Latest / Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations / Does the Road Go On Forever? We can’t just pave our way out of traffic congestion.

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Does the Road Go On Forever? We can’t just pave our way out of traffic congestion. · Thinking Transportation: Engaging Conversations about Transportation Innovations

• 0:15
  Bernie Fette (host): Hello.
• 0:16
  Bernie Fette (host): Welcome to thinking transportation, a podcast about how we get ourselves and the things we need from one place to another.
• 0:24
  Bernie Fette (host): I'm your host, Bernie Fette, editor-at-large at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.
• 0:31
  Bernie Fette: We're about a year into the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 0:35
  Bernie Fette: Hardly a day has passed since then that we haven't talked about, or at least thought about, how much we really want things to get back to normal.
• 0:43
  Bernie Fette: Normal visits to restaurants and sporting events, normal encounters with our friends and maybe even normal encounters with strangers too--but normal traffic?
• 0:53
  Bernie Fette: Maybe not so much.
• 0:56
  Bernie Fette: Roadway gridlock today looks pretty much the same as it did before the lockdown last spring.
• 1:03
  Bernie Fette: That's when traffic jams were costing the average American about a thousand dollars and more than 50 hours of lost time, every year.
• 1:13
  Bernie Fette: A lot of things about life have been changed forever, but traffic congestion just might end up being one of the few things that remains pretty much the same as we've always known it to be.
• 1:26
  Bernie Fette: Does that mean that we have to deal with traffic congestion in the same way?
• 1:30
  Bernie Fette: That we have to manage it the same way?
• 1:33
  Bernie Fette: Well, if you ask David Schrank, the answer is maybe not.
• 1:39
  Bernie Fette: David is a senior research scientist at TTI, and he's been studying traffic jams for most of the 30 years he's been in this business.
• 1:48
  Bernie Fette: David, thank you for joining us.
• 1:51
  David Schrank (guest): Glad to be here.
• 1:54
  Bernie Fette: Well, can you start by helping us understand simply why traffic keeps getting worse?
• 2:01
  Bernie Fette: How did we get ourselves into this mess?
• 2:04
  David Schrank: Traffic gets worse because the population grows in an area.
• 2:07
  David Schrank: And with that, economic activity picks up.
• 2:09
  David Schrank: It takes more housing, it takes more businesses, it takes more office space and all the traffic that's associated with those various land uses.
• 2:20
  David Schrank: Transportation planning can often take five, ten years for a solution to be planned all the way till it is on the ground and helping.
• 2:31
  David Schrank: And in that time, if you think about it, the traffic can grow at one or two percent a year, is kind of the traditional thinking.
• 2:38
  David Schrank: That could be 10 or 20 percent between the time that project is planned until it is implemented.
• 2:47
  David Schrank: And with that, so we can oftentimes sort of lose ground and we see traffic congestion grow as we're coming through these cycles of adding more transportation system to handle that demand.
• 3:01
  Bernie Fette: So from what you're describing, it sounds like we're always playing catch-up to some degree.
• 3:07
  Bernie Fette: So that's how we got into this mess.
• 3:10
  Bernie Fette: And so can you tell us now, how do we get out?
• 3:13
  Bernie Fette: What options do we have?
• 3:16
  David Schrank: You mentioned the 30 years we've been doing this.
• 3:18
  David Schrank: In that time, we've said these solutions are a little bit of everything.
• 3:23
  David Schrank: Traditional treatments, like things like construction or mass transportation and those sorts of things along with the improved technologies that we have today with, with the computing side of transportation, um, we need more of those things, all of them.
• 3:41
  Bernie Fette: So can you talk a little bit about some pros and cons of some of these options?
• 3:46
  Bernie Fette: Do they involve trade-offs?
• 3:50
  David Schrank: So traditionally, when most people think of transportation, they think about adding some kind of a new capacity, meaning a road or a transit line or something like that.
• 4:06
  David Schrank: Those can take a lot of time.
• 4:08
  David Schrank: Those can take a lot of resources, meaning capital in order to construct or to implement those treatments.
