Cascadia Prospectus

The U.S. transportation sector contributes more than any other to manmade greenhouse gas emissions which threaten the planet's environment, while our nation's dependence on foreign oil means - as former CIA Director James Woolsey so astutely puts it - that we are funding both sides of the war on terrorism. Some say the answer is to "get people out of their cars," and certainly, the more who can be enticed to use public transit or telecommute, the better. I'm a regular Seattle bus rider, and telecommuter, myself. But cars are an uttter necessity for the majority of daily commuters, and indispensable for much discretionary personal transportation. That's just not going to change.

So, we can rail against cars and trucks. Or we can try to make more vehicles run on cleaner fuels, as we also muster political will to enact key road and transit improvements and institute a robust regional congestion pricing strategy.

As anyone not currently ensconced in a cave in Tora Bora knows, there's been growing scientific and investment capital devoted to developing cleaner vehicle fuels and energy sources. And one of those cleaner fuels, depending of course on how it is produced, is electricity.

There are hurdles still to clear on crucial lithium ion battery development for electric cars and - unavoidably - some uncertainty about ultimate levels of market penetration, but as we'll see below, the auto industry is increasingly committed to developing plug-in electric hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) in a big way. These will improve upon the popular Toyota Prius hybrid. They will plug in overnight at home and elsewhere during down times. They will run on electricity for as long as 40 miles between charges from more powerful lithium ion power packs, versus the Prius' nickel metal hydride batteries, which allow electric powered travel just at lower speeds and via brake pedal-activated regeneration. Some of the new models will be plug-in hybrids which can seamlessly switch to biofuels if and when the charge runs down, others will be extended range all electric plug-ins.

Cascadia Center's joint conference with Microsoft last year at the software firm's Redmond main campus brought some of the nation's top PHEV experts and advocates together - you'll find speaker presentations here, and links to conference press coverage here.

Since then, Cascadia Senior Fellow Steve Marshall has continued his peripatetic evangelism to keep building support for a Northwest PHEV pilot project. And with Cascadia Center director Bruce Agnew, Marshall has authored several op-eds on the topic - here, in the Puget Sound Business Journal; in NW Current; in the Sunday Seattle Times; and in the Seattle Times again. Our belief at Cascadia is that with the region's supply of clean, hydro-powered electricity and a growing commitment to alternative energy and fuels, the Northwest is ideal for ramping up electrified transportation. That's something the rest of the nation and world need to do too, in meeting the larger challenge to "green" surface transportation.

One Northwest pilot project approach now being considered is to find a way to look more closely at how PHEVs perform for everyday Northwest commuters in the private sector. Marshall has already helped link key players in a PHEV pilot project involving government agencies in the Seattle region.

Cascadia Center is also beginning to gear up for its 2008 annual Microsoft conferrence on transportation and technology, where the latest developments on PHEVs and all-electric vehicles will be among the featured topics. (It will be held in the May-June time frame; stay tuned to our Web site for more details).

There'll be a lot to explore because the momentum for longer-range, plug-in electric vehicles is building. At the Detroit auto show last month, General Motors Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner said oil supply cannot keep pace with demand and the answer, mid- and long-term, is electric cars. GM's Vice-President of Global Program Management Jonathan Lauckner tells Wired the company plans to sell its plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, now in development, globally and by the "tens of thousands," with models beginning to come off the assembly line in late 2010 and initial price around $40,000.

The Boston Globe's veteran auto writer Bill Griffith notes that the Volt will seat four or five passengers, will go 40 miles without a charge, and 600 miles without stopping when the onboard gas engine kicks in, as a generator only. Attending an unveiling of a Volt prototype outside Boston's Faneuil Hall at Quincy Market last week, he wrote:

The step Chevy is taking with its Volt is that the drive wheels are powered only by an electric motor, as opposed to other hybrid systems in which a combination of internal combustion engines and electric motors do the job. Even for someone who never took high school chemistry, the first question about the Volt came easily: Is it cleaner and more efficient to "plug in" this vehicle than to power it by burning gasoline? "In areas where electricity is produced by fossil-fuel plants, you can reduce overall emissions by up to 40 percent at fossil-fired plants that employ 'scrubbing' of combustion gases," said Keith Cole, director of legislative and regulatory affairs for General Motors. "But in areas where there is hydropower, nuclear power, or wind power, there's a huge advantage."

