“I’d like to see the president go on television and, in a dramatic demonstration of real leadership, announce a plan geared toward increasing employment that is both big and visionary – something on the scale of the Manhattan Project, or the interstate highway program, or the Apollo spaceflight initiative.”

He goes to propose a “Rebuild America” campaign to put people to work rebuilding infrastructure, including roads, schools, electric power grids, and mass transportation. 

I agree completely with his sentiment, but he and others who propose similarly ambitious initiatives never understand why these kinds of initiatives seem beyond our reach today.  Even if we had the money for them, which we do not today, achieving their goals would be virtually impossible because of policies and practices we have put into place in the last 40-50 years:

• We have given individuals and interest groups far more power to stop and slow big projects than was the case when we built the interstate highway system.  Aside from laws mandating environmental impact statements, protection of endangered species,  protection of people with disabilities, rights of people affected to have notice and hearings, and reviews by metropolitan planning organizations, we have also put into place processes to protect against unfair and uncompetitive contracting.  While individually these rights are necessary, we must recognize that their cumulative effect is to make it difficult to get anything done, and, when anything does get done, its cost balloons out of sight.  For example, as Alan Altshuler and David Luberoff point out in their book Mega-Projects: The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment, the infamous “Big Dig” project in Boston was estimated to cost $5 billion, but cost in excess of $16 billion.  Over 1,700 special agreements had to reached with home and business owners and other interest groups to get the project done.
• We have added too many unrelated goals to the completion of infrastructure projects, all of which add cost and time to the project. Two years ago, when I was invited to speak at the ground-breaking ceremony for the $80 million Urban Transitway project in Stamford, Connecticut, I was introduced to the U.S. Department of Transportation official responsible for diversity in contracting and employment.  He had a large and bewildering array of responsibilities mandated by federal law and executive order to enforce.  Additionally, the project was subject to prevailing wage regulations and a wide range of other non-transportation-related rules.  Again, I do not question the broad direction of these goals, or even whether they are appropriately applied to infrastructure projects, but let’s remember that they add cost and time to getting projects done, and almost none of these were in place 40-50 years ago.
• Unfortunately, there are a lot of “hands in the till” between the time projects are begun and when they are completed.  We have this idealized image of modern-day infrastructure projects that take unemployed people and put them to work within a few months after the project is commenced.  The reality is quite different.  There is some period of time in which currently employed government professionals have to work through mandated review processes.  Then, highly-paid outside engineering and construction firms get involved for design.  After that, well-paid planning and government affairs consultants and lawyers get involved.  Each of these groups takes their toll charge on a project for a long time before any unemployed person has the potential to get employed.  In some communities, the work may not even get done by unemployed local residents.  Some years ago, I visited with the head of a community development group in a depressed major city, who had put local residents to work on small construction projects.  He said his biggest adversary was the mayor, who was upset that the community development organization did not funnel work to the mayor’s friends and political contributors.  He said that, on other projects, work got diverted away from the unemployed to outside, but politically-connected firms.

As a society, we have to decide whether government exists to serve its citizens or to be a conduit for money from its citizens to resourceful and politically well-connected special interests, whether they be state employees, politically powerful contractors, lawyers, lobbyists, government affairs consultants, or engineering and design firms.  It’s nice to contemplate an idealized world in which none of these factors play a role, but it’s not the world we live in today, and it won’t be the world our children live in unless we do something about it.

Before I provide my views and financing and funding strategies, I want to make several preliminary observations:

• We cannot expect the public to support tax or fee increases for transportation if there is not complete transparency and logic for any movement of revenues or expenses between the General Fund and the Special Transportation Fund. The public will see such increases as general tax increases, to which they are resistant, as opposed to funding sources for transportation, which they would support.
• The public will also be reluctant to support increased transportation funding if we cannot have more discipline in making project cost estimates and approving appropriations for them.  When the General Assembly approves an expenditure based on Connecticut DOT project cost estimates, and then sees those estimates double or triple for no apparent good reason, the public and its elected representatives will be very reluctant to give ConnDOT more money to spend.
• Connecticut’s heavy dependence on federal transportation money puts it in peril if replacement funding sources are not found quickly because the Federal Highway Trust Fund is essentially insolvent.
• Reliance on motor fuel taxes as the primary funding source for covering bonded indebtedness for transportation projects is increasingly risky because of the likelihood that people will reduce fuel consumption over time.  This was emphatically pointed out by Mary Peters, the Commissioner of the U.S. Department of Transportation in her minority position statement on the Federal Surface Transportation Study released earlier this year.
• In the ConnDOT 2007 Master Transportation Plan, ConnDOT identifies a minimum of $3.27 billion funding gap between what is needed to keep the current transportation infrastructure in a state of good repair, and what is projected to be available from existing funding sources.  This gap does not take construction cost inflation into account, nor does it make any assumptions about reduced federal funding.  Whether this gap is higher or lower than it should be, nevertheless, it is indisputable that we have a significant funding gap if we do business as usual.

