Basin Bridge Board of Inquiry Representation by Nina Arron, submitter 103484

1. I am an urban planner and former Wellington resident. I now live in New Rochelle, New York.

2. I view the proposed flyover as an outdated 20th Century solution to something that I do not believe is even a problem. We are in a time of transition to more sustainable modes of transport and improved walkability, cycling and public transport options over designing solely for the private car.

3. This transition is driven by the desire for a more sustainable transport system, but it is also driven by evidence from many countries that there is a mismatch between transport agencies’ modelling, which assumes that the use of cars will continue to grow on a “business as usual” basis, and a reality that is rapidly undermining that assumption.

4. I have provided an Appendix of supplementary material. This consists of an article which I wrote for Wellington online news site Scoop entitled “Transportation in the 21st Century: The Modelling/Reality Gap”, published on 11 November 2013. Together with this article, I have included the text of three references linked to in the article, showing recent examples from the US, Canada and Australia of transport projects that have failed to meet or even come close to their stated goals because transport modellers projected continued traffic growth which failed to eventuate.

5. This phenomenon can also be observed in New Zealand, as the final article I have supplied, “Kiwi Teens Turn Off Driving”, shows. To quote from the article:

A worldwide trend known as "driving ambivalence" has hit young people in New Zealand. Figures show the number of teens getting their licences has dropped drastically in the past five years.

Experts cite a variety of reasons for the decline, from the expense of maintaining a vehicle to the dangers of driving.

They also say smartphones and social media have rendered the need for teens to get behind the wheel less important.

6. While this phenomenon can been partly attributed to New Zealand-specific factors, such as changes in drivers’ licensing rules, the fact that it is happening in developed countries worldwide suggests that the New Zealand findings are not just a ‘blip’ but reflect a significant social trend.

7. I have included a reference to an article that graphs changes in driver licensing in New Zealand during the period 2003-2013, and also changes in vehicle kilometres travelled in Auckland during that time [1].

8. It appears to me that the NZ Transport Agency’s transport planning, specifically with regard to the planning of the proposed Basin Reserve flyover, has attempted to deny or minimize the reality of these changes in transport behaviour. For example, in his Evidence in Chief, Mr Tim Kelly states (4.17, p. 17):

It is true that traffic counts on many sections of State highways and local roads have exhibited very low or even negative growth in the period since 2007.

However, he then goes on to claim (4.18, p. 18):

In my view, societal changes (such as a reduced tendency for younger people to own and operate private motor vehicles) are likely to be a relatively minor contributor to the generally low rates of traffic growth observed in the period since 2007. These patterns are more likely to be due to the significant contraction in economic activity which has led to reduced employment, expenditure and transportation demand.

In my view, the international and New Zealand evidence both show that societal changes are making a significant difference to the uptake and driving licences and the use of motor vehicles, and that the NZ Transport Agency has failed to demonstrate that it has taken this into account.

9. Given these recent developments, it makes no sense to commit to building an expensive piece of transport infrastructure that will be massive, ugly, destroy the ambience of an iconic part of Wellington, and may well prove to be a white elephant. I understand that alternative options that involve making much smaller, less disruptive and less expensive changes at grade have been presented to the Board. While I have not considered this alternative proposal in detail, at-grade changes make much more sense in an environment in which transport behaviour is rapidly changing, and models based on business-as- usual thinking are becoming increasingly outdated.

References

[1] Transport Blog (Auckland), “Teens increasingly choosing not to drive” (March 2, 2014), http://transportblog.co.nz/2014/03/02/teens-increasingly-choosing-not-to- drive/

Nina Arron

Appendix

Documents referred to in representation by Nina Arron, submitter 103484

This document is in three parts:

1) Article by Nina Arron, “Transportation in the 21st century: the modelling/reality gap” 2) Three articles on failures of transport modelling linked from that article 3) Article in Sunday Star-Times, “Kiwi Teens Turn Off Driving”

1) Article by Nina Arron in Scoop (12 November 2013): http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1311/S00089/transportation-in-the-21st-century- the-modelingreality-gap.htm

Transportation in the 21st century: The modeling/reality gap Tuesday, 12 November 2013

Transportation in the 21st century: The modeling/reality gap

by Nina Arron

Traffic modellers seem to be an optimistic breed. The value and construction of many large scale road, bridge and tunnel projects seem to be based on traffic modeling projections that are proving to be overly, or down right wildly, optimistic. There seems to be an idee fixe that traffic will increase, always and forever and ever. Reality however is showing a different trend, a drop in traffic volumes.