....Among the battery suppliers General Motors has been dealing with over the past five years of the Volt's development is A123 Systems of Watertown, a company with its roots in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's research labs. As the car was being put on a carrier later that fall evening, Ric Fulop, A123 Systems' founder and vice president of marketing and business development, tried to explain the state of battery art to me by using a restaurant napkin. He started with the lithium-ion batteries that we still use in laptops and digital cameras. Fulop scribbled lines of formulas - hieroglyphics to me - each one a step toward finding the right combination of power, battery life, and safety....Rick Arnold, a museum educator and faculty member at the Tsongas Industrial History Center at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, followed Fulop's battery explanation step-by-step, asking questions along the way. His summation of the evening: "This is the biggest step forward in automotive engineering in the past 100 years."

Toyota cedes no ambition to GM on developing next-generation electric vehicles. Forbes reports the Japanese automaker has commited to unveiling two new plug-in hybrid prototypes at the '09 show in Detroit as part of its strategy to lease PHEVs to government and corporate fleet customers by 2010 and sell a million hybrids a year in the next decade. Toyota is teaming with Japan's largest consumer electronics manufacturer, Matsushita, in a joint venture to evaluate the feasibility of mass-produced lithium ion batteries for PHEVs, and is also working on developing ethanol from wood waste rather than agricultural crops. As The Oregonian's PDX Green blog reports, another "cellulosic ethanol" effort has launched, in Oregon. It's one of many in North America. Once further developed and distributed, such relatively clean and green "flexible fuels, or "flex fuels" would be a desirable complement to electrified vehicles, because many hybrid models will be able to run on these liquid alternative fuels, and electricity, extending average gas mileage range up to and even beyond 100 miles per gallon.

The implications, environmentally and geopolitically, are huge - and all upside.

Another oft-mentioned alternative fuel is hydrogen. Notably, though, the Toronto Star's Tyler Hamilton reports that two University of Waterloo students in Ontario who won the GM-U.S. Department Of Energy three-year "Challenge X" energy-efficient vehicle design competition have shifted their focus from hydrogen fuel cells to PHEVs.

"Ethanol, hydrogen, they're nice approaches, but we see the biggest impact coming from electrification," says (Matthew) Stevens, who's just finishing off the last year of a PhD in chemical engineering. "Electrification is by far the best bang for your buck. We're most excited about plug-in hybrids."

Stevens and partner Chris Mendes have formed a UW spin-off called CrossChasm Technologies, to develop software that manages power-sharing between the electricial grid and PHEVs. Shades of a Puget Sound firm named V2Green, profiled here in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Venture Blog by technology reporter John Cook. V2Green CEO David Kaplan spoke at the Cascadia-Microsoft conference last year. At Cleantech Blog, John Addison has more on future interplay between PHEVs and electric utilities, including an ambitious pilot project envisioned by XCel Energy's Smart Grid Consortium. More on that from the Denver Business Journal. Regarding V2G and the backdrop to the company's emergent smart grid technology, The Star's Hamilton notes:

The long-term idea is that plug-in vehicles, as they begin to take market share, could end up becoming back-up power systems for homes and the grid -- an approach that would also require complex management.

Another Puget Sound company elbow-deep in PHEV technology is AFS Trinity Power Corp in Bellevue. As the Chicago Tribune reported last week, AFS is marketing an $8,700 "Extreme Hybrid" conversion kit, which is now being showcased on a customized, lithium ion battery-powered Saturn Vue PHEV prototype. With the kit, the Vue, which would otherwise have a normal cruising range of 10 all-electric miles before needing to recharge, can go 40 miles without a charge. Ultracapacitors and proprietary electronics boost battery power and control overheating, which is still a major concern with lithium ion batteries.

