Cascadia Prospectus

Construction began last week on a High Occupancy and Toll (HOT) lane to serve carpoolers, transit and - for a price varying by miles travelled and time of day - solo drivers, on a 14-mile stretch of southbound I-680 in the San Francisco Bay Area. The highway connects the jobs-rich Silicon Valley region with populous East Bay communities to the north. Electronic tolling will be employed, using transponders and overhead gantries. Carpoolers will cover their onboard transponders to avoid being charged. Some commuters are expected to save 30 minutes in the express lane, while congestion will be eased in the general use lanes as well. It's all part of a much broader, 25-year, $6.1 billion toll-financed plan to build, operate and maintain a Bay Area HOT lane system. The plan was developed by the nine-county Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The aim is creation of 800 miles of HOT lanes on the region's highways to make driving and bus transit more predictable and reliable, while encouraging alternatives to peak-hour solo drives. As Gary Richards of the San Jose Mercury-News reports, the initiative is seen as a real game-changer:

Traffic officials described the Bay Area tolling plan in no uncertain terms: revolutionary, dramatic and bold. "The entire nation will be watching," said Gene Fong, the California chief with the Federal Highway Administration, referring to transportation officials' interest in the potential for widespread use of toll lanes. Added John Ristow, lead highway planner with the Valley Transportation Authority: "It'll have as big of an impact as building BART in the '60s. There will be such a dramatic change in the way people get around."

HOT lanes are an example of what is called "congestion pricing," which includes not only variably-priced lanes, but variably-priced highways and urban core parking. The road-pricing strategy continues to gain currency in the national media for its transformational potential. Last week, New York Times syndicated columnist David Brooks, in a widely-read piece titled, "A National Mobility Project," wrote:

Americans now spend 3.5 billion hours a year stuck in traffic, a figure expected to double by 2020. The U.S. population is projected to increase by 50 percent over the next 42 years. American residential patterns have radically changed. Workplaces have decentralized. Commuting patterns are no longer radial, from suburban residences to central cities. Now they are complex weaves across broad megaregions. Yet the infrastructure system hasn't adapted. The smart thing to do is announce a short-term infrastructure initiative to accelerate all those repair projects that can be done within a few years. Then, begin a long-term National Mobility Project.

Create a base-closings-like commission to organize federal priorities (Congress has forfeited its right to micromanage). Streamline the regulations that can now delay project approval by five years. Explore all the new ideas that are burgeoning in the transportation world - congestion pricing, smart highways, rescue plans for shrinking Midwestern cities, new rail and airplane technologies. When you look into this sector, you see we are on the cusp of another transportation revolution.

The Bay Area has already taken this kind of thinking to heart. This July, 2008 "principles" document from the MTC says the system will utilize existing rights-of-way and focus on corridors and so-called "commute sheds," while reinvesting revenues where they're raised and directing spending not only to system operations and maintenance, but also "non-highway options." These are to include transit, and easing traffic bottlenecks for carpoolers and buses on arterial "collector" routes. The plan will be refined and overseen by the region's Congestion Management Agencies (CMA), Caltrans, California Highway Patrol, and the Bay Area Toll Authority.

In addition to the work starting on I-680, HOT lanes are already being built on I-580. Among other planned projects in the network are HOT lanes for the I-880/Highway 237 interchange, the length of Highway 85, and Highway 101, from Morgan Hill to Palo Alto.

The Oakland Tribune's editorial board explains why they think it's all a ripping good idea:

Toll revenues would pay for construction of additional HOT lanes so that they would be available to motorists almost anywhere in the Bay Area. Today, carpool lanes often end near intersections and are missing altogether on many stretches of highway. Perhaps even more important than building new HOT lanes, the MTC's plan would construct and improve key highway connectors throughout the Bay Area. All too often today, traffic bottlenecks occur near intersections where there are not enough lanes to accommodate carpools.

Another part of the MTC plan is the creation of an express bus system that would significantly enhance mass transit in many parts of the Bay Area. One of the major problems with bus transportation today is the lack of a continuous carpool or HOT-lane system. As a result, buses are forced to slow down to a crawl in many locations, especially at intersections of major highways. Also, there are not enough express buses. Most of them make so many stops along their routes that they are not useful for longer commutes. Express buses on a continuous HOT-lane system would be a great improvement and are likely to attract far more riders than they have today.

