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Highway Expansion - Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems Today
The Road to Nowhere
The Truth about Highway Expansion as an Economic Driver
Travel patterns along I-70 have already shifted to off-peak hours and off peak days in response to growing traffic congestion during peak periods. Thursdays and Fridays are already approaching weekend traffic volumes as Front Range Residents and Visitors alike attempt to avoid peak weekend travel hours. A weekend tolling program will provide an additional incentive for the peak spreading travel behavior that is already occuring.
By 2010 continued Front Range population growth will stress Colorado’s limited transportation infrastructure and increase peak travel times and congestion in the Mountain Corridor. Transportation Management Activities will be necessary to make the most efficient use of our existing infrastructure.
Travel System and Travel Demand Management measures will increase the operational efficiency of the current four lane I-70 facility and at the same time increase Corridor motorists’ reliance on these efficiencies for access to recreational destinations in the Mountain Corridor.
Recreational travelers, unlike commuters who must work specific hours, have a choice in making travel decisions. This choice will continue to push recreational travelers away from current peak travel hours and effectively spread peak hours earlier and later in the day or night and further into weekdays, (especially Thursday’s, Friday’s and Monday’s). Eastbound and westbound peak hours will further overlap on busy travel days. Recreational travelers may even push into adjacent seasons as Summer recreational trips extend into the Spring and Fall to avoid the prime season congestion.
Highway expansion construction activities will occur mostly in the spring, summer and fall months due to weather and temperature restrictions. Growing peak travel during these months will make avoidance of highway construction activities during peak travel periods especially difficult. By 2010 it is very possible that "Off-Peak" travel days will be limited to Tuesday and Wednesday as Front Range Residents and Visitors work harder to avoid peak travel days and times and travel more on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Even if peak period highway construction activity can be avoided, those who would have made off hour and weekday travel plans to avoid peak hour congestion, will now find considerable highway construction related congestion and delays in those off peak hours.
Truck traffic attempting to avoid peak travel times, may wind up in construction related delays and closures, especially with nighttime construction work.
The net result is that by 2010, we will be making the best and most efficient use possible of the existing four lane I-70 facility in the Mountain Corridor. Front Range residents' lifestyles will have become more reliant than ever before on maintaining this operational efficiency to provide some minimum level of access to the mountains. There will be no viable option to mainline I-70 travel when highway construction begins.
Any highway expansion construction is likely to severely compromise access to the mountains for Front Range residents and visitors, no matter when the highway construction occurs. CDOT officials should not minimize the economic and lifestyle impacts that this will have on Colorado.
The outcome of this PEIS will have the greatest impact on those Colorado residents and visitors in their 40’s, 50’s and older. Many of these folks are Baby Boomers who make up the primary consumer base for the western slope resort communities. The 20 year PEIS time frame would suggest that we will not derive any substantial transportation benefit in the mountain corridor until the construction of the selected alternative is completed. Those younger may be able to take advantage of these improvements, while those in their 40’s and 50’s will be more concerned about the next 20 years. Their primary experience with the I-70 West PEIS will be in the next five years as congestion increases prior to major construction and then the fifteen year construction period.
Mobility during the next 20 years will be a critical factor in their lifestyles and may ultimately determine whether or not they stay in or visit Colorado. It may also have a serious impact on the state's tourism driven economy.
The effective result of the construction related mobility disruption will be a huge number of people avoiding the mountain corridor altogether during the 15 year construction period.
This could have a devastating impact on the Western Slope resort communities as Utah, Wyoming, Montana and even California resorts with better access appear much more attractive to out of state and even local travelers.
We must pursue an alternative that will leave the current four lane I-70 highway basically intact during the fifteen year construction period. An option must be made available to provide residents and visitors with a viable alternative to extensive construction delays before any main line I-70 highway reconstruction is initiated. Any alternative that reconstructs the highway or builds Transit in the center median, (which requires major highway reconstruction), before a viable option for corridor capacity is made available, must be discarded due to the enormous mobility restriction during the construction period.
Outside from building a new East-West major four lane freeway elsewhere in the state, (alternative routes screened out earlier in the PEIS process), a high speed elevated transit system capable of being built adjacent to or further away from the I-70 highway alignment is the single best choice.
An elevated guideway could have the ability to deviate from the highway alignment to reduce construction impacts to the highway. The theory would be to build a minimally intrusive elevated transit system and keep the current four lane highway operational just as it is today during the construction of the guideway.