Finally for now, one more sign of the times. The Detroit Free Press reports this week that the University of Michigan has begun a new one-year graduate program which aims to train engineering students for work on clean vehicle energy systems including lithium ion battery power packs, and to prepare them for advancing the two-way connections between plug-in electric vehicles and the electrical power grid.

The race to develop clean vehicles and bring them to the masses is only in its infancy, but is of vital importance to the global environment and U.S. national security. The corporations and entrepreneurs who succeed will stand apart not only because of their smarts, but also their ambition and audacity. As famed Chicago urban designer Daniel Burnham said, way back when: "Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood."

With that at top of mind, we'll continue to keep you posted on developments in clean vehicle technology, including attendance and program information on what's sure to be an outstanding 2008 Cascadia-Microsoft conference, later this year.

TECHNORATI TAGS: PLUG-IN HYBRID ELECTRIC VEHICLES, ELECTRIC VEHICLES, LITHIUM ION BATTERIES, PHEVS, BIOFUELS, FLEX FUELS, SMART GRID, CHEVY VOLT, TOYOTA, DETROIT AUTO SHOW, AFS TRINITY POWER CORP, V2GREEN, CASCADIA CENTER, MICROSOFT, UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

From Wuhan to Barcelona to Pittsburgh, More Deep-Bored Tunnels Are On The Way

New Zealand's finance minister Michael Cullen says a government-appointed steering group will investigate the feasibility of a public-private partnership to build a deep-bored tunnel for completion of an urgently-needed western ring road segment in metro Auckland. It would be part of a larger, 48-kilometer ring road network connecting major population and employment centers in the region, and could influence whether PPPs are used on other major road projects in New Zealand also facing funding gaps. The five kilometer long tunnel would cost an estimated NZ $2 billion ($1.6 billion U.S.), with private developers compensated for their up-front investment either through tolls or a government lease-back provision, over 35 years. More:

The Government wants the motorway tunnel, which it has called the Waterview Connection, to be completed by 2015...Cullen said the deep tunnel option was much less disruptive and not more much expensive than a tunnel built by cutting into the earth and then covering it back up again. "Once you take into account the cost of acquiring property. . . It is probably no cheaper and possibly more expensive than the deep tunnel option," Cullen said....Cullen said one of the advantages of a public-private partnership was that much of the money to build the tunnel would come from the private sector. "It reduces the pressure on other roading projects not just in Auckland but around the country."

Residents whose homes would be taken if an above-ground ground segment of the ring road were built are pleased with the tunnel option.

The Money Crunch

Many states, provinces, regional and local governments now find that funds required for top-tier road and transit projects significantly exceed funds available from current - and even recently-increased - transportation taxes. Washington state is a case in point, as two gas tax hikes (in 2003 and 2005) have helped but hardly kept pace with major project funding needs. That's why our state's Democratic governor is talking very straightforwardly about tolling major highway bridges in Puget Sound and in the I-5 Washington-Oregon border corridor to help pay for replacements addressing glaring safety or congestion problems.

Public-private transportation partnerships allow better financial risk sharing, and quicker timelines to beat ever rising prices tied to robust global competition for construction labor and materials. The payback to private investors occurs over time, sometimes via a government lease-back of the newly built facility; or via tolls, the amount of which can be pegged to traffic levels at time of use, and controlled by government rather than the private partners. Without accelerated completion under a PPP, planned projects can drag on for years as politically-driven funding gaps remain, and the costs of materials and labor climb ever higher.

Deep-Bored Tunnels - A Global Phenomenon

The Auckland deep tunnel PPP proposal hasn't been greenlighted yet and could still be torpedoed. But the high-level attention from the feds is another indication - atop an impressive roster of completed deep-bored road and train tunnel projects in Europe and elsewhere - that today, such new tunnels are growing in popularity.

Deep-Bored Tunnels In Seattle

There are literally dozens of other major highway and train deep-bored tunnels completed around the world in recent years. One is in Seattle, through Beacon Hill for Sound Transit's light rail line. Another such tunnel would be part of the planned extension of the line north from downtown to the University District. A major new deep-bored tunnel roadway is also possible in Seattle, as a replacement for the dangerously earthquake-prone Alaskan Way Viaduct on State Route 99 through Seattle's downtown waterfront.

