public finance and health costs

Residential location decisions are generally long-term and depend on a number of factors - access, quality of life, etc. To some degree these are reflected in the original purchase price, but conditions can change over time, especially in urban areas. Recent proposals and completed projects around port facilities are a case in point: port expansions, railyard constructions, and development of on-dock rail can dramatically change the urban experience for near-port residents.

What does the cost-benefit analysis of relocation of folks within close proximity to massively expanding urban ports look like once health effects are considered? The ports of LA/Long Beach are cancer hotspots that are expanding. What if expansion were able to continue unhindered by nearby residences. How much would it cost to buy up property near the ports and relocate the individuals? These people would ultimately be healthier (in terms of exposure to noise and air pollution), reducing public costs due to health care, and the port would be substantially unencumbered because they would no longer have nearby residents to worry about.

irrational planning considerations

Transportation planning and finance are generally based upon what are thought to be rational performance metrics: congestion, volumes, delay, etc. Engineers in the 30s pioneered OD surveys that formed the basis of planning at the time.

Contemporary transportation planning has illustrated vividly the failures associated with relying solely on the rational to guide planning. Our challenge as planners and engineers today is to bring the irrational into planning (histories of racism and transportation injustice, the disenfranchisement of entire populations from the planning process - the same populations we now expect to enthusiastically 'participate' in decision making).

investigating...

1. barriers to transportation sustainability posed by existing systems of governance 
2. the importance of public participation and citizen/expert interactions during policy formulation and implementation  
3. the contemporary landscape of race, class, environmental justice, and litigation in the policy arena

recently overheard at an MTC planning committee meeting

"Actually you have it backwards - we lose money if we go into attainment."
MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger

http://apps.mtc.ca.gov/events/agendaView.akt?p=1752

Perhaps the most short-sighted comment in an academic paper...ever?

With the advent of better and faster computers, it seems highly possible that in the not-too-distant future, road planning will become an exact science.

Hoffman and Pavley, 1958. "Applications of Digital Computers to Problems in the Study of Vehicular Traffic." Proceedings of the May 6-8, Western Joint Computer Conference.

on sb375

A white paper from Juan Matute at UCLA makes the bold claim that, "The primary barrier to successful SB 375 implementation is the lack of accurate and valid forecasting and measurement of GHG emissions from transportation."

I agree with this statement if you interpret "SB 375 implementation" to refer only to the precise achievement of CARB's per capita GHG reduction targets. If the model is not accurate and valid, it will fail to predict the effect of transportation policy and investment changes on travel behavior and thus GHG emissions.

But is the purpose of SB 375 to truly reshape our urban form, then the primary barrier is not our modeling tools, but rather the political will to do everything we can to improve transportation and housing choices for all California residents. We know the policies that will move us in the right direction - the best transportation policy is intuitive. HOV lane conversions, dropping transit headways on high-volume routes, jobs-housing fit (especially to accommodate low-income folks that typically in-commute, potentially providing relief from hellishly long and complex transit trips), selectively eliminating egregious highway bottlenecks, probably not constructing entirely new highways or interchanges, promoting active transportation by mixing land uses and income levels with greenspace, promoting user fees over sales taxes for finance, etc. In California, we've been aware of all of these methods (basically) since the late 60s.

The more fundamental question - the real problem with SB 375 - is whether unelected regional governments composed entirely of local electeds are capable of implementing a statewide policy goal. California's transportation planning history indicates that we are loathe to enforce state-level goals on lower units of government. In fact, our laws have evolved to make this nearly impossible. SB 375 creates a state-level mandate but does not touch the system of transportation and land use governance. How can we expect mid-level units of government with no enforcement authority to reshape cities now or ever?

I've been into California's planning history recently. It's got some surprisingly timely insights for today's debates. In May, 1977 the Director of Caltrans, Adriana Gianturco said,*

I do not have a grand plan.** I just do not think it is possible any more to come up with grand plans that last for 20 years. Conditions are just changing too rapidly. It is unrealistic to think that way. I think we need marginal changes, fiddling with the system in relatively minor ways, seeing whether it works, proceeding more along a certain line if it works, dropping it if it does not work.

