Modal balance & multi-modal corridors

Modal balance is a dead concept, a weird rhetorical legacy of past planning theory. Planning now is about which modes do we prioritize and where. I explicitly differentiate between the old paradigm of 'share the road', where all users are expected to make use of arterial roadways, and what I'll call the "Streetmix" paradigm (after the website), which says "we have 60' of ROW, how are we allocating that to car lanes, bike lanes, landscaping, sidewalks, and street trees?", and realizing that there is often more value created by not following the historic default of prioritizing auto capacity uber alles.

More broadly, it gets into the issue of what it means to have a multi-modal corridor. It's sometimes used in minimalist way, to suggest where it's possible for multiple modes to be present. Most corridors are nominally multi-modal, in the sense that it's nominally legal for other modes (pedestrians, bikes, etc) to travel along them (freeways being the exception). But at a higher standard, having a multi-modal corridor means having infrastructure for multiple modes -- sidewalks for urban streets, or a divided highway that has bus stops. 

But for anyone who actually makes use of non-auto infrastructure, non-auto modes are clearly second class. Because for transportation, it's the network that matters. Sidewalks that end mid-block aren't very useful. Bus stops where the ADA-compliant sidewalk stops beyond the bus stop are a bit of a cruel joke.  So the next tier of quality for a multi-modal corridor is one that is designed to encourage use by multiple modes, rather than merely permit, tolerate, or minimally accommodate them. 

Recognizing that automobile access has been prioritized over that of other modes is the first step, because it opens the door to the option that other modes might be similarly prioritized. Traffic planners intuit that is dangerous, and so there will be endless whatsaboutism that the corridors are already multi-modal, designed to obscure the fact that most planning prioritizes the automobile. 

After someone can be made to recognize that a corridor where cars occupy 99% of the space, and have (effective) priority at all conflict points, and admits that cars are being prioritized, they will then attempt to justify that priority. After several years arguing with people making goon arguments on Twitter, these will include the chestnut that the gas tax pays for it. If they can be made to accept what the gas tax actually pays for (ie, not the existing ROW), an awkward silence may ensue, and then it's possible to have a real conversation about how we allocate an expensive, limited public resource to maximize transportation and economic development benefits, and what that means about prioritizing different transportation modes. 

CAHSR

Mistakes abound, but CAHSR is the 'icebreaker' for Shinkasen in American--there is no domestic industry experience in HSR, yet politics demanded that it had to be American Made. So such mistakes were (depressingly) inevitable. CAHSR was also, at the start, politically tenuous--it had barely fifty percent support, and was only feasible because a massive slug of Federal cash was available.

The cost estimates were, if no laughable, certainly questionable. And because of the lack of cost sensitivity that afflicts most public sector infrastructure projects, a whole series of decisions that would have been questionable from an engineering standpoint were made to buy political support. The political support for a tenuous project was maintained, but suffered ballooning costs. All very typical mega-project issues. (Flyvbjerg has written extensively on such issues).

Goon Arguments for Automobile Priority

After someone can be made to recognize that a corridor where cars occupy 99% of the space and have (effective) priority at all conflict points, and admits that cars are being prioritized, they will then attempt to justify that priority. After several years arguing with goons on Twitter, this usually consists of series of disputable claims:

The Gas Tax Pays for It!

Delusion. The Federal gas is used to pay for the Federal Aid Highway System (US Interstates and US Highways), which (IIRC) represent about 1% of road miles. Secondly, the Highway Trust Fund (which receives gas tax revenues) has been bust since 2008 and has been bailed out six times using revenue from the General Fund, which comes (mostly) from income tax. 

The State Gas Tax Pays for It!

Dream on. The state gas tax is largely used to provide the 'match' share the Feds require the states kick in on US Interstates and Highways. The Feds pay for 80-90% of it but still require the states to kick in 10-20%. The rest of the state's gas tax gets used to pay for State Highways*. 

Developers Choose to Do it!

Nice try. Every talk to a developer, who'd like to cut three inches off the width of the road, so they could save themselves a million dollars? The specifics of how subdivisions get built (road width, pavement thickness) is highly specified by city ordinance. 

Cities Choose that for Their Roads!

Again, pre-emption. Most of the wide roads in cities are highways, and the state owns them*. And the state has its own standards for state highways, and those standards are highly focused on moving automobiles at highway speeds. Many states also have rules mandating certain standards (width) for roads anywhere in the state.

All Roads are Multi-modal!

Bunkum. If it was actually multi-modal, it would have a dedicated lane for that mode, and design standards that reflected all modes, and managed conflict between them.  If I design a home for horses, no one tries to pretend it's for humans, even when humans can use it. 

*Which, if you live in Ohio, might actually be all roads in the State. 

Fares and (economic) equity

Transit districts, where transit is spread equitably (a stop every two blocks, a frequent network grid, excellent coverage) can be funded by a local property or sales tax--the beneficiaries of the service are also those who fund the service. But if you have people using transit who are from outside that district, who aren't paying the local property/sales tax to fund that service, they are functionally free-riding*, and in equity should be charged higher fares than those within the zone. In the reverse, using sales tax to pay for transit only works if that transit is equitably spread through out the sales tax area. Else people are paying for services they aren't using.

There is argument to be made that in either case, the affected folks do benefit, indirectly, through reduced  traffic congestion. But the match or mismatch of the taxed service area and the services provided matters. Fail to provide service while charging taxes and you'll get a tax revolt that revokes funding for transit. But spend too much money providing transit service to marginal transit-hostile areas, you'll go broke. Analyzing the cost per rider of any transit system clearly shows a wide variance in cost per rider by route (and even by route segment). So you have to hope that the transit planners have made a good 'bargain' in expending scarce and limited dollars to buy political support by providing transit service to marginal corridors/stations. (This hope is often in vain). 

In an equity sense (ignore the benefits of congestion mitigation), people should pay for what they get. But doing can be complicated, as it requires accounting for the cost of service and also the cost of infrastructure. In an ideal case, fares at an underground station with trains every four minutes should be much higher than fares at a ground-level station with one train an hour. However, because that underground station is located downtown, so the cost per rider of providing that service may actually be much much lower than at the peripheral surface level station with poor frequency. 

* A certain level of free-riding is of course tolerable, on the basis of generosity, charity, equity, and the cost of attempting to collect all revenue due exceeding the value of the revenue collected.