Surface Transportation Congestion: Policy and Issues
Congressional research reportFeb 6, 2008
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Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress
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Surface transportation congestion most likely will be a major issue for Congress as it considers
reauthorization of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act—A
Legacy for Users (SAFETEA), P.L. 109-59, which is set to expire on September 30, 2009. By
many accounts, congestion on the nation’s road and railroad networks, at seaports and airports,
and on some major transit systems is a significant problem for many transportation users,
especially commuters, freight shippers, and carriers. Indeed, some observers believe congestion
has already reached crisis proportions. Others are less worried, believing congestion to be a minor
impediment to mobility, the by-product of prosperity and accessibility in economically vibrant
places, or the unfortunate consequence of over reliance on cars and trucks that causes more
important problems such as air pollution and urban sprawl. Trends underlying the demand for
freight and passenger travel—population and economic growth, the urban and regional
distribution of homes and businesses, and international trade—suggest that pressures on the
transportation system are likely to grow substantially over the next 30 years.
Although transportation congestion continues to grow and intensify, the problem is still
geographically concentrated in major metropolitan areas, at international trade gateways, and on
some intercity trade routes. Because of this geographical concentration, most places and people in
America are not directly affected by transportation congestion. Consequently, in recent federal
law, Congress, for the most part, has allowed states and localities to decide the relative
importance of congestion mitigation vis-à-vis other transportation priorities. This has been
accompanied by a sizeable boost in funding for public transit and a more moderate boost in
funding for traffic reduction measures as part of a patchwork of relatively modest federally
directed congestion programs.
Congress may decide to continue with funding flexibility in its reauthorization of the surface
transportation programs. States and localities that suffer major transportation congestion would be
free to devote federal and local resources to congestion mitigation if they wish. Similarly,
congestion-free locales would be able to focus on other transportation-related problems, such as
connectivity, system access, safety, and economic development. Alternatively, Congress may
want to more clearly establish congestion abatement as a national policy objective, given its
economic development impact, and take a less flexible and, in other ways, more aggressive
approach to congestion mitigation. Three basic elements that Congress may consider are (1) the
overall level of transportation spending, (2) the prioritization of transportation spending, and (3)
congestion pricing and other alternative ways to ration transportation resources with limited
government spending.
Congress also may want to consider the advantages and disadvantages of specific transportation
congestion remedies. Hence, this report discusses the three basic types of congestion remedies
proposed by engineers and planners: adding new capacity, operating the existing capacity more
efficiently, and managing demand.
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Issues for Congress.......................................................................................................................... 3
Transportation Spending Levels................................................................................................ 5
Transportation Spending Priorities............................................................................................ 7
Congestion Pricing and Other Alternative Ways to Ration Resources.................................... 10
Brief History of Transportation Congestion .................................................................................. 12
Highway Transportation.......................................................................................................... 12
Public Transportation .............................................................................................................. 14
Freight Transportation............................................................................................................. 15
Legislative History of Transportation Congestion......................................................................... 17
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (P.L. 102-240) ............................ 17
National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 (P.L. 104-59) ........................................ 20
Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (P.L. 105-178; P.L. 105-206) ........................ 20
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act—A Legacy for
Users (P.L. 109-59) .............................................................................................................. 21
Transportation Congestion: Concepts, Measures, and Trends....................................................... 23
Measures and Trends in Road Traffic Congestion .................................................................. 25
Current Trends in Road Traffic Congestion...................................................................... 28
Interurban Road Traffic Congestion ................................................................................. 32
Road Bottlenecks .............................................................................................................. 32
Road Congestion at International Gateways..................................................................... 32
Measures and Trends of Congestion in Public Transit ............................................................ 34
Measures and Trends of Congestion in Rail............................................................................ 36
Freight Rail Congestion Measures.................................................................................... 36
Trends in Freight Rail Congestion .................................................................................... 38
Intercity Passenger Rail (Amtrak) Congestion Measures ................................................. 40
Intercity Passenger Rail (Amtrak) Congestion Trends ..................................................... 40
The Costs of Transportation Congestion ....................................................................................... 41
Transportation Congestion Remedies............................................................................................ 43
Building New Road and Transit Capacity............................................................................... 43
Operating Existing Capacity More Effectively ....................................................................... 44
Managing Demand .................................................................................................................. 45
Congestion Pricing............................................................................................................ 45
Land Use Strategies .......................................................................................................... 46
Institutional Issues................................................................................................................... 46
Expanding Rail Capacity......................................................................................................... 47
Intermodalism in Freight Transportation................................................................................. 48
Concluding Observations .............................................................................................................. 48
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Figure 1. Motor Vehicle Travel and Road Capacity, 1941-2005 ................................................... 14
Figure 2. U.S. Cost of Logistics, 1984-2005 (percentage of Gross Domestic Product)................ 17
Figure 3. The Relationship Between Speed and Vehicle Flow on Freeways................................. 28
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Figure 4. Proximate Causes of Road Traffic Congestion .............................................................. 29
Figure 5. Road Traffic Congestion, 1982-2005............................................................................. 30
Figure 6. U.S. Merchandise Trade by Region, 1980-2005 ............................................................ 34
Figure 7. Transit Vehicle Utilization, 1995-2004 .......................................................................... 36
Figure 8. Freight Rail Traffic Density, 1980-2006 ........................................................................ 38
Figure 9. Average Speed of Freight by Rail, 1980-2006 ............................................................... 39
Figure 10. Average Freight Rates, 1980-2006 (constant 2000 cents)............................................ 40
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Table 1. SAFETEA Authorization Levels, by Legislative Titles and Selected Programs,
FY2005-FY2009 ........................................................................................................................ 22
Table 2. Top 10 Metropolitan Areas by Transit Usage, 2004 ........................................................ 35
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Author Contact Information .......................................................................................................... 49
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ransportation congestion most likely will be a major issue for Congress as it considers
reauthorization of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act—A
Legacy for Users ( SAFETEA), P.L. 109-59, which is set to expire on September 30, 2009.
By many accounts, congestion on the nation’s road and railroad networks, at seaports and
airports, and on some major transit systems is a significant problem for many transportation users,
especially commuters, freight shippers, and carriers. Moreover, trends underlying the demand for
freight and passenger travel—population and economic growth, the urban and regional
distribution of homes and businesses, and international trade—suggest that pressures on the
transportation system are likely to grow in the years ahead.
A number of experts and organizations believe that congestion has reached crisis proportions. In
announcing a new National Congestion Strategy in May 2006, then Secretary of Transportation
Norman Mineta stated that “congestion is one of the single largest threats to our economic
prosperity and way of life.”1 In a similar vein, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) currently
has congestion on its “critical issues” list as one of the most pressing problems of the
transportation system, arguing “if the 20th century can be called the era of building, the 21st may
be called the era of congestion.”2 More recently, in January 2007, the U.S. Government
Accountability Office (GAO), for the first time, placed transportation financing and capacity on
its list of high-risk federal programs and operations.3
Not everyone agrees that congestion is a major, national problem. Some see it as a minor
impediment to mobility, others as an unfortunate by-product of prosperity and accessibility in
economically vibrant places. Several environmental groups argue that congestion is less the
problem than the over reliance on the cars and trucks that cause it. Indeed, this over reliance on
highway transportation, they believe, leads to more important problems, such as suburban sprawl
and air pollution. Furthermore, because the problem is geographically concentrated, most places
and people in America do not suffer noticeable levels of congestion. Thus, many might question
to what extent transportation congestion is a national problem warranting a federal government
response. In uncongested regions, transportation problems are more often to do with basic
connectivity of the transportation system, system access, and economic development.
Connectivity, system access, economic development, and congestion relief are some of the
objectives of national transportation policy that also include mitigating the negative effects of
transportation, such as deaths, injuries, and environmental damage. According to 49 U.S.C. § 101,
The national objectives of general welfare, economic growth and stability, and security of the
United States require the development of transportation policies and programs that contribute
to providing fast, safe, efficient, and convenient transportation at the lowest cost consistent
with those and other national objectives, including the efficient use and conservation of the
resources of the United States.
To accomplish these objectives, the federal government regulates transportation activities and
provides funding to encourage states and local governments to build and operate transportation
1
U.S. Department of Transportation, “National Strategy to Reduce Congestion on America’s Transportation Network,”
May 2006, at http://www.fightgridlocknow.gov/docs/conginitoverview070201.htm.
2
Transportation Research Board, Critical Issues in Transportation (Washington, DC, 2006), p. 2, at
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/general/CriticalIssues06.pdf.
3
U.S. Government Accountability Office, High Risk Series: An Update, GAO-07-310, January 2007, at
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05207.pdf.
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infrastructure. Since the beginnings of this “federal-aid” system, there have been major debates
about how these funds should be distributed and spent. An underlying tension throughout these
debates has been whether to distribute funds to encourage the pursuit of nationally defined
transportation goals, such as the building of the Interstate system, or to distribute funds equally
between the states (according to a predefined formula) and allow them to pursue their own
objectives.4 In SAFETEA, about 90% of highway funds are authorized to be distributed by
formula, and states are guaranteed by FY2008-FY2009 a 92% return on money paid into the
highway account of the Highway Trust Fund.5
Because transportation congestion is geographically concentrated, Congress has tended to favor a
state and local approach to solving transportation congestion in the recent history of the federal
surface transportation program. This has been accompanied by several sizeable boosts in funding
for public transit and traffic reduction measures directed to major metropolitan areas in an attempt
to curb the negative effects of cars and trucks, including road traffic congestion. Congress also
has enacted a patchwork of other programs to deal with congestion at the national level, with
some success, but these have generally been relatively modest efforts. Consequently, the
flexibility provisions of recent federal laws, and with them the equity provisions that attempt to
return to each state the taxes paid by its highway users into the highway account of the Highway
Trust Fund, have largely left it to the states, and in some cases metropolitan planning
organizations, to decide funding priorities.
The extent to which Congress decides congestion is a national problem to be solved by federal
dictates, and funding may be a major issue in reauthorization. Congress may decide its current
“bottom-up” approach to planning and programming transportation improvements, with some
modifications, is the best approach to congestion in the broader scheme of transportation
priorities. Conversely, Congress may decide that congestion warrants a stronger role for the
federal government. Three broad elements of the issue are discussed here: overall levels of
transportation spending, the prioritization of transportation spending, and congestion pricing and
other alternative rationing schemes that require limited government spending.
Although congestion is being experienced throughout the transportation system, including at ports
and airports, this report is limited to a discussion of congestion associated with the surface
transportation system—highways, public transit, and freight and passenger rail. Because these
modes connect with ports and airports, there is some discussion of intermodal issues at these
nodes as well, but the report does not discuss congestion in the waterway or airway systems per
se. This report begins by outlining in broad terms some of the issues that Congress may face in
the reauthorization debate. This is followed by a brief history of transportation congestion in the
United States, and how Congress has dealt with the issue in the recent past. It then goes on to
discuss transportation congestion concepts, measures, and trends, followed by information on the
national costs of congestion. The final section lays out some of the major types of congestion
remedies that have been proposed by transportation engineers, planners, and policy makers.
4
See U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, America’s Highways, 1776-1976
(Washington, DC, 1976), especially Part Two, Chapter 1.
5
Transportation Weekly, “Congress Completes Work on Highway Bill,” vol. 6, issue 34, August 4, 2005.
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Most experts agree that surface transportation congestion has grown over the past few decades
and, moreover, that the demand for surface transportation services is likely to continue growing
over the next few decades. According to one national assessment of highway congestion by the
Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), total delay in 437 urban areas increased five-fold between
1982 and 2005, and delay per peak-period traveler almost tripled.6 Anecdotal evidence suggests
that overcrowding is a growing problem in some major transit systems and that conflicts between
freight and passenger rail trains (commuter and intercity) are an issue for both. In the freight rail
industry, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) notes that average speeds, one indicator of
congestion, are lower now than at anytime since the early 1980s except for the 1997-1998 period
following the merger of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific.7 With dramatic increases in foreign
trade, many fear that ports and border crossings have become significant bottlenecks to the flow
of commerce.
Despite these trends, the question remains as to whether or not congestion is a national problem
and, therefore, should be a specific goal of national transportation policy. Although congestion
has intensified and spread, congestion is geographically concentrated in major metropolitan areas,
at international trade gateways, and on some intercity trade routes. Because of this geographical
concentration, most states and localities do not suffer any appreciable transportation congestion
directly. Moreover, some argue that even in places with relatively intense congestion problems, it
only adds a few extra minutes to daily travel and that many actually enjoy the extra time alone in
the car away from the pressures of work and family.8 Seen in terms of an entire trip, including the
time it takes to park and walk to the office, one expert believes the extra time caused by freeway
delay is relatively minor.9 Some even go so far as to suggest that much like a crowded restaurant
or nightclub, congestion is a sign of success and its costs must be balanced against the benefits of
access to jobs, stores, recreational amenities, etc. that congested regions provide.10 Environmental
organizations generally argue that road traffic congestion results from an unbalanced
transportation system, one that favors cars and trucks, and that urban sprawl, air pollution, and
noise, not road traffic congestion per se, should be the focus of national policy.11
The alternative view is that transportation congestion is a major problem, national in scope, and,
if unchecked, a problem that will intensify and spread over the next 25 years. Many experts point
out that although congestion may be highly localized, because transportation is a network that
serves the U.S. population in a variety of ways, its economic effects are national. Most obviously,
freight movement is largely dependent on a national transportation network in which a bottleneck
6
Texas Transportation Institute, Urban Mobility Report 2007 (College Station, TX, 2007), at http://mobility.tamu.edu/
ums/.
7
U.S. Congressional Budget Office, Freight Rail Transportation: Long-Term Issues, January 2006, at
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=7021&sequence=0.
8
Downs, Anthony, Still Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak-Hour Traffic Congestion (Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press, 2006).
9
Taylor, Brian D., “Rethinking Congestion,” Access, vol. 21 (2002), pp. 8-16.
10
Ibid.; Downs, 2006; El-Geneidy, Ahmed M. and David M. Levinson, “Access to Destinations: Development of
Accessibility Measures,” report prepared for the Minnesota Department of Transportation, May 2006, at
http://www.lrrb.org/pdf/200616.pdf.
11
See, for instance, Sierra Club, Highway Health Hazards (San Francisco, CA, 2004), at http://www.sierraclub.org/
sprawl/report04_highwayhealth/report.pdf.
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in one place, such as southern California, may affect businesses and consumers in largely
congestion-free Nebraska. Moreover, these experts point out the national network effects are
becoming increasingly important as supply chains lengthen and become more complex. Similarly,
although passenger transportation is mostly a local affair, congestion on roads that service airports
and other passenger terminals may also result in inefficient intercity passenger travel, dragging
down the productivity of businesses that rely on it for managing far-flung operations.
