Tag Archives: highways

Interstate highways are not intended to be military airfields in times of crisis

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This story about a plane landing on a North Carolina highway reminded me of a myth about the U.S. Interstate system: the idea that they could be used by military aircraft in times of crisis.

Numerous folks swear Interstate highways in the United States must be designed so that one mile in every five is perfectly straight and flat. According to this whispered bit of facetious lore, if the U.S. ever comes under attack, those straight, flat stretches will be used as landing strips.

Belief in this crazy idea should fail anyone’s logic test. It makes no sense to render inoperable the Interstate highway system during times of domestic crisis — moving troops and supplies on the ground would be too important an activity to curtail just to land planes. The U.S. is riddled with any number of small, private airfields that could be pressed into service if the need arose, with that need being dependent on some foreign power having first knocked out an almost uncountable number of major airports plus those airstrips on military bases, not to mention the American fleet of aircraft carriers. Folks who commit to believing this crazy notion of highways doubling by design as airstrips are letting the romance of a “cool fact” blind them to what their common sense should be blinking at them in bright neon letters.

Richard Weingroff, information liaison specialist for the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Infrastructure and the FHA’s unofficial historian, says the closest any of this came to touching base with reality was in 1944, when Congress briefly considered the possibility of including funding for emergency landing strips in the Federal Highway-Aid Act (the law that authorized designation of a “National System of Interstate Highways”). At no point was the idea kited of using highways or other roads to land planes on; the proposed landing strips would have been built alongside major highways, with the highways serving to handle ground transportation access to and from these strips. The proposal was quickly dropped, and no more was ever heard of it. (A few countries do use some of their roads as military air strips, however.)

Some references to the one-mile-in-five assertion claim it’s part of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. This piece of legislation committed the federal government to build what became the 42,800-mile Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, which makes it the logical item to cite concerning regulations about how the interstate highway system was to be laid out. The act did not, however, contain any “one-in-five” requirement, nor did it even suggest the use of stretches of the interstate system as emergency landing strips. The one-out-of-five rule was not part of any later legislation either.

This myth could be countered without suggesting that this is such a crazy idea. Small, private airfields would not likely have the length for modern jets nor be able to stand the weight of larger aircraft, particularly bombers. Additionally, the federal government spent large sums of money on interstate highways; wouldn’t they have wanted to get more out of their outlay?

Another way to counter this myth would be to make a larger argument that yes, Americans considered driving so important that the government was willing to subsidize the construction of interstates. In other words, the highways are more about our love for and reliance on cars and trucks than a nefarious Eisenhowerian plan benefiting the military-industrial complex.

The Federal Highway Administration has an official myth-busting page. Here is their answer to two questions of whether interstates were built with defense purposes in mind:

President Eisenhower supported the Interstate System because he wanted a way of evacuating cities if the United States was attacked by an atomic bomb.

President Eisenhower’s support was based largely on civilian needs—support for economic development, improved highway safety, and congestion relief, as well as reduction of motor vehicle-related lawsuits.  He understood the military value of the Interstate System, as well as its use in evacuations, but they were only part of the reason for his support.

Defense was the primary reason for the Interstate System.

The primary justifications for the Interstate System were civilian in nature.  In the midst of the Cold War, the Department of Defense supported the Interstate System and Congress added the words “and Defense” to its official name in 1956 (“National System of Interstate and Defense Highways”).  However, the program was so popular for its civilian benefits that the legislation would have passed even if defense had not been a factor.

Interesting that the federal government hosts such a page…

More privatization of public roads

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Eric Jaffe takes a look at a recent trend: the privatization of public roads throughout the United States.

Public-private partnerships for infrastructure (often called PPPs or P3s) have been on the rise in recent years, and many experts believe the trend has yet to peak. If the activity of the past several weeks is any indication, they may be right. A billion-dollar PPP for the East End Crossing, in Indiana, was announced in late March. News of a $1.5 billion PPP overhaul of the Goethals Bridge, in New York City, came in April. The Pennsylvania D.O.T. placed an open call to private firms for PPP projects just last week.