Elevated guideway construction methods could be explored that work from the elevated platform once the stanchions are placed, which would further reduce construction impact to the highway.
Click Here to learn about an elevated guideway solution for the mountain corridor available TODAY!
More roads are not the answer!
Colorado's residents and businesses will take a bigger economic hit by taxing themselves to fund the billions and billions of highway expansion dollars that some Colorado officials will be proposing for a ballot initiative in 2008 or 2009. The economic growth projected by this massive highway funding program won't pay for the highway infrastructure investment, let alone the additional investment needed for schools, fire protection, police, water and sewer infrastructure for continued auto-oriented development.
Induced automobile dependency created by highway expansion, creates an infinite cycle of automobile dependent development, increased Vehicle Miles Traveled, increased highway congestion and the need for more highway expansion and more highway maintenance (basically the definition of insanity).
CDOT Economic Benefits Study
Denver Metro Chamber I-70 Congestion Study
Why both studies are Wrong (Word doc)
From the Denver Metro Chamber Study:
Answers to I-70 congestion may require a statewide vote to approve financing authority. Yet, a December 2005 statewide survey of registered voters—commissioned by the Chamber and the Metro Denver EDC and conducted by Hill Research Consultants—found that Coloradans rank transportation and I-70 toward the bottom of the state’s priorities. Transportation results include:
- 31 percent of respondents agreed that congestion limits economic activity in communities along I-70 from Denver to Grand Junction.
- 29 percent felt that reducing traffic congestion should be a “high priority” for the legislature.
- 19 percent gave “high priority” for the legislature to address I-70 from Denver to Grand Junction.
- 4 percent labeled transportation and roads as a “most important” issue for the state.
- 1 percent labeled I-70 from Denver to Grand Junction as a “most important” issue for the state.
The economic studies to be presented by CDOT in 2007 should be taken only for what they are worth based on the organization that is sponsoring them. CDOT is an organization with a 1960's highway culture and intense bias towards highway construction and highway expansion, so the outcome of these studies will suggest that highway expansion equals economic development.
Of course, the studies will downplay the severe consequences of highway construction and continued auto oriented development. Again, environmental impacts, global warming, our aging population, our dependency on foreign oil and world peak oil production will be deliberately ignored in the economic discussion by an organization fixated on highway expansion and toll roads.
The taxes necessary to keep up with skyrocketing highway construction and maintenance costs will drive us all broke, but you won't hear that from some Colorado officials whose intent is to fund a giant works program for the highway industry at taxpayer expense.
We cannot afford the billions and billions of dollars necessary for the Owens/Norton/FHU build highways and add lanes everywhere 2030 scenario. With Colorado's projected population growth, reducing congestion is impossible by expanding highways and increasing VMT.
By continuing Colorado's auto-oriented development patterns, today's congestion will only get worse, even if we could find tens of billions of new highway expansion dollars. In addition, we will continue to secure our dependence on volatile foreign oil supplies and prices as well as contributing to global warming which threatens Colorado's Tourism Economy.
The reality is that Colorado's voters will never agree to tax themselves to the extent necessary to pay the astronomical costs of highway expansion.
The sooner the leaders of Colorado understand that we absolutely cannot afford the Owens/Norton/FHU build highways and add lanes everywhere 2030 scenario, the sooner we will begin to actually make some progress. Our limited transportation dollars will be much more wisely spent on TDM and TSM programs, compact land use, infill development, energy efficient mass transit development and maintenance and preservation of our existing infrastructure, including State Patrol and Public Safety Agencies that service the highways (including emergency communications).
The highway expansion and highway maintenance bottomless money pit will never get filled. It would actually be more cost effective to simply put potentially developable land into agricultural or open space use rather than paying the outrageous cost of the transportation, school, water and sewer infrastructure to support continued auto-oriented growth.
What are Colorado's Overall Transportation Objectives?
Do they represent a sustainable solution
?
Do they agree with the Ritter Administration's Colorado Promise?
Governor Ritter’s Colorado Promise
Transportation
We must always consider the impact that transportation projects have on the environment.
We must design projects that improve mobility, honor the environment and protect the livability of adjacent communities.
Governor Ritter’s Colorado Promise
New Energy Economy
Leading Colorado Towards Self-Sufficiency
- Alternate Energy Promotion
- Cleaner ways of extracting and using fossil fuels
- Rewarding Efficiency and Conservation
Governor Ritter’s Colorado Promise
Environment
- Protection of Water Quality
- Protection of Air Quality
- Protection of Colorado’s Wilderness areas,
Waterways and Wildlife habitats
“We also owe it to future generations - generations of Coloradans we will never meet –
to protect our natural resources, our water supplies and our crisp mountain air.”
