Courtesy of the Urban Land Institute

From Infrastructure 2007 – A Global Perspective
© 2007 by ULI–The Urban Land Institute and Ernst & Young

author/editor, Jonathan D. Miller

Efficiencies can be realized through better regional planning, which integrates infrastructure expenditures with land use and population trends. Federal and state grants to local governments can be structured to encourage integrated regional schemes. Intermodal approaches should be favored over one-off highway projects or transit stops where the only pedestrian walks lead to parking lots. Roads, rail, and mass transit systems should link to walkable neighborhoods and pedestrian-friendly commercial centers. In addition to underwriting costs over time, increased reliance on user fees would help orient behaviors and lifestyles to more efficient location preferences and reduced dependence on cars. If owners had to foot the full bill for far-flung infrastructure enabling their exurban homesteads, would sprawl development seem so attractive and affordable? “When people really understand how much something really costs, they tend to act accordingly.”

Americans only start to recognize a potential crisis and continue to put off the day of reckoning. Caused by two decades of under spending, “a yawning budget gap” swallows initiatives to fund deferred maintenance. Prevalent sprawl, poor planning, and car dependence pose even greater challenges to overcome for meeting future needs.

States and particularly local governments must become more self-sufficient for funding infrastructure improvements, spurring public/private partnerships and greater reliance on user fees.

Expect an epidemic of sticker shock as governors and local leaders come to terms with approaching budget shortfalls and receding federal support.

Tolls Will Become More Prevalent, Driving Costs Increase

- Most new U.S. highways will be constructed as toll roads—states will finance through bond issues and private concessions.

- Elected officials initially will resist morphing existing freeways into toll roads, fearing voter repercussions.

- But over the longer term, funding shortfalls will dictate greater reliance on tolls for existing roads and transponder technologies will facilitate toll collections.

- Emerging technologies—satellite and GPS—will facilitate charging drivers based on miles traveled on specific roads.

- Trucker lobbies will need to gear up to fight sharply higher rates for moving goods. Politicos eventually will realize that charging tractor-trailer fleets is more voter friendly than sticking constituents with repair bills from trucks’ outsized damage to roads. They’re just passing through town.

- States may consider tolled truck corridors to facilitate movement of goods and expanding freight rail corridors to take pressure off overtaxed roads.

- Other user fees—parking fares and metering—will become more common. Property owners eventually may get taxed for their parking spaces.

- Despite current resistance, fuel taxes will increase, too.

Bottom line: Drivers will pay more for the privilege.

Local Governments Begin to Face Hard Realities

- American government officials and taxpayers have blissfully avoided the consequences of laissez-faire suburban development generously enabled by a federally funded, post World War II interstate highway boom.

- In particular, high-population-growth metropolitan areas in the Sunbelt have evolved around multiple commercial nodes and low-density subdivision projects, served almost entirely by spider webs of roads.

- Major arterials will soon approach the end of typical 50-year life cycles, needing expensive overhauls. Sewer and water systems are overburdened, too.

- Congestion, meanwhile, will increasingly overwhelm existing road systems, designed for lower traffic volumes. Without mass transit alternatives and more high-density apartment development in commercial centers, these areas may be unable to sustain projected growth and economic development. Additional lanes and congestion pricing strategies will be part of the mix. “All the transit in the world won’t solve the entire problem.”

- But creating efficient hub-and-spoke transit systems may be next to impossible in the absence of pedestrian friendly commercial hubs. Identifying potential rights-of way through suburban backyards will prove extraordinarily contentious.

- Taxes (sales, property, special district) and user fees (tolls, fuel taxes, parking) will increase dramatically, raising the cost of living in places where people and businesses had moved for suburban quiet and convenience on modest budgets.

- At the suburban fringes, escalating impact fees to fund new streets and sewer lines will discourage Greenfield developers and significantly raise new housing costs. 

Environmental Issues Could Foster Acceptance of Change

- Global warming concerns may turn into a passing fancy, but they could also help spur greater acceptance of smart growth principles, which are generally more environmentally friendly.

Reducing car pollution and co2 emissions comports with raising driving fees and encouraging lifestyle changes, including living in pedestrian-friendly places with nearby mass transit.

- User fees can exact “pollution” premiums for larger cars and trucks with poor gas mileage.

- Water quality and availability will become more pressing concerns in many places, and could exact development restrictions. The arid western part of the United States confronts growing demand from expanding populations. Agribusiness interests, meanwhile, compete for supply. Runoff from development and population encroachment in watershed areas threatens water purity in many built-out regions, including the Northeast and Southeast. Rising sea levels could damage aquifers and infiltrate other fresh water sources in vulnerable coastal zones, particularly Florida.