PPPs provide a valuable public service while shifting the financial risk to private wallets. Advocates also mention efficiency: private developers, driven by an urgent push for profits, can keep costs lowers and complete work faster than the public sector. Supporters believe that in exchange for this revenue share they provide the public with the broader economic advantages of improved metro area mobility. Besides, states just don’t have the money right now to do these projects on their own…

The first “major” public-private road partnership of this new era was the E-470 tollway in Denver in 1989, says William Reinhardt, editor of Public Works Finance. That $323 million project, organized by a highway authority distinct from the state DOT, didn’t rely on public funding. In doing so it sent the country down a new road for new roads.

Since then the growth of private partnerships has been steady if not overwhelming. Twenty-four states plus Washington, D.C., have engaged in 96 public-private road partnerships worth about $54.3 billion. In 2011, PPPs accounted for roughly 11 percent of capital investment in highways, according to Reinhardt, and that’s with about 20 state legislatures yet to permit these types of deals. In a brief history of PPPs for a road builders association in 2011 [PDF], Reinhardt concluded that PPPs “will likely be the primary model for building new highway capacity in heavily congested urban areas in the decades ahead” — particularly for mega projects valued in the billions…

Still, as an urban scholar, Sclar is more frustrated that public-private partnerships tend to interfere with comprehensive approaches to city planning. He uses the example of State Highway 130 near Austin, Texas, a public-private toll road that made traffic worse because truckers chose to take the free I-35 through the city rather than pay the toll. The point is that seeing roads as individual profitable projects distracts from their role as part of the greater public network — capable of influencing everything from transport equity to urban density to environmental sustainability.

As I read through this overview, I’m struck by one thing: the biggest issue seems to be the lack of money available to governments to build roads. If they had such money, they likely wouldn’t choose privatization. But, in an era of growing infrastructure costs, privatization offers some up-front cash and moves the costs off the books for a while. This seems to be a matter of convenience rather than the preferred option for most governments.

Additionally, I don’t see much here about whether this helps or harms drivers. Again, governments are worried about their bottom lines and these certainly impact constituents and taxpayers. Roads aren’t really free. But, private firms want to make more money than perhaps governments might try to generate through roads. Do consumers come out ahead financially or in their experiences on these private roads?

Will a new design for Chicago’s Circle Interchange prove beneficial in the long run?

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Illinois and Chicago officials are putting the final touches on plans to reconstruct the Circle Interchange where the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Dan Ryan expressways come together. But, will a new design lead to better outcomes?

But other urban planning experts criticized the agency’s decision, saying the claimed benefits of the Circle project were not put to a rigorous test. For instance, it’s highly unlikely that IDOT’s estimate of at least a 50 percent reduction in traffic delays on the three expressways would materialize, some independent experts said.The Circle project also scored poorly on criteria designed to determine whether ridership on public transit and access to transit would be enhanced by the work, the experts said.

“The data that CMAP made available showed that this project would not produce a significant return on investment,” said MarySue Barrett, president of the Metropolitan Planning Council, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainable transportation and land-use policies…

IDOT officials insist that Alternative 7.1C would do the best job of reducing congestion, bottlenecks and crashes, leading to faster and safer commutes, according to traffic modeling that simulated the estimated 400,000 cars and trucks that travel over the Circle Interchange each weekday.

An average of almost three accidents a day occur in the vicinity of the Circle, which is also the slowest and most congested highway freight bottleneck in the U.S., according to the Federal Highway Administration.

It sounds like there are actually two conversations going on:

1. How to improve this specific stretch of road. The primary emphasis seems to be on adding lanes, both for the Kennedy and Dan Ryan through the area as well as for the congested ramps. Of course, adding lanes it not necessarily a panacea – drivers tend to fill in the supply that new lanes provide.