A full-on regional "system" approach is the way to implement HOT lanes, with an accent on better service delivery for transit, ride-share vehicles and solo drivers. It's encouraging that HOT lanes are already implemented in a score of different locales across the U.S . and that more are coming.

Major metro regions that step up to the complex mobility challenge will reap economic benefits that laggard competitors won't.

California won voter approval this week to attempt development of an approximately $44 billion intercity high speed rail system, connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles with later extensions to Sacramento, San Diego, and Riverside County, east of L.A. (Artist's rendering below). Top speed is billed as 220 miles per hour.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that in addition to the $10 billion in government-backed bonds okayed by voters, the California High Speed Rail Authority will shoot for another $10 billion in federal aid and billions more from private investors. Other private partners might join in, to help the state manage construction, and operate the system.

It's the beginning of a big headache," joked Mehdi Morshed, director of the authority. "But it's the good kind. We're looking forward to it."

Travel times between L.A. and the Bay Area, it's claimed, would be a mere two-and-a half hours, versus the current 11- to 12-hour trip on Amtrak's Coast Starlight run. If California manages to pull this off successfully, the upside is huge: convenient, speedy travel between major metropolitan regions without the hassles of highway traffic or air travel, while cutting increases in greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

But possible pitfalls include land acquisition, environmental obstacles, cost overruns, construction delays, and failure to achieve ridership and travel time projections. The San Jose Mercury News reports:

James Moore, a professor and director of the transportation engineering program at the University of Southern California....said he believes the project's backers have overstated ridership projections and the trains' maximum speed in urban areas, while underestimating the costs of acquiring right-of-way, building the system and operating the trains. Still, many of the state's top political leaders endorsed the bond issue, along with business and construction interests, including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. The rail network would be a boon for Silicon Valley because it would bring lower-priced housing in Central Valley communities within a comfortable commuting range of less than an hour's ride to the Bay Area, (High Speed Rail Authority board member Rod) Diridon said. He added: "That makes it so much easier to recruit top talent."

Backers have claimed the project will create 160,000 construction jobs and eventually 450,000 jobs in other industries that benefit from the transit network. Diridon, a driving force behind creation of Santa Clara County's light-rail system, said construction contracts could go out to bid by 2011 and an initial north-south line could be in operation by 2020.

It all pencils out economically, compared to road and air travel alternatives, claims the rail authority.

To serve the same number of travelers as the high-speed train system, California would have to build nearly 3,000 lane-miles of freeway plus five airport runways and 90 departure gates by 2020 -- costing more than twice the high-speed train system and having much greater environmental impacts. What's more, the proposed high-speed train system will provide lower passenger costs than for travel by automobile or air for the same city-to-city markets.

It's looking like an opportune time for ramping up inter-city rail in the U.S. President-elect Barack Obama wants to see more high speed inter-city passenger rail, as do many key members of the U.S. House and Senate. The surface transportation reauthorization bill in 2009 and the push for a national transportation stimulus spending package will provide a vehicle for additional passenger rail system development. Already, by a veto-proof majority Congress last month passed a $13.1 billion passenger rail funding bill including $3.4 billion for high speed rail corridors and state passenger rail improvement projects.

In the Cascadia region, the Amtrak Cascades service from Eugene, Oregon through Portland to Seattle would benefit greatly from construction of a third rail between Portland and Seattle, allowing separation of freight from passenger rail. Upgrades to or replacement of at-grade rail-road crossings are also key, and combined with a third rail for freight could allow the Portland-Seattle Spanish-made Talgo passenger train to travel closer to its top speed of 110 mph. It now doesn't usually exceed 70 mph and averages less than that. When running on time, the Portland-Seattle run currently clocks in at three-and-a-half hours, longer - in most instances - than driving. Shaving six minutes off the trip with a routing change through Tacoma is a start, but more work remains.

