Traffic Congestion: Potential Solutions

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Traffic Congestion Potential Solutions

• CRP 445/545
• October 2007

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Next Two Classes

• Answers to traffic congestion
• What are they and how well do they work?
• Various issues related to transportation and
  quality of life
• Sustainable communities (development that
  supports alternative modes of transportation),
  walkable communities, access management, traffic
  calming, context sensitive design, modern
  roundabouts, etc.

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What Lies Ahead

• Lectures
• Two classes on Environmental Justice and Equity
• Fairness issues in transportation
• Impacts of the transportation system on people
  and communities
• Services provided to different groups of people
• One class on an issue of current concern
  Transportation Security
• One class on freight transportation
• (Guest lecture)
• One class on future transportation trends and
  issues
• (Guest lecture)

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What Lies Ahead

• Discussions and Short Papers
• Student presentations on economic impact issues
• Student presentations on QoL and EJ issues (if
  applicable)
• Role play on environmental justice
• Role play on security
• Your project presentations
• Final Exam

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Todays Material

• Various Solutions to Traffic Congestion
• What are they?
• Do they make sense if we think of traffic
  congestion as a market failure, a pricing problem
  or a negative externality?
• Under what circumstances do they seem to be
  effective?
• A shameless marketing discussion of the College
  of Design Rome Program for Summer 2008

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What Is Congestion, Really?

• A pricing problem--peaking demand
• Highway capacity is a scarce resource under some
  conditions, yet we always charge the same price
  for it via user fees and taxes
• Other utilities and transportation modes (e.g.
  telephone, electricity, and airlines) charge peak
  and off peak rates
• An externality
• As you enter a congested highway facility, you
  impose additional delays on all the other
  motorists
• In other words, a form of market failure

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Types of Congestion

• Repetitive or chronic congestion
• Occurs at the same places every day at about the
  same time (usually on weekdays)
• Examples rush hour congestion on I-235 in Des
  Moines congestion at a major air hub on Friday
  afternoons
• Tends to be an urban phenomenon and to be worse
  the larger urban areas get
• Event-related congestion
• Occurs due to an event, such as a crash, vehicle
  fire, weather, sporting event, construction zone,
  concert, etc.
• Examples rubbernecking at a crash scene,
  aircraft delays at a hub due to thunderstorms
• Can be urban or rural

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Some Generic Approaches

• Build more highway capacity
• Build public transit capacity
• Encourage higher rates of vehicle occupancy (more
  persons per vehicle, PPV) through means such as
  HOV lanes or formal ridesharing programs
• Use ITS to provide better information to
  motorists and to improve operations
• Pricing of the roadway and/or parking

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The Market Failure Test
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Adding More Highway Capacity

• This is the traditional approach to traffic
  congestion
• Adding roadway capacity will reduce congestion
  provided that an urban areas roadway program can
  keep pace with local travel demand growth
• The problem is, most urban areas have already
  fallen behind so that new road growth now has to
  be faster than traffic growth
• This is very difficult to accomplish
• It is also very possible to overbuild capacity

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Adding More Highway Capacity

• If an urban area has fallen behind, any new road
  will almost magically induce new traffic to
  move from other roads and from off-peak to fill
  up the new capacity
• Planner Anthony Downs observed this phenomenon
  decades ago
• Urban areas, no matter what their size, are only
  adding on average 50 of the new lane-miles
  needed to keep up with traffic growth
• Some new capacity will be needed and will be
  built, but this is very unlikely to be the only
  answer in most places
• Wed have to more than double spending on new
  urban projects to catch up and then stay ahead
• This approach will work best in smaller, slower
  growing metro areas

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Adding Public Transit Capacity

• The problem with adding public transit capacity
  is that it starts from very low base in most
  small and medium-sized urban areas
• In smaller urban areas, public transit and
  ridesharing only capture 1 to 2 percent of the
  market for work trips
• In order for this strategy to impact congestion
  in most urban areas, the occupants of at least 3
  or 4 out of every 100 vehicles need to switch to
  transit or become a carpool or vanpool this
  would be difficult to accomplish in most metro
  areas
• This solution will work better in larger metro
  areas with well-established transit systems
• This is probably a strategy that can only succeed
  when done in concert with others

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Encourage Higher PPV

• This strategy normally involves the use of
  strategies such as HOV lanes during rush hour
• HOV lanes require that vehicles carry at least
  two occupants
• Experience indicates that in most places, HOV
  lanes are a poor use of limited highway capacity
  they generally operate far below their useful
  capacity and dont appear to reduce overall
  demand much at all
• Enforcement is a must with HOV lanes since if
  there is no enforcement, there will be poor
  compliance (SOVs will use the lanes)

