Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan is on life support after two proposed alternatives died yesterday in the Senate. Only McDonnell’s plan, slightly modified in the House of Delegates, remains and the Senate is not very enthusiastic about it. The McDonnell plan would abolish the 17.5-cent gasoline excise tax and rely primarily on a sales tax increase for revenue instead.
Yesterday in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, I explained in an op-ed why the McDonnell plan was both a step in the wrong direction for Virginia and a dangerous precedent-setting move nationwide:
To be fair, the governor is absolutely correct that Virginia’s gasoline tax revenue has stagnated. This can be traced to several factors. Since the 17.5-cent gasoline tax was last raised in 1987, inflation has eroded that revenue’s buying power by more than half. Cars have become much more fuel-efficient thanks to both federal regulations and changing consumer preferences, which means less revenue is collected per mile driven. Finally, and most importantly, recent driving trends suggest Virginia officials no longer can assume Virginians will continue to drive more year after year.
This does not mean revenue from the gasoline tax ought to be replaced by sales tax revenue. To do so would violate the longstanding highway funding principle of user pays/user benefits. Relying on users is the fairest way to fund highways. Payment is proportional — the more you drive, the more you pay. Charging users also ensures a reasonable level of funding predictability, because highway use does not vary wildly in the short run. And given that user-tax revenue roughly tracks road use, it provides an important signal as to how much infrastructure investment is needed to maintain a desired level of efficiency. Highway users pay, but they also reap the benefits of the resulting infrastructure investments and improvements.
Furthermore, relying on sales tax revenue is far riskier in the context of expensive, multi-year transportation projects that require stable funding. Virginians’ consumption of iPhones and dog food is a poor proxy of the commonwealth’s road use. Other jurisdictions’ large-scale use of dedicated sales tax revenue for transportation demonstrates this risk. In 2000, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority began to be funded heavily by a dedicated sales tax. From 2000 through 2009, sales tax revenue grew at only one-third the rate initially projected. This only exacerbated Massachusetts’ existing transportation funding and management problems.
A better-balanced approach to transportation funding would center on preserving and strengthening the user-pays approach with modern technology and practices. All-electronic tolling should be greatly expanded, as it doesn’t face its technological ancestors’ collection cost disadvantage relative to fuel taxes.
Virginia pioneered the use of transportation public-private partnerships and should continue to be a model for the rest of the nation. Private financing and management are powerful and effective tools, which have the bonus of being taxpayer-friendly.
Vehicle-miles-traveled taxes are currently being studied but still face many unanswered questions relating to cost, equity and privacy. This alternative plan also would involve keeping the gasoline tax flat and allowing it to follow its natural course into obsolescence and eventual abolishment.
Read the whole thing here.
After months of confusing double-talk on whether or not he would stay on in a second Obama term, Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood announced he would be resigning once a successor is selected. I’ve expressed in the past my distaste for LaHood’s management, noting that he lacked the qualifications one would like to see in a transportation secretary.
Aping George W. Bush’s selection of Democrat Norman Mineta, President Obama appointed Republican LaHood as transportation secretary. Unfortunately, unlike Mineta — who had a fairly strong transportation policy background in Congress (where he chaired the House Transportation Committee and spearheaded the first post-Interstate highway bill) and the private sector — LaHood’s only transportation experience was a five-year term on the House Transportation Committee. Before leaving Congress, LaHood was best known as a major pork-barrel spender, which if anything made him even less qualified for the top DOT spot during the post-earmark Congress.
LaHood is a big spender at heart, and not much else, which is why it should not be surprising that his four-year term as head of the Department of Transportation was marked by absurdly wasteful programming, such as the TIGER “livability” grants, increased passenger rail subsidies, and a “distracted driving” sideshow. Secretary LaHood and the Obama administration were out to lunch for the most significant transportation policy battle during his term, the reauthorization of surface transportation law. After the Obama administration came out with a transportation policy proposal completely lacking in seriousness, Congress ended up crafting and passing the MAP-21 highway bill, which did nothing to resolve the structural problems facing federal surface transportation policy.
While “Good riddance!” was my first reaction to LaHood’s resignation announcement, the most likely successor — professional political climber and current L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – is even less qualified for the job. But picking Villaraigosa would continue President Obama’s general ignorance and acquiescence to clueless special-interest activists on matters of transportation policy. It is just a sad fact that slick, photo-op politics trump sensible policies in the Obama administration.
