ISSN 1052-7524

Proceedings of the Transportation Research Forum

Volume 7 1993

35th TRF Annual Forum New York, New York

October 14-16, 1993 The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 51

Environmental Goals and Infrastructure Realities: Transportation Dilemmas and Solutions"

Scott E. Nadler, Moderator Assistant Vice President Consolidated Rail Corporation

My name is Scott Nadler. I'm Assistant budget analyst fresh out of college, when Vice President ofEnvironmental Quality the wise old heads assured me that it with Conrail. was a lot more fun to be a budget was no money. The examiner when there distinction between a truism and a That didn't make a lot of sense. They cliche is that a truism is what you say said, sure it does. and a cliche is what somebody else says. Let me start with two truisms that I When there is no money, there are no think will be central to what we are here easy choices. Everybody has to deal to talk about today. One is that with some pain. Therefore, you don't everything connects to everything. I spend time convincing people to make t hought I had some sense of that. I painful decisions. It is only a question of l earned it a lot more poignantly in the which painful decision. Half the fight is Year-and-a-half that I've been managing a already fought for you. corporate environmental program. It is clear, though, that it is not a principle On the transportation side, that is the that has always been put thoroughly terms into world we are dealing in today. In practice, particularly from a public of conventional funding sources and Policy standpoint. mechanisms, there is clearly a crisis. It can potentially be an opportunity, as We've got a lot to learn about how to well. make sure that everything does really connect up to everything and that it To talk to you about making those c onnects up in our thinking and not just connections and the ways in which a in the effects. In particular, there is a crisis can be turned into an opportunity dynamic of the funding mechanisms,the to help make those connections, we Politics oftransportation, especially from brought together three people who spend the highway side, that has really helped a lot of time and brain power looking at s eParate transportation programs from these issues. the environment in which that trans- Portation takes place. We need to at look First you will be hearing from Jim how those connections take place. Tripp. Jim is General Counsel of the The Environmental Defense Fund. His second truism that we will be education includes the University of talking about today is that crisis can be Munich and a Masters ofPhilosophy and an opportunity. I learned that as a a Law Degree from Yale. He has been

1 A grant from Conrail helped make this session possible. 52 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 with the Environmental Defense Fund some issues in the tri-state since 1973. transportation area,where we are now — New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Then you will hear from Sam Schwartz, — and how we are trying to address better known as "Gridlock Sam" from those issues. his column in the New York Daily News. Sam is Executive Director of the As Scott indicated,transportation — how Infrastructure Institute and is on the we use transportation dollars, what our faculty of Cooper Union. He is also Vice transportation system looks like, and President of Hayden Wegman, a how it functions — has emerged verY consulting and engineering firm. clearly in the last two years as a major domestic environmental issue — much Sam was with the City of New York's more as national and environmental Department ofTransportation for nearly groups are more concerned than 20 years, culminating in the role of previously. engineer and first Deputy Commissioner. What are the environmental resources He is a licensed professional engineer, on which our transportation system has and his education includes a B.S. from a major impact? They are air, and, Brooklyn College and a Masters in Civil indirectly, water and land — all kinds of Engineering from Penn. land resources — and energy.

Batting cleanup here will be Brian It would be fair to say that trans- Ketcham, who is President of Brian portation infrastructure, and the kind of Ketcham Engineering and Executive development that it supports,have major Vice President of Konheim & Ketcham, impacts on all of those environmental an environmental consulting firm. resources.

Brian was trained as a design engineer In terms of air quality, it should be clear at Case Institute of Technology and at in most of the major metropolitan areas MIT. He has worked for over two of the country that our non-attainment decades on clean air and transportation for ozone is due in large part to planning issues, including air pollution transportation. control work for the City, authoring its first comprehensive transportation The transportation sector combination of control plan in the early 1970's. automobiles, trucks, and buses contributes in a very significant way, in Brian has been deeply involved in trying some cases more than 50% of the VOC's to quantify the societal costs of and NOX, and therefore is a transportation, particularly motor predominant force in determining what vehicles, and is a founding member of ozone levels are. the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. That, in turn, has major impacts on public health, on visibility, and on James Tripp, Counsel environmental resources like forests. So, Environmental Defense Fund any effort to clean up the air in the country and to improve visibility and My plan is to talk about some national public health in our cities in terms of air transportation and environmental issues, quality means placing significant and then to talk more regionally about constraints on our transportation system. The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 53 In terms of water, what goes into the air want to see land relentlessly chewed up verY often ends up in the water, and that and consumed for development and for ls. certainly true of nitrogen oxide. more highways. So,there is a constraint Airborne nitrogen oxides are a major there. cause of festering nitrification, e nutrient nrichment. From an environmental point of view, in most metropolitan areas, virtually all The transportation sector in this country the watersheds, forests, wetlands, flood consumes about 60% of the oil, half of plains, farm land, whatever is left, is which is imported, so the demand for valuable and important. From an fossil fuels by our transportation sector want c environmental point of view, we to ontributes oil spills and everything save as much of that as possible. associated with oil imports and tr ansshipment. Energy — the transportation sector consumes something like 60% of the oil You may ask why a transportation and a third of the fossil fuels consumed sYstem contributes to so much air in this country. What difference does it Pollution? Well, every mile that a truck make? or a car goes, it produces pollutants. What difference does it make that the Trucks and cars can get cleaner, but United States consumes five times the there is a tremendous amount of worldwide per capita average in fossil congestion on a lot of our highways, fuels? It seems to me, as an Particularly in urban metropolitan areas. environmentalist, we should be thinking So, You can say, well, isn't the solution of transforming our transportation t herefore to build more highways, to system or structuring a transportation e ncourage people and businesses to move system in this country that to some further away to have more sprawling degree makes d sense for the rest of the ecentralization? We then come up world from an equitable and fairness against land. That is the constraint. point of view.

