by John A Charles Jr.
Thursday, November 12.
2009
At its November 12
meeting, Metro’s Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Transportation (JPACT)
adopted “performance targets” calling for a tripling
of walking, biking, and transit use by 2035. This came despite the release of
the Annual Portland Resident Survey conducted by the City Auditor, showing that
levels of solo driving for commuters actually increased by 4.6% this year and
that transit use dropped by 9%.
During a 20-minute discussion of performance targets covering such topics
as climate change, clean air, and affordability, none of the committee members
questioned the feasibility of tripling the mode share for walking, cycling, or
transit. The committee
appears to believe that if they collectively wave a magic wand, they can
persuade people to change driving habits. Recent trends, however, suggest that
this will be an expensive exercise in futility.
For instance,
according to Metro, the daily levels of vehicle-miles-travelled (VMT) per
person in the region have gone from 18.8 in 1990 to 20.0 in 2007. As the region
continues to expand and more employers leave the central city for suburban
locations, there is no reason to think daily VMT will decline.
Other data sources
show similar trends. The Portland
Auditor has been collecting citizen survey data regarding commute travel habits
for the past 12 years, and the surveys show that in 1997 the private automobile
was the primary means of travel for 82% of commuters in the city (71% driving
solo, 9% carpooling, and 2% driving to a transit station). In 2009, 78% of
commuters relied on driving (68% solo, 7% carpooling, and 3% driving to
transit). This is a tiny drop in auto use, given that we opened four new light
rail lines and a streetcar during those years, at a cost of over $2 billion.
Moreover, those are
citywide averages. When the numbers are broken down by region, the survey shows
that 92% of commuters in East Portland rely on driving, as do 86% of commuters
in SW Portland.
Pure transit use in Portland (with no auto driving involved) has remained
completely flat; it was 10% in 1997 and 10% in 2009. In TriMet’s strongest market (workers in
the downtown core) transit use is actually declining. According to the annual
business census reports published by the Portland Business Alliance, MAX/bus
use dropped from 45% of commuters to 43% from 2001-2008, while the streetcar
share was 1% or less in all years.
Metro, TriMet, and
other local jurisdictions have bought the notion that expensive rail transit
investments, coupled with severe zoning restrictions around transit stations to
ensure high-density development, will dramatically increase transit use; but
actual evidence shows that the strategy is not working.
For example, auto
commuting at the commercial office building at the Beaverton Round is 90% of
all commuting for that building. For the Orenco Gardens development south of
light rail in Hillsboro, auto use is 80% of all commuting. At the Elmonica
Court Apartments across the street from the light rail stop in Beaverton, 96%
of commuters drive. All along the MAX system, from Gresham to Hillsboro and up
to North Portland, one can find similar results by simply observing how people
travel near MAX lines.
While bicycle
commuting has gone up from 3% to 7% of all city commuters, it’s unlikely that
this number will grow significantly. It actually hit 8% last year, and that may
have been the high-water mark. Most people will find bicycle commuting
impractical no matter how much money the city spends on bike lanes.
For instance, after the city took away two auto lanes of Holgate
Boulevard in outer SE Portland last summer in order to create monster bike
lanes, I went out there on three separate occasions to do counts. The weather
was beautiful on all days, and I varied the times/days so that I chose a
weekday mid-morning, a Sunday afternoon, and a Thursday morning at the peak
hour. Of all vehicles observed, more than 98% were automobiles, and none of the
cyclists turned into the new light rail station (the ostensible reason for
creating this 30-block bike lane was to encouraging bike commuting to the new
Green Max line).
Despite the fact that
the regional strategies to reduce driving have failed, the earnest folks at
JPACT are convinced that this time, the central planners will finally get it
right! If the $2 billion we spent on rail transit caused no change in travel
habits during the past decade, we’ll double down and build rail lines to
Sherwood, Lake Oswego, Milwaukie, and Vancouver, while letting highway
congestion get worse so as to force a few commuters onto the slow trains. Of
course it will fail again, but a lot of planners will stay employed. Perhaps
that’s the real goal.
John A. Charles, Jr. is
President and CEO of Cascade Policy
Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research center.
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