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Better Use of Information/ITS

• Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) play two
  roles in battling congestion
• Improving our ability to efficiently operate
  transportation systems
• Traffic signal interconnection and optimization
• System performance monitoring via sensors and
  cameras
• Incident detection, response and clearing
• Ramp metering

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Better Use of Information/ITS

• Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) play two
  roles in battling congestion
• Improving information to travelers, ideally in
  real time
• Through variable message signs
• Via Highway Advisory Radio (HAR)
• Via Transportation Management and Information
  Centers and kiosks
• Over the Internet
• Via 511 telephone services
• Over traditional media (radio, television, cable)

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Effectiveness of ITS

• ITS appears to be the best solution right now for
  dealing with event-related congestion
• Weather problems
• Traffic-crash related delays
• Special events
• Some ITS applications like ramp metering and
  traffic signal interconnection do positively
  impact chronic congestion
• Twin Cities ramp metering experiment
• In the longer term, smart highways and smarter
  cars may help us get more capacity from our
  highways

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Congestion Pricing or Value Pricing The Final
Frontier

• According to economic theory, congestion pricing
  should be the single most effective answer to
  congestion
• Pricing of parking is a related policy lever
• We know the concept works based on experience in
  other industries electricity, telephone,
  airlines, hotels
• Unfortunately, its also the hardest concept to
  gain acceptance of
• Hence, the recent attempt to come up a more
  positive spin (value pricing)
• This is because variable pricing of highways
  requires a fundamental change in how we think
  about them

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How Congestion Pricing Works

• A variable price for using the road is charged
  based on the level of congestion (or time of day
  as a surrogate)
• Ideally, automated collection technologies are
  used to avoid queuing at toll booths
• People are thought to be willing to pay tolls of
  25 to 40 cents per vehicle mile to avoid
  congestion in major urban areas (this is the
  revenue maximizing toll)
• Congestion is eliminated through route shifting,
  mode shifting, ride sharing, temporal shifting of
  trips, trip avoidance, etc.some motorists are
  tolled off
• Revenues can be used to finance capacity or to
  make alternative transportation investments in
  the same corridor

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An Operational Test

• The first US test of congestion pricing was done
  in California by a private company operating a
  state highway
• The California Private Transportation Company
  uses the toll revenues to finance extra roadway
  capacity
• A 16 kilometer (9 mile) portion of Route 91 near
  Anaheim in Orange County
• Variable tolls are charged on four express lanes
  (two in each direction) to keep speeds high and
  congestion low
• SOV cars pay up to 2.50 during rush hour and as
  little as 25 cents off peak to use the express
  lanes
• Carpools and vanpools with three or more
  occupants travel toll free anytime
• All tolls are paid electronically using
  transponders in the vehicles

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An Operational Test

• So far, Route 91 is working well
• Violators are automatically caught with cameras
  and are mailed fines of 100 to 300
• The new express lanes drew so many commuters that
  congestion on the old parallel, free lanes
  declined to levels not seen in 15 years
• Carpooling has increased dramatically in the
  corridor
• Air pollution emissions are down in the corridor
  as a whole
• The number of transponders in use is many months
  ahead of the projected level (the project is
  popular)
• The state DOT made complementary investments in
  rail public transit in the same corridor this
  service is also well-used
• The private company that owned it already sold it
  back to the public sector

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Sticking Points

• Getting the public to understand and warm up to
  the concept of congestion pricing--this is the
  purpose of demonstration projects such as Route
  91
• The equity or fairness issue--what to do about
  people who cannot afford the congestion toll
• The answer to this is in how the revenues from
  the congestion toll get spent, what level high
  occupancy tolls (HOT) are set, and what other
  investments are made (e.g. in public transit)

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Conclusions Battling Congestion

• Can we build our way out?
• Only partially and only in some places.
• Can we use public transit investments instead.
• To a limited extent.
• Are non-toll HOV lanes the answer?
• Apparently not. They do not seem to work well.
• Will better information and ITS work?
• Very well for event-related congestion, but not
  as well for chronic congestion.
• Is pricing the answer?
• It looks promising but is hard to sell to the
  public and decision-makers. We need to try it
  more places.

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Conclusions Battling Congestion

• Congestion is an issue that is very likely to be
  with us for a long-time it will likely get worse
  before it gets better
• We need to more carefully consider how we plan
  our cities in terms of development density and
  mixing land uses.
• It may be that we could eliminate many auto trips
  in the long-run this way.

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Next TimeOther topics related to quality of
life and transportation

• Sustainable communities (development that
  supports alternative modes of transportation and
  that avoids urban sprawl)
• Walkable communities
• Access management
• Traffic calming
• Context sensitive design
• Modern roundabouts