Coping with demand and protecting quality will turn into infrastructure priorities. Wind farms and hydropower technologies could present opportunities for private initiatives to source electric power alternatives.

Planning

Governments need to provide a broad vision for land use and future infrastructure needs, involving roads, mass transit, airports, and freight corridors as well as water/sewer and power requirements. Integrated, multimodal solutions require centralized, regional oversight. Parochial local planning and zoning regulation must defer.

To sustain regions, planners must anticipate needs over the next half-century, not look for short-term fixes.

Transportation planners need to focus on the whole journey, not particular stages of trips. Sidewalks and roads from neighborhoods need to link effectively to mass transit and railways that lead to ports, airports, and commercial districts. A “holistic” approach requires understanding how to move people and freight most efficiently across regions using multiple options in order to relieve congestion.

One-off road building or a new rail link offers a temporary bandage that may shift traffic, not provide comprehensive solutions.

States should use the carrot of grant money to encourage more uniform, compact transit-oriented development by local governments and discourage more costly infrastructure sprawl models.

Zoning behaviors can be changed by linking transportation and housing grants—for sewer, water, roads, transit—to more high-density development along transit corridors. Sprawl-supporting infrastructure should not be subsidized.

In new transit corridors, station districts must be zoned to encourage apartment-, retail-, and pedestrian-friendly multiuse development, enabling people to walk home or to stores from trains without having to drive. Stations shouldn’t be designed as islands surrounded by parking lots and parking decks, the conventional approach that nurtures dependence on cars.

Funding needs to concentrate on high-speed, intercity rail corridors, supporting regional growth and providing alternatives to car and short-hop air travel.  Much of the 21,000-mile (33,796-km) national Amtrak network inefficiently serves low-population areas over long distances. Cross-country railways should focus on increasing freight shipping to regional distribution centers.

Increased user fees on drivers—tolls, higher fuel taxes, parking fees, congestion pricing—could have huge economic benefits. Fee revenues would provide reserves for infrastructure repair and improvements, while drivers would be charged more directly for the true cost of their road use. Auto insurance rates should correspond to miles traveled in addition to driver history and age. By aligning pricing with use, market incentives will help adjust behaviors to find the most efficient and cost-effective travel as well as inform decisions on where to live and work.

Cost burdens for new local infrastructure—streets and water mains—should continue to shift to developers and owners through impact fees and special tax districts.

Changing Behaviors

User fees have similar applicability to electric and other utility rates. Fixed infrastructure costs for bringing power into homes are higher per capita in sprawling, single-family areas than in compact urban centers. But flat rates that are charged users can distort true costs, subsidizing transmission lines and other infrastructure in suburban areas. Smart metering technology can help electric users understand costs and how to reduce them.

Impose axle taxes on trucks. Passenger cars actually subsidize trucks on intercity travel since trucks cause disproportionably more damage to roads than lighter vehicles. Many highways and most local streets have not been engineered to withstand wear and tear from heavier, wider, and longer rigs. Weight/distance fees will help pay the bills and assess costs more fairly. Improved rail corridors could provide competitive, lower-cost freight-hauling alternatives—more energy efficient and less polluting, too. The European Union takes regulatory steps to encourage rail freight through member countries.

Travel convenience can be enhanced without pouring so much concrete. New technologies can provide information to reduce lost time and travel tedium at transfer and interchange points. Among the solutions are the following: improved directional signage, real-time information on train arrivals at station platforms, up-to-the minute information on clogged roads, better lighting and security in stations to encourage off-peak travel, improved airport check-in, security clearance, and baggage claim.

Controlling traffic flows—through improved information and congestion pricing—can speed up road travel without adding lanes. Pricing mechanisms should be convenient for drivers and accurately reflect trip costs. Tolls should reflect peak and off-peak congestion levels in variable pricing schemes and apply to all major thoroughfares. Rates should be as predictable and easy to understand as possible. Avoid frequency discounts—they encourage driving. Provide more choices—transit improvements and bike lanes.

China

China’s history of authoritarian rule orients the country to acceptance of central government mandates and policy control. “The dictatorship lays down policy and that is the way.” Regional planning links into national policy, and land use is integrated around moving people and goods efficiently. 

“In the U.S., we talk for years about developing bullet train corridors and it never happens. In China, they just do it.” After initial missteps in the early 1990s, Chinese planners have rejected models based on American suburban development—office parks and parking decks separated by roads from cul-de-sac subdivisions.

“At first, they copied what they saw in the United States and parts of western

Europe—no bike paths and six-lane roads with turning lanes,” says an interviewee. “But rising oil costs, dependence on Middle Eastern energy sources, and pollution issues had to be addressed.” They realized quickly that “the Irvine, California, concept” would be counterproductive to greater energy independence.

