Leroy N. Soetoro
2023-01-14 01:02:16 UTC
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/06/us/widen-highways-traffic.html
With billions of dollars available to improve transportation
infrastructure, states have a chance to try new strategies for addressing
congestion. But some habits are hard to break.
Interstate 710 in Los Angeles is, like the city itself, famous for its
traffic. Freight trucks traveling between the city and the port of Long
Beach, along with commuters, clog the highway. The trucks idle in the
congestion, contributing to poor air quality in surrounding neighborhoods
that are home to over one million people.
The proposed solution was the same one transportation officials across the
country have used since the 1960s: Widen the highway. But while adding
lanes can ease congestion initially, it can also encourage people to drive
more. A few years after a highway is widened, research shows, traffic
and the greenhouse gas emission that come along with it often returns.
Californias Department of Transportation was, like many state
transportation departments, established to build highways. Every year,
states spend billions of dollars expanding highways while other solutions
to congestion, like public transit and pedestrian projects, are usually
handled by city transit authorities and receive less funding.
Over the next five years, states will receive $350 billion in federal
dollars for highways through the infrastructure law enacted last year.
While some have signaled a change in their approach to transportation
spending including following federal guidelines that encourage a fix it
first approach before adding new highway miles many still are pursuing
multibillion dollar widening projects, including in Democratic-led states
with ambitious climate goals.
The Biden administration has suggested that states should be more
thoughtful in their solutions to congestion. Sometimes widening is
necessary, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, but other options
for addressing traffic, like fixing existing roads or providing transit
options, should be considered. Connecting people more efficiently and
affordably to where they need to go, he said, is a lot more complicated
than just always having more concrete and asphalt out there.
Some communities and government officials are pushing back on widening
plans. In Los Angeles, this opposition had an impact. After $60 million
was spent on design and planning over two decades, the Route 710 expansion
was canceled last May.
We dont see widening as a strategy for L.A., said James de la Loza,
chief planning officer for Los Angeles Countys transportation agency.
It remains to be seen if the cancellation is the start of a trend or an
outlier. Widening projects are still in the works for highways in Texas,
Oregon and Maryland, to name a few. New York City is even considering re-
widening the traffic-choked Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
LOS ANGELES
A Change in Approach to Congestion
The cancellation of the Route 710 expansion came after California learned
the hard way about the principle of induced demand.
In 2015, a $1 billion project to widen a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405
through Los Angeles was completed. For a period, congestion was
relieved, said Tony Tavares, the director of Caltrans, Californias
Department of Transportation.
But that relief did not last. Rush hour traffic soon rebounded, he said.
When a congested road is widened, travel times go down at first. But
then people change their behaviors. After hearing a highway is less busy,
commuters might switch from transit to driving or change the route they
take to work. Some may even choose to move farther away.
Its a pretty basic economic principle that if you reduce the price of a
good then people will consume more of it, Susan Handy, a professor of
environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis,
said. Thats essentially what were doing when we expand freeways.
The concept of induced traffic has been around since the 1960s, but in a
2009 study, researchers confirmed what transportation experts had observed
for years: In a metropolitan area, when road capacity increases by 1
percent, the number of cars on the road after a few years also increases
by 1 percent.
For years, critics of the Route 710 plan had voiced concerns that the
widened highway would lead to more greenhouse gas emissions and the
bulldozing of the communities around it.
In late 2020, the E.P.A. ruled that the widening plan violated the federal
Clean Air Act, and officials paused the project. Then last spring,
Caltrans canceled the project altogether. Mr. Tavares said it was
probably the most significant cancellation in the agencys history.
Caltrans is considering alternatives to address traffic on the Interstate,
including moving freight to a rail line.
Caltrans in the past was very focused on dealing with congestion
primarily, Mr. Tavares said. We have since pivoted, completely done a
180.
State transportation agencies said they have shifted their focus to
providing people with options other than driving and were planning to
divert money to projects that would benefit communities surrounding Route
710. Options include improving air filtration in schools, providing better
access to green spaces and investing in a zero-emissions truck program.
Yet there are still plans to widen other highways in the state. One size
does not fit all for transportation, and California is definitely not one
size, Mr. Tavares said.
JERSEY CITY, N.J.
Air Quality vs. the Economy
On an unseasonably warm day last November, dozens of northern New Jersey
residents gathered in the shadow of a highway overpass in Jersey City,
just across the Hudson River from New York. In a densely populated state
with expansive transit infrastructure, many in attendance wondered why
officials were planning to widen the highway.