With major population growth projected for metro Portland and Seattle, and a new $4 billion bridge to be built across the Columbia River between Portland and Washington state, it would be smart to boost non-vehicular travel alternatives in the I-5 corridor with an investment in speedier Seattle-Portland passenger and freight rail. The cost for necessary improvements would likely run into the low billions, but yield a great net benefit in eased delays, saved vehicle emissions and improved freight mobility. Our ability to meet similar challenges across the nation with improved rail mobility will help drive U.S. mastery of the global economy. We snooze, we lose.

California's ambitious high speed rail project bears close watching. Now that the enabling ballot measure has passed, skeptics should be trying to add value with suggestions on cost control and optimizing performance. However this grand initiative fares, growth in the West Coast Corridor from Baja to B.C. is only going to intensify in decades to come. From one end of the corridor to the other, the time to solidify plans for better, faster inter-city passenger and freight rail is now.

The State Route 520 Tolling Implementation Committee's "November Scenario Evaluation" document released yesterday shows that the most robust regional financing for replacing the dangerously sub-par 520 bridge comes from time-variable tolling on it starting in 2010 and tolling the parallel I-90 span across Lake Washington, starting in 2010 or 2016. Tolling in this key east-west corridor would be done on the fly, electronically, with vehicle windshield transponders and overhead gantries; no toll booths. Tolls that vary by time of day are likely, though flat rates are also an option. Special lanes that would be free to buses and ride-sharers could be made available to solo drivers, for a price.

The committee's members are WSDOT Secretary Paula Hammond (pictured, left), Puget Sound Regional Council Executive Director Bob Drewel, and Washington State Transportation Commission board member Richard Ford. This latest analysis, along with public comment, will inform a January, 2009 final report from the committee to the state legislature, which is then to approve a tolling plan for the SR 520 bridge and perhaps the I-90 bridge as well. Then, specific toll rates would be set by the state transportation commission and approved by the legislature, with construction of pontoons for the new 520 bridge beginning later in 2009 if all goes as envisioned.

The weary and crowded 1963-vintage 520 bridge connects Seattle with Eastside job centers such as Bellevue, Redmond and Kirkland but is at major risk of catastrophic failure in a 70 mph windstorm, or earthquake. At the same time, growing regional traffic congestion has prompted a public warming to expansion of regional transit, and bettered the odds for a system of electronic, time-variable tolling on major highways and state routes across metro Puget Sound. A priced-lanes pilot project for carpoolers and solo drivers is already underway on SR 167, and flat-rate electronic tolling in place, to rave reviews, on the new southbound span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge.

The 520 tolling committee's latest report reveals that:

The committee will continue to get an earful at public hearings this week and next from tolling opponents who somehow imagine they are a due a free ride because the construction, maintenance and operations costs of Puget Sound roads and bridges, as population continues to swell in coming decades, can somehow all be covered by the incredible shrinking gas tax and.......what? More sales tax hikes or vehicle fees?They're nice if you can get 'em, but the well only runs so deep.

Pay as you go is the way to go in this day and age - coupled with cost-saving, performance-based consortium contracting to design, build, operate and maintain surface transportation facilities and systems.

The four-lane SR 520 bridge across the lake is to be replaced with a six-lane structure. Current plans call for two "general purpose" lanes and one high-occupancy vehicle lane in each direction, the former would be tolled either via either a flat or time-variable rate if a plan is adopted. This is confirmed by WSDOT, though it can get a bit confusing because one doesn't necessarily think of general purpose lanes as being tolled. On the I-90 bridge, the agency also confirms, tolling would be on all general purpose vehicle lanes, except under one scenario that exempts eastbound traffic from Mercer Island. On both bridges the possible HOV lane could be designated a High Occupancy and Toll (HOT lane), free to transit and ride-share vehicles, but also available, for a toll, to solo drivers.

The more time-variable tolling, and the sooner, the better: it will further drive alternative choices such as ride-sharing and telework, and raise more money for regional surface transportation needs, transit included.

The policy decisions to come on tolling the SR 520 bridge, and perhaps the I-90 bridge as well, are an important turning point for the state and region. Going forward, a broad regional plan to implement time-variable tolling on several highways and major state routes is needed. That would allocate scarce peak-hour capacity, ease congestion, and help pay for billions more in needed safety, repair and mobility improvements on I-5, SR 99, SR 704, SR 509, US 2 and I-405/SR 167.