Local congestion may also be thought of as a national issue in that the places where it is found
tend to be the hubs of the national economy and its costs, therefore, are not inconsequential in
terms of the national economy. For instance, the 28 metropolitan areas that experienced 40 hours
or more of annual delay per peak-period traveler (as measured in 2005 by TTI) account for more
than 45% of total personal income in the United States (in 2005).12 Most businesses rely, to one
degree or another, on the efficient transportation of people locally, whether it is the transportation
of managers to business meetings, workers to work, or customers to places where products are
consumed. Research has shown that metropolitan areas with the largest labor markets tend to
have the highest productivity.13 Consequently, when added together, the local costs of congestion,
some argue, are significant in national terms.
Another commonly expressed view is that given current trends in the supply and demand for
transportation the problems of congestion will affect more people and more businesses in the
future. Road traffic congestion, for instance, is growing fastest in the smaller urban areas included
in the TTI study, though admittedly from a small base. However, research by the Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA) shows a wider problem when it projects future demand on the
current highway system.14 Underlying these trends are broader trends in population and the
economy. For example, the population is expected to reach 364 million by 2030, an increase of
about 20% from 2007.15 Over the same period, the CBO projects GDP to increase by about 70%
(in real terms).16 Furthermore, the FHWA predicts that freight movements will nearly double
between 2002 and 2035.17
The federal surface transportation program approach to congestion tends to view it as a state and
local issue, not as a major national problem. At least as far back as passage of the Intermodal
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 (P.L. 102-240), Congress has tended to
leave to the discretion of the states, within certain planning parameters, the relative weight to be
placed on congestion mitigation vis-à-vis other transportation priorities. In this regard, many
argue that governments and other stakeholders closest to transportation problems are in the best
position to craft solutions. Another issue since the 1980s, with the near completion of the
12
CRS calculation based on U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Personal Income for Metropolitan Areas, 2006,”
Table 1, News Release, August 7, 2007, at http://www.bea.gov.
13
Crafts, Nicholas and Timothy Leunig, “The Historical Significance of Transport for Economic Growth and
Productivity,” background paper for the Eddington Transport Study, October 2005, at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/
independent_reviews/eddington_transport_study/eddington_index.cfm.
14
See the maps in U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Freight Facts and Figures
2007 (Washington, DC, 2007), pp. 31-32, at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/nat_freight_stats/docs/
07factsfigures/index.htm.
15
U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2008 (Washington, DC, 2007), p. 8, at
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/.
16
U.S. Congressional Budget Office, The Long Term Budget Outlook: Supplemental Datasheet (Washington, DC,
December 2007), at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8877/SupplementalData.xls.
17
Federal Highway Administration, 2007, p. 11.
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Interstate system, has been the controversy regarding state payments to and from the Highway
Trust Fund (HTF), known as the “donor-donee” debate.18 This debate focuses on the perceived
fairness of the relative size of each state’s payments to and receipts from the highway account of
the Highway Trust Fund. Increasingly over the years, federal law has attempted to equalize these
amounts rather than concentrate funding where needs are greatest. Several new federal programs
to tackle congestion nationally have been developed, but, in dollar terms, these have been
relatively modest.
Because state and local funding flexibility has been a significant feature of federal transportation
policy since ISTEA, Congress may decide to continue with this approach in reauthorization.
States and localities that suffer major transportation congestion would be free to devote federal
and local resources to congestion mitigation if they wish. Similarly, congestion-free locales would
be able to focus on other transportation-related problems, such as connectivity, system access,
safety, and economic development. Alternatively, Congress may want to take a less flexible and,
in other ways, more aggressive approach to congestion mitigation. Three basic elements to the
problem that Congress may want to consider are (1) the overall level of transportation spending,
(2) the prioritization of transportation spending, and (3) congestion pricing and other alternative
ways to ration transportation resources.19
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The amount of federal funding for surface transportation programs is a major issue during all
reauthorization debates and will undoubtedly be an issue in the reauthorization of SAFETEA.
Some observers contend that America is underinvesting in transportation infrastructure, resulting
in deteriorating conditions and worsening performance, including growing congestion.20 One
alternative to addressing transportation congestion, in this view, is a significant increase in the
overall level of infrastructure investment to deal with the existing backlog of projects and future
needs. The most recent needs assessment by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT)
suggests that the cost to maintain the current condition and operational performance of the
highway system is about 12% more annually than is being currently spent by all levels of
government. For transit, the figure is 25%. Spending to improve conditions and reduce congestion
would be greater than this.21 It should be pointed out that, as with any attempt to estimate current
and future system conditions and performance, there are a host of simplifying assumptions,
omissions, and data problems that influence the results. Nevertheless, this analysis suggests that if
total government spending is not increased above current levels, the physical condition of system
elements may decline and congestion, particularly highway congestion, will continue to increase.
An alternative view of the overall level of government transportation spending is that it has not
been dramatically deficient. In this view, deteriorating performance, and in some places
deteriorating conditions, are the result of resources not being directed to the parts of the system
18
See CRS Report RL31735, Federal-Aid Highway Program: “Donor-Donee” State Issues, by (name redacted).
For a discussion of these three elements in the early 1990s, see CRS Report 93-107, Transportation Infrastructure:
Economic Issues and Public Policy Alternatives, by (name redacted). (Out of print; available from the author.)
20
See, for instance, American Society of Civil Engineers, “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure 2005,” at
http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=30.
21
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2006
Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions and Performance (Washington, DC, 2007), at
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/2006cpr/index.htm.
19
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that are in greatest demand and, therefore, have the greatest needs for maintenance and
expansion. Indeed, USDOT’s own analysis of historic spending patterns shows that total
government spending in highways and transit, including capital spending, has generally kept pace
with usage since the early 1980s, although the federal share has declined. Capital spending by all
levels of government on highways per vehicle mile has remained relatively constant since about
1980, at around 2.5 cents per vehicle mile (in real terms).22 Over this period, the federal share
declined from close to 60% to a little under 40% at the end of the 1990s, but has since rebounded
to about 44% in 2004.23
In terms of the nation’s transit systems, the USDOT analysis shows that total government
spending on capital and operations grew by approximately 80% between 1980 and 2004 (in real
terms), much faster than passenger trips, which grew by 12%.24 The federal share of total
spending declined from 42% to 25% over this period.25 The federal share of capital spending in
2004 was 39%, somewhat lower than the approximately 50% share that existed in the mid1990s.26 In 2004, the federal government funded about $36 billion of highway and transit capital
expenditure, with 86% going to highways and 14% to transit.27 The transit share increases to
about 16% if all government spending is included.28
Consequently, assessments of highways nationally reveal that conditions have generally improved
overall during the past decade, particularly in rural areas, but have declined in large urban areas.29
Similarly, bridge conditions have improved, but to a much greater extent in rural areas than in
urban areas.30 As noted above, operational performance on the urban highway system has
generally declined, but there are also growing pressures on the higher elements of the rural
highway system, especially rural interstates.31 Transit conditions and performance have remained
about the same over the past decade, but rail system performance has declined to some extent.32
Some experts, however, believe that investment in the freight rail industry fell behind demand at
some point over the past decade or so, leading to rail congestion and higher prices for shippers.33
Freight rail, as a predominantly private industry, depends on investment received mostly from
railroad profits or from money borrowed in capital markets to be paid back with future revenues.
One view is that these sources of investment will be adequate to cope with future demand.
Another view is that because of the great risks inherent in investing in rail infrastructure and the
22
Ibid., exhibit 6-11.
Ibid., exhibit 6-8. The federal share of highway spending as a whole is lower, currently about 22% of spending by all
levels of government. The same pattern of a shrinking federal share since 1980 is similar, however.
24
Ibid., exhibit 6-22; American Public Transportation Association, “Unlinked Passenger Trips by Mode, 1890-2004,”
at http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/trips.cfm.
25
Ibid., exhibit 6-20.
26
Ibid., exhibit 6-23.
27
Ibid., exhibits 6-8, 6-23.
28
Ibid., exhibits 6-8, 6-20.
29
Ibid., exhibit 3-4.
30
Ibid., exhibit 3-18.
31
Ibid., exhibit 4-12.
32
Ibid., exhibits 3-24, 3-28, 4-15, 4-18.
33
Testimony of Carl D. Martland, Senior Research Associate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in U.S. Congress,
House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Railroads, U.S. Rail Capacity Crunch, April
26, 2006.
23
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demands of shareholders, the railroads themselves will not be able to supply the necessary capital
to expand capacity. In that case, some contend that government financial assistance will be
needed, otherwise rail congestion will grow and more freight will be diverted to the roads.34
As the case of the railroads reminds us, not all transportation infrastructure investment comes
from federal, state, and local government. The private sector is a major source of investment and
not just in rail transportation. A flurry of recent major privatization efforts, such as the Chicago
Skyway and the Indiana East-West Toll Road, have increased interest in this approach. Thus,
some argue that there is a need for much greater investment in transportation, but that the federal
government should consider using its resources to leverage private investment through publicprivate partnerships. Others argue that these types of public-private partnerships will be limited to
only a few places with the highest profit potential and that investment could be quickly cut off if
macroeconomic conditions change.
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With growing pressure on transportation infrastructure but competing claims on governmental
resources, another issue for congressional consideration is improving the efficiency of federal
investments. Some argue that prioritizing investments may be a better way to deal with
congestion mitigation than the scattershot, “more-is-better” approach. Several aspects of
prioritizing federal transportation spending to mitigate transportation congestion could be of
interest to Congress. These are prioritizing projects by location and project type, and the issue of
mode-neutrality. Inherent in these discussions, of course, is how project decisions are made and
the ways in which the relationships between federal, state, and local governments affect the
outcome. This is another aspect of prioritization that may be of interest to Congress.
Continued federal transportation funding likely will be needed to maintain and operate the
transportation system as a whole and to meet other national transportation goals such as rural
access, urban mobility, safety, and national security. However, it can be argued that if mitigating
congestion in the name of enhancing national mobility and economic productivity is a national
goal, then federal funding will need to be focused in the places that promise the greatest return:
those with the most congestion. The three major locales of transportation congestion are major
metropolitan areas, some intercity trade routes, and foreign trade gateways.
An oft-cited argument for targeting federal resources toward congested places is that while the
project costs of congestion mitigation are local, the benefits, at least in part, are regional or
national in scope. In addition, fixing transportation bottlenecks is very often a hugely expensive
proposition and, therefore, beyond the means of a single locality or state. Moreover, many point
out that in addition to the pecuniary costs of large transportation facilities, costs associated with
local environmental and social disruptions must be mitigated.
Another aspect of prioritizing federal funding to mitigate congestion is the way in which projects
are planned and funded within states and regions. For the most part, project development and
funding decisions are made by state departments of transportation (DOTs). Metropolitan planning
organizations (MPOs) have assumed a greater role over the years, but not enough to
34
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), Transportation, Invest in
America: Freight-Rail Bottom Line Report (Washington, DC, 2003), at http://freight.transportation.org/doc/
FreightRailReport.pdf.
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fundamentally change the traditional federal-state intergovernmental relationship that has existed
since the beginning of the Federal-Aid Highway Program.35 One effect of this, some have
suggested, is that highway funding tends to be funneled disproportionately toward rural areas at
the expense of urban and suburban areas where needs, including congestion mitigation needs, are
greatest. A study of Ohio found this to be the case because many municipal roads are ineligible
for state funding, state gas taxes are limited by state law to highway projects, and state
apportionments are made equally to counties without regard to needs such as population, miles of
road, and traffic volumes.36 Some of the same processes may also occur within metropolitan
regions that comprise many local jurisdictions. For instance, some observers contend that local
government officials are often more concerned about receiving their “fair share” of funding than
they are about solving regional problems such as transportation congestion. MPOs also tend in
most instances to be dominated by suburban areas at the expense of center cities because voting
power is often not weighted by population size.37 Of course, weighted voting is no guarantee that
a central city will not be dominated by surrounding jurisdictions when collectively they comprise
a larger share of the regional population.
A number of other factors have also been found to affect transportation investment decisions.38
Broad stakeholder involvement requirements in federal law and, in some cases, the need for local
voter approval can have a major influence on which types of projects move forward and which do
not. For example, freight interests, a relatively minor constituency, argue that such requirements
often lead to the prioritization of passenger projects over freight projects. In addition, state and
local officials, needing to forge consensus on major investment decisions, tend to favor system
preservation, maintenance, and operations projects because they are comparatively easy and
quick to implement. By contrast, major capacity expansion projects are typically controversial
and can take a decade or two to complete. Added to this is the fact that densely populated urban
areas often have limited space available for major new infrastructure and that old and inadequate
infrastructure can be very difficult and expensive to expand.
Choosing among the types of strategies that provide the most cost-effective reductions in
congestion could be done in a number of ways. The most effective projects are likely to vary from
place to place and situation to situation, requiring local solutions rather than national dictates.
However, Congress may require project alternatives to be chosen after an assessment of the full
benefits and costs, with congestion mitigation and economic efficiency as high priorities.39 A
major study of transportation in the United Kingdom found that projects aimed at relieving
congestion “offer remarkably high returns, with benefits four times in excess of costs on many
35
Puentes, Robert and Linda Bailey, “Increasing Funding and Accountability for Metropolitan Transportation
Decisions,” in Bruce Katz and Robert Puentes, eds., Taking the High Road: A Metropolitan Agenda for Transportation
Reform (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005).
36
Edward Hill et al., “Slanted Pavement: How Ohio’s Highway Spending Shortchanges Cities and Suburbs,” in Katz
and Puentes, 2005.
37
Downs, Anthony and Robert Puentes, “The Need for Regional Anticongestion Policies,” in Katz and Puentes, 2005;
Lewis, Paul G., “Regionalism and Representation: Measuring and Assessing Representation in Metropolitan Planning
Organization,” Urban Affairs Review, vol. 33, no. 6 (July 1998), pp. 839-853; Association of Metropolitan Planning
Organizations, “AMPO Survey Results: Policy Board Structure,” at http://www.ampo.org/assets/
62_policyboardstructure.doc.
38
U.S. General Accounting Office, Surface Transportation: Many Factors Affect Investment Decisions, GAO-04-744
(Washington, DC, June 2004), at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d04744.pdf.
39
U.S. General Accountability Office, Highway and Transit Investments: Options for Improving Information on
Projects’ Benefits and Costs for Increasing Accountability for Results, GAO-05-172 (Washington, DC, January 2005),
at http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05172.pdf.
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schemes, even once environmental costs have been factored into the assessment.”40 A different
approach is a performance-based assessment in which a federal standard or goal is set, such as a
certain level of congestion reduction, freeing state and local governments to determine the most
efficient way of meeting the goal.41
Another important issue with respect to prioritization is “mode neutrality.” Traditionally, federal
surface transportation funding has been focused on highways and transit. This has made it
difficult to fund projects involving modes that fall outside these categories, such as freight rail or
multi-modal projects.42 Program changes have been made over the years to allow greater
flexibility, but some argue that these changes have not gone far enough. An opposing view is that
when private transportation infrastructure providers are involved, it is very difficult if not
impossible to properly assess the public benefits and costs of public subsidies. Others fear that
subsidizing private businesses may substitute public investment for private investment with no
net gain for the transportation system, or that such assistance may provide some businesses an
unfair advantage over others.