If we want to be a leading state, look at what Colorado is doing in
ending their highway expansions. Look at Los Angeles, Jimmy Lee,
president of Safe Streets JC, said.
New Jersey transportation officials plan to reconstruct and add up to four
lanes to sections of the New Jersey Turnpike leading to the Holland
Tunnel. In addition to carrying traffic into Manhattan, the turnpike is,
like Route 710 in Los Angeles, an artery heavily trafficked by freight
trucks carrying goods between ports and warehouses in the area.
The project, which will cost an estimated $10.7 billion, includes
rebuilding elevated roadways and the bridge over Newark Bay on the 66-
year-old highway.
Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, commissioner of New Jerseys transportation
department, said the project was long overdue. A flurry of new residential
buildings and commercial warehouses in the area has crowded the highway
with more vehicles. The expansion is needed, she said, to make the highway
safer and ensure the ports, critical pieces of New Jerseys economy,
remain viable.
Congestion is not safe, Ms. Gutierrez-Scaccetti said. I dont advocate
widening roads just for the sake of widening.
The project has the support of New Jerseys governor, Philip D. Murphy, a
Democrat who set ambitious climate goals for the state, and local labor
leaders. Mark Longo, director of an organization representing heavy
equipment operators, said the expansion is the single most important road
project for the economic future of New Jersey.
New Jersey Turnpike Extension
The proposed expansion would add two lanes in either direction on the
bridge over Newark Bay, one lane in either direction on segments in
Bayonne and Jersey City and widen the road shoulders. The last segment
leading up to the Holland Tunnel would remain at two lanes in each
direction but be widened to add shoulders.
Critics of the plan say the congestion can be addressed in other ways,
including investing in public transit. Officials in Hoboken and Jersey
City, which surround the highway and have some of the worst air quality in
the country, have denounced the plan.
There are other types of mobility that people value instead of just
cars, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said.
HOUSTON
A Commitment to Expansion
For critics of widening projects, the prime example of induced demand is
the Katy Freeway in Houston, one of the widest highways in the world with
26 lanes.
Immediately after Katys last expansion, in 2008, the project was hailed
as a success. But within five years, peak hour travel times on the freeway
were longer than before the expansion.
Matt Turner, an economics professor at Brown University and co-author of
the 2009 study on congestion, said adding lanes is a fine solution if the
goal is to get more cars on the road. But most highway expansion projects,
including those in progress in Texas, cite reducing traffic as a primary
goal.
If you keep adding lanes because you want to reduce traffic congestion,
you have to be really determined not to learn from history, Dr. Turner
said.
Officials from the Texas Department of Transportation said the Katy
expansion provided the capacity needed to keep up with projected
population growth in the Houston area.
Expanding roads does not create more congestion, transportation
officials said in a statement. Rather, they said, it helps to manage new
travel demand.
The Texas Constitution mandates that the majority of transportation funds
go to improving the highway system. Over the next year, the state plans to
spend about 86 percent of its budget on highway projects.
One of those is a $9 billion plan to reconstruct and widen a section of
Interstate 45, which crosses paths with the Katy Freeway. Transportation
officials said the project would improve safety, reduce congestion and
address flooding along the roadway.
Houston I-45
The project runs from suburban Greenspoint to downtown Houston. The
proposed design for this segment would replace the H.O.V. lane with two
managed lanes in each direction, add a lane to the frontage roads in each
direction and widen the road shoulders.
The plan for Route 45, Dr. Handy said, is another project being sold as
congestion reduction. But whats especially troubling about that project
is the destruction to the neighborhood that it will cause.
The Texas transportation department estimates more than 1,000 people and
300 businesses in the surrounding neighborhoods, where most residents are
Black and Hispanic, would be displaced by the expansion.
At the same time, officials at Houstons public transportation agency are
pulling together funding from bonds and federal grants for an additional
way to address congestion and growth: 500 miles of improvements to public
transit.
Additional production by Stephen Reiss.
--
"LOCKDOWN", left-wing COVID fearmongering. 95% of COVID infections
recover with no after effects.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Donald J. Trump, cheated out of a second term by fraudulent "mail-in"
ballots. Report voter fraud: ***@mail.house.gov
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.
With billions of dollars available to improve transportation
infrastructure, states have a chance to try new strategies for addressing
congestion. But some habits are hard to break.