A few examples are outlined below with links to articles for those who would like to read further..

A US example

In Bethesda , near Washington DC, an 18.8 mile toll highway was begun in 2007. The first segment was opened in 2011 and is falling a long way short of the traffic projections with a correspondingly low toll income. To add to the pain of lower than expected income, costs ballooned from $1billion to $2.4 billion, or $4 billion if interest payments are included. Proponents of the development also predicted that the road would lead to economic development in the area but this has not yet occurred. Considering that a commuter making daily round trip use of the road during rush hour can expect to pay $2,000 a year it is not surprising that many drivers are choosing to avoid it. http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October-2013/The- Intercounty-Connector/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

A Canadian example

The blog Price Tags outlines a number of traffic predictions in British Columbia that have proven to be widely optimistic. The Port Mann Bridge graph is particularly revealing with the actual traffic volume showing a decrease from 2001 to 2011 while every prediction made (2006, 2007, 2011) consistently and optimistically say the volumes will increase. Surely at some point the traffic modellers will have to admit they were wrong and adjust downward….won’t they…? http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/sightline-british-columbias-traffic-delusion/

An Australian example

In Brisbane the multinational AECOM was hired to provide traffic modeling for the Clem7 tunnel. AECOM predicted traffic volume (aka toll revenue) to be a great deal higher than real use. As a result the project is bankrupt and investors are now suing AECOM for misleading them.http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/5966 And just as there are multiple examples of optimistic predictions leading to costly underperforming roading projects in Canada and the US, this is not the only Australian example of traffic projections being overstated. The Australian (article below) also mentions Sydney’s Lane Cove tunnel. This is now owned by Transurbanhttp://www.transurban.com.au/ which paid $600 million for the asset, $1 billion LESS than its construction costs and now receives all of the toll revenue.http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/government-wins-battle- for-bankrupt-clem7-tunnel/story-fn91v9q3-1226728864804

A New Zealand example?

If New Zealand’s Roads of National Significance share the same overly optimistic traffic modeling and the government decides to sell the assets rather than continue to lose money on debt servicing, then companies like Transurban can buy up these assets for less than their construction cost, set toll rates and own the toll revenue for ever.

For more examples follow this link http://daily.sightline.org/blog_series/dude-where-are- my-cars/ Clark Williams-Derry has compiled quite a list of traffic modeling optimism.

Nina Arron Bio

Nina Arron is an urban planner with a passion for Pedestrian Oriented Development. A past resident of Wellington, Nina is currently living in New Rochelle, New York where she has just begun a new project Walk Your Community encouraging people to define their community and then walk it. She has defined her community geographically and is currently walking the 175 miles of streets of New Rochelle. You can read about the project and her progress on her website and blogwww.urbanafoot.com. Better yet, set your own community parameters, start walking, and share your stories with Nina on www.urbanafoot.com\

ENDS

2) Articles linked from Arron (2013)

“A US example”

Bethesda Magazine (Sept/Oct 2013), “The Road Less Traveled” http://www.bethesdamagazine.com/Bethesda-Magazine/September-October- 2013/The-Intercounty-Connector/index.php?cparticle=1&siarticle=0#artanc

[Note: To save space, only the opening illustration of this article has been included in this document. All illustrations are available online.]

The Road Less Traveled The Intercounty Connector promised a lot of things to Montgomery County residents. But with traffic and revenue far lower than projected, some people are asking: Was the highway all hype? BY EUGENE L. MEYER

Where’s the traffic? Critics point to the Intercounty Connector’s often empty travel lanes, like these at the Route 29 interchange in Silver Spring, as proof that the road was unnecessary. Photo courtesy of Maryland Department of Transportation

Driven on the Intercounty Connector lately? No? You’re not alone. Many haven’t. The 18.8-mile highway—the first stretch of which opened two and a half years ago after great hype and amid great controversy—is the road less traveled. Traffic counts are well below early projections, and revenue from tolls—needed to pay off the bonds that were sold to build the road—is far less than originally anticipated. The initial estimated cost of $1 billion has ballooned to $2.4 billion—or as much as $4 billion if you include interest payments. Consequently, all tolls on Maryland highways, bridges and tunnels have been raised in part to help pay for the ICC. Every driver who passes through the two harbor tunnels, goes over the Francis Scott Key, Chesapeake Bay or Harry Nice bridges, or speeds along the John F. Kennedy portion of Interstate 95 north of Baltimore is helping to pay for the highway, which currently extends from the I-370 spur off I-270 to I-95. (Eventually it will continue as a four-lane road another nine-tenths of a mile east to U.S. Route 1, with the last section’s completion scheduled for July 2014.) Meanwhile, $180 million is coming out of the state’s Transportation Trust Fund to pay bondholders—money that critics say could otherwise be spent on mass transit, such as the or the up-county Corridor Cities Transitway, and on improvements to secondary roads and intersections. At the same time, Maryland has committed future federal funds to make payments to ICC bondholders. The story of the ICC is a bit like the invasion of Iraq, a march to war in which the highway hawks—developers, development lawyers and contractors—held sway while critics were ridiculed as knee-jerk tree huggers and opponents of economic growth. “They inflated the benefits, minimized the damages,” says Greg Smith, who led a band of citizen activists against the highway.

