Job sprawl and the multipolar city

Back in 2009 I had an interesting discussion with Alon Levy, Jarrett Walker, Jeff Wood and Damien Newton about transit and multipolar cities. Jarrett, in particular, highlighted the efficiency benefits of multipolar layouts:

If you want a really balanced and efficient public transit system, nothing is better than multiple high-rise centers all around the edge, with lower-rise density in the middle, because that pattern yields an intense but entirely two-way pattern of demand. If balanced and efficient transit were the main goal in Los Angeles planning, you'd focus your high-rise growth energies on multiple centers such as Westwood, Warner Center, Burbank, Glendale and perhaps new centers in the east and south, while continuing to add density in the middle as opportunities arise.

It's expensive to have your jobs centralized in a small area and your housing scattered around it. It results in large crowds at rush hour and empty trains and buses in the reverse peak, or else large railyards and/or bus garages in the middle of the city. In a multipolar city there are jobs and residences everywhere, so that in the rush hour there is a greater use of the transit system but it is not highly unbalanced in one direction. In Paris, for example, you have people who live in Nanterre and Noisy-le-grand commuting in to work at the Bourse or one of the government offices, but at the same time you have people who live in the Marais and the Latin Quarter commuting out to La Défense and Montreuil.

In a multipolar city like that, you want circumferential routes, not just radial ones, because it's more efficient for someone who lives in Saint-Ouen and works in Nanterre to go directly west instead of going south into the city first. New York could stand to be more multipolar, and David Giles has pointed to job sprawl as evidence that of such multipolarity emerging. In our current transportation network, circumferential highways like I-287, I-278 and the Belt Parkway are much more functional than any similar transit routes. Given this, David argues that job sprawl favors drivers over transit users. He argues that we should build "bus rapid transit" to even out this disparity.

The thing is that there's a big difference between a multipolar city and sprawl. Multipolar cities have, you know, poles. Of higher density, near major transit hubs. Sprawl has highway interchanges, but the density is still fairly uniform. You can get off the train at La Défense and walk to your job, but you can´t do that for most of the jobs in the White Plains area: they're too far from the station. Because of this, job sprawl forces most people to drive and is much less efficient than a multipolar city.

David did consult me and other smart people for his report, and on the whole I like the way it turned out. But I disagree with his ultimate conclusions, especially the emphasis on "bus rapid transit." There are two problems with that. The first is that buses are always more expensive to operate, per passenger, than trains. The second is that it won't ultimately solve the problem of job sprawl. That second point deserves a whole post, so look for one soon!

Our expensive cheap roads

On November 8, Gizmodo ran a great piece by Rachel Swaby about the deterioration of the American road system, much of it based on interviews with Tim Lomax of the Texas Transportation Institute. The roads were originally designed for private cars, with the expectation that most freight shipping would continue to be done by train. They were mostly constructed out of compacted dirt with a layer of asphalt on top, unlike the German Autobahn which was asphalt on concrete.

Truck freight offered a particular advantage over rail for shippers: on trains, small loads of a container car or two had to be decoupled from the train and possibly coupled to another train for the next leg of the journey. The more times a train had to be stopped in a yard, "broken" and reassembled, the longer the trip for the entire cargo.

A full truck, by contrast, could hold a lot less than a full train, but it could go directly from the loading point to the unloading point. Both freight railroads and road builders were surprised by the speed of the shift from rail to road. The roads were paid for by the government, and most of them were "free." Lomax tells Swaby that "companies are pushing the limits of what our roads can take, which increases their profits—but at the taxpayer's expense." It's clear to me that this has been going on for as long as there have been companies.

You probably know what happened next. The railroads began losing money, and cut their passenger service first. American housing and retail reorganized themselves around roads, and manufacturing and other industries followed. Faced with such intense demand for the roads, the federal, state and local governments embarked on a massive expansion plan. This just fed the appetite for more roads.

I've known for years about this vicious cycle of road subsidies, but I didn't make the connection with the use of dirt instead of concrete under the asphalt. It makes me wonder: if all these roads had been made with concrete, how much longer would it have taken to build out the 1950s era Interstate system? How many railroads would have avoided bankruptcy? How many downtowns would have been saved from being paved over for parking?