With this apparently grim picture, what can we do to improve mobility for people and goods to insure that we have a globally competitive economy in Connecticut and a higher quality life?  Also, what can we do to improve safety on our roads, bridges, tunnels, and public transportation systems?

The good news is that there are many cost-efficient strategies we could employ, but have not chosen to employ so far.  I will not discuss tolls or congestion pricing because those subjects are part of a study, the results of which will be released next year, and because the speakers following me will cover this in far more detail.  However, I will note that, without some form of fee based on road usage, any attractive public-private investment partnership option will be very difficult to implement.  I would hope that the toll study under way will have as broad a scope as possible in terms of technology, pricing, and process options.

Today, I will focus on other alternatives for addressing mobility and safety issues.

Strategy 1:  Use private sector sponsors to fund programs to reduce demand.

Reduce trips

The least resource-intensive way to improve mobility for those who have to travel on our roads or use our public transportation infrastructure is to reduce trip demand from those who could employ other alternatives:

• There are many private sector companies, like Cisco Systems, HP, Microsoft, ATT and the other telecom service providers, and Research in Motion who benefit from individuals working at home or at satellite locations closer to home.  Early telecommuting experiments failed in many organizations because they were too ambitious or because organizations did not understand execution imperatives.  Allowing employees to work more flexibly from a more convenient location even one day a week is a very popular benefit, and it is less risky than adopting a full telecommuting program.  Over time, as organizations learn what works best, they can expand these programs.  ConnDOT and the Department of Labor should convene a group of large employers, as well as technology providers, and workflow consultants, to identify and promote best practices in alternative work locations.  To the degree that these practices become widespread, our traffic volumes will shrink just enough to increase traffic flow significantly, as they do on certain religious holidays that are not broad work holidays.
• We have learned in the past two decades that we have mobility issues throughout the day and evening, not just at peak commuting times.  We are increasingly a just-in-time society, with retailers and manufacturers holding smaller volumes of inventory and expecting suppliers to deliver products, parts, and materials at greater frequency.  We also have many individuals making retail trips by automobile to do errands that could be avoided if a convenient home delivery infrastructure were in place.  The good news is that there are many delivery options available today that would reduce both the redundant delivery systems many retailers and manufacturers use today and the consumer travel to the retail site.  Recently, DHL announced an agreement to eliminate its residential delivery system and to use the U.S. Postal Service system.  We need to encourage other delivery services to focus on their core capabilities and to join forces to reduce traffic congestion, fuel consumption costs, and environmental emissions.
• We also might find that some of these delivery companies are better equipped to provide residential delivery services for other firms to increase convenience for consumers, such as the elderly, who would welcome more deliveries to their homes, rather than having to go to as many locations to collect items they have purchased.  Once again, state and local governments can convene meetings that enable every firm with a delivery capability to leverage that capability for more purposes.  Web-based systems could also be created to match small retailers with delivery needs to those with excess delivery capacity.
• Similarly, ConnDOT should be doing a better job promoting ride-matching services that would allow individuals to access rides in automobiles from other individuals commuting to or from nearby locations at the same times of day.  The State of Virginia has used this system effectively to reduce single-occupant vehicle demand on the highways.  Our NuRides program needs to be modified to allow payment to the ride brokerage agencies based on the number of road miles they eliminate, as opposed to a flat fee.  Houston has implemented such a system, with an annual cap that protects the government from budget overruns.

Reduce motorized travel

There are two big opportunities for reducing motorized travel demand:

• To increase bicycle access at train stations and bus terminals; and
• To make bicycle and pedestrian travel more viable options for short trips.

ConnDOT and the towns which operate rail stations have a severe rail station access issue.  There is far more demand for rail station parking than the available supply of parking spaces.  At a minimum, there needs to be a central system for identifying and allocating parking spaces.  Today, individual towns treat parking spaces like season tickets for popular sports franchises.  They issue parking permits to residents, who then keep them as long as they want, and who derive value that can be passed down to future owners or residents.  Parking access should be priced at its true value, should be continuously re-offered to those willing to pay that value, and the revenues collected should be used to improve the stations, not for the general funds in the towns.

However, beyond a more effective revenue collection system, ConnDOT and the towns need to learn from the experience of major cities like Amsterdam that make bicycle and pedestrian access to the trains and the stations very easy.

For shorter trips, bicycles are used more extensively for more of the year in many parts of North America, including Canadian cities like Montreal, than they are here in Connecticut.  One of the most absurdly inefficient uses of motorized travel is the use of motor vehicles to drive single children or to have them drive themselves to high school and middle school, when bicycle alternatives would work just fine most of the year.  We should be accessing funding from the Safe Routes to School program, but, beyond that, major bicycle or athlete clothing and equipment companies, like Nike or Adidas, could support these efforts.

