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 eware. Haven't past promises given us the same "big
lie" that we can build our way out of traffic? Billions
of dollars of building later, traffic is only worse. Now the
pols and planners are coming to us with more of the same. You
give us more taxes and we'll build more roads to solve your problems.
Problem is, studies show exactly the opposite happens. The more
roads you build, the more people drive. We never catch up with
the growth. Are sixteen lanes enough? Are twenty? Where does
it end?
 It is beginning
to approach at least some limits. When the Taxpayers and the
Sierra Club align on something, maybe a sea change is at hand.
The San
Diego County Taxpayers Association has signaled that it's time
to rethink historical approaches to regional transportation and
land use planning. They have officially opposed the 2020 Regional
Transportation Plan and the requisite multibillion dollar tax
increase that it presumes. Executive Director Scott Barnett noted,
"My Board believes that better management of the transportation
infrastructure and its users is the key to best reduce the region's
traffic congestion -- not simply throwing more money at the problem.
Before a $12 billion tax increase is justified, the SANDAG Board
of Directors should step back and reconsider their approach to
planning, taxing and spending in this region." The Taxpayers
developed a set of principles that they are requesting SANDAG
and the region adopt. The principles promote efficiency, incentives,
and improved, comprehensible performance standards.
Other groups
opposing or finding serious fault with the RTP include the Sierra
Club, the San Diego League of Conservation Voters, Endangered
Habitats League, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, Buena
Vista Audubon, Preserve South Bay, and a newly formed coalition
group: the San Diego Coalition for Transportation Choices. SDCTC
was formed as a result of negotiations between the San Diego
Sierra Club and developers in the Future Urbanizing Area around
the planned State Route 56 (from I-5 to I-15, from Carmel Valley
to Rancho Bernardo). The basis for forming the organization was
the agreed-upon dearth of advocacy, reasoned education and informed
support for a mix of transportation alternatives throughout San
Diego. Their board of directors consists of environmentalists,
landowner/developers, community members and transportation planners
-- including myself in one of the environmentalist seats.
What a
large cross-section of San Diegans are coming to understand is
that we need a new way to approach transportation and land use
planning, funding and accountability. We must plan and build
an urban form designed around mobility that isn't so exclusively
car-based, and therefore traffic and congestion dominated.
The New
York Times reported in late January, "Not so many years
ago, it was common wisdom that the only way to relieve highway
congestion was to add new lanes. Now the common wisdom, supported
by several recent studies, is that expanding a road usually leads
to substantial increases in the number of vehicles on it. 'Adding
highway capacity to solve traffic congestion is like buying larger
pants to deal with your weight problem,' said Michael Replogle,
transportation director of the advocacy group Environmental Defense,
in Washington. So in New Jersey, the state transportation commissioner,
James Weinstein, could go before a business group last week and
utter words that would have been heresy in that car-besotted
state just a few years ago: 'We're past the period where adding
lanes is the solution to traffic congestion, make no mistake
about that.'" They also reported that the Maryland "state
highway administrator has adopted a slogan that would cheer anti-sprawl
activists: 'Thinking Beyond the Pavement.'"
Oddly enough,
organized business groups in San Diego still seem to believe
in the old paradigm. Politicians and the Chamber of Commerce
still tell us that commerce requires more roads. I would point
out that what commerce really requires is less congestion. But
angry drivers also demand more roads. Drivers pay taxes and vote
-- and so do the road builders and designers -- and you have
to give them what they want.
What if
giving the voters what they want ends up costing them more and
screwing everyone to some degree? This is the ultimate "commons
problem." A commons problem is where if everybody gets what
they want (the common wants), then the entire system as a whole
(the common good) breaks down, and everyone suffers. Overindulgence
of certain kinds of common wants causes the common good for all
to decline.
But governance
for the common good always runs into conflict with appeals to
let the "free market" handle it. If everyone wants
a suburban home, then we should let the market build them. Anything
else, according to this world view, is inappropriate social engineering.
Somewhere in between social paternalism and congestion chaos
lies a better path.
It would
be much better to use informed research to make smart choices
for incentives and taxing policies that favor the common good
and not just the popular -- even common-sensical ideas from the
past expressed in unserviceable market demand. It was once common
wisdom that the world was flat. It was easier in some ways for
Columbus to persuade the world otherwise than it may be to have
Californians and their politicians and planners learn how to
get out of traffic!
Building
new roads has not led to reducing traffic congestion. It ultimately
leads to more congestion, because it does not confront the need
to do the only thing that can sustainably work: demand-side changes
and market-based planning for the transit network to supplement
the car-oriented network.
The Board
of Directors of our Metropolitan Transit Development Board deserve
kudos for their strategic planning efforts in this direction.
They have committed significant resources to a market-research
based program of transit development that's aimed at getting
real answers to the questions of "what can transit really
do." They've commissioned extensive market research, hired
expert help, and have begun a regional discussion on how to make
transit more central and more effective.
Cities
that have built more roads do not have less congestion. They
just have more cars driving around creating more pollution and
more noise and more well traffic. Smart Growth means trip shifting
and the land use and transportation decisions that make it possible
for people to be mobile without cultural car overdependence.
Our aging demographics also call for it. As more and more seniors
become unable to drive, mobility alternatives will become even
more paramount.
As expanding
the belt is not the right answer to a fat belly, an agenda dominated
by building more roads is not the corrective response to growing
congestion. It is, however, the response that commits us to continuous
tax increases that do not address the real problems. As the utility
industry was compelled to pursue more demand-side management
changes -- and in the process saved taxpayers and the environment
billions of dollars and pounds of pollutants -- so must we determine
the best demand side approaches to transportation. They cannot
be the exclusive approaches in the short term, but the commitment
must be made to move into a different paradigm for dealing with
the transportation aspects of growth.
You can
still give your input to SANDAG on the 2020 Regional Transportation
Plan before their Board hearing to adopt the plan on February
25th. To encourage public comment on its plan, SANDAG has a toll-free
number: (888) 472-6324. The plan is on their website: www.sandag.cog.ca.us/
where comments can also be emailed. 
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