Common Sense Alliance
Public investment in highway efficiency should always be the first priority for transportation funding, so long as there are still significant gains to be made. For example, there is no question that improved traffic flow at the Entrance to Aspen, and possibly other locations along the Highway 82 corridor, would save more fuel than an increase in bus service.
In addition, and unlike those transit expenditures which only benefit bus riders, highway upgrades benefit 100 percent of the traveling public, improving our experience regardless of whether we are using private vehicles or public transportation.
It is a huge missed opportunity that RFTA does not exercise its full potential to plan for, propose, and fund highway based transportation solutions. Projects as diverse as the Entrance to Aspen, Glenwood Springs bypass, or grade separated access to Basalt could move forward regardless of state funding delays, and would set us up for future reimbursements from the state that could then be applied to transit services.
It is doubly sad that the RFTA board could not bring itself to even discuss the possibility of creating a petition process as part of their charter so that private citizens could propose plans and funding options to present to the voters.
When advocates for a new Entrance to Aspen were sent packing by the RFTA board, petition organizers pursued the second best option and proposed a Pitkin County road fund property tax that prioritized spending to deal with the worst problem first. While the RFTA sales tax proposal would have required the creation of a petition process from scratch, citizens of Pitkin County already have the right of petition, as established by the state constitution.
For whatever that’s worth.
It is not credible that the county clerk and county attorney believe that the Pitkin County Charter supersedes the state constitution, but that’s what they claimed in rejecting the proposed road tax petitions. They took a purely political stand in order to protect the county’s own property tax proposal from having to face a competing ballot question offered by citizens.
Commitment to democracy among area officials extends only far enough to allow us to pick from their list of choices. The collateral damage of their collective mindset against direct democracy has been the suppression of common sense proposals that achieve their own stated objectives more effectively than the policies and projects they currently support.
*This space was originally intended for “Discussing Mass Transit Part V – What is RFTA Proposing?”, but RFTA is still working on whatever they are about to propose. We pause from that series long enough to offer this background information.
September 17th, 2008
RFTA is organized under Colorado state law as a Regional Transportation Authority (RTA). An RTA is a tax district which can fund projects related to “any highway, road, street, bus system, railroad, airport, gondola system, or mass transit system”. In contrast, the RFTA board, made up of elected officials from eight different jurisdictions, effectively limits our RTA to being nothing more than a mass transit authority.
The first major RFTA planning effort, the Corridor Investment Study (CIS), did go through the motions of examining the full range of transportation possibilities intended by state law. Although identifying future traffic congestion as the problem to be addressed, the “technology options” considered by the CIS managed to include “automobiles on new lanes” on the same list as extravagantly silly items like “jet packs”, “dog sleds”, and “automobiles on flatbed trucks”, and then treated these ideas equally by dismissing them all with no further comment.
Claiming that reduced bus travel time would result in huge ridership increases, the CIS authors did not examine any highway option beyond “passenger cars or trucks using Highway 82 in its present configuration,” despite the potential for highway capacity increases to provide both congestion relief and improved transit performance. The CIS set out to show that “the region’s growing traffic congestion cannot be solved with just one mode of transportation or by highway expansions alone,” but ended up confirming the exact opposite by showing no congestion improvement even with unrealistic projected transit ridership increases.
Last year, RFTA was approached with a request to create a petition process for the district that would allow local citizens to propose “outside the bus” traffic solutions. For example, the use of local tax sources for highway construction would allow us to cut through state level funding delays, and set us up for future reimbursements from the state that could then be applied to transit services.
This year, taxpayers could have had the opportunity to weigh the relative benefits of doubling bus service on the Highway 82 corridor, or fixing the Entrance to Aspen (for example), and voting accordingly. But the RFTA board never discussed the idea of allowing citizen initiated petitions for the use of our own tax money. It requires six out of eight votes to make such a change, and representatives of the three upper valley jurisdictions - Aspen, Snowmass Village, and Pitkin County – made it clear they would never vote to allow such a process.
Until RFTA expands the scope of its vision in respect to our private vehicles, transportation planning will continue to be a process akin to viewing the ocean through a glass bottom bucket - and the results will continue to be shortsighted.
*This space was originally intended for “Discussing Mass Transit Part V – What is RFTA Proposing?”, but RFTA is still working on whatever they are about to propose. We pause from that series long enough to offer this background information.
September 9th, 2008
There seems to be an irresistible temptation to equate bus trips with vehicle trips, as though 5 million annual riders are equal to 5 million cars taken off the road. Converting ridership to vehicle trips is not nearly that easy, and is never exact. For example, transit creates a number of induced trips – trips that would not have been taken if not for the presence of the bus service. Past RFTA surveys have reported that more than a third of bus passengers did not have a private vehicle available at the time of their trip.
