6.0TransportationPlanning.pptxTransportation Planning
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If wishes were horses, beggars would ride
Recent Trends in Urban Transportation
A powerful force that has increased automobile ownership was the increase in average real personal income in the years following World War II.
The postwar suburbanization and the increase in automobile ownership were complementary phenomena.
In addition, moving from the central city to the suburbs increases one’s need for an automobile.
The Ideal Environment for Public Transportation
Is seen in a number of the large, older, eastern cities – with masses of jobs concentrated in the urban core
and masses of apartments concentrated near transit stops.
When public transportation use declined,
it is generally the ride to work in a car that was desired.
The biggest growth area in transit has been in para-transit,
also referred to as demand response systems.
These serve specialized populations such as individuals who are disabled, or elderly, and
they may service an area in which it is not economically feasible to provide scheduled, fixed route public transportation.
What is Transportation in the USA?
Transportation in the United States is facilitated by
road, air, rail, and waterways (via boats).
The vast majority of passenger travel occurs by automobile for shorter distances, and
airplane (or railroad for some people) for longer distances.
In descending order, most cargoes travel by
railroad, truck, pipeline, or boat;
air shipping is typically used only for perishables and premium express shipments.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_the_United_States#Ownership_and_jurisdiction
Ownership and Jurisdiction
The overwhelming majority of roads in the United States are owned and maintained by
state and local governments.
Federally maintained roads are generally found only on federal lands (such as national parks) and
at federal facilities (like military bases).
The Interstate Highway System is partly funded by the federal government but
owned and maintained by individual state governments.
There are a few private highways in the United States, which use tolls to pay for construction and maintenance.
There are many local private roads, generally serving remote or insular residences.
Passenger and freight rail systems, bus systems, water ferries, and dams may be
under either public or private ownership and operation.
Most airports are owned and operated by local government authorities,
but there are also some private airports.
Transportation Security Administration has provided security at most major airports since 2001.
Department’s of Transportation
The United States Department of Transportation and its divisions provide regulation, supervision, and funding for all aspects of transportation, except for
customs, immigration, and security, which are the responsibility of the United States Department of Homeland Security.
Each state has its own Department of Transportation, which builds and maintains state highways, and depending upon the state, may
either directly operate or supervise other modes of transportation.
Aviation law is almost entirely a federal matter, while
automobile traffic laws are enacted and enforced by state and local authorities.
Economic jurisdiction over tidelands is shared between the state and federal governments, while
the United States Coast Guard is the primary enforcer of law and security on U.S. waterways
Paying for Transportation
To understand transportation policy, it is important to understand how private and public transportation are financed.
In terms of direct cost, private transportation is largely self-financed.
Vehicle purchased, fuel, maintenance, insurance, parking, and other costs are paid directly by vehicle owners and operators.
Roads and highways are, by and large, paid for by
a variety of taxes and charges levied on motor vehicle users.
For example: the federal government imposes an 18.4 cents per gallon excise tax on gasoline and a 24.4 cent tax on diesel fuel.
This brings in over $30 billion in cash and, in turn, deposited in the Highway Trust Fund which directly supports the programs of the Interstate Highway System.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT)
Transportation's vital importance to the U.S. economy is underscored by the fact
that more than $1 out of every $10 produced in the U.S. gross domestic product is related to transportation activity.
This includes all aspects of transportation, including the movement of goods and the purchase of all transportation-related products
and services as well as the movement of people.
Employment in the transportation and material moving industry accounted for 7.4% of all employment,
and was the 5th largest employment group in the United States.
The United States invests 0.6% of its GDP on transportation annually.
Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act
Traditionally, federal expenditure on surface transportation was provided by omnibus funding bills with a typical duration of five years or so.
To the surprise of some folks Congress manage to reach an agreement to the following long-term bill.
The Fixing America's Surface Transportation (FAST) Act is a funding and authorization bill to govern United States federal surface transportation spending.
It was passed by Congress on December 3, 2015, and President Barack Obama signed it on December 4.
The vote was 359-65 in the House of Representatives and 83-16 in the United States Senate.
The $305 billion, five-year bill is funded without increasing transportation user fees. (The federal gas tax was last raised in 1993.)
Instead, funds were generated through changes to passport rules, Federal Reserve Bank dividends, and privatized tax collection
To Justify or Not Justify….
With the exception of commuter rail, public transportation does not generally serve
an affluent class of people.
Couple that with its high per-mile costs and it is inevitable that public transportation has
to be heavily subsidized.
However by raising fares to a level that would make the system self-sustaining is not feasible because it
would impose and enormous hardships upon millions of people who cannot afford or use private transportation.
The subsidizing public transportation benefits people who may never use it by
reducing automobile traffic along with the carbon dioxide and the extra vehicles that helps congest the roads in use.
A common justification is that it represents an income transfer to lower-income people
Is they constitute a large number of its patrons.
Transportation Planning and Land Use
Land use shapes the demand for transportation.
Population (or commercial growth) can produce congestion and delays which, in turn, creates political pressures to deal with the situation.
In addition, the creation of roads impacts land values and what the land can be utilized for, thus can alter the entire pattern of land use.
For example: the Interstate Highway System reshaped urban areas and the balance between metropolitan and nonmetropolitan areas in our country.
Transportation planning and land-use planning are married, sometimes happy and sometimes not.
Divorce is not an option!
Modeling Metropolitan Area Transportation
The goal of the transportation planning is to assist governments in providing an adequate transportation system at an acceptable cost.
The following is a four step process for estimation travel movements.