2. How this stretch of road fits in with larger traffic concerns in the Chicago area. It is one thing to reduce congestion at this particular point but another to improve mass transit on a broader scale that would help reduce demand for this traffic bottleneck. Traffic could be viewed as a region-wide issue where policymakers could try to reduce the number of highway trips through this area. Some would argue Americans have tended to privilege trying to fix roads rather than tackle the larger issues of why congestion occurs in the first place.

Four years of major construction is a long time to wait if the alterations don’t change much in the long run…

Chicago traffic bad and, perhaps worse, unpredictable

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Having heavy traffic is bad enough but Chicago also has unpredictable traffic, according to a new report.

Residents of the Chicago area are accommodating that increasing uncertainty by setting aside more time each day — just in case — for the commute, new research shows.

For the most important trips, such as going to work, medical appointments, the airport or making a 5:30 p.m. pickup at the child care center to avoid late fees, drivers in northeastern Illinois and northwest Indiana should count on allotting four times as much time as it would take to travel in free-flowing traffic, according to the “Urban Mobility Report” to be released Tuesday by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. The analysis is based on 2011 data, which are the most recent available.

It is the first time that travel reliability was measured in the 30-year history of the annual report. The researchers created a Planning Time Index geared toward helping commuters reach their destinations on time in more than 95 percent of the trips. A second index, requiring less padding of travel time, would get an employee to work on time four out of five days a week…

The Chicago region ranked No. 7 among very large urban areas and 13th among 498 U.S. cities on a scale of the most unreliable highway travel times. The Washington area was the worst. A driver using the freeway system in the nation’s capital and surrounding suburbs should budget almost three hours to complete a high-priority trip that would take only 30 minutes in light traffic, the study said.

This sounds like an interesting new way to measure traffic. The absolute amount of time spent in traffic is interesting in itself but this study gives us a sort of confidence interval for time spent in traffic. This suggests that traffic is not just an issue of getting stuck but it is the threat of getting stuck that would affect a lot of behavior. Just the threat could lead to a lot more lost time and productivity.

It would also be interesting to look at how often the average driver gives themselves this time cushion. Could traffic be improved if people planned to take more time to get to their destination?

The “world’s longest fast train line” for the day after Christmas: Beijing to Guangzhou in eight hours

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While high speed rail continues to inch along in the United States, China continues to build. A new line opened yesterday connecting Beijing and Guangzhou:

The opening of the 2,298 kilometer (1,428 mile)-line was commemorated by the 9 a.m. departure of a train from Beijing for Guangzhou. Another train left Guangzhou for Beijing an hour later…

Trains on the latest high-speed line will initially run at 300 kph (186 mph) with a total travel time of about eight hours. Before, the fastest time between the two cities by train was more than 20 hours…

More than 150 pairs of high-speed trains will run on the new line every day, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing the Ministry of Railways.

Railway is an essential part in China’s transportation system, and the government plans to build a grid of high-speed railways with four east-west lines and four north-south lines by 2020.

When I see stories like this about infrastructure in China, I’m struck by three things:

1. The ability to construct these large infrastructure projects is remarkable. I wonder what China will do next. Faster trains? An even bigger rail network?

2. The contrast with transportation options in the United States is interesting. Our equivalent to high-speed trains is an extensive interstate network that connects all major cities. The interstate option plays on several American traits: it was built in the prosperous era after World War II, it allows more freedom for driving (which requires certain incomes and interest in driving), and it allows for more diffuse living patterns (meaning: suburbs).

3. I wish these stories were accompanied by ridership figures. Over 150 pairs of trains a day is impressive and these are two major population centers: Beijing has over 19 million people and Guangzhou has over 12 million people (and perhaps around 40 million in the Pearl River Delta). So are these trains going to be full? How much does it cost? Can the average Chinese resident ride these trains?

