Shameless self-promotion: I was on the radio!

My last post was noticed by the local NPR station, and the host, Ross Reynolds, invited me to discuss the results on his show. I've never spoken to such a large audience, and even if it wasn't in the physical presence of anyone but the host, I was pretty terrified. It was too great an opportunity to pass up though, so I went on and everything went well. Thanks to Ross, Arwen, and the rest of the team on KUOW's The Conversation for the chance to speak on your show!

Click the image below to visit the web site and listen to the audio (it's brief, less than 7 minutes total):

Proof! From KUOW.org.

Rankings that matter: Which cities save the most time and money thanks to public transportation?

Every year the Texas Transportation Institute releases its Urban Mobility Report (aka congestion rankings) and it's rightly pilloried throughout the sustainable transportation media. The single-minded focus on what's good for drivers of private vehicles, and drivers of private vehicles only, leaves much to be desired, but there's a lot of good information in there if you do some digging. Inspired by this article from the Oregonian, which highlights the amount of time and money saved by commuters due to the congestion-reducing contribution of public transportation, I thought I'd see how other metro areas fared. (Portland came in 12th in the country for total savings, not bad for the 23rd-largest metro.)

Rather than just ranking by total savings, however, I decided to calculate savings per person, so that larger metros weren't gaining an unfair advantage. I divided the total savings by both population and by "commuter," a subset of the total population. Interestingly, while nearly every city's "commuter" population is about half that of the total population, according to TTI, the New York metro is a huge outlier with less than a third of its population being considered commuters. I suspect this might be the result of TTI not counting people who walk and bike as commuters, but I can't be sure.

So without further adieu, here are the rankings for the top 25:

Rank	Urban Area	Population (000)	Commuters (000)	Annual Congestion Cost Increase ($million)	Money saved per person ($)	Money saved per commuter ($)
1	New York-Newark NY-NJ-CT	18,946	6,040	9,586.8	506	1,587
2	San Francisco-Oakland CA	4,101	1,931	775.9	189	402
3	Boston MA-NH-RI	4,320	1,979	809.4	187	409
4	Chicago IL-IN	8,605	3,959	1,542.1	179	390
5	Washington DC-VA-MD	4,613	2,011	711.0	154	354
6	Philadelphia PA-NJ-DE-MD	5,381	2,406	654.9	122	272
7	Seattle WA	3,286	1,659	366.5	112	221
8	Baltimore MD	2,523	1,336	248.6	98.53	186
9	Portland OR-WA	1,925	932	151.1	78.49	162
10	Salt Lake City UT	1,027	538	79.6	77.51	148
11	Pittsburgh PA	1,761	926	124.0	70	134
12	Denver-Aurora CO	2,348	1,396	127.1	54.13	91
13	Atlanta GA	4,360	2,135	232.2	53	109
14	Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana CA	13,229	6,597	695.0	52.54	105
15	San Juan PR	2,333	1,235	113.1	48	92
16	Miami FL	5,482	2,875	248.8	45	87
17	San Diego CA	3,121	1,528	136.0	43.58	89
18	Cleveland OH	1,700	857	72.3	43	84
19	New Orleans LA	1,065	525	40.3	37.84	77
20	Austin TX	1,345	712	50.6	37.62	71
21	Spokane WA-ID	383	201	13.4	34.99	67
22	El Paso TX-NM	739	387	25.8	34.91	67
23	Houston TX	4,129	2,274	144.1	35	63
24	Brownsville TX	214	112	7.3	34.11	65
25	Hartford CT	905	468	30.4	34	65

(Data from TTI's 2012 Urban Mobility Report.)

A few things stand out right away. First is the huge difference between the savings in the New York Metro compared to everywhere else--the savings are so large, in fact, that if you add the $9.6 billion congestion savings to the $5 billion in farebox revenue that MTA brought in in 2011 you exceed the agency's total budget of $12.6 billion by a full two billion dollars.

The next four metro areas, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and D.C. all group together in savings per person/commuter, and, not coincidentally, probably represent the four best transit networks in the country after New York. 

Los Angeles stands out for doing particularly poorly here given its population. They're notorious for being car-centric, although that seems to be changing under the leadership of Mayor Villaraigosa, but given the overall density of the metro area this is a bit perplexing. The LA metro is actually more dense on average than the NY metro, but perhaps the key is pockets of much greater density: the actual city of New York is more than three times as dense as that of LA, and those very dense regions are certainly accounting for a disproportionately high level transit use. Count that as yet another case for density--we get our money's worth when it comes to public transportation spending, both in mobility and savings. Still though, the city of LA is only about 35% less dense than Chicago and yet with five million more people it's got less than half the savings. LA clearly has a lot of catching up to do. If only Measure J had passed.

Bringing it back home: Seattle also gets a lot of flak for having a pretty wimpy transit system (also improving, but still far from ideal), but we can see here that we're getting good value from what we've got so far. As the 15th-largest metro in the country we rank 7th for money saved per person, putting us very cleanly near the top of the "second-tier" public transportation systems. With 1.8 cents out of every sales-taxed dollar spent in King county devoted to transit--besides fare revenue, this is the vast majority of metro funding--you'd have to spend over $12,000 a year to pay back the $221 every commuter saves thanks to the metro system.