Mode neutrality in transportation congestion mitigation is still an issue in the relative balance
between funding highways and transit. Some argue that highway congestion cannot be solved by
building more highway capacity or otherwise improving service because this only encourages or
“induces” more people to travel by highway, thereby restoring the same, or an even higher, level
of congestion. Instead, they contend that alternatives such as public transit in concert with land
use measures to encourage the use of alternative modes of travel are the only way around
congestion.43 Others argue that so few people use transit to get to work, and even fewer for other
reasons, that major new investments in transit capacity, except in a limited number of situations,
are not likely to reduce highway congestion appreciably, if at all.44
The problem and empirical measurement of induced demand are a central element in many of the
debates about road traffic congestion. The theory of induced demand suggests that building more
road capacity will not solve road traffic congestion because it merely “induces” travelers using
other modes, driving on other routes, or driving at other times of the day to travel on the new
facility during the peak period, resulting in congestion as bad as that suffered before the
expansion.45 Some suggest it is even possible for congestion to become worse in the long run
after a road is built or expanded because the new capacity encourages more development,
resulting in proportionally more drivers than the new capacity added.46 Attaining a definitive
answer to this question is difficult because of the confounding factors of regional trends in
population and employment growth and other things that lead to changes in transportation
40
HM Treasury and Department for Transport, The Eddington Transport Study, Executive Summary (London,
December 2006), p. 6, at http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/39A/41/eddington_execsum11206.pdf.
41
Cox, Wendell, Alan E. Pisarski, and Ronald D. Utt, “Rush Hour: How States Can Reduce Congestion Through
Performance-Based Transportation Programs,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1995 (January 10, 2007), at
http://www.heritage.org/Research/SmartGrowth/upload/bg_1995.pdf.
42
U.S. General Accounting Office, June 2004.
43
Surface Transportation Policy Project, Easing the Burden: A Companion Analysis of the Texas Transportation
Institute’s 2001 Urban Mobility Study (Washington, DC, May 2001), at http://www.transact.org/PDFs/etb_report.pdf.
44
Wendell Cox and Randal O’Toole, “The Contribution of Highways and Transit to Congestion Relief: A Realistic
View,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, no. 1721 (January 27, 2004).
45
Pickerell, Don, “Induced Demand: Definition, Measurement and Significance,” in Working Together to Address
Induced Demand (Washington, DC: Eno Transportation Foundation, 2002).
46
For a discussion of this issue see Downs, 2006, p. 104.
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habits.47 However, several studies show that although induced demand is real, it typically takes a
number of years for the new capacity to be absorbed, suggesting that new capacity can reduce
congestion in the medium term.48 Moreover, other experts note that while congestion may reassert
itself after the addition of major new capacity, the new facilities still serve more travelers than
before even if service quality is poor, and the increase in travelers on the new or larger facility
may take pressure off other facilities, improving travel over the whole network.49
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Many economists argue that transportation congestion is caused by the way in which service is
rationed. In highway transportation, for example, because the marginal cost of driving is so low,
congestion is the main method for rationing peak-period roadway space. Peak-period roadway
space is in great demand for deep-seated reasons that have to do with the need for face-to-face
interaction in economic and social situations. Thus, at certain times and in certain places, demand
for roadway space exceeds supply and vehicles have to queue for the next available space to open
up. It is argued that road traffic congestion could be reduced by using different rationing methods.
One approach is to limit roadway space to certain types of vehicles or vehicles carrying a certain
number of passengers, such as buses or high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes. Another method is
to ban a vehicle or driver from driving at certain times for one or more days a week. The method
generally favored by economists, however, is to use some sort of pricing mechanism, known as
congestion pricing or value pricing. Its supporters argue that not only does road pricing have the
potential for solving congestion, it also promotes the most efficient use of highway infrastructure.
Detractors argue that road pricing unfairly favors higher-income drivers, may cause severe
mobility problems where no reasonable alternative exists, and may, if it raises the cost of
traveling in the most dense urban areas, lead to more sprawl and highway congestion farther out
from the urban core. Another argument against tolling in general, of which congestion pricing is
one form, is that drivers have often already paid for the infrastructure and its maintenance through
taxes and fees, and so it amounts to a form of double taxation. Consequently, some suggest that
such strategies should be used only to fund and manage new capacity or should not be used at all.
Demand for transit service in large cities is typically more concentrated, both in time and by
direction, than demand for highway travel. The result can be vehicle overcrowding, service
denial, and, because overcrowding tends to increase vehicle dwell times (i.e., time spent at a
station or bus stop to discharge and pick-up passengers), overall slower speeds. Despite this, most
transit agencies do not differentiate fares on the basis of peak/off-peak service but instead have
flat-fare structures and offer unlimited ride passes.50 As is often pointed out, higher peak-period
fares would help to cover the higher costs of providing peak-period service and might persuade
47
Pickerell, 2002.
Cervero, Robert, “Are Induced-Travel Studies Inducing Bad Investments?,” Access, no. 22, 2003, pp. 22-27, at
http://www.uctc.net/access/22/Access%2022%20-%2004%20-%20Induced%20Travel%20Studies.pdf.
49
Downs, 2006; Poole, Robert, “New Evidence Questions the Reality of ‘Induced Demand,’” Surface Transportation
Innovations, no. 39 (January 2007), at http://www.reason.org/surfacetransportation39.shtml.
50
Transportation Research Board, Fare Policies, Structures, and Technologies: Update, Transit Cooperative Research
Program (TCHRP) Report 94 (Washington, DC, 2003), table 2-6, at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/tcrp/
tcrp_rpt_94.pdf.
48
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some travelers to travel during less busy periods. Even where higher peak-period fares are
employed, however, they are not usually high enough to substantially reduce demand peaking.
Proposals to introduce differentiated fare schemes to reduce overcrowding—or in places that have
them to raise fares even higher at congested times or places—are often viewed skeptically as a
way for a transit agency to generate more revenue, particularly from transit-dependent travelers.
Others fear such schemes might push public transit users to drive instead, causing greater
highway congestion.
In freight rail transportation, prices (or “rates” as they are more commonly known) are already the
main mechanism used to manage supply and demand. Rates reflect the cost of providing freight
rail service and demand. Demand for rail service is largely a function of the overall strength of
the economy and the ability of rail transportation to compete with other modes, particularly trucks
and barges. With strong demand and constrained supply, economic theory would suggest, all else
equal, that rates will increase, providing greater resources for investing in expanding supply.
Although the situation is complex, because not all else is equal, the evidence suggests that with
greatly improved productivity and strong demand, the financial health of the railroad industry has
improved substantially since deregulation. This has allowed railroad companies to make
significant investments to maintain the current system and to increase capacity in some places.51
Nevertheless, there is widespread concern that the railroads will not be able to make sufficient
investments to keep up with demand.52
A number of reasons have been posited for the inability of railroads to invest sufficiently in new
capacity to keep up with demand. Clearly, expanding capacity is a slow process, meaning it may
take decades for supply and demand to find an equilibrium, if it ever does. Moreover, in many
congested urban areas, railroads find it difficult to acquire land for new capacity.53 Port areas that
could benefit from new rail lines and terminal facilities are notoriously space-constrained. The
railroads argue that they suffer several inequities that hinder their ability to finance new capacity.
The railroads note that, unlike trucking and barge firms, they provide their own infrastructure and
must bear the long-term risks associated with owning fixed assets. Furthermore, they argue, other
modes pay less in taxes and fees than their use of public infrastructure would warrant, putting the
railroads at a competitive disadvantage. Railroads also argue that they are subject to several
industry-specific laws that raise their costs in comparison with their competitors. These laws
include the Railroad Unemployment Insurance System and some remnants of the Interstate
Commerce Act.54 Ultimately, the railroads argue that despite improvements in their financial
situation since deregulation, they continue to have problems earning enough to cover the cost of
capital, hindering their ability to compete for financing in capital markets.55
In this context, a number of public policy alternatives have been suggested to alter the current
rationing of public and private resources. One controversial proposal is to impose greater taxes
and fees on truck and barge companies to “level the playing field” with railroads. Another is to
51
CBO, 2006.
U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), Freight Railroads: Industry Health Has Improved, but Concerns
about Competition and Capacity Should Be Addressed, GAO-07-94 (Washington, DC, October 2006), at
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d0794.pdf; AASHTO, 2003.
53
Bryan, Joseph, Glen Weisbrod, and Carl Martland, Assessing Rail Freight Solutions to Roadway Congestion: Final
Report, NCHRP Project 8-42 (Washington, DC: Transportation Research Board, October 2006), at http://www.trb.org/
NotesDocs/NCHRP08-42_FR_Rev10-06.pdf.
54
CBO, 2006.
55
Ibid., p.20.
52
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provide government assistance to railroads to mitigate some of the risks they face, with the goal
of increasing the level of investment and accelerating its current pace.56 On the other hand, some
contend that the railroads ought to make a greater financial commitment to solving problems
where they impose high external costs, such as places where rail operations contribute
significantly to highway congestion. For example, in 2002, northeastern Illinois was estimated to
have about 1,700 highway-rail grade crossings that caused nearly 11,000 hours of motorist delay
on a typical weekday.57 Contributions by the railroads to highway-rail grade crossing
improvements, such as grade separation projects, however, tend to be a relatively small share of
the overall cost.
A final consideration in the rationing of resources is what might be called the costs of debate,
review, and approval. Some argue that the costs of complying with federal, state, and local
regulation stemming from the multitude of planning, environmental, and community involvement
laws have substantially increased project costs since the 1960s. These costs include the direct
compliance costs of staff time and the indirect costs of project delay that results in foregone
opportunities in terms of improved mobility, safety, and the like. Most agree that these laws serve
an important purpose and have several benefits. Nevertheless, many would like to reduce the
delay caused by the unnecessary duplication of effort and coordination problems among the
different parties.58
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In the early years of the century, before the mass production of motor vehicles, congestion
generally referred to overcrowded trolley lines and trolley cars in major cities and downtown
streets filled with pedestrians and horse-drawn passenger and goods vehicles.59 For most of the
20th century, however, transportation congestion meant road traffic congestion. The rapid rise of
motor vehicle ownership, particularly with the introduction of Ford’s Model T in 1908, together
with rudimentary road and traffic control systems, made urban road traffic congestion a major
transportation problem by the 1920s.60 Federal, state, and local governments responded with a
significant road-building effort in this period, although road traffic congestion was largely
“solved” by the Great Depression and the Second World War.
During the Second World War, with the massive diversion of resources to the war effort,
automobile use was widely discouraged. Public transit ridership boomed again during this period,
56
Ibid.
Illinois Commerce Commission, “Motorist Delay at Public Highway-Rail Grade Crossings in Northeastern Illinois,”
Working Paper 2002-03 (July 2002), at http://www.icc.illinois.gov/docs/rr/021114rrdelay.pdf.
58
See, for a general overview, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Evaluating the
Performance of Environmental Streamlining: Development of a NEPA baseline for Measuring Continuous
Performance” (Washington, DC), at http://www.environment.fhwa.dot.gov/strmlng/baseline/index.asp.
59
Wachs, M., “Fighting Traffic Congestion with Information Technology,” Issues in Science and Technology (Fall
2002), at http://issues.org/19.1/wachs.htm.
60
Motor vehicle ownership increased from approximately 8,000 in 1900 to 27 million in 1930. See U.S. Department of
Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics, Summary to 1985 (Washington, DC, 1987), p.
25.
57
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reaching an all-time high in the United States in 1946 of 23.4 billion trips.61 However, car
ownership and motor vehicle travel rose rapidly after the war causing another bout of concern
with road traffic congestion, particularly in and around cities.62 Congestion and the threat of
future congestion were among the reasons cited by President Eisenhower in his push to create the
Interstate Highway Program,63 although he was against the idea of urban interstates, preferring
instead bypasses that would allow through traffic to avoid the central cities. Nevertheless, the
cities themselves were insistent that urban interstates were needed to solve urban congestion
problems, and Congress obliged in the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 and the Highway
Revenue Act of 1956 (P.L. 84-627).64
Road capacity expanded rapidly following the passage of the 1956 acts that also created the
Highway Trust Fund. Less than 20 years later, by the end of 1974, about 36,000 miles of the
42,500 mile system were complete, with another 2,800 miles under construction.65 Together with
the improvement of other urban and rural road networks, road capacity (measured by paved
centerline miles of highways and streets66) grew at about the same rate as motor vehicle travel
from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s (Figure 1). The problem of road traffic congestion never
disappeared in major cities, but in the 1970s, the most vexing highway transportation problems
were energy, air quality and other environmental issues, and highway safety.
61
American Public Transportation Association, 2006 Public Transportation Fact Book (Washington, DC, 2006), at
http://www.apta.com/research/stats/factbook/index.cfm.
62
Weingroff, Richard F., “The Genie in the Bottle: The Interstate System and Urban Problems, 1939-1957,” Public
Roads, vol. 64, no. 2 (September/October 2000), pp. 2-15, at http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/septoct00/urban.htm.
63
In a speech Eisenhower argued, “The country urgently needs a modernized interstate highway system to relieve
existing congestion, to provide for the expected growth of motor vehicle traffic, to strengthen the Nation’s defenses, to
reduce the toll of human life exacted each year in highway accidents, and to promote economic development.” Quoted
in Weingroff, R.D., “Original Intent: Purpose of the Interstate System: 1954-56,” at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/
infrastructure/originalintent.cfm, as of December 28, 2006.
64
Schwartz, Gary T., “Urban Freeways and the Interstate System,” Southern California Law Review, vol. 49 (1976),
pp. 406-513.
65
U.S. Department of Transportation, 1976, p. 481.
66
Paved centerline miles is the length of roads paved with some type of bituminous, Portland cement concrete, or brick
surface, as measured along the center in one direction. As such, this metric does not account for the capacity provided
by highways with more than one lane in each direction. FHWA did not begin publishing lane-mile data until 1980.
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Figure 1. Motor Vehicle Travel and Road Capacity, 1941-2005
Source: U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics (Washington,
DC, various years).
Note: Paved centerline miles is the length of roads paved with some type of bituminous, Portland cement
concrete, or brick surface as measured along the center in one direction.
The growth in road capacity and motor vehicle travel began to diverge in a major way during the
1970s, as shown in Figure 1. Except for slight dips associated with the oil shocks of 1974 and
1979, motor vehicle travel continued to grow apace. At the same time, growth in road capacity
slowed as the interstate system neared completion, maintenance requirements began to absorb
more resources, and building new capacity became more expensive and time-consuming as a
result of new environmental laws. Consequently, road traffic congestion began to climb quickly
again in the 1980s and has continued to rise ever since.