New public relations campaign to convince Chicago area residents that congestion pricing is the way to go

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The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning launched a campaign today intended to raise support for congestion pricing on Chicago area highways:

Would driving a steady 55 mph the entire way be worth the price, say, of a latte, particularly on days when you are crunched for time?

Officials at the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning think drivers will see value in a congestion-pricing plan that the agency is recommending be implemented on new highway lanes planned on six major existing and future roadways across the six-county area. Under congestion pricing, drivers who opt to use free-flowing express lanes pay a fee, or an extra toll on the Illinois Tollway, during peak traffic periods. The price goes down when fewer vehicles are on the roads…

In the proposal, the amount would be 5 cents to 31 cents per mile during rush hours, depending on the specific roadway. That comes out to $2.76 in the Stevenson scenario and $3.41 on the Eisenhower…

CMAP officials said their goal is to get congestion pricing up and running within three or four years, starting on the Addams. A widening project is slated to begin on the I-90 corridor next year, and the tollway has previously identified it for a possible congestion-pricing experiment.

I will be interested to see how people respond and what this public relations campaign looks like. It seems that certain highway solutions in the Chicago area, such as adding more lanes and increasing traffic capacity, are reaching an end or have run their course. Just how many lanes can you add anyway – and it really doesn’t help as this tends to attract drivers. There have been some plans in place to extend mass transit, such as through the delayed STAR Line, but money is lacking. High occupancy vehicle lanes have been discussed but haven’t really gone anywhere. Thus, congestion pricing might kill two birds with one stone: reduce highway traffic (or at least stabilize it) while raising some money that can be reapplied to highways. Of course, this will strike some as unfair, particularly coming after a toll hike (that hasn’t limited tollway traffic much), but no one is being forced to use the express lanes…

Los Angeles survives Carmageddon II

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The Los Angeles area has now survived Carmageddon and Carmageddon II, which just took place this past weekend. And it also ended a few hours ahead of schedule:

The reopening of the busiest and most congested freeway in the U.S. came hours earlier than predicted. Crews working on dismantling the Mulholland Drive Bridge had a 5 a.m. Monday deadline, and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a Sunday evening press conference that there would not be an early opening.

Starting around midnight Saturday when that stretch of the I-405 was fully shut down, crews had 53 hours to complete their work. Had they overshot their Monday morning deadline, a late penalty of about $360,000 would have been charged to them every hour…

The demolition is part of the $1-billion Sepulveda Pass Improvements Project, which adds a 10-mile northbound carpool lane. On Sunday, crews also paved the freeway between the Skirball Center Drive and Mulholland Drive bridges…

As for the benefits of Carmageddon, officials said if this year is anything like the last, a lot of people will be breathing a little easier when the weekend is over. According to a study at the University of California, Los Angeles, the air quality in the area of the 405 closure improved more than 80 percent during the 2011 Carmageddon event.

If you live by the highway, you can also die by the highway (closures). See some photos of the work here.

Apparently, the site of an empty highway in Los Angeles is a strange one:

Like Villaraigosa, some drivers couldn’t resist comparing the scenario to a movie.”It’s like that movie `Vanilla Sky,’ … where Times Square is empty,” Sterling Gates told KABC-TV. “It’s kind of like that. We’re known for our traffic, and it’s just nothing.”…

The rare sight of a carless freeway attracted many onlookers, including seven people who were cited for sneaking onto the roadway, the California Highway Patrol said.

Last year, three people slipped onto the freeway at the crack of dawn and snapped photos of themselves enjoying a gourmet meal on an eerily empty freeway.

It is a post-apocalyptic scene…for two days.

Reminder to drivers: using all the possible space to merge is more efficient

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A large road expansion project is taking place near our house and this has led to multiple busy intersections having lane closures where two lanes merge into one. As often happens, drivers in these situations often get amazingly territorial, deliberately moving over to block the closing lane hundreds of feet even before the lane is closed.