Interstate 710 in Los Angeles is, like the city itself, famous for its
traffic. Freight trucks traveling between the city and the port of Long
Beach, along with commuters, clog the highway. The trucks idle in the
congestion, contributing to poor air quality in surrounding neighborhoods
that are home to over one million people.
The proposed solution was the same one transportation officials across the
country have used since the 1960s: Widen the highway. But while adding
lanes can ease congestion initially, it can also encourage people to drive
more. A few years after a highway is widened, research shows, traffic
and the greenhouse gas emission that come along with it often returns.
Californias Department of Transportation was, like many state
transportation departments, established to build highways. Every year,
states spend billions of dollars expanding highways while other solutions
to congestion, like public transit and pedestrian projects, are usually
handled by city transit authorities and receive less funding.
Over the next five years, states will receive $350 billion in federal
dollars for highways through the infrastructure law enacted last year.
While some have signaled a change in their approach to transportation
spending including following federal guidelines that encourage a fix it
first approach before adding new highway miles many still are pursuing
multibillion dollar widening projects, including in Democratic-led states
with ambitious climate goals.
The Biden administration has suggested that states should be more
thoughtful in their solutions to congestion. Sometimes widening is
necessary, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, but other options
for addressing traffic, like fixing existing roads or providing transit
options, should be considered. Connecting people more efficiently and
affordably to where they need to go, he said, is a lot more complicated
than just always having more concrete and asphalt out there.
Some communities and government officials are pushing back on widening
plans. In Los Angeles, this opposition had an impact. After $60 million
was spent on design and planning over two decades, the Route 710 expansion
was canceled last May.
We dont see widening as a strategy for L.A., said James de la Loza,
chief planning officer for Los Angeles Countys transportation agency.
It remains to be seen if the cancellation is the start of a trend or an
outlier. Widening projects are still in the works for highways in Texas,
Oregon and Maryland, to name a few. New York City is even considering re-
widening the traffic-choked Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
LOS ANGELES
A Change in Approach to Congestion
The cancellation of the Route 710 expansion came after California learned
the hard way about the principle of induced demand.
In 2015, a $1 billion project to widen a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405
through Los Angeles was completed. For a period, congestion was
relieved, said Tony Tavares, the director of Caltrans, Californias
Department of Transportation.
But that relief did not last. Rush hour traffic soon rebounded, he said.
When a congested road is widened, travel times go down at first. But
then people change their behaviors. After hearing a highway is less busy,
commuters might switch from transit to driving or change the route they
take to work. Some may even choose to move farther away.
Its a pretty basic economic principle that if you reduce the price of a
good then people will consume more of it, Susan Handy, a professor of
environmental science and policy at the University of California, Davis,
said. Thats essentially what were doing when we expand freeways.
The concept of induced traffic has been around since the 1960s, but in a
2009 study, researchers confirmed what transportation experts had observed
for years: In a metropolitan area, when road capacity increases by 1
percent, the number of cars on the road after a few years also increases
by 1 percent.
For years, critics of the Route 710 plan had voiced concerns that the
widened highway would lead to more greenhouse gas emissions and the
bulldozing of the communities around it.
In late 2020, the E.P.A. ruled that the widening plan violated the federal
Clean Air Act, and officials paused the project. Then last spring,
Caltrans canceled the project altogether. Mr. Tavares said it was
probably the most significant cancellation in the agencys history.
Caltrans is considering alternatives to address traffic on the Interstate,
including moving freight to a rail line.
Caltrans in the past was very focused on dealing with congestion
primarily, Mr. Tavares said. We have since pivoted, completely done a
180.
State transportation agencies said they have shifted their focus to
providing people with options other than driving and were planning to
divert money to projects that would benefit communities surrounding Route
710. Options include improving air filtration in schools, providing better
access to green spaces and investing in a zero-emissions truck program.
Yet there are still plans to widen other highways in the state. One size
does not fit all for transportation, and California is definitely not one
size, Mr. Tavares said.
JERSEY CITY, N.J.
Air Quality vs. the Economy
On an unseasonably warm day last November, dozens of northern New Jersey
residents gathered in the shadow of a highway overpass in Jersey City,
just across the Hudson River from New York. In a densely populated state
with expansive transit infrastructure, many in attendance wondered why
officials were planning to widen the highway.
