Category Archives: SEWRPC

A trip down memory lane: SEWRPC still silly

Posted on by
Reply

Before the Wisconsin Department of Transportation strips money from schools, health care and tax credits for the poor to pay for bigger freeways, let’s take a trip down memory lane to review a number the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission used to justify this concrete binge.

SEWRPC said gasoline prices would remain steady at $2.30 a gallon — in 2005 dollars — through 2035.

Hmmm. Lots of people giggled at that, but SEWRPC officials said they were very good at projections and were historically right about these types of things. They insisted they would never, ever, ever lowball gas prices to pump their traffic projections to to justify freeway expansion, which was clear for years they would endorse no matter what the facts were.

Here’s the bottom line: gasoline that was $2.30 per gallon in 2005, if SEWRPC were correct, would be $2.59 today.

Right.

You go, guys.

The JS on tolls

Posted on by
Reply

The JS is fine with destroying neighborhoods, increasing flooding in neighborhoods, tearing up crucial wetlands, making more kids sick with asthma, potentially increasing birth defects and pumping more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere as long as some drivers pay a few bucks for the privilege.

Yes, the editorial board has endorsed freeway Lexus lanes, again misquoting poor retired Phil Evenson, formerly executive director of the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission, in an unconvincing effort to justify its position. Lexus lanes are freeway lanes that allow those with enough cash to buy their way out of the traffic jams the rest of us must sit in.

The paper pretends that the only cost of additional freeway lanes is the cost to build them. There are loads of additional costs in health and environmental and economic consequences that are well-documented and should be considered, but are simply ignored by the paper. In its increasingly right-wing view, the massive cost of a convenience for a few should be externalized to the community at large.

And while freeway expansion advocates long have argued that more lanes will ease congestion (they don’t, by the way), even that alleged benefit is passe for Lexus lane advocates. By their own accounts, traffic in the untolled lanes remains congested — defeating the entire purpose of freeway expansion in the first place.

Toll advocates say that excess revenue could be used to fund mass transit. In Minnesota, though, that excess revenue amounts to a mere $300,000 a year, an amount that does not come close to what the Milwaukee County Transit System needs to stay afloat, much less operate at an optimal level. Inflicting great damage on neighborhoods to provide a quick rides through them to a relatively few people who mostly — by a large margin — don’t live there is simply a bad idea. Funneling the leftover pocket change to transit doesn’t make that stinky proposal smell any sweeter.

Finally, Phil Evenson did not endorse Lexus lanes during his 2008 remarks. Evenson made that clear way back then. Shame on the JS for again misrepresenting his remarks.

Walker’s toll lanes

Posted on by
2

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker last week endorsed the creation of Lexus lanes, which are freeway way lanes that allow rich folk to pay tolls to move faster than the rest of us.

The story was reported by the JS’ Patrick Marley rather inadequately, uncritically and without not a single question about details. Like, um, Scott, do you support Lexus lanes in addition to the Milwaukee-area freeway expansion recommended by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission?

If so, do you think the additional debt service required for the fifth lane will harm the state’s bond rating? How much damage to neighborhoods and the environment around freeways are you willing to cause so that certain people can drive faster?

If the intent of the new toll lane is to allow those who can pay to travel faster than everybody else, then obviously the tolls have to be set high enough to discourage everybody from using the toll lane. If you are not planning to expand the freeways from three to five lanes and intend only to expand from three to four lanes and limit the fourth lane to toll-payers, how will you ease congestion in the other three lanes? Or are you suggesting the reality — that Milwaukee-area congestion is not bad enough to warrant construction of a fourth toll-free lane?  In that case, until the toll question is settled, shouldn’t the freeway expansion projects underway and being planned be cancelled?

If Walker simply wants to go ahead and build a fourth lane for rich people, the health and environmental impacts likely will be worse than if he builds a fourth lane for everyone. Under the toll scenario, there will be three lanes of stalled traffic belching out poisons and additional drivers zipping along emitting bad things, but perhaps at a lower rate. All the bad things associated with freeway expansion, like loss of wetlands and increased flooding, will occur, but any benefits will accrue to a much smaller group of drivers.

Walker’s idea is really pretty atrocious. A few folk reap the benefits, the public writ large pays the cost. Maybe that formula is now so common it’s not newsworthy any more.

Obama’s $50 billion

Posted on by
4

President Obama used a Labor Day appearance here to announce that he wants to spend $50 billion on infrastructure over six years.

Hold the applause, please, at least until we get the details.

First, Republicans don’t like the plan, announcing that it is dead on arrival. Republicans don’t like anything Obama does, so the opposition isn’t new. It still could be significant, though.

Second, it’s not really very much money. $50 billion nationwide over six years. The fine folks at the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission told us seven years ago that spending $6 billion in a small area of a smallish state to rebuild and unnecessarily expand freeways is such a minor consideration that it need not be mentioned in surveys measuring support for the $6 billion effort.

Just kidding. The SEWRPC freeway study planning process, as we all know, was a joke driven by road builders and HNTB (sponsors of the broken Marquette Interchange ramp) to justify a conclusion already reached by road builders and HNTB.  (See how it works? HNTB helps SEWRPC conclude that freeway expansion is needed and then grabs the design contracts for the resulting projects. Sweeeeet.)

What is serious is that $50 billion over six years over 50 states is less than it might first appear. Economist Dean Baker says it is 1.4% of the federal budget and adds:

It is also equal to about 4 percent of the $1.2 drop in annual demand (@ $600 billion in lost consumption and $600 billion in reduced construction) due to the collapse of the housing bubble.

Obama says the $50 billion, targeted at transportation, would be the first phase of an infrastructure bank. But adding $50 billion in spending is just wasting a lot of it if it isn’t spent well. And highway spending, in this country, isn’t done well.

According to the Government Accountability Office report, Highway Trust Fund: Nearly All States Received More Funding Than They Contributed in Highway Taxes Since 2005:

As we have reported, for many surface transportation programs, goals are numerous and conflicting, and the federal role in achieving the goals is not clear. Many of these programs have no relationship to the performance of either the transportation system or of the grantees receiving federal funds and do not use the best tools and approaches to ensure effective investment decisions.15 Our previous work has outlined the need to create well defined goals based on identified areas of federal interest and a clearly defined federal role in relation to other levels of government.16 We have suggested that where the federal interest is less evident, state and local governments could assume more responsibility, and some functions could potentially be assumed by the states or other levels of government.17 Furthermore, incorporating performance and accountability for results into transportation funding decisions is critical to improving results.

So major jobs program? Absolutely, yes. But spending large, but insufficient sums in the usual ways that don’t produce the desired results? Absolutely, no. Please. Let’s get it right.

SEWRPC’s $1,000 dinner

Posted on by
Reply

Jim Rowen has the scoop on the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission’s self-indulgent, taxpayer-funded thousand-dollar dinner at the University Club.

Sounds likely that there was a quorum of some SEWRPC committee or task force or perhaps the commission itself at that dinner. Seems to me that it probably should have been noticed as a public meeting under the Open Meetings Law, but I don’t see any notice of a University Club dinner on the SEWRPC web site.

Whoops!