Have you heard the saying, “We can’t build our way out of congestion?” It was used by ITS advocates to promote systems instead of new lanes. Remember “If you build it, they will come”—stolen from a Hollywood classic and twisted to convey that new lanes would instantly flood with new demand. The ITS gurus had the answers: the smart car, the smart highway. Concrete and steel solutions to traffic congestion were outdated. With all that ITS has to offer, why has congestion doubled while we have been arguing about how to address it? It is worse because . . . we didn’t build it, and they came anyway!
In July 2007, Colorado’s Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 experienced the highest daily traffic volume counts ever recorded. Gas prices were over $3 a gallon. People should be traveling less, but they are traveling more.
In April 2007, the Denver Post ran a headline about I-70 west of Denver: “Study: Gridlock toll in mountains $839 million.” The article stated, “A study released Wednesday puts a price tag on the chronic congestion along the mountain corridor that carves into business, tourism and quality of life: $839 million annually.”
On Sept. 2, 2007, the Orlando Sentinel front page headline read, “Tied up on I-4? Worst yet to come, state warns.” The article reports that I-4 in downtown Orlando in 2006 reflected record growth in volume and exceeded the 200,000 average annual daily traffic (AADT) mark at six new locations.
Congestion is a worldwide crisis, and continues to rise in spite of all the good reasons not to jump on that entrance ramp. In Minneapolis a bridge fell, with instantaneous tragic cost of human life, and the ongoing cost of further reducing the available freeway capacity in an already congested area. Demand is rising, congestion increasing and capacity decreasing as the infrastructure crumbles. State DOTs have hundreds of unfunded projects, including ITS. Today’s national politicians will not embrace a “war on traffic” because it lacks media punch. As traffic management engineers, we face the worst of all possible conditions.
So, what’s the cure for congestion? The “concrete and steel” guys and the “management and operations” types need to get together and speak with one voice. The answer has been provided by our national megaprojects. The truth is, if you build it, and manage it, you can build your way out of congestion. The $16 billion Central Artery Tunnel project in Boston decreased traffic delay 62% between 1995 and 2005, while demand increased 25% over the same period. They built it, and managed it, and the extra demand came, and they managed that, too.
Does $16 billion sound like too much money to eliminate congestion in a major U.S. city? The Boston Globe reported that the cost of the war on terror is a staggering $2 billion per week. The Big Dig took 25 years to plan, design and construct at a cost equivalent to a mere eight weeks of today’s defense spending.
Terrorism surely threatens our way of life, but a congested highway can ruin property value, erode the monthly household budget and ruin our way of life. Investment in transportation is no less important than defense. President Eisenhower combined the two and built our Interstate Highway System. If we could capture just 10% of what is spent on defense we could revitalize our national highway system in ways not seen before.
Today I sat in the Expressway Authority operation center in Tampa, Fla., for the new elevated reversible tollway—a nine-figure managed lanes marvel—six lanes added within 6 ft of median. The Tampa city traffic engineer described how it essentially eliminated the congestion in the urban corridor and some intersections in the city grid. The Denver T-Rex project is another example: At a mere $1.4 billion it mobilized a congested urban corridor.
Which of the presidential candidates will champion our cause? Which will back the $50 billion “Build America Bonds” introduced by Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and John Thune (R-S.D.)? We insiders need to stop quibbling about construction versus transit versus ITS versus bicycling and reach out to our politicians as a united industry, fully behind a comprehensive cure for congestion of “managed infrastructure.” It is the only solution proven to work, and without it we are failing to protect our mobile way of life. Build It—Manage It is the cure for congestion.
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