While extensive road construction accommodates ramped-up use of cars, land use policy now emphasizes providing mass transit and rail service, connecting to pedestrian-friendly districts. Beijing plans ten new subway lines and Shanghai quadruples the size of its underground. New cities adopt traditional neighborhood design (TND) principles of concentrating high-density residential projects around mass transit stations and retail. “They want to keep typical walking distance within one-fourth of a mile of stations.”

Bike lanes are incorporated everywhere. High-speed trains have also been integrated into China’s infrastructure strategy. The country launched the world’s first magnetic levitation train in regular service between downtown Pudong and the city’s international airport, an eight-minute trip with speeds reaching upwards of

270 miles per hour (434 km per hour). Conventional high speed rail lines are under construction between Beijing and Shanghai, and Beijing and Tianjin, among other cities.

Asia

The Japanese introduced a network of bullet trains in 1964 that travel at speeds of close to 200 miles (321 km) an hour between Tokyo and other major cities. In fast-developing China, rail use is increasing at a 30 percent annual clip—an estimated

156 million people boarded trains during this year’s 40-day lunar New Year holiday. Making a major investment in railways, the Chinese government just completed a $4.2 billion rail line between Beijing and Lhasa in Tibet, which powers through mountain passes and the Gobi Desert over tracks designed to remain stable in permafrost.

Taiwan just completed a $15 billion high speed line between Taipei and the southern port of Kaohsiung, reducing travel time from four hours to 90 minutes. South Korea also builds bullet train corridors between Seoul and other major cities.

Europe

Advanced hub-and-spoke rail systems carry passengers in and out of primary European cities where proximity makes for efficient travel. Futuristic TGV electric trains power riders at average speeds of 186 miles (299 km) per hour through France. High-speed center city to center city rail transport between Paris and Lyon has cut into service by airline competition significantly. By year-end 2007, high-speed Chunnel trains are scheduled to begin operations between London and both Paris and Brussels.

The Paris trip will take two hours and 15 minutes, and the Brussels route will take under two hours. Expectations are that the new train service will substantially reduce air travel between these European capitals. Germany, Italy, and Spain also spend heavily on high-speed rail.

United States

Low Rail Use

In the United States, rail travel takes a back seat to cars and planes. Amtrak’s intercity rail system carried only 25 million passengers during all of 2006, compared to airlines, which served 712 million. Americans, meanwhile, own more than 200 million automobiles. Less than 5 percent of Americans commute to work by forms of mass transit, including trains. Most of those trips concentrate in the handful of 24-hour cities, particularly New York and Chicago. For most people in fast-growing Sunbelt metropolitan areas developed around interstates, cars are the only way to get to their jobs.

Critics point out that Amtrak continues to operate in the red, incurring a $1 billion deficit in 2006, despite infusions and capital support from the federal government (recently about $1 billion annually). Every year, Congress seems to battle over proposals to privatize or scuttle the system. Many representatives in far-flung districts inevitably vote to support service, but with major strings attached: unprofitable routes need to remain available to their constituents.  As a result, the Amtrak network extends over 21,000 track miles/33,796 track km (half the size

of the interstate system) to 500 communities in 46 states including a slew of small cities like Moscow, Idaho; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Burlington, Iowa; and Jackson, Mississippi.

Trailing Behind

While Amtrak extends low-volume passenger service over nationwide routes, the United States has fallen well behind other parts of the world in taking advantage of the potential for bullet train lines linking cities in densely populated regions, covering distances from 50 up to 250 miles (80 up to 402 km). High-speed rail

service could prove more efficient and convenient than either air or car travel, and help relieve growing road and airport congestion in corridors like Boston/New York/Washington, D.C., in the Northeast; San Diego/Los Angeles/San Francisco on the West Coast; Miami/Orlando/Tampa in Florida; Houston/Austin/Dallas in Texas; and Chicago/St. Louis/Kansas City in the Midwest.

The lone U.S. version of an aerodynamic TGV-style bullet train, the Acela Express, theoretically can travel up to 150 miles (241 km) per hour on its Northeast route from Washington, D.C., through Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York and up to Boston. But curving rail beds, conflicts with freight traffic schedules on shared tracks, and various municipal restrictions put the brakes on bullet train like schedules. Without dedicated, state-of-the-art tracks and freedom from local speed encumbrances, a reasonable three-hour timetable for end-to-end Acela service appears unattainable. Currently, the 210-mile (338-km) trip between New York and Washington actually takes 2.5 hours if everything clicks, while travel time on the comparable New York to Boston leg extends to more than three hours.