“We must protect the quality of our air with a greater emphasis on mass transit, renewable energy, new clean coal technologies and more thoughtful growth strategies.”
Protection of water quality is essential to the health of our citizens, the strength of our economy and the preservation of our quality of life.
Governor Ritter’s Colorado Promise
New Energy Economy
Do Our Part to Reduce Global Warming Trends
We can no longer talk about energy without acknowledging the effects of our energy production and use on our environment.
We are not talking about just global warming; we are talking about “local” warming.
One could easily argue that continued highway expansion and continued automobile dependent development is exactly the opposite of the Ritter New Energy Policy.
Increased funding to add highway capacity, increase Vehicle Miles Traveled, increase fuel consumption, increase greenhouse gas emissions, increase regional haze and other harmful environmental impacts, only increases the demand for more highway maintenance and increases automobile dependent development and sprawl.
Here is an example of the Highway Expansion bias in much of Colorado's Transportation documentation.
1. The word "Transportation" is synonymous with the word "Highways" (they are used interchangeably).
2. Transportation funding (a.k.a., Highway funding) is imperative to Colorado's economic development. Move Colorado is an advocate for economic development through its advocacy for Transportation funding (i.e. Highway funding) but does not not consider any of the negative economic impacts of highway expansion.
3. Note no mention of the role that land use, auto-oriented development and sprawl play in the congestion equation.
4. Note the primary focus of the Colorado transportation funding discussion:
a. fiscal restructuring
b. alternative revenues
c. tolling
d. leveraging resources
(where is multi-modal transportation solutions?)
5. Note no mention the negative impacts of Highway Expansion such as:
a. Harmful environmental Impacts
b. Harmful economic impacts
c. Continued auto-dependent development and sprawl
d. Induced vehicular travel (expansion generated traffic)
e. Increased Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Global Climate Change
f. Increased dependency on foreign oil and the worldwide political
instability that it causes
g. Increased national security costs associated with protecting our
access to the world's decreasing oil supplies
h. The impact of the looming liquid fuels crisis
At least two questions must be answered to understand the relationship between "economic benefits" and highway expansion.
1. Can we afford continued highway expansion and auto-dependent development?
The Denver Regional Council of Governments staff has already helped us in answering these questions. Although perhaps not unequivocally, their answers and research have provided valuable insight into the relationship between development and transportation.
From their recent Scenario Planning Exercise:
Additionally, the UGB/A Policy Committee did not have the findings of the Scenario Modeling effort conducted in the fall of 2006 at their disposal when they offered their recommendation. Summarizing this modeling effort, a scenario that assumed no increase in the UGB/A beyond the 2030 total showed the best values on all indicators for the three land use scenarios.
A scenario that used the original 70 sq. mi. addition to the UGB/A demonstrated only comparable travel delay times and only after the addition of $8 billion of regional highway improvements.
Here is the simplified version of this statement.
DRCOG staff modeled two different Metro area year 2035 land use scenarios that predicted Daily Vehicle Hours of Delay (Congestion) for both.
The first scenario used the same urbanized area number (in square miles) that is assumed in the Metro Vision 2030 plan, for the year 2035 (urbanized area is defined by a residential density of more than one residence per acre).
The second scenario added 70 square miles to the metro region urbanized area for the year 2035.
The model indicates that year 2035 congestion resulting from a 70 square mile urbanized area expansion over the year 2030 urbanized area, would require an additional $8 billion in regional highway capacity improvements to lower the congestion level equal to a 2035 model with no urbanized area expansion.
Bottom line:
$114,300,000 in regional highway capacity investment is required for every square mile of urbanized area expansion to maintain the same level of congestion as no urban expansion (in the Denver Metro area in 2035).
There is a substantial relationship between urbanized area expansion and highway spending in order to just minimize congestion increases. The cost of the highway infrastructure investment alone to mitigate congestion would be a crushing burden for Colorado's taxpayers and doesn't include the public infrastructure dollars for schools, water and sewer services, and public safety services such as police and fire protection.
The DRCOG modeling effort would suggest that the Blue Ribbon Transportation Panel, Move Colorado and CDOT cannot consider transportation funding by itself. Clearly, the way in which Colorado grows over the next 30 years is just as important (if not more important) than how much additional transportation dollars we can raise. Smart Growth strategies that minimize urbanized area growth by providing incentives for infill, compact, mixed use, senior, pedestrian, bicycle and transit friendly development could save Colorado's taxpayers billions in highway spending.