Continue Reading September 3rd, 2008
Once upon a time, the rail corridor that runs the length of the Roaring Fork Valley was purchased by local governments, with the help of the federal government.
A Corridor Investment Study (CIS) was completed by RFTA in 2003 to serve as a long range plan for the use of the old rail bed. The scope of the study encompassed transportation options in general and the current state of, and future expectations for, conditions on Highway 82.
The CIS predicted huge increases in traffic volume and subsequent congestion, and proposed a mass transit program which would have no effect on the problem. By the year 2025, a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system would result in less congestion than the “No-Action” alternative at only one of nineteen selected locations along Highway 82.
Continue Reading August 29th, 2008
Transit is very conducive to empirical analysis. Translation: Since you can count, measure and time every detail of a transit system, the use of real information to evaluate what the public is getting for its money is both easy and advisable. Otherwise, without some factual basis to evaluate what transit does now and how much more it can potentially do, public policy decisions will be based on perception and assumption - or perhaps on nothing at all.
RFTA is about to propose a major service expansion, so this is an ideal time to gain some insight into the standard statistical tools used to measure transit performance, consider which numbers really matter or apply, and propose some new data points for weighing where we are and where we might want to go from here.
Continue Reading August 20th, 2008
Discussing
Mass
Transit
Part I
Who is Served?
With apologies to Abraham Lincoln, some of the people can ride the bus all of the time, all of the people could ride the bus some of the time, but not all of the people will ride the bus all of the time.
And it’s not a matter of how much room is on the bus; mass transit of any kind is limited to a particular kind of service. There must be a match between the type of trip a traveler is making, and the trip that transit can provide.
If:
1. you regularly travel from a particular Point A to the same Point B;
2. you don’t need to take, or pick up, more stuff than you can easily carry;
3. your Point B is located at a convenient walking distance from a transit stop;
4. you generally spend a significant amount of time at Point B;
5. and you usually return directly to Point A;
you may potentially be a regular customer for mass transit. You may still decide not to use the bus based on personal preference, but at least your Limited-purpose travel needs match the limited capability of transit service.
“Limited-purpose” is a term created for this discussion to better describe the core transit customer, and to reinforce the point that it isn’t about the person, it’s about the trip. For example, the term “commuter” is often used to imply someone who could be taking the bus. However, not all commuters travel to a location close to a mass transit stop, and commuters often need to carry things, or make other trips, before returning to Point A. A commuter isn’t necessarily making a Limited-purpose trip suitable for mass transit, even though many such trips are made by commuters.
On the other hand, if:
1. you usually start from the same Point A, but Point B could be anywhere;
2. Point B is just one of several destinations;
3. one or more of your destinations is nowhere near a mass transit stop;
4. very little time is spent at one or more destinations;
5. you need to take, or pick up, more stuff than you can comfortably carry;
you aren’t likely to be a mass transit customer regardless of your personal preference. Your “Multi-purpose” trips just don’t match the service which mass transit can provide.
The type of trip determines whether it is practical to even consider using transit services, but this overriding principle receives very little attention. We no longer notice the very obvious circumstance which confirms the limited application of mass transit, and we have lost sight of the consequences.
Because mass transit is not sufficiently cost effective, in large part because not enough of our trips fit the Limited-purpose profile, private companies are unable to offer this service. This is why mass transit is a government program supported with tax dollars.
People whose lives don’t fit a bus schedule have no moral obligation to be subsidizing the transportation costs of people whose lives do happen to fit a bus schedule – but it certainly turns out that way. Perhaps someday a simple thank you would be in order.
What is the rationale for having a tax subsidized transit program?
Some transit proponents insist that mass transit reduces traffic congestion, and, in the extreme case of the Entrance to Aspen, that transit can even serve as a substitute for an adequate highway. Effects on congestion and pollution are too minimal to matter anywhere but the most densely populated urban environment, and there is no substitute for adequate public infrastructure - regardless of whether the subject is highways, hospitals, or sewage treatment plants.
Transit is a very nice public amenity, and is no doubt appreciated by our visitors, but neither attribute explains why it shouldn’t be paying its own way.
So, from a public policy perspective, the only social need that can justify tax subsidized transit services is the benefit to those citizens who are either too young, too old, or too broke to own and operate their own vehicle. We should evaluate transit funding in the context of the value of their mobility compared to competing social needs.
The sponsors of this public discussion ask only that the conversation be relevant to the actual conditions in our area, not New York or LA, and suggest that assessing the value of, and appropriate expenditure for, mass transit should be based on verifiable benefits, not ideological faith.
Next: Part II
Is it possible to have enough mass transit? How do you know when you get there?
August 13th, 2008
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