Airports and Cars

So if they don’t drive, most intercity travelers in the Northeast continue to take the airline shuttles, which can get them door to door in two to 2.5 hours if everything works, but also means taking cabs on often jammed roadways, bridges, and tunnels to get to and from airports. A single shuttle arrival into LaGuardia Airport can result in 100 to 200 extra car trips flooding onto the Grand Central Parkway, while another 150 cabs and cars may be heading to the terminal for the next outbound flight. Four shuttle flights leave LaGuardia for Boston and Washington each hour while four other planes land. So conservatively, the shuttles can result in approximately 15,000 car trips each day onto New York’s swollen highway system.

Trains drop off passengers in central downtown locations, which can facilitate use of mass transit connections or pedestrian routes that don’t further tax already crammed streets and highways. Cab rides would presumably cover shorter intracity distances. Bullet trains also use less energy per passenger mile than either cars or planes. Faster train service could buttress intercity regional economies, energizing Baltimore, Philadelphia, New Haven, and Providence as more convenient support centers for the 24-hour economic giants: Washington, New York and Boston. 

Intercity Connections

With the exception of San Francisco, cities in California, Florida, and Texas do not yet have the mass transit networks found in Northeast centers. But bullet train systems could help encourage the evolution of more multifaceted 24-hour downtowns with light-rail links to surrounding districts. Service could slow escalating congestion on major interstates and relieve dependence on cars, at least on the margins.

To make bullet trains work, government regulators need to fashion dedicated rights-of-way without local speed restrictions. Resources must be focused on high-volume corridors where train service can make a difference in relieving congestion and providing convenient and efficient transportation alternatives. But expanding corridors through heavily populated areas presents discomfiting environmental and NIMBY challenges, not to mention extraordinary costs. Experts budget a Sacramento/San Francisco to San Diego rail link at $60 billion. Refashioning Amtrak, dropping service to low-population areas, and/or bringing in private operators won’t make a dent in that bill. Proven rail systems and technologies exist, but the United States has not found the will or a way to take advantage of them.

Europe

Europe benefits from a tradition of core-centric cities, towns, and villages and greater reliance on rail and mass transit alternatives to the car. Biking, motor biking, and walking are more accepted there than they are in the United States for running errands and traveling short distances.

Countries sympathize with global warming concerns, boosting the cause of rail freight over trucks and embracing carbon caps. While driving remains overwhelmingly preferred and desirable for flexibility and mobility, limits placed on car culture are more common and accepted. Still, growing suburban areas around major cities have not been immune to increasing congestion and other side effects of traditional sprawl.

In Europe, car ownership costs more, helping to moderate auto-buying appetites. Some countries like the U.K even tax car ownership and fuel taxes are significantly higher than in the United States. The number of toll roads increases across many countries—“there’s a strong movement in Europe of not leaving drivers the free option.” At the extreme, Italy’s motorway system is composed of mostly private toll roads. New motorway construction in the U.K., France, Portugal, and Spain, among other countries, will be funded mostly through privately operated toll road concessions.

Even Germany, home of the high-speed Autobahn, jumps on the bandwagon. As a result of higher driving-related expenses, car ownership per-capita ratios are lower and rails are somewhat more favored (as well as heavily subsidized). France, for example, spends 20 times more per capita on railways than the United States does.

Nevertheless, rail use has declined steadily among passengers and freight haulers in European Union countries since 1970. Railways carry only about a 6 percent market share of passenger traffic, down from 10 percent in 1970; freight transport captures a 13 percent market share, down from 30 percent. But overall, Euro zone

Countries want to reverse these trends. They increase budgets to expand railways and political momentum builds for revitalizing rail use. In 2007, the European Union has moved to deregulate rail freight and open markets to cross-border competition with uniform practices. Privatization advocates suggest that breaking national railway monopolies in countries like France and Italy will stimulate innovation and enable “interoperability” across rail systems throughout the continent, facilitating transport and reducing costs. They push for deregulation of passenger trains, too.

In most EU countries, infrastructure decision-making and land planning tend to be centralized and top down, resulting in more integrated national transport systems and better-contained suburban growth. “We consciously try to avoid investments that lead to sprawl, and concentrate on infill like success stories in the Docklands [London] and Manchester,” says an interviewee. “Reinvesting in public transport for central cities is a common strategy. Paris and other French cities as well as Dublin invest in tramways.”

Light rail has been embraced in many countries. Germany has the most systems—every large to mid-sized city uses light rail. Eleven cities in France, including Paris, now have light rail, and six Italian cities have constructed or are planning light-rail systems. Dublin,