Too often, transportation spending decisions are based on political agendas or ideology, rather than objective public need or performance. This leads to an underperforming system that wastes public money and reduces mobility.
Washington Policy Center recommends five principles to a responsible transportation policy:
1. Tie spending to performance measures, like traffic relief and economic development.
Traffic relief is the most basic goal of any transportation policy, yet it does not exist as a priority in Washington state.
In all cases, mobility should mean traffic relief, but instead state officials define it as a strategy to move people, rather than to improve traffic flows. This means spending shifts from actually fixing congestion to providing alternatives to congestion. This strategy is more expensive, less efficient and, ironically, will always lead to greater congestion.
According to the Federal Highway Administration, private passenger vehicles represent about 85 percent of all forms of transportation in the Seattle region. This means all other modes, including transit, walking, biking and telecommuting, serve only 15 percent of travelers. Adopting a policy that disproportionately ties spending to only 15 percent of the market will always lead to greater congestion, because the system that supports the remaining 85 percent is left to languish.
In business, measuring performance is a way of life. It is viewed as an indispensable tool that shapes decisions on resource distribution and risk. In the public sector, however, performance measures are treated more like an inconvenience. This is especially true in transportation policy. Across the country and in Washington state, transportation spending decisions are too often tied to political agendas and the wishes of influential constituencies, not objective measures of public need, such as safety, economic development and traffic relief.
Performance measures also inherently create accountability among agency officials and their decisions. Washington policymakers should strengthen the link between spending transportation taxes and specific performance measures like congestion relief. In Eastern Washington and other rural areas, economic development should be key.
2. Respect people’s freedom of mobility.
Government policies in transportation should be responsive to the market and improve the freedom of citizens to live and work where they choose. Government serves society, not the other way around.
Manipulating transportation policies to force a particular behavior coerces people to abandon their individual liberties in favor of a socialistic benefit by which, supposedly, a greater collective good is created. These measures always fail because of what Milton Friedman called “one of the strongest and most creative forces known to man,” rational self interest — or people’s desire to do what they believe is best for their own lives. Instead, proponents of social change should work in the marketplace of ideas to persuade others to share their vision and work toward it. They should not use the power of government to force through their own ideas, but should seek to change policy, if that is needed, once reform is broadly supported by the public. Policymakers should respect people’s choices and allow for a greater freedom of their mobility.
3. Deploy resources based on market demand.
Transportation resources should be distributed based on market demand rather than spent in ways that are somehow meant to engineer demand.
In economics, supply is a function of demand. This means a willingness to use a service must exist before a supply of that service is created. Boeing executives do not make 300 airplanes knowing they will only sell 100. Likewise, governments should not spend a disproportionate amount of taxes in low-demand sectors, where the public’s willingness to use the service does not justify the spending.
European transit systems provide a good contrasting example of how these economic concepts apply.
In Switzerland, transit is successful, not because of the amount of service or infrastructure, but because the country has certain demographic and economic characteristics that induce demand.
In other words, there is an existing market with a customer base and Swiss policymakers respond with proportional infrastructure investments. As a result, mode share, ridership and fare box recovery are high. In the United States, transit resources are distributed in just the opposite way.
Under the “build it, and they will come” theory, policymakers think that increasing the supply of transit will somehow create more public demand. This speculative model fails because most U.S. cities do not possess the economic or demographic characteristics that create enough voluntary consumers for public transit.
Using the economic principles of supply and demand shows that building excess transit capacity before there is an equal amount of willingness to use it leads to an underperforming system. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Puget Sound region, where Sound Transit officials are spending billions of dollars on a light rail system. Despite this massive spending, mode share, ridership and fare box recovery are very low and below projections.
When prioritizing transportation projects, policymakers should use consumer demand to drive investments, not the other way around.
4. Improve freight mobility.
Freight mobility should play a significant role in transportation policy since that mobility is the key building block to our state’s economic strength.
The transport of consumers and goods puts our economy in motion, and improves our quality of life. From trucks, freight trains, aviation and marine shipping, the value of goods that move through Washington state is expected to rise from $400 billion a year today to $1.2 trillion within 25 years. And in just nine years, the freight industry will add 2 million more trucks to our road system.
Our highways, which carry 70 percent of all commercial truck freight, are already congested, and that congestion is expected to double in the next 20 years. The Washington Transportation Commission estimates Washington has up to $200 billion of unmet transportation infrastructure needs. Yet, local and state leaders spend billions of our transportation tax dollars in areas that do not help.
Replacing the Alaskan Way viaduct with two fewer lanes, replacing the Highway 520 bridge with no additional general purpose lanes, replacing the center lanes on the I-90 bridge with light rail, and ignoring the I-5 bottleneck through Seattle are not long-term solutions.
This means the number of general purpose highway lanes connecting the state to its largest employment hub will decrease in the next 20 years, despite regional population increases of more than 1 million new residents.
Policymakers must acknowledge that the freight industry is paramount to Washington’s economic health and fund projects that improve mobility, not make it worse.
5. Utilize public-private partnerships.
Using private investment through public-private partnerships (PPP), lawmakers can fund new projects, shift risk, maintain current transportation infrastructure and increase value to taxpayers.
There are many benefits associated with a PPP. These include leveraging private dollars for public use, shifting risk from taxpayers to the private sector, using competition to create incentives that lower capital and operating costs, and gaining a more efficient distribution of scarce transportation resources.
Other factors like public oversight, asset ownership, long-term maintenance, liability and labor costs will dictate which PPP is a better fit. In some cases, these issues have been treated as obstacles and have prevented partnerships from forming. Yet other states have solved these problems and have adopted several types of partnerships. Undoubtedly, these concerns are important, but they should not deter us from pursuing the benefits of a public-private partnership. Partnering with the private sector is one way to increase financial resources and get roads built.
Washington state’s experience with PPPs has been limited to the design/build format, which is an extremely passive approach and underutilizes the potential of private investment.
Washington does allow PPPs by statute, but the law contains provisions that effectively prevent them from forming. Washington law requires that debt must be issued by the state treasurer, which eliminates financial incentives for private investment. Washington law also prohibits unsolicited proposals and requires a lengthy and inefficient approval and oversight process.
Public-private partnerships have a proven track record across the United States and should be embraced by public officials in Washington. However, reform is required if lawmakers want to take full advantage of PPPs to fund transportation projects in Washington.
As state and local officials contemplate higher transportation taxes and tolls, they should employ these principles to improve our mobility and spend our money more efficiently.
Michael Ennis is the transportation director at Washington Policy Center, an independent policy research organization with offices in Seattle, Olympia, Spokane and Kennewick.
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