Estimating trip generation
Estimating trip distribution
Estimating modal split
Predicting trip assignment
Different models can be generated on the environments impacts of
possible movements of business and future residents.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Metropolitan_Agency_for_Planning
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_American_Transportation_Systems
The Policy Decision
Computer modeling can and does help examine possible improvements and additions to the transportation system
but by itself cannot make any decision.
How is the actual decision about policy reached?
One technical aid to decision making is benefit-cost analysis.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost– benefit_analysis
On the benefit side might be: time saved by the travelers; lives saved if new route is safer than the old one’ savings in vehicle operating cost; etc.
Question: how does one assign precise value to human life and health?
Transportation questions often generate citizen involvement and can become highly emotional and political.
The Opposition to Policy Decisions
Reasons: new construction takes people’s property and can have a impact on neighborhoods.
Changes in the flow of traffic may bring windfalls of some businesses and large losses to others.
The term freeway revolt has been used to describe rising resistance to highway building.
Not only does resistance come from affected businesspeople, and property owners, but
some also comes from environments, who in general do not favor anything that will increase automobile use.
Planning for Public Transportation
In recent years the public in large cities and metropolitan areas has generally been more favorably disposed to transit improvements (and other modes of transportation)
than to building of new highways.
Improving transit tends to decongest the streets by reducing automobile travel.
It appeals to environmentalist for reasons of air quality and fuel consumption.
Those concerned with urban design often favor transit because it leads to
a more compact land-use pattern that is much friendlier to pedestrians.
New Trends in Transportation
Mode of transport is a term used to distinguish substantially different means of conveyance.
The different modes of transport are air, water, and land transport, which includes rail, road and off-road transport.
Other modes also exist, including pipelines, cable transport, and space transport.
Human-powered transport and animal-powered transport are sometimes regarded as their own mode,
but these normally also fall into the other categories.
In general, transportation is used for the movement of people, animals, and other things.
Each mode of transport has a fundamentally different technological solution, and some require a separate environment.
Each mode has its own infrastructure, vehicles, and operations
Optimizing the Traffic System
The key optimizing the performance of existing system (of getting more performance from a given number of lands miles) involves the following two programs:
Transportation System Management (TSM);
and Transportation Demand Management (TDM).
Both refer primarily to non-structural system improvements.
Transportation Systems Management
Transportation Systems Management is a set of techniques used to increase the capacity of a piece of transportation infrastructure without
increasing its physical size.
Most often, these techniques are used in
the context of roadways.
In this context, transportation systems management techniques may include changes to traffic signals, such as
coordinating them or introducing ramp metering, or minor changes to road geometry, such as straightening corners or lengthening merge lanes.
These low-cost interventions can be very effective in reducing congestion under some circumstances.
Due to the low cost of transportation systems management, it is often included as a reference option in
cost-benefit analyses and environmental impact statements for new roadways or mass transit links, such as busways, metros, and light rail lines.
It is typically considered in conjunction with the default "no-build" option
Transportation Demand Management
Transportation demand management, traffic demand management or travel demand management (all TDM) is the application of strategies and policies
to reduce travel demand, or to redistribute this demand in space or in time.
In transport, as in any network, managing demand can be a cost-effective alternative to
increasing capacity.
A demand management approach to transport also has the potential to deliver better environmental outcomes,
To wit: improved public health, stronger communities, and more prosperous cities.
TDM techniques link with and support community movements for sustainable transport.
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_demand_management#See_also
The Growing Role of Tolls and Privatization
One way to utilize public resources more efficiently is to get the prices right.
Currently more roads are being tolled and in some cases the toll is adjusted by the time of day.
It allows maximizes toll collections by raising the charges during the morning and evening peaks,
when demand is greatest.
From the municipal or state perspective, the privately built toll road achieves
the public goal of improving traffic flow without the expenditure of public funds and the creation of public debt.
The trend toward the privately built or operated toll road was given a considerable boost by federal legislation, SAFETEA-LU.
SAFETEA-LU a Pork Barrel Project
The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users SAFETEA-LU was a funding and authorization bill that governed United States federal surface transportation spending.
It was signed into law by President George W. Bush on August 10, 2005, and expired on September 30, 2009.
The $244.1 billion measure contained a host of provisions and earmarks intended to improve and maintain the surface transportation infrastructure in the United States, including the interstate highway system, transit systems around the country, bicycling and pedestrian facilities, and freight rail operations.
Congress renewed its funding formulas ten times after its expiration date, until replacing the bill with Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act in 2012
In 2006 Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, championed a $207-million earmark inserted in the omnibus highway bill for the Prairie Parkway, a proposed expressway running through his district.
The Sunlight Foundation accused Hastert of failing to disclose that the construction of the highway would benefit a land investment that Hastert and his wife made in nearby land in 2004 and 2005.
The law garnered a large amount of bipartisan support, though support was not unanimous, particularly among those who believed it to be laden with too much pork barrel spending.
Eventually a compromise of $284 billion was reached, and signed into law by the President.
Four months later Hastert sold the land for a 500% profit. Hastert's net worth went from $300,000 to at least $6.2 million. Hastert's ownership interest in the tract was not a public record because the land was held by a blind land trust, Little Rock Trust No. 225.
Hastert denied any wrongdoing.
In 2012, after Hastert had departed from Congress, the highway project was killed after
federal regulators retracted the 2008 approval of an environmental impact statement for the project
https ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe,_Accountable,_Flexible,_Efficient_Transportation_Equity_Act:_ A_Legacy_for_Users
The Future of the Automobile
The planner of future automotive technology should be great interest because of the powerful link between transportation and land use.
Changes in automotive technology:
All-electric and a variety of hybrid types
New energy sources: natural gas as a result of fracking and horizontal drilling
More fuel efficiency (CAFÉ)
Driverless cars
https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_average_fuel_economy
