Running on empty: the case for a sustainable national transportation system.

• Author: Benfield, F. Kaid

1. Introduction:A New Era in Transportation Policy

   With the election of the 104th Congress, our nation's federal government began a potentially historic transition. What is emerging from new concepts being considered and adopted in the executive and legislative branches is a government that in many respects will be leaner, more oriented toward incentives than regulation, and more concerned with results than process in its efforts to assist local governments and citizens in achieving social and policy goals. All of this will be particularly manifest at the federal Department of Transportation (DOT).

   DOT is a focus of these efforts not only because it is a target for deficit-reducers in Congress, but also because our nation's system of transportation investment and management is at a crossroads. In particular, the Interstate Highway System (IHS), the centerpiece of federal transportation investment for the last forty years, is now essentially complete. It is time to consider what we learned from that impressive undertaking and what we should do next as a matter of public direction and policy in transportation.

   Creative thought on these issues certainly will be welcome. All evidence indicates that in the past several decades we were far too indiscriminate as a nation in applying our transportation resources. Notwithstanding the achievement of the IHS, the overall result has been a patchwork system of various modes of travel that consumes far too large a share of our economic and environmental resources and now threatens our limited supplies of energy, clean air, and open space.

   No one need be blamed for the mistakes of the past. The truth is, we know more now about the social harms of inefficient transportation than we did when our current system was under construction. In addition, unanticipated pressures of serving a growing population caused us to adopt short-term solutions that created long-term problems. Today, the nation's collective energies should focus on the future, on managing our transportation resources in a way that saves money and energy, decreases pollution, and enhances the lives of American citizens.

   To this end, in late 1993 DOT began a challenging administrative exercise to piece together a new national transportation system" (NTS) that will integrate management of the various surface transportation modes-automobiles, trucks, rail, public transit, bicycling, pedestrian travel, and so on - into a more coherent fabric.(1) The Department also intends to adopt a new administrative structure that integrates the functions historically performed by the federal Highway Administration, federal Railroad Administration, federal Transit Administration, and certain other subagencies into a new "Intermodal Transportation Administration."(2) At least in principle, both initiatives build on the direction set by the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA),(3) which places new emphasis on intermodalism and gives new attention to environmental concerns in transportation planning, investment, and management.(4)

   It is important for the nation's economic and environmental well-being that the promise of these initiatives be fulfilled with a blueprint for a sustainable NTS that will provide efficient mobility for present and future generations. The remainder of this Essay details the factual and legal context in which such a system must be considered, a procedural framework for federal transportation managers to follow, and a group of policy strategies for moving the system toward a sustainable course.

2. Economic and Environmental Inefficiency in Our Current

   Transportation System

   Efficiency is not everything. It is, nonetheless, an excellent starting point for evaluating our current NTS and establishing policies and objectives for improved patterns of travel and an improved Department of Transportation in the twenty-first century. This is particularly so in a climate in which public and private resources are increasingly regarded as scarce in our society.

   Today, it is clear that something needs to be done. The economic costs of transportation inefficiency are enormous, especially considering hidden costs and those likely to be borne by future generations. The impacts of our current transportation practices are even more disturbing. These include massive energy overconsumption, air pollution, sprawl, and congestion.

   1. Economic Costs

      In announcing the NTS initiative, Transportation Secretary Federico Pena observed that Americans spend nearly one trillion dollars - seventeen percent of our gross domestic product - on transportation services each year.(5) Even a one percent improvement in the overall efficiency of our nation's transportation system, according to the Secretary, would produce nearly one hundred billion dollars in savings across the economy within a decade.6 These observations, made when DOT announced the NTS initiative in late 1993, make a compelling reference point for considering our current system's impacts.

      Similarly, federal Office of Management and Budget Director Alice Rivlin has written that, as a nation, we have invested one trillion dollars in public works capital and spend some one hundred billion dollars annually on operating, maintaining, and adding new public works.(7) Most of this is required to support our national habit of driving and moving an incredible 3.5 trillion passenger miles each year.(8)

      As plainly as these numbers speak, they may understate the severity of the costs. In a 1993 study, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) undertook to estimate the full range of costs attributable to passenger ground transportation.(9) NRDC's study attempted to account not only for the direct costs but also the societal costs of transportation, including the external costs and subsidies associated with energy use, congestion, subsidized parking, accidents, noise, building damage, and air and water pollution.(10) The study did not, however, attempt to quantify certain elusive transportation costs, including those associated with travel time, loss of wetlands and agricultural lands, and other impacts of urban sprawl.(11)

      NRDC's researchers concluded that when the full range of costs are tallied, passenger ground transportation alone costs the American public $1.2 to $1.6 trillion each year.(12) This is equal to about one-quarter of our nation's annual gross domestic product and far greater than our total annual national expenditure on either education or health.(13)

      Automobile transportation is responsible for nearly all of these costs, accounting for more than four thousand dollar per capita per year.(14) Indeed, NRDC found that just the direct personal costs of automobile travel account for about fifteen to twenty percent of the Gross Domestic Product.(15) Aggregate rail and bus transportation costs are at most thirty-one billion dollars per year, accounting for only one hundred dollars per capita or about two percent of the total.(16) Automobile costs are likely to increase in coming years, given that total mileage driven, average trip length, and the number of trips taken per year are all increasing while vehicle occupancy is decreasing.(17)

      NRDC also found that a substantial portion of the costs of each of the three surface passenger modes is subsidized by society rather than paid directly by users.(18) Automobiles receive a much higher aggregate subsidy than does bus or rail transport, but the three modes receive a more or less equal subsidy on a per-passenger-mile basis. One difference between the three modes is the form of the subsidy: automobiles receive about eighty-five percent of their subsidy in the form of external costs such as air pollution, parking, and accidents, While buses and rail receive theirs primarily in the form of direct governmental expenditures.(19)

   2. Energy Consumption

      Transportation is by far the largest user of petroleum products in the United States, accounting for seventy-two percent of total U.S. oil consumption in 1987.(20) Highway travel accounts for about three-quarters of direct transportation energy use, and passenger highway travel accounts for two-thirds of that amount.(21) Despite vehicle fuel efficiency improvements over the last two decades, overall transportation fuel consumption continues to increase at a rate of about 2.6 percent per year.(22)

      From a global perspective, the United States consumes more than one-third of the world's transport energy, almost all (ninety-six percent) of it in the form of oil products. This is more oil than the United States produces, despite our country's position as one of the world's largest oil producers.(23) The average resident of the U.S. consumes nearly five times as much energy for transportation as does the average resident of Japan and nearly three times as much as the average resident of western Europe.(24) This is, in part, because the average American undertakes the highest level of personal travel (13,500 miles per person, including nondrivers, per year) and owns the most vehicles per person (0.6, including nondrivers) in the world.(25)

      Freight trucks are the second largest category behind automobiles) of U.S. transport energy consumption, accounting for nearly twenty-three percent of the total.(26) Freight truck mileage driven has been growing at well above three percent per year, faster than the Me of increase for cars.(27) When all kinds of trucks are considered, mileage driven by trucks has grown at an alarming 4.7 percent per year.(28)

   3. Air Pollution

      Our current transportation system also contributes mightily to the nation's resilient inventory of air pollutants. Some of the most serious products of motor vehicle exhaust include carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and particulates. These ingredients make for a nasty soup. Carbon monoxide can harm fetuses, impair perception and thinking, slow reflexes, and cause drowsiness...