and in the manner of the Base Realignment and Closure process (BRAC), would be subject to a Congressional veto but no amendments. If no actions are taken, the recommendations become law. The devil is in the details of course, and we need to better understand whether the proposed process can move the transportation program away from the politics and earmarks that have plagued it and toward investments that support strategic, sustainable metropolitan growth in America. Will a newly appointed NASTRAC commission, once given authority to set total transportation funding levels, be any more insulated from politics than the Congress has been? If performance criteria become the key factor in project decision-making, the challenge is finding the right performance criteria that will select projects that provide a high return on investment, promote transportation choice and safety, and produce the greatest efficiency. In light of the enormous challenge to reduce carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050, (and the contribution of a growing 33 percent of all carbon emissions coming from the transportation sector), it is appropriate to establish performance criteria that evaluate projects on the basis of their climate benefits. Coordination with existing land uses could also be used to evaluate projects that create new capacity, as has been done in California. In fact, while the Commission’s focus on performance criteria and accountability is right, it could go farther. By failing to articulate how the hard decisions about transportation projects will be made in an era of mounting climate and energy constraints, it has left the door open for others to develop a vision for nation’s transportation system. Yes – we need to move people and goods efficiently, provide capacity for economic growth, dramatically increase safety on our roadways, and shape our built environment in ways that will be both prosperous and pleasant. But will these goals be achieved by building more than 150,000 new lane miles on the Interstate System by 2050, as the leading highway industry group has proposed, or a real commitment to linking metropolitan development with modern public transportation investments, so as to provide new transportation choices to millions of Americans and reduce vehicle miles traveled? The Commission report also fails to address the hegemony of state Departments of Transportation and their natural predilection toward road building as the solution to most transportation problems. The Commission’s proposal to develop 10 national plans to guide its 10 goal-oriented transportation programs is a sound one – except that it calls for state DOTs to propose the projects in each state that will comprise the plans. (How will this process differ from the free-for-all pork process we currently suffer from?) Without greater funding directly sub-allocated to metropolitan planning organizations and regional transit agencies, the metropolitan regions that power the nation’s economy will continue to lose out. And the Commission, while tipping its hat to the challenges of America’s emerging megaregions and the complex transportation issues they pose, does not suggest new institutions, tools, or legal mechanisms to allow adjacent states and metropolitan areas to plan, fund, and operate multi-jurisdictional transportation corridors and networks. Getting back to the gas tax, the Commission provides a great service by not shying away from the serious funding gap needed to fix the falling-down bridges, congested roads, inadequate public transit, and lack of decent intercity rail in the nation. America deserves a modern and sustainable transportation system to fuel growth and prosperity in this century as previous generations built for us in the past. But to get there will require a radical realignment of the way we spend our transportation dollars with the goals we have as a society. That is a conversation that has yet to take place. Then it hit me. We were charged with creating a plan to lessen our community’s impact on climate and ready the Village for global warming’s gravest effects. Yet so far there was just one proposal that enjoyed unqualified support among us. It was: “Hold a Design Contest to Create a Village Canvas Shopping Bag.” While I’ve got nothing against cloth shopping bags, it’s hard to see how designing one will do much, even in the long run, to reduce carbon emissions. Even as a symbolic gesture, it was a decidedly small one. So how had this become the only common ground, within a group of people sincerely committed to addressing climate change? The answer to this question is more important than it might appear on first glance. As we move forward to address climate change, we need real, substantive actions not only at the national and international levels, but on the local level, where most American land use policies are hammered out. Localities have the promise of being the main engine for U.S. progress on climate change. But while there are scattered examples of towns and villages that have mobilized full force, the ‘criticality of the locality’ is liable to go largely untapped if States to do not step in to encourage this path. Let’s begin by acknowledging that it’s no mystery how the heartfelt desire of local citizens to avert what may be the largest challenge yet faced by human kind can be compressed down to a kid’s design contest aimed at reducing the use of plastic bags. And it has nothing to do with competence, or even ideology. Our Task Force includes six highly intelligent individuals with significant professional expertise. We are all well aware of the stakes involved, and happily there’s not a climate change skeptic among us. Yet there are numerous factors that can prevent local groups like ours from coalescing around truly useful climate action plans. One factor is the soup of possibilities: with so many ways to address global warming, it can be difficult to rank potential actions. Discussion—at least in our group—tends to careen precipitously between the ‘voice of urgency’ and the ‘voice of reason,’ and there’s no doubt that minute personal interests can tip the balance. (A proposed anti-idling ordinance, for example, might fall before the specter of one’s child trudging to school on subzero days.) There is an obvious danger in committing enormous time and energy just to reinvent the wheel, but because small towns and villages tend to cherish their uniqueness, folks may be wary of using other community plans as templates. Add to this a free-floating fear of being perceived as ‘too strident,’ and the natural propensity—in the school-focused atmosphere of small towns – to favor educational solutions, and – voila! – the canvas bag solution to climate change. This is precisely the terrain American efforts to stem climate change must negotiate, as they wend their way through the micro-capillaries of local power. We know that land use patterns, as well as building design and retrofit, are central to any climate fix. But zoning powers are squarely in the hands of the localities, as is oversight for building codes and (typically) the ability to carve out “more restrictive local standards” in those codes. The local scene, so to speak, may now comprise the most important front in climate action. This is not all bad news. As public attitudes tip decisively in favor of action on climate change, strong local planning efforts could actually serve as the critical mobilizing factor to move the nation forward. But localities need help identifying and prioritizing truly effective strategies. They need tuned-in outsiders to help sort through the pile-up of competing fears, desires and demands. Perhaps more than anything, as localities become aware and motivated, they need good old, inclusive and well-planned ‘visioning’ sessions to help them understand what climate change will look like locally – and how their communities might look and feel if they strategically shaped them to mitigate carbon output. If done well and done soon, this is work that could make climate change more real than it has yet been in America, giving traction to state and national efforts over the long term. Of course, there are numerous obstacles to be overcome to make this vision a reality. But one easy way to begin tapping the latent power of localities is for states to offer incentives and financial support for comprehensive municipal planning efforts centered on climate change. While it will take some time to overcome the natural fear of change and the tendency of local committees to think small, a nudge in the right direction—even a few dollars, say, for extra planning help—could lead more towns away from the canvas bag and toward real solutions.
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January 28 January 29 January 31 February 7 February 7 February 8 February 13 February 16 February 22 February 23 February 28 February 29 April 18 |
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Spotlight on The Region A publication of Regional Plan Association, Robert Yaro, President / Alex Marshall, Senior Editor 212-253-2727, x360 alex@rpa.org www.rpa.org |
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