• 4:16
  David Schrank: Demand management, on the other hand, which is, is managing the travel that's trying to use it.
• 4:24
  David Schrank: Those facilities can be much quicker and potentially cheaper to implement than those traditional, uh, you know, widen the road, add a bus line; add a light rail line-- those kinds of treatments that we think about.
• 4:41
  David Schrank: And with that, the trade-off there is potentially we get a quicker solution that's cheaper as opposed to one of these five- and ten-year multi- million-dollar type investments.
• 4:54
  Bernie Fette: You talk about demand management and, and you describe it as, as this is a kind of a supply and demand picture.
• 5:01
  Bernie Fette: Miles of roadway, if I understand right, that's the supply side and the number of vehicles wanting to use that road space, that's the demand side.
• 5:10
  Bernie Fette: So you sound like you're a fan of focusing more on the demand part of that picture, is that fair to say?
• 5:18
  David Schrank: I'm a fan of using all the options at our disposal.
• 5:21
  David Schrank: And that means keeping with what we've done in the past; we will need more system because we continue to grow in our population and in our economy.
• 5:32
  David Schrank: But at the same time, look at what's happened during this COVID time with the changes that have occurred in our transportation, system with less people driving to work in those peak times as peak six, eight hours a day, when so much demand is placed on our system, when we're all trying to go to work at eight, and we're all trying to leave at five, this demand management, um, can make a big difference at whittling down and shrinking those peak periods.
• 6:04
  Bernie Fette: So it sounds like a very simple and straightforward approach.
• 6:09
  Bernie Fette: Is, is there a hidden challenge here?
• 6:12
  Bernie Fette: How do we actually do what you're suggesting?
• 6:18
  David Schrank: As our budgets are struggling to provide these large investments in transportation across the country, um, there's actually sort of a double-edged sword here.
• 6:28
  David Schrank: As we build more road, there's obviously the maintenance side that comes with that.
• 6:34
  David Schrank: So we have to maintain what was there and now maintain what we've just added.
• 6:38
  David Schrank: So those two things together keep demanding more money, more capital be spent on them.
• 6:46
  David Schrank: Our systems are already, um, so requiring more and more maintenance.
• 6:52
  David Schrank: Our bridge system across the country is taking a lot of resources.
• 6:56
  David Schrank: Now we have very old bridge system that is required to a lot of those to be, uh, replaced and or upgraded.
• 7:05
  David Schrank: So when we're looking at the demand side of the equation, this could free up funds that we were putting into more roads, more transit, more options, and make those dollars go further, because we are now satisfying more demand with less dollars because we are managing that demand.
• 7:31
  Bernie Fette: It sounds like we've already been kind of pushed into doing some of what you're describing.
• 7:37
  Bernie Fette: Is that, is that right?
• 7:39
  David Schrank: In a way COVID forced our hand.
• 7:42
  David Schrank: Um, it demonstrated how we could keep a lot of our workforce at home and keep the economy going.
• 7:49
  David Schrank: Yes, we've struggled here, there; certain sectors have, have struggled with this telework kind of environment, but while this trend is hot right now, and while we are understanding how this works, we should be following up on that to encourage employers, to keep doing this as it is available and an option to their workforce, because in the long run, this will allow us again, free up potential large amounts of money that we're putting into a transportation system that we keep having to expand because of increased demand, increased need for transportation, into now we're managing that demand.
• 8:37
  David Schrank: And because of that, we can stretch those transportation dollars even further.
• 8:42
  David Schrank: It may sound strange, but you could almost incentivize this activity.
• 8:48
  David Schrank: Instead of spending millions and billions of dollars on the transportation system, you could spend a fraction of that encouraging workers to work from home.
• 8:56
  Bernie Fette: And I remember a conversation we had about this not too long ago.
• 9:00
  Bernie Fette: What I remember you saying was, think of all the millions that we spend on building a mile of freeway and think of how many laptops you might be able to buy with the same amount of money.
• 9:13
  David Schrank: Well, that's exactly right.
