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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

The certification process, though, does not mean that SEWRPC is doing a good job. Far from it. The whole review process, in fact,  generally is considered fairly meaningless by metropolitan planning organizations like SEWRPC, according to the Government Accountability Office. Here it is, in gray and white, from the GAO’s September report, “Metroplitan Planning Organizations: Options Exist to Enhance Transportation Planning Capacity and Federal Oversight“:

Most MPOs we interviewed generally view the federal certification reviewsas pro forma in nature and place a greater value on informal assistance from the federal government. Officials in one state said that the most important oversight is the “give and take” between agencies on the various transportation plans they create. This informal interaction allows the oversight agencies to identify issues prior to the formal reviews. Likewise, many federal officials with whom we spoke view informal interactions— such as regular meetings, technical assistance, and review of air quality conformity analyses—as an important aspect of oversight. One FHWA division official we interviewed stated that the benefit of ongoing communication is that problems are identified as they arise and can be addressed well before the certification review or self certification is conducted.

Yup, the very people who are supposed to judge whether SEWRPC (and other MPOs) are doing a good job are the very people working closely with those same MPOs on a day-to-day basis and trying to ensure that problems within the MPOs do not become big enough to earn a mention in recertification reports. Some might call that type of cross-purpose relationship a conflict of interest, but FHWA and FTA do not. In SEWRPC’s case, FHWA official Dwight McComb participated on the federal review team even though he serves on many SEWRPC committees and so was basically reviewing his own work. Citizens Allied for Sane Highways (of which I am co-chair) asked FHWA early in the recertification process to remove McComb from the review team — the agency refused.

The certification process is designed to avoid conflict, GAO said:

“FTA and FHWA officials noted that the process is meant to be collaborative in nature. Therefore, a finding of  noncompliance is as much of a failure on the part of (US) DOT as the MPO, according to a DOT official.”

Fortunately for SEWRPC, according to the GAO, “The current process-oriented approach toward
certification generally focuses on procedural requirements as opposed to performance.” (Emphasis added)

And tough sanctions for doing a lousy job just haven’t happened. The GAO:

FTA and FHWA can withhold apportioned federal highway and transit funds if they determine an MPO is in noncompliance with federal requirements. However, FTA and FHWA officials were unaware of any instance in which an MPO was not certified due to noncompliance during the last 10 years….Because the federal certification is focused on compliance, not outcomes,it is difficult to determine whether federal oversight is improving transportation planning. GAO has previously recommended to DOT, as well as to Congress, that adopting performance measures and goals for
programs can aid in evaluating and measuring the success of the programs, which can lead to better decisions about transportation investments. The procedural focus of the federal certification, and the fact that, according to DOT officials’ knowledge, no MPO has failed to be certified as a result of a certification review also makes it difficult to use the certification results as a performance indicator for MPOs.

It seems almost miraculous, given the extraordinarily low standards set by the federal government in its MPO recertification review process, that SEWRPC got called to task on any issues at all. Heaven knows what a real review by an independent outside agency would reveal.

More here.

The bad news, as blogger Jim Rowen points out, is that the Federal Highway Administration says there are no economically distressed areas in southeastern Wisconsin.

Who needs to involve the public when you’re spending $67.2 million in public money? Not SEWRPC.

Postings here and here.

More here.