All of these numbers, as with the report from which they're derived, should be taken with a grain of salt. At the same time, I think they do a good job of illustrating the value of public transportation in our daily lives. There's a whole range of environmental, health, and social benefits to a robust transit system, but for the most successful networks the economic case can be justification enough for continued investment.

A possible solution to the SR 99 tunnel's projected tolling shortfall

As Publicola has diligently reported over the past several years, the downtown Seattle SR 99 bored-tunnel project has been an ill-advised mess from day one. Now, with tolling revenue projections cut in half (at least), the day of reckoning is approaching in Olympia, where rural, Republican, and other generally anti-Seattle lawmakers are making noises about Seattle needing to make up the difference. The state is already paying for $2.6 billion of the $4+ billion project, and the $200+ million tolling shortfall is our problem, the story goes.

The crux of the problem is that even small tolls will cause massive diversion onto downtown streets, defeating the whole purpose of the tunnel in the first place, and lowering revenue to boot. From Publicola again, state senator Curtis King (R-14, Yakima) complained that the committee responsible for updating tolling revenue estimates was too "Seattle-centric," and that it's no surprise that they're saying all of the tolling scenarios proposed by the state would lead to unacceptable diversion/congestion and that the state should pick up the difference--"you have an advisory committee that is all from Seattle. What else are they are going to tell us?"

He went on to say "So, the city of Seattle is concerned about diversion because they're the ones that are going to be affected," indicating that he thinks this is a choice between raising the necessary amount of money or accepting more congestion. Take some pain, but pay off your obligations, in other words. 

But while Sen. King can make all the political hay he likes out of this, the committee isn't wrong. Any amount of tolls will fail to raise enough revenue because of the diversion; one problem (of many) at the outset of this project was the fanciful expectation that people would be willing to pay for a trip through the tunnel when there are so many other free options for getting through the city.

This committee, the Advisory Committee on Tolling and Traffic Management, had a meeting in September where they discussed various tolling rates and the diversion this would entail. They produced a pdf presentation that includes some of those numbers, which can be found here. Unfortunately it only includes numbers for mid-day (1:30-2:30 pm) and peak period (3-6 pm), but those numbers are instructive. We'll focus on the peak period numbers because that's when a) the most cars use the tunnel, b) the tolls are highest and the most revenue is raised, and c) when the congestion penalty for choosing another route is largest. Let's take a look.

From the Advisory Committee on Tolling and Traffic Management.

Combining both northbound and southbound traffic for the peak period, they estimate that there would be 21,800 cars using the tunnel with no tolls. 21,800 cars, zero revenue. Now let's add the smallest tolls, $2.25 for southbound travel, and $1.50 for northbound. This diverts about 30% of vehicles, leaving us with 15,300 using the tunnel and many of the rest using other city streets. We also want to know how much it raises compared to other scenarios, so just for the purposes of comparison we'll calculate revenue for the day, which equals $28,125. 

The high toll scenario raises $40,675, but results in almost 50% diversion, spilling over 10,000 vehicles onto nearby roads at the busiest time of day.

Maybe that's just the price we pay though, if we want to do the right thing and cover our $400 million share, right? Wrong. From the same report, even the high-toll scenario raises only $250 million (or as little as $210 million) in actual project funding--the low-toll scenario doesn't even warrant consideration because it doesn't raise enough to bond against:

From the Advisory Committee on Tolling and Traffic Management.

So given the fact that no tolling scenario raises enough money (although I don't think the scenarios from this report are anywhere near optimal), the question then becomes whether the revenue differences are offset by other concerns, economic and otherwise. For example, there's a $40 million difference between the High Toll Benchmark and Scenario 1, but the HTB diverts an additional 1,200 vehicles just during evening peak. Is that money worth the decreased safety and the economic, environmental and psychological cost of increased congestion? If not, maybe we just eat the loss and come up with a different way to raise the money. This question actually suggests the beginnings of a solution.

The solution begins with accepting that the Washington State DOT is probably most to blame for the failed tolling projections. They designed the project and it's alternatives, and they created the faulty estimates from back before the tunnel was actually approved. eattle voted to approve the tunnel, yes. It was a huge mistake, no doubt, but the vote was undertaken with almost criminal levels of misinformation. So while Seattle voted yes, to say that they should be on the hook for a mistake a state department made would be incredibly unfair.

Instead, let's do this: to start, do a better job on these tolling scenarios. Just to start with, the high toll benchmark numbers seem like they should be switched for northbound and southbound. Diversion is way worse for southbound and yet it has a higher toll than northbound--reverse those and you probably end up with slightly more revenue and less diversion. The point is, it can and should be improved, and then those options should be reported to the state. Now pass the report along to the city and the state.