ȱȱ
Public transportation congestion has not been a major issue since the end of the Second World
War, when transit ridership was at an all-time high. On the contrary, the major issue, particularly
through the 1950s and 1960s, was the overall lack of riders resulting from increases in motor
vehicle ownership, suburbanization, and other changes in work and leisure.67 By the early 1970s,
transit ridership was only a quarter of what it had been at its peak in 1946, dropping from a high
of 23.4 billion trips to a low of 6.5 billion trips. In response, many streetcar systems were
abandoned in favor of diesel buses, and privately owned and operated transit systems were taken
over by public authorities. Public transportation has undergone something of a resurgence since
the mid-1970s with the building of a number of new rail systems, particularly light rail, but also
heavy rail and commuter rail. Since then, transit ridership has increased modestly to about 10
67
Smerk, George M., The Federal Role In Urban Mass Transportation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
1991).
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billion trips in 2005.68 To put this in context, however, the proportion of all trips made on transit
declined by half between 1969 and 2001, as trips by other modes, particularly in personal motor
vehicles, increased to a much greater extent.69
Although not as widespread as road traffic congestion, peak-period transit overcrowding has
become an issue in some cities with large numbers of transit commuters and heavily congested
roads and railways, such as New York; Chicago; San Francisco; Washington, DC; and Boston.
Peak-period overcrowding on the subway in Washington, DC, for instance, has led to proposals
for substantially higher fares at the most heavily used times and stations.70 In addition, because
most transit buses do not run on roads with controlled access (e.g., high-occupancy vehicle
[HOV] and bus lanes), road traffic congestion also affects bus riders.
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Until relatively recently, congestion has not been a major issue in freight transportation. The
building of the interstates, together with the existing rail, water, and pipeline systems, provided
adequate surface freight capacity from the 1960s through the 1980s. According to many analysts,
the biggest problem at this time was antiquated federal regulation from laws dating to the late 19th
and early 20th centuries. Administered mainly by the now defunct Interstate Commerce
Commission (ICC), these regulations controlled prices and competition, leading to some major
inefficiencies in the transportation of goods. Deregulation beginning in the late 1970s sparked a
major reorganization within and across modes that overall has provided shippers with cheaper,
more efficient freight transportation and much greater choice.
In railroading, for instance, federal regulation made it difficult to abandon little-used or
unprofitable lines. Thus, although railroad mileage peaked as early as 1916, it changed little for
the next 60 years. Overcapacity was a significant contributor to the financial difficulties of the
railroads that reached crisis proportions in the 1970s and subsequently led to deregulation of the
industry through the Staggers Rail Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-448). The Staggers Act made it much
easier for major railroads to abandon lines or to sell or lease them to non-Class I railroads.71 Since
then, the miles of track owned and operated by Class I railroads have dropped precipitously from
271,000 in 1980 to 162,000 in 2006.72 Non-Class I railroad mileage consequently has grown,
although modestly. Despite less track, railroads today are able to move more freight because
technological changes allow them to run heavier, longer, and faster trains. Indeed, freight rail tonmiles increased by 93% between 1980 and 2006.73 This has also been accomplished with
relatively fewer locomotives, freight cars, and employees, marking huge productivity gains since
deregulation.
68
American Public Transportation Association, “Transit Ridership Report, Fourth Quarter 2005,” April 4, 2006, at
http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/riderep/documents/05q4cvr.pdf.
69
Polzin, Steven, and Xuehao Chu, Public Transit in America: Results from the 2001 National Household Travel
Survey (Washington, DC, September 2005), at http://www.nctr.usf.edu/pdf/527-09.pdf.
70
Sun, Lena H., “Rush Hour Metro Fares May Rise As Much as $2.10,” The Washington Post, December 14, 2006, p.
A1.
71
The Surface Transportation Board, the federal agency responsible for economic regulation of the railroad industry,
classifies freight railroads based on operating revenue. In 2006, the classification was as follows: Class I, $346.8
million or more; Class II, $27.8 million to $346.7 million; Class III, less than $27.7 million.
72
Association of American Railroads, Railroad Facts 2007 (Washington, DC), p. 45.
73
Ibid., p. 27.
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Deregulation also played a major role in the reorganization and growth of the trucking industry.
New laws such as the Motor Carrier Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-296) and other changes freed up
trucking companies to more directly compete against each other, allowed the entry of new firms,
and encouraged the development of efficient truck operation and routing. The results have been
generally lower prices and higher-quality and more reliable service.
Among other things, deregulation played an important role in the shift toward what has been
called “coordinated logistics,” defined as “the integration of distinct logistics activities, such as
cross-modal coordination or the bundling of transportation and inventory control.”74 Deregulation
helped remove many of the modal and jurisdictional barriers between carriers. Moreover, with
industry consolidation and improvements in productivity and profitability, carriers were able to
introduce new technologies and develop innovative services. For instance, over the past few
decades, trucking and railroad companies have created networks of trailer-on-flatcar service that
combine the advantages of rail and truck transportation. With cheaper and more timely deliveries
of goods, shippers have been able to save production and distribution costs by developing longer
and more complex supply chains and by cutting back on their inventories of goods. Coordinated
logistics, therefore, has raised the importance of transportation in the logistics process and has
placed greater emphasis on seamless networks of multiple transportation modes.
Coordinated logistics has also been spurred on by extraordinary growth in foreign trade. Foreign
trade as a percentage of U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown from 11% in 1970 to
26% in 2005.75 Consequently, the amount of goods moving through foreign trade gateways—
ports, border crossings, and airports—has skyrocketed. For instance, waterborne merchandise
trade almost tripled between 1970 and 2006, from 581 to 1,565 million tons.76 This growth has
placed great pressure on the gateways themselves, but also on the transportation networks that
serve them—primarily roads and rail lines—and the connection between modes. Among other
problems, most of these gateways are located in large urban centers that suffer from high levels of
road traffic congestion and have limited space for facility expansion. Many experts now believe
the efficiency gains resulting from deregulation and other changes have largely run their course.77
After declining for years, the cost of logistics to U.S. businesses appears to be increasing, partly
because of congestion (see Figure 2). In railroading, many lines and terminals are running at or
near full capacity. With little or no slack in the system, railroads have become more susceptible to
disruptive incidents, such as late loadings and unloadings, breakdowns, and poor weather.
Another problem as rail lines reach capacity is the growing conflict between freight and
passenger trains (Amtrak and commuter) that, for the most part, use the same lines. As a result,
delays are multiplying for both freight and passenger trains, particularly in major urban areas that
generate a lot of freight and passenger traffic. In trucking, productivity is now largely dependent
on road congestion, the supply of qualified truck drivers, and fuel costs.
74
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Freight Carriers: From Modal Fragmentation
to Coordinated Logistics,” undated white paper, p. 1, at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/theme_papers/
final_thm5_v4.htm.
75
U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, National Income and Product Accounts, at http://www.bea.gov.
76
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Waterborne Commerce Statistics of the United States 2005, National Summaries
(New Orleans, LA, 2007), p. 1-3, at http://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/ndc/wcsc/pdf/wcusnatl05.pdf; U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers, 2006 Preliminary Waterborne Commerce Statistics: National Totals and Selected Inland Waterways (New
Orleans, LA, October 23, 2007), p. 1, at http://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/ndc/wcsc/pdf/Prelim06.pdf.
77
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “Regulation: From Economic Deregulation to
Safety Regulation,” undated white paper, at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/theme_papers/final_thm8_v4.htm.
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ȱ
Figure 2. U.S. Cost of Logistics, 1984-2005 (percentage of Gross Domestic Product)
Year
Source:
Council of Logistics Management, State of Logistics Report (Washington, DC, 2006).
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In line with the rapid growth of motor vehicle ownership and travel, federal surface transportation
policy for most of the 20th century focused on road connectivity and capacity, particularly with a
view to providing basic access in rural areas and then intercounty and interstate roads. Urban road
traffic congestion warranted a certain amount of attention in the early Federal-Aid Highway Acts,
including the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. Federal transit funding, beginning in the 1960s,
was also partly predicated on the argument that it would relieve road traffic congestion.78 As the
interstate building program neared completion in the 1980s and road traffic congestion was
growing apace, federal policy makers began a fundamental reassessment of surface transportation
policy. The result was the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA),
P.L. 102-240.
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In the deliberations of the congressional committees that culminated in the passage of Intermodal
Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), there was recognition that urban road traffic
congestion was a major problem.79 Unlike in the past, however, some viewed road capacity
78
Smerk, 1991.
U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, S.Rept. 102-71, June 4, 1991; U.S. Congress,
(continued...)
79
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building as a flawed strategy for dealing with the issue. This view was summed up by Senator
Daniel Moynihan in the introductory statement of the Senate report. Talking about the building of
the interstate system, he argued the following:
[T]he plain fact is that traffic congestion has grown during this period of massive highway
construction. We have to face the fact that even if we had greater resources than we do,
adding to highway capacity does not any longer seem a promising road to increased highway
efficiency.80
Congressional leaders also expressed the concern that solutions to transportation problems that
encouraged more driving would lead to more air pollution, thereby undermining the provisions of
the recently enacted Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA), P.L. 101-549. A third major
concern was that scarce resources should be used first and foremost to maintain and improve the
current highway system over system expansion.
Rather than design a new road-building program, leaders in both the House and the Senate sought
to fashion a program to enhance the efficiency of a transportation system that was largely in place.
This new program would be based on highway system maintenance; more transit funding; greater
funding flexibility; intermodalism; enhanced state and metropolitan planning; improved
operations, including development and deployment of advanced technologies (e.g., technologies
to improve roadway monitoring, enhance traveler information, and enable the electronic payment
of tolls); and efforts to improve safety, energy efficiency, and pollution control. The new surface
transportation bill also required the designation of a new National Highway System (NHS) to
prioritize federal help for the most heavily traveled routes of the Interstate Highway System, the
Strategic Highway Network, and Federal-Aid Primary System.81
A fundamental theme in the development of ISTEA was that states and localities should be free to
fashion their own solutions to local problems, a tenet that became known as “flexibility.” While
recognizing that congestion was a problem, the committees understood that it was not a problem
everywhere, hence the need for flexibility. In this regard, the House Public Works and
Transportation Committee report noted, “The new system reflects the Committee’s recognition of
the need to relieve congestion in urban and suburban America, while at the same time addressing
the mobility and access needs of Rural America.”82
In reworking the surface programs, the large Surface Transportation Program (STP), authorized at
$24 billion over the life of the bill, was at the core of the flexibility provisions. STP funds were
made available for highway capital projects but could be “flexed” to transit if desired and if
certain other conditions were met. As the House Committee noted, “For those with congested
urban areas, flexibility may mean more transit solutions, while for rural areas or those
(...continued)
House Committee on Public Works and Transportation, H.Rept. 102-171(I), July 26, 1991.
80
S.Rept. 102-71, June 4, 1991, p. 4.
81
At this time, the Interstate Highway System was approximately 45,000 miles in length. The interstates were part of
the Federal-Aid Primary System, which also included approximately 260,000 miles of mostly rural arterials and some
urban principal arterials. The Strategic Highway Network (STRAHNET) was, and still is, a system of roadways
identified as being important for national defense. In addition to the interstates, the STRAHNET at this time included
another 15,000 miles of non-interstate roads.
82
U.S. Congress, H.Rept. 102-171(I), July 26, 1991, p. 6.
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experiencing economic growth, flexibility may mean more highways.”83 Within certain
parameters, flexibility was also provided for switching funds between the different parts of the
highway system, as projects could be on any part of the system except local and rural minor
collectors. Moreover, STP funds could be used for a bridge project on any public road, not just
those on the federal-aid system.
ISTEA also authorized a substantial increase in federal transit funding over previous
authorizations, nearly $32 billion over the life of the bill. Many expected that additional funding
would be devoted to transit from flexed STP funds and another new program, the $6 billion
Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program (CMAQ), which was authorized to provide new
funds for projects to help states and localities meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act
Amendments (CAAA) of 1990. Funding was aimed primarily at reducing pollutants emitted by
reducing motor vehicle travel, particularly single-occupant vehicle travel. Because the most
polluted places tend to have the worst road traffic congestion, it was believed that many projects
funded under CMAQ to reduce pollution would reduce road traffic congestion as well. However,
CMAQ prohibited spending on more traditional congestion relief projects, such as new road
capacity that would be primarily used by single-occupant drivers. In addition, building new
capacity could violate the requirements in the Clean Air Act and ISTEA that state and
metropolitan plans “conform” to the emissions levels set forth in the air quality State
Implementation Plan (SIP) as required by CAAA. A 10-year assessment of the program found
that about 44% of CMAQ funds were spent on transit projects and another 33% on traffic flow
improvement projects such as incident management, HOV lanes, and traffic signal
improvements.84
ISTEA also advanced a few other congestion-related programs that were federal program
innovations. First was the idea of intermodalism—planning and financing projects that enhance
the links between modes. In this regard, states and metropolitan areas were required to consider
the transportation systems as whole in the planning process and to include participation from all
stakeholders, including the freight community. Funds were also made available for highway
projects to accommodate other transportation modes and for carpool projects, such as fringe and
corridor parking facilities and programs, and bicycle transportation and pedestrian walkways.
Second, ISTEA placed more emphasis on funding highway operations, including the
establishment of a new program to fund the development and deployment of advanced
technology in transportation, known as the Intelligent Vehicle/Highway Systems Program
(IVHS). Now known as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), the program was originally
authorized with $660 million over the six year life of the act. Third, to enhance the ability of
metropolitan areas to coordinate and fund the development of their transportation systems, ISTEA
increased the responsibilities of metropolitan planning organization (MPOs) and required the
development of congestion management systems at both the metropolitan and state level. The
requirement for a congestion management system at the state level was subsequently dropped in
the National Highway System Designation Act of 1995 (P.L. 104-59).85 Fourth, ISTEA provided
funding for up to five projects in the Congestion Pricing Pilot Program and allowed greater use of
federal funds on toll roads than in the past.
83
Ibid., p. 7.
Transportation Research Board, The Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement Program: Assessing 10
Years of Experience, Special Report 264 (Washington, DC, 2002).
85
U.S. Government Accounting Office, Transportation Infrastructure: States’ Implementation of Transportation
Management Systems, GAO-RCED-97-32 (Washington, DC, 1997), at http://www.gao.gov/archive/1997/rc97032.pdf.
84
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ISTEA required the designation of a new category of highways, the National Highway System
(NHS), to be worked out in consultations between the USDOT and the states. The designation of
the 155,000-mile NHS system was the primary purpose of the NHS Act. However, the NHS Act
included several other provisions amending the federal programs, some with relevance to the
issue of mobility and congestion. Among them were the authorization of two new financing
mechanisms: the State Infrastructure Bank (SIB) pilot program and what became known as Grant
Anticipation Revenue Vehicle (GARVEE) bonds. The SIB pilot project allowed a handful of
states to use some of their highway and transit funds to capitalize a revolving fund. The GARVEE
bonds were developed from Section 311 of the NHS Act that expanded the use of federal-aid
highway funds for bond financing. A number of intermodal projects, including the Alameda
Corridor project, were advanced because of these new provisions.