Doug Duncan, who was Montgomery County’s executive at the time, claimed the ICC would result in development. That has yet to occur, though Duncan puts the blame on an “anti-business climate” fostered, in his view, by the current county government. Early boosters, including Duncan, predicted the ICC would relieve congestion and improve safety on the Beltway. Seeking to unseat highway opponents in the 2002 election, Duncan called ICC critics “the council’s Congestion Coalition” and asserted, “We will not solve the traffic mess without an ICC.” For business groups, the ICC was a “litmus test,” according to councilmember Phil Andrews, an ICC critic who alone survived the campaign waged that year by the highway’s supporters. When studies discounted Beltway improvement from the ICC, supporters then said it would relieve traffic on local roads, speed traffic bound for Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport and spur economic growth. The media hyped the highway, too. From 1997 to 1999, ran six pro-ICC editorials. Tolls were barely discussed. And hypothetical figures buried in a 2004 state consultant’s report marked “confidential” are lower than tolls currently being charged ($8 round-trip, end-to-end, for cars and $60 for trucks, during rush hours). There’s talk now of lowering tolls to attract more drivers. The speed limit was raised from 55 to 60 mph in March to that same end. But with Maryland Transportation Authority police aggressively issuing citations to speeders, there’s a further disincentive to use it. To pay for other road improvements the state cannot afford—thanks largely, critics say, to the ICC—the Maryland General Assembly this year pumped $880 million more into the depleted Transportation Trust Fund by increasing the gasoline tax for the first time in 21 years. And tolls increased on state highways—except for the ICC—in July under the second phase of increases first approved by the Maryland Transportation Authority in 2011. All told, the higher tolls are expected to raise $225 million by 2014, which will pay for debt service on the ICC and I-95 improvements and express lanes project and repairs to bridges, tunnels and roads, according to John Sales, a Maryland Transportation Authority spokesman. The ICC is the Pac-Man of roads, critics charge, eating up all the transportation dollars in sight, now and for years to come. “What a waste of money,” says , a county councilmember and longtime ICC opponent. Supporters have their own comebacks, of course: The ICC isn’t supposed to be crowded, they say; traffic was supposed to grow gradually. The outsized cost of the highway? The result of delays; if environmentalists and those advocating slow growth hadn’t fought it for so long, it could have been completed sooner for less, with money left over for other projects. Tolls? The wave of the future; get used to them, county councilmember Nancy Floreen says, as drivers in many other states have. The ICC is here, near and dear. Go for a drive, supporters say. Check it out. Work on the first segment of the highway began in November 2007. And since the first stretch opened in February 2011, the message posted on the Maryland Transportation Authority website has been nothing if not consistent: “There are no traffic advisories at this time.” On a recent Sunday afternoon, there’s not another car in sight around its gently bending curves. And even when the Beltway and I-95 are in early rush-hour mode on a weekday afternoon, traffic remains light on the ICC. The highway has been promoted as a commercial truck route, too, but trucks are few on this particular weekday. “Some days there is heavier traffic than on others,” says Duncan, who lives in Rockville and made construction of the ICC his top priority as county executive, an office he’s pursuing again in the 2014 election. “It’s never bumper to bumper, but it was never meant to be. It’s absolutely successful.” Indeed, there are some residents who love the highway. Harvey and Lynn Berk, who live in White Oak in eastern Montgomery County, gladly spent $24 a month on ICC tolls to take their dog to and from their vet in Kentlands. “It’s expanded our horizon of places to go,” including restaurants and movie theaters in the Gaithersburg area, Harvey Berk says, applauding its lack of congestion. In 2003, state consultants predicted 52,013 to 56,175 vehicles would be driven on the ICC each day in the year 2012, yielding $58.9 million to $68 million in tolls. The actual average for 2012: 42,878 vehicles per day, according to the Maryland Transportation Authority. That’s about 18 percent fewer vehicles than conservatively projected and nearly 24 percent less than more optimistic projections. (Average daily Beltway traffic, by comparison, was 232,000 vehicles at the American Legion Bridge in 2010.) And the total revenue in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2012: $19.73 million—a third of the low-end projection of a decade ago. (Figures for this past fiscal year weren’t available at press time.) The higher projections were needed to finance the project even before its cost inflated, according to the 2003 document. Duncan declines to comment on the shortfalls. “You have to talk to the state about the numbers,” he says. “They’re the ones who produced the numbers.” In fact, the state developed two sets of projections, both higher than actual usage so far. The higher numbers were in official documents