Row much land in the country do we For historical reasons we developed Want to consume through the much before the t rest of the world. The ransportation sector in the form of new rest of the world wants to become rich, highways and loops and interchanges but then, what is the world going to look and parking lots and garages? How like? Imagine if all the major cities of Much land are we willing to see the world and other countries replicated s acrificed, particularly in our the kind of transportation system we l zetropolitan areas, through further have and they used energy the way that Metropolitan expansion, the kind of we do. sPrawl that this country has witnessed and in many ways promoted over the The energy consumption of the world last 40-50 years? would go up four or five times. Whatever your feelings I are about think it would be fair to say that if you greenhouse gases, I think it would be look at major metropolitan areas across fair to say that the result would be this country,there are increasingly vocal disastrous. conservation groups, land conservation groups, environmental groups, civic From an environmental point of view, groups, community groups, that do not certainly national but also from a global 54 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 point of view, there is a need to decrease Resources Institute a year or two ago did significantly the amount of energy used a little study showing that users of in our transportation sector. Over the highways and trucks and cars are next 30-40 years, when I say decrease, I subsidized by general taxpayers very am talking about a two-thirds decrease, significantly. at least, in terms of fossil fuel consumption. Waterways, in terms of freight movement, are heavily subsidized. How do the different modes of Barges pay a small amount per gallon of transportation play out against all these fuel. They've never paid for any of the environmental factors? Well, you can do capital costs of building the waterway this as well as I can, but if you look at system in this country. freight, it seems that trucks are a major cause of urban air pollution; they Freight rail, in general, pays real estate contribute in a major way to congestion taxes and is not subsidized. Conrail, in metropolitan areas. Cars are the which was the old Penn Central, clearly other major component of it. When we received significant government are talking about doing something about subsidies to get it off the ground. air pollution, that is what we are really directing our attention to. Obviously, In any case, I think a general case could the direct air pollution impact of rail be made that there is not a direct depends on whether we are talking relationship between the environmental about an electrical mechanism or diesel. impacts associated with each mode of transportation, whether we are talking In terms of energy use, obviously it about passenger or freight, and the depends on load factors and so on, but levels of government subsidies. there is certainly evidence that passenger rail and passenger bus, and In fact, it would seem to be an inverse freight rail can be more energy efficient. relationship. That explains, in general, In terms of land, there is in much of this why environmentalists are enthusiastic country a significant amount of rail about transit in terms of passenger capacity in place. Much of it is not transportation,and a greater role for rail being used. So, from a land resource in terms of freight movement. point of view, it would make more sense to use that rather than expanding the From a national point of view,one of the existing highway system. overall general solutions to all of that is that ISTEA funds should be used first Waterways,of course, are another major and foremost to repair and maintain the mode of freight transportation, and highway system, not to pay for any waterways have done significant damage highway expansion. to the rivers and wetlands of this country. In my view, we shouldn't build any more highway capacity until we have brought If we look from a cost point of view, all the highways and bridges in the what mode receives the biggest country up to a state of good repair. government subsidies across the board? Who pays the most taxes or least taxes? Gas and fuel taxes should go up over the Certainly there have been studies that next 10-15 years to the levels we see in have been done, and Brian Ketcham is Europe and Japan. All states in the going to go into these more. The World country should adopt the laws of Califor- The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 55 ilia for tailpipe emission standards, and tremendous amount of air pollution. there should be equivalent standards for What is our solution to that? trucks. I think the only viable, realistic solution We should install a system of roadway- is to take steps to reduce the amount of highway bridge pricing using automatic driving and adjust the amount of vehicle vehicle identification systems to miles travelled. That would be for both internalize our costs of t highway trucks and cars. ransport. Those are the directions in which we will be relentlessly moving for The solution has been to build more all kinds of reasons. highway capacity. That is self-defeating. It just can't work. It is too expensive. Now, let me talk about this region here — the Tri-state region. The Tr -state the amount Tr Our stated goal is to reduce ansportation Campaign was started in of driving one percent per year, at least early 1992. It now consists of 14 until we come to ozone attainment. This en vironmental groups from New York, is 15% from now to the year 2007. It is New Jersey, and Connecticut. going against the trend, which has been It up. It is a very modest proposal. As ranges from groups like the Regional back to P somebody pointed out,it takes us lanners Association that does a lot of the amount of driving we were doing in analytic thinking and planning, to this region in the early 1980's. It is not groups that are primarily concerned with taking us back to the 1930's or 1890's. grass roots mobilization and public e ducation, such as the Environmental So, we are going to reduce congestion by Justice Alliance. not adding any lane capacity, unless certain very stringent criteria are met. Brian Ketcham, from whom you will As I said before, in my view, all ISTEA hear in a moment, is also a member of dollars that are available for this region, the campaign. at least any money we are going to spend on highways, should be spent on I think you are going to see citizen-based repair and maintenance of the highway °rganizations like this sprouting up all system, before we spend a dollar on over the metropolitan areas of the adding capacity. country. To do all that, it means we have to shift There has really not been a social and car riders to multi-occupant cars, vans, environmental voice in terms of tr buses, rail, and so on. That is one ansportation planning and the way tr approach. It also means we have to ansportation dollars have been spent, improve transit. There are a number of Whether we are talking on the freight good things going on in this region, Side or the passenger side. particularly in New Jersey, to improve our rail services. The most closed agencies in the country are probably the transportation agencies, But, we need to resuscitate rail text to maybe the agricultural agencies. passenger service where it has been abandoned, and we have to look at ways What are we proposing for our region? of selectively expanding the rail system, We are all aware of the fact that there is particularly to service suburban too much congestion, which leads to a communities. So, we need some major 56 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 physical investments in the physical I don't see any way of reducing the transit system. amount of truck traffic significantly other than allowing easy access into Pricing policies — Brian will talk more New York and through New York into about this, but if we are going to have a Long Island and New England with rational, efficient transportation system additional freight capacity. here, gas taxes will have to go up, highway pricing schemes will have to be These are, needless to say, all tough implemented. People who use roads and challenges, but I do think we are dealing bridges and parking lots should pay. here, on the one hand, with public Similarly, employers in suburban areas values, public choices, public education. should promote the use of vans. As a nation, we need to stop subsidizing Recalcitrants in transportation agencies employee parking. and elected officials are going to have to listen to what people have to say. Big changes are going to be needed in terms of land use policies. We can no Groups like EDF and the other members longer afford the kind of decentral- of the Tri-State Transportation ization, sprawl, and dispersal that has Campaign are going to have a major role been going on. It consumes energy; it to play in changing those attitudes. produces air pollution; it consumes land.