A real "no build" option for the Tappan Zee Bridge

By law, the environmental review for every major capital project has to include a "no build" alternative, so that the consequences of building the thing are seriously compared to the consequences of not building it. Sometimes the no-build option wins out, as with Westway and the state's plans to widen the Major Deegan Expressway in 2009. Most of the time, unsurprisingly, the no-build option is a sham to satisfy the formal requirements. Some of those times, though, the projections for the no-build scenario are so divorced from reality that it borders on fraud.

The no build alternative advanced to satisfy the requirements for the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement is really not an alternative at all. "The No Build Alternative would involve the continued operation of the existing seven-lane bridge with ongoing maintenance to keep the bridge in a state of good repair," says the Scoping Packet. It envisions the state raising tolls and taxes to maintain an increasingly deteriorating bridge, while new residents pour into Rockland. These residents would be sitting in traffic for hours each day, with traffic backed up to Coxsackie and forlorn employers in Westchester staring at thousands of empty cubicles.

As I've written before, these projections are bullshit. It's already a pain in the ass to drive across the bridge, and people have responded by taking jobs in the city or by simply not moving to Rockland, Orange and Bergen. Employers have responded by hiring people who live east of the river, or by relocating to the city.

This is true for bridge maintenance as well. Just because maintenance costs rise doesn't mean we have to pay them. We could dramatically reduce maintenance - and crashes - by simply reducing the number of lanes on the bridge. If only half as many vehicles took the bridge, it would dramatically reduce the stress. They're doing it on a bridge in Montreal, and it's a boon for transit. It's even got some people talking about BRT on that bridge - without replacing it!

I may not have been clear enough in my earlier post, but just as failing to expand the bridge will not result in huge traffic jams, unemployed Rocklanders and empty cubicles in Westchester, neither will reducing the number of cars that can use the bridge. If only half as many people can get across the bridge, then people will compensate by making adjustments to their homes, their jobs and their transportation.

The grinding traffic jams on the bridge are there not because it's such a wonderful way to get to work, but because it's underpriced. As Eric Jaffe writes, the only way to get rid of them is to charge market rate tolls. Before you protest about gouging the poor Rockland residents, let me remind you that almost all of them moved there because they could get the suburban life for cheap. It's cheap because we're subsidizing their driving, but nobody ever promised them it would be cheap forever, did they? Oh, and the State plans to double or triple the tolls even if they replace the bridge, so you should be just as mad about that.

The great thing is that as tolls go up, maintenance costs go down and the money available to pay them go up. There is likely to be a point at which the tolls cover maintenance again and other Thruway users no longer have to chip in. On the other hand, it's possible that the particular structure of this bridge is hopeless, and there is no toll level that would attract enough drivers to cover the cost. In that case, we can simply have an orderly devolution of the bridge, where we raise tolls enough to keep the bridge going for five or ten years more, and to build up capacity on the four railroad lines that serve the area.

The past ten years' discussion of Tappan Zee Bridge replacement has been full of this kind of dishonesty. Wouldn't it be nice if the discussion could be honest from now on? An honest discussion would consider the possibility that the best option might actually be to tear the bridge down and build nothing in its place, or to turn it into a greenway without building a new bridge. Instead, the three goals listed on Page 1-7 of the Scoping Packet are,

Ensure the long-term vitality of this Hudson River crossing
Improve transportation operations and safety on the crossing
Maximize the public investment in a new Hudson River crossing

These are goals for "the crossing," not for the people. They admit no solution that doesn't involve spending lots of money on "the crossing."

Tomorrow, November 15, at 5:00 PM is the deadline for commenting on the scope of the environmental review. If you think that the scope of this project is too narrow, and that the "no build" option is bogus, you need to make your opinion known. You can email them, or you can call them at (877) 892-3685. Anything you send them, they have to respond to it and they have to include it in a report.

The future of the Hudson Valley, and the future fiscal health of the State of New York, depend on us stopping this boondoggle. Please act.

Some consequences of energy depletion

Many people accept the likelihood of peak oil and climate change, but haven't quite thought through all its implications. Here are five things that I think are likely results:

- Mode shift: In the past four years, the price of gasoline has already gotten high enough relative to income that driving is unaffordable for a larger segment of the population. This trend will only continue. Biodiesel, electric cars and hydrofracking will only postpone it.

- Depopulation of sprawl: The housing market collapsed in 2007 because people could no longer afford to "drive 'til you qualify." The commercial real estate market collapsed right after because employers didn't want to be dependent on workers driving in from miles around. Most of suburban America is unsustainable at a gasoline price of five dollars a gallon, and an even bigger chunk is unsustainable at ten dollars a gallon. The recession has cut gas prices and commute times, and people have started creeping back into the subdivisions, but any recovery will send them back into more urban areas.