presented to the public, bolstering the case for the highway and implying greater environmental impact with higher volumes. More conservative numbers were used for the bond rating agencies, “looking at the financial implications if traffic volumes are on the lower side,” according to Sales. Andrews, who lives in Gaithersburg and represents constituents who might be expected to use the highway, doesn’t drive the ICC. “People are voting with their steering wheels to stay off,” the councilmember says, adding that round-trips at rush hour can cost individuals up to $2,000 a year. Still, he wants people to use the highway since it’s there, which is why he proposes cutting tolls in half. Sales’ response: Studies show that “the increases in traffic volumes are not great enough to offset the significantly lower revenues collected.” Elrich, a Takoma Park resident, refuses on principle to use the ICC. “I’ve driven over it at rush hour on Georgia Avenue, look[ed] down and [seen] it’s empty,” he says. Former Gov. Parris Glendening, who killed the highway only to see his successor resurrect it, also refuses to use the ICC. “I don’t see a lot of reason to go out of my way to pay a toll to save 18 minutes,” says Glendening, who lives in Annapolis and works in Washington as president of Smart Growth America’s Leadership Institute. Plus, “it’s philosophical. I just don’t agree with it.” When it was first conceived 50 years ago as part of an outer Beltway, the highway was intended to cross the Potomac, bridging the iconic waterway to better ferry traffic between the burgeoning suburbs, office parks and international airports on both sides. But resistance to another river crossing, mostly in Maryland, killed that grand plan. What emerged in its place was a Maryland-only highway linking the I-270 and I-95 corridors that supporters said would shorten commuting times, spur economic growth and speed traffic to BWI Airport. Opponents objected on several grounds: They said highways beget more sprawl. They cited state surveys that concluded traffic on the Beltway and arterial roads would actually increase if the ICC were built. Their arguments might have been valid, but they weren’t enough to stop it. So highway opponents invoked the National Environmental Policy Act, passed in 1969 during the Nixon administration. Any project of such magnitude would have to pass the NEPA test, which would require multiple environmental impact statements. The stringent federal requirements allowed opponents entry into the federal courts, which alternately rejected the highway and demanded more studies regarding potential damage. The lawsuits ultimately succeeded in reducing the ICC’s impact on sensitive wetlands and species—in part by cutting the number of lanes from 12 to six and requiring “mitigation” projects. But environmentalists continued to pursue legal remedies. In November 2007, a federal judge dismissed their lawsuits. They took their case to a higher court but dropped it a year later after the state agreed to more environmental steps. “Environmental mitigation caused them to clean up the crimes of previous development in that part of the county,” says Floreen, who was elected to the county council in 2002 on Duncan’s “End Gridlock” slate. “It was a good thing, but it drove up the cost.” The ICC has had a bumpy road, to say the least. Glendening, who supported the highway when he was Prince George’s county executive in the 1980s, changed his mind after he became governor in the 1990s. “When I got into [state] office and looked at it in detail, I moved against it,” he says. “We can’t think we can continue to solve traffic and congestion problems by building more highways and adding more lanes. We are losing all of our open space and doing immense damage to the climate. It is so unneeded. The state has to spend millions advertising to get people to ride it. And when I looked into the financing, think what we could have done with $4 billion.” In 1999, Glendening canceled plans for the highway, saying it “would be an environmental disaster.” He also tried to sell off the property that the state had acquired earlier for $25 million. He says his efforts were blocked by then-Comptroller William Donald Schaefer, who preceded Glendening as governor and strongly supported the ICC. Even so, the project seemed dead. The 2002 Montgomery County Council election was the game changer. “I was so ticked the county council kept voting against the construction of the ICC over the years; that’s actually why I ran for council in 2002,” says Floreen, a former county planning board member. “The ICC had been planned forever, and it was a major infrastructure project that needed to be done. About the first vote I took when I arrived in Rockville was we voted to support the ICC, and that started the ball rolling with the county executive and the governor. It got fast-tracked and it got constructed.” Indeed, Duncan’s “End Gridlock Team” campaigned on the promise that the ICC would “drastically ease traffic congestion and relieve gridlock for the entire region.” The slate’s brochure hammered the point home: “Tired of waiting in traffic? You can make a difference. Vote for Doug Duncan and County Council candidates committed to building the ICC and ending gridlock. …While our citizens are drowning in traffic, some members of the Montgomery County Council have stalled important projects, like the Intercounty Connector.”

