The Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority plans to add two lanes to MoPac between Lady Bird Lake and Parmer Lane.  The cool part of the plan is that it intends to use dynamic congestion pricing – i.e., the toll will fluctuate as necessary to keep traffic in the the tolled lanes flowing at 50 mph.   The six existing lanes will remain free.

This is how we ought to add new capacity.  It will make everyone better off.   The people who choose to pay the toll will be better off because they value the time savings more than the cost of the toll.  Bus commuters will be better off — they might be the biggest beneficiaries, in fact — because they will get a suddenly much shorter commute for (I presume) the same bus fare.  Drivers who continue to use the free lanes will endure slightly less congestion, even if it’s just a narrower period of peak congestion.  Finally, taxpayers, if not better off, will be no worse off because they won’t have to pay for the extra capacity.  The capacity will be paid by those who value and use it.

Everyone will not only better off compared to the status quo, but . . . and this is the key point . . . they’ll be better off than if the two new lanes were free.   Adding two free lanes would reduce congestion, too, but they would reduce congestion less than two new tolled lanes.  Tolling congested lanes increases their capacity.  A congestion-priced lane can handle 1,800-2,000 cars per hour; an unpriced lane during peak congestion will handle less than half of that.  Somewhat counterintuitively, perhaps, charging for a congested lane is a sure way to get more cars through it.

Referring to it as the, “Republican Highway and Transportation Bill,” Blumenauer said in an official statement, “I am appalled at the fantasy finance scheme Republicans are proposing.” Blumenauer is a senior member of the House Budget and Ways and Means committees, so he focused his criticisms on financial issues instead of simply bashing the bill for being anti-bike.

Here’s more from Blumenauer’s official statement (emphasis mine):

“Rather than working in a bipartisan fashion to find revenue for the Highway Trust Fund, House Republicans instead would tie revenues from oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge and in our coastal waters to transportation funding. Drilling in these areas is opposed by the public and runs the same environmental risks that gave us the Deepwater Horizon disaster. What’s more, my colleagues know full well that revenues from this drilling would do almost nothing to close our funding gap. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the best case scenario would result in $5 billion over ten years, when we need $60 billion over five years to fund the Trust Fund. This bill’s reliance on such an inadequate funding scheme shows just how unserious and partisan an effort it is at real transportation reform.”

The bill (soon to be available on transportation.house.gov) reverses 20 years of progress by:

• destroying Transportation Enhancements by making it optional;

• repealing the Safe Routes to School program, reversing years of progress in creating safe ways for kids to walk and ride bicycles to school;

• allowing states to build bridges without safe access for pedestrians and bicycles;

• eliminating bicycle and pedestrian coordinators in state DOTs; and

• eliminating language that insures that rumble strips “do not adversely affect the safety or mobility of bicyclists, pedestrians or the disabled.”

Well, Renew Lehigh Valley is here to say that this simply is not true.  Smart growth is not and should not become a partisan issue.  Policies utilizing smart growth planning are meant to reinvigorate a community and provide for wise and effective economic development.  Rather than letting a piece of land be developed in any way, why wouldn’t a community want certain boundaries to ensure that the development will enhance the economy, benefit the community, and bring jobs to the area for the long term?  “Planning” shouldn’t be considered a bad word; it’s smart.  And it has the community’s best interest at heart.

While the business as usual approach threatens to harm the economic viability of the nation, it can be measured most accurately at the scale of the region where clusters of interdependent municipalities will win or lose the future by outcompeting each other for finite capital resources. To do this effectively requires one to differentiate itself beyond offering corporate tax breaks and the crown jewel school system, which only meet increasingly limited market segments.  Indeed, this country’s most desirable, and therefore sustainable, places have always created new paradigms rather then reinforcing old ones. In doing so, they often inspire change at a regional, national, or even international scale– they become Pattern Cities. If there is one city in America seeking to accomplish this, it’s Long Beach, California.

While we recently profiled the city’s new parklets, Nate Berg over at Atlantic Cities bring us this fantastic article about Long Beach, California’s conscientious effort to become America’s most bike-friendly city. While there is no need to re-hash the article (really, read the whole thing), it’s important to underscore the symbolism and substance of this bold decision.