The Viaduct replacement tunnel now being discussed - including at a December symposium sponsored by Cascadia Center - is an inland, deep-bored option that would be financed with private sector partners and perhaps tolls. Speaker PowerPoints at the bottom of our Web page on the event variously highlight: Seattle's many tunnels; the impressive long term cost-benefit ratio for tunneled versus above-ground highways; huge advances in deep-bore tunnel technology; and successful deep-bore tunnel projects in Europe including Paris, Madrid and southern England.

Cascadia Senior Fellow Glenn Pascall summarized the symposium and arguments for a deep-bored tunnel in this Puget Sound Business Journal op-ed.

A state transportation department-led stakeholder group is to make a final recommendation by year's end from among three current options - the committee holds a public forum in West Seattle Tuesday, February 12th. The final choice menu is: an elevated replacement; a so-called "surface-transit" option which would tear down the viaduct and funnel traffic onto surface streets while providing more and better transit service for Viaduct users; and an inland, deep-bored tunnel.

Seattle Channel News Talk Show Examines Tunnel Option For Viaduct

On Seattle Channel's "City Inside/Out" recently, former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice told host C.R. Douglas, "I'm a tunnel guy. I think that's the wiser choice to make." Another guest, former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer, argued for the surface-transit option, saying that with traffic moving at a steady 35 miles per hour and well-calibrated traffic and pedestrian signals, it could be quite viable. Of the elevated replacement option, Royer said, it would be "big, disruptive, ugly and expensive." (Watch the video here. You'll need RealPlayer - download a free "basic" RealPlayer here).

A week later on City Inside/Out, Seattle City Council Member Jan Drago made several points in support of a deep-bored tunnel replacement for the Viaduct, in an interview by Douglas. Drago stressed that huge international construction firms are building deep-bored tunnels all over the world; that the technology has improved greatly; costs are a relatively modest $100 to $300 million per mile; and that a deep-bored inland tunnel to replace the Viaduct in Seattle would be a quite different, less risky approach than the covered trench on the waterfront proposed by the city and rejected in a public advisory vote last year (along with an elevated replacement option).

The Washington State Department of Transportation's point man on the Viaduct replacement, Ron Paananen, told Douglas in the above-linked episode that the long period of disruption stemming from other alternatives is an important consideration, and that a bored tunnel is "definitely feasible."He reiterated that no preferred option has been chosen yet.

In his PSBJ op-ed, Cascadia's Pascall argued that the surface-transit option and the inland deep-bored tunnel are complementary approaches - it's not an either-or paradigm.

...two alternatives have moved steadily along -- the surface street option and a deep-bore bypass tunnel....the two approaches appear compatible since they would minimize disruption to the waterfront and downtown while connecting these two iconic parts of Seattle. The bypass tunnel assists the surface street option by providing a capacity solution for the 60,000 vehicles that use the Viaduct each day as a through route, taking this load off the design of a surface street plan. Some strategists are already talking about a tunnel finance plan that includes funds which could be applied to surface street and transit amenities.

The choice of a Viaduct replacement option is at least 10 months off, if not a bit longer. As the process brews, it's worth noting that a public-private partnership to limit taxpayer exposure for a deep-bored tunnel is hardly a far-fetched notion. A state statute, RCW 47.29.140, spells out the requirements for public-private partnerships, including articulation of how partners will share risk management and project costs, who is responsible for cost overruns, what are the penalties for non-performance by contractors, and what accounting and auditing standards will be used. Under RCW 82.44.195, private entities may deposit funds in the state's transportation infrastructure account to help fund surface transportation projects considered critical to mobility. For every such private investment in a highway project, there must be a long-term payback, such as tolls - which state or regional entities would control. Under RCW 35.85.050, financing could also come from property owners within a designated tunnel improvement district.

As that statute articulates, those who benefit from a tunnel can be assessed a special tax to help pay for it. And the environmental, recreational and economic benefits of opening up the downtown waterfront - while simultaneously establishing a swift, underground downtown bypass on SR 99 - would be considerable.