Supporting the End Gridlock slate was a business coalition calling itself Citizens for Quality Living (CQL). Neither the group’s website nor its fliers identified the coalition’s leaders or provided an address or phone number. In fact, members included the Montgomery County Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Washington Board of Trade and the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors. Targets of the coalition—including councilmember Andrews—filed a lawsuit alleging that the group had violated campaign finance laws by failing to file required reports. Ultimately, a three-judge panel ruled that CQL, which spent $15,000 on television ads, was not a “political committee” and had not broken any laws in listing candidates’ positions on the ICC. “During the 2002 campaign,” Andrews says, “critics were marginalized by [CQL’s] claim that any elected official who doesn’t support the ICC doesn’t care about the fact you’re sitting in traffic.” Once pro-ICC members gained a majority on the county council, the focus shifted to Annapolis. Robert Ehrlich, the former Republican congressman elected in 2002 to succeed Glendening, breathed new life into the seemingly dead highway, ordering the last of three environmental impact studies. Just three months before Ehrlich’s election, President George W. Bush signed an executive order allowing certain environmentally sensitive highway projects to be fast-tracked. Of 75 applicants, 13 were chosen, and the ICC was one of them. Meanwhile, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks seemingly had provided another argument for the ICC: The highway would be linked to national security. “Homeland Security—Providing a Secure Route in an Emergency,” said a Maryland Transportation Authority brochure touting the benefits of the ICC. That the highway did not provide an exit route from the nation’s capital was beside the point. Once the highway was a given, debate centered on which route would least damage the environment and which would provide the best access to BWI. The route that Ehrlich chose in 2005 did not veer northeast toward BWI—which would have made the trip to the airport shorter—but southeast, toward Konterra, the long-planned, mixed-use project of developer Kingdon Gould, just four miles north of the Beltway off Route 1. Major construction has yet to begin, but plans call for the development to include hotels, 4,500 residential units and 5.3 million square feet of offices, restaurants and shops. “Sufficient access to the Interstate system will be critical for the Konterra property to develop into its full potential,” the State Highway Administration said in a 2004 report. That access would come by way of the ICC. In order to build ramps from the ICC into Konterra, the state paid the development’s owners $74 million for 240 acres. Earlier, the same land had been appraised at $32 million, though the Gould family had challenged the lower valuation. Gould and his corporations had long contributed to politicians supporting his development plans, and in January 2006, that amounted to seven checks of $4,000 each to Ehrlich as he was seeking re-election. The checks came from limited liability corporations linked to Gould, thereby sidestepping state election finance laws that limit individuals to a $4,000 contribution made to a single candidate. Glendening notes that Gould and his associates had been top contributors to his campaigns when he supported the road—but not after he opposed it. “These projects are sort of like zombies,” Glendening says. “You kill them, they come right back.” He attributes the ICC’s nine lives to the “construction-landowner complex,” something akin to the military-industrial complex President Dwight Eisenhower warned about as he was leaving office. “They will push for more and more roads,” Glendening says. As with a military-industrial complex, the ICC had its own “revolving door,” as critics termed it. Alan Straus, the state’s ICC project manager in the 1990s, left to work for URS, an engineering, construction and technical services firm that became a leading consultant on the road’s construction. And Parker Williams, head of the State Highway Administration, found a new job with the consulting firm that received the contract on designing and developing the ICC’s electronic toll system. Once the final decision was made to build the road, a way had to be found to pay for it. In 2005, the state Legislature enacted a plan to move the ICC to the head of the line of state transportation projects and to pay for it largely with borrowed money. The interest payments over time bring the total cost to about $4 billion, compared with the $2.4 billion sticker price. The largest chunk, $750 million, comes from so-called GARVEE bonds (for Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicles). To service the GARVEE debt, the state agreed to divert significant amounts of anticipated future federal funds. There’s also a $516 million loan from the federal government; $264.9 million directly from the state’s general fund and bonds; $180 million in cash from the state’s Transportation Trust Fund; and $669 million from loans to be paid off partly from tolls generated by the ICC and seven other Maryland