Highway Expansion

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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
Today
Cycle of Sprawl - The Road to Nowhere
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Typical Pattern of Auto-Oriented Development in
Colorado
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation Roads are the lifeblood of sprawl.
When development is spread thinly over a wide
area of land, an extensive system of roads is
required to serve it.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation New roads are built. Intersections
are widened. New development moves in. Traffic
increases and fills up road capacity.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation Instead of solving congestion,
more roadways actually encourage the construction
of new low-density, single-use development at the
urban edge.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation In these new communities,
destinations are farther apart, requiring us to
drive longer distances and drive more often than
in traditional more compact, mixed communities.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation This generated traffic quickly
fills up the highways again.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation By not taking steps to curb
sprawl, we are creating an endless cycle of
demand for new and improved roadway
infrastructure and an endless cycle of demand for
tax increases to pay for it.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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So, Lets Review Cycle of Sprawl Results in
Increased - VMT - Automobile Dependency -
Demand for more Highway Construction - Demand
for more Highway Maintenance - Demand for
Unlimited Highway Tax Dollars What did we miss?
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Poor Water Quality Poor Air Quality Loss of
Open Space, Forests, Wildlife Habitats
Farmland Alternate Travel Modes get Minimum
Funding New Communities get Funding Older
Communities get Left Behind
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Development of land for residential use rarely
pays its own way, and the suburban sprawl model
for growth is an expensive alternative to the
economic efficiency of planned development.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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High growth in auto trips Adding to the wear and
tear of our roads is the skyrocketing vehicle
miles (VMT) we travel. Fragmented suburban
development requires an automobile trip for every
errand.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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High growth in auto trips Studies have shown that
residents of sprawling communities drive three to
four times as much as those living in planned
mixed-use communities.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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The American Farmland Trust (AFT) developed a
method that communities across the nation have
used to assess the costs associated with
different forms of land use.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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The method involves calculating the total costs
of infrastructure and comparing these costs to
revenues received in the form of taxes.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Categories of infrastructure include general
government expenditures, public safety, fire
protection, sheriffs department, public works,
libraries, and community development.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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The results are consistent in every study
conducted to date. Residential land use costs
more in services than is generated in revenues.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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For example, in the Northeast, six AFT studies
conducted in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New
York showed that 1.15 was spent on community
services in residential areas, compared with
1.00 of tax revenues generated by that land, a
ratio of 1.151.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Meanwhile, commercial/industry areas was 0.361
and for farmland was 0.341 (.34 spent for 1.00
of tax revenue)
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Maintaining farmland also reduces spending on new
infrastructure. For every dollar we spend on
agricultural land preservation, we are going to
save 10 in highway and road construction costs
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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DRCOG staff modeled two different Metro area year
2035 land use scenarios that predicted Daily
Vehicle Hours of Delay (Congestion) for
both.    The first scenario used the same
urbanized area number (in square miles) that is
assumed in the Metro Vision 2030 plan, for the
year 2035.    The second scenario added 70
square miles to the metro region urbanized area
for the year 2035. 
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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The model indicates that year 2035 congestion
resulting from a 70 square mile urbanized area
expansion over the year 2030 urbanized area,
would require an additional 10 billion in
regional highway capacity improvements to lower
the congestion level equal to a 2035 model with
no urbanized area expansion.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Bottom line  143,000,000 in regional highway
capacity investment is required for every square
mile of urbanized area expansion to maintain the
same level of congestion as no urban expansion
(in the Denver Metro area in 2035).
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Smart Growth strategies that minimize urbanized
area growth by providing incentives for infill,
compact, mixed use, senior, pedestrian,
bicycle and transit friendly development could
save Colorado's taxpayers billions in highway
spending. 
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Traffic engineers traditionally describe any
increase in road or parking facility capacity as
an improvement, although from many perspectives
(pedestrians, residents, aesthetics,
environmental quality) it may represent
significant degradation.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Traffic modeling often ignores the tendency of
traffic congestion to maintain a self limiting
equilibrium.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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As roadways become more congested, motorists
adjust by shifting their travel times and
destinations, if capacity is expanded motorists
take more peak period trips.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Modeling that fails to take travel shifting into
account tends to overpredict future congestion,
and overestimates the benefits of roadway
capacity expansion (sound familiar?).