One would hope that the Blue Ribbon Panel is equally focused on growth strategies as they are on securing additional transportation funds.
2. What is the economic benefit of highway expansion?
The economic development and quality of life improvements from adding capacity to existing highways is debatable at best.
While automobile use often increases with economic development, this occurs because wealth allows more driving, not that increased driving leads to wealth.
With a mature highway system, it may be better to increase transportation diversity and encourage efficiency rather than continuing to expand highway capacity. Today the most cost effective highways have already been built. Expanding highways is now very expensive, since they are often located in constrained areas, (physically confined by the natural or built environments). The return on investment for incremental increases in highway capacity may be only marginal, if at all. New highway investment in well developed areas does not have a major impact on economic growth. In particular, the impact of the highway expansion can harm the area in question.
High levels of per capita automobile use are found to increase the portion of regional wealth devoted to roads and commuting, increase per capita accidents, and reduce the efficiency of transit service.
This research indicates that automobile dependency reduces economic development and competitiveness by increasing transportation costs, particularly since such expenditures tend to divert large amounts of capital from more economically productive uses, and increase the consumption of imported goods (vehicles and fuel).
Some people want to return to traditional planning practices that favor automobile travel and ignore other planning objectives. They advocate highway expansion to reduce congestion. Their analysis tends to:
- Exaggerate highway expansion congestion reduction impacts and
economic benefits.
- Ignore or understate generated traffic and induced travel effects.
- Overlook many economic, social and environmental costs of wider
highways, increased vehicle traffic and sprawled land use.
- Underestimate the true costs of expanding major urban highways.
- Fail to compare highway expansion with other transportation improvement
options.
Colorado's voting public is being told to assume that the only way to avoid economic disaster is to spend countless billions of dollars on highway infrastructure. The truth is that a massive highway expansion plan is a certain path to economic and environmental disaster.
Continued highway expansion ignores the most harmful impacts such as continuing the cycle of auto-dependent, auto-oriented sprawl, our addiction to foreign oil, increased greenhouse gas emissions, continued water quality degradation by the use of more and more chemical deicers and traction sand, continued air quality and regional haze degradation and related health problems, increasing vehicle - animal collisions, increasing vehicle accidents and fatalities, increasing energy
costs and increasing global warming.
Not only will future oil shortages drive skyrocketing liquid fuel costs, but the oil for asphalt overlays and other highway repairs will become increasingly more expensive and drive highway maintenance and repair costs sky high as well.
Continued highway expansion does not represent a sustainable solution for Colorado. Instead it represents a self serving works program that only benefits the ill-fated legacy of the Owens/Norton Regime and the pro-oil position of the Bush/Cheney Administration.
Courtesy of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute:
Highway Expansion Costs
Highway expansion advocates generally ignore or severely understate generated traffic and induced travel impacts.
For example, Cox and Pisarski (2004) use a model that only accounts for diverted traffic (trips shifted in time or route) but ignores shifts in mode, destination or trip frequency, and Hartgen and Fields (2006) assume that generated traffic would fill just 15% of added roadway capacity, which is unrealistically low when extremely congested roads are expanded.
They also ignore the incremental costs that result from induced vehicle travel, such as increased downstream traffic congestion, road and parking costs, accidents and pollution emissions. They claim that roadway capacity expansion reduces fuel consumption, pollution emissions and accidents, because they measure impacts per vehicle-mile and ignore the increased vehicle miles.
As a result they significantly exaggerate roadway expansion benefits and understate total costs.
Courtesy of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute:
Economic Value of Roadway Expansion
Advocates claim that highway expansion provides huge economic benefits, but their economic analysis is faulty.
If roadway capacity expansion significantly increased economic productivity this effect would be easy to measure, but numerous studies show that economic returns on highway expansion investments are modest and declining (Boarnet and Haughwout, 2000; Shirley and Winston, 2004).
Figure 5 shows how highway investments provided high annual economic returns during the 1950s and 60s, far higher than returns on private capital, but these declined to below that of private capital investments by the 1980s. This is what economic theory would predict, since the most cost-effective investments have already been made, so more recent projects provide less value at a higher cost.
To the degree that highway expansion induces additional vehicle travel and stimulates sprawl it tends to be economically harmful since this increases public infrastructure and service costs and shifts consumer expenditures to goods that provide relatively small regional business activity and employment. Other congestion reduction strategies provide more positive economic impacts.