toll facilities. That the ICC might be a toll road first came to light in a 1997 draft environmental impact statement—but only as a hypothetical. It came as a shock to many when the ICC not only became a toll road but a high-priced one. Mike Landsman, a Bethesda resident, drives the ICC several times a week from Rockville to Baltimore for his job with an environmental consulting firm. But if his employer didn’t pay the tolls, he says, “I wouldn’t drive it as much. I plan to keep driving the ICC so long as my employer is paying for it. At rush hour, there’s nobody on there. I don’t think I’ve ever been on there when there’s actually been traffic.” Floreen, the pro-highway councilmember, wishes “they’d given residents a year or so to get used to the road and then increase tolls incrementally, but they didn’t.” Then again, “nobody wants to pay for things,” she says. “That’s the way people are.” Not only do people not want to pay, they actually don’t pay. According to a Maryland Transportation Authority report released in February, 34.2 percent of drivers using the ICC without an E-ZPass transponder weren’t paying the bills they later received in the mail, costing the system $5.1 million from November 2011 through November 2012. In the first half of 2012, a rental car company alone racked up $4,263 in unpaid tolls; a construction company, $2,241, according to The Washington Post. When the highway’s first segment opened in 2011, it was toll-free for two weeks, during which daily traffic counts reached 30,000. But with tolls in place, traffic had dropped to 11,490 less than two months later. The apparent lack of public enthusiasm prompted the state to undertake a $2.8 million advertising campaign to promote the road. Things seemed to be looking up last October. The Maryland Transportation Authority issued a press release asserting that ICC usage was “consistent with our projections,” with 35,000 vehicles daily using the westernmost segment and 26,000 the eastern segment. Unmentioned was that the numbers were consistent with 2009 projections, which were significantly lower than earlier forecasts. The more recent projections “reflect the impacts of the current economic recession and its effects [on development],” says Wilbur Smith Associates, the state consultant. To encourage use of the road, the state also established five ICC bus routes, which it subsidizes heavily. So far, they’ve failed to catch on. In March, the Gaithersburg-BWI bus had 8,472 riders. The weekday rush-hour route from Frederick to College Park had 3,291 riders; Columbia to Bethesda and Gaithersburg to Fort Meade, fewer than 2,000; College Park to Germantown, only 123. Compare those to the 28,176 who rode from Dunkirk in southern Maryland to the District, and the 17,861 from Columbia to Silver Spring. However, “they are much more mature routes with long established ridership bases,” Maryland Transportation Authority spokesman Terry Owens wrote in an April 29 email. Still, two weeks later, the MTA announced it was considering canceling three of the five ICC routes due to low ridership. The authority was planning to discontinue service on those routes in August. As for the ICC promise of relieving traffic on other roads—if not the Beltway, then the arteries that bisect it—a study released in June by The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, under contract to the State Highway Administration, details traffic counts on local east-west roads both before and after the ICC opened. Among its findings: Traffic on alternate roads has decreased slightly. And drivers who use the ICC instead of local roads have cut their drive times in half, according to the study. “There is some relief on surrounding roadways,” says Ron Kirby, director of transportation planning for COG. However, despite reports that the Washington area is one of the nation’s most congested, he says traffic is flat or declining throughout the region, as it is nationally. “If you build it, he will come,” a voice whispers to Kevin Costner in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. That is, of course, the classic criticism of highways: that they will bring both traffic and development. So far, the ICC has induced neither. The highway may, Glendening says, be more of a Jurassic Park situation, a dinosaur the likes of which will not be seen again. The lower-than-projected traffic counts may be due not only to the recession but to changing lifestyles. More people are telecommuting and shopping online, rather than driving to stores. People under 25, seeking a more urban lifestyle, “are driving less, not more,” says Glendening, an apostle of smart growth around transit stations, “and baby boomers are moving to condos—600,000 seniors a year are giving up their car keys. It is happening nationwide.” COG’s Kirby agrees. “People don’t need to drive as much to get to work. Instead of driving to a bookstore, people are ordering from Amazon. There is just less travel.” Is the ICC, then, a highway stuck in neutral? “Over the long run, you can ask if the ICC is really necessary,” Kirby says. “…But there is still a lot of travel out there. Eventually people will start to find the value of it. Demand will grow. How fast remains to be seen.” ENDS