Strategy 2: Use private sector solutions to get better usage of existing transportation assets.

Raise revenue and improve system-wide efficiency through better travel information.

From studies we found during the work on the Reform Commission, people who use roads and public transit will pay more for better information on whether there are travel delays, to give them an opportunity to make alternative arrangements.  Today, ConnDOT travel information is limited to interstate highway data, and, for people already in transit, is insufficiently detailed and timely to be useful.  ConnDOT also has to recognize that its transportation information infrastructure is more designed to achieve compliance with Federal Highway Administration requirements than it is to give useful information to travelers or others, like supply chain managers, who depend on accurate, precise, and timely transportation information.

Private companies are far better able to provide the level of detail needed by transportation asset users, but the ConnDOT can participate in a partnership that enables it to capture additional revenues, either in the form of higher fares or a fee-based service for which citizens would pay.

That information would include real-time data on the interstate highways and on principal arterial roads like Route 1 and Route 7.  It would also include specific information on available parking at specific rail stations.

Incent Private Sector Developers to Increase Parking At and Around Rail Stations.
I began my transportation volunteer work in 1985 to try to get funding for rail station parking in Southwestern Connecticut.  Today, we still have a shortage of parking spaces.  There are many solutions that the State could use more aggressively to increase the supply of parking.  As major development projects get approved by the State Traffic Council near major rail stations, the Council could require the dedication of parking spaces to rail station users.

Reduce unpredictable delays by reducing the number and severity of motor vehicle accidents.

By using the technological and business capabilities of the State’s licensed automobile insurers, and the trade associations that represent trucking companies, the state can take a wide range of steps to reduce the frequency and severity of motor vehicle accidents.  For example, Progressive Insurance offers an insurance plan in some states called MyRate that rewards safe, low-mileage drivers with discounts, by validating their safe driving behaviors with an on-board device.  This insurance plan is not allowed in Connecticut.  The state should allow it, but make sure it is voluntary and that appropriate privacy protections are in place for those who choose it.

Similarly, cameras are used in many states and cities around the world, including here in the United States, such as the City of Chicago, to identify vehicles committing moving violations.  Whether this technology is deployed, or others are used in its place, there is no question that technology that detects unsafe driving behavior and makes information on that behavior available to law enforcement authorities significantly reduces motor vehicle accidents.

These kinds of solutions can reduce unpredictable delays from accidents and significantly improve mobility and safety throughout the year.

Strategy 3: Increase the supply, efficiency, financial attractiveness and reliability of motorized transportation.

In a recent article in the New York Times, the Rochester, New York, Transit Authority was profiled because it actually has a budget surplus.  The reporter noted that Rochester had re-evaluated all of its bus routes, had eliminated some, changed the routing on others, but, most importantly, had identified specific large customers, such as the school districts and the major businesses, which were willing to supplement fare revenues to get more customized services and to eliminate redundant bus services they had in place.  We have a highly fragmented infrastructure for delivering bus service here in Connecticut.  That service has a lot of actual and potential innovation, but there are also opportunities for reconfiguring the networks to have those who can benefit pay more.

Expand Alternative Travel Outreach

We have many great programs here in Connecticut, such as TransitChek, which can be implemented faster and at much lower expense than building additional capacity on highways, rail systems, or even bus systems.  These programs are generally thinly-funded and poorly-marketed.  We need to look at selectively increasing funding and marketing for programs that can get the most immediate and largest paybacks in decreasing the number of people who use single-occupant vehicles.

Strategy 4: Engage Private Investment and Operational Capital for Selected State Transportation Assets

I believe that public-private partnerships for investment or operation of selected state assets would make a great deal of sense in conserving scarce state transportation capital.  Realistically, the attractiveness of selling highway assets is limited unless we have tolls with congestion pricing potential, so I would not recommend that we consider that option at this time.

On the other hand, there are asset categories which we should consider opening more fully to private investment and operation, but with appropriate state oversight:

Highway Service Areas

As noted in our Reform Commission report, one of the areas in which Connecticut is below average in transportation assets is the quality and condition of its service areas.  Many are over 50 years old.  Getting the private sector to invest significant capital in these areas could achieve several benefits, aside from making them far more attractive for travelers:

• A private sector operator could move more aggressively to increase revenue yield, the benefit of which could be shared with the state.  While these service areas are net profit contributors to the state today, they could be greater profit contributors with more focus.
• Service areas along I-95, I-91 and I-84 could be equipped more modern technology and other amenities for truckers, which would make them more attractive for truckers to get badly-needed rest and reduce fatigue-related highway accidents. A simple investment in technology that would allow truckers to keep electric power going while they eat and rest would be significant.
• Culverts and other topographical and environmental issues adjacent to the service areas could be addressed in the renovation of these service areas.