Upon receiving the new scenario plans, the city can choose which tolling regimen they prefer, but all revenue that falls short of the highest-revenue benchmark is covered by the city. The rest is covered by the state. In the case of the existing scenarios, this means that if we choose Scenario 1 with it's $210 million revenue in favor of the High Toll Benchmark revenue of $250 million, Seattle is on the hook for $40 million and the state pays the remaining $150 million to bring us up to $400 million total. 

This allows Seattle to decide for itself on the costs vs. benefits of higher revenue or worse traffic, but doesn't punish them for the original sin of WSDOT's awful tolling projections at the outset of the project. We take responsibility for what we could reasonably be considered responsible for, and the state does the same. Neat.

Thoughts on income tax as a source of transportation funding

How we're going to pay for transportation infrastructure in the face of falling gas tax revenues has been a hot topic lately, with ideas ranging from pretty good to ridiculously bad. The concept that transportation should be primarily funded by user fees (gas taxes, licensing fees, tolls, and other costs that fall specifically on those who use the roads) is fairly unique to government spending and has a lot of merit, but one significant drawback of getting most of your money from drivers is that it tends to overemphasize road capacity expenditures over transit, pedestrian, and bicycling infrastructure--no one likes the idea that they're subsidizing someone else's lifestyle, after all.

Many people note that the federal Highway Trust Fund has been reliant on tens of billions of dollars in general fund revenue for years, effectively resulting in subsidy of drivers' infrastructure by those who drive little or not at all. This is portrayed as a bad thing--a case where drivers' hypocrisy is laid bare--and as a justification for public transit and active transportation subsidies. Using federal income tax revenue (the main source of general fund monies) to shore up the transportation fund has been somewhat demonized when compared to user fees, but perhaps there's something to it.

Technically, we already pay income tax into the Highway Trust Fund.

Structured correctly, such a tax could be very progressive and begin to reduce the maintenance backlog we fall further behind on each year. It could move us toward a less car-centric transportation system, and even be enough to catch us up to the many nations currently ahead of us in building a 21st-century infrastructure.

Now, even a very small tax could be devastating to someone with very low income, at or around the poverty line for example. Say we make it a 1.0% tax on all income over $20,000. Most people make over $20k a year, and many of those that don't are students who will make more in the future, and retired seniors who have already paid their dues. Those that earn less than that don't need any additional burdens, and they're a very small share of the income pie anyway, so exempting them wouldn't have much impact.

Per capita income in the US was slightly above $40,000 in 2011--this includes children, infants, retired persons, the unemployed, etc., so obviously the per capita income of the working population is considerably higher. Total personal income in the US was about $13 trillion for 2011. To account for the first $20k of everyone's income being exempt, we'll pretend everyone earns $40k a year and say the tax is assessed on half of total personal income, or $6.5 trillion dollars. (In reality this would be higher, of course, but there are too many variables for me to know exactly how much.) A one percent tax on this amount would bring in $65 billion a year, more than the federal government spends total on transportation each year ($53.5 billion). Add this to the ever-declining federal fuel tax revenues of $34 billion and we're at almost $100 billion per year. (And remember, there's no reason to get rid of the existing fuel tax.)

One appeal of an income tax for transportation is that it's sensible in regard to how people value their time. Even with a flat percentage on all income, people who earn more will pay more money into the transportation fund, and this makes sense: a person earning $100k a year has more to lose (from a financial standpoint) by wasting time in traffic than a person earning $30k a year, so it's fair that they would pay more for a transportation system that actually works. We need to actually a working network if we're going to collect more taxes though--our transportation network is so degraded and ill-suited to our needs that almost no one feels like their money is being put to good use. An extra $60+ billion a year might just get us there--at the very least it'd make a dent in some of that $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog we've been ignoring.

Aside from the first-$20,000 exemption, this also solves the problem of "free-loading," the perception by people on all sides of the transportation debate that the other guy isn't paying the full cost of his or her mode of travel. Everyone pays something, so everyone gets a seat at the table when it comes to decision-making.

Of course, a bunch of extra money to spend on infrastructure doesn't do us any good if it's all just frivolously wasted on new capacity, and that's where things could get really interesting. How do we spend this new revenue responsibly? Imagine if, for example 80% of the new revenue had to be spent on maintenance and repair.

Poor roads cost the average vehicle owner $355 a year, not to mention the injury and loss of life that can result from a crumbling, unsafe infrastructure. Or consider that it can cost 6 to 14 times more to repair roads in the last years of their life than in the first fifteen:

With an extra $65 billion a year we could literally erase this maintenance backlog. Once a state had caught up with their repairs--a process that would no doubt take decades, but without additional spending will worsen rather than improve--they could begin to use this money on other projects, assuming they kept things in a good state of repair. It's unfortunate that states can't be trusted to operate with a "fix-it-first" mentality, but when it's costing us all money in the long term and lives in the short term, it's appropriate for the federal government to step in and demand changes. As more roads fall to poor and very poor condition the costs will only accelerate, and we're so far behind at this point that only a significant increase on transportation maintenance spending can get us caught up.