While automobile use often increases with economic development, this occurs because wealth allows more driving, not that increased driving leads to wealth.
Many roadway improvement benefits are economic transfers, rather than true net benefits. A new highway intersection may attract businesses to a specific location, but this may simply represents a shift of economic activity from one location to another, rather than true economic development.
Of course, if business activity shifts to another region, then one jurisdiction may enjoy economic benefits but at the expense of the other jurisdiction.
Highway expansion advocates understate the true costs of the projects they propose. For example, Cox and Pisarski (2003) assume that highway widening costs would average $3 million per lane-mile for arterials and $6 million per lane-mile for freeways, and Hartgen and Fields (2006) assumes that severely congested highways could be expanded for $3.8 million per lane-mile on average, although these projects are mostly in dense urban areas, often requiring land acquisition, complex intersections, bridges, tunneling and community mitigation, plus the delay costs during project construction.
Many recent urban highway projects have much higher unit costs. Of 36 highway projects studied by the Washington State Department of Transportation 13 of them had costs in excess of $10 million per lane mile (WSDOT, 2005). Future projects are likely to have higher unit costs since most jurisdictions have already implemented the cheapest highway projects, and both construction costs and urban land values have increased much faster than inflation in recent years.
As an analogy, consider the role laxatives should play relieving constipation. Laxatives are sometimes appropriate, but it is generally best to address constipation by changing diet (more fiber and liquids) and exercise (take a walk), because laxatives’ effectiveness declines with frequent use, they can hide more severe diseases, and they can exacerbate other medical problems. A physician who prescribes laxatives without investigating why the patient is constipated or considering other solutions is guilty of malpractice.
Similarly, chronic traffic congestion is often a symptom of more fundamental community design problems, such as inadequate mobility options that force people to drive for every trip, and dispersed land use patterns that increase travel distances. Where this is true, expanding roads may reduce short term symptoms but exacerbate long term problems.
Although roadway projects (particularly safety and reliability improvements) can be an appropriate part of a city’s transport program, continually expanding congested highways tends to be inefficient. The first highways in an area often provide large economic returns, but marginal benefits diminish as more capacity is added for the following reasons:
The first highways projects are generally the most cost effective, because planners are smart enough to prioritize investments. For example, if there are several possible highway alignments on a corridor, those with the greatest benefits and lowest costs are generally built first, leaving less cost effective options for subsequent implementation.
Interregional highways (those connecting cities) are generally constructed first. They tend to provide greater economic benefits and have lower unit costs than local highway expansion, due to numerous conflicts and high land costs in urban areas.
Adding capacity tends to provide declining user benefits, since consumers are smart enough to prioritize trips. For example, if highways are congested, consumers organize their lives to avoid peak automobile period trips. As highway capacity increases they travel more during peak periods, perhaps driving across town during rush hour for an errand that would be deferred, or moving further away from their worksite. Each additional vehicle mile provides smaller user benefits, since the most valued vehicle-miles are already taken.
The main transport problems in most urban communities are traffic congestion, inadequate mobility for non-drivers, and various costs associated with increasing motor vehicle traffic, including road and parking facility costs, accidents and pollution emissions, all problems reduced with improved travel options, more efficient travel behavior, and more accessible land use development.
With a mature highway system, it may be better to increase transport diversity and encourage efficiency rather than continuing to expand capacity.
Courtesy of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute:
Urban Highway Expansion Costs
Highway expansion advocates understate the true costs of the projects they propose.
For example, Cox and Pisarski (2003) assume that highway widening costs would average $3 million per lane-mile for arterials and $6 million per lane-mile for freeways, and Hartgen and Fields (2006) assumes that severely congested highways could be expanded for $3.8 million per lane-mile on average, although these projects are mostly in dense urban areas, often requiring land acquisition, complex intersections, bridges, tunneling and community mitigation, plus the delay costs during project construction.
Many recent urban highway projects have much higher unit costs, as illustrated in Figure 6.
Of 36 highway projects studied by the Washington State Department of Transportation 13 of them had costs in excess of $10 million per lane mile (WSDOT, 2005). Future projects are likely to have higher unit costs since most jurisdictions have already implemented the cheapest highway projects, and both construction costs and urban land values have increased much faster than inflation in recent years.
Conclusions
Modern transportation planning considers a wider range of impacts and options than was previously common, which supports policies and programs that improve transport options, encourage more |