Bradley and Other Airports

It became clear to me during the work we did on the Reform Commission that our airports had great underutilized potential.  While Bradley is a net profit contributor with a strong management team and board, it is inevitably constrained by annual budgeting processes as to its ability to maximize revenue potential. For example, at a time when the New York area airports are increasingly unattractive because of air traffic congestion delays, Bradley could have a service reach much farther into Fairfield County than it does today, were it to have a more focused marketing plan.  The management team at Bradley is capable of developing and implementing such a plan, but annual and inflexible budget constraints limit Bradley’s potential.

A private operator with appropriate state oversight could do far more with Bradley, and with other airports that have potential for commercial service.  To effect this result, the state would need a more centralized management structure than it has today, and would need to consider packaging a number of airports, including Tweed-New Haven, to make them attractive to a private operator.

Strategy 5: Employ and Provide More Incentives for Smart Growth Strategies

I support Connecticut’s fledging effort to study transit oriented development, which was approved in last October’s bonding package.  However, the funding needs to be more narrowly focused on transportation and other development projects that specifically focus on creating walkable environments and on developments that occur within a walkable distance from public transportation facilities.  Transit-oriented development will relieve the funding crisis in two ways:

• It will enable developers to create more demand and, therefore, more revenue for public transportation without significant state expenditures; and
• It will cause individuals to engage in activities closer to where they live, thereby reducing the need for single-occupant vehicles and the stress they cause on scarce roadways.

The State also needs to empower the State Traffic Commission to exercise its power in issuing Major Traffic Generator Certificates of Operation to induce communities to require a master plan that takes transportation impacts more fully into account, consistent with smart growth and transit-oriented development strategies.

Concluding Observations

What I want to leave with you today are the following observations:

• While there is no “silver bullet” solution that, by itself, will have a big impact on our funding crisis, there are many smaller initiatives that cumulatively would close the funding gap.
• To take advantage of those initiatives, we need to rely far more heavily on private sector assistance and partnership than we do today.  Some of the best initiatives would require little or no public funding.
• To the extent that the State plays a major role in driving these initiatives, we need appropriate oversight, but we also need methodologies that enable us to make sensible multi-year decisions that will be investments in the future of our transportation network.

In the absence of significant changes in the way we look at transportation, we will become far less competitive in the national and global economy.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present my views today.

Having run businesses that had many different kinds of fees, particularly financial services businesses, and having been a consumer for many decades, I have some observations about what makes fees acceptable, and what causes them to be annoyances to consumers.

The consumer has to believe that the purpose of the fee is valid.

There are three types of fees that are arguably valid: those that are charged for extra services, those that reflect added transaction costs, and those specifically designed to discourage certain conduct.  Some fees fit into more than one category, such as fees for late payment of a bill.  Late charges are a form of extra credit to the late payer, so there is value given by the biller, but they also reflect the cost of the biller being deprived of cash for a longer period of time, and needing to reflect that in a fee.  Generally, if a fee is justified by one of these purposes, consumers are more likely to accept it.

If the cost of doing business requires a fee for something that used to be free, it is far more palatable to the consumer if the seller also adds something of value at the same time.

In 1991, when I ran our HR function, I had the unenviable task of increasing health care premiums so that the employees’ total payments would approach 20% of our total cost.  This was much higher than we had asked them to pay before.

However, we simultaneously offered them broader coverage in the form of preventive screenings.  While they did not like the cost increases, they accepted them because we gave them something of value that they had not been given before.

The marketer cannot get greedy.

Even if the fee is for a valid purpose, consumers resent it if they think they are being gouged.  The amount of the fee has to bear some relationship to value or cost.  For example, if a late fee is more than a certain percentage of the outstanding balance, even if it is legally valid, it starts to look like loan sharking if it is too high.  Consumers also expect that fees will be reduced or eliminated when the reasons for imposing them disappear.  They do not like to feel that the marketer is using an external event as an excuse to raise prices and keep them raised.

Consumers do not like to be surprised by fees.

Fees need to be openly disclosed, not buried in the fine print of a lengthy contract, and the marketer is always better off explaining why the fee has been imposed.  For example, no one likes to pay a fee for checked luggage on airline flights, but when airlines explain that the extra weight of each piece of luggage adds significantly to fuel costs, the fee becomes more understandable when gasoline becomes so much more expensive.

Over time, consumers prefer high fixed rate charges to a charge that varies by the level of fees charged.

ATT and other telecoms have discovered over the years that consumers prefer predictable bills to lower, but significantly variable, bills.  They want the comfort of knowing the maximum amount they will pay, even if it is higher than what a variable fee-based bill would cost them.

Much of what I have said is common sense, but it is surprising how many marketers fail to adhere to it.

