How Many Bird Strikes...

The Federal Aviation Administration recently released data about the number of bird strikes (plane-bird collisions) in the United States, and it is a number that surprised many people: more than 73,000 bird strikes in the last eight years (and the FAA believes only 20% of strikes are even reported). Previously, the downing of a plane in the Hudson River in January because of a bird strike seemed like a bizarre rarity; the data has changed our perception. While in some ways it is reassuring that major problems from bird strikes are so infrequent, the number of strikes is still of concern because they present a real, if unusual, danger. Of broader importance, however, is the power this new information gives us to assess which methods of bird strike prevention work best and whether progress can be made to decrease the number strikes.

The issue of data about bird strikes holds a lesson for transportation more generally because, as the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Although the FAA has kept data about bird strikes for many years, the number of strikes has increased annually since the early 1990s, indicating that either there are more collisions occuring, increased reporting, or the FAA is not taking effective action. (We should note that the annual number of flights has increased over that time period as well, however.) Hopefully, public scrutiny will incentivize progress in reducing the number of strikes. There are a number of methods of deterring birds from near airports, including annoying noises, habitat manipulation, use of predators, shooing of birds, and shooting of birds. Data can illuminate which methods work best, and the public can judge whether their local airports are taking effective action. In short, it is good news that the FAA is tracking data, and it is of equal importance that the data is now available for public assessment.

One of the National Transportation Policy Project’s consistent themes has been the need for performance measurement and accountability. As the bird strike example shows, measurement and accountability should go hand-in-hand. Accountability is impossible without data, but data alone does not mean much unless it can be used to find best practices and reward good performance. Increased transparency should be at the core of a new approach to transportation performance and accountability.

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Is Failed Midway Airport Deal a Blow to Infrastructure Privatization?

Earlier this week the planned sale of Midway airport to private investors by the city of Chicago fell through. Observers such as the Wall Street Journal are calling it a blow to the privatization of infrastructure more broadly. Whether that is true or premature, it highlights an important issue for transportation policy: The private appetite for infrastructure will inevitably ebb and flow with market conditions, experiencing booms and busts over time like other areas. Public policy must take this into account when considering the role that private capital can and should play in infrastructure investment.

In recent years the ability of private capital to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure has been highly touted – leaving the impression that private money can fill a substantial portion of the current investment shortfall. When interest rates are low and credit markets are loose the potential of public-private-partnerships (PPPs) looks much rosier. It becomes easy to imagine that the flow of private money will persist indefinitely, that somehow infrastructure investment is an investment class immune to traditional booms and busts, that it can always and forever provide investment. Under this view, it becomes possible to imagine that the public is best served by abdicating its traditional role as provisor of infrastructure.

Although we have just built up a bit of a strawman to knock down, the outgoing administration had an explicit policy against raising federal fuel taxes and in favor of leveraging private capital as a substitute. It is good public policy to harness private capital when available and appropriate, but similarly it is poor public policy to rely on that private capital for essential infrastructure investments. Public money will always have an important role in infrastructure investment – especially as a consistent provider when the market is not responding. There is also a specific federal role to be played in addressing critical investments of national importance. There is, without a doubt, a beneficial role to be played by PPPs, but the limitations of that approach have become apparent in the current economic crisis. Public policy must take all this into consideration in the upcoming authorization bill when weighing how public and private money can be used to achieve the greatest good.

-Daniel and Joshua

High-Speed Rail Money Should Be Spent on Actual High-Speed Rail

A disturbing trend has emerged in the debate about how to spend the billions of dollars that the stimulus package dedicates to high-speed rail (HSR). The trend is towards spending the money on marginal improvements to existing routes rather than true investment in new high-speed ones. For example, a recent panel of witnesses before a House Appropriations subcommittee argued that the money “would best be used on incremental speed increases for current routes.” The general reasoning behind this argument is that HSR is costly, takes years to build, and the returns are relatively uncertain. Therefore, improving existing train speeds from say 79mph to 90mph is the better way to go. If this is the route chosen, the money might as well not be spent at all.

The general concern about HSR is that it may not be the most cost-effective way to spend transportation money. That argument is, for now, irrelevant; the stimulus money is going to HSR in some form regardless. The more important issue at this point is, we could argue, more political: if the public is told that billions are being spent on HSR but all the money gets frittered away on marginal improvements to existing lines, the broader goal of actual high-speed rail will be tarnished. A marginal improvement to existing train service is not game-changing, and would do little to reinvigorate the mode. Moreover, true HSR offers travel, business, and quality of life gains that marginal improvements will never provide.

While it is true that HSR will not be seen within the next few years, that’s not a good reason to avoid making investments in it. Recognizing that stimulus money is intended for shovel ready projects, it may not be possible for all of the $8b allocated to be spent on HSR; but surely a significant amount can, and the priority should be to spend every dime that we can on actual HSR project development. Whatever money is left over can then be prioritized to more marginal improvements in select corridors with an eye to the future.

HSR can likely provide significant benefits in select corridors, and those corridors have already been generally identified. One corridor that is moving forward with HSR is the California route between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Investing the stimulus money in this corridor (or in real development of another corridor like the Northeast or Chicago) is one way to make sure that in the not too distant future the country actually has a viable example of truly high speed 220mph trains, not Amtrak trains that can go 90mph instead of 79mph.

In other circumstances and for other transportation modes the argument to make marginal improvements might be the prudent one. But when it comes to HSR, the bold course is the right one.