“A Canadian Example”

Sightline: British Columbia’s Traffic Delusion (3 October 2013): http://pricetags.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/sightline-british-columbias-traffic- delusion/

Yes, it’s Motordom #Fail here at Price Tags. This time Sightline Institute researcher Clark Williams-Derry (whose must-read series “Dude, Where are my cars? is here) ruminates on our particular version of the Traffic Delusion:

BC places a huge bet on rapid traffic growth . It must be a syndrome. A mass delusion of endless traffic growth. Or maybe the idée fixe that the future will resemble the 1950s.

Earlier in the week I mentioned that, despite years of declines on the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Washington’s transportation revenue forecasts assume that traffic will soon start growing, quickly and inexorably. It might be funny if the fiscal stakes weren’t so dire.

Apparently, the same mentality apparently holds sway north of the 49th parallel. Consider the newly twinned Port Mann Bridge—a project of British Columbia’s provincial government that opened to traffic last fall. The province was anticipating a rapid increase in traffic volumes to pay for construction. And while it’s too early to tell how the added road capacity will affect traffic volumes over the long haul, the declines in traffic volumes in recent years could make it very hard for the bridge to meet its toll revenue forecasts…

(Forecasts here; actuals here.)

As with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the traffic forecasts actually got wackier over time. Despite roughly a decade of flat or declining traffic, the province’s transportation planners in 2011 predicted that traffic volumes would quickly catch up with where they “should” have been. In essence, the planners interpreted the slight decline in traffic between 2006 and 2011 as evidence that traffic would skyrocket even faster from 2013 through 2021.

It shouldn’t be too hard on the poor traffic forecasters. As Yogi Berra (or was it Niels Bohr?) allegedly said, “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.” And that advice applies to me as well as to traffic planners—so I want to make it clear that I’m not actually predicting that real-world traffic won’t live up to the official forecasts. . Still, it’s increasingly clear that official traffic forecasts have become untethered from reality. At best, they’re based on outdated transportation models or “best practices” forged in the years when traffic volumes really were growing quickly. At their worst, they’re the result of coordinated deception to build support for politically favored projects.

The fiscal consequences of failed transportation forecasts can be pretty dire: see, e.g., the $35 to $45 million annual hole that the Golden Ears Bridge is blowing through the lower mainland’s transportation budget, because toll revenues from the bridge aren’t keeping pace with projections, even as bond payments to pay for construction keep coming due.

But has the province actually learned anything from the Golden Ears shortfalls, or the flat-lining of gasoline consumption in the lower mainland, or the failure of its early Port Mann forecasts to line up with forecasts? Apparently not. In fact, they’re doubling down on their risky bet on traffic growth, by moving forward with a costly and aggressive plan to replace the 4-lane George Massey Tunnel with a 10- lane bridge.

No doubt, the province will predict that rapid traffic growth will help pay for the construction costs for the new bridge. Which could set the province’s taxpayers for quite a shock down the road: they could easily wind up paying for yet another highway project that was supposed to pay for itself.

“An Australian Example”

The Australian, Government Wins Battle For Bankrupt Clem 7 Tunnel (28 September 2013): http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/companies/government-wins- battle-for-bankrupt-clem7-tunnel/story-fn91v9q3-1226728864804

Government wins battle for bankrupt Clem7 tunnel ANDREW WHITE

QUEENSLAND'S publicly owned investment office has emerged as the victor in a four-way tussle for ownership of the bankrupt Clem7 Tunnel in a deal that again highlights the perils of privately funded infrastructure development. The Queensland Investment Corporation-owned Queensland Motorways will pay $618 million to buy the Brisbane toll road built at a cost of $3 billion. The sale comes as advisers to Royal Bank of Scotland seek buyers for Sydney's Cross City Tunnel, which collapsed into administration for a second time two weeks ago. Brisbane's Airport Motorway is also in receivership and likely to be put on the market next year. Neither asset was able to cover its debt-funded construction cost as traffic fell as much as two-thirds short of forecast levels. The sale comes as the new federal government starts to consider ways of encouraging private investment to again fund badly needed infrastructure development, including, as reported in The Australian, infrastructure bonds. Shareholders and lenders have lost billions of dollars attempting to finance private infrastructure investment following the removal of generous tax deductions and rising development costs. But those losses have been a boon to later investors who have been able to buy the assets at discounted prices and handle the below-forecast traffic numbers. Australia's biggest listed toll-road operator, Transurban, bought Sydney's Lane Cove Tunnel for $600m -- $1bn less than its construction cost -- in a deal that also scuttled a takeover bid by the company's biggest shareholders. Transurban, which already owns a number of toll roads in Sydney, is also expected to be a bidder for the Cross City Tunnel. Receiver Martin Madden of KordaMentha, who oversees both RiverCity Motorway and the Cross City Tunnel, and advisers Goldman Sachs fielded bids including the UBS Infrastructure Fund, Albertis/Hastings Funds Management and Access Capital Partners. Queensland Motorways has also bought the tolling rights for the $1.5bn Legacy Way and $308m Go Between bridge, both in Brisbane, and is expected to be a bidder for the Airport Motorway. RiverCity Motorway, which built the tunnel under the Brisbane river and was listed on the sharemarket, collapsed under the weight of its borrowings in June 2011. The 6.8km tolled motorway links major Brisbane roads, including the Pacific Motorway, Ipswich Road, Lutwyche Road, Inner City Bypass, AirportlinkM7 and Shafston Avenue at Kangaroo Point.