We are working on a number of Samuel Schwartz, Vice President proposals that would create incentives Hayden Wegman for more focus on development in what is called centers — urban centers, villages, Jim talked about a number of communities near transit modes, etc. constraints, including land, energy, and environmental constraints. I maintain This will inevitably require not only a there is another constraint that is going tremendous amount of public education to get the general public's attention to persuade people that they should want much more quickly and that is the crisis to save open space, but also state of the infrastructure. As Scott said, in legislation in the three states to amend crisis there is also opportunity, and that land use empowering acts. is really the gist of what I would like to talk about. As I said, our goal is reducing our truck traffic one percent per year, or 15% over There is tremendous opportunity in this the next 15 years. That would mean infrastructure crisis and we should view shifting a lot of what now moves through it that way. But, we need to understand the region by truck to rail. the magnitude of the problem, how we got to that problem, otherwise it is going That probably entails, in my view, to overwhelm us. developing some freight rail capacity between New Jersey and New York that The first slide shows some beautiful now doesn't exist. If that can be infrastructure, the bridges, from the combined with additional passenger rail distance. Imagine you are looking at capacity, all the better. that right now. This is last year and this is an almost daily occurrence. The Port Authority is beginning to look Somewhere in the city, infrastructure is at that. collapsing — over 600 water main The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 57 br eaks, several hundred sewer collapses Painting and cleaning steel, keeping the — bridges do collapse in the city, decks salt off of it. The steel would go on not are collapsing. 20 years, not 50 years, not 100 years. We have looked at steel on the Brooklyn There are over 400 locations where decks Bridge, which is about the oldest steel. are in danger of collapsing in this city. Steel has only been around 140 years or It is a regular scene in which so. The steel at the Brooklyn Bridge I nfrastructure is being overwhelmed by that was sheltered is 110-115 years old. the neglect, the decay, and it is failing. It is in perfect shape. That means a lot of attention and a lot of dollars that could go into other things. If you keep steel clean,I don't know how It also means that we don't begin to long it would last. Maybe 500 years. Plan. What we do is we just respond e to Certainly in the hundreds. But the steel raergencies. that we see that is unpainted, after 10- 15 years is tissue thin. I used to take This slide is the emergency in front of people on tours of the bridges. I would Grand Central when 42nd Street burst. It have a hammer in my back pocket and I stopped the auto and bus traffic on would go right through the web of a 42nd Street and the train traffic below beam and I'm not superman. It is that 42nd Street. thin. We had an opportunity. If we had been The solution, again, is very simple — ready, if we had been prepared, we could clean it. Paint it regularly. It costs have rebuilt the street in some other pennies. Instead, all that steel has to be Way. It is just that we are running from e replaced. Bridges are being knocked mergency to emergency. down. A hundred bridges in the City of New York alone have to be rebuilt from I remember when Madison Avenue scratch at a cost in the billions because exploded around 23rd Street. We put in of lack of maintenance. You can see the Some pedestrian islands and some other same thing with concrete, where it has things. We had an opportunity to make been allowed to corrode where cracks change. But, we did it haphazardly. We begin. Just thought, it is a good idea, we can r econstruct it now. This is the North Channel Bridge. You can see that the bridge is, in effect, But, the infrastructure is so levitated from that point. That bridge overwhelming that all we are going to had to be knocked down do and another is replace it in kind. Sometimes it is bridge put in its place for $70 million. more than just an inconvenience. That was from not doing the very basic Sometimes it is downright dangerous, as preventive maintenance work. When the FDR drive collapsed in 1989 and killed a motorist below. We have Part of this is also age, and we are going all seen other terrible ones. The to see in city after city that there is a Schoharie Creek, the New York State time in which you have to do Thruway collapse that killed ten people. rehabilitation work, you have to do some capital replacement. In New York City, A lot of the infrastructure crisis is so this is where we are now, and it is the easy to solve that it is stupid we are in a same for the sewers and a lot of the Position like this. It is as simple in other infrastructure. I've got lots of age many cases as just painting steel. charts, but I won't show you all of them. 58 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993