ADDENDUM: Villaraigosa has taken himself out of the running.
Have a listen here.
Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell recently released a headline-grabbing plan for the state’s transportation funding that would abolish the state’s gasoline tax and raise other taxes to make up the difference. Fellow in Land-use and Transportation Studies Marc Scribner is critical of the plan, and prefers policies that fit the user-pays, user-benefits principle.
A great deal of news coverage today has been given to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) decision to remove backscatter X-ray strip-search machines from U.S. airports and to replace them with millimeter wave full-body scanners, with many outlets implying that this is somehow a major win for travelers and those concerned about effective air security and privacy rights. This analysis, however, ignores the bigger underlying issues, as well as recent TSA policy.
This shuffle actually began in October of last year, when the TSA announced it would begin replacing backscatter machines with millimeter wave machines, which run on software capable of producing “gingerbread man” depictions of customers rather than nude images. Then a subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee recognized that this shuffle failed to address core criticisms of body scanners broadly and held a hearing on the matter in November. What happened today is that the TSA is ending its contract with OSI (parent of Rapiscan Systems), manufacturer of the original whole-body scanner, because OSI was unable to meet its deadline to come up with software capable of generating the newly required “gingerbread man” passenger depictions through its backscatter X-ray machines.
It is important to keep in mind that this technology was originally developed and marketed for the purpose of protecting high-security environments, such as prisons and sensitive government installations. It was only after the U.S. was swept by a wave of irrational paranoia following the September 11 terrorist attacks that anyone seriously considered putting whole-body scanners in airports — and treating air travelers like prisoners.
The core issues that TSA has repeatedly failed to address began with TSA’s flouting of the law that required them to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act. Public and expert comments were never solicited and never taken into account before the TSA began purchasing and deploying these machines. It remains to be seen if they are at all effective in reducing risks to air traveler safety, let alone if these potential risk reductions justify the privacy-invading airport security policies that the United States foolishly adopted after 9/11.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed suit against the TSA’s illegal deployment of whole-body scanners. A court later ordered that the agency was in fact in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and that it must open the required notice-and-comment rulemaking proceeding. A year after the court’s order, the TSA still had not complied. EPIC petitioned for a writ of mandamus in an attempt to force the agency to promptly begin the proceeding they are legally required to conduct. The Competitive Enterprise Institute led a diverse coalition supporting EPIC’s petition, filing an amicus brief on the coalition’s behalf. The court rejected EPIC’s mandamus petition, but in doing so effectively set a timetable for the TSA to begin its legally required rulemaking proceeding. The TSA is obliged to announce the proceeding no later than the end of March.
In August, former American Airlines Chairman and CEO Robert L. Crandall and I coauthored an op-ed explaining why the TSA’s use of scanners is both illegal and likely just another cog in the federal government’s growing apparatus of counterproductive aviation security policies. For instance, due to nonsensical and offensive post-9/11 airport security theater, many short-haul travelers have abandoned flying and taken to the far more dangerous roads. Three Cornell University economists have estimated that 500 additional annual road deaths can be attributed to this phenomenon. Have that TSA’s porn-and-grope airport security policies prevented more than a full 747 of airline terrorism casualties every year? I find this highly unlikely given the rarity of terrorism, and especially air terrorism.
What is the takeaway here? While it is true that the millimeter wave scanners coupled with the “gingerbread man” software are less intrusive than the backscatter X-ray machines they are replacing, the underlying problems with whole-body imaging such as the lack of sound, risk- and cost-based security policy and the TSA’s continued lawless behavior remain unaffected.
Green paternalists often gush about the great potential for hybrid electric automobiles to reduce negative externalities, or social costs, such as local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions that result from driving. In addition to classic externalities such as crashes, congestion, and air pollution, excessive noise is also one form of social cost, albeit a relatively small cost — remember the “whistle tipped” modified exhaust pipe video that went viral several years ago? The Federal Highway Administration has estimated that noise externalities average 0.06 cents per mile for cars and light trucks, while a paper by Mark A. Delucchi and Shi-Ling Hsu arrived at an estimated cost of 0-0.4 cents per mile. To put this in auto-externality perspective, crashes (which account for three-quarters of automobile social costs) average something like 15 cents per mile.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is now moving in the opposite direction, and will soon begin a regulatory proceeding that will require that hybrid and electric vehicles emit sounds when they travel at low speeds (this would mean an audible alert whenever the vehicle is started and still stationary, in reverse, or traveling under 18 mph). Presumably, this is to benefit the blind, although NHTSA reveals in its own benefit-cost estimates that bicyclists will benefit more than pedestrians, and cycling is generally not a viable transportation mode for those with poor or no eyesight — not to mention that cycling has a much smaller travel modal share than walking. To many, this would indicate that this isn’t much of a problem in the first place and we live in a world of ever-changing risks best addressed by markets, but those who think as much generally don’t opt for careers as government regulators or special-interest lobbyists.