The question is, how serious are we about doing this? The legislature will provide the first piece of the answer when it next meets.

Legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers sat down for an interview at the recent Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco and shared some thoughts in this video from ZDNet (click here or on embed below):

The money quote:

The most important thing (President-elect Barack Obama) has got to do is kick start a huge amount of innovation and research in energy. We invest less than a billion dollars a year in renewable energy research and that's contrasted with health care which is $32 billion, and I think we've just scratched the surface in terms of clean ways to use energy, to create energy. It's the challenge of our generation. It's the scourge of our economy.

Doerr also said the nation must figure out ways to increase the number of graduates in science and engineering and ensure that foreign nationals educated here in those fields are able to stay here as legal residents and help address clean-tech challenges such as renewable energy.

Developing vehicles that can run on clean electricity and second-generation net-green bio-fuels remains a high priority despite sharp drops in the price of gas from this summer's record highs. Cascadia Senior Fellow Steve Marshall and Bullit Foundation President Denis Hayes explain why in a recent Seattle Post-Intelligencer op-ed on the promise of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Five years ago oil cost $23 a barrel. Despite the recent wild swings, oil prices remain historically high. Last year the U.S. paid $300 billion for imported oil, and this year we will double that. According to Henry Kissinger, our foreign oil purchases have resulted in the "largest transfer of wealth in human history." What's worse is that a major share of the world's oil revenues ends up in countries hostile to our interests, undemocratic or both....With 97 percent of all transportation fueled by oil, we have had no choice other than to pay up until now. But with recent advances in more powerful, lighter-weight and durable batteries, we can begin to replace oil with electricity in light-duty transportation.

Every new internal combustion car that's sold will make it more difficult for us to reduce our oil dependence. And over its lifetime each such vehicle will also generate several tons of global warming gases a year. Around Puget Sound, transportation produces more greenhouse gases than all other sources combined.

....Cleaner, cheaper domestic electricity offers our best available opportunity to move beyond oil in transportation. A (state fleet) moratorium on buying new gasoline vehicles with a plan to buy the coming plug-ins would be an added incentive to automakers to speed up the transition we need for the economy, national security and the environment.

Earlier this fall, Cascadia Center - with co-sponsors including Idaho National Laboratory and Microsoft - staged a conference titled "Beyond Oil: Transforming Transportation," which explored new paradigms in transportation and energy. A rich archive page of the event is here, including speaker presentations, videos and media coverage. Under "Day Two Video Segments," don't miss electric car visionary Shai Agassi; former CIA director James Woolsey; and Microsoft's Chief Environmental Strategist Rob Bernard.

On Sunday, the 2008 ITS World Congress kicked-off its biggest event ever in NYC. Guests were treated to a top-notch opening ceremony that miraculously managed to fit in half a dozen speakers and artistic performances ranging from hip hop to opera, violins, ballet and Broadway favorites.

New York City has closed down and renamed 11th Ave. in front of the convention center (name is now ITS World Congress Blvd.) for demonstrations of exotic technologies such as automatic collision avoidance and driverless autonomous vehicles.

ITS America's Best of ITS Awards

Then there was Sensys Networks snagging an award for a deployment of their wireless vehicle detection technology with a grant from (you guessed it) Caltrans. I believe the line was "installs in 10 minutes, transmits for up to 10 years." Pretty impressive stuff--battery powered, as accurate as loop detectors, and not affected by weather. Caltrans is deploying 5,106 of them in 800 locations.

Sensys Flush Mount Wireless Vehicle Detector

Someone's epiphany that cooperation and open standards are far better for everyone is beginning to bear fruit. We're starting to see instances of the best technology being improved by one agency and then released into the wild for others to use. One of the many examples of this philosophy here is New York City's award winning new Applied Solid-state Traffic Controller (ASTC). This is the box that physically controls the lights, grabs sensor data, etc.

