The problem with forecasts, be they economic, weather, or transportation, is that they generally assume the perpetuation of recent trends.  When something occurs that fundamentally changes the dynamics of the condition being forecast, our tools are ill-prepared to address them.

For transportation, we lack a full cycle from which to draw parallels. We are still in the first cycle of transportation post advent of the automobile.  Compare this to an economic cycle, where we can draw on prior experiences of market adjustments.  Even though Americans failed to respond appropriately to over-valued high-tech stocks early in this decade and poor market regulation and over-valued real estate more recently, there are economists with models built on data from prior economic cycles who predicted the outcomes of those market adjustments. 

In my view, we are at the critical turning point of a transportation market adjustment.  The pendulum swung away from streetcars and pedestrians toward automobiles in the 1920’s and 30’s (see Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic).  The pendulum reached the bottom of its swing (where it has the most momentum) in the 1960’s and 70’s, when Americans first raised the question, do we really want to build cities that are reliant on the automobile?  The pendulum began to slow but continued in the auto-dominant direction.  We are now at the point in time when the pendulum has stopped.  But what does the euphemistic reversal of the pendulum swing mean for transportation in American cities?

Which brings us back to poor transport forecasting.  We have no basis to say, ‘the last time we shifted away from transportation policy focused on a single mode – the automobile, the consequences were…’  There is no last time.   So what do we do?  Well, what we are doing is assuming that land use and transportation will continue for the next 20 years on roughly the same trend as they followed for the last 20 years.  Actually, this assessment is a bit harsh.  Many regions are assuming that demand for housing will shift away from the suburbs and back to the central city.  But with respect to the resulting transportation patterns, we are stuck in the mind set that autos will continue to be the dominant form of transportation.  And when I say dominant, I don’t mean 50 percent of all trips, but rather 90 percent of all trips. 

We are so resigned to this future that even progressive transportation planners have focused our research on the trip-making characteristics of “smart growth.”  We are essentially saying, we know autos will be the preferred mode choice for any trip that is too long to walk or bicycle, but let’s arrange land uses to maximize walking trips and reduce auto trip lengths.

We are ignoring the reasons why autos achieved dominance.  When the auto became dominant, it provided the most travel flexibility, least cost (once you had purchased a vehicle), and the best travel experience.  With respect to flexibility, it provided access to more destinations without the need to wait for public transit vehicles or to transfer from one transit vehicle to another.  With respect to cost, it was free to drive an auto and often to park, while use of transit had an associated fare.  With respect to experience, autos provided good travel speeds with each person having personal space, climate control, music choice, etc.

These benefits have eroded:

• Travel flexibility – Personal vehicles (autos) still provide access to more destinations, but with smart growth land use trends there will be less need to travel to remote housing developments and shopping centers, so the benefit of this flexibility will erode over time.
• Costs – Parking costs were the first cost incurred by autos, and the trend is for more areas to enact parking costs and use parking fees to manage parking and traffic congestion.  Toll roads were the next cost to autos.  More recently, these have expanded dramatically.  Discussions of usage taxes based on miles of travel or carbon footprint could dramatically reduce the one-time cost advantage of autos and it is already less cost-effective to drive to most major metropolitan downtowns than to use transit.
• Experience – While autos continue to become more comfortable on the interior, the experience of traveling by auto in nearly all metro areas has eroded.  We have even coined a new term to describe it – “road rage.”

In addition to the erosion of these benefits, we are increasingly aware of the consequences of a transportation system without a diversity of travel choices – a less active population with resulting obesity and diabetes trends; poor air quality that contributes to rising levels of asthma in our children; loss of valuable farm lands to urban sprawl; loss of community, or neighborhood-scale, facilities (schools, sports fields, shopping, churches) resulting in an erosion of the neighborhood as a cohesive unit.  And global warming.

And yet our forecasting tools are insensitive to these changes.  Not only do they fail to acknowledge the changing dynamics of transportation market conditions, they also ignore city planners’ ability to influence transportation through policy actions.  Many cities are enacting policies that limit parking provisions; prioritize the movement of transit vehicles above the movement of autos; accept higher levels of auto congestion or eliminate auto level of service ; and incentivize alternative transportation modes through transportation demand management (TDM) programs like subsidized transit fares.  Emerging policies are likely to charge autos for the full cost of maintenance and operation of roadways, as well as of treating health and environmental consequences of autos.

Unfortunately, there is not yet an accepted body of evidence that these policy actions will counteract auto domination.  Nor is there recognition that the layering on of good land use, with provision of alternatives to the auto, with policies to promote a balanced transportation system have a compounding effect.  So we are stuck in the cycle of talking about the benefits of a more balanced transportation system but forecasting transportation based on the trends of the last 20 years.  The result, unfortunately, is the conclusion that we need to build more auto capacity.  And so, in the first draft of the transportation projects to be included in the Obama administration’s economic stimulus package, the large majority of the projects are auto capacity focused.

In fact, the timing of this economic stimulus package could not be worse.  Conventional wisdom among state departments of transportation, the primary group responsible for assembling the list of projects to be included, is still that we need more auto capacity, but shortly after we deliver the capacity (if the package goes forward as proposed) we will realize that the roads were a very poor use of resources and a huge lost opportunity to bring about a more balanced transportation system.  Lest the author of this article be labeled a radical and the points made belittled, a more balanced transportation system is one that assumes that autos continue to be the dominant transportation mode, but that makes investments in other modes to begin the trend of restoring balance.  The economic stimulus package should make strategic investments in roads and highways, particularly where such projects employ a Complete Streets philosophy, but should emphasize investments in facilities for pedestrians, transit riders and bicyclists.