NHTSA has found that hybrid electric vehicles are more likely to be involved in certain pedestrian or cyclist accidents and says we can expect to save a few dozen lives nationally per year once the regulations come into full force (doubtful). So what do we know about pedestrian and cyclist fatalities when automobiles are involved? The vast majority of pedestrian or bicyclist injury events do not involve motor vehicles. Furthermore, in roadway accident settings, more than half of cycling and about one-third of pedestrian injuries do not involve motor vehicles — meaning that the most serious threats facing many pedestrians and cyclists are their oft-inattentive selves. We also know that pedestrians and cyclists involved in accidents with motor vehicles are far more likely to be intoxicated than those involved in accidents without motor vehicles. It should not be surprising then that a disproportionate number of fatal accidents (as opposed to injurious accidents) involve intoxicated pedestrians and cyclists.
These federally mandated noisemakers will likely do little to save drunk, stoned, iPod-listening pedestrians and bicyclists from their own stupidity inattentiveness. A small class of pedestrians and cyclists may certainly benefit at least initially, although regulation risks locking in inferior technology even once some better safety method or product is developed by automakers. But if we must have this silly nanny-state micromanagement, I hope our regulatory overlords have the sense of humor to make something like this the mandated hybrid alert sound. Unfortunately, NHTSA is not thinking very creatively about the sound possibilities.
In November, I noted in The Washington Post and here on Open Market that a bill introduced in the D.C. Council contained two dangerously flawed provisions and another unnecessary and overcautious provision. Basically, the original bill 1) nonsensically mandated that autonomous vehicles operate using alternative fuels, 2) established a special tax that would further reduce consumer purchases, and 3) required that a licensed driver be in the driver’s seat of the vehicle during autonomous operation, which is unnecessary and will restrict potential testing and functionality (admittedly, this is far less severe than the first two).
Good news! The bill was amended with the most troubling provisions (1 and 2) removed [PDF] and it unanimously passed its final reading before the Council on December 18.
D.C. will soon join Nevada, Florida, and California as jurisdictions that have explicitly legalized autonomous vehicles. There are few laws and regulations that explicitly ban the operation of autonomous vehicles in the United States, making them technically legal virtually everywhere provided a licensed driver is in the driver’s seat. But these legalization efforts are important to both send a positive signal to potential developers and establish a framework to address public policy and legal issues that will arise as consumers begin to adopt autonomous vehicles. Bryant Walker Smith, perhaps the foremost expert on the law as it relates to autonomous vehicles, recently authored a fascinating paper that explores these issues in great detail. For those who want a brief overview, see Smith’s article in New Scientist.
The Sierra Club’s Beyond Oil Campaign recently released a report [PDF] highlighting what the environmentalist group claims to be the 50 best and worst transportation projects in the country. Take their claims with a grain of salt for obvious reasons, but there were a few interesting aspects of the report.
To start with the good, the Sierra Club picks on some projects that deserve it. The St. Croix River crossing between Minnesota and Wisconsin is awful, as is Seattle’s Alaska Way Viaduct replacement tunnel project — which I predict will be known as Big Dig-West.
That about does it for the good. The rest of the report is “bikes and trains, good; cars and roads, bad.” For instance, they praise D.C.’s red menace, Capital Bikeshare. This is despite the fact that Capital Bikeshare may be the least equitable government transportation program in existence (thanks to the retirement of the France/U.K. government-funded Concorde?).
A report published by Capital Bikeshare that the Sierra Club cites favorably makes this quite clear: heavily subsidized Capital Bikeshare caters to a mostly white (81% when the employed regional workforce is only 53% white), male (55% when the employed regional workforce is only 44% male), young (66% of users were under 35, compared to 17% of regional workers in that age group), highly educated customer base (an astonishing 95% of users were at least earning an undergraduate degree). Note that these demographic characteristics are pretty much the opposite of the average truly transit dependent individual (who is far more likely to be non-white, female, older, and less educated). Isn’t modal diversity wonderful?