-Daniel Lewis

New Debate about Vehicle Miles Travelled Fee

Recent weeks have seen renewed debate about how to pay for transportation investment. The National Financing Commission released a report recommending an increase in the gas tax and a transition in the next decade to a system based on vehicle miles travelled (VMT). Around the same time, Transportation Secretary LaHood commented that he was willing to consider a VMT charge as a revenue mechanism – a comment that the Obama administration quickly smacked down and backed away from. This was a surprising move that does little to advance a reasonable discussion of how to actually pay for transportation investment.

The basic issues, as we have partly laid out in previous posts, are these:

1. There is a popular myth that the public fully pays for transportation infrastructure via the gas tax. This is false. As the Finance Commission reports, people pay nowhere near the full direct and indirect costs of transportation.


2. Transportation infrastructure is not only deteriorating, it is not being used efficiently. Charging people more of the actual cost of their use can preclude the need for more investment. Either people pay upfront with higher fees, or they pay later through higher general or indirect taxes, and it is cheaper to pay upfront.


3. If we do not raise enough revenue through user fees like a VMT charge, we face the issue of whether to spend money from the general fund. This would be a foolish approach because it severs the connection between payment and use.


4. The gas tax is unsustainable. As the primary revenue source, in the short term it needs to be increased if we want to invest adequately in transportation. In the medium term (5-20 years), it needs to be phased out because changing technologies will limit the revenue it raises.

So we arrive at discussion of the VMT charge. The administration’s dismissal of a VMT charge flies in the face of broad consensus in the transportation sector. Without proposing an alternative revenue source, it seems that the administration either does not believe that more money should be invested in transportation, or that more investment should be paid for from the general fund. The first possibility is contradicted by the administration’s own emphasis in the stimulus bill of the public value of investing in transportation. The second possibility is simply poor policy.

At a time when the country needs to focus on efficient spending, a policy that funds transportation from the general fund is the most costly and least efficient approach. It voids the principle of “user pay” and ensures that transportation infrastructure will be used in the most inefficient way (i.e. continued traffic congestion).

It is not that a VMT charge is the only viable user fee available, but it is a logical and reasonable one. To dismiss it off the cuff without a discussion of the alternatives is to preempt a thoughtful debate of best practices. For those reasons, we have certainly not heard the last of a VMT charge.

How to Improve the Stimulus Bill

There has been much discomfort in the transportation community about the amount of funding for transportation infrastructure in the stimulus, or economic recovery, bill reported out of the House Appropriations Committee a week ago Of course, we do not yet know what the final bill will contain for transportation or even the degree to which the House language is reflective of what the new President and his Administration desire, but this first significant legislative action on economic stimulus is an opportunity to remind ourselves of our goals and purposes.

I am not an economist, but it seems to me that the purpose of a stimulus bill is to stimulate the economy and, more specifically, to stimulate job creation. That is why there has been a focus on "shovel-ready" projects and why the House bill contained "use it or lose it" language. Nonetheless, as the Congressional Budget Office noted, there is some delay (often, fairly significant delays) before transportation authorizations are turned into outlays, that is, before they become money actually spent and invested in the economy. Indeed, even though every recent surface transportation authorization bill has been primarily justified on the basis of job creation, no one really knows how many jobs are created by transportation bills or how quickly. My limited exposure to this issue during my service at the U.S. Department of Transportation left me skeptical that there was very much authenticity in, or analytical rigor to, the estimates of "X number of jobs are created for $1 billion of spending" in this sector.

Nonetheless, while we may not know for certain how many jobs are created, or how quickly, by surface transportation spending, clearly these investments make fiscal sense in the current economic environment. With that in mind, let's continue to remember that job creation is the purpose of the transportation spending in this stimulus bill. The transportation sections of a stimulus bill are not designed to correct the serious shortfalls that we have had in infrastructure investment in this country for many years or to correct the fact that much of the surface transportation money that has been authorized by Congress in recent bills has not always been spent wisely.

Our goals should remain constant: however much money for transportation is contained in the final stimulus or economic recovery bill, those funds should be spent on "good" projects. That means projects that are likely to bring the greatest economic returns in the shortest time. Most often, these will be projects designed to restore transportation facilities and networks to states of good repair and to enhance the operational efficiency and productivity of existing systems.

Moreover, the principles of transparency, tracking, and accountability that are in the House stimulus bill should be retained in the final legislative language.

This discussion reminds us that we need significant long-term change in federal surface transportation programs. That is unlikely to happen in a stimulus bill, but we should be certain that the stimulus bill does not set this effort back. There was -- and, I suppose, there remains -- a risk that the attention on the total level of transportation funding in a stimulus bill would divert us from this purpose and would "swallow-up" the debate over national transportation goals and over the need to establish performance-driven and accountable surface transportation policies.

We need to articulate these national transportation goals, to redefine the federal role in transportation, to assure funding mechanisms that advance performance and accountability, to "get the prices right" in transportation (as the Eddington Report advocated for the U.K)., and to reform fundamentally federal surface transportation programs. These challenges will only be met in the surface transportation authorization bill yet before us, and these challenges will remain, no matter the level of transportation funding in the final stimulus bill.

-Emil Frankel

National Transportation Policy Project Reception at TRB Tonight

Dear Readers,

The Bipartisan Policy Center's National Transportation Policy Project is hosting a reception tonight, Wednesday, the 14th, as part of the Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting. The reception will be at the Omni Shoreham (by Woodley Park metro), in the Congressional Room, from 6-7:30pm. All are invited to attend.

The reception will feature two of NTPP's Co-Chairs, former Congressman Sherwood Boehlert and former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer. Several members of the NTPP will be in attendance as well, including former FAA administrator Jane Garvey. Senator Mark Warner, a former NTPP Co-Chair, will also be stopping by early in the evening, and there may be a guest appearance by a former Senator...

Thanks for reading.