It would also be true under this system that those who don't drive often, or at all, would be contributing more money directly to the transportation fund. As such, we could expect drastic changes to how money is apportioned, and cities and states could make serious progress on their public transportation, walkability, and bicycling goals--something that wouldn't just improve mobility, but also health, the local economy, and the environment. A growing share of trips is already being made on foot, bike, or transit, so the existing 20% of the Highway Trust Fund devoted to transit would have to increase, especially since much more of its funding would be coming from lite- or non-drivers. This would in turn lead to better options for those who would like to use their car less, and greater support for more investment in alternative transportation.

One last benefit of such a system, when compared to other revenue mechanisms like mileage fees and tolls (which certainly have many benefits themselves), is that it wouldn't cost any additional money to administer. Unlike a vehicle-miles traveled system, which requires GPS or mileage tracking hardware in every car, as well as monitoring of all of this data, an income tax is something we're very familiar with in this country and would be very simple to tack on to existing federal income taxes at little or no cost. Tolls and congestion pricing could be retained in dense urban areas for purposes of traffic control of course, but if generating revenue as efficiently as possible is the goal, an income tax is hard to beat.

There would be upsides and downsides for any income-tax based funding mechanism, but I think there's value in at least giving it consideration and discussing how we might make it as equitable as possible. I still believe strongly in user fees, and I generally favor taxing things that produce negative externalities, like gasoline consumption, alcohol, or cigarettes, over taxing positive things like employment. This isn't what I would choose if my goal were to maximize fairness and social justice, but when the scale of the infrastructure problem is so massive and the cost of waiting is so great, maybe the best solution is just the one that actually solves it, and solves it quickly.

Property tax deductions, like mortgage interest deductions, are unfair to renters

This is a fairly minor follow-up to the post I wrote a few months ago about the pointlessness of the mortgage interest tax deduction. This is about the property tax deduction. Like the MITD, the PTD does a poor job of achieving its supposed policy goals, and in some cases actually works at cross-purposes to those goals.

Just as with mortgage interest, property owners are able to deduct state and local property taxes from their taxable income. Rental property, like owner-occupied housing, is also subject to this exemption. The goal of mortgage interest and property tax deductions is nominally to encourage homeownership, but by it's very nature this can't happen with rental property. Instead, all we end up doing is taking money out of the pockets of renters and handing it over to the (on average, richer) owners, with no social or economic policy victories to speak of.

Here's why:

Rents will usually be set by landlords at whatever level the market will bear (i.e., the highest level at which they can still rent all of their units). Unless competition for renters is extremely fierce, these property owners will be charging rents that cover their costs--not just their mortgage, but also repairs, landscaping, cleaning, taxes, and hopefully some profit. Renters, although they don't receive the actual bill, are the ones paying the property tax as part of their rent checks. Despite this fact, however, the property owner is the one who gets to write it off.

This means that if the property tax bill on my rental unit is $2,000 every year, I end up sending that money to my landlord (who then forwards it along to the city and state) and he deducts it from his taxable income, saving him upwards of $500. That's a pretty steep middleman's fee. The deduction is very clearly not succeeding at its goal of "encouraging homeownership". After all, I'm still renting. Maybe if I got to keep that extra $500 myself I'd be a little closer to owning a home. At the very least, we're clearly operating under an unfair system when only homeowners can deduct their property taxes even though both renters and owners pay them.

This isn't the fault of the property owners and I am not writing this with some kind of vengeance in mind for them, but if the deduction isn't helping to encourage homeownership* then why does it exist? From a government policy perspective, property and mortgage interest tax deductions are already of very questionable value for owner-occupied housing; in this case it's nothing more than a giveaway to rental property owners with nothing in return for the renter or society more broadly. No good is achieved.

As I wrote in November, there's no need for any additional incentive to purchase a home. Unless we want to find some way to ensure that the deduction finds its way into the hands of the person who actually paid the tax, we're better off getting rid of it entirely.


(I'd be interested in anyone's thoughts on how we might pass along the property tax directly to renters, or more likely give them the option of doing so. At first glance it seems too complicated to be worthwhile, and just getting rid of the deduction seems like a more realistic solution. But maybe there are some good ideas out there.)

*Other than in some perverse "force renters to overpay on their taxes until they wise up and buy a house" fashion.

Mileage fees are a great idea -- in addition to gas taxes, not in place of them

Vehicle mileage fees have become a popular topic of conversation for those concerned with keeping our transportation system fully funded, and rightly so. Gas tax revenues are being eaten away at by inflation on the one hand and increasingly fuel-efficient cars on the other, and the Highway Trust Fund has been dependent on general fund transfers for the past 5 years. Mileage fees provide a way to increase revenues while more fairly distributing the cost of road-building and maintenance: the more you drive, the more you pay. 

The pro-VMT (vehicle-miles traveled) fee camp got another boost last month with the release of a Government Accountability Office report detailing the benefits of this system of transportation funding. Right off the bat they came out with a strong endorsement: 

“Mileage-­based user fee initiatives in the United States and abroad show that such fees can lead to more equitable and efficient use of roadways by charging drivers based on their actual road use and by providing pricing incentives to reduce road use.”

