Urban Traffic Congestion:

A rumination on the economic and national security implications of urban congestion, written as an op-ed for The Chicago Tribune:

A visit to the Illinois Tollway’s website will reveal Governor Blagojevich’s $5 billion congestion relief plan proudly splashed across the front page, as it well should be; traffic congestion in Chicago is some of the worst in the country. The Texas Transportation Institute’s “2005 Urban Mobility Report” lists Chicago as the eighth most congested city in terms of commuter time spent in traffic, while the economic cost ranks third in the nation at $4.3 billion a year, or approximately $1,500 for every household in the Chicago metropolitan area. That is not even taking into account the detrimental health impacts of the stress and pollution directly attributable to area’s gridlock.

And while the financial waste is enough to make any citizen take notice, the real outrage is that commuters unnecessarily burn through 3 million-plus barrels of oil each year sitting in traffic, putting at least an extra $150 million a year into the bank accounts of despotic Middle East regimes and financiers of terrorism.

Digging into the Governor’s proposal, despite the seriousness of the problem and the promises of relief, there are exactly zero data documenting the impact the project will have on traffic. That is because the project will reap negligible results. If you are doing the math, the Governor is spending $5 billion for a ten year makeover on a highway system that will cost the state at least $50 billion in economic waste over the same period.

At the highest level, there are two options for reducing congestion – increase the supply of or reduce the demand for Chicagoland’s highways.

The Governor is taking advantage of the lack of legislative Tollway oversight by focusing on the supply solution since it is the easiest and most politically palatable. After all, the Governor gets to take sole credit for creating new jobs and saying he is doing something to combat traffic, while he will be long gone from the Governor’s Mansion by the time the ten-year project is complete and proves to be a failure. Does anybody who regularly sits in Chicago traffic, seeing the frustrating magnitude of the problem and utter lack of space into which the highways can expand really believe that adding a few new lanes to a handful of highway sections will solve the problem? The expansion and tollbooth removal plan completely ignores the most congested sites on the highways – for one there are no tollbooths in many of these locations, and if for no other reason, simply because there is no space for expansion.

As the Chicagoland population continues to grow and the amount of highway-usable land remains a constant, the only true solution is to significantly reduce highway demand and increase the number and availability of alternatives.

The Tollway Board seems at times to understand the demand side and has made several encouraging moves in the right direction. While in theory raising tolls for non-I-Pass motorists should help reduce tollway usage and encourage usage of the more efficient I-Pass system, their effort in doing so was half-hearted at best. An additional 40 cents will not discourage nearly enough motorists to have an impact, as evidenced by the fact that Illinois toll rates remain extraordinarily low compared to other states. Moreover, by introducing peak and non-peak rates only for trucks, the Board has ignored the reality that commuting office workers, by definition, cause the vast majority of rush-hour traffic (not to mention the fact most trucking lines reimburse drivers for tolls).

The Tollway Board needs to raise tolls, significantly, and introduce peak rates for all vehicles.

Additionally, the City of Chicago should take a cue from its sister cities in Europe and consider imposing congestion charges on motorists choosing to drive within defined 'congestion' areas served by public transportation (click here to visit the website for London's congestion charge program), especially since Chicago is home to one of the finest confluences of public transportation in the world.

While public transit within the city and the Metra-Pace network connecting the suburbs and the city are excellent systems, they are not enough. For most lines, both systems are already heavily utilized. Additionally, the downfall of rail systems is they are not very scalable; it is expensive to add new lines and again, there is little available space to do so.

To expand capacity and increase commuters’ options, Chicagoland can also learn from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, where the bus lines actually provide more service on the highways connecting the cities and the suburbs than within city limits and get to bypass highway traffic by riding the shoulders of the road.

To reduce the expense incurred by commuters and consequently further demand for public transit, the state should also divert highway money into funding for CTA, Pace, and Metra, rather than devoting the billions to producing computer-generated videos of I-Pass lanes and renovating roads.

The state should also be offering a combination of income tax incentives and disincentives to further shape highway demand. The state should offer commuters graduated tax breaks for living within specified distances of their respective place of employment, and conversely, the state should levy tax penalties on workers living outside of certain radii from their place of employment.

The state should grant businesses economic incentives to pass along to employees who carpool and/or utilize public transportation for their commute. This has the advantage of not creating additional cost or bureaucracy for the state since it is relatively simple and cost effective for employers to track their employees’ mode of transit (automotive commuters will need parking passes, for example).

Finally, the city should make car ownership more expensive for citizens living within the reach of public transit. Meaningfully higher title and registration taxes will discourage car ownership and subsequently reduce the amount of traffic within city limits and help ease the pain of the particularly acute lack of parking in the Loop and Near North side.

Traffic congestion in the Chicago metro area is a problem much more serious, expensive, and far-reaching than the thoughtfulness of the current proposed solutions would suggest. For too long our political leaders have treated highway usage as an unalienable right of the citizenry and shied from truly addressing the traffic problem. Congestion is not a problem remediable with politically motivated road construction projects and press conferences, but it is altogether not a difficult problem to solve. A common sense approach geared towards reducing the demand for highways while increasing the demand for and supply of public transportation alternatives will solve a major economic problem and continue Chicago’s tradition of serving as a leading innovator among US cities.