One of the reasons why it's appealing to not enact change in this manner is that the long-term plans we enact (RTPs are typically 30 year plans coupled with shorter term improvement programs) normally don't have to demonstrate conformity with any performance targets. This is what's changing with SB 375, but it's not clear why such a long-term target is necessary. Why couldn't we use best practices combined with periodic updates? Let's still use models to plan particular infrastructure decisions, but why rely on them to meet climate goals? Looks like we need some wisdom from the 70s to be injected into current planning practice.

* Quote is from the May, 1977 issue of Mass Transit magazine.

**Under AB 69 (Chapter 1253, Statutes of 1972) Caltrans had been given authority to conduct (potentially meaningful) statewide planning. After fits and starts they still (kind of) enjoy this authority, but the statewide plans don't seem to really mesh well with regional plans anymore.

love it.

wisdom from the mid-70s

"A proposed California Transit Plan may be an environmental fanatic's dream, but it will be a nightmare for every resident who owns an automobile and needs to use it."

Source: San Francisco Progress, December 1, 1976.

"[MPOs] consist of local elected officials who just do a lot of horse trading among themselves rather than looking at the region as a whole."

oh, the power of lobbying

Doesn't this, instinctively, feel like a problem?

From the webpage of the California Business Properties Association (CBPA):

CBPA had a very successful year. Below are some of the highlights from 2010:
LEGISLATION – CBPA engaged on more than 500 pieces of legislation in the California State Capitol. Of the forty-nine (49) bills deemed “High Priority,” we opposed thirty one (31), 15 of which were killed in the Legislature and sixteen (16) were vetoed by the Governor. Eight (8) bills we supported were signed by the Governor. Most importantly zero (0) bills opposed by CBPA were signed into law.

In my gut, it seems like if there is a single organization that represents the interests of capital and that agency is able to advocate for and achieve specific outcomes from the government, then we do not live in a democracy.

nuclear power and conflicts of interest

Just scanned a new article by Kristin Shrader-Frechette in Science and Engineering Ethics. She provides evidence from 30 nuclear power cost estimates and shows that the industry consistently ignores certain costs, trims others and generally makes estimates of other parameters which make the final result appear favorable to the nuclear industry.

She attributes the underestimates of cost that result from these studies are most likely due to the obvious conflict of interest that industry-funded studies encounter. Further, most of the data are provided by the industry themselves, and many are shielded under proprietary privilege.

In any case, a very nice piece of work with interesting parallels for others in the energy sector.

Shrader-Frechette, K. (2011). "Climate Change, Nuclear Economics, and Conflicts of Interest." Science and Engineering Ethics 17(1): 75-107.

A letter to Governor Brown re: California Transportation Commission appointments

I just sent in this letter to Governor Brown via this link.

Dear Gov. Brown,

The current membership of the California Transportation Commission (CTC) is troubling. Not a single civil engineer or urban planner sits on the body charged with approving the State Transportation Improvement Plan - the key document outlining the state's vision for transportation as embodied in the projects listed within it. Instead, the commission is overwhelmingly populated by real estate developers. While their voice is surely important, it ought not dominate the discussion. Pursuit of the objectives of developers is often not the best course for the state as a whole.

As you consider new appointees to the CTC, I urge you to choose individuals who have demonstrated an ability to think critically about the state's transportation policies and priorities. California has a substantial amount of transportation research talent housed within the Institute of Transportation Studies spread across several University of California campuses (Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, and Berkeley). Professors and researchers at these institutions have been on the leading edge of transportation and land use planning research for decades. Many of them would make excellent candidates capable of providing the well-reasoned input necessary to place California on a path to meet its ambitious 2050 greenhouse gas emissions reductions goals as required by AB32 and to improve land use planning as required by SB375.

With kind regards.

ab32 lawsuit

Looks like a devastating result for EJ advocates. I don't see how finding the alternatives analysis of CEQA to be in violation is going to lead to an improvement in EJ outcomes. The CARB will simply prepare an updated alternatives analysis that will still lead to cap and trade as the preferred alternative. California agencies have never (or, perhaps, rarely) seen an alternatives analysis as an occasion to change a preferred policy.