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ŘŖŜǼȱ
The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21), as amended (P.L. 105-178; P.L.
105-206), enacted June 9, 1998, maintained the essential structure of the programs created in
ISTEA with an increase in funding (in nominal terms) of 40%. Of the total $218 billion
authorized, $177 billion was allocated for highways and $41 billion for transit, although TEA-21
continued and enhanced the flexing of monies between modes as introduced by ISTEA in 1991.86
Several programs begun in ISTEA were retained and expanded under TEA-21. CMAQ was
retained with more funding ($8.1 billion) and expanded eligibility criteria. ITS funding was raised
to $1.282 billion, and a new ITS program, the Commercial Vehicle Information Systems and
Networks (CVISN) Program, was established and funded at $184 million. With the ultimate goal
of improving the efficiency and safety of commercial motor vehicle operations, the CVISN
program was created to make use of information systems and communications networks by
developing industry standards and demonstrating potential benefits. Three areas were initially
targeted under the CVISN program: safety information exchange, credentials administration, and
electronic screening.87 The Congestion Pricing Pilot Program was renamed the Value Pricing Pilot
Program and funded at a higher, though still very modest, level ($51 million).
TEA-21 also created a few new programs. Some of these came under the banner of innovative
financing, including the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) and the
Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) program. TIFIA was to provide up to
$10.6 billion in credit assistance to large projects of national significance (generally projects over
$100 million). The RRIF program was set up to provide loan and loan guarantees up to $3.5
billion, of which not less than $1 billion was to be available to non-Class I railroads. Two new
infrastructure grant programs—the National Corridor Planning and Development Program and
the Coordinated Border and Infrastructure Program—were also created and jointly funded at $140
86
U.S. Department of Transportation, Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century—A Summary (Washington, DC,
1998).
87
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, Introductory Guide to CVISN
(Washington, DC, 2000), at http://cvisn.fmcsa.dot.gov/downdocs/cvisndocs/guides/intro_p2/pdf_all1/intro_p2full.pdf.
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million per year for FY1999 through FY2003.88 The first was conceived primarily as an economic
development tool (although congestion costs were one factor to be used in determining projects)
and the second was intended to alleviate congestion and improve mobility at the borders. Since
FY2000, nearly all the funds in this program have been earmarked in appropriation bills.
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After a number of hearings prior to reauthorization of TEA-21 in which transportation congestion
was a major focus, the initial legislative proposal from the House of Representatives (H.R. 3550)
in the 108th Congress included a number of new provisions in Subtitle B, entitled “Congestion
Relief.” Two provisions were seen as being particularly innovative. The first was the Motor
Vehicle Congestion Relief Program, which would require states with an urbanized area over
200,000 to set aside apportioned funds under several existing programs to be spent on projects
that enhance capacity and relieve congestion. The proposed set-aside was 10% of a state’s total
apportionments multiplied by the percentage of the state’s population in urbanized areas of
200,000 or more. The second innovative proposal was to fund ITS technologies at a much higher
level and to speed up their deployment. H.R. 3550 would have authorized about $4 billion during
FY2004-FY2009, with about $3 billion of this amount for expedited deployment. This was up
from about $230 million per year toward the end of TEA-21 (not including federal-aid highway
funds allocated by the states to deploy ITS).89
H.R. 3550 proposed a new $6.6 billion allocated program called Projects of National and
Regional Significance to fund important high-cost facilities ($500 million or more or greater than
75% of a state’s annual apportionment), including freight rail projects eligible under Title 23
U.S.C. Also included in the bill was a new Freight Intermodal Connectors program to be funded
by formula at the level of $1.37 billion over six years and a Freight Intermodal Distribution Pilot
Grant Program funded at $30 million over five years as a takedown from the Freight Intermodal
Connectors authorization.90 This latter program was intended to provide grants to facilitate
intermodal freight transportation initiatives at the state and local levels to relieve congestion and
improve safety, and to provide capital funding to address infrastructure and freight distribution
needs at inland ports and intermodal freight facilities. As passed by the House, two tolling
provisions were also included in H.R. 3550, one to permit states to allow drivers to pay to use
HOV facilities as part of a variable toll-pricing program and the other to permit the construction
of new lanes on interstates to be funded by tolls.91
The reauthorization of the surface transportation programs was not passed in the 108th Congress
but was eventually completed in the 109th Congress and signed into law by the President on
August 10, 2005. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act—A
Legacy for Users (SAFETEA) provides a general increase in transportation funding with a sixyear total of $286.4 billion for programs from FY2004 through FY2009. This represents a 31%
88
ISTEA had identified 21 high priority corridors, and the NHS Designation Act had added another 8 corridors. ISTEA
provided funds for feasibility and design studies.
89
See CRS Report RL32226, Highway and Transit Program Reauthorization Legislation in the 2nd Session, 108th
Congress, by (name redacted).
90
U.S. Congress, House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, H.Rept. 108-452, March 29, 2004.
91
A similar provision was included in S. 1072.
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increase in nominal terms over the $218 billion provided over the six years of TEA-21 (FY1998FY2003).92
As enacted, SAFETEA largely retains the structure of the surface transportation programs begun
under ISTEA, with a large proportion of funding going to the established “core” highway
programs (such as the Surface Transportation Program, the National Highway System, the
Interstate Maintenance Program, and the Bridge Program) and public transportation.93 The
Congestion Relief subtitle of SAFETEA contains just one program, the new Real-Time System
Management Information Program. This program, with no separate funds of its own, is designed
to encourage states to develop a real-time traffic information system to improve highway
operations and reduce congestion. The rest of the Congestion Relief programs, as proposed in
H.R. 3550, were either shifted elsewhere in the act or deleted. ITS funding was not retained as a
separate program but was “mainstreamed” as an eligible category in the core programs. CMAQ
continues at a higher funding level, and project eligibility is expanded to include projects that
might have a more direct impact on congestion. Table 1 shows the authorization levels of
SAFETEA’s titles and some selected programs for FY2005 through FY2009.
Table 1. SAFETEA Authorization Levels, by Legislative Titles and Selected Programs,
FY2005-FY2009
(in millions of dollars)
Selected SAFETEA Title/Program
Title I—Federal Aid Highways
Total
Authorization
FY2005-FY2009
199,490.476
Interstate Maintenance Program
National Highway System
Bridge Program
Surface Transportation Program
Congestion Mitigation & Air Quality Improvement Program (CMAQ)
National Corridor Infrastructure Improvement Program
Coordinated Border Infrastructure Program
Projects of National & Regional Significance
National Corridor Planning & Development & Coordinated Border Infrastructure Programs
Freight Intermodal Distribution Pilot Grant Program
Value Pricing Pilot Program
25,201.595
30,541.833
21,607.422
32,549.757
8,609.100
1,948.000
833.000
1,779.000
140.000
30.000
59.000
Title II—Highway Safety
3,131.592
Title III—Public Transportation
45,313.000
Title IV—Motor Carrier Safety
2,519.829
92
CRS Report RL33119, Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act - A Legacy for Users
(SAFETEA-LU or SAFETEA): Selected Major Provisions, by (name redacted).
93
Ibid.
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Total
Authorization
FY2005-FY2009
Selected SAFETEA Title/Program
Titles V-X (excluding rescission of unobligated balances of highway contract
5,003.940
authority in Title X)
Source:
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act - A Legacy for Users
CRS Report RL33119,
(SAFETEA-LU or SAFETEA): Selected Major Provisions, by ne recte.
SAFETEA does provide states with slightly more latitude in using tolls to build or expand
interstate capacity and to improve operational efficiency to reduce congestion. The Value Pricing
Pilot Program was reauthorized at a higher level: $11 million for FY2005 and $12 million
annually for FY2006-FY2009. In addition, SAFETEA includes provisions for a limited number
of pilot projects to test the viability of the use of tolling on existing facilities including HOV
facilities and for tolling to fund new interstate capacity.
SAFETEA also created the new Projects of National or Regional Significance program, but with
funding set at $1.779 billion for FY2005 through FY2009, not $6.6 billion as proposed in H.R.
3550, and all the funds earmarked in the act. The new Freight Intermodal Connectors program
was dropped before final passage of the bill, but the Freight Intermodal Distribution Pilot
Program remained with $30 million authorized through FY2009. Again, this $30 million was
earmarked in the bill. SAFETEA also reauthorized the Coordinated Border Infrastructure
Program as a new apportioned program, with funding set at $833 million from FY2005 though
FY2009.
Existing innovative funding provisions were extended and modified to some degree in
SAFETEA. For instance, the minimum project size for TIFIA projects was reduced from $100
million to $50 million for most projects and from $30 million to $15 million for ITS projects.
SAFETEA also allowed for broadened use of SIBs and Private Activity bonds. The RRIF was
expanded tenfold under SAFETEA, from $3.5 billion to $35 billion in loans. Of this, $7 billion is
reserved for non-Class I railroads. The legislation also added to the list of priorities in using such
loans “enhancing rail infrastructure capacity and alleviating rail bottlenecks.” SAFETEA also
added a new federal grant program for relocating rail track that interferes with motor vehicle
traffic.
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Transportation congestion exists when demand for a transportation facility or vehicle is greater
than its capacity and the excess demand causes a significant drop in service quality, such as
speed, cost, and comfort, depending on the mode and specific situation. For example, when too
many drivers compete for road space, the result is usually a significant drop in traffic speed but
also higher vehicle operating costs and, with bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go conditions, an
increase in driver stress. In freight railroad transportation, train speeds may suffer when demand
begins to reach capacity, and because shippers directly pay for access to rail infrastructure, higher
rates theoretically may be another indicator of congestion. Depending on the situation, congestion
in public transit may result in vehicle overcrowding—possibly resulting in service denial and
reduced passenger comfort—slower vehicle speeds, and higher peak-period fares.
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From the viewpoint of a multi-modal passenger trip or freight shipment, the possibility for
congestion exists not only within each mode but also in the connections between modes. Poor or
overstretched intermodal connections are another part of the transportation system that may
damage service quality. Moreover, inefficient intermodal connections may cause problems within
a mode as unexpected delays interfere with other trips and shipments farther down the line. For
example, a delayed ship-to-truck transfer in a major metropolitan area may result in the truck
traveling during peak-period traffic.
Ideally, transportation congestion should be defined and measured from the perspective of the end
user—a traveler or a freight shipment. Congestion, therefore, could be measured by the extent to
which excess demand slows or otherwise harms a passenger trip or freight shipment from the
origin to the destination.94 In some situations, such as the transportation of packages by an
express carrier, such as UPS and FedEx, it may be possible for the carrier to collect data and
monitor movements for business purposes. However, in most situations, for public policy
purposes, because measuring trips from origin to destination is difficult to accomplish in a large
scale and meaningful way, measures of congestion typically focus on service problems within a
mode. Moreover, within each mode, many measures of congestion are limited to a specific
transportation facility. This is especially the case in highway transportation. For example,
highway engineers typically refer to speed or level of service (LOS) on a particular road segment.
Measurements on these segments are then sometimes aggregated to develop systemwide
measures of highway congestion.
Mode-specific and facility-specific measures of congestion are not wholly satisfactory indicators
of capacity problems in transportation service because they fail to measure aggregate impacts
across the whole system. On the other hand, some transportation experts have noted that the focus
on facility congestion instead of the effect of congestion on passenger and freight trips may also
overstate its importance. For instance, freeway congestion may not be as bad as it seems if seen in
the context of an entire automobile commute trip, including the time it takes to park and walk to
the office.95 Similarly, it might be true that the effect of freight bottlenecks might not be as bad as
is generally believed if seen from the perspective of the entire supply chain.
Whether facility-based or trip-based, another criticism of transportation-based congestion
measures is that they ignore the land-use context within which travel is taking place. In
transportation planning parlance, they measure mobility but not accessibility. Accessibility
explains the seeming paradox of why the most congested places are also the most economically
vibrant, even when the congestion is long lived. Manhattan, for example, may be one of the most
congested places on earth, but it also provides access to an enormous number of opportunities in
terms of homes, jobs, retail outlets, restaurants, recreation, etc. A study of accessibility in
Minneapolis, MN, for example, found that while traffic congestion more than doubled between
1990 and 2000 (measured in annual delay per person), access to opportunities by car, in this case
the number of jobs, increased more quickly.96 Seen from this perspective, the performance of the
transportation system, in concert with land-use, actually improved in the 1990s rather than
deteriorated, as congestion data alone would suggest.
94
Giglio, Joseph M., Mobility: America’s Transportation Mess and How to Fix It (Washington, DC: Hudson Institute,
2005).
95
Taylor, 2002.
96
El-Geneidy, Ahmed M. and David M. Levinson, May 2006.
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Unfortunately, as it stands today, national data do not exist to examine the effects of congestion
on accessibility as opposed to mobility. Nor do we have the means to examine the effects of
congestion on passenger trips and freight shipments from end-to-end, including the efficiency of
intermodal connections. The transportation congestion measures employed in most instances,
including in this report, are both facility- and modally-based, with the inadequacies this entails.
Several measures of congestion, particularly in freight rail and public transit, are gross indicators
of capacity utilization using aggregate measures across the whole system. Moreover, no measures
of intermodal terminal congestion per se exist. The measures of congestion presented here,
nonetheless, represent the best available information today using publicly available data.
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Efforts to define and measure road traffic congestion have increased over the past few decades as
congestion itself has grown.97 Still, congestion has proven difficult to measure at the national
level because of the size and diversity of the highway system and because traffic problems can
occur anywhere at any time of the day or night for a number of different reasons. Moreover, what
constitutes a “congestion problem” is highly subjective. One frequently cited national road traffic
research effort is the Urban Mobility Program at the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI). TTI
defines traffic congestion as an excess of demand in relation to supply (or capacity) such that
travel speeds are slower than normal, where normal is defined as free-flow speed. TTI derives
travel speeds by relating the theoretical capacity of a roadway segment to the average number and
type of vehicles traveling the segment. Speed estimates are then used to calculate travel delay.
TTI uses data from FHWA’s Highway Performance Monitoring System.98
Travel delay measures the extra time it takes to make a trip and can be expressed in several
different ways, such as total delay, delay per traveler, and as a travel time index. The travel time
index measures the ratio of travel time in the peak period to travel time at free-flow conditions.
Thus, a Travel Time Index of 1.35 indicates a 20-minute free-flow trip takes 27 minutes in the
peak-period.
In related research, TTI is developing measures of travel time reliability. Travel time reliability
measures the variability of travel times. When the highway system is unreliable, travelers and
shippers must build in extra time to avoid being late. TTI measures travel time reliability via its
Buffer Time Index (BTI). The BTI measures the extra time needed to ensure that a traveler or
freight shipment will arrive on time according to a predetermined standard, typically 95% of trips.
A BTI of 43%, for instance, indicates that a traveler needs to add an extra 43% to the average
travel time of a trip to arrive on time 19 out of 20 times (95% of trips).99
Some suggest that reliability is more important to both travelers and shippers than average delay.
