More people, more highways - Car and Driver

[Klaus]

More people, more highways.
BY BROCK YATES
APRIL 2003


Fewer than six months have passed since taking possession of my Mini Cooper S, and already I've scored my second speeding ticket, thanks to our neighbors to the north, the Ontario Provincial Police and their heavy batteries of laser guns. One might think such a tiny machine could squeeze through the barrage of beams as the cops take aim at more conspicuous targets, but not so. The Mini offers two handicaps in this regard. For one, its vivid profile attracts attention from everyone, including the gendarmes. Second, the little rat refuses to run slowly. It is so nimble, so user-friendly, so eager to run, so generally rapturous to drive that 70 to 90 mph seems a natural state of being for the driver, if not the highway patrols of North America.

But I'm hardly whining. We who drive hundreds of thousands of miles routinely accept speeding tickets as the price of doing business, like the skin diver who expects the occasional nip from a capricious barracuda or a quarterback being blind-sided during an otherwise perfectly executed play.

But this whole sordid business of speed enforcement calls into question exactly what we are doing with our highway transportation network, both here and in Canada, where driving conditions are similar in metro areas. Although most traffic cops squander their time as revenue collectors and accident cleanup crews, we drivers are running headlong toward gridlock.

According to the Texas Transportation Institute's 2002 Urban Mobility Study, we are blowing $68 billion a year in wasted work time and needlessly consumed fuel while stuck in traffic. Example: Commuters in Los Angeles spend 136 hours annually in traffic jams, and in Atlanta the loss is 70 hours. Most major metro areas record similar time losses. These numbers will escalate in the future because no more highways are being built, despite the continuing boom in population growth.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and NPA Data Services of Arlington, Virginia, our population will rise from the current 290 million souls to 310 million in 2010. By 2050 the population will increase by 170 million, or more than the entire population of the nation half a century ago. Worse yet, say experts, 64 percent of that explosion will come in 10 states, with California, Texas, and Florida each growing by more than 10 million.

Within this prospect of overflowing populations, we have such visionaries as California Gov. Gray Davis pledging that not another foot of freeway will be built as long as he holds office. The environmental lobby also stands in rigid formation against even the thought of expanding the highway network. The poltroons in Washington don't even dare suggest road building for fear of bringing down the wrath of the eco-terrorists.

In the meantime, the entire transportation network is crumbling.

Amtrak, the Toonerville Trolley of modern railroading, is in the tank, surviving in the short term on a $205 million bailout last year. Our rail freight system is in lousy shape, with steadily reduced trackage. (In 1916 the nation's railroad peaked with 254,000 miles of track. Today it is less than half that, and much of it is in poor condition.) This has led to the absurd situation where it is economically more viable to pay a driver $30,000 to $50,000 a year to haul 70 tons of freight coast to coast in a diesel truck than it is to carry it on a freight train capable of 100 times that capacity.

The airline industry, once believed to be a savior of travelers, is also in extremis. United Airlines and US Airways are bankrupt, and only a few low-cost, bare-bones fleets such as JetBlue and Southwest—the Greyhounds of the sky—operate anywhere near a profit.

Based on the general inconvenience of the airlines, the Trailways-level amenities, even in first-class, the rising costs, and the useless check-in-counter shakedowns, I continue to drive, even over long distances. As this is written, Lady Pamela and I are headed for Arizona in the family XJ8, bound for the Meguiar's Person of the Year award conference and the RM Auctions event in Phoenix. Sure, it will take a couple of days, but the little pleasures that remain in the travel environment still come at the wheel of a good automobile and not sardined into a fetid aluminum tube with 200 fellow citizens.

The old adage pertains: "If you've got plenty of time (and patience) fly. But if you're in a hurry, drive."

So what is the point of all this garble? It is simply that, as the pols posture over budget deficits, foreign wars, Social Security benefits, and presidential politics for 2004, our overall transportation network is being ignored.

Massive highway construction is off the table, although such major arteries as the East Coast's Interstate 95 ought to be expanded to six lanes over its entire length. So, too, for the West Coast's Interstate 5 and a myriad of other freeways crisscrossing the nation. Additional interstates must be constructed to accommodate increased traffic from Mexico and Canada now that NAFTA is a reality.

Better railroad service must be part of the transportation package, in part to relieve the road-crushing, 60-plus-million semis we now depend on for movement of freight. So, too, for improved commuter service and intercity passenger travel that is now absurdly expensive and slow.

No less than a Marshall Plan for transportation is needed. With our population expanding and nothing being done to improve our rail or highway networks, not to mention the need for more airports, a national gridlock is an ugly prospect.

This is a nation that has risen from its vast agrarian origins to become the leader of the world in part because of the most advanced, sophisticated transportation system in the world. First was our network of railroads, then came the vast expansion of our highways, thanks to the mass-produced automobile. Now we have an air-transport system second to none. All three components of this incredible triad are undergoing massive strains based on a booming population, misplaced economic priorities, and the bizarre post-Luddite pressures of the eco-Nazis and the loony Left.