Clearly, we have a crisis in terms of traffic congestion, overburdened existing transportation infrastructure, too many bridges that are structurally deficient and functionally obsolete, and too many preventable safety-related problems.  In the July 28, 2008, USA Today, a federal transportation official was quoted as saying that we need an additional $225 billion in transportation spending to address this crisis.  Moreover, in the July 29 New York Times, an articled reported that the Federal Highway Trust Fund, the main source of federal dollars for road and bridge projects is in such dire financial straits that money may need to be borrowed from a federal mass transit fund.

Decades ago, our country made the decision to finance transportation construction, maintenance, and repair, and public transportation asset acquisition primarily through taxes and fees levied on purchases of gasoline and other fossil fuels.  Today, that decision is painful and being stress-tested to the limit because of the $4 a gallon price for gasoline.

Elected officials are reacting to this crisis by proposing temporary gasoline tax holidays, rollbacks of gasoline tax increases, and even reductions of current gasoline tax levels.  At the same time, they and the public are resistant to implementing or increasing tolls or congestion pricing that could potentially provide a supplemental source of financing.  There is also a lot of resistance to privatizing transportation assets in many states and regions, although some states, such as Indiana and Illinois, have jointly outsourced the tollway that operates at the border of both states.

This collective denial and refusal to face up to this crisis has serious consequences, particularly in an environment in which delay is causing significant increases in the price tags of any transportation project governments may wish to undertake.  The same forces that are causing a rapid increase in gasoline prices are operating to increase the prices of the basis commodities used in construction: steel, plastics, nickel, zinc, copper, aluminum, and cement.  As the clock ticks, inflation ravages the purchasing power of tax dollars at a level unseen since the 1970’s.  Unlike the 1970’s, when we basically had a self-inflicted set of problems that drove inflation, this inflationary spiral is driven by global forces that are largely outside our control, such as demand in China, India, and the Middle East for the same construction materials.

The only thing that appears to motivate elected officials who do not want to collect gasoline taxes, do not want to institute or raise tolls, and do not want to privatize assets is that they are hoping against all odds that this crisis will go away on its own.  Unfortunately, it won’t.  This crisis is not like fine wine.  It will not get better with age.  

We need elected officials who have the moral courage to describe in specific detail what it will take for our transportation crisis to be addressed, and to propose unpopular, but necessary, steps to deal with it.

I understand that there is a lack of trust in many departments of transportation in terms of their cost estimates and their competence in carrying out big projects.  But even if they had exaggerated the problem by doubling cost estimates, and even if they were exceptionally competent, we would still have a major crisis.

I believe there are some creative ideas for reducing the scope of the problem.  Private sector money could be used for assets such as bicycle paths, rail station parking areas, or even airport improvements.  Traffic information systems could be provided far more cost-effectively by the private sector than by the cumbersome processes used in government procurement, and they would be far more responsive to the needs of both individual and business travelers, as well as logistics and delivery firms that depend on correct, real-time information.  I also believe that demand reduction is a viable strategy today, a far less expensive and faster one than adding capacity.

But none of these ideas will see the light of day until elected and appointed government officials face honestly up to the problem, and have an intelligent dialogue with the public.  While there will also be those members of the public who do not want to face reality, the majority of Americans will support prudent investments in our critical infrastructure.

The biggest opportunity to address both in one strategy is the reduction of carbon from vehicle emissions into the air. Better fuel economy, reduced driving, and reduced emissions improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion, reduce asthma from bad air, and reduce the carbon footprint of driving.

That is one of the reasons we have advocated substituting remote commerce for face-to-face commerce relative to citizen interactions with government and other private sector transactional activity that reduces unnecessary vehicle trips. What are some of the “no-brainers” here?

• Why not eliminate all toll plazas and substitute either E-Z-Pass-type solutions or photos that capture a driver’s license plate number and result in a bill being sent to the driver? The highest emissions come from car engines running at low or idling speeds, as opposed to 55-mile-an-hour travel. Why do we keep toll plazas in place? For example, Ireland, which I visited this past week, is on the way to eliminating them.

• Why not substitute photo capture of speeders and motorists who violate other traffic rules for stationing policemen with idling engines? Everywhere photo enforcement systems have been used, they reduce accidents, reduce incident-related congestion, and increase fines and penalties revenues.

• Why not give many more voters the chance to vote by mail? California offers voters the choice of voting by mail or in person. 35% of the voters have chosen to vote by mail, reducing those vehicle trips.

• Why not have more government license acquisition transactions done by mail or over the Internet?

• Why not have more pharmaceuticals delivered by mail or through a local delivery system serving a number of small merchants, particularly to elderly citizens?

