As you consider future transportation needs and challenges, it might be productive to install a crystal ball in your C-suite. Business managers face conflicting data today in determining the factors that will affect the surface delivery of goods and equipment to American cities, companies and consumers tomorrow. Predictive information from the recent past has simply been all over the political, economic and technical playing fields and planning for a return to transportation “normalcy,” much less planning for a robust economic recovery, is fraught with uncertainty.

The topsy-turvy days of 2008 and early 2009 saw, for example, both the highest, and lowest, relative prices for oil in history, plus of course the collapse of the world’s banking systems. In February 2009, the value of the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude fell significantly in the same week that the per-gallon price of auto fuel rose dramatically.

The stimulus package, signed a week later by President Obama, included billions of dollars in “shovel ready” highway repairs and transit improvements, but at the same time projected almost nothing for additional highway lanes or for freight rail. At the end of 2008, the year after Al Gore won the Nobel prize for “An Inconvenient Truth,” global warming—extensively affected by U.S. transportation inefficiency—dropped to last in the American public’s list of important issues. But, at the same time, the Obama Administration was advocating “green infrastructure.”

Change, indeed, appears to be the horizon in surface transportation. Consequently, if managers accept a “business as usual” approach to delivering goods during the recession, they could be left in the dust of both social and technological innovation at the exact moment prosperity returns.

It’s a “Catch 22” for the transportation planner, made even catchier by the following little-known, but highly relevant, trends in American surface transportation. 

Intelligent Transportation Systems

While the immense potential of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) vehicles will get the most press and promotion in the next few years, they are the least likely of the new concepts to become standard in the short-run.

These vehicles, which communicate variably with each other, the roadway and GPS satellites, theoretically eliminate drivers and have the implied endorsement of the U.S. Department of Defense, which proclaims that one-third of the ground combat vehicles it purchases by 2015 will be unmanned. The prototypes of these high-tech “autonomous” cars took VIPs around the Jacob Javits Center in New York City at last fall’s 15th World Congress on Intelligent Transportation Systems, interacting with each other, parked vehicles and assorted obstacles, including even a pedestrian who peaked out from behind a bus to challenge the ITS system’s “Dedicated Short Range Communications” capabilities.

But there are still a half-dozen prime issues waiting to be perfected, from highly-receptive distance sensors to software interfaces connecting previously all-mechanical steering and braking systems. Even so, however, there is little doubt that the race to develop a practical “self-chauffeured” vehicle is underway.

Today, these vehicles are being promoted primarily for their potential safety implications; proponents of the “Vehicle Infrastructure Integration” system argue, for example, that it can prevent 90 percent of America’s six million annual crashes by 2030. Besides assuring that drunks can’t turn the key, the “real-time” possibilities that make i-Phones work eliminate “driver reaction time” and assure slowing for weather and pavement conditions, circumstances which many human drivers refuse to acknowledge.

As of yet, the decreased pollution and congestion concepts of ITS have not been promoted, but it’s likely that once the annual congestion loss of 4.2 billion hours and $78 billion become better known and global warming re-gains media attention, these ITS benefits will find some traction in at least funding applications.

The prime ITS research today, however, is in “cars,” not “trucks” and while robotics already successfully move assembly-line parts around manufacturing plants, the first of the commercial ITS systems will likely show up in private vehicles. Even then, with an historical American turnover of about 8 percent of vehicles annually, it would take at least a dozen years to retire all of America’s 251 million “stupid” cars—and that’s if ITS vehicles were the only new cars available. The emotional ties that drivers have with their vehicles—cars have not been promoted as utilities since the Nazis introduced the Volkswagen—will further hinder introduction.

Even after the private vehicle market goes “autonomous,” the likelihood that long-haul drivers and trucking unions will stand quietly aside while 18-wheel computers are designed to eliminate their jobs seems debatable.

Public-private rail partnerships

Pioneered by Virginia, programs which provide governmental funds to remove 18-wheelers from interstate highways are perhaps the most intriguing, while least known, of the new transportation concepts. Primarily a congestion-mitigator, these projects provide public dollars to rebuild rail overpasses, deepen tunnels, and provide rolling stock to rail companies like Norfolk Southern or CSX in exchange for meeting dedicated goals in decreasing long-haul truck traffic.

Under Virginia’s 2005 “Rail Enhancement Act,” Norfolk Southern aligned with Virginia, West Virginia, and Ohio departments of transportation to slow the stampede of trucks along Interstate 64 from the port of Hampton Roads to the Midwest and construction got underway in summer of 2008. If all goes according to plan, trains on the “Heartland Corridor” are projected to double-stack containers for in-land transit in a competitive time frame to individual trucks using the interstate through Norfolk’s overwhelmed highway tunnels and past Richmond, Virginia and Charleston, West Virginia.