• 9:14
  David Schrank: If you look at, at sort of what happened when we got the stay at home notices across the country, what we saw is we weren't driving anymore.
• 9:24
  David Schrank: Now we're driving our computers from the house.
• 9:27
  David Schrank: And so to your point, we were investing in our transportation by purchasing laptops and things to stay at home.
• 9:36
  Bernie Fette: Okay.
• 9:37
  Bernie Fette: Part of what you're describing requires or seems to require a pretty dramatic shift in the way that people think about moving about every day.
• 9:48
  Bernie Fette: How do you speak to commuters who are very fine right now with the way that they're getting to work, thank you very much?
• 9:55
  Bernie Fette: How do you, how do you talk to those people?
• 9:58
  David Schrank: I don't know many commuters that really relish the time slogging away in traffic day in and day out.
• 10:05
  David Schrank: If you could tell them they might only have to do that a day or two a week.
• 10:10
  David Schrank: I think that that would resonate well, and that there were a lot better uses of that extra time than the traditional day-to-day slog to work.
• 10:19
  David Schrank: Now you could regain that time and use it to spend with the family or go to dinner early on a given weeknight and other uses that you would rather have for that 30 minutes, hour-long, hour and a half of driving you were doing day in and day out.
• 10:38
  David Schrank: So, I think that there's a lot to be said for, as we come out of this and telework is again optional for us, I think it will have a different appeal than it does when it's sort of forced on us.
• 10:52
  Bernie Fette: Okay.
• 10:53
  Bernie Fette: How does research fit into what you're advocating?
• 10:58
  Bernie Fette: What are you guys studying right now?
• 11:01
  David Schrank: We're actually looking into how COVID travel has changed and varied around the country by region.
• 11:08
  David Schrank: For example, some of the areas that rely heavily on transit, they haven't seen that ridership return.
• 11:15
  David Schrank: So the question is, will it return or what will it look like in years to come?
• 11:20
  David Schrank: In other areas that have an older, an elderly population that are nervous about traveling, they've seen some of their travel down because some of that older elderly population is not on the road as much.
• 11:37
  David Schrank: So again, what does that mean going forward?
• 11:40
  David Schrank: Will they return, or are they becoming used to a world where they don't make that trip on a train every day or they don't drive to satisfy their needs as an older driver?
• 11:56
  Bernie Fette: Okay.
• 11:56
  Bernie Fette: That's what you're working on now.
• 11:57
  Bernie Fette: Do you have in mind, any questions that you guys envision that you're going to need to be asking in the future?
• 12:05
  Bernie Fette: What else is on your research to-do list?
• 12:08
  David Schrank: It's kind of interesting with every positive, there's always a small amount of negatives or things you have to work through.
• 12:16
  David Schrank: One of the things that arises from more people staying home and working from home is that when this becomes optional in the future, what happens when all of those workers decide that today is the day I'm going in; the world has gotten used to a lower amount of commute travel.
• 12:37
  David Schrank: So workers are maybe leaving a half-hour later in the morning to go to work and, and getting home half an hour earlier in the evening.
• 12:47
  David Schrank: Well, now when everybody, all that demand comes back on a given day and the system is not ready for it, the congestion level could actually be worse than it was pre-COVID, because we're not all expecting that on a given day.
• 13:01
  David Schrank: It's like.
• 13:01
  David Schrank: In essence, you have a bunch of incidents happening on your transportation system all at once on a given day.
• 13:08
  David Schrank: So we will have to work through some of those kinds of issues to try to figure out how to keep the system at a sort of normal operating level throughout the day, even if that operating level is a less congested one than we have in today's or our pre-COVID world.
• 13:28
  Bernie Fette: So it sounds like you think that there's still a lot of work to be done on the subject, but we've kind of seen the promise of what could be by or through the example that we've been kind of forced into setting for ourselves.
• 13:42
  David Schrank: I think that's accurate.