You can see we built our city between In some cases, if you do no maintenance, the years 1890 and 1940 or 1950, and it you can lose your steel in 15-20 years. was built to last about 100 years. So, a That would be in very active areas lot of these systems are coming due now. where you've got cars splashing water We are going to have to replace almost and salt. So, if you have one generation all of our infrastructure. But,if we have of a gap in maintenance, as we had here, to do that, how can we pay attention to then you will lose your structures. anything else? We are so stupid in not doing preventive Maybe we should be prepared to think maintenance, since it is cheaper. about what we are going to leave on the Instead, what we do is we just use up surface as we rebuild every street in the our facilities. We consume our bridges, City of New York. As you can see, what our water mains, our sewers. We use will happen if we don't pay attention to them up and then build them new. It is our infrastructure is that the projected like disposable razors and disposable number of water main breaks will be in diapers. That is what we do with our the thousands from 600 today. You will infrastructure. have crews racing from water main break to water main break, instead of When I was with the City, we knew we from fire to fire. weren't doing the job right, so we commissioned a group of universities, of No matter what city you are in this which Cooper Union where I'm now at country, you will find there was usually was one. They studied the bridges of the a fairly condensed period in which the City of New York and I asked them, infrastructure of the city was built. with the inventory of the bridges in the That means that it will all come City of New York, how much money together at one time. should we be spending annually. I was amazed at the answer. They said, to do The day will come in which you have to the job right, you should be spending start thinking of replacing or $150 million a year. I said, that is very rehabilitating it. You can stretch it out interesting because I am spending $400 if you do some maintenance, but if you million a year. didn't, as we didn't in New York, everything is due at the same time. It is The reason we are spending $400 million an enormous bill and it overwhelms the a year is we are doing almost no ability to do good environmental preventive maintenance and almost all planning, good transportation planning. capital replacements. Instead of However, if you think of it in the long repainting the beam, we are replacing term, there is an opportunity and I'll the beam. So, we are wasting a quarter discuss that. of a billion dollars a year.

What this slide shows is that you can If we started today and said, let's do the offset the affects of age. A study by a job right, about a dozen years from now group of universities found that as you in bridges alone, you would have an increase your maintenance, your life extra quarter of a billion dollars. You increases and if they went to 200 years, would be wondering what to do with it. it might well be infinity. Two hundred If you did it for all the infrastructure in years is the life of steel that is well the City of New York, it is probably one maintained by paint. to two billion dollars. The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 59 If You did it in the country, it is tens of maintained. Parts of it are literally billions of dollars. I've never quantified falling down. Parts of it have been It, but there is a huge amount of money, closed, and another big portion of it is a huge resource that we can grow in our going to be closed. Own country. If we unleash that, we would be arguing to a greater extent In our lifetime, this highway was What programs we should for be introducing widened from a parkway to an our cities and our other areas. expressway and the Verrazano Bridge City with 12 But, was built in New York we are so wrapped up in trying to lanes of traffic and no rail going across catch up and maintain our infrastruc- it. There is no side walk, no place for ture, that we do not look long term to bike riders. find out it really costs less right. to do the job So, in our lifetime, we created the problem that this roadway is going to We are way behind other countries. We have to be shut down, but a whole tried to get New York City up to gear, so depending upon we borough was built up studied other countries. the automobile. oortie of them do 50 times the amount of This crisis is looming just around the In frastructure preventive maintenance corner. Brian is going to get into this in work that we do, when r the comparison is much greater detail, but it is a major eplacement value of the structures. So, we crisis that the city is facing. are really way behind. There are ways that the Part other of the infrastructure crisis is the infrastructure crisis is going to fact that there has been less investment dramatically hamper transit that has an by all government levels. You can see impact on environment. the bow the As it has come down since the late 60's. transit system deteriorates, people will turn more and more to their cars. part of it is due to the fact that the federal government used to be an equal What is not known people is Player by most in infrastructure for urban areas that the bridges that are over the transit and it now contributes less than one-fifth to systems, let alone the bridges that carry infrastructure. This slide shows a the transit system, are structurally road that stretches from the Battery deficient. which leads right into Manhattan, to the Verrazano Bridge at Eighty percent of the Transit Authority the other end. That leads into the bridges in Brooklyn, that's 84 bridges, borough of Staten Island. are structurally deficient. As they get repaired,there will be track closures and The road was once a parkway, the maybe complete closures. Gowanus Parkway. It is eight lanes in this section and six lanes just south of There may be emergencies. There was a the Expressway. day in December, the coldest day of the year in 1989, right before Christmas, The Gowanus Parkway is the major when they were told by the state to shut route through this part of Brooklyn. down the N Train, because the bridge There are no other expressways or other going over it they thought was in danger 'united access highways. It has not been of collapse. 60 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993

I had 20 engineers and we did some should that bridge function? Should we emergency work and we kept the trains have more transit? Should we have running. But, what that would have more pedestrian ways? Instead, our meant is that all the people in that part mode of operating now is to build in of Brooklyn could not have gotten in by kind what you've got, so the sidewalk public transportation. ends up where the sidewalk is now, the street is where the street is now. They would have had to go to their car or some other form of transportation. This was a project that we worked on This is threatening our transit system about 15 years ago. It was an ugly and very few people even know about it. traffic area right in front of Long Island University that we transformed into a When you look at the magnitude of our very nice, attractive area. You can still facilities in New York City and you look see where the street went. at the situation nationally, you begin to wonder whether we can do anything At dozens of locations around New York more than just keep up. Can we even City, we took streets and made them keep up with all of these facilities, a into attractive pedestrian areas. Right thousand schools, tunnels, thousands of now the city is looking closely at the bridges? Of course, one of the things Herald Square area. that is important is to start thinking about demand in infrastructure. We There is real opportunity — a half- ought to be looking at that. million people pass through this area above or below ground every single day. In New York, we accidentally lost a highway,the West Side Highway. It fell What is needed is a vision of the city. down and Brian Ketcham and others We had a vision at one time. Before kept it from being rebuilt, and we are 1910, we thought we were an attractive surviving. city. We thought we would get around by rail. In San Francisco, there was an earthquake that knocked down Every major facility had rail built into it highways, and they are surviving. We — lots of rails — six tracks on the ought to ask ourselves, did we build too Williamsburg, six on the Queens. much infrastructure? borough, four on the Brooklyn, four on the Manhattan. Since 1910, we have There is tragedy on the West Coast and decided we are a different kind of city. here was a bit of tragedy also, but maybe we don't have to wait for We are not a rail city. Some-where tragedies. Maybe we ought to think there was that planning that said, we about reducing our infrastructure to are going to build major facilities in this some extent. town without rail. So, no major bridge has been built that included rail. When I say there is an opportunity, we have 6,000 miles of street in New York Not only that, but the policy that has City. If almost every water main or gone on for the past 70-80 years said, sewer would have to be replaced over the let's correct the mistake of providing rail next 50 years, we ought to be debating on these facilities. We began to remove right now what that street should look all the rail from the Brooklyn Bridge, like. How should it function? How four tracks from the Williamsburg The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 61