- Survival of cities: We have had concentrated population centers for thousands of years, and we will continue to do so. Even if the total population declines, there will still be trade and industry. Expensive energy will make the 3,000 mile Caesar salad an expensive rarity (if it survives at all), but just as the Romans traded with the Chinese, so will future Americans. These goods may not be transported by plane, diesel ship and truck, but by electric ship and rail (if we're lucky) or sailing ship, canal boat and horse (if we're not). Whatever the conveyance, there will continue to be a need for transfer, storage and distribution centers, and that means cities. They may not be as big as they are now, but we're not all going to be blacksmithing and raising goats.

- Rust belt resurgence: Shortages of energy and water will make it difficult if not impossible to live in areas that depend on air conditioning for survival, like those around Phoenix and Houston. People will move to cooler cities that are nodes in water and rail transportation networks. That means the same "Rust Belt" cities that their parents mocked: Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Springfield.

- Capital shortage: When energy, transportation and asphalt (which is made out of oil) are expensive, it will be hard to build any new infrastructure. We may be able to build some things, but that ability depends in part on how quickly we deplete the supply of fossil fuels and uranium that we have left, and how quickly we build alternatives to harness renewable energy.

- A vicious cycle of transportation inadequacy: The cost of any infrastructure project also depends on how well the transportation system is functioning when you need to transport supplies for the new infrastructure. Let's say you want to rebuild an abandoned rail line, like the old Air Line through Connecticut. If you can get the supplies 90% of the way by rail or boat, that's great. But if you need to spend exorbitant amounts the fuel to carry the supplies by truck across potholed roads, that's going to add to the cost.

Any that I missed?

Inefficient cities of the future

In response to my post on inefficient cities, Alon wrote that in Kampala his cousin observed, "The heavier vehicles take the space they want, and pedestrians get the short shrift because they're lighter than cars and if they don't make way they get run over." This is what happens all too often when there is not enough to go around - in this case, enough space to maneuver in the streets - and when the rule of law is weak. Might makes right, and the mighty happen to be the rich who can afford to buy big, heavy vehicles.

It doesn't have to be this way. In the Third World, if you go to places where there is enough street space, such as smaller towns, everyone shares. If you go to places where the rich can't bring their cars, like the narrow streets of the old towns, you can find a more equitable distribution of space.

Interestingly, in these inefficient cities even the rich with their big cars usually have trouble getting around. They may be able to get around a little faster and easier than everyone else, but they still get slowed down and frustrated.

As I wrote in the last post, Los Angeles and Houston have notorious traffic along those lines, but up to now they've been able to build lots and lots of roads to keep cars moving. Kampala and Cairo and Lagos cannot. And here's the problem for LA and Houston (and Las Vegas and Phoenix and Atlanta and Charlotte ...): some day soon, they will lose the ability to build lots and lots of roads. Once that happens, they will become as paralyzed as Cairo and Lagos.

For some, it won't matter. Vegas and Phoenix are so closely tied to the sprawl economy that if sprawl becomes impossible they will lose their reason for existence. People will leave, the cities will shrink, and if there is still a need for anyone to live and work there, they'll probably get around just fine by bike. But they are also heavily dependent on air conditioning and imported water, and if either of those break down the cities will become uninhabitable.

For others it does matter. As Kunstler has argued, coastal cities like LA and DC, river towns like Memphis and Cincinnati, and lake ports like Detroit and Buffalo, will see a resurgence. But the extent to which they function well depends on how well-adapted their transportation systems are for people without cars.

This is where rapid transit comes in. And it has to be rapid so that the transit passengers aren't stuck in the same gridlock as everyone else. The guaguas of Santo Domingo and the bachés of Bamako have phenomenal ridership, but they´re slow, uncomfortable and unreliable during peak times. Streetcars in mixed traffic aren't much better. You need to have at least a physically separated transit right-of-way, and better a grade-separated one. Cities that either have enough of those already or can build them quickly will be in better shape than those that have built themselves around private cars.

Maybe you can see now how this is getting back to the Tappan Zee Bridge replacement. I'll follow up soon.

