Infrastructure and Traffic Congestion

A few weeks ago, on successive days, I came across two articles which got me thinking about highways and public transportation. The first was focused on the need for infrastructure repair and maintenance to reduce traffic congestion. Certainly, when parts of roads and highways become unusable because of deterioration, it increases congestion, and increasing amounts of time are wasted by drivers stuck in traffic. As I read it, however, it seemed to me that it completely ignored a much more basic and valuable solution to the problem of congestion: public transportation.

During my lifetime, we have seen a repeated cycle of building highways and having them filled beyond capacity, then enlarging them and having them filled again. It seems that for most peoplethe apparent convenience of being able to go from Point A to Point B in one's own vehicle outweighs the inconvenience of being caught in traffic jams. While the problem is worst around cities during rush hour on weekdays, there can also be significant delays on weekends, especially holiday weekends. Here in Massachusetts such delays occur during the summer as people go to and from Cape Cod as well as resort areas of Maine and New Hampshire. In October, foliage attracts heavy traffic. During these times highways on which traffic normally flows unimpeded become congested. Two years ago, something of the sort happened to me as I went to western Massachusetts for a weekend of concerts at Tanglewood. The trip, which should take under two hours each way, was slowed by congestion and took more like four hours each way.

The usual solution has been to widen the roads, creating additional travel lanes. But it seems to me that it would be highly preferable to provide public transportation, which could remove large numbers of cars from the highways, as well as from urban roads. It would have to be capable of reaching the destinations of most travelers in a time which is competitive with a trip by car. For this, a graduated system would be needed. First there should be high speed rail roughly paralleling the interstate highways. These could get people from one pint to another significantly faster than they could by car. Stops could be at major cities and at junctions of interstates. From these stops there can be high speed rail along intersecting interstates and local rail to other destinations. From the stations subways could cover some metropolitan areas and a network of buses would reach outlying areas.

For example, a high speed railroad roughly following Interstate 90 would travel three times as fast as cars on the highway, losing some of the advantage when the train made stops. On the other hand passengers would not have to take breaks to refuel, refresh, and eat. Near Springfield, a high speed line would run north toward Montreal and south to Hartford and then to a connection with the Boston-NYC line. A traveler to Tanglewood could connect in Lee with a local railroad to Pittsfield (and points north. Buses could cover the run from Pittsfield to Lenox. A 2 1/2 drive from Boston to Lee could be covered by high speed rail in about 1 1/4 hours. Even if the time thus saved (or somewhat more) were taken up by local transportation, it should be highly attractive not to have to deal with traffic, but to be able to do other things, such as read, during the trip.

Another example: a trip from Boston, MA, to Butler, PA.  An 8 1/2 hour, 540 mile, trip by car to Erie, PA, on Interstate 90 should require no more than 3 hours by high speed rail — saving 5 hours. If a high speed train wouldn't stop between Erie and Pittsburgh, a local train to somewhere around Route 422 ought to be able to get there in 2 1/2 hours (a bus would take longer), and a local bus from there to Butler might need maybe 1/2 hour. Mapquest estimates under 2 hours Erie-Butler by car. So by car from Boston to Butler via interstates could take over 10 hours, whereas with high speed rail to Erie and other public systems from Erie, it would be more like 6 hours overall — without the hassle of driving.

These scenarios depend for their attractiveness on having both high speed and local transportation running frequently enough that trips can be accomplished in an overall time that is not much longer than travel by car. Certainly, there are places so remote and lightly populated that public transportation would not be feasible. People would need to drive at least part of the way (possibly a rental car from the end of the line). But if systems could be put in place which could entice even half of the drivers off the roads it would obviate the need for road and highway expansion as well as cutting the exhaust emissions by nearly half.

The second article dealt with the laws restricting the imposition of tolls on federal highways. If tolls could be raised on the highways so that the cost of a trip by car were comparable to the public transportation fares, that would overcome an incentive to drive which is created by the subsidy taxpayers give to highway construction. If users ultimately pay the expenses of public systems, users should also pay the costs of highway construction and maintenance.