3) Subsequent New Zealand article

Sunday Star-Times: Kiwi Teens Turn Off Driving (2 March 2014): http://www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/9779944/Kiwi-teens-turn-off-driving

Kiwi teens turn off driving KIRSTY JOHNSTON Growing numbers of of teens are refusing to get behind the wheel, because they think cars cost too much, they're worried they might drive into someone, or they just can't be bothered sitting their licence.

A worldwide trend known as "driving ambivalence" has hit young people in New Zealand. Figures show the number of teens getting their licences has dropped drastically in the past five years.

Experts cite a variety of reasons for the decline, from the expense of maintaining a vehicle to the dangers of driving.

They also say smartphones and social media have rendered the need for teens to get behind the wheel less important.

"I think more people should put in a bit more consideration into driving . . . it's a tonne of metal going at 100km per hour, and it's intimidating," non-driver Jay Lichter, 17, told the Sunday Star-Times.

Both rural and urban New Zealand are affected by the trend, New Zealand Transport Agency statistics show. Of the cities, Wellington shows the biggest decline, with the number of licensed drivers aged 16 to 19 falling by as much as 75 per cent.

Dunedin and New Plymouth both had at least a 20 per cent drop, while smaller towns like Opotiki on the North Island's east coast and Gore in Southland showed a 10 per cent slump.

Figures for 15-year-olds were not included because the licence eligibility age shifted in 2011, meaning teens now have to wait until they are 16 to apply for a learner's permit.

The change appears to also have affected older teens, with some who may have got their licence at 17 now waiting until 18.

University of Otago PhD student Aimee Ward, who is studying the travel behaviour of young people, says research shows the lack of interest in driving is occurring all over the world.

Ward said it was possible that some people would never get a driver's licence, leading to a rise in public transport use.

Focus groups had overwhelmingly told her that cost was an issue - licence cost, vehicle prices and maintenance fees all came into the equation.

"But they are also ambivalent about driving," Ward said.

"Their parents or friends will drive them around so they don't need a licence. I said to them, what if you get a job? And they reply, it would need to be at the weekend so my parents could drive me."

A recent international study showed a correlation between internet use and licensure rates in Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, Canada, Japan, South Korea and Germany.

The study found "access to virtual contact reduces the need for actual contact among young people". Auckland's transport museum, Motat, also links the rise of the smartphone to the decline in licensing.

"Lots of things people used to do in cars they can now do on a smartphone," said exhibitions co- ordinator Emily Gordon.

"They don't need to drive and meet each other. Plus there are so many restrictions on driving now - seatbelt laws, the zero limit for drink driving for young people - smartphones have no restrictions."

However, Ward thought it was more complicated than that. She said while technology meant a driver's licence no longer stood for independence like it used to, there were other factors.

The increase of better public transport, a growing awareness of the impact of cars and a growing "pride" in taking the bus or train were also having an effect. "Plus there are a whole cohort out there who say they're just not ready to drive."

Mark Wilson, an Aucklander in his mid-20s, is one of those.

"I have an irrational - or rational - fear of the responsibility of controlling close to a ton of metal. The fact that I could endanger someone by veering off course by half a degree scares me.

" I don't think I am ready for that kind of responsibility. I don't think a lot of people are ready for that kind of responsibility."

Lichter, from One Tree Hill in Auckland, agrees. "My parents say it would be a good idea so they don't have to drive me around anywhere but I'm not keen in the slightest. Mostly just the fact that you have so much power in the dropping of a foot. That's the thing that I find a bit overwhelming and intimidating about it."

Lichter, who gets a ride with his mum to school but bikes most other places, says despite the fact it's still "cool" to have a car, he's content to take the bus.

"Public transport is bad but it's not that bad. I don't feel like I'm missing out by not having my licence."