 (Streetsblog summed up the report's key points here.)

The report's authors, however, seem to be operating under the assumption that a VMT fee would be adopted as a replacement to the 18.4 cent per gallon gas tax, not as a supplementary source of revenue. If so, that's a mistake we need to avoid. 

The fairest and most efficient solution would be to retain the gas tax and index it to inflation, then set a mileage fee (also indexed to inflation) at a level that gets our total transportation funding to whatever target we choose. While either a gas tax or VMT fee by itself could be set at a level to achieve our transportation revenue goals, combining them has a unique and important benefit: it disentangles two distinct externalities of driving, pollution from gasoline and the cost of building and maintaining roads. 

Currently our gas-tax-only system only taxes drivers for the amount of pollution they release into the air, not the amount they actually use our road and highway network. It's nice that Prius drivers get a break for polluting our environment less per mile than SUV drivers, but building roads is expensive and it's clearly unfair for some to pay much more than others for the privilege of using them (assuming equal miles driven). The Prius driver also contributes just as much to congestion, and to the opportunity cost of dedicating large amounts of urban space to car travel and subsidized parking.

By adding a mileage fee to our funding mix we are able to preserve the benefits of taxing pollution (specifically, encouraging people to choose more environmentally-friendly transportation) while finally doing something to assess the other societal and financial costs of driving.

Unlike the mileage-fee-only system the GAO seems to be suggesting, this combination would also ensure that drivers of higher-mpg vehicles aren't punished. Take a look at the following chart from the GAO report:

From GAO.

The three bars under "baseline" are the estimated mileage fees paid by the average driver if we wanted to collect 1) the same amount of revenue as gas taxes currently do, 2) the amount we actually spend on transportation, and 3) the amount we would need to collect to maintain our current transportation network, respectively. As you can see, the SUV driver actually pays less under the "current revenue levels" system than under the baseline scenario, while the hybrid driver pays double. In the highest revenue system the Prius driver's tax bill increases almost four-fold, while the SUV pays slightly less than double. Everyone pays the same amount regardless of the gas mileage of their vehicle.

Clearly though, the costs imposed by a 16 mpg SUV are not the same as those of a 40 mpg hybrid (or a 100 mpg electric vehicle for that matter). Not only is the SUV producing much more pollution, carbon dioxide and otherwise, but due to its weight it's also more damaging to the road surface and more destructive to any people or property it crashes into. To ignore these differences would be blatantly unfair, and in many ways a worse solution than simply increasing the gas tax to appropriate levels. 

Large, low-mileage vehicles have a greater impact on our roads, our economy, and our health than do smaller, higher-mileage vehicles, and our federal policy should reflect that. 

If we want more equitable and financially solvent transportation funding, adopting a mileage fee is the way to go--but not at the cost of ignoring the real and significant costs of gasoline consumption. We can have both, and we should.

Governor of Virginia offers worst transportation funding proposal in modern memory

Sometimes, in order to better appreciate our current policy and the options before us for improving it, you've got to get an idea for how much worse things could be. You've got to hear an idea so bad, so backwards and wrongheaded, so utterly devoid of merit, that it can't help but bring people together in united opposition. In the spirit of such bipartisan cooperation/condemnation, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell has proposed the what is possibly the worst transportation funding plan that you're ever likely to see from a serious politician. Really, it's that bad.

The plan has a several components. First, get rid of the state's 17.5 cent gas tax (the federal tax of 18.4 cents would still be in place, of course). Second, make up for lost gas tax revenue by jacking up the state sales tax by 0.8%, from 5.0 to 5.8. Third, just for funsies, charge drivers of hybrid and electric cars a $100 fee on top of their regular vehicle fees.

Starting from the top: eliminating the gas tax is foolish regardless of what else you intend to do to shore up transportation funding. It's true that fuel tax revenues are declining as vehicle mpg increases and people drive less, and it doesn't help that in most places the taxes aren't indexed to inflation. There are almost certainly better ways to pay for transportation--a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) tax, for example--but this doesn't change the fact that burning gasoline to get around is bad for people and bad for the planet. Anything done to raise additional funds should be in addition to the existing gas taxes.

Independent of the value of raising money with the gas tax, it rightly serves as a mild disincentive to purchasing gasoline. There are other transportation options besides driving a single-occupancy vehicle these days. If people choose to drive, which they are of course free to do, it should be recognized that this is to the detriment of human and environmental health, and that privilege shouldn't cost nothing. Market demand sets the price of gas, government sets the cost of pollution. As far as state fuel taxes go, Virginia already does a worse job of pricing those negative externalities than most states: its gas tax ranks #40 in the country (New York is #1 at 49 cents).