According to the Association of American Railroads, freight railroads carry more than 40 percent of the nation's freight measured in ton miles, and had aggregate revenues of $54 billion in 2006. The Association's January 2008 report "Overview Of U.S. Freight Railroads" notes that "a typical train takes the freight equivalent of several hundred trucks of our highways." And freight railroads are experiencing unprecedented expansion. "For the first time in nearly a century railroads are making large investments in their networks," wrote Daniel Machalaba in the Wall Street Journal ("New Era Dawns For Rail Building," February 13, 2008). He reports that since 2000, freight railroads have spent $10 billion to expand track, build freight yards and buy rolling stock and they have $12 billion more in upgrades planned.

"Their campaign is altering the corridors of American commerce, more so than any other development since interstate highways spread to the interior....It's been a century since railroads embarked on a similar spate of capital investment."

Booming International Trade Fuels Freight Rail Growth

The catalyst for this burst of investment has been the rapid growth of international trade and its rising demands to move containers of finished goods from ports to major cities. Demand for rail service increased sharply when Asian imports intensified starting in 2003. While long-haul trucking continues to be the backbone of the nation's land-based freight system, railroads are stepping in to supplement the goods carrying capacity in many corridors.

Burlington Northern was the first to begin expanding the physical capacity of its rail network by adding a second set of tracks to portions of its Chicago-Los Angeles Transcon line, now nearing completion. Union Pacific followed with an upgrade of its Sunset Corridor from Los Angeles to El Paso, Texas. Norfolk Southern is improving access to the ports of New Orleans and Norfolk by expanding the capacity of its Crescent (New York- New Orleans) and Heartland (Chicago-Norfolk) rail corridors. CSX is doing the same in its Chicago-to-Florida Southeast Corridor.

The Long Beach Press-Telegram reports that recognition of continued growth in Asian imports to North America, plus congestion at Southern California's busy ports, helped prompt the Mexican government's commitment of $1 billion to a hoped-for mega-port at Colonet, Baja California. It would include new inland rail connections to speed goods to north of the border, and requires $4 billion more, in private capital.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce tells the newspaper that the proposed Baja port should compel further and timely investment in on-dock and near-dock rail at SoCal ports. She adds:

Rail is not impacted by road congestion so it helps avoid bottlenecks, which provides an even greater benefit to the region.

Financial Self-Sufficiency

What is remarkable about the massive expansion and modernization of freight rail infrastructure in the United States is that it has been accomplished without the help of any public funds. From 1980, when the Staggers Rail Act partially deregulated railroads, through 2006, railroads have invested some $400 billion of private capital in their systems according to the AAR report issued last month. From 1980 through 2006, freight railroads invested a robust 40 cents of every revenue dollar in infrastructure and equipment, says AAR. They are able to do so because dramatic increases in freight volume due to  booming international trade have led to record earnings. Forecasts are for continued profitability, with freight railroads prepared to continue funding internally the vast majority of their planned infrastructure investment.

A Model for Highways?

Could highways become more like freight railroads? Could future highway infrastructure be financed with user fees and private capital, just like rail infrastructure? Or is the notion that highways are a public good to be supported primarily by taxpayers too deeply ingrained to allow for such a radical change in approach?

The debate on this score has just begun and its eventual outcome is uncertain. Ultimately, the answer may hinge less on how Congress decides to fund the federal contribution to the surface transportation program than on how governors, state legislatures and local governments across the nation decide to approach the long term challenge of financing new road infrastructure.

The signals from many state capitals suggest that user fees in the form of tolls are  increasingly being considered as the principal means of financing future highways and bridges. Governors and legislative committees in as many as 14 states are contemplating adding tolls to their arsenal of revenue measures. 

This does not mean that the need for fuel taxes will disappear. The gas tax will continue to be needed to fund  the ever-growing costs of preserving and modernizing the nation's aging road facilities.  However, finding the resources to pay for new capacity will require a more entrepreneurial approach, with the freight railroads serving as a possible financing model. User fees in the form of tolls may turn out to be the most sensible way to ensure the long-term integrity of the highway system without imposing an unacceptable tax burden on the American people.