Beyond these obvious carbon-reducing actions, governments need to change other policies that discourage or fail to encourage private decisions that reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions:

• Connecticut levies a heavy tax on new vehicles and very little on old ones. This discourages new vehicle purchases, and keeps higher-polluting older vehicles on the road longer. It is justified as a device to help lower-income residents who are driving older cars, but the system could be altered to provide tax credits for lower-income citizens who drive old vehicles. The taxes on wealthier families who keep an older vehicle, particularly a gas-guzzling SUV, could be increased to cover the revenue shortfall.

• Parking fees and taxes should be far greater for larger vehicles, particularly SUV’s, than for smaller or energy-efficient vehicles. New York City does this to a degree with its higher parking fees for oversized vehicles, but it probably needs to have an even steeper differentiation than it does today. Most states or localities that have parking taxes and fees have no incentive for reducing vehicle sizes. The Gristmill blog discusses some relevant points related to the connection between congestion pricing and carbon taxes.

• I am on the Board of Directors of Eaton Corporation which provides cutting-edge engine air management technologies for automobiles that reduces emissions, while maintaining vehicle performance. Governments do not provide sufficient incentives for adoption of that technology or others that may attempt to accomplish the same goal a different way. Hybrid cars, for instance, are a great alternative proven to reduce carbon emissions, as cited in the BioStock blog.

• New Jersey has started to allocate its transportation capital projects dollars to favor smart growth planning and zoning which discourage unnecessary uses of motor vehicles. Many other states have not followed that path.

• Too many states and localities address traffic congestion with a focus on increasing road capacity and, even with a focus on public transportation, increasing railcars and buses. There needs to be an equal or greater emphasis on eliminating unnecessary trips by individuals and substituting telecommuting or other ways of keeping the individual off the road. By the way, while rail is certainly better than driving because it is group travel alternative, there is still a trip, often by car, to the train station, and the railcar has a carbon footprint, although a smaller one per person.

The Carbon Clear Blog outlines some additional good low-carbon strategies to fight global warming. I specifically agree with the “Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Part III” post, which touches upon ways to reduce driving-related climate pollution.

Ultimately, we need to look at all of our governmental and private sector actions through a different set of lenses. These are just a few examples.

Two things are worth noting, one of which is a broader point about our society today:

• Traffic congestion is popping up in areas in which we have never experienced it before. For the past 15 years, my family and I have been going down to South Bethany Beach, Delaware for a week’s vacation. This year, for the first time, we experienced horrific traffic delays at odd times at places like the Delaware Memorial Bridge going into Delaware, State Route 113 south of Dover, and even some of the county roads between Route 113 and Bethany Beach. Much of this is a result of continuous over-building of new housing in areas in which the infrastructure is not there to support traffic.
• The bigger issue is that our infrastructure in many places has no flexible capacity. Driving from Peabody, Massachusetts, into Cambridge, Mass. last week, we experienced a horrific delay getting across the Tobin Bridge because of a problem on Storrow Drive that had an effect that radiated across a good part of Boston.

It is this second problem that gives me deep concern about our future. When we spend too little money on flexible capacity, we guarantee that small problems have huge disruptive consequences. Businesses experience this in many circumstances:

• When public companies are expected to lever up or to return every bit of spare cash to shareholders if they do not have an immediate use for it, they are succumbing to a pressure that will deprive them of ability to respond to unanticipated conditions.
• When organizations cut every bit of “excess” staff, they lose the flexibility to address unanticipated growth opportunities or risks. For example, if there were a serious pandemic, most organizations would collapse because of their inability to deploy trained staff.
• When companies operate with a “just-in-time” supply chain strategy, they cannot manage supply chain disruption effectively.

Governments, as well, are operating in ways that do not prepare them to address unanticipated problems. “Rainy funds” are hard to maintain because citizens demand either tax reductions, spending on social needs, or spending on capital projects when there are budget surpluses.

Today, we experience this chronic underinvestment in our transportation network, as well as the lack of “rainy day” funds. To some degree, politicians who want to get re-elected succumb to short-term pressures.

However, there are mechanisms to insulate certain funds from these pressures to spend money foolishly or to reduce taxes that cannot easily be increased in more challenging times. We saw politicians become very creative in dealing with the difficult issue of military base closures. They agreed to have a neutral Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission make recommendations that would have to be approved or rejected as a package.

Today, we desperately need creative political and business leadership that can recognize the pressure to think short term, and to find ways to insulate themselves from that pressure. As we look at those who vie for our support in 2008 for federal elective office, as well as those who will run for state and local offices between now and then, identifying those who have the will and the skill sets to devise mechanisms to recognize the pressure to take destructive short-term actions and to counteract is a task all of us have to undertake.

I would love it if those who question candidates during pre-election debates would zero in on this issue and ask candidates about how they would address this type of problem. For anyone reading this blog, I would be interested in your ideas on this suggestion.

Last week, we all watched the tragedy of the Minnesota bridge collapse unfold.  Unfortunately, although there will be a study that will detail the technical reasons the collapse occurred, a study that will be completed months or even more than a year from now, the fundamental reason underlying the collapse is that all accountable levels of government paid insufficient attention to preventive maintenance.