Quick:

AB32

• "Arbitrary and capricious" is the relevant standard against which the court will judge the ARB.
  
• ARB's interpretation of the 2020 target as a floor on reductions is fine.
• Costs are properly evaluated for the plan as a whole - not individual measures.
• Exclusion of agriculture also okay.
• "The statute does not support the argument that ARB must demonstrate that cap and trade will result in the same reductions as any direct regulation."
• CARB justified in choosing cap and trade
• "In the analysis of voluntary and incentivized measures for the agricultural sector, the record does not demonstrate that ARB used the best available models as required by AB 32."
• AB 32 does not specify that analyses have to be quantitative (?)
• Public health analysis fine (but no mention of the question of co-benefits)
• No AB 32 revisions necessary - CARB gets wide latitude as a quasi-legislative agency

CEQA

• This is a program- as opposed to project-level EIR. They are assessed on different merits.
• Location of biofuel plants was speculated upon in the SP, but CARB was justified in only giving a vague description of possible impacts. The case cited here (Rio Vista) refers to a county that generated a hazardous waste landfill plan, but did not specify particular locations, so it seems to be a little different.
• The impacts portions of the FED are complete.
• The "programmatic" label cannot be used to justify an analysis which is inadequate for informed public review and informed decision making by the ARB. Respondent has argued that more detailed analysis of alternative may come later during the implementation process. This claim has no credibility because the ARB has already proceeded, prematurely, with the implementation process.
  

funny passage from conference report on performance measures

For example, a transit project is sold or marketed to a decision-making group. The proponents say, "We have great fare box recovery ratio, unlinked passengers, etc." After the transit advocate goes out, the highway advocate comes in and says, "My VC ratio is going to go from .95 to .85, and my average speed is going to go from 35 to 37." That person leaves the room, and the decision makers sit together and say, "We don’t understand what these guys are talking about. It is very difficult to compare these two. So we are going to go with whomever we feel lobbied harder and seemed more sincere."

environmental justice and public participation

There's a new issue of Environmental Justice out that focuses on public participation. In it, there's an article by Neenah Estrella-Luna that analyzes the law structuring public participation in environmental review in Massachusetts. It's a nice piece, but doesn't go far enough (although the articles in this journal are quite short, so don't really allow the type of incisive, nuanced analysis required [IMO] for EJ work).

The article focuses on public participation in environmental permitting. The permitting decision is usually binary - either the facility gets permitted or it does not. She's specifically interested in the tradeoff between the interests of the permit applicant (or proponent) and the public-at-large. Who is more influential on the final decision?

But what is the appropriate way to measure influence when something either happens or it does not? It seems like the discussion of public participation in EJ misses this point - what would we judge as good public participation? How do we operationalize influence when a decision is binary? How many facilities should be permitted, and how many not for it to be considered just? Where does the facility go if not in the EJ community? Will it simply go to a rich neighborhood? to China? is either just?

Rather than arguing about individual permitting decisions, EJ should embrace its criticism of consumer capitalism and take it to its logical conclusions (a la Bedford). Seen in this light, the idea that harmful facilities should be placed in any community is unjust and we begin to see the nature of production and consumption as problematic. Environmental injustice is a symptom, the cure is not amelioration but something much more radical.

strange word choice

A massive FHWA report released in April suggests strategies for reducing transportation-related GHG emissions along with a technical appendix. One of the options is titled "reduce carbon-intensive travel activity." Why only "carbon-intensive" travel activity. Why not just travel activity? The methods that they list yield substantial benefits regardless of the carbon intensity of the mode ("reducing the need for travel [and] increasing vehicle occupancies"). It's just a framing question then, I suppose: thinking about reducing travel demand as only or mostly applying to high carbon modes makes us feel good that we don't need to actually change our behavior. It's almost like painting over VMT reductions with a technology brush.

environmental impact assessments

Nice article by Anne Steinemann on how alternatives get selected and analyzed in environmental impact assessments under NEPA.

I was just thinking about related issues - why do we have so much resistance to innovative transportation planning? Could the problem lie with environmental assessment?