Satellic Drives in Style

The primary order of business Wednesday was to take my search for the best signal control system global. One could be forgiven for thinking that since there are large cities all over the world, there must be other signal control systems that rival the best ones in the United States.

It turns out that there is some merit to this way of thinking, but it must be heavily nuanced. America is unique in that it has relatively young cities that were developed with cars in mind. Their hallmarks are heavy use of grids and obsessive traffic control systems; quite a contrast to the ancient citadels of Europe with their medieval layouts, ring roads and excessive use of roundabouts.

It stands to reason that traffic engineers in New York and Los Angeles don't build adaptive signal systems with giant roundabouts in mind. Nonetheless it seems worth examining how other large foreign cities tackle this problem.

I started with our English speaking neighbors across the pond. According to the Directorate of Traffic Operations for London Streets, they have around 6,000 signals in London, 3,000 of which are purely locally controlled (not controlled by their TMC). Many of these are pedestrian controlled mid-block crossings. Nineteen percent of them are centrally controlled fixed time lights and 30 percent (2,000) are adaptive.

There's typically a lot of green between Tennessee and Oregon. But the two states have something in common when it comes to the future of vehicle technology: Nissan has selected both states (the only two so far) to debut its all-electric car in 2010.

The Oregonian's Richard Read reports that Nissan was drawn to Oregon's "green vision," including its installation of vehicle charging hubs.

Under Gov. Ted Kulongoski's leadership, Oregon is already building electric vehicle charging stations. And Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen penned an understanding this summer to begin building stations in the Volunteer State. The first roll-out of the vehicles will be for government and commercial fleets.

Click below to read the extended post and The Oregonian's coverage.

Yesterday, one of our burning questions was answered: Are those automatic cars really avoiding things on their own?

Well it turns out that at least one is - as was proven today (unintentionally) by ITS America CEO Scott Belcher. Scott walked across the 11th Ave. test track unaware that a live demonstration was going on. A second later an autonomous SSTI test vehicle came zipping around some barrels. Some excitement ensued as the vehicle detected him and automatically stopped. Security started yelling (until he realized it was his boss in the track). So Scott cheats death (and so do a few engineers, I'd imagine) and the SSTI crew gets a good story to tell.

Unfortunately, even despite the new votes of confidence, no one was willing to let me hop in the back seat of one of those fancy cars with a few drinks and tour Manhattan with no driver. I can see it now: "Yes, officer, I have been drinking, but the car hasn't, and it's the one that was driving."

A report titled "Large Diameter Soft Ground Bored Tunnel Review" has just been released by the transportation think tank Cascadia Center and global engineering and consulting firm Arup. It strongly suggests that a new state cost estimate for a deep bored tunnel of approximately two miles to replace the aging Alaskan Way Viaduct could be greatly inflated.

The state's Alaskan Way Viaduct Stakeholders Committee (SAC) pegs the cost of the one-mile tunnel at $3.5 billion, but the Cascadia-Arup report surveyed deep-bored vehicle tunnels worldwide and found costs typically fall in the range of $200 million-$700 million per mile, for large diameter soft ground bored tunnels, created with assistance of a tunnel boring machine (pictured below at right).

A Nov. 20 Cascadia letter with 2 summary charts on tunnel costs, plus the Arup report, were distributed to SAC members at the SAC's Nov. 20 meeting, where SAC cost estimates for eight different Viaduct replacement options, including the deep bored tunnel, were unveiled.

In its letter to the SAC, Cascadia Center notes:

SAC is expected to winnow down the eight options to three recommended for further consideration. In December, Governor Christine Gregoire, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims are to recommend one option. The state legislature will make the final decision.

Cascadia Center reiterates its recommendation made to the SAC in March 2008 that an independent expert review panel assess the costs of a deep bore tunnel to replace the Viaduct.

Cascadia has learned from sources close to the proceedings that one quarter of the $3.5 billion SAC estimate for the deep bore tunnel is for design fees. These can be dramatically reduced, along with risk management and construction timeline costs, through a properly detailed "design-build-operate-maintain" contract with a project management consortium. In addition, time-variable tolling in the SR 99/I-5 corridor, including the proposed tunnel, could help fund the project.