Bridge, all the tracks from the about $730 billion. In fact, it ranges Queensborough Bridge, and only two are between $500 billion and $1.0 trillion. oPerating on the Manhattan Bridge For example,congestion costs about$150 because we didn't maintain the bridge. billion in losses today, nationwide. This is progress. Traffic accidents are the big ticket item. Progress is the Brooklyn Bridge when it The economy is losing about $400 billion had all four tracks going across it in a year just due to traffic accidents. 1907, its peak year of usage — over Automotive air pollution could be costing 400,000 people used the bridge. We then as much as $200 billion a year in health modernized the bridge and removed the costs. tracks and now 178,000 people use the bridge a day. In crop and property damages,depending upon how you analyze it, we use a much SO, there was a policy of non-rail, and more conservative $30 billion in losses this was a deliberate attempt to every year. modernize the city. We need the reverse of that. Back then they had a plan. The bottom line is they are huge costs What I am saying is that we need to and they are made all the worse by our Plan. deteriorating infrastructure. Sam Schwartz has described the problem Over the next 30-50 years, we are going relating to New York City, but much of to be rebuilding huge parts of this city. it is true around the country. He didn't It ought to be done with a plan or else talk about how we pay for all of this, We will end up with the same thing we although he suggests that we perhaps have. We ought to think about what we are unwilling to face the music and to are — a city for cars or a city for people. finance this. I am going to go into some of that. However, the result has been a vicious cycle. Brian Ketcham, Executive Vice President If we don't maintain our transportation Konheim & Ketcham system, it deteriorates and the hidden costs that are summarized on that sheet What I am going to do is try to pull grow and grow. They will continue to do those last two presentations together that until we find a solution. With what we are calling least cost transportation. Also as shown on that sheet, there is plenty of money out there to pay the cost I am going to talk about the of infrastructure repair. We are environmental costs. I have passed out spending today, in 1993, about $1.1 copies of the two-pager showing you the trillion on mobility in this country, but full cost of transportation, both the not very much on our infrastructure. direct out-of-pocket, as well as the hidden cost, the environmental cost that Nationwide, about $38 billion a year is Jim Tripp so effectively summarized. spent by local, state, and the federal government on roadway improvements, The costs are enormous in both dollar replacing bridges, highways, and so terms and in societal terms. By our forth, and building new facilities. calculation, in 1990 it looks like the Another $10 billion, by the way, is spent marginal costs or hidden costs total on transit capital improvements,just to 62 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 give you some order of magnitude and of every crack in every highway in the comparison. city, even brand new roads within two or three years. In addition to this, we are spending about $37 billion nationwide on In permitting potholes to occur, the maintenance and operations of our motorists themselves are suffering highway networks. That total comes to damages — about $300 million a year in about $75 billion. damages to motor vehicles in this city, and about $1.0 billion in damages Unfortunately, only about $44 billion of region-wide. It is the motorist's loss in that is paid directly by motorists — by one sense, and in another sense, it is the truckers and auto drivers. The rest,$31 repair industry's gain. Nonetheless, billion, comes from our general revenue repairs are expensive and it is money and property taxes. Some of this is paid spent for transportation that could be by people who don't either own or spent for other things. operate an automobile. These funds are direct subsidies to the motorist. Sam has described the huge amount of infrastructure repair that is required. A I guess if costs were paid directly by the huge amount is actually on the books in motorist, they would provide significant this city and region. Much more is additional funds to correct some of the needed,but the actions that are essential problems that Sam has outlined for you. to our future create other problems.

I think we need about double what we The problems I am relating now concern are currently spending on infrastructure transportation issues - not the to correct those problems. replacement of 6,000 miles of water mains in the city. The problem is that The title of this forum is "New York as this work accelerates, every one of City in '93," and New York is perhaps those highways is going to be rebuilt one of the worst examples of significantly over the next 20 years. The infrastructure deterioration in the problem is that as you rebuild those, you country, as far as I can tell from take a major piece of roadway out of travelling to various cities around the service, forcing a huge number of country. Sam has very effectively and motorists onto our neighborhood vividly described some of the resulting roadways. environmental degradation. I have a classic case study of this in my What about New York City? Well, in own neighborhood. I live and work in my judgment, New York City is a downtown Brooklyn. The Gowanus broken city compared to world class Expressway, which Sam has already cities. You drive through the streets and described, will, over the next 12 years, you can see what I mean. undergo reconstruction. The Gowanus moves about 150,000 to 200,000 cars and Increasingly, we look like a third world trucks a day. What Sam showed of the community. For those of you who live Gowanus is actually the portion further here, you know the problem. For those to the south on the picture, but it is of you who don't, however, just drive going to be rebuilt and is under through our pothole-littered streets. One construction now. It will probably of the worst things about New York City continue to be under construction to the is that weeds and trees are growing out year 2008, driving 50,000 to 60,000 The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 63