The Sierra Club really likes train monument projects. Getting the greens’ seal of approval were the useless Midwest medium-speed Amtrak upgrades, a light rail line to some of the wealthiest outer-ring suburban Minneapolis communities, and folksy streetcars in Cincinnati. While I oppose government subsidies, I’d be willing to make one exception: buy model train sets for the Sierra Club and other rail fanboys and girls. Really nice ones. This could greatly reduce the social costs of their train obsessions by giving them less costly mainline fixes for their destructive rail addictions.
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Representatives of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 63 (ILWU) agreed to a labor contract with port operators associated with the Los Angeles/Long Beach Harbor Employers Association.
The deal, announced Tuesday, ends an eight-day strike that began when the port’s clerical workers walked off the job after complaining that they had been working for the last two years without a contract. The strike idled 10,000 dockworkers, effectively shut down 10 port terminals and halted trade into the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
“I am pleased to announce that an agreement has been reached between labor and management that will bring to an end the eight-day strike that has cost our local economy billions of dollars,” L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in a statement.
Mayor Villaraigosa’s concerns about the strike are well-founded, considering the effects of a port shutdown would be felt beyond Southern California. According to Colliers International, the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are the two busiest ports in the United States and North America, both equipped to accommodate a combined 14 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of cargo per year and make up around 40 percent of all U.S. container imports. According to Fox News, the shutdown of the two ports has kept $760 million of goods per day from being unloaded. Bloomberg reported the strike’s economic cost totaled $1 billion per day.
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This past Saturday, the innovative I-495 Express Lanes opened on the Washington Beltway. The 14-mile high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes — which were built and are operated under a public-private partnership between the Virginia Department of Transportation, the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and infrastructure companies Transurban and Fluor – provide a quicker and more predictable option to drivers who are willing to pay the variably priced toll (or nothing if they have two or more passengers in their vehicles).
The media have focused on several accidents caused by confused and careless drivers, as well as the fact that driver utilization of the new lanes is still low. In response, Transurban-Fluor will be modifying the southern entrance in an attempt to reduce driver confusion. The indispensable TOLLROADSnews has more details. Unlike some uninformed ideological critics, most transportation practitioners and analysts agree that managed lanes, which include HOT lanes, are one of the small number of tools available to offer drivers relief from congested roads and managers new revenue. The current politics make road expansion nearly impossible and mass transit is impractical for most Americans who reside outside the New York City metropolitan area. This means existing capacity needs to be used more efficiently and variable-priced electronic tolling is the best way to keep traffic flowing.
After a rocky start in October 2011, the Atlanta metro’s I-85 express lanes have seen a 143-percent increase in average weekday traffic and a 29-percent increase in the average daily fare [PDF]. Georgia is now planning future toll lane expansions. It generally takes drivers some time to adapt to new road projects, so it is imprudent to rush to judgement about the viability of these lanes both in terms of use by Northern Virginia drivers and profitability for the private investors. Let’s just wait and see, shall we?
Along with the rising cost of bag fees, the most notorious nuisance air travelers must endure before reaching the terminal is the security checkpoint line. Travelers must frantically search and strip themselves and their baggage of anything that is made of metal or contains a certain amount of liquid. Depending on the airport you are at, after removing your shoes, belts, watches, and cell phones, travelers then walk into a full body scanner, which creates a semi-nude X-ray photo meant to detect any dangerous weapons within the travelers clothes. Whether these machines are effective or not is another issue entirely. (Earlier this year, CEI filed an amicus brief in a lawsuit questioning the legality of the government’s deployment of these scanners.)
Of course, if you planned out your trip to the airport ahead of time, hopefully you can put your belt on and tie your shoes quickly enough to make it to your flight.
So why do air travelers put up with this security routine? According to Gallup, while many Americans question the effectiveness of these screening methods, 54 percent of Americans say that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the government agency within the Department of Homeland Security that oversees airport security, is doing a good job at keeping air travelers safe.
Despite this passive acceptance of the TSA, the agency has been broiled in controversy that could possibly explain why Americans question the agencies security methods. ABC News has recently released a list of the top U.S. airports for TSA employee theft firings and an investigation into the prevalence of these theft cases.
While these cases of theft show that air travelers are probably not being adequately protected by the TSA, those who work within the agency seem to be more concerned with their own job security than the security of the passengers.
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