If we want to be a leading state, look at what Colorado is doing in
ending their highway expansions. Look at Los Angeles, Jimmy Lee,
president of Safe Streets JC, said.
New Jersey transportation officials plan to reconstruct and add up to four
lanes to sections of the New Jersey Turnpike leading to the Holland
Tunnel. In addition to carrying traffic into Manhattan, the turnpike is,
like Route 710 in Los Angeles, an artery heavily trafficked by freight
trucks carrying goods between ports and warehouses in the area.
The project, which will cost an estimated $10.7 billion, includes
rebuilding elevated roadways and the bridge over Newark Bay on the 66-
year-old highway.
Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, commissioner of New Jerseys transportation
department, said the project was long overdue. A flurry of new residential
buildings and commercial warehouses in the area has crowded the highway
with more vehicles. The expansion is needed, she said, to make the highway
safer and ensure the ports, critical pieces of New Jerseys economy,
remain viable.
Congestion is not safe, Ms. Gutierrez-Scaccetti said. I dont advocate
widening roads just for the sake of widening.
The project has the support of New Jerseys governor, Philip D. Murphy, a
Democrat who set ambitious climate goals for the state, and local labor
leaders. Mark Longo, director of an organization representing heavy
equipment operators, said the expansion is the single most important road
project for the economic future of New Jersey.
New Jersey Turnpike Extension
The proposed expansion would add two lanes in either direction on the
bridge over Newark Bay, one lane in either direction on segments in
Bayonne and Jersey City and widen the road shoulders. The last segment
leading up to the Holland Tunnel would remain at two lanes in each
direction but be widened to add shoulders.
Critics of the plan say the congestion can be addressed in other ways,
including investing in public transit. Officials in Hoboken and Jersey
City, which surround the highway and have some of the worst air quality in
the country, have denounced the plan.
There are other types of mobility that people value instead of just
cars, Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said.
HOUSTON
A Commitment to Expansion
For critics of widening projects, the prime example of induced demand is
the Katy Freeway in Houston, one of the widest highways in the world with
26 lanes.
Immediately after Katys last expansion, in 2008, the project was hailed
as a success. But within five years, peak hour travel times on the freeway
were longer than before the expansion.
Matt Turner, an economics professor at Brown University and co-author of
the 2009 study on congestion, said adding lanes is a fine solution if the
goal is to get more cars on the road. But most highway expansion projects,
including those in progress in Texas, cite reducing traffic as a primary
goal.
If you keep adding lanes because you want to reduce traffic congestion,
you have to be really determined not to learn from history, Dr. Turner
said.
Officials from the Texas Department of Transportation said the Katy
expansion provided the capacity needed to keep up with projected
population growth in the Houston area.
Expanding roads does not create more congestion, transportation
officials said in a statement. Rather, they said, it helps to manage new
travel demand.
The Texas Constitution mandates that the majority of transportation funds
go to improving the highway system. Over the next year, the state plans to
spend about 86 percent of its budget on highway projects.
One of those is a $9 billion plan to reconstruct and widen a section of
Interstate 45, which crosses paths with the Katy Freeway. Transportation
officials said the project would improve safety, reduce congestion and
address flooding along the roadway.
Houston I-45
The project runs from suburban Greenspoint to downtown Houston. The
proposed design for this segment would replace the H.O.V. lane with two
managed lanes in each direction, add a lane to the frontage roads in each
direction and widen the road shoulders.
The plan for Route 45, Dr. Handy said, is another project being sold as
congestion reduction. But whats especially troubling about that project
is the destruction to the neighborhood that it will cause.
The Texas transportation department estimates more than 1,000 people and
300 businesses in the surrounding neighborhoods, where most residents are
Black and Hispanic, would be displaced by the expansion.
At the same time, officials at Houstons public transportation agency are
pulling together funding from bonds and federal grants for an additional
way to address congestion and growth: 500 miles of improvements to public
transit.
Additional production by Stephen Reiss.
--
"LOCKDOWN", left-wing COVID fearmongering. 95% of COVID infections
recover with no after effects.
No collusion - Special Counsel Robert Swan Mueller III, March 2019.
Officially made Nancy Pelosi a two-time impeachment loser.
Donald J. Trump, cheated out of a second term by fraudulent "mail-in"
ballots. Report voter fraud: ***@mail.house.gov
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
President Trump boosted the economy, reduced illegal invasions, appointed
dozens of judges and three SCOTUS justices.