vehicles onto our local streets. We are illustrated. He didn't say that we could not talking about a new highway or a be rebuilding our infrastructure to a r(lior highway, but about simply standard to last 50-75 years. That is r eplacing the deck on this highway. being done in Europe and Japan instead This will severely impact the 300,000 of of fixing it each 10-20 years. Us who live and work in that corridor. Right now,the planners for the Gowanus The problem that my neighbors and I are looking at completing it up to the Will suffer might not have happened had Grand Central Parkway in 2012 or 2014. New York practiced least cost The entire roadway will be under transportation planning. I am not construction between now and 2015. We referring to least cost transportation as will then have to start all over again, sunply minimizing the direct out-of- and the same problem will be faced by Pocket or direct capital outlay to replace the same community. the roadway deck, but to the full cost of this action, including the costs borne by Sam pointed out that maintenance raY neighbors and myself. These costs produces far many more jobs and greater include the increase in traffic accidents tax revenues than does new construction. resulting from displacing 50,000 or 60,000 vehicles onto local streets. I am personally convinced that were least cost transportation planning The accident rate is about four times as practiced, we would find it less costly to high on local streets as it is on the rebuild our cities, and to minimize our expressway. That is why there is such a dependence on the mechanical modes of huge cost associated with some of these transport, we would substituting actions. Of course, this includes the proximity, that is, walking, for mobility increased health costs due to elevated air by cars and subways. Pollution levels, elevated noise levels, and so on. The Gowanus Expressway could have lasted another decade, perhaps more, They also include the increases in had New York properly maintained the Congestion, lost productivity to both structure, cleaned the drainage system, residents and more particularly to and so on. businesses in the corridor and through downtown Brooklyn. Clearly, New York brings these problems on itself. An example of this is They also include the lost value of the deal cut with Staten Island about six Property there as people find over an 8- years ago to make toll collection on 10-12 year period that they can't sell Verrazano Bridge one way instead of their homes in many instances and they collecting in both directions as BTA and won't be able to rent apartments. There all the other facilities do. are huge losses associated with the replacement of the Gowanus The result has been a redistribution of Expressway. traffic seeking free eastbound entry into Brooklyn and Manhattan. This action Were least cost transportation planning was done to protect a handful of Staten practiced in this city, I think New York Island residents from slightly elevated would spend a considerably greater air pollution levels. However, it amount of money on preventive accelerated the decay and collapse of the maintenance, as Sam has already Gowanus, causing significant effects on 64 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 my community. Least cost a means of securing greater transportation planning would have accountability of public officials who taken this damage into account,avoiding bear the responsibility for minimizing the damage suffered by Brooklyn and these cost. Forcing motorists to pay a lower Manhattan residents because of fair share of the harm they impose on one-way toll collection as opposed to two- the rest of us over a long period of time way. will produce some significant changes in travel behavior. Least cost transportation planning is a very simple concept. It forces decision As the price to drive goes up, people are makers to consider all the costs, direct going to demand alternatives, not only and marginal, and to quantify those better transit, but more efficient living costs in their totality. arrangements where people can live close to where they work and shop, as Besides congestion, traffic accidents, many of us do here in New York. noise, and air pollution, some other societal costs of travel include storm As people and freight movers make these water runoff of road salts, lead and toxic changes, our roads will be freed up for organics that are a major source of those who choose to drive, but at the uncontrolled water pollution,the damage higher costs. Air pollution levels and and cleanup costs of oil spills, noise and the like will go down greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide and significantly, as well. nitrogen oxide and CFC's, the opportunity cost of land devoted to How do we get least cost transportation highways, the cost of disposal of ten planning adopted by decision makers? million cars a year and 300 million tires, How, in fact, do we begin the very and the social consequences of depriving ambitious programs described by Jim direct auto access to people who are too Tripp for the Tri-State Transportation old and too young to drive. Campaign and by Sam Schwartz for repairing our infrastructure? There are foreign policy issues like defending our imported oil, and the First, we have to price transportation many hidden costs associated with the services in a manner that produces least manufacture of vehicles and the storage cost transportation solutions. This and refinement of petroleum products. means not only least cost to users out of pocket. It means forcing truckers to pay In the New York metropolitan area, a fair share of the real costs of using our these costs, insofar as we can quantify, roads. total about $55 billion a year in losses. This is equivalent to $3,000 per person Truckers,by the way,in New York State per year in this region. pay just 13% of the state's highway budget. They cause about 65% of the Least cost transportation planning will costs resulting from damage to our force planners to minimize these highways. California gets about 45% of marginal costs as well as to optimize the its highway budget from freight movers, use of our existing tax dollars. as does Texas, and it should be so in New York, as well. So, least cost transportation will ultimately lead to far greater changes in We should be doing this through how we price transportation and provide automated weight-distance taxing The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 65 r aeasures or programs like those cost transportation. We have to get a lot underway in Oregon. more people involved and that means we have to convince a lot more people. It also means, of course, increasing the cost to drive for all motorists cannot move forward i and The agenda ncreasing gasoline taxes, deeper additional information. We r without egistration fees, licensing fees, have to spend a lot more simply to e luninating free employer parking for understand the full cost of travel and employees, instituting automated how internalizing these costs will affect congestion pricing programs, and so on. our economy and our physical environment. We also should institute pay-at-the-pump 110-fault auto insurance on a national Not a lot of money is needed — about level. Right now, we spend about $100 $10 million in research is required to billion on auto insurance, 40% of which answer these questions. I would guess goes to brokers and the middle men. that $1.0 million a year is being invested That $40 billion could be retained by right now, maybe less. It would be motorists, or better yet, go to repair money well spent,especially by our mass infrastructure. transit industries that need to justify the heavy subsidies they receive to maintain liow to do this is going to be tough. services that people can afford to use, or Both Jim and Sam suggested it was to ensure that competing modes do not going to be tough. I think it is. There is continue receiving even heavier a ton of money out there to do this. If subsidies. we are just putting four percent of our total transportation budget into Least cost transportation can provide the infrastructure reconstruction, I think information transit operators need to sell there is a lot of money there. But look their programs. What is astonishing is What happened with the 4.34 per gallon that so far neither transit nor railroad deficit reduction gas tax Congress operators at any level have been willing enacted. Truckers went ballistic on that to finance this research. Like our one. President, they too may not understand the numbers. Given public opinion and The problem is that most people, their lack of confidence in government in including our President, his economic general and transportation agencies in advisors, the media, and perhaps a lot of particular, getting public support to t ransportation planners, really don't raise the cost of driving is going to be understand the numbers. Until they do, tough indeed. we are not going to get very far. A huge education effort is required. It will take Because they have no confidence in a good deal of time to accomplish, but we government, the public will remain are moving. For example, at the annual suspicious about how government uses meeting of the Transportation Research the increased user fees. All across the Board in January there will be a half- country, the average motorist is just not day devoted to the issue of least cost willing to give another nickel. transportation planning. Again, reflecting on the reaction of the There are currently about 30 people trucking industry, they just don't think around the nation who are actively they are going to get anything in return engaged and working on the goal of least and they think they are paying more 66 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 than their fair cost. They really don't part of it. We are moving past the era of understand the big picture and the way easy answers. We are moving past the we finance transportation and how much era of saying, when in doubt, let's go of it is being financed for them. with more and when in more doubt, let's go with more of the same. So, in addition to research and education, we need to demonstrate the The issues discussed here today raise effectiveness ofleast cost transportation. different levels of complexity. They We need to show conclusively that the raise different levels of interaction. public and our economy will benefit. That is going to be a lot of work, but I I'll speak from the perspective of the do not see an alternative. industry that I am part of — the rail freight industry. We have spent a New York City and American cities in number of years seeking to move general cannot afford continued transportation off the highways in large deterioration. They can't afford it part with an intermodal product that up economically. They can't afford it until the last few years attempted to socially. It is driving people out of cities mimic a truck. and into the sprawling developments that Jim Tripp described. Least cost This meant that what you did in moving transportation can play a major role in traffic from rubber tire to rail moving this agenda forward. guaranteed that within a metropolitan area, that product looked, acted, tasted, Nadler- If you think about what Brian smelled, felt, and emitted just like a said and remember the three truck. presentations, there is a fairly compelling case here that doesn't match That meant that you could take what what is being done today. It doesn't you might view as a lot of the right match the mainstream of what is actions and not have the right actually happening day-to-day in consequences. We see that now in transportation planning and funding. passenger and freight rail, where there The question you have to ask yourself is, is a lot of different capacity in the why? There are a couple of different system, but a lot of the demand tends to answers. coexist, and there are complexities as to how you can maximize the potential of One, potentially, is that what you have that asset to get more than one objective heard from the three speakers is satisfied. analytically bankrupt and shouldn't be the mainstream. I don't personally That doesn't say it can't be done, but it happen to think so. I think they have requires a little bit of complexity and a made a pretty compelling case, but if you little bit of multi-disciplinary approach think otherwise, you will have a chance that institutionally we haven't been set in a moment to ask them questions to up to take into account. that affect. Jim Tripp's points about the Second is that we are dealing with a interconnection of transportation and level of complexity that is far beyond land use gets particularly complex when what has been brought to a lot of our you look at issues such as the environ- transportation decisions over the last mental questions of how clean is clean several decades. I think that is a big that determine how much you will be The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 67