• 13:43
  David Schrank: Again, we've, we've developed some momentum here to use this telework, you know, again, forced on us, but now we've learned, and from what we've learned, can we carry that forward and use that to our advantage, to help us with our transportation of the future so that we increase our transportation system by decreasing our transportation demand?
• 14:08
  Bernie Fette: And it's looking like we know how to do that.
• 14:12
  David Schrank: What we've seen on the roads for the past six, nine months is that the peak periods are shorter than they used to be as far as hours of the day.
• 14:23
  David Schrank: And they're not quite as bad and that we won't, we're not going 10, 15 miles an hour, we're going 30 or 40 miles an hour in those peaks.
• 14:31
  David Schrank: So if we can maintain that momentum and keep that going forward, maybe what we've known as our traditional four, five, six, seven, eight hours a day of slogging in traffic can be reduced and shortened and improved going forward so that we don't have to have that situation again.
• 14:52
  Bernie Fette: Talked a lot today about what problems we face and what the possibilities are.
• 14:58
  Bernie Fette: We talk about elevator speeches.
• 14:59
  Bernie Fette: If you just had, you know, half a minute to tell everybody what you think is important here, that we've learned in the last 30 years and the next few years going forward, what are you thinking?
• 15:12
  David Schrank: The transportation system in the U.S.
• 15:15
  David Schrank: going forward is going to need some of everything, just like we have for decades.
• 15:21
  David Schrank: So we will need to continue to build things to add things; but at the same time, maybe we can make some of those improvements, those additions go further by managing demand that's using those systems.
• 15:39
  David Schrank: And in doing that, we have a more all-encompassing transportation system going forward, where we look at both supply and demand.
• 15:49
  David Schrank: We've known about telework and flexible work environment for decades, but we have never really acted on it systemically.
• 15:59
  David Schrank: As I mentioned earlier, COVID has forced our hand, and it's made us implement telework nationwide.
• 16:07
  David Schrank: And because of that, we've learned a lot about what teleworking can do for our transportation system.
• 16:12
  David Schrank: So travel demand management, known as telework and other options like that, should be right up there with every option we look at when there's a transportation need.
• 16:23
  David Schrank: Should we build a road?
• 16:24
  David Schrank: Should we add a rail line?
• 16:26
  David Schrank: Can we do something with telework to make our situation better?
• 16:32
  Bernie Fette: David Schrank is a senior research scientist at TTI.
• 16:35
  Bernie Fette: David, we appreciate you helping us understand all of this just a little more clearly.
• 16:41
  Bernie Fette: Thanks very much for sharing your time with us.
• 16:44
  David Schrank: Appreciate it.
• 16:44
  David Schrank: Anytime, Bernie.
• 16:47
  Bernie Fette: If we had always planned our transportation future by leaning on the past, the saddle and horse carriage industries would be great places to invest your money.
• 16:57
  Bernie Fette: And we'd have an awful lot of manure to scoop up.
• 17:01
  Bernie Fette: Thankfully, we didn't take that path.
• 17:04
  Bernie Fette: We chose to not cling to an old mobility idea just because it had worked for us in the past.
• 17:10
  Bernie Fette: Maybe we should apply the same proactive approach to our mobility needs today and concentrate more on how to use our roads better, not just on how to build more of them.
• 17:23
  Bernie Fette: Thank you for listening.
• 17:25
  Bernie Fette: We hope that you'll subscribe to our podcast and share it, too.
• 17:28
  Bernie Fette: In the next episode of Thinking Transportation, we'll turn our attention to self-driving cars.
• 17:34
  Bernie Fette: And we'll hear from Bob Brydia, who will help us understand why we're still waiting for those cars and why we might be waiting for quite a while longer.
• 17:43
  Bernie Fette: Thinking Transportation is a production of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute, a member of the Texas A&M University System.
• 17:54
  Bernie Fette: T he show is produced and edited by Chris Pourteau.
• 17:57
  Bernie Fette: I'm your writer and host Bernie Fette.
• 18:00
  Bernie Fette: Thanks again for joining us.
• 18:02
  Bernie Fette: See you next time.