Steinemann confirms (somewhat anecdotally) that alternative projects are often boxed out by the project objectives as stated by the agency, or are eliminated later as not being "cost effective" where the costs are defined narrowly (in terms of agency or construction costs - benefits don't seem to be a factor).

Other problems involve difficulties integrating agencies. I chuckled when I read this: As a federal highway agency official said, "Why would we want to pursue transit alternatives, and give some of our money to them?"

Right, so FHWA/FTA are competing for the same funds, FHWA is the lead agency, why would they want money to go towards a transit project?

This type of initial foreclosure is even happening with the bit of innovative planning that's going on in California in response to SB 375. It's even a little more insidious. SACOG is conducting a series of workshops presenting the pubic with (four?) alternative futures for transportation. Two are extreme and one is status quo. The other is a reasonable middle ground. Obviously folks are choosing that one. What good is a public process if the outcomes are determined in advance?

A related article by Michael Smith reviews appellate court decisions involving NEPA alternatives analysis. He finds that the "purpose and need" statement can be circumscribed by an agency who is conducting an environmental assessment in response to an application by a private party. So, if I want to build an oil pipeline through a wetland, I need only apply to the relevant agency who can then compare the project to a "no-build" scenario. No other alternatives need be assessed so long as the agency provides some justification. This is the primary lesson from the paper - that if an agency gives some justification for the exclusion of an alternative, it will likely be successful in court should the environmental review be challenged.

Smith's article leaves me feeling a little more pessimistic than Steinemann's. His conclusion that

if federal agencies construct a solid and legitimate statement of purpose and need, analyze [a] reasonable range of alternatives in detail that stems directly from that purpose and need, and explain clearly and with rational reasoning [?] why they are dismissing other alternatives to their project that may appear reasonable, they will nearly always be successful if they face future litigation...

So, he's basically laid out a roadmap for agencies to follow if they want to avoid being defeated in litigation whereas Steinemann has an eye toward improving the process (conducting assessments earlier, involving the public in deciding alternatives). Clearly the extant alternatives assessment is broken. Why would we keep it as is?

oakland airport connector

Streetsblog has a post about the Oakland Airport Connector that finally appears to be going through. I was interested to see that the opposition to the project was cast only in "cost to the taxpayer" terms:

[BART General Manager Dorothy] Dugger said the only thing the delay in the project over civil rights and funding had accomplished was to increase construction costs. “I think one of the sad realities is that these kinds of major infrastructure projects take a long time to get to the starting block. It’s a truth that goes along with any large project: delay is generally not helpful. Delay only adds cost to the taxpayer.”

Does Dugger mean to imply that we should not oppose or question transportation projects at the risk that we might increase costs to the taxpayer? What about making the project more suitable for the individuals who will be using it?

This kind of opposition to opposition comes up often with transportation projects. It happened with the US 95 project and also with the Century Freeway. It's interesting to note that transportation officials feel comfortable short-circuiting the democratic process in favor of getting their favored projects built.

If they instead allowed genuine public participation, perhaps they would see fewer of their projects delayed?

US 95

Construction completed on US highway 95 in Northwest Las Vegas in 2005. The highway was expanded from six lanes to 10, ostensibly to deal with the specter of existing congestion and increasing congestion expected to result from population increases.

As part of an initial scoping study, three alternatives were reviewed. One was the expansion of the highway, one was the expansion of several arterials combined with travel demand management, and the third was a transit alternative. The last two were rejected as either too expensive or as not meeting the project requirements.

[Q1: How extensive were evaluation of these alternatives? Were they evaluated on the same terms as the others? Were only costs considered? or was there a cost/benefit analysis? Did the benefits include things like improved land use from non-expansion alternatives?]

Sierra Club filed a complaint (Sierra Club v. US Department of Transportation et al.) in the United States District Court for the District of Nevada (310 F. Supp. 2d 1168). This case was decided in March, 2004, was appealed and then settled in 2005. The initial decision touches on issues of air quality, induced demand, data, modeling, analysis of alternatives, and public participation.

While each of these has interesting components, the thing that struck me reading through the court documents was the complaint about public participation.