Inefficient cities

There are lots of cities in the Third World that I'd call "inefficient cities." It's hard to get anywhere because the transportation infrastructure is so overburdened. This is illustrated by a story I read recently about Kizza Besigye, a political opposition leader in Uganda who was shot in the arm with a rubber bullet and arrested four times, for walking to work in the capital of Kampala. This is not like the stories of crazy suburban high school administrators who threaten to arrest parents for child endangerment for allowing their children to walk to school. This guy's goal was to disrupt the government by walking to work.

One funny aspect of Besigye's story was that when the police arrested him, they gave him a number of choices. One of them was to simply call for his car. Their assumption was that everyone in the Ugandan political elite has not just a car, but a paid chauffeur. Since Besigye didn't challenge that assumption, it was probably accurate.

Clearly, Besigye didn't disrupt the capital by telling his driver to stay home while he walked. That would have actually eased traffic congestion slightly. What disrupted things was that his followers also walked to work, instead of taking buses, cars or motorcycles. Why did this disrupt things? Because Kampala's pedestrian infrastructure sucks.

I haven't been to Kampala, but I've been to other cities in Africa and the Caribbean, and I know that in many of them the sidewalks are narrow or nonexistent. The cities are designed for drivers first, and pedestrians are an afterthought. With proper sidewalks, New York was able to handle crowds of pedestrians during the blackout of 2003. Only the bridge walkways were too narrow for the crowds, so the DOT opened a lane to pedestrians on every bridge. In Kampala, apparently, they can't handle a bunch of people walking to work.

There are similar stories of car traffic, of people trying to get across town in Cairo or Lagos, and giving up because they've been stuck in the same place for hours. These are places that were designed for cars, but where most of the people don't own cars. Still, there are more car owners than the roads were designed for, and the result is gridlock. Los Angeles and Houston have notorious traffic along those lines, but up to now they've been able to build lots and lots of roads to keep cars moving. Kampala and Cairo and Lagos cannot. This is why I call them inefficient cities.

Believe it or not, this still relates to the Tappan Zee Bridge. I'll get to that connection eventually.

Wenn brauchen wir Beton vor alles...

My friend Alon Levy has done a great service for the transit blogging community by introducing us to a German planning proverb: Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton. Literally it means "organization before electronic before concrete," and the idea is that changing the organization of an enterprise is relatively cheap, installing electronics is more expensive, and large infrastructure projects are the most expensive. So if your goal is to provide a service like transportation, you should look at organizational and compact solutions first, and pour concrete only as a last resort.

This is great advice when the goal is to get commuters to their jobs quicker, more comfortably and with greater flexibility. It works well if your goal is to improve access, especially for the poor, and when you're spending your own money that could go to other worthwhile problems.

The principle is less applicable when "jobs" are a goal. This could be from the perspective of Keynesian stimulus, or simply of old-fashioned patronage. When Barack Obama and Ray LaHood want to put people back to work, they're not necessarily interested in organizational streamlining.

The Keynesian practice of ignoring deficits in a liquidity trap gives them a huge pot of money to throw at "shovel-ready" projects. This would be great if it could be spent on much-needed transit maintenance and operations, but currently politicians get the greatest reward from funding big new projects, less from fixing things that are broken, even less for incremental improvements and hardly anything from keeping things running smoothly.

This combination of Keynesian budgets and "ribbon-cutting bias" means that the government is itching to spend money on stuff, and they care more about job creation than about efficiency. The transit projects that are most likely to get funded are the ones that create the most jobs for voters and donors in the districts of influential politicians. Those of us who care about efficiency may not like to see it take a back seat to considerations like stimulus and patronage, but there are different kinds of efficiency, including cost efficiency, fuel efficiency, space efficiency and time efficiency.

If it's a choice between a five billion dollar beton transit project or a 500 million dollar elektronik project, sure, we want the cheaper one. But if the government plans to spend five billion no matter what, then it's the choice between a five billion dollar transit project and a 500 million transit project plus a 4.5 billion dollar highway project. Under these circumstances the elektronik project will not ultimately save money, and the highway project will use more energy per passenger-mile and induce more sprawl.

The highway project will also compete with parallel transit lines, so it could wind up reducing energy and spatial efficiency further. It will encourage people to drive more and reduce the constituency for future transit projects, compounding the effect.

On top of all that efficiency we have other goals like reducing pollution and carnage, and increasing health and social interaction. These goals mean that we need to get people out of their cars, and for me at least they are more important than simple cost efficiency.

So yes, Organisation vor Elektronik vor Beton. But if you're getting béton anyway, then make it Schiene vor Beton.

There's another reason that I'll get into in a future post.