Replacing the gas tax with a sales tax increase is almost as bad as not replacing the revenue at all. Sales taxes are notorious for being one of the most regressive ways of funding government spending. Take Washington as an example, a state that relies more heavily on the sales tax than perhaps any other. In Washington, because there is no income tax and most revenue comes from the sales tax, middle-income, and particularly lower-income people pay a higher share of their income to state and local taxes than the national average, and a much higher percentage of their income than do high earners:

From the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

To be fair, the gas tax is also regressive. It hits poor people harder for exactly the same reasons as the sales tax does. It differs, however, in that people have options for transportation--very few are completely dependent on driving a car (at least not driving by themselves). There are no options when it comes to buying things like clothing, furniture, or kitchen utensils--you just need them, and you'll pay sales tax on them. But perhaps more importantly, those who earn very little are already much more likely to not drive; under McDonnell's plan, a gas tax they didn't need to pay would be replaced by an increase to the sales tax they pay every day. And the money would be used to fund roads that, by and large, they don't ever use. I doubt the governor would admit that his goal is to shift the burden of transportation funding to his lowest-income constituents, but that's the practical effect of this plan.

This would also make driving cheaper at the expense of those who don't drive, or don't drive often. At 17.5 cents, the current state gas tax accounts for about 5% of the cost of gasoline at the pump. Drivers would save this money and be able to spend it elsewhere--like on things that are subject to sales tax. The proposed increase in the gas tax is only 0.8%, however. So where before about 5% of the money drivers spent on gas was going toward transportation funding, now they can take that money and spend it on an extra coffee at Starbucks every week and only 0.8% of that money is going to transportation. This is a blatant shift further away from user fee-funded transportation, but in more ways than are immediately obvious.

Compare this to people who don't drive, who save exactly nothing and pay more on nearly all of their day-to-day purchases. And again, the people who don't drive are already disproportionately lower-income. Those who may have decided to get rid of their car or rely more on public transportation for financial reasons are being punished for that decision, while drivers are encouraged to keep on keepin' on.

Last, and most insane (although least significant overall), is the $100 fee assessed on hybrid and electric vehicles. This has been proposed in many places in response to the fact that these vehicles use the roads but, because they use so much less gasoline, contribute much less to transportation infrastructure funding. (This is also yet another reason to add a VMT tax to our funding mix.) I have reservations about penalizing people for doing right by the environment and their fellow man, but I understand why such fees exist and think they're okay, all things considered. In the case of Virginia, however, there's not supposed to be a gas tax that electric vehicle owners can skip out on--it's just an arbitrary punishment for owning a low-emissions car. This fee doesn't actually serve any purpose.

I've heard that the real reason for this fee is to make up for the federal gas taxes that these Virginians aren't paying much of either, but that makes no sense. For one, the fact that the federal government is failing to collect revenue from hybrid and electric vehicle owners is not something that Virginia or any other state needs to worry about. Let the federal government figure that out, the states get their money either way. You should be happy that you get to keep more of your own money--isn't that what every state wants? And I somehow doubt this $100 per car is going to to be sent to the U.S. Highway Trust Fund in lieu of foregone gas taxes. More likely it'll go straight to the state coffers, which means it's just a sneaky, dishonest way of shaking down electric vehicle owners and hoping they don't notice.

So Virginians, don't support this. Your legislature just recently shot down two transportation funding bills, one a mild sales tax increase (without removing the gas tax) and a much better one indexing the the gas tax to inflation. Neither was enough. Now's your chance to do even better and try out a VMT on a larger scale than the pilots going right now, like the one in Oregon. And while you're at it, stop exempting gasoline from the sales tax. And the rest of you states and governors, the low bar has been set. It can only get better from here. Right?

Drunk driving prevention is difficult, but we already know how to do it

Out of roughly 34,000 traffic-related fatalities in 2009, about one-third involved a driver with a blood-alcohol content of 0.08 or above (the minimum for a DUI offense in every state). Thinking about this I wondered whether this number could be reduced by increasing the penalties for higher BAC levels, since the chances of a collision rise quickly as impairment increases, but fines, suspensions, and jail time do not. After doing some research on the subject, I found instead that this is actually a very complicated issue (surprise!), and my intuition didn't really stand up to scrutiny. Case in point was Wisconsin, a state that already has penalties that scale with BAC but in both 2008 and 2009 had significantly higher rates of alcohol-related fatalities than the national average. Something else is going on here.

Just so you can get a sense for the argument I was making originally, here's the bulk of what I'd written before deciding to add the above disclaimer and what comes afterward:

Idea: drunk driving penalties should be more closely tied to blood-alcohol content

The penalties for a DUI conviction usually include a small amount of jail time, a 30-day to one-year driver's license suspension, and a few hundred to a few thousand dollars in fines--most states also have enhanced penalties which kick in BAC levels of 0.15-0.20. In the case of Washington state, though, the increased penalties for BAC at or above 0.15 don't have much bite: the same maximums for jail time and fines, with barely increased minimums, and a longer license suspension, one year instead of 30 days. Drunk driving of any kind is a serious crime that threatens the lives of the driver, passengers, and anyone else on the streets or sidewalks, but there's a big difference between driving with a 0.08 and a 0.15 BAC. We need to formally recognize this reality, and ensure that the penalty is commensurate with that increased risk.