By the way, I reject the notion advanced by some political partisans that, if we were not spending so much in Iraq, money would be available for bridge repair and maintenance.  Neglect of preventive maintenance of our infrastructure has been going on for decades, and it long predated the Iraq war.  Stephen Flynn of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote a book called On the Edge of Disaster which detailed our long-standing neglect of vital infrastructure of all kinds. 

Why do we allow infrastructure neglect to happen?  Our experience here in Connecticut with the Mianus River bridge collapse along I-95 in 1983 tells the story.  Many government officials have defined success in governing by highly visible projects and accomplishments in which there is a great photo-op.  Thus, it is far more tempting to break ground on a new highway or bridge, or to celebrate the purchase of a new rail car or bus than to do the boring, low-visibility, but absolutely essential work required to repair and maintenance existing assets.  Not surprisingly, with this mindset, preventive maintenance is given a far lower priority than increasing capacity by new building activity.

In a seemingly unrelated story that appeared in the New York Post the French actress and environmental activist Julie Delpy was appropriately concerned about a truck idling outside a restaurant at which she was having a meal.  As the story goes, the driver explained that he had to keep the engine running because he was carrying perishable meats that required continuous refrigeration.

The question should have been: why was he there, rather than along a highway which had generators to which his truck could have been hooked up?  The answer again is that governments under-invest in amenities for truckers, such as rest stops which they need to make sure that they are not driving while fatigued, and generators that they can use to keep power flowing to their storage cabins, so they do not have to keep engines running.  Like bridge maintenance, the decision to spend money on truck stops is not the kind of event that gets politicians media coverage because it lacks the elements that get media people interested.  Additionally, few people want truck stops or weigh stations near them.

As a result, truckers end up eating or resting in more crowded residential and commercial areas off the major highways with their engines idling as they are eating or resting.

Likewise, one of the best techniques for reducing traffic congestion is to promote demand reduction strategies, such as increased use of mass transit, car pooling, and van pooling. In our area, rail station parking is a major constraint on rail usage.  In 1985, I got my start in volunteer work trying to get funding for rail station parking expansion, but there are other ways to expand rail station access, including the provision of bicycle storage areas, like Amsterdam does, encouraging smaller vehicle usage to increase available parking capacity, and building satellite parking lots at which rail commuters can park.  Unfortunately, none of these techniques create photo-ops.

Beyond the lack of media visibility many of these transportation programs entail, they also tend to cost money in the current year and hit operating budgets.  Big capital projects, like highway construction, can be financed by bonds and their cost is deferred.  The repayments on the bonds hit current-year budgets, but, very often, these have a smaller current-year impact than a much lower actual expenditure on maintenance or on upgrading a truck stop, or on a program to subsidize mass transit usage increases. 

Because of poorly-conceived balanced budget requirements, constitutional provisions and statutes, many politicians avoid spending money to avoid current-year hits.  They starve transportation departments of the staffing needed for maintenance projects.  They defer current-year maintenance expenses.  They also spend less money on smaller, but very important, transportation enhancement initiatives because they do not produce the political and media “bang for the buck” that larger projects do. 

Strong government leadership would organize stakeholders, define measurable goals for how to spend public money, make the achievement of the metrics the media event, and trust in the intelligence of the voters.  They would also balance the need for current-year budget discipline with investment in the future.  We also need to demand that governments do more life-cycle costing and explain to voters what it should cost to maintain infrastructure assets.  We do not demand enough disciplined thinking from government officials, and, therefore, we get short-term, high-media-intensity actions that do not constitute good government.

If the bridge collapse has any positive consequence, it will be to refocus governments on the need to do the boring, but necessary, current-year expenditures that will make our public infrastructure better and safer.

Recently, I was asked by Governor Jodi Rell to chair an advisory group to make recommendations to improve Connecticut’s Department of Transportation.  I was asked to do so because I have participated in volunteer advisory and advocacy work in transportation for nearly 22 years.

Consistent with my philosophy of taking the road less traveled and seeing a different game, I want to share some observations that you may not see elsewhere as often as you should.

Clearly, we should move more drivers into trains, on to buses, and into van and car pools, but these alternatives have been amply discussed elsewhere, so I will not comment on them here.

If we are going to address the transportation crisis, we have to manage demand on all modes, particularly the roads, as well as supply.  With respect to highway congestion, the demand problem is not primarily a result of overpopulation or a significant increase in the population of automobiles on the road in our region.

There are three root causes to highway congestion: more vehicle trips, more vehicle miles traveled per driver, and more trucks delivering more items, particularly because of a combination of more global sourcing strategies and more remote, long-haul commerce.

This last trend will become more pronounced as we do more shopping over the Internet and we order products from more geographically remote places.  But we can do something about the first two root causes, and, more importantly, the things we can do to reduce congestion are not particularly costly.