able to re-use existing industrial loca- Machiavelli, in talking about gratitude, tions. once said, never give people what they are entitled to because they won't be If you can't re-use existing industrial grateful. They expect what they think locations, do you guarantee a long-term they are entitled to. Pattern of further sprawl that will Preclude your opportunities to build the We have, as a society, assumed that we kinds of transit systems that are talked are entitled to infrastructure that works. about here today? State governors around the nation don't These are very complex issues with no like to put a lot of money into repair and simple right or wrong answer. maintenance because people expect the highways to work. If you want them to I think part of what Brian Ketcham is be grateful, you've got to have a good suggesting is that least cost trans- ribbon cutting. You've got to have a Portation, by providing something of a new project to show. That is a paradigm common denominator tool that can be that is going to have to change. used to cross these issues, may be a vital and under-utilized tool to attack that That is the issue that I think the three complexity. speakers were bringing to you today — how do we look at things differently? Lastly, I think part of what we are What are the analytical tools we can dealing with here is a level simply of an use? How do we bring those into the extraordinary paradigm shift. main-stream of transportation planning and transportation decision-making? I had the mixed blessing of being the head of a rail operation in a State Question - Your basic point is, if we Highway Department a few years ago. could get into a mode where everything is in reasonably good shape and we could It was fun to stand there and watch my do something about preventive main- boss, who was head of highway pro- tenance, what is it going to take us to gramming,completely scoff at the notion get there? of how the rail industry seemed to have its problem with deferred maintenance I'm curious whether you would argue or and having to abandon things. agree with me that we ought to be devoting transportation dollars to Fortunately, that wasn't a concept that bringing us to that state of good repair was relevant to the highway side - there before we start building a lot more high- were no issues of deferred maintenance. ways, which the region is thinking of doing? I suggested to him that maybe they should look at abandonments on the Answer - I think it is folly to increase highway side. He didn't think that was capacity of a highway system before we tremendously funny. can maintain what we have. In most areas, they probably don't have the But, we are talking about a tremendous highway capacity they had in 1980 or Paradigm shift. Part of it is a political 1970. New York probably peaked in issue. terms of highway capacity in 1970. 68 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993