Everyone at the meeting was very sorry to hear Maurice’s very sad news: his son-in-law’s 30 year-old brother, Nathan Crowson, was killed while riding a bicycle in Baton Rouge over the weekend.Nathan was riding on an arterial road at night, but in that area there is no alternative.Nathan did not own a car and depended on bicycling for transportation.There will be a “ghost bike” placed at the position by BRASS in remembrance of the tragedy.

The group began to talk of frustrations with the city in its lack of planning and design for alternative transportation.To this day there is not a single bike lane in the entire city, even on newly built roads.Normally all that would be required would be painting the lines of the streets differently.

In discussing possible causes of this shortcoming it was noted that the Metropolitan Planning Commission apparently does not talk to the Community Development Office, contrary to what one would expect.The MPC seems to have a background in facilitating private development and does not attend to how general quality of life can be enhanced by using best practices.It was noted that the head of the MPC is a developer and the planner has come from engineering.It was speculated that the city may have underfunded the continuing professional development of the people in those positions.Paying for their attendance at conferences or workshops, for example, would have informed planning commissioners, planners, and engineers of the standard best practices for accommodating walking and bicycling.Indeed, when visitors to our city see no bike lanes, no bike paths, no dog park, little success in downtown revitalization and containing sprawl, etc., and when such things are standard in other cities, they’ll have to wonder about the quality of city administration.

Parklets are most are the direct offspring of the Park(ing) Day movement and a great example of tactical urbanism. While both tactics were initially developed in San Francisco, Park(ing) Day is now a global movement. Parklets, now sprouting in New York City, Vancouver, Long Beach, and Los Angeles, may also become a global movement, and one we can get behind.

Who’s next?

So what’s in the bill? Politico has a copy of the leaked 14-page summary, but it covers the policy only in very broad strokes, so it’s not possible to reach any sort of real conclusions about the bill just yet.

One of the most notable aspects of the bill is the proposal to raise the billions needed to cover the yawning gap in anticipated gas tax revenues with money from increased oil drilling — an intent also illustrated by the title: “The American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act.” The fact that the bill was written entirely by committee Republicans and tied to such a controversial new revenue source could result in a bill that gets little Democratic support in committee or on the floor.

What’s the city that took the top slot in both? Cold, old Boston, Massachusetts.

The full report is a whopping 248 pages and the result of “hundreds” collaborating but a handy media sheet will try to wow you with some big facts, like this one: “12% of all trips are by bicycle (1.0%) or foot (10.5%).” Good to know. But look deep into the report and see that D.C. is also recognized for some big firsts: “In August 2008, the first public smart bike sharing program in the U.S. was launched in Washington, DC, and subsequent programs have sprung up in Boston, Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis, Nashville, San Antonio, and other cities.” This “smart” bikesharing system was actually the now-dead SmartBike D.C., which preceded our current Capital Bikeshare.

The report also ranks the percentage of people who bike to work and walk to work. D.C. ranked seventh and second, respectively.

Men edge out women in terms of both biking and walking, according to the report: “Men make up 73% of bicycle commuters and 54% of pedestrian  commuters. Walking is more even between the sexes. Men comprise 49% of the population and the same percentage of all walking trips.” in D.C., our biking advocates have begun to seriously consider how to close this gender gap.

Oregon is fairly lenient when it comes to setting the boundaries (although both states could be better in this regard). Washington falls short in the allowable density in rural areas and agricultural resource lands (max 1du/5ac or 1du/10).

Most of the sprawl over the last two decades in Clark County hasn’t been in contradiction of WA’s GMA. It’s been in the rural area.

Consider the Columbia River Crossing project. The EIS basically says that there will be no sprawl in Clark County because they have a UGA and rural/resource land protections. What the EIS fails to mention is that the expanded bridge would induce more development of Clark County rural lands.

The CRC is a project that Metro has control over. It’s unfortunate that the Metro council isn’t thinking about the sustainability for the whole region, even though they clearly could, and would actually be of economic benefit to Portland.

Also, I don’t think its fair to pick on this recent location if the investment firm to Camas. I bet if it located in Hillsboro, Beaverton, or Gresham or even Salem or Corvallis you wouldn’t find cause to decry the move.