[Klaus]

More people, more highways.
BY BROCK YATES
APRIL 2003


Fewer than six months have passed since taking possession of my Mini Cooper S, and already I've scored my second speeding ticket, thanks to our neighbors to the north, the Ontario Provincial Police and their heavy batteries of laser guns. One might think such a tiny machine could squeeze through the barrage of beams as the cops take aim at more conspicuous targets, but not so. The Mini offers two handicaps in this regard. For one, its vivid profile attracts attention from everyone, including the gendarmes. Second, the little rat refuses to run slowly. It is so nimble, so user-friendly, so eager to run, so generally rapturous to drive that 70 to 90 mph seems a natural state of being for the driver, if not the highway patrols of North America.

But I'm hardly whining. We who drive hundreds of thousands of miles routinely accept speeding tickets as the price of doing business, like the skin diver who expects the occasional nip from a capricious barracuda or a quarterback being blind-sided during an otherwise perfectly executed play.

But this whole sordid business of speed enforcement calls into question exactly what we are doing with our highway transportation network, both here and in Canada, where driving conditions are similar in metro areas. Although most traffic cops squander their time as revenue collectors and accident cleanup crews, we drivers are running headlong toward gridlock.

According to the Texas Transportation Institute's 2002 Urban Mobility Study, we are blowing $68 billion a year in wasted work time and needlessly consumed fuel while stuck in traffic. Example: Commuters in Los Angeles spend 136 hours annually in traffic jams, and in Atlanta the loss is 70 hours. Most major metro areas record similar time losses. These numbers will escalate in the future because no more highways are being built, despite the continuing boom in population growth.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and NPA Data Services of Arlington, Virginia, our population will rise from the current 290 million souls to 310 million in 2010. By 2050 the population will increase by 170 million, or more than the entire population of the nation half a century ago. Worse yet, say experts, 64 percent of that explosion will come in 10 states, with California, Texas, and Florida each growing by more than 10 million.

Within this prospect of overflowing populations, we have such visionaries as California Gov. Gray Davis pledging that not another foot of freeway will be built as long as he holds office. The environmental lobby also stands in rigid formation against even the thought of expanding the highway network. The poltroons in Washington don't even dare suggest road building for fear of bringing down the wrath of the eco-terrorists.

In the meantime, the entire transportation network is crumbling.

Amtrak, the Toonerville Trolley of modern railroading, is in the tank, surviving in the short term on a $205 million bailout last year. Our rail freight system is in lousy shape, with steadily reduced trackage. (In 1916 the nation's railroad peaked with 254,000 miles of track. Today it is less than half that, and much of it is in poor condition.) This has led to the absurd situation where it is economically more viable to pay a driver $30,000 to $50,000 a year to haul 70 tons of freight coast to coast in a diesel truck than it is to carry it on a freight train capable of 100 times that capacity.

The airline industry, once believed to be a savior of travelers, is also in extremis. United Airlines and US Airways are bankrupt, and only a few low-cost, bare-bones fleets such as JetBlue and Southwest—the Greyhounds of the sky—operate anywhere near a profit.

Based on the general inconvenience of the airlines, the Trailways-level amenities, even in first-class, the rising costs, and the useless check-in-counter shakedowns, I continue to drive, even over long distances. As this is written, Lady Pamela and I are headed for Arizona in the family XJ8, bound for the Meguiar's Person of the Year award conference and the RM Auctions event in Phoenix. Sure, it will take a couple of days, but the little pleasures that remain in the travel environment still come at the wheel of a good automobile and not sardined into a fetid aluminum tube with 200 fellow citizens.

The old adage pertains: "If you've got plenty of time (and patience) fly. But if you're in a hurry, drive."

So what is the point of all this garble? It is simply that, as the pols posture over budget deficits, foreign wars, Social Security benefits, and presidential politics for 2004, our overall transportation network is being ignored.

Massive highway construction is off the table, although such major arteries as the East Coast's Interstate 95 ought to be expanded to six lanes over its entire length. So, too, for the West Coast's Interstate 5 and a myriad of other freeways crisscrossing the nation. Additional interstates must be constructed to accommodate increased traffic from Mexico and Canada now that NAFTA is a reality.

Better railroad service must be part of the transportation package, in part to relieve the road-crushing, 60-plus-million semis we now depend on for movement of freight. So, too, for improved commuter service and intercity passenger travel that is now absurdly expensive and slow.

No less than a Marshall Plan for transportation is needed. With our population expanding and nothing being done to improve our rail or highway networks, not to mention the need for more airports, a national gridlock is an ugly prospect.

This is a nation that has risen from its vast agrarian origins to become the leader of the world in part because of the most advanced, sophisticated transportation system in the world. First was our network of railroads, then came the vast expansion of our highways, thanks to the mass-produced automobile. Now we have an air-transport system second to none. All three components of this incredible triad are undergoing massive strains based on a booming population, misplaced economic priorities, and the bizarre post-Luddite pressures of the eco-Nazis and the loony Left.