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Highway expansion advocates generally ignore or
severely understate generated traffic and induced
travel impacts .
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Highway expansion advocates tend to exaggerate
congestion costs and bias their analysis to favor
highway expansion over other types of
transportation improvements.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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They also ignore the incremental costs that
result from induced vehicle travel, such as
increased downstream traffic congestion, road and
parking costs, accidents and pollution emissions.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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They claim that roadway capacity expansion
reduces fuel consumption, pollution emissions and
accidents, because they measure impacts per
vehicle-mile and ignore the overall increased
vehicle miles .
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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To the degree that highway expansion induces
additional vehicle travel and stimulates sprawl
it tends to be economically harmful since this
increases public infrastructure and service
costs and shifts consumer expenditures to goods
that provide relatively small regional business
activity and employment.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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While automobile use often increases with
economic development, this occurs because wealth
allows more driving, not that increased driving
leads to wealth.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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With a mature highway system, it may be better to
increase transport diversity and encourage
efficiency rather than continuing to expand
capacity
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation is about places If you plan cities
for cars and traffic, you get cars and
traffic.If you plan for people and places, you
get people and places.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Traffic and road capacity are not the inevitable
result of growth. They are in fact the product of
very deliberate choices that we have made to
shape our communities around the private
automobile.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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We as a society have the ability to make
different choices--starting with the decision to
design our streets as comfortable places for
people.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Project for Public Spaces has a radical
idea--transportation can create great places, not
destroy them. We see the vast amount of urban
land dedicated to cars, traffic, and parking lots
as a huge opportunity to create public spaces
that serve community.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation can be the handmaiden of this
transformationby redeveloping facilities from
highways to boulevards, from parking lots to
mixed-use transit oriented development, and from
nowhere to someplace. But we must follow some
simple rules.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Rule One Stop Planning for Speed Speed kills
sense of place. Cities and town centers are
destinations, not raceways. Commerce needs
traffic--foot traffic. You can't buy a dress from
a car. Even foot traffic speeds up in the
presence of fast-moving cars. Access, not
automobiles, should be the priority in city
centers. Don't ban cars, but remove the
presumption in their favor. People first!
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Rule Two Start Planning for Public
Outcomes "Right-sizing" road projects in cities
and suburbs can help increase developable land,
create open space, and reconnect communities to
their neighbors, a waterfront, or park. They can
reduce household dependency on the automobile,
allowing children to walk to school, connecting
commercial districts to downtowns, and helping
build healthier lifestyles by increasing the
potential to walk or cycle.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Rule Two Start Planning for Public
Outcomes Think public benefit, not just private
convenience.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Rule Three Think of Transportation as Public
Space The road, the parking lot, the transit
terminal--these places can serve more than one
mode (cars) and one purpose (movement). Sidewalks
are the urban arterials of cities--make them
wide, well lit, stylish and accommodating with
benches, outdoor cafes and public art.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Rule Three Think of Transportation as Public
Space Roads can be shared spaces with pedestrian
refuges, bike lanes, on-street parking etc.
Parking lots can become public markets on
weekends. Roads are places too!
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation professionals have just as much
reason to object to decisions that create
automobile dependent land use patterns as they
would to the closure of a highway lane or a
reduction in transit service, since all result in
reduced access.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Transportation planners and engineers receive
professional rewards for implementing capacity
expansion projects, but are seldom rewarded for
finding ways to avoid the need for such projects.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Demand management tends to involve skills such as
education and marketing that are not
traditionally valued in transportation agencies.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Sustainable planning requires that transportation
professionals shift from being traffic engineers
concerned only with vehicle flow, into public
space architects concerned with balancing
diverse and often conflicting uses of road
environments.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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Sustainable transport planning avoids language
biased in favor of automobile travel.
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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OK, time for you to take the wheel to
Sustainability
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Highway Expansion  Auto-Oriented Land
Use Creating Tomorrows Transportation Problems
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And watch out for those Dinosaurs!
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Thank You!
For More Information Contact Harry
Dale 303-670-0085 hjd173_at_wispertel.net http//trai
nsnotlanes.info