First, with technology available today, many more workers should be able to work at home or at satellite offices closer to home or to attend meetings by using video-conferencing technology.  Tele-commuting stumbled in its early days because people trying it may have been too ambitious.  Trying it one or two days a week, instead of every day, might work better, and it will have an immediate effect on rush-hour traffic congestion.  It also is a great morale builder for employees who have personal errands to run near their homes. 

Second, the Internet makes ride-matching much more workable for individuals who want to carpool, but do not know how.  Connecticut has a program through Rideworks, and other parts of the country, like Northern Virginia, have well-developed systems for ride-matching, including areas where passengers can wait safely for their pick-up.

The federal government also provides tax credits for employers to give to employees for using public transportation and ride-sharing.  These are called TransitCheck vouchers.  This is a win-win for employers and employees, since employers also avoid paying Social Security taxes on the amounts employees pay for this alternative transportation, and employees pay with pre-tax dollars.  Too few employers take advantage of this opportunity.

Third, many non-work-related trips that could be eliminated.  Many errands  could be handled over the Internet or via the mail.  Many government transactions done face-to-face today could be done remotely, including the dispensing and payment of traffic tickets, motor vehicle license renewals, and permit and license renewals. 

The most dysfunctional automobile trips in many communities are the ones in which parents take their children to school every day.  In my community, many of us drive children to school for three reasons:  the books are too heavy to carry on foot, the morning start times are keyed to the convenience of the teachers and administrators, not the body clocks of middle and high-school children, and, most importantly, the town does not have sidewalks or bicycle paths convenient and safe for children to get to school. So we miss the opportunity for our increasingly obese population of children to get a chance to walk. 

Safety is a bigger issue in some communities for children to walk to school.  When I was young, I had a short walk to school between 5th and 8th grades, but there were bullies along the way that I had to avoid.  This is an even bigger issue today. 

If automobile trips can’t be eliminated, we should make them more predictable and less stressful. For drivers, the biggest perceived problem, according to many surveys, is not the increasingly long trips, but the increasing unpredictability of trips.  When the train is not a practical option and I am forced to drive from Stamford, Connecticut, to Manhattan or to one of the New York airports during rush hour, I could be looking at a one-hour, two-hour, or even longer trip.  How much time do I allow?  Allowing one hour is too risky, but, more often than not, two hours is too long, and I waste time waiting for the start of a meeting. 

What causes unpredictability?  Waiting times at toll plazas, accidents, construction, stalled cars, fires and building collapses and, in some cities, police blockades are some of the causes.

Some of these root causes are preventable.

Tolls are probably unavoidable if we want to pay for transportation assets, but governments should eliminate toll booths.  Even if a traveler does not purchase an EZ Pass or similar system as an infrequent traveler, having a system for photographing license plates will eliminate the need for non-EZ Pass travelers to have cash in hand and to wait in a cash-dispensing line.  It’s also not particularly good for the environment to have millions of cars idling as they take long periods of time to get through barrier tolls around the country.

Many governments use EZ Pass systems to raise tolls higher than they would otherwise be raised with a cash-based toll system.  Doing this quietly, rather than openly, does not show government in its best light.  We need governments to be forthright about how much revenue they need for transportation and what it will be used for.  Voters are smarter about these issues than politicians give them credit for.

The frequency of accidents can be significantly reduced.  Given the fact that excess alcohol usage and reckless driving by teenagers is a major cause, we should employ everywhere successful strategies for reducing teenage alcohol usage.  As a parent with three children, a 21-year-old and two teenagers, I have mixed feelings about teenage driving.  It makes our life easier since my wife and I are not chauffeurs as much, but our children do not have the experience to anticipate as many oddball driving challenges as we have learned over a lifetime of driving.  Phased-in drivers licenses will help everywhere.

There are chronically reckless drivers, just as there are hardened criminals.  We all experience them, and they create many accidents.  New Jersey has a great program, by which any motorist can report reckless driver behavior by dialing #77.

Construction barricades and highway signage and design cause accidents.  My mother died in an auto accident in Florida in 1994 partly because of a poorly-designed median strip that blocked visibility of oncoming traffic, and because of a poorly designed construction barricade.

If there is a source of delay, the Internet tools for communicating those delays to others should be more user-friendly and should be updated in real time.  The other day, when there was a steam pipe explosion in New York near Grand Central terminal, the media incorrectly reported that Grand Central had been evacuated and closed.  That was incorrect.  Most entrances were closed and subway service was suspended, but commuters could still get on suburban trains.  Metro North failed to communicate accurate information in real time.  My son ended up unnecessarily taking an Amtrak train back up to Connecticut.

I will take another opportunity to talk about why our supply of transportation capacity is deficient, but this is just one set of ideas about how to reduce demand.