It seems reasonable to propose that most commuters would prefer to spend an extra 5 minutes to
and from work each day than to endure an unexpected delay of 50 minutes on just one journey a
97
Transportation Research Board, Quantifying Congestion, Volume 1, National Cooperative Highway Research
Program, Report 398 (Washington, DC, 1997).
98
Texas Transportation Institute, Urban Mobility Report 2007 (College Station, Texas), Appendix A, at
http://mobility.tamu.edu/ums/.
99
Texas Transportation Institute and Cambridge Systematics, Monitoring Urban Freeways in 2003, report prepared for
the U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, December 2004, at http://tti.tamu.edu/
documents/FHWA-HOP-05-018.pdf.
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week, a delay causing problems with arriving at work on time or picking up a child from school
or daycare. Similarly, shippers often place greater value on being able to predict reliably when a
shipment will arrive than on the speed with which it got there. In some cases, such as just-in-time
manufacturing and distribution operations, shippers and carriers can face penalties for making
late or, in some cases, early deliveries.
In its annual Urban Mobility Report, TTI aggregates road segment estimates for an entire urban
area system of freeways and arterials. The same methodology has been used by other researchers
to identify and measure delay and, in some cases, reliability at specific places, such as
bottlenecks,100 truck bottlenecks,101 and border crossings,102 as well as roads on the federally
adopted National Highway System.103 The FHWA is using similar measures to examine
congestion on major travel corridors defined by Interstate routes, such as I-5 traversing
California, Oregon, and Washington. However, in this research program, FHWA is using data
collected from trucks themselves using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology.104
One of the main criticisms of TTI’s work on urban road traffic congestion is that it does not
directly measure congestion in any urban area, but relies instead on estimates of congestion based
on a number of theoretical relationships. For a time, this meant that TTI was unable to account for
improvements in speeds resulting from operational improvements—such as freeway entrance
ramp metering, incident management programs, and traffic signal coordination programs—nor
the effects of public transit. TTI has since begun including these variables in its models, but the
overall criticism that its estimates of congestion are not direct empirical measurements still
stands.
Another major criticism has to do with the estimation of congestion by comparing traffic speeds
to free-flow conditions. A number of experts point out that such models can never fully account
for induced traffic and that, as problematic as this may be theoretically, as a practical matter,
eliminating congestion for all peak-period travelers is wholly unrealistic because the costs would
be overwhelming. Thus, congestion-free peak-period travel in major metropolitan areas “is a
purely notional idea, not a conceivable description of the world we might choose to provide
for.”105 Moreover, using free-flow speed in the calculation of congestion can lead to some results
that do not square with reality. For instance, if widening a road improves the peak-period average
speed but is accompanied by a proportionally greater increase in the speed limit, the calculated
amount of congestion will increase after the improvement. In addition, a small change in average
100
American Highway Users Alliance, Unclogging America’s Arteries: Effective Relief for Highway Bottlenecks, 19992004 (Washington, DC, February 2004), at http://www.highways.org/pdfs/bottleneck2004.pdf.
101
Cambridge Systematics, “An Initial Assessment of Freight Bottlenecks on Highways,” report prepared for U.S.
Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, October 2005, at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/
otps/bottlenecks/bottlenecks.pdf.
102
Texas Transportation Institute and Battelle Memorial Institute, “International Border Crossing Truck Travel Time
for 2001,” report prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, April 2002, at
http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/documents/brdr_synthesis.pdf.
103
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Freight Management and Operation,
The Freight Story: A National Perspective on Enhancing Freight Transportation (Washington, DC, November 2002),
p. 13, at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/freight_story/freight.pdf.
104
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Office of Freight Management and Operation,
Freight Performance Measurement: Travel Time in Freight Significant Corridors, FHWA-HOP-07-071, December
2006, at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/freight_analysis/perform_meas/fpmtraveltime/traveltimebrochure.pdf.
105
Goodwin, Phil, “The Economic Costs of Road Traffic Congestion,” Discussion Paper, Transport Studies Unit,
University College London, 2004, p. 13, at http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/archive/00001259/01/2004_25.pdf.
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conditions, such as a decrease of a few miles an hour, may appear to be a significant congestion
problem when measured over a large number of drivers.106
Empirical research on the relationship between freeway speed and vehicle flow shows maximum
vehicle throughput at something less than free-flow speed, about 50 miles an hour. This too
brings into question a congestion calculation based on free-flow speed. As Figure 3 shows, when
there are few vehicles traveling on a freeway segment, as might be the case very early in the
morning, average speeds are high, at about 60 miles per hour (mph), but overall throughput is
low, at around 300 vehicles per lane per hour. As volumes build, vehicle throughput increases to
around 1,800 vehicles per lane per hour and average speeds decline by about 10 to 15 mph. At
this point, as the number of vehicles coming onto the road continues to increase, the volume of
vehicles begins to overwhelm capacity and speeds decline precipitously. As speeds decline in this
instance, vehicle throughput declines.107
Overall, this line of criticism concludes that estimating congestion using the unattainable ideal of
free-flow conditions, and with it the costs of congestion (see below), tends to overstate its impact
on society. This and other criticisms notwithstanding, the TTI estimates of urban road traffic
congestion are widely used because they provide the only national picture of road traffic
congestion on an annual basis and, hence, are useful for monitoring changes in congestion over
time. Nevertheless, figures purporting to quantify the billions of hours of time lost (and their
associated monetary value), numbers often used in newspaper headlines to dramatize the
problem, ought to be viewed somewhat skeptically.
A very important finding from the work by TTI and others is that both roadway demand and
roadway capacity are subject to short-term and long-term variations. Demand varies by day of
week, time of day, and season, and in response to planned special events, such as professional
football games, music festivals, and the like. Most road traffic congestion occurs on weekday
mornings and evenings because of trips associated with jobs and school. Roadway capacity, on
the other hand, is defined by the type of facility (number of lanes, access, etc.), its condition, and
by events that may temporarily reduce capacity, such as traffic incidents, work zones, weather,
railroad crossings, toll facilities, and commercial truck pickup and delivery in urban areas.108
106
Ibid.
Downs, 2006, Appendix A.
108
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Temporary Losses of Highway Capacity and Impacts on Performance: Phase 2
(Oak Ridge, TN, October 2004), at http://www-cta.ornl.gov/cta/Publications/tlc/tlc2_title.shtml.
107
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Figure 3. The Relationship Between Speed and Vehicle Flow on Freeways
Source:
Downs, Anthony, Still Stuck in Traffic, Brookings Institute Press (Washington, DC, 2006).
According to the current research, about 40% of urban road traffic congestion is caused by
capacity problems and another 5% is caused by poor signal timing (Figure 4). About 55% of
congestion is the result of a temporary loss of capacity, with incidents (crashes, disabled vehicles,
etc.) accounting for 25%, weather 15%, work zones 10%, and other events 5%.109
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Most experts agree that urban road traffic congestion has intensified and become more
widespread during the past quarter century. TTI data from 437 urban areas covering the period
1982 through 2005 indicate that total travel delay has increased five-fold and delay per peakperiod traveler has nearly tripled.110 On average, delay increases with city size, but delay in small
urban areas (those with a population of less than 500,000) has grown more quickly during this
time period. Figure 5 demonstrates this in the 85 urban areas for which TTI provides detailed
data. In addition, the morning and evening rush periods have lengthened and a greater share of
roadways are congested. For instance, in the Louisville metropolitan area—a medium-sized urban
area with a population of about 900,000 that covers parts of Kentucky and Indiana—the share of
the road system congested has risen from 35% in 1982 to 52% in 2005. Moreover, the number of
“rush hours” has increased from 4.2 hours per day to 7.2 hours.
109
Cambridge Systematics and Texas Transportation Institute, “Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Trends and
Advanced Strategies for Congestion Mitigation,” report prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal
Highway Administration (September 1, 2005), at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/congestion_report/congestion_report_05.pdf.
110
Texas Transportation Institute, 2007.
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Figure 4. Proximate Causes of Road Traffic Congestion
Cambridge Systematic and Texas Transportation Institute, Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Trends and
Advanced Strategies for Congestion Mitigation, report prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal
Source:
Highway Administration (September 1, 2005).
Despite becoming more widespread, road traffic congestion is still heavily concentrated in a few
of America’s largest urban places. The 10 largest urban areas by population account for nearly
one-half of total delay, though only about one-quarter of the U.S. population and the top 20
account for two-thirds of total delay and one-third of the population. Los Angeles suffered the
most delay in 2005, with 72 hours of annual delay per peak-period traveler and a Travel Time
Index of 1.5.
Urban road traffic congestion has increased because motor vehicle travel has grown rapidly,
outstripping the existing road capacity and efforts to add new capacity and improve throughput
with operational treatments. In the 437 urban areas studied by TTI, daily vehicle miles traveled
on freeways grew by 128% between 1982 and 2005 and by 77% on arterials, while freeway and
arterial lane-miles increased by only 41% and 37% respectively. Nationally, lane-miles grew by
4% and VMT by 87% during this period.111
111
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics (Washington, DC, Annual
Issues), at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/ohpi/hss/index.htm.
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Figure 5. Road Traffic Congestion, 1982-2005
Annual Hours of Delay per Peak-Period Traveler
60
Very Large Urban Areas
50
85 Urban Area Average
40
Large Urban Areas
30
Medium Urban Areas
20
Small Urban Areas
10
0
1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
Source: Texas Transportation Institute, Urban Mobility Report 2007 (College Station, Texas, 2007).
Motor vehicle travel has grown rapidly for a number of reasons, including substantial growth in
population, jobs, and national income; increased vehicle availability; and growth in metropolitan
areas, particularly the suburbs. Between 1980 and 2005, the United States added 69 million
people (a 30% increase), 42 million to the ranks of the employed (a 43% increase), 86 million
motor vehicles (a 53% increase), and gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 113% in real
terms.112 Both population and job growth have been concentrated in metropolitan areas, most
especially in low-density suburban rings that are difficult to serve with public transit. A
metropolitan suburb-to-suburb commute is today, by far, the most common type of commute.113
As result, most people drive alone to work—77% in 2005, up from 64% in 1980. Over the same
period, the share of commuters using transit hovered around 5%.114
These trends have been bolstered by an increase in the number and widespread availability of
motor vehicles. The number of personal motor vehicles (cars, sport-utility vehicles, pickups, and
minivans) per licensed driver passed 1.0 some years ago and continues to climb. In 2005, the
average number of personal motor vehicles per driver was 1.16. That same year, only about 8% of
112
U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2008 (Washington, DC, 2007), pp. 7, 373; U.S.
Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, National Transportation Statistics
2007 (Washington, DC, 2007), table 1-11; U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, “Gross Domestic Product,” at
http://www.bea.gov/.
113
Pisarski, Alan E., Commuting in America III (Washington, DC, Transportation Research Board, 2006). Of the 99.1
million commutes originating in a metropolitan area in 2000, 44.3 million (45%) were from suburb to suburb, 25.2
million central city to central city (25%), 18.8 million from suburb to central city (19%), 8.6 million from central city to
suburb (9%), and 2.1 million to a non-metropolitan destination (2%).
114
Pisarski, 2006; U.S. Census Bureau, 2005 American Community Survey, at http://www.census.gov/.
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households were without a vehicle.115 The low price of gasoline has also contributed to enhancing
the attractiveness of motor vehicles as a transportation option. For about 20 years beginning in the
mid-1980s, the pump price of gasoline was below $2.00 per gallon (in 2006 dollars) in real terms,
lower than at any time from 1918 on.116
Many of these same factors—population and income growth—together with economic
complexity and globalization have led to more demand for commercial truck transportation. Since
1980, truck traffic has grown slightly faster than passenger traffic.117 Although a lot of truck
milage is made on long intercity trips, about half of truck VMT is made in urban areas,
contributing significantly to urban traffic congestion, particularly near urban-based industrial
facilities, ports, and border crossings.118
Many of the same factors generating vehicle travel and congestion are expected to continue
growing. The Census Bureau expects the population to reach 364 million by 2030, an increase of
about 20% from 2007.119 Two-thirds of this population growth, and with it a significant portion of
new road traffic, is expected to occur in just seven states: Florida, California, Texas, Arizona,
North Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. Over the same period, the CBO projects that GDP will
increase by about 70% (in real terms).120 FHWA’s Highway Performance Monitoring System
includes state-based estimates of future VMT growth.121 The annual growth rate is projected to be
1.92%, with rural VMT growing somewhat faster than urban areas (2.15% average annual versus
1.79%).122 The Freight Analysis Framework projects that freight tonnage by truck will double
between 2002 and 2035.123
None of this is inevitable, and a few counter trends may slow the growth in VMT and peak-period
travel. For example, although the age at which people are retiring from the workforce has begun
to tick upwards over the past few years, baby boomers will begin retiring in large numbers in a
few years. This may slow the growth in the number of workers. Some have suggested that as
baby boomers age, they may begin to favor denser neighborhoods that are easier to serve with
transit, thereby reducing the growth in VMT. Others believe there may be a reduction in work
travel associated with flexible schedules, such as a compressed work week and telecommuting.
115
U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, American Housing Survey for the
United States: 2005 (Washington, DC, 2006), table 2-7, at http://www.census.gov/prod/2006pubs/h150-05.pdf.
116
American Petroleum Institute, “U.S. Pump Price Update—April 10, 2007,” at http://www.api.org/aboutoilgas/
gasoline/upload/PumpPriceUpdate.pdf.
117
FHWA, 2007, p. 20.
118
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics 2006 (Washington, DC,
2007b).
119
U.S. Census Bureau, 2007, p. 8.
120
Congressional Budget Office, December 2007.
121
Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2007.
122
Ibid., pp. 9-10. Rural VMT is projected to grow faster than urban VMT for several reasons: urban areas, unlike rural
areas, are expected to moderate their VMT growth using travel demand management techniques; commercial truck
travel in rural areas is expected to grow more quickly than in urban areas; and rural areas include rapidly growing
places on the urban fringe that may be reclassified as urban in the future.
123
Federal Highway Administration, 2007, p. 11.
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Most, though not all, road traffic congestion is experienced in urban areas. An FHWA study of
truck travel in freight-significant corridors—Interstate routes that span urban and rural areas—
showed that a good deal of delay and reliability problems derive from the urban portion of
trips.124 Nevertheless, rural travel has grown faster than urban travel during the past 25 years.