TECHNORATI TAGS: FREIGHT RAIL, EXPANSION, SELF-FINANCING, ROADS, HIGHWAYS, TOLLING, PORT TO RAIL, INTERNATIONAL TRADE, NORTHERN, UNION PACIFIC, NORFOLK SOUTHERN, CSX, LOS ANGELES, LONG BEACH, BAJA CALIFORNIA, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF RAILROADS

Implemented regionally, tolling and congestion pricing will be the key that unlocks the door to more efficient use of major highways in Puget Sound. Incentives for more telecommuting, carpooling, vanpooling and off-peak travel will grow substantially, as tolls and especially time-variable congestion pricing are instituted over the next few years. Tolling coupled with investment by public employee and labor union pension funds will also help close funding gaps on major road, bridge and transit projects needed to accomodate economic growth and environmental protection. Despite some political resistance, this paradigm will transform transportation infrastructure development across North America in coming years and decades.

Let's once again take a partial and recent survey of the landscape, starting with Puget Sound.

Just last week, the Washington State Transportation Commission set a range of tolling charges for solo drivers to use the new HOT (High Occupancy and Toll) lanes on SR 167 in south King County. Depending on traffic volume and congestion in the lanes at the time of use, the charge for solo drivers will be from 50 cents to nine dollars. KOMO-TV reports here. The commission's announcement notes this is a four-year pilot project, expected to launch this April and that transit buses, vanpools, two passenger-plus vehicles and motorcycles will be exempt from the SR 167 HOT lane tolls.

Allocating Peak-Hour Road Capacity To Handle Growth

The SR 167 HOT lanes - one in each direction, for now - are a good start. Roads and transit in central Puget Sound need repair, expansion, rational management and unified, accountable regional governance. Taking measures to allocate finite peak-hour road capacity is a baseline action for future problem-solving. The region will eventually need two HOT Lanes in each direction on all our interstate and major state highways including SR 167, I-405, I-5, SR 99, SR 520 (pictured, left, in all its rush-hour glory) and I-90.

Taking The Long View

Hover at 20,000 feet for a moment, looking down at central Puget Sound. The Puget Sound Regional Council in their draft "Vision 2040" report, projects that between 2000 and 2040, the four-county metro Seattle region is expected to see a 52 percent population jump. We're a land of opportunity. Plus kayaks, book lust, artisinal bread, and a relatively moderate climate. Really. People just can't seem to stop wanting to live and work here.

But the accreting hordes will greatly tax our infrastructure, one way or another. Already, multi-billion dollar, safety-driven construction projects such as replacement of the decrepit Alaskan Way Viaduct on SR 99 and the disaster-prone SR 520 floating bridge beg the question of supplemental funding.

That's because funds secured to date will fall well short of final costs - which keep growing due to project launch delays and tightening global competition among customers for transportation construction labor and materials. One example is a planned car rental center at SeaTac Airport, for which, the Seattle Times reports, costs have risen almost 30 percent in the last year. In the article, a Port of Seattle Commissioner attributes that to rising prices for steel and concrete.

Additional funding for major road, bridge and transit construction projects would be delivered via tolling strategies including variable-rate congestion pricing; and quite possibly via investment from trade union and public employee pension funds such as that of CalPers - which has started its own infrastructure investment account. On a project basis, these investments could be supplemented by private transportation infrastructure funds such as those managed by Goldman Sachs and Macqaurie. To facilitate political cooperation, it's best if the public sector retains ownership of the assets, even if it leases them out over the long-term as part of a maintenance and operations agreement. The public sector should also have final say on setting and raising toll rates. There are other issues, such as whether new arterials or highways parallel to a tolled facility can be permitted and whether they should then also be tolled (probably, yes); and how all that affects revenue streams. No one is saying that any of this stuff is a snap. But we'll be seeing more of it.

In each project where tolling and/or innovative finance strategies are employed to fund construction, the aim should be to ensure timely completion of the right design alternatives. These are the ones with the best life-cycle cost-benefit ratio in terms of congestion reduction, increased transit use and greenhouse gas controls, and surface environmental and economic benefits.