RELATED:

"A Deep Bore Tunnel to Replace The Alaskan Way Viaduct," Cascadia Prospectus.

The Washington Post paints an accurate picture of the surface transportation funding and financing crisis that will confront President-elect Barack Obama (below at right), Congress, and Obama's pick to head the U.S. Department of Transportation.

As roads and bridges are crumbling and cracking and transit systems struggling with rising costs and ridership, the U.S. Highway Trust Fund is in bad repair itself. Headed for bankruptcy and saved last fall only by an $8 billion raid of the U.S. Treasury's General Fund, this highway and transit account dates to 1956 and relies on a federal gas tax that hasn't been raised from the current level of 18.4 cents per gallon for 15 years. A high-profile federal commission has urged the tax be hiked to 40 cents per gallon, but that's unlikely, given the economy's woes, and the politics of raising taxes.

Yet, to ensure highways and transit can support economic growth as U.S. population booms in coming decades, surface transportation spending will need to rise from the current $140 billion a year ($50 billion from the feds, $90 billion from the states), to $225 billion per annum. What else besides a gas tax hike should be considered? The Post:

Other ideas to raise revenue include expanding toll roads, increasing public-private partnerships and using congestion pricing, a system in which motorists or transit passengers pay more during peak travel periods. Another idea, which is being tried in Oregon, is to charge motorists a tax based not on the gas they buy but on the number of miles they drive.

The Clinton administration experimented with some of these initiatives, but the Bush Transportation Department has embraced them, particularly toll roads and public-private partnerships. Under Bush, the department has been shrinking the federal role in road building and public transportation and opening the sector to private investors who assume the risks of building the projects in exchange for profits from tolls and fees. Congressional Democrats and some Republicans, along with transit advocates, have accused the department of rationing good road transportation to those who can afford fees, tolls and taxes. In some cases, the public-private partnerships have lacked adequate protection of the public interest, according to reports by the GAO.

"We need to look at all kinds of alternatives," said William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, an industry group that represents transit systems. "Tax credit bonds, public-private partnerships, tolling, user fees - we should be looking at it not from an ideological standpoint but from a very practical standpoint. . . . There may be places even in public transit where you could charge more for certain services."

In a sidebar, the Post profiles four leading contenders for the DOT hot seat, including Mort Downey of PB Consult, and ex-FAA head Jane Garvey. Obama and the Congress will really hold the cards, but the DOT pick will have to do some heavy lifting, including broad coalition-building.

Cost-saving, exacting "design-build-operate-maintain" (or DBOM) contracting arrangements need to become more prevalent. More state legislatures should take whatever steps are necessary to make it easier for public employee pension funds to invest in road, bridge, tunnel and transit projects while meeting their market-rate fiduciary obligations to pensioners. This means eschewing lower-rate state highway bonds in favor of P3 partnerships where the pension funds help provide investment capital through alternative means such as a private infrastructure investment fund or direct investment, in return for a share of toll or fare proceeds over the long term.

That long-term orientation is a plus. Although nearly all U.S. public employee and building trade pension funds have taken a hit during the financial meltdown, they're still flush, typically with with tens upon tens of billions in assets, and a growing interest in diversifying further - into more stable investment classes such as infrastructure.

Another key element of the strategy going forward must be time-variable pricing of roadways and transit. We all pay for the water and electricity we use according to our own consumption patterns, often with higher charges for peak-period use, and no one cries out about economic injustice - either because of the pay-as-you go approach or the peak differentials. The same model should be more broadly applied to surface transportation infrastructure, especially as demand grows, supply becomes constrained, and maintenance and operations costs threaten to continue spiraling upward.

The group representing America's transportation and highway officials wants you to tell President-elect Obama and the next Congress what you think should be done about transportation. AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials) today launched a campaign -- to run through inauguration day -- to make sure citizens' voices are shared with the 111th Congress and the 44th president. The Web site, www.IToldThePresident.org, lets you send comments or video.

AASHTO represents state departments of transportation. According to its release announcing the online campaign, "State departments of transportation (DOTs) across the country will be encouraging citizens to post videos about what's happening in their communities."

Click below to read the extended post and to view AASHTO's press release.