Even before the first “Heartland” public dollar was handed over to the booming rail industry, DOTs across the mid-Atlantic began conferring with Norfolk Southern to alleviate traffic on the nation’s prime NAFTA highway, Interstate 81, through the historic Shenandoah Valley. The “Crescent Corridor” will potentially put containers on rail in New Orleans and Memphis and remove them outside of the population centers of New York and Philadelphia. Much cheaper than expanding I-81, Norfolk Southern hopes to partner with state and federal governments to build pick-up and delivery terminals, sidings, deepen tunnels, and strengthen and raise overpasses to accommodate the double-stack containers. Plans call for running up to 20 trains a day along two already-existing tracks in hopes of removing 1 million trucks a year from I-81.

In public-private partnerships, state and federal tax dollars purchase, for the first time in U.S. history, capital equipment for private entities. At the end of the contract period, if the dedicated truck-removal and economic development goals can be verified, that equipment will be deeded to the private rail companies. Interestingly, this burgeoning “socialistic” concept is coming to fore not long after many European nations de-nationalized their railroads.

One prime benefit will be that truck drivers will likely find more work delivering day trips from the public-private terminals, ensuring an easier, “9-to-5” lifestyle and, therefore, decreasing driver fatigue as well as driver turnover. One prime negative is that public-private freight traffic decreases the possibility for using the same rails for passenger and commuter services. The South Texas Amtrak experience indicates that passenger service will be politely neglected in favor of trying to match the freight times of point-to-point trucking.

 

Road use, high occupancy tolls, parking, and congestion charging

A hold-over from the Bush Administration, high occupancy toll (HOT) roads—or lanes—allow drivers to buy the right for speed along heavily congested roadways. Usually paralleling existing highways, the high-occupancy toll driver pays by the number of passengers and/or weight and by the relative congestion on the nearby non-toll roadway. Typically, public dollars still build the toll lanes but private money maintains and benefits from managing the roadway, including enforcement.

Besides the normal HOV entrance and exit issues, HOT lanes suggest a varying payment structure, which might include toll alterations while the driver is in the toll lane. Does the driver pay the rate existing at the moment he/she enters the HOT where traffic is relatively light or the rate closer to his/her exit in a more congested, downtown area? Or some variable of the two? Does the higher rate stay in effect if, for example, an accident stops traffic in the toll lane? Or frees it downstream in the non-toll lanes? The true “Piguvian”—or market price—of the convenience of speed is always difficult to identify and implement and is, therefore, a drawback to HOT lanes.

Congestion and road-use charging has been the rage since London, England instituted the highly-discussed “Charge Zone” in 2004 and almost overnight inner-city speeds increased by a third. Besides developing support from the business community—who at first fought the concept but then discovered great savings in delivery times and driver pay issues with little loss of sales—congestion charging is credited with doubling the number of bicycle commuters and providing funds for improved transit services throughout greater London.

 The per-car charge, although it fostered international diplomatic incidents over whether it was a “tax” and therefore exempt to embassy staffers, was so quickly accepted that it was barely an issue in London’s 2008 mayoral race, won by the pro-business candidate. With only 16 radial roads entering the old city center, the $15 charge accessed by photographing all in-bound license plates remains reasonably easy to administer even though a black market in fake, magnetic plates appeared very early. Still, over half the income derived from London’s congestion charging is spent on administration and enforcement.

Most famously, New York City has discussed attempting to duplicate the London experience in America, but since Manhattan Island is accessible primarily by toll bridge or tunnel, a congestion charge in effect already exists and the concept of raising the tolls to a true Piguvian level has been called a “regressive tax,” unfair to the poor.

Most American cities have yet to consider congestion or road-use charging, although a number have moved toward limiting parking or market pricing it as a means of decreasing the probability of single-occupancy commutes. The Washington, D.C. area, where building downtown parking costs as much as $88,000 per space, has moved to limit new construction parking to two-thirds the number of projected employment. Washington State has followed suit.

Political conservatives seem more receptive to all the concepts that “market price” transportation, but it’s unlikely these kinds of prospects will make much headway in the near future now that the Republicans are out of power. Meanwhile, UCLA professor Don Shoup’s The High Cost of Free Parking is becoming a prized textbook in urban planning programs, indicating long-run potential.

Transportation Demand Management

Education is a key tenet in one of the world’s fastest growing—and most successful—measures to address urban and suburban surface transportation issues: Transportation Demand Management (TDM). TDM is the effort to decrease the need for supplying roadway lanes through any “hard” (or enforcement/cost efforts, like congestion charging) and/or “soft” (educational and incentive efforts) concepts, which convince drivers to try, and hopefully adapt, alternative methods of transportation.

In response to the oil embargoes of the 1970s, North America pioneered TDM, but embarked on a path that neglected the understanding of human behavior and is still generally chained to that path. Based on asking employers to provide drivers with ride-sharing and transit information, the typical U.S. program is solely commute-centered and generally asks corporate human resource personnel to distribute, promote and access compliance with concepts and regulations for which they receive no compensation or reward.