Between 1980 and 2005, rural VMT per lane mile grew by 65%, whereas urban VMT per lane
mile grew 41%.125 Estimates by FHWA of peak-period congestion on the federally adopted
National Highway System in 2002 and a projection to 2035 suggest a much more widespread
congestion problem. In 2002, FHWA’s analysis of congestion found that it was largely confined to
highway links in large urban areas. However, by 2035, assuming no change in physical road
capacity or operational improvement, FHWA expects congestion to intensify in those areas and to
spread to intercity corridors throughout the country.126
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A number of studies have attempted to locate, characterize, and quantify bottlenecks in the
highway system. TTI defines bottlenecks as “locations where the physical capacity is restricted,
with flows from upstream sections (with higher capacities) being funneled into them.”127 One
study found 233 major highway bottlenecks in 2002, defined as places with 700,000 hours of
delay annually. This was a 40% increase in major bottlenecks from the 167 bottlenecks found in
1999. Of the 233 major bottlenecks in 2004, 24 had more than 10 million hours of delay in a
year.128 Freeway to freeway interchanges account for most bottleneck delay. According to another
study, highway bottlenecks affecting large volumes of trucks accounted for 243 million hours of
truck delay in 2004.129 A third study on bottlenecks associated with summer vacation travel
ranked the top 25 destinations likely to suffer the worst traffic delay in 2005.130
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Other potential bottlenecks in the transportation system are foreign trade gateways. Rapid growth
in international trade over the past few decades has placed enormous pressure on these
gateways—land border crossings, certain airports, and water ports—and the road and rail
infrastructure that supports them. By value, in inflation-adjusted terms, international merchandise
124
U.S. Department of Transportation. Federal Highway Administration, Office of Freight Management and Operation,
2006.
125
CRS calculations based on U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Highway Statistics
(Washington, DC, annual issues).
126
See the maps in Federal Highway Administration, 2007, pp. 31-32.
127
Cambridge Systematics and Texas Transportation Institute, “Traffic Congestion and Reliability: Linking Solutions
to Problems,” report prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (July 19, 2004),
p. 2-1, at http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/congestion_report_04/congestion_report.pdf.
128
American Highway Users Alliance, 2004.
129
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, “An Initial Assessment of Freight Bottlenecks
on Highways,” white paper prepared by Cambridge Systematics, October 2005, at http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/
otps/bottlenecks/index.htm.
130
American Highway Users Alliance, American Automobile Association and TRIP, “Are We There Yet?”
(Washington, DC, 2005), at http://www.highways.org/pdfs/travel_study2005.pdf.
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trade increased by 160% between 1980 and 2005.131 Growth in value terms has been particularly
rapid on the Mexican and Canadian borders and on the Pacific Coast, although the Atlantic Coast
continues to handle the most trade (Figure 6). These trends are likely to continue with the
growing globalization of production and consumption. Indeed, the FHWA expects foreign trade
tonnage to more than double between 2002 and 2035.132
Although no comprehensive time-series data for congestion at land gateways nationwide exist,
numerous studies have found delay and unreliable travel times at certain heavily used crossings.
In 2004, daytime (8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.) wait times for trucks entering the United States from
Canada averaged 8.5 minutes, and those from Mexico averaged 7.3 minutes. However, daytime
wait times at Laredo, TX, averaged nearly 21 minutes, and at Port Huron, MI, the average was 25
minutes.133 Although they provide a basis of comparison, these averages mask the variability of
delays that are probably more important. At land border crossings, congestion is caused by three
main problems: inadequate transportation infrastructure to handle the volume of cars and trucks,
import and security processing, and general urban road traffic congestion.134 Some studies have
suggested that border delay and reliability problems have more to with institutional and staff
issues, such as inspection staffing levels at periods of high demand, than infrastructure problems,
although this may depend on the specific crossing.135 Similarly, delays at water ports may be
caused by inadequate road and rail infrastructure, general road congestion, and customs and
security requirements. Indeed, one of the big challenges at international gateways in the past few
years has been balancing passenger and freight mobility with the need for heightened security in
the wake of the terrorist attacks of 2001.136
131
Federal Highway Administration, 2007, p. 14.
Ibid., p. 11.
133
U.S. Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of Transportation
Statistics, Transportation Statistics Annual Report 2005 (Washington, DC, 2005), at http://www.bts.gov/publications/
transportation_statistics_annual_report/2005/.
134
Texas Transportation Institute and Battelle Memorial Institute, “International Border Crossing Truck Travel Time
for 2001,” report prepared for U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration (April 2002), at
http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/freight/documents/brdr_synthesis.pdf.
135
Taylor, John C., Douglas R. Robideaux, and George C. Jackson, “U.S.-Canada Transportation and Logistics: Border
Impacts and Costs, Causes, and Possible Solution,” Transportation Journal, vol. 43, no. 4, pp. 5-21.
136
Testimony of Margaret Wrightson, Director of Homeland Security and Justice Issues, Government Accountability
Office, in U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, May 17, 2005, at
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d05448t.pdf.
132
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Figure 6. U.S. Merchandise Trade by Region, 1980-2005
Source:
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, Freight Facts and Figures 2007
(Washington, DC, 2007).
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The main public transit modes in the United States—bus, commuter rail, heavy rail, and light
rail—have different but overlapping characteristics that influence the causes and impacts of
congestion. All public transit modes have the potential for vehicle overcrowding, but they differ
in terms of system congestion. Transit buses typically run on roads in the general traffic stream
and, therefore, are affected by road traffic congestion. In many cities, light rail systems have their
own rights of way, but running at grade with limited separation can cause conflicts between rail
and road traffic. Commuter rail service runs over rail lines that also carry freight and intercity
passenger trains and, therefore, is subject to many of the same causes of delay and unreliability.
Heavy rail (subway) systems have their own rights of way and, thus, are not subject to conflicts
with other modes. However, subway system congestion is theoretically possible at peak periods
when the number of trains running on the track begins to reach the design maximum, known as
line capacity, and passenger loads affect station dwell times.137 When running at full capacity, the
lack of redundancy in the system also magnifies the effect of incidents such as a train breakdown.
Transit ridership grew 15% between 1980 and 2005. Over that time, bus ridership was virtually
unchanged, while commuter rail and heavy rail grew by 51% and 33%, respectively. Light rail
ridership almost tripled during these years because of the construction of several new systems.138
137
Transportation Research Board, Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, 2nd Edition, TCRP Report 100
(Washington, DC, 2003), at http://nrc40.nas.edu/news/blurb_detail.asp?id=2326.
138
American Public Transportation Association, “Unlinked Passenger Trips by Mode, 1890-2005,” at
http://www.apta.com/research/stats/ridership/trips.cfm.
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Although all urban areas and many rural areas provide some sort of transit service, transit usage is
heavily concentrated in a few large urban areas. Bus transit is widely provided, but only 34
metropolitan areas have one or more major forms of rail transit (defined here as commuter rail,
heavy rail, and light rail). In 2004, 10 metropolitan areas accounted for 75% of all urban transit
trips in the United States (see Table 2). The New York metropolitan area alone accounted for
nearly 40% of all urban transit trips.
There are no direct measures of public transportation congestion available regularly on a national
basis. Two indirect measures of congestion are average vehicle utilization, as a measure of
vehicle overcrowding, and average operating speeds, as a measure of system congestion.139
Vehicle utilization, as measured by the USDOT, is “calculated as the ratio of the total number of
passenger miles traveled annually on each mode to total number of vehicles operated in
maximum scheduled service in each mode, adjusted for the passenger-carrying capacity of the
mode in relation to the average capacity of the Nation’s motorbus fleet.”140 The USDOT notes
that these two variables are related as “changes in the capacity utilization of rail vehicles have
influenced these vehicles’ operating speeds through changes in dwell times. As vehicles become
more crowded, they take longer to unload and load, increasing wait at stations and hence
passengers’ total travel time.”141
Table 2.Top 10 Metropolitan Areas by Transit Usage, 2004
Cumulative %
Annual Unlinkeda
Urbanized area
New York, NY-NJ-CT
Los Angeles, CA
Chicago, IL-IN
Washington, DC-VA-MD
Boston, MA-NH-RI
Atlanta, GA
Philadelphia, PA-NJ-DE-MD
San Francisco-Oakland, CA
Seattle, WA
Miami, FL
United States, urban total
Rank
Urban
Passenger Trips
Transit
U.S.
(thousands)
Trips
Pop.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
3,383,886
606,843
582,786
442,936
396,087
363,326
350,518
199,369
156,256
151,222
8,852,131
38
45
52
57
61
65
69
71
73
75
6
11
14
16
17
19
21
22
23
25
U.S. Department of Transportation, Research and Innovative Technology Administration, Bureau of
Transportation Statistics, State Transportation Statistics 2006 (Washington, DC, 2007), table 4-3; U.S. Census
Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2007 (Washington, DC, 2007), tables 17 and 25.
a. Unlinked passenger trips is the number of passengers boarding transit vehicles. A transit trip from origin to
destination may involve one or more than one unlinked trips.
Sources:
139
Federal Highway Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2007.
Ibid., pp. 4-3
141
Ibid., pp. 4-22.
140
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Average vehicle utilization data for urban transit systems show that passenger volumes in relation
to service capacity are greatest on rail, particularly commuter rail. The higher level of commuter
rail utilization is due to the longer average trip lengths with seating capacity only and to the
limited time service is available. According to the FTA, utilization rates have generally declined
since 2000/2001 (Figure 7). These data are bolstered by data on average speed that show little
change in the average speed of non-rail modes, mainly buses, but a slight decline in speeds for
rail transit. Non-rail speeds averaged 13.7 miles per hour in 1995 and 14.0 mph in 2004, but rail
speeds declined from 26.6 to 25.0 mph over this period.142 Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence
points to overcrowding problems on some rail transit systems, such as Washington’s Metro and
Boston’s T. This suggests that these national average utilization data, which average over time
and across place, may not fully capture rail transit overcrowding and system congestion in certain
cities at certain times.
Figure 7. Transit Vehicle Utilization, 1995-2004
U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal Administration and Federal Transit Administration, 2006
Status of the Nation’s Highways, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions and Performance (Washington, DC, 2007).
Source:
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The rail network is made up of a system of mainlines, spurs, sidings, yards, intermodal terminals,
and places where the lines of different railroad companies come together (known as
interchanges). Complexity is added by the physical characteristics of the thousands of tunnels,
142
Ibid., exhibit 4-15.
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bridges, and overpasses with different clearances, the number and type of highway-rail grade
crossings, and the thousands of miles of track with different load-bearing capacity and parallel
lines. For the most part, this railroad infrastructure is owned and operated by private companies
engaged in the transportation of freight. However, in some places, freight trains share space with
passenger trains belonging to Amtrak and, in some urban areas, commuter rail operators.
In contrast to the way highway transportation works, decisions about accessing the rail system are
controlled by a central authority—each railroad—that determines when a shipment will be
transported and for what price. Thus, capacity problems tend to appear in a different form than
they do on the highways and must be measured in different ways. Moreover, because the rail
system is primarily private, the government has chosen not to collect and publicly disclose
detailed data related to congestion. As a result, some indications of congestion problems are
impressionistic and anecdotal.
In a free-market, when demand outstrips supply for a good or service, the price rises until an
equilibrium between the two is found. One indicator of congestion in the rail industry, therefore,
is freight rates. Unfortunately, understanding the relationship between capacity and prices is
difficult as best. Rates are affected by any number of other variables, including the competition of
other modes. Morever, rates can be regulated after the fact to protect “captive shippers.” Capacity
problems may also result in deterioration in service quality or no service at all. For example, in
some cases, there may be a promise to transport a shipment at a certain price, but this shipment
may be delayed as the operating railroad waits for space on the network. In other cases, some
shipments may be denied access to the system completely and will have to travel by another
means of transportation.
In theory, centrally controlled access to the rail system should avoid the queuing seen on
highways; however, in practice, delay and unreliability do tend to increase as the number of trains
on the system reaches maximum capacity. This derives from the complexity of determining the
timing and routing of trains with different dimensions, such as single- or double-stacked
containers, carrying different commodities over long distances, and the rules that must be
followed to ensure that trains do not collide, particularly in places that are not signal-controlled.
In addition, tight schedules can be upset by unforeseen incidents such as accidents, bad weather,
and breakdowns and by interference with passenger trains that, by federal law, are supposed to
have priority over freight trains.
Publicly available measures of freight rail congestion are traffic density, speed, and freight rates.
None of these conclusively proves that congestion is a problem because they are all influenced by
other things, such as efficiency gains derived from improved technology. Traffic density, as the
Association of American Railroads (AAR) notes, “measures the average system-wide freight
carrying utilization of the railroad track infrastructure. A higher figure indicates greater utilization
efficiency, but can signal the risk of congestion.”143 Speed can be measured by average train
speed or by net ton-miles per train hour (freight speed). Again, slower speeds might be an
indication of a congestion problem, but they might also be related to other factors, such as the
mix of commodities being transported and length of haul. Average cost is measured by freight
revenue per ton-mile. TRB notes that this has been declining for years because of productivity
143
Association of American Railroads, Railroad Facts 2007 (Washington, DC, November 2007), p. 42.
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growth, excess capacity, and deregulation. It notes a slowing of the rate of decline or even a
pronounced increase might be indicative of a congestion problem.144
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The three measures of capacity utilization—traffic density, average freight speed, and freight
rates—all suggest a growing congestion problem in the industry. This is supported by anecdotal
evidence of trip times and bottlenecks. Since rail deregulation in 1980, Class I rail freight tonmiles have increased 93%, from 919 billion to 1,772 billion, while miles of track have decreased
40%. Traffic density measured by millions of revenue ton-miles per mile of track, therefore, has
increased from 3.4 in 1980 to 10.9 in 2006 (Figure 8).145 Moreover, these data exclude demands
placed on the system by intercity and commuter passenger rail operations.
Figure 8. Freight Rail Traffic Density, 1980-2006
12
Revenue Ton-Miles Per Mile of Track (Millions)
10
8
6
4
2
0
1980
Source:
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
Association of American Railroads, Railroad Facts (Washington, DC, various issues).
The average speed of freight moved by rail, measured by net ton-miles per train hour, grew
substantially in the 1980s but has since declined (Figure 9). Consequently, as CBO notes, the
average speed is “now lower than it has been since the early 1980s, except for the turbulent 19971998 period following the merger of Union Pacific and Southern Pacific.”146 Another expert
144
Transportation Research Board, Freight Capacity for the 21st Century, Special Report 271 (Washington, DC, 2003),
p. 62.
145
Association of American Railroads, 2007.
146
CBO, January 2006, p. 8.
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estimates that over the past 10 years, trip times have increased by about 25%-50% for general
merchandise rail traffic.147
. Average Speed of Freight by Rail, 1980-2006
Figure 9
Source:
Association of American Railroads, Railroad Facts (Washington, DC, various issues).
Average freight rates, measured by freight revenue per ton-mile, have declined substantially since
deregulation from 5.3 cents per revenue ton-mile to 2.4 cents (in constant 2000 dollars).
However, over the past decade the decline in rates slowed, and in the past few years rates have
increased. Rates in 2006 were 14% higher in real terms than they were in 2003 (see Figure 10).148
It is not clear, however, if this is indicative of a new upward trend in rates, nor is it clear how this
relates to capacity problems in the industry.
Like road traffic congestion, freight rail congestion is generally limited to a few key locations.
