Transportation Issues for the Next President
August 8, 2008
Lisa Schweitzer of the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development looks at how transportation might speed up or go off the rails under the next administration.
Q: How is transportation likely to change under President McCain or President Obama?
A: Transportation investments seldom change all that much from administration to administration, because of the way transportation planning is done. I think there is some belief that Republicans invest in roads and Democrats favor public transit, but there is a lot of rail transit getting built in traditional Republican strongholds, and Michael Dukakis and Ted Kennedy helped bring us $15 billion of Boston’s Big Dig highway project.
I think both sides of the political spectrum agree that Americans’ consumption patterns have to change. For example, we had President Bush’s “addicted to oil” comments in his State of the Union address a few years ago. Barack Obama has transit in his platform, and John McCain’s platform includes advanced transportation technologies to deal with both energy and climate change. Everybody sees the writing on the wall clearly enough; the devil is in the implementation.
Q: Is the car industry responding to environmental concerns correctly? What, if anything, is the government’s role in promoting changes?
A: American auto manufacturers (a bit of a misnomer, as they are multinational) do a poor job of reading the American market over the long term. They have gotten caught again and again: first by energy price shocks in the 1970s, then through changes in production efficiencies, and now again by structural changes in energy prices. Anybody who didn’t see $4 gasoline coming wasn’t paying attention.
There are some very good engine technologies available right now. We don’t have to wait for the hydrogen economy or to rebuild all our cities around walking and transit (though we should do more of that, it will take time). New engine technologies are costly, but so is fuel now, and we’ll see greater adoption of both hybrids and plug-ins, as well as greater use of small vehicles like scooters and motorcycles, and sharing methods like carpooling.
The government has many roles to play. I think the biggest — and this is very hard because of the political and social consequences — is to let auto drivers deal with the real costs of their choice to drive. In cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, where land is expensive and housing costs are high, it’s senseless to require space for cars rather than space for affordable housing. Furthermore, if we are worried about the pollution that fossil fuel consumption causes, then we need to subject gasoline consumption to green taxes. Yes, that means raising the cost of gasoline even more. It is a painful thought, but if we want to curtail pollution from gasoline, this is the fastest way to go.
We also need to clean up other bad policy choices from the past. We charge per trip whenever someone gets on public transit. Why don’t we do the same when someone gets on the freeway, which is essentially a premium transportation service? People use the excuse that they already pay gas taxes, so they shouldn’t be expected to pay congestion tolls. But that’s a red herring. I pay gas taxes (my husband has a car), yet I still have to pay every time I get on a bus.
At the same time, we have to make sure we are providing good-quality public transport alternatives at an affordable price for urban residents with low incomes.
Q: The federal government collects a portion of gas taxes to fund road projects, but that revenue is declining as people drive less. What are the implications for transportation policy?
A: Both the federal government and the states collect gas taxes, and they are an important funding source for transportation investments. Thus higher gas prices — and lower tax revenue — are bad news for everybody.
The total purchasing power of the gas tax revenue has been dwindling for a long time. Most gas taxes are levied in cents per gallon, and most aren’t indexed for inflation. We haven’t had a major crisis in funding, but agencies have been pinched for some time between higher transportation demand and lower purchasing power.
The 2007 collapse of the Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota revealed our inability to keep up with pressing needs to fix and maintain roads and other infrastructure projects. Meanwhile, transit demand is rising at a time when one of our main funding sources is weak and getting weaker.
President Bush has just issued a new federal plan which emphasizes alternative funding sources and programmatic streamlining. But where the streamlining plan is specific, the new funding sources are vague. Nobody wants to be the guy who raised taxes. What we will probably see is an increased emphasis on road user charges and sales taxes — a shift that started a long time ago because of the weakness in the gas tax.
Q: Are there other major transportation issues that need to be addressed by the government?
A: The sleeper issue in transport is freight. Los Angeles has learned the hard way that freight has major environmental and public health consequences. Freight is also a major force at all levels of the economy: local, regional, state, national and global. The U.S. freight infrastructure system is utterly crammed right now, to the point that freight rail companies are moving out of long-term investment partnerships with governments and building their own infrastructure. We are talking trillions of dollars at stake over the next decades and enormous environmental consequences. Investment in new freight infrastructure can be either a boon to local communities or a disaster, depending on where and how it is made and whether we emphasize occupational and public health/community benefits alongside goods movement. That is going to require a lot of leadership from both the public and private sectors.
Our air transport system is suffering from both high energy costs and the demands placed on it by security requirements. Whether you believe in the security measures or not, they add a great deal of time and hassle to every single trip. With fuel costs added in, people — including business travelers — will simply not make as many trips as they did in the past. The airlines were ailing even before the fuel and security costs rose, and, except for very nimble providers like Southwest, the airlines will struggle even more unless some pretty powerful magic occurs. All of this has consequences for the U.S. economy.
Lisa Schweitzer, assistant professor in the USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development, is an expert in transit policy, alternative energy and sustainability.