According to this study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the risk of a crash is 1.74-2.69 times higher at a BAC of 0.08. At 0.15, crash risk is increased by 8 to 22 times, and at 0.20 the risk is 21 to 82 times higher relative to driving unimpaired. (The ranges represent the difference between the study's observed crash rates and its adjustment for those who refused to participate, were involved in hit-and-runs, etc., so the higher number is theoretically the more accurate risk estimate.) So in Washington, even though you're about 30 times more likely to get into a wreck at a BAC of 0.20 compared to 0.08, the punishment hardly differs at all. In the eyes of the law, the severity of each crime is essentially the same. Below is a graph from the study, illustrating the exponential increase in crash risk as BAC increases:

Crash risk vs. BAC, from NHTSA.

DUI laws in Washington (and many other states, I'm sure) aren't very sensible, but we can look elsewhere for guidance toward a better system. Although I think it still underrates the seriousness of BAC levels much higher than 0.08, Wisconsin has a system that's definitely superior to Washington's. There, penalties double, triple, and finally quadruple as BAC increases. A driver with a >0.25 blood-alcohol content faces penalties four times greater than someone arrested for DUI with a BAC between 0.08 and 0.149, and this includes fines, jail time, and license suspension. Of course, we can see from the above graph that a person with a BAC of 0.25 has a 160-times higher risk of getting into a collision compared to a sober person, and fifty times the risk of a person with a BAC of 0.08, so penalties that are only four times worse (at most) don't really capture the seriousness of driving with a very high BAC.

If BAC-scaled penalties aren't the solution, what is?

Based on the data from Wisconsin, increasing penalties for more serious drunk-driving infractions is not the whole solution. That doesn't mean it can't be a part of it, but it's not enough by itself. So what else can we do? My next thought was that perhaps part of the problem is that, at least in Washington, we so rarely actually convict people of DUIs. I have several friends who have been arrested for DUIs, and all of them were able to plead down to a "wet reckless" with the help of a lawyer, a much less serious crime, even though they blew over a 0.08 on the breathalyzer. Maybe the problem isn't that DUI penalties are insufficient, but that so few people are actually convicted of the crime they've committed.

Nope. Texas doesn't allow defendants to have their charge reduced to a wet reckless, and yet they had even higher rates of alcohol-related fatalities than Wisconsin did. Again though, things aren't so simple: Texas has extremely lax penalties even for a DUI conviction, with no minimum for fines, and as little as 3 days in jail and a 90-day license suspension.

Like I said, this turned out to be pretty complicated (again--surprise!). The most effective solution I found was actually a program that started in Washington state itself in November 2006, and was followed up in 2010. The study was performed in the three biggest counties in Washington and consisted of adding six--yes, just six--state patrol officers to each county, their primary goal being to crack down on alcohol and drug-impaired drivers. The report can be found at the NHTSA's web site [PDF]; it's only 5 pages and I encourage you to check it out for yourself. The gist of the report is captured by the following graph:

From National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The TZTP counties are the three with the extra WSP officers. As you can see, compared to the average over the previous five years, the TZTP counties experienced a 34.4% decline in alcohol- and drug-related fatalities. That's in one year. Compare this to a 28.4% increase in the next two biggest counties (Clark and Spokane), and an 8.5% decline in the rest of the state. It's very possible that the numbers might jump up a bit after people get used to the presence of these extra patrols, but the difference between the pre- and post-TZTP eras is stark and worth investigating further. I have to reiterate once more that this is the result of adding just 18 officers (plus another ten or so support staff) to three counties with a total population of 3.5 million. We could do much more.

During the 10-month window of the study these officers made over 3,000 DUI arrests, 3,000 speeding citations, and 900 seat belt citations. In theory this should mean several million dollars in fines, more than enough to cover the expense of these extra patrols. Due to the leniency of our sentencing, however, I couldn't really guess what we're actually collecting as a result of these arrests. But more importantly than all that, the presence of these officers saved dozens of lives, possibly including the innocent drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians these drunk drivers might have struck with their vehicles. The fact that it was at essentially zero cost to the state is just icing on the cake.

One way to ensure that we can capture that revenue and keep our drunk-driving patrols funded is to follow in Texas' footsteps (never thought I'd say that) and stop allowing offenders to plea down to wet reckless. Instead of punishing drunk drivers through the justice system's fines and suspensions, we're basically just redirecting that money to DUI lawyers--the people I know that were arrested for DUIs each paid about $5,000 through the whole process, but most of that money went to their lawyers. And for what? What do the lawyers contribute? No one is disputing the fact that these people were driving with a BAC at or above 0.08. The state should collect that money itself in the form of the DUI fines it rarely seems to collect, and use it to fund more patrols instead of enriching a few unnecessary lawyers.