Consequently, the typical American employee hears of “ride share” or “commuter connection” programming only during annual “benefits” periods when the employee wrestles with health and life insurance and retirement plans, flex benefits, and other personally pressing issues. The vast majority of North American TDM literature, therefore, is rarely opened and virtually never promoted in a manner conducive to addressing an adult’s habitual behavior of putting one’s keys in one’s ignition for any transportation need. Montreal, Canada’s award winning, and beautifully designed, TDM materials, for example, are almost an inch thick and include seven CDs, but have affected only 2.7 percent of employees in that island-city.

Conversely, more behavior sensitive, community centered programs in Europe, Asia, and Australia have enjoyed greater success in changing driving behavior to decrease congestion and free roadways for commerce.

A great example is Perth, in Western Australia, where annually the 1.6 million citizens show a decrease in 30 million car trips, an increase of 4.4 million transit boardings, a decrease of 290 million kilometers driven, an increase in 7 million hours of physical activity, a decrease of 88 million tons of C02 emissions, and an additional savings of 5 million gallons of fuel. 

Again, those are annual changes in a booming economic area composed of freeways and suburbs.

Not quite thirty years after Western Australia eliminated commuter rail from its transportation mix, Perth-area roadways suffer little congestion today and are freely utilized by delivery trucks rarely fazed by time delays. Community pressure first began seeking a return to commuter rail in the 1980s and a decade ago Perth piloted a “TravelSmart” TDM educational program, which re-taught citizens how and why to use bicycles, feet, transit and car share for any trip, not just commutes.

Consequently, when Western Australia opened the Southern Suburbs Railway last year with 67,000 first day riders—and 90 percent approval ratings—part of the credit was handed out to TravelSmart activists. TravelSmart practitioners are hired, not for their marketing skills or degrees, but for their commitment to the environment, or to health, or to decreasing Australia’s need for foreign oil imports—and they work to connect only with citizens who want to be part of the solution to those respective issues. They, furthermore, consistently “model” the behavior (bicycling, transit usage, carpooling) they seek, yet continually declare that in many situations driving is the only workable transportation possibility.

The economic benefit-cost analysis conducted by Western Australia indicates that the TravelSmart program—when health, global warming, pollution, and saved governmental spending issues are included—is 67:1 while the typical highway is constructed if transportation economists can find a 4:1 congestion benefit.

Accordingly, the UK announced plans last year to provide a similar educational TDM consultant to any requesting household across England, Wales, and Scotland at the equivalent cost of building 17 miles of interstate highway.

In the U.S., a 2004 Federal Transit Authority trial in Cleveland, Ohio; Durham, North Carolina; Sacramento, California; and Bellingham, Washington indicated a minimum of 8 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled due to TravelSmart-style programs. That is double the national decrease caused by the rapid gasoline price hikes in 2008, which saw the first nationwide decline in vehicle miles traveled since the year of the Iranian oil embargo—1979.

Beyond freeing highways for trucking, “soft” educational TDM has three effects that should interest business practitioners:

•    The materials have an incredible diffusion rate, well beyond anything conceived of in traditional advertising. In Brisbane, Australia, the state marketed 70,000 households, but discovered that 107,000 households were using the TravelSmart materials.

•    TravelSmart practitioners have discovered a powerful carryover of conservation attitudes into other activities as citizens who learn to decrease their driving also work to decrease their consumption of energy and supplies at the home and office while increasing recycling at both locations. “Thrift,” therefore, becomes a virtue for which the employee rewards himself, becoming “autonomously” motivated toward saving money for his employer.

•    Not spending as much money consuming gasoline and diesel provides Perth’s citizens an additional $25 million Australian annually to be spent in the consumer economy. 



Promoting TDM, therefore, provides the business transportation planner with perhaps the most successful, and certainly the cheapest, method of hedging bets toward the return of boom times. Urging government to consider behavior sensitive TDM concepts like TravelSmart establishes the business as backing jobs—because TravelSmart is labor intensive—during the down times that will help decrease delivery and transportation issues when normalcy returns.

Perhaps more importantly, promoting TDM supports President Obama’s green agenda while helping seed the transitions toward Intelligent Transportation Systems, congestion charging, public-private rail partnerships, commuter transit or other economic and technical advancements, which require expensive and extensive new infrastructure.

Overall, what educational TDM does is consistently remind individual drivers to use their vehicles intelligently, rather than habitually. It does not remove the need to get quickly from one location to another, which the personal vehicle solves beautifully; nor does it punish the driver who can’t make any realistic change. It does not attack automobiles or their drivers. Nor does it keep workers from jobs or purchasers from stores. Rather, it helps citizens recognize that his or her actions are comparatively as detrimental to the environment, to health, to U.S. foreign policy as corporate actions, which in the long run, aid in decreasing potential anti-business animosity during future economic or social crises. wt

    

Randy Salzman is a former journalism and communications professor who writes about in-depth transportation and sustainability issues.