This is especially the case in Puget Sound - on the replacement for the Viaduct on SR 99, going to and through downtown; and across Lake Washington on a rebuilt SR 520 bridge.

WA State Legislature To Set Stage For More Tolling

Establishing a policy framework for coming decisions on tolling, the Washington State House last week passed Engrossed Second Substitute House Bill 1773, now before the state Senate Transportion Committee. The bill anticipates action to set specific tolls on the SR 520 bridge, which has to be replaced before a storm or earthquake causes it to collapse, and for which a $138 million federal DOT Urban Partnerships grant has been made, contingent on legislative approval by September 30, 2009 of a tolling plan for the facility. The bill gives tolling authority to the state for all state roads and bridges, but allows local tolling, with state approval if there's judged to be a significant impact possible on the use of a state road or bridge.

Smartly, the bill allows the potential use of tolls on a facility for transit - but only on the very same facility, and only if so directed by the legislature. For hard-core policy wonks, the relevant language is that such revenues can be employed to "improve, preserve, manage or operate" the facility; and that they can be used to "provide for the operations of conveyances of people or goods." Key Olympia sources confirm the transit-friendly meaning of these terms.

Down the road, the trick will be dividing up toll monies between corridor reconstruction and maintenance on the one hand, versus transit on the other.

The ESSHB 1773 vehicle must be approved by the Senate Transportation Committee by Monday March 3; approved by the full Senate by March 7; and then any Senate changes to the current House bill approved by the House before the legislative session ends on March 13.

The looming legislation, though just a first step toward broader regional tolling here, comes as the stars are beginning to align. Friday's Seattle Times reiterates that Governor Chris Gregoire is warming up to tolling SR 520 to help pay for its replacement, and the parallel I-90, to prevent traffic diversion from toll-avoiding SR 520 commuters. In addition, a transportation budget bill passed by the House last week makes an important passing reference to "pre-construction tolling" on SR 520 - pocket-protector pals, please see page 49, line 4.

Public support is solidifying for tolls in Puget Sound, as well. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial board reports a King County poll finds four out of five respondents prefer tolling SR 520 over increases in the license tab fees, or the gas or sales tax, to help pay for its replacement. And as we noted recently, the governor is also broadly hinting at the need for tolling to pay for a $4 billion-plus rebuild (including beefed-up corridor transit) of the badly-congested Interstate Bridge, connecting Oregon and Washington across the Columbia River on I-5. You know........the Corridor From Hell? Remember encounters with it on those trips from Pugetopolis to the mid or southern Oregon Coast - and how you then took the slow, scenic route along the coast on the way back, just to avoid it?

In any case, Washington state isn't travelling by itself on the road to regional tolling, and the coming collaboration with Oregon on I-5 is hardly the only indicator. In recent days and weeks interest in new tolling projects has continued to grow across North America - driven by gaps in road expansion or maintenance funding, and worsening peak-hour traffic congestion.

Toronto Regional Tolling Proposal Sparks Debate

The Globe and Mail reports that a blue-ribbon panel comprised of business, labor and academic leaders has issued a report on how the financially-troubled city of Toronto can get its house in order, and a tolling proposal is one major recommendation. The report recommends the city add tolls to the Don Valley Parkway and the Gardiner Expressway. Eye Weekly reports the 401 and 427 expressways ringing the city could also be included in the regional tolling plan, as well.

The panel recommends that oversight of newly-tolled facilities be transferred from the city to either the province or Metrolinx, formerly the Greater Toronto Transportation Authority. Proponents say the move would save the city $20 million per year in maintenance costs, boost transit use and raise millions for new subways and light rail lines.

Page 17 of the full report includes the tolling recommendations, which can hardly be considered the work of conservative business ideologues, given that they're followed by a call for a non-surface parking tax coupled with increased bike routes and car-free zones.

Another recommendation - on page 22 - is for the city to look to partner with the private sector and the Canadian Pension Funds on major transportation infrastructure projects. Whaddaya know?

The Toronto regional tolling recommendations are already sparking dialog.