I started this post planning to make a strong argument for increasing drunk-driving penalties, but after starting to write I realized there isn't evidence to back up my claims. Not without controls that don't yet exist, at least. And that's fine. Perhaps not surprisingly, I learned that enforcement seems to be the most effective way to prevent drunk driving and save peoples' lives. These two arguments intersect, however, at funding. If we want to be able to pay for extra patrols, the money needs to come from somewhere, and more strict penalties--or consistent sentencing, at least--could be part of the solution. And as we work to increase enforcement and seek to provide further evidence for its efficacy, let's keep finding new ways to prevent drunk driving, whether that means harsher penalties, more accessible alcohol and drug treatment programs, better transportation options, or all of the above. Even the most incremental improvement can mean hundreds of lives saved over the next few decades, and safer roads for everyone.

Infrastructure stimulus is different

The theory behind stimulus spending is that when private spending and investment fall short of expectations, government can step in and make up the difference. Things like temporary payroll tax cuts, extending unemployment benefits, and grants for states to keep teachers in schools are great examples of ways the federal government can assist individuals, businesses, and cities, but they differ from infrastructure spending in a key way: while most stimulus measures are only needed as a response to recessions and shortfalls in consumer demand, investing in infrastructure and maintenance is something we need to do--but haven't--in booms as well as busts. What they share, however, is that recessions (and their recoveries) are always the best time to make these expenditures.

Why is this the best time to spend on infrastructure? Contracting is very cheap right now since construction companies are so desperate for business. Borrowing costs for the federal government are so low that investors are willing to accept a year-over-year loss on their bond purchases, after inflation (which is also exceedingly low). Unlike during a boom, we can be confident that public expenditures won't be crowding out private investment. And, of course, more people will have construction jobs, which lowers the unemployment rate directly as well as indirectly when those newly-employed workers start spending their money in the broader economy.

But for those who choose to believe that "stimulus" is just code for big government, socialism, etc., or that it doesn't actually boost the economy, infrastructure--particularly maintenance--is still a sensible way to spend our money. As has been widely reported, including on this blog, the U.S. has an estimated $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog. Whether we choose to spend that money now or later, it's going to be spent. The longer we wait the worse the degradation and the more expensive each of those repairs will be, and the more it will cost us in vehicle wear-and-tear, lost productivity, and injuries and lost lives as pipes burst and bridges crumble. If we've got to make the investment either way, let's do it now, while the costs are least and the benefits greatest.

With driverless cars on the way, smarter transportation investment is needed

Even though driverless cars have only been popular in the news for a few years, it's looking increasingly likely that they're the future of personal vehicle travel. Already, California and Nevada have taken steps to approve the use of Google's model, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin believes autonomous vehicles will be commercially available within a decade. The advantages to driverless cars are numerous and significant, but they raise serious questions about how we invest in infrastructure as the technology matures. In particular, are we wasting billions on highway capacity that will soon be obsolete?

There's a lot to like about autonomous vehicles. There's great potential for them to be operated much more safely than manually-driven vehicles, and if this bears out it'd be justification enough to make the switch. They would also reduce the need for parking directly adjacent to destinations, since the car could drop you off and find a space further afield. It'd also be easier to save a lot of money by getting rid of your own vehicle, instead taking advantage of a massive fleet of cheap, robotic vehicles. 

Then there's congestion. 

According to a recent study by Columbia University's Patcharinee Tientrakool, a highway populated exclusively with driverless, communicating vehicles could increase its efficiency by up to 273%. In this scenario almost four times as many cars could travel through a corridor, safely and quickly, as are currently able to do so. This is mainly thanks to the decreased following distances required by autonomous vehicles--about 100 feet at 60 mph for humans, compared to less than 20 feet for computer-driven vehicles--and their ability to coordinate speeds, merging, etc. Although not absolutely equivalent, fully adopting driverless cars would be akin to more than tripling the number of lanes of every highway in the country.

Patcharinee Tientrakool, Columbia University.

Whether that transition takes twenty years or fifty, it's coming. (And if it doesn't, it will be because of some other revolutionary technology that solves the problem even more effectively.) Given that reality, and with vehicle miles per capita on the decline, continuing to invest scant transportation dollars on increased capacity is a monumentally wasteful practice. According to a Congressional Budget Office report [PDF], we spent about "$146 billion to build, operate, and maintain highways in the United States," about two-thirds of that paid for by state and local governments, in 2007 alone. Not all of this is capacity expansion, but you can count on the fact that a great deal of it is. This is at the same time as the American Society of Civil Engineers is telling us that we've got a $2.2 trillion infrastructure backlog, and the longer we wait to make these necessary repairs the more expensive they'll become.

In urban areas it costs tens, sometimes even hundreds of millions of dollars per mile to add new highway lanes--and in as little as a generation we're going to be forced to to tear them right back out. 

It's been said again and again, but it really is time to turn the corner and start investing more in the maintenance and repair of our ailing transportation system, and directing funds toward projects that do more for promoting health, sustainability, and economic productivity. It's understandable, if not acceptable, that the threat of increasing population and traffic congestion has made it difficult to focus on simply maintaining what we already have. It's increasingly clear, however, that this is no longer a question of useful expansion vs. useful repair. Only one choice makes sense for our future. We can do better, and we're running out of excuses for failing to do so.