Here is the problem with this behavior: these protectors of the lanes are actually making the whole process more inefficient. Traffic moves like waves. Not everyone starts driving at once when they can so changes filter down through a line of cars. Therefore, making one single long line takes a lot longer to get through than having two lines half the size that merge at the end. We could all get to our destinations quicker if people could stop worrying that someone is getting ahead of them. People successfully merge from two lanes into one on highway ramps all the time so why can’t they don’t it construction situations?

A note: having two lanes that are supposed to merge into one is a lot different situation than one described in the Chicago Tribune yesterday. At the infamous and congested Circle Interchange, there are more dangerous situations where people try to cut into two dedicated lanes meant for another highway (say going east on the Eisenhower Expressway and getting off to exit for both the Kennedy and Dan Ryan) from a third lane that is headed in a different direction. As the article suggests, these late attempts at cutting in can be quite dangerous.

If you want to read more about this, I highly recommend Tom Vanderbilt’s book Traffic.

After Illinois toll hike: traffic barely down, revenue up 44%

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The Illinois Tollway released some new figures of what happened to traffic and revenue after the January 1, 2012 toll hike:

Many drivers vowed to stop using the tollway and avoid paying an extra 35 or 45 cents for each I-PASS transaction — and double the tolls for cash-payers.

Through June, the number of passenger vehicle transactions on the tollway system fell 2.6 percent compared with the same period in 2011, tollway finance chief Michael Colsch said…

Based on estimates from the tollway’s traffic consultant, officials originally forecast a 5.9 percent decline in transactions because of the toll hike.

Toll revenue also is running higher than estimates, increasing about 44 percent through June, compared with a projected 41 percent for 2012, Colsch said.

Even though a number of people seemed really upset over this toll hike, this is what I suspected would happen: the tollways are convenient and paying a little more would not deter many drivers. There are few alternatives that are as fast and I also suspect using the IPass to pay the tolls removes some of the price shock (similar to how consumers will spend more by credit card than by using cash). Indeed, it would be interesting to know what the tolls would have to rise to before driving patterns would change dramatically. Additionally, there have been conversations in recent years about congestion pricing express lanes and I wonder if this small drop in traffic is a sign that these would be worth pursuing.

Of course, one could ask whether the Tollway is raising enough money to fund their stated goals and if the money will be used wisely…

Illinois State Toll Highway Authority thinking of changing how new interchanges are funded

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If you were ever curious how new interchanges on Illinois toll roads are funded (and I am), you can find out here as the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority (ISTHA) thinks of changing its regulations:

The agency traditionally funds half the costs of interchanges, but it may provide more money if it appears revenues will exceed 50 percent of projections or if communities indicate that the location is near a major regional road or truck route.

Other considerations would be if towns can offer right-of-way land or agree to finance the project and be reimbursed by the tollway.

Another proposal would be a “corridor approach.” This could mean when a new interchange is built with tolls that are higher than other nearby ones, the agency may evaluate and increase those adjacent rates…

Some other revisions include stipulations that all future requests for interchanges must come from government agencies and requiring more financial information and payback schedules.

I had no idea this is how things work but I am not surprised. Having studied the early years of some of the Illinois toll roads, particularly I-294, I-88, and I-90, it is remarkable to me how few full interchanges were built originally. For example, I-88 only had a few full interchanges, meaning that motorists could get on or off the tollway going any direction, between the Cook County line and Aurora. Since then, things have changed as the population further west of Chicago has increased. These changes included a new full Winfield Road interchange in the 1990s (which helped spur the growth of the Cantera property which has become quite important to Warrenville), an added full interchange at Route 59 (originally it only had two ramps), and a new interchange at Eola Road to help handle the growth in the Aurora area. Of course, not all of the interchanges have been improved: exits like Route 53 are still limited. Additionally, if you drive on other toll roads like the Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania Toll Roads/Turnpikes, the exits are quite infrequent as it would cost a lot more money to build interchanges where the population may not support it.