Sierra Club alleged that the FHWA violated 23 USC §128. This section addresses public hearing requirements for state DOTs proposing federal-aid highway projects. It states only that the state certify that it has had "public hearings, or has afforded the opportunity for such hearings" and that it submit a transcript of the hearing to the Secretary of Transportation. FHWA regulations stipulate that state programs for public hearings must follow guidelines somewhat stricter than those specified under section 128. They are still quite general, only requiring that the DOT

explain the project's purpose and need; alternatives to the project; the social, economic, environmental, and other impacts of the project; relocation assistance and right-of-way acquisition process; and procedures for receiving both oral and written statements from the public.

This is a legislatively and administratively guaranteed one-way flow of information, from the decision makers and the decisions already made to the public.

Pursuant to these regulations, the FHWA approved NDOT's proposal to hold "open house" style hearings where posters with project information are displayed and officials are on hand to speak with citizens. The transcript in the case of the open house includes precisely what interested individuals choose to say to a stenographer hired for the event.

Since FHWA administers the federal-aid highway program, it is charged with administering section 128. When it reviews the agency's interpretation of a statute (here it would be FHWA's implicit finding that open house-style "hearings" satisfy section 128), the court employs a two-part test established in Chevron v. NRDC (467 U.S. 837, 81 L. Ed. 2d 694, 104 S. Ct. 2778 (1984)). First, is the intent of Congress clear as to this precise issue? If yes, then deference is given to Congress. If no, then deference is given to the agency's interpretation of an ambiguous statute. Since section 128 provides no explicit definition of "public hearing" or "transcript" it is ambiguous.

Further, FHWA studied the open house process in 1987 and concluded that it had a number of benefits over the traditional (testimony-based) public hearing including the avoidance of "emotionally charged" testimony (hah!).

So, the court grants summary judgment in favor of the defendants (US DOT et al.), but, surprisingly (to me at least) feels compelled to address what it sees as "serious deficiencies" in the open house-style hearing.

The court argues that the "public" part of the public hearing is diminished since open house hearings result in a number of mini private meetings between citizens and officials. Citizens attending do not get to hear their fellow citizens' comments, nor do they get to influence and be influenced by them. The open house format appears fundamentally anti-democratic.

Imagine if hearings surrounding the adoption of the Scoping Plan had had an open house format. What would happen if a number of "emotionally charged" individuals showed up and disrupted the proceedings? Presumably there would be no record of what was said or what happened. Would the disruptive group be asked to leave?

I just did a quick search to see if the FHWA took the court's advice and stopped allowing/approving open house meetings. It seems that, no, they haven't. The single public meeting listed at the Caldecott Tunnel Fourth Bore Project page seems to have been open house-style.

Interestingly, I hadn't heard about these meeting types before. Maybe other (higher stakes?) policy folks know that they wouldn't fly in their communities?

AB 32 regional targets

California's Climate Change Scoping Plan requires a 5 MMT reduction from land use changes. The specific target is subject to revision based on the setting of regional targets. These are ostensibly GHG reduction goals that metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) must meet through changing policies to promote compact development, increasing transit use, etc.

However, the committee established to advise CARB on target setting has chosen to suggest a per capita emissions metric to be used for targets. Their justification for this metric is dubious at best.

In addition, this form of metric has the advantage of directly addressing growth rate differences between MPO regions. Addressing growth rate differences between the MPO regions is important given that growth rates are expected to affect the magnitude of change that any given region can achieve with land use and transportation strategies. The relative characteristic of the metric ensures that both fast and slow growth regions take reasonable advantage of any established transit systems and infill opportunity sites to reduce their average regional greenhouse gas emissions. [Emphasis added, RTAC report p. 24]

Isn't this just saying that growing regions (with growing absolute GHG emissions and VMT) should be able to feel good about measures that they're taking even though they won't actually be making absolute progress towards the Scoping Plan's mandated target? With growing populations, per capita emissions have to drop quite a bit for there to be anything like an absolute reduction. How does this jive with the Scoping Plan's goals? Were they updated to reflect per capita targets?

[Update to come as I figure things out.]