Last week, the reaction from Toronto Mayor David Miller (pictured above, right) was guarded; he said tolling must be applied regionally, if at all.

But over the weekend, the Toronto Star reported he seems to be warming to the idea, and is now stressing the link between new tolling and generating more transit funding.

"If you want to build in transit, which we'll have to if Toronto is going to succeed, you have to consider the way to finance it," he said. "I think it (road tolls) needs some serious consideration, very serious."

The "Double-Taxation" Red Herring

As this Toronto Star article notes, push-back can be expected on the proposed tolls from motorists invoking the hoary notion of "double taxation." That fails to recognize the unavoidable long-term decline in fuel tax revenues due to better mileage, and the political difficulties of raising a fuel tax, even as the cost of road maintenance ticks upward with each vehicle mile travelled. Fading gas tax revenues increasingly pose this very same challenge to U.S. states, as McClatchy Newspapers Washington, D.C. correspondent Les Blumenthal reported yesterday on the front page of the Sunday Tacoma News Tribune. Likewise for Canadian provinces with major metro regions and heavily used roads. Writing in the Financial Post Policy Analyst Benjamin Dachis of the C.D. Howe Institute likes the Toronto regional tolling idea:

One of the panel's wisest proposals is to suggest that Toronto cede control of the Gardiner Expressway and Don Valley Parkways to the province and have tolls placed on all GTA freeways. Toll revenues from these two freeways alone could amount to $7-billion over their useful lifetimes. Toronto's freeways, particularly the 401, offer a unique opportunity for a hybrid system of express toll lanes in the current middle lanes while maintaining free lanes in the right-hand collectors. Only those willing to pay for congestion-free travel will pay the toll. Buses could be given free access to these toll lanes to improve commuter bus service to surrounding communities when they would otherwise be stuck in traffic.

More support for the tolling recommendations comes from the editorial board of the Toronto Star.

Tolling Front And Center In Virginia Beach, San Francisco, Louisville

Elsewhere, the Virginia Beach City Council will be getting a report examining whether to re-impose tolls on I-264. The tolls would cut congestion and help fund the concurrent $1.6 billion reconfiguration of problem interchanges on the highway, at a peak-hour cost of up to $2.85 on a key stretch.

In the Bay Area, the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District is considering a $1 hike in tolls on its namesake, landmark bridge due to growing maintenance costs for that span and the bus and passenger-only ferry fleets it runs.

Faced with dwindling prospects for full federal and state gas tax funding, Kentucky state legislative leaders of both parties and the governor agree that tolls will have to be a key ingredient in the state's $2.9 billion share of the $4.1 billion Ohio River Bridges Project connecting Louisville to Indiana. It would add two new bridges to those currently spannng the river (pictured above, left) to ease congestion. The project would also include re-engineering the city's "Spaghetti Junction" highway interchange.

Oh, Edinburgh!

Of course some locales, afflicted by perverse populism or voodoo economics, go further than merely declining to toll when feasible. They actually rescind existing tolls on busy roadways. Surprise! The rush hour lengthens considerably, as Edinburgh motorists travelling the Forth Road Bridge corridor are discovering. And those tolls, as it happens, paid for the bridge's maintenance.

RELATED:

"Transportation Action Plan For Puget Sound," Cascadia Center.

"Tolling, HOT Lanes Spread In U.S.; Creep Foward In Puget Sound," Cascadia Prospectus. (Incl. metro D.C., L.A., Orange County, Salt Lake City, PA, & the "Lexus Lanes" canard.)

"Congestion Pricing, Tolls Loom For Puget Sound," Cascadia Prospectus. (Incl. San Diego, NYC/NJ).

"Tolling Goes Mainstream," Cascadia Prospectus. (Incl. GA, VA, AL, ME, NC, FL).

TECHNORATI TAGS: TOLLING, CONGESTION PRICING, SEATTLE, PUGET SOUND, WASHINGTON STATE, GOVERNOR CHRIS GREGOIRE, TORONTO, MAYOR DAVID MILLER, VIRGINIA BEACH, SAN FRANCISCO, LOUISVILLE, PENSION FUNDS, INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDS