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By Brian Friel, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Friday, Jan. 19, 2007

On a Wednesday in December, several hundred people gathered in a downtown Washington hotel to hear Wade Horn, a Health and Human Services Department official, give a 10 a.m. speech. But other speakers had to fill in at the last minute. Horn was stuck in traffic. He didn't arrive until 11 a.m. because of unusually heavy congestion between his Laytonsville, Md., home and the city. It took him 45 minutes just to get to a highway, a drive that normally takes 15 minutes. The traffic on the highway had backed up and was clogging all of the feeder roads.

The sort of delay that Horn faced is all too common on America's roads. We are a nation stuck in traffic. The average American loses 47 hours a year in gridlock -- not to mention the hours lost from padding trips with extra time because of the unpredictability of traffic, and the opportunities lost because congestion deters even an attempt at travel. And the jams keep getting worse. In 1982, commuters could expect congested roads for four and a half hours a day. Now it's seven hours. In 1982, trips took 13 percent longer during rush hour than during off-peak times. Now they take 39 percent longer, the Texas Transportation Institute estimates.

Politicians keep promising to make things better, but even as federal, state, and local governments spend more than $100 billion a year on building and maintaining roads, conditions only get worse. Transportation projects seem to take forever to design and build, and many of the new roadways are congested as soon as they open. Decisions on which projects to fund seem to be driven as much by politics as by the potential to ease travel.

Leading transportation experts generally offer two pathways to relieving congestion. Susan Handy, a professor of environmental science and policy at the University of California (Davis), calls one option "making it possible to drive less," and dubs the other "making driving more expensive."

The drive-less camp argues for more public transportation, more housing built along transit routes, more live-near-your-work programs, more walking and bike paths, more telecommuting, and other "smart growth" or "new urbanism" approaches. Environmental activists, who are key members of this camp, contend that Americans would drive less, and gridlock would be reduced, if driving weren't the only option so much of the time.

The raise-the-cost crowd promotes toll roads, fees that make rush-hour driving more expensive than off-peak travel, and taxes based on the number of miles you drive rather than on the amount of gasoline you buy. Free-market proponents support the pricing option, arguing that congestion is a classic tragedy of the commons. "The root cause of traffic congestion is the absence of property rights in roads," Gabriel Roth and Olegario Villoria, transportation experts, argue in Street Smart, a new book published by the nonprofit Independent Institute, based in Oakland, Calif. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican, recently leased the Indiana Toll Road to a private company for $3.8 billion for 75 years. The company has the right to raise tolls -- which haven't gone up since 1985 -- every year beginning in 2010 to keep pace with inflation. The state, meanwhile, will use the $3.8 billion to complete long-delayed road projects, Daniels said.

At the federal level, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters is overseeing an anti-congestion initiative that will test ideas from both camps, including higher rush-hour tolls and telecommuting agreements with major employers. This summer, a congressional commission is slated to offer a vision for the future of transportation policy in America. Douglas G. Duncan, president of FedEx Freight, testified before that commission in November. He said businesses that over the past several decades developed a sophisticated system of moving goods quickly around the world are finding it increasingly difficult to get through the traffic that is clogging roads -- and railways, seaports, and airports. "We're starting to see a real collision course between these rapid-supply chains and aging infrastructure that is lacking investment and innovation," Duncan said. "I'm afraid if things don't turn around soon, we'll begin turning the clock back."

As several business leaders impressed upon the commission, distance is no longer a primary factor in the modern world economy. Now, travel time is what counts most. [an error occurred while processing this directive]

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