Research completed for the Association of American Railroads indicates that about 3% of the
freight rail network has demand at or above capacity, with another 9% near capacity. Some major
bottlenecks include, among others, the network in and around Chicago, Kansas City, Atlanta, and
Memphis as well as the rail corridors from San Francisco to Los Angeles and Los Angeles to
Tucson, Arizona. In the Chicago region, congestion is compounded by the lack of connectivity
between the several different railroads serving the area whose route systems are focused on states
east and west of the Mississippi River.149
147
Testimony of Carl D. Martland, April 26, 2006.
CRS calculations using the implicit price deflator for GDP.
149
Association of American Railroads, National Rail Freight Infrastructure Capacity and Investment Study,
Washington, DC, September 2007, at http://www.aar.org/PubCommon/Documents/natl_freight_capacity_study.pdf.
148
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. Average Freight Rates, 1980-2006
(constant 2000 cents)
Figure 10
6.0
Revenue Per Ton-Mile (constant 2000 cents)
5.5
5.0
4.5
4.0
3.5
3.0
2.5
2.0
1.5
1.0
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
Association of American Railroads, Railroad Facts (Washington, DC, various issues); U.S. Bureau of
Economic Analysis, “Gross Domestic Product.”
Sources:
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Congestion problems in intercity passenger train travel—trains operated by the National Railroad
Passenger Corporation, known as Amtrak—are somewhat akin to those of the freight railroads
discussed above. Except for the 500 miles it owns in the Northeast Corridor (NEC), intercity
passenger trains operated by Amtrak run on rail lines that are owned and operated by freight
railroads. As freight movements have grown, so too have the conflicts between freight and
passenger trains, even though under existing federal law, passenger trains are supposed to have
priority over freight trains. Other issues for Amtrak include the condition of the privately owned
rail lines that can result in a local speed restriction below the track’s normal speed, train
breakdowns, and other incidents. Measures of these types of congestion problems are train ontime performance, amount of delay, and average speed.
In addition, as a type of passenger service, congestion problems with Amtrak theoretically may be
manifest in ticket availability, ticket prices, and train overcrowding. Systemwide, these are
generally not issues that Amtrak has to worry about. These problems may occur on certain routes
at certain times, such as the NEC around major holidays, but realistically, the system cannot be
designed to handle demand that only occurs a few times a year. Load factor, a metric tracked by
Amtrak, is a measure of train utilization and possible overcrowding.
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The data appear to show that, in general, rail system congestion, including freight, commuter, and
Amtrak operations, is something of a problem and is getting worse, but that train overcrowding is
not a problem. Amtrak delays per 10,000 miles have trended upward from FY2001 through
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FY2006. Delays resulting from Amtrak itself have remained relatively constant during that
period, at about 400 minutes per 10,000 train miles. Most of the delays are due to freight
operations, rising from about 1,700 minutes in FY2001 to about 2,300 minutes in FY2006.
Overall on-time performance was 67.8% in FY2006, down from 69.8% in FY2005, 70.7% in
FY2004, and 74.1% in FY2003. Load factors, on the other hand, are quite low, suggesting little
train overcrowding. For all Amtrak routes, the load factor in FY2006 was 48%. The average load
factor in FY2006 was 45% in the NEC, 41% in state-supported and other corridors, and 55% on
long distance routes.150
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The negative effects of transportation congestion are primarily economic. Transportation
congestion, particularly road traffic congestion, also causes a good deal of stress in some of those
that experience it, as well as a certain amount of environmental damage because of the extra fuel
that is used. Congestion may also have a negative effect on road traffic safety, although it is not
clear from the available evidence if the damage done as a result of slowing or stopped vehicles
outweighs the reduction in crash severity due to lower speeds. However, the main effects are an
increase in direct user costs, particularly the extra time and fuel expended, and a number of
economic distortions that decrease productivity and hurt competitiveness.
Most of the available evidence on the costs associated with transportation congestion is limited to
the effects of road traffic congestion. Little is known about the national costs associated with rail,
transit, and intermodal congestion. Hence, if accurate, existing estimates focusing exclusively on
the costs of road traffic congestion understate the total cost of transportation congestion to the
national economy. It must also be borne in mind that estimates of the cost of congestion are based
on assumptions that are somewhat arbitrary. Time, an important variable in transportation
evaluation studies, can be especially hard to value.151
The direct user costs of road traffic congestion are the extra time and fuel expended to complete a
trip. In its study of 437 cities, TTI estimates that drivers lost 4.2 billion hours to road traffic
congestion and wasted an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel, at a cost of $78.2 billion.152 Most of the
cost is due to the time lost by travelers. Per traveler, the cost is $710 annually or approximately
$3 per work day. In inflation-adjusted terms, the cost of congestion has risen from $14.9 billion in
1982 (in constant 2005 dollars). These estimates, however, do not include the cost of unreliability,
in that travelers will often budget extra time to make sure they arrive on time, even if it means
arriving early.
150
Amtrak, “Monthly Performance Report for September 2006,” December 4, 2006, at http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/
0609monthly.pdf; Amtrak, “Monthly Performance Report for September 2004,” November 1, 2004, at
http://www.amtrak.com/pdf/0409monthly.pdf.
151
U.S. Department of Transportation, “Departmental Guidance for the Valuation of Travel Time in Economic
Analysis,” memorandum, April 9, 1997; and U.S. Department of Transportation, “Revised Departmental Guidance,”
memorandum, February 11, 2003, at http://ostpxweb.dot.gov/policy/programsa.htm#V.
152
TTI assumes a cost of $14.60 per hour of person travel and $77.10 per hour of truck time. Excess fuel is estimated
using the state average cost.
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In addition to direct user costs, there are at least three other types of economic costs associated
with congestion153:
•
Logistics costs—the extra costs associated with businesses having to carry extra
inventory as a result of slower and more unreliable transportation.
•
Market scale and accessibility costs—as congestion reduces the area that can be
served by a production facility, the reduced demand results in higher unit costs
because of lower-scale efficiencies and lower access to specialized inputs.
•
Business cost of worker commuting—the costs associated with attracting and
retaining workers and compensating them for higher commuting costs. There
may also be lower labor productivity resulting from the stress of longer or more
unreliable commutes.
Although not quantified, congestion in other modes also has costs. As demand for space on the
rail system increases, rates may begin to rise, increasing shipper costs. In addition, railroads have
been keen to accommodate generally more lucrative intermodal shipments over bulk shipments.
This is beginning to create significant problems for the movement of bulk shippers in some
markets at certain times, as they often have no alternative to moving their goods by rail.
Congestion on the rail system may also force more freight to move by truck. Some contend that
there are a number of public benefits associated with moving freight by rail, such as less air
pollution per ton-mile of freight than trucking.154 Similarly, congestion and overcrowding in
passenger rail transportation and public transportation may divert travelers to other modes. In
urban areas, congested transit service may lead to more single-occupant driving during the peak
period, causing more road congestion. Likewise, congested intercity rail transportation might shift
a few travelers onto the roads, although it may shift them to intercity buses or airplanes,
depending on the situation.
It is commonplace these days to attempt to quantify the costs of congestion and add them together
to arrive at a total cost of congestion to the economy, sometimes expressed as a share of GDP.
This approach is particularly common in accounting for the costs of road traffic congestion, as
TTI does in terms of extra time and fuel, and other researchers have attempted to calculate more
comprehensively.155 There are, however, some problems with this approach. These cost estimates
are often based on the premise of “free-flowing traffic,” which, as discussed above, tends to
exaggerate the amount of congestion experienced. Furthermore, total cost estimates suggest that
there is a monetary windfall waiting to be distributed to every household, when in reality,
eliminating congestion, if it were possible, would only save most travelers a few minutes on
peak-period trips.156 Consequently, a number of experts question the calculation of total costs and
suggest that
153
Transportation Research Board, Economic Implications of Congestion, National Cooperative Highway Research
Program, Report 463 (Washington, DC, 2001), at http://onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_rpt_463-a.pdf.
154
AASHTO, 2003.
155
For example, the Chief Economist of the U.S. Department of Transportation adds TTI’s estimate for 85 urban areas
contained in the 2005 Urban Mobility Report with the cost of urban areas not included and other factors to arrive at a
total of $168 billion annually. See Wells, Jack, “The Role of Transportation in the U.S. Economy,” PowerPoint
presentation to the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission (June 26, 2006), slide 21,
at http://www.transportationfortomorrow.org/pdfs/commission_meetings/0606_meeting_washington/
wells_presentation_0606_meeting.pdf.
156
Downs, 2006.
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what matters in practical terms is the change in the cost of congestion brought about by a
specific feasible projects or act of policy.... As economists would say, we need to change our
thinking from total costs to marginal costs.157
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Transportation engineers and planners have devised a large number of potential remedies for
congestion. Although it is beyond the scope of this report to evaluate all of these, it is worthwhile
discussing some of the major remedies as a basic guide for policy makers. The many different
remedies form three basic strategies for reducing congestion: adding new capacity, operating the
existing capacity more efficiently, and managing demand. This section discusses these strategies
and the institutional issues that affect the implementation of congestion remedies. This is
followed by a discussion of rail congestion remedies and intermodalism in freight transportation.
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Building new roads, or expanding existing ones, is one approach to reducing congestion.
Proponents of road building point out that since the completion of the interstate system, road
construction has generally lagged behind the growth in motor vehicle travel. Moreover, these
proponents argue that in some places, lack of capacity is a major contributor to road congestion.
TTI’s analysis of congestion found that adding to road capacity slowed the growth in travel
delay.158 New capacity can range from major new freeways to major bottleneck reduction projects
and much smaller projects, such as widening arterial roads and improving street connectivity.
Few deny that highway travel has grown more than highway capacity during the past few
decades. There is, however, a major disagreement about whether new road capacity, in the
absence of tolling pricing, can solve congestion because of the problem of induced demand (see
earlier discussion). Other concerns about major expansions of road capacity have to do with the
costs in labor and raw materials, rights-of-way acquisition in heavily developed urban areas, and
social and environmental disruptions. Over the past few years, the cost of raw materials has
increased dramatically, making this a greater concern than just a few years ago. An added
difficulty is the time it takes to plan, design, and build major new facilities. Consequently, some
experts argue that once congestion has developed, it is very hard for an area to build its way out
of the problem because of the time it takes to add new capacity.
Some suggest that road congestion is a problem because other viable means of transportation are
not widely available. In this view, new or expanded public transportation service is seen as a
major solution to urban road traffic congestion. TTI points out that if public transit service
disappeared and everyone used private vehicles, delay in the 437 urban areas it studied would
increase by 541 million hours, about a 13% increase.159 By its estimates, almost all of this extra
delay (about 80%) would occur in very large urban areas (population of 3 million or more). This
is because, as noted above, transit service is heavily concentrated in just a few major metropolitan
areas. Currently, about 5% of workers commute by transit and in only the New York and Chicago
157
Goodwin, 2004, p. 14.
Texas Transportation Institute, 2007.
159
Ibid.
158
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metropolitan areas do more than 10% of commuters use transit. Nevertheless, much higher
proportions of transit users are found for certain types of commute, particularly those from suburb
to central city. It is probably in these sorts of situations—where the density of origins and
destinations is high enough to make transit an attractive mode of travel—in which new or
expanded transit options are likely to contribute to a reduction in road traffic congestion.
Morever, because buses can be caught up in road traffic congestion, only dedicated bus lanes or
non-highway modes of transit provide effective solutions. Generally speaking, transit is not likely
to reduce congestion in smaller urban areas or in the suburbs of large urban areas because the
areas to be covered are too large and the densities of residences and jobs too low.
According to some experts, new or expanded transit systems have improved travel options but
have not noticeably reduced road traffic congestion.160 To some extent, this is because most new
major transit systems are built in fast-growing regions in which the growth in travel demand tends
to swamp the extra capacity. However, some contend that peak-period road traffic congestion is
not reduced because if some people switch from road to rail others are induced to travel by car at
the most convenient times, or because many rail riders are not former drivers but former bus
riders. Morever, even though, theoretically, with more transit service, a greater number of people
are able to travel at the most convenient times, the new capacity may not serve the greatest needs,
such as suburb-to-suburb commutes.
Like new highway capacity, new transit capacity is costly in terms of labor, materials, and, in
some cases, right-of-way acquisition. However, transit can have positive social and
environmental benefits, such as potentially greater mobility for the poor and non-drivers, as well
as lower air pollutant emissions per trip. New rail systems are the most costly, although light rail
can be a cheaper alternative than heavy rail. The cost of new commuter rail capacity depends
largely on whether or not the existing freight rail network is available for use by passenger trains.
Because of the large start-up costs, some proponents of expanded transit capacity argue that new
forms of bus transit, such as bus rapid transit (BRT), are a more viable alternative.
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Operational improvements on highways and transit have become a much more important concern
of state and local DOTs as congestion has increased. Operations include a host of strategies for
improving the flow of road traffic and improving transit trips. These include, among others,
transportation management center operations, incident management techniques, event
management techniques, ramp metering, real-time traveler information, road weather information
systems, work zone management, signal retiming, and transit priority at signals. Many of these
strategies rely on the deployment of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technologies.
In general, operational strategies for reducing congestion can be quicker to implement and
relatively low-cost. For instance, with a large share of road traffic congestion caused by incidents
and other non-recurring forms of delay, many areas have created transportation management
centers to improve the response of state and local agencies to problems that can arise at any time
or place in the transportation system. Evaluations have shown that in many cases, the benefits of
these centers greatly outweigh the costs.161 Another advantage of these types of programs is that
160
Downs, 2006.
U.S. Department of Transportation, Joint Program Office, Intelligent Transportation Systems Benefits, Costs and
Lessons Learned: 2005 Update (Washington, DC, May 2005), at http://www.itsdocs.fhwa.dot.gov/JPODOCS/
(continued...)
161
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they typically cause minimal disruptions, unlike major construction projects. On the downside,
operational strategies require a much greater ongoing commitment from local and state DOTs.
This has been a problem in some places because, historically, DOTs have functioned as road
construction and maintenance agencies and have struggled to redefine their mission.
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Operational strategies reduce congestion on the supply side of the transportation equation. There
are a range of strategies that exist on the demand side, known as demand management strategies.
Among others, these include congestion (or value) pricing, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes,
alternative work schedule and telecommuting programs, and land-use strategies. Proponents of
demand management strategies argue that just as adding a few extra cars on a roadway can make
a big difference in terms of extra delay, removing a few cars can make a big difference in terms of
reducing delay. For example, an evaluation of the congestion charge in London, described below,
suggests that while traffic has been reduced by about 15%, congestion has been reduced by about
30%.162
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Schemes to charge drivers a fee to travel on congested facilities or in congested areas are known
generally as “congestion” or “value” pricing. Economists generally believe that congestion
pricing is the single most viable way, though not necessarily most popular way, to reduce
highway congestion. With the use of advanced technologies, the fee can be varied to ensure the
most e
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