In terms of time, I think it would take, doing the basic inspections. Even the for the highway system and highway inspections were not being done. bridges, 12-20 years to get most urban areas back in shape. In terms of dollars, The City began to listen only in terms of in New York City, it would take crisis. When the Williamsburg Bridge probably $3-4 billion for the bridges and was closed, suddenly we began getting a probably an equal amount of money for preventive maintenance program. That the roadway system. was listened to until 1990, and then a new mayor came in and abandoned, to a In other systems such as the water large extent, the preventive maintenance system, it would probably take 50 years, program. We then, through Cooper since you probably couldn't do more than Union, petitioned and got some money two percent a year. I understand that back in the budget, but the capital the Boston area, having studied an budget has been reduced sharply over earlier report of ours called "The Age of the last four years. The Region's Infrastructure," concluded that the best cycle to be on is a one- Some agencies are listening a good deal. percent replacement cycle every year. The Department of Environmental But, to get there, it will take 50 years of Protection is basing a lot of its work and doing two percent a year. planning on the work we have done at Cooper Union. Parks Department is In New York, we are up to 1/250th or somewhat responsive, but most agencies currently less than one-half of a percent. haven't been terribly responsive and the In some areas, it would be 500 years mayor's office has been less than before we would ever replace our responsive. systems. So, we are going to have to go through a period of 20 years in Comment - In terms of van services, the transportation and 50 years in most Transit Authority has been trying its other infrastructure. best to stop them. I think recently they are beginning to think that maybe they If we were smart, that is what we would ought to provide similar services. do now. In the future, we would be However, it is very expensive for the reaping tremendous benefits. Otherwise, Transit Authority to do it with their we stay on this downward spiral. Some labor rates. generation has to say stop. You are right about human behavior and Question - What are you receiving from people's desire to drive alone. The real people who matter in the city, as far as issue in terms of changing is pricing your ideas and your proposals? Who is driving properly, forcing the motorist to listening to you? pay not all of the hidden costs but at least a portion of them. This happens all Schwartz - I spent 20 years in city over the world — much of Europe is government and by the time we realized charging $3.00 a gallon and even in how obvious the problem was and the Canada gasoline is twice as expensive. solutions to it, it took bloody battles with the Mayor's office and it took some fatal Most cities in this country are far less accidents from some collapses, a cable dense than the cities in Canada. In snap on the Brooklyn Bridge, the many of your larger cities, I think you Schoharie Bridge nearby that collapsed generally have attractive bus service. In with ten people dying, before we began New York City proper, a huge number of The Environment and Transportation Infrastructure 69

People use buses. It is less true in the employer. That is where the first impact suburbs. Two percent of Long Island's will be. trip are via transit as one comparison, Which is a fairly densely built up area, Pennsylvania's Department of but it is still not dense enough to provide Environmental Resources views itself at transit services in a way that would this point as caught between a rock and accommodate a lot of travel. a hard place.

Comment - Let me just say something on They are facing, as is any other state vans or minibuses or vehicles that can with a non-attainment area,the stricture haul somewhere between 5-15 or 20 on highway funds if they don't put in a People. I think we need to encourage program. But,they are admittedly loath them in the metropolitan area, not only to get in the business of imposing any in the city but probably in a lot of the kind of sanctions on employers. suburbs. So, the signals that are being sent to The question is, and I don't think this employers by the regulatory community has really been addressed, what kind of right now aren't building that sense of a regulatory framework do you want to crisis. set up in terms of making sure that People are insured? You probably have 15-20 people in each non-attainment area who are doing most Do you allow people providing van of the work of trying to forestall Services on a private sector basis to do it imposition of the regulations. You have only during commuter hours? Can they virtually no one yet working from the stop whenever they want and do you practical side on how you would then expect the MTA to come up and implement the regulations. Pick up? Right now you have a buffer. The There are a lot of issues that have to be impact has not yet begun to be felt by addressed, but I don't think they are the community the provision was aimed hopelessly complicated. I think that at hitting. those kinds of services are probably going to be best provided by the private If you talk to any MPO in any city that sector for the reasons that Brian gave. is a non-attainment area, they are still But I think somehow we've got to wrestling with what this means. To the encourage it as an alternative to the extent that it is supposed to create a single occupant vehicle. sense of crisis, which is one interpretation of what the Act is Rev.saise_ (in response to a question)- Let intended to do, so far there hasn't been me talk about another example — enough time for it to move through the Philadelphia rather than New York. political and regulatory process. That is Right now, the sense of crisis has been my sense, as part of the regulating Postponed by the regulatory structure. community, on how others view it.

The impact has not yet been felt and Comment - There is not a clearly focused internalized by the bulk of the business crisis of the sort that you mentioned. A community. The way the VMT lot of people have a sense that various reductions are built in, the first brunt is things are going on that don't seem to be supposed to fall primarily on the right or wrong. There is a lot of conges- 70 Proceedings of TRF, Vol. 7, 1993 rural tion. Most people don't like that. Some keep on building new roads in people don't like air pollution. There communities and building new schools are a lot of people in the suburbs who and doing everything else while other want to see open space protected. A lot things are deteriorating? Our challenge to of those people don't connect what they is to show those relationships and try see going on with how transportation put it together in a compelling case. I'm dollars are being spent. I think the enough of an optimist to think we call world challenge for the advocacy community is change our ways without having a going to be, can we afford it? Should we war.