The Urban Transportation Problem

The Urban Transportation Problem by J.R. Meyer, J. F. Kain, M. Wohl

This study of urban transportation was written in 1965 and funding in part by the Ford Foundation. It was written at the heyday of "cars and freeways are great era." The book is filled with numbers and equations to evaluate different transportation means. It does attempt to provide a balanced analysis, but, alas, it was a product of its time and misses out on areas that seem obvious. 

The book evaluated development patterns. People and businesses were moving to peripheral suburban areas. As a whole, people would live close to where they worked, but there were some that would commute further - especially to the central business district. The book took the assumption that people would want to live where there was more land, without looking at the significant subsidies (especially in the highway system and infrastructure) that enabled them to live there. The authors did look at whether urban or rural drivers "pay there way" with gas taxes. However, the assumption was that gas taxes should be strictly used for highways, while local roads should be covered by local property taxes. Alas, this missed out on the significant impact that freeway drives would have on local roads, from requiring excess capacity to limiting other non-car movements. 

There was one chart showing increased traffic in streets with freeway interchanges. However, this was in the context of showing that the were anomalies compared to other streets that lost traffic. Even back then, Darrell Ward wrote about "los angeles a classic example" (of induced demand) in Metropolitan Transportation January 1962. Alas, the authors of this book work the refute the argument by showing that parallel streets (such as Figueroa and Sunset lost traffic volume when freeways were built.)  I tried to look up the current volumes, but couldn't find anything conclusive. It is unclear what segments they were referring to, and renaming of sections further complicates things. I did find that Sunset is now highly congested with volume exceeding design capacity. The related freeways are also carrying many times more volume than previously - and highly congested.  The book included a table comparing travel times in 1936 with those post-freeway in the 1950s and 1960. I did some midday Google map lookups. It wasn't all negative. In general the routes today are about a minute faster than they were in 1936 - if you take the optimal google route. Most all of them also had routes that were slower than 1936. Seems that Ward does get the last laugh.

The book analyzed the decrease in central business district trips by cities with built up rail infrastructure. It found that the trains did not help reduce the hemorrhaging. What was missed was the impact of the freeways. A city with a built up transit network would likely be very densely populated. Building freeways would eliminate significant numbers of homes, workplaces and other buildings. Even if only 1.6% of land area were used for a freeway, this would be very significant in the built environment.  The additional support for cars (parking garages, larger roads, etc.) would further cause damage.  The book also looks at potential improvements with urban renewal, but does caveat that many projects seem to have a plan for decreased density. Alas, we know that urban renewal did not turn out so well. It reduced density in built up areas, sometimes improving housing stock, but in other cases just destroying it. 

The book has a general assumption that people can easily store their cars and that cars will just be able to use the area. Alas, this has come at great expense. Car usage has reduced capacity and slowed travel for non-car users. Freeways have sliced through neighborhoods, cutting off access, and making it challenging to walk or bike across interchanges. Streets become busier as cars move to access freeways. More frequent and longer trips are made by cars, requiring more space to move cars quickly. The improved car movement speed is frequently implemented to the detriment of other road users. Car subsidies continued, leading to more cars and decreased transit quality and even more cars.

It was interesting to see the matter-of-fact ways that racial segregation was looked at. It was assumed that more black people would seek suburban housing if they could. However, at the time, they typically chose to live in close in areas that had lower transportation costs. A similar dwelling unit would be more expensive in these areas, yet they could live in smaller units that were not available in other areas and save costs. Alas, the "if they could" part has played out, with many central cities slowly losing their black population. 

The book is filled with equations looking at different means to transport people to the central cities. Express bus service comes out highly in terms of speed and cost. Yet, it seems to never work well. The authors do note that people have a preference for rail. They also are a little too concerned with downtown distribution. People don't mind walking. Spending more effort making the walking environment better would be better than improving car access.

At the end, the book looks towards "future technology". Autonomous cars and "small cars" are proposed as well as congestion tolling. Small have a huge benefit with minimal cost, yet we have spun in the opposite direction. For busses, the authors propose a form of bus rapid transit with a dedicated freeway bus lane, queue-skip entrance ramps, multi-door loading, platforms and the like. Much has been implemented in some extent. The authors identify that a dedicated lane would provide the greatest overall increase in system performance, but would also leave unused capacity (that would be alienated to drivers.) Alas, we have ended up with a "half-way" bus system. There are bus lanes, but they are often clogged with cars turning or just being bad. Buses may use carpool lanes on freeways, but rarely dedicated bus lanes. They also mention electronic toll collection and adaptive signals.

It is interesting to see some of the other ideas and concerns. Air conditioning was not widespread in vehicles, and seemed to be a possible innovation. Automated fare collection was discussed, but there were concerns about labor displacement. Hydrofoils and Monorails looked like the rage, but had shortcomings. A continuously running rail loop that would drop off cars was proposed - this seems to have potential, but has never appeared. 

The book has some interesting insights on cost on subsidies. Subsidizing public transit is essentially subsidizing land development in the suburbs. Congestion on freeways is a form of income distribution from wealthy (who value time more) to the poor. Tolls, especially variable tolls would be best for managing demand, but are politically challenging. When people value transit at different amounts, price discrimination would allow it to run profitably, but equal prices would require a subsidy.

The authors reiterate that subsidizing long-haul public transportation is in essence giving subsidies for people to live in the distant suburbs. They point out that regulation often leads to decrease in quality and ridership, and that less regulation may be preferable to subsidies. (Of course, back then, there still were private transit operators and passenger railroads.) Subsidies and regulation are used to push transit in a direction, which may not be optimal. We have seen what happened with freeways and zoning and car dominance. We have trouble seeing far enough into the future for solutions.  One quick win deregulation proposed was eliminating taxi franchises. They predicted Uber and Lyft a half-century early. 

As for countering the negative of cars, they suggest paying for filters (catalytic converters?) or even considering electric cars once storage capacity is available. This view seems to be that the emissions are the only problems with cars. If only that were so. They also brush off speculation that different transit types produce different styles of development. Perhaps they have never seen urban development near rail stops compared to strip development around freeway interchanges. 

When looking at the book as a whole, it is interesting how little has changed in the areas analyzed. Most of the "improvements" we have seen in the past half century were predicted. There have also been a plethora of rail projects in the US. However, most have served primarily to bring suburbanites to the central city. Many run next to freeways. They could have been much more cheaply implemented by dedicating one freeway lane to buses. However, as the authors observed, people love transit projects - but would like somebody else to ride the transit. Replacing a freeway lane with a dedicated bus lane would improve overall system performance, but would upset drivers with the "wasted space". One area that was totally missed by the authors was allocation of street space to pedestrians and cyclists. Today there is finally an acknowledgement that transportation doesn't have to involve motor vehicles.