Nix to TRAX: More roads the solution to traffic congestion
Paul T. Mero
Article Last Updated:12/02/ 2006 01:53:48 PM MST

It's not difficult for light rail transit to look successful when
Salt Lake City sets the bar so low." This is the comment of Sam
Staley, co-author of an insightful new book on transportation policy
titled, The Road More Traveled: Why the Congestion Crisis Matters
More Than You Think and What We Can Do About It.
Frankly, nearly everything Utahns have been told about light-rail
transit as the savior of our congestion woes is false. The truth is
that new funds should focus nearly exclusively on more roads and more
rights-of-way if we are truly interested in solving the very real
problem of growing congestion. TRAX expansion is the last thing we
should do.
Here are some things to consider at the water cooler (and what
TRAX advocates and their marketing firms hope you never learn):
Despite transit (light rail) funding increasing seven-fold since
the 1960s, the percentage of people using it has fallen nationwide by
63 percent. Despite the broad misconception, only a quarter of New
Yorkers use transit to get to work, only 11 percent in Chicago, and
no other metro area even breaks double digits.
Americans use transit for only 1.5 percent of their trips;
telecommuters actually outnumber people who use transit in over half
of the nation's largest metro areas. The rest of the world is no
different; transit accounted for 25 percent of all European travel in
1970, while today it accounts for only 16 percent.
And the 800-pound gorilla in the room, light-rail transit, does
not relieve congestion.
There are many conflated arguments within the "congestion"
debate, and purposely so. Professional advocates of light rail and
their ad agencies, all of whom will grow in money and power, want
Utahns to think that this issue is so complicated that only "experts"
have the solution. Here is the simple truth:
Does the Salt Lake City metro area, running from Davis County
down to Utah County, suffer from traffic congestion? Yes. Will
expanding light-rail transit relieve this congestion? No. Will more
roads relieve this congestion? Yes.
It's that simple.
The problem with Utah's transportation policy is that we don't
really have one. Mass transit, mostly bus service, was created and is
still important as a means for poorer people to stay mobile. Sound
transportation policy addresses broader community needs but
appropriately specifies a government role in the case of Utah's poor
and needy. The mass-transit question is how do we give fuller
mobility to our poorest and neediest of neighbors?
Mass transportation policy is social policy (i.e., how we provide
more mobility to people without private or affordable access to it).
Economic development policy is something else (i.e., how we create
tax and regulatory environments to encourage new business
development) .
Transit advocates such as the Salt Lake Chamber and the UTA
conflate a multitude of issues to muddy the debate. They rest their
case not on helping our neighbors in need or economic development.
They address an entirely different question: How do we relieve
congestion? Worst of all, their answer is one totally without merit:
light-rail expansion. So these champions of Utah commerce are not
only asking the wrong questions, they are answering them incorrectly.
If traffic congestion is the real problem, then let's be honest
about real solutions. Light-rail transit does not relieve traffic
congestion. More roads do. If economic development is the real
problem, then cut taxes (especially repeal the corporate income tax),
quit spending tax dollars like a drunken sailor and encourage
flexible local planning. A needlessly expensive, endlessly
subsidized, fixed and limited-use light rail is a totally impractical
solution for any problem TRAX advocates claim we face.
Commuters want congestion relief in their cars, not from their
cars. The new money should go to new roads. That's what voters were
saying.
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* PAUL T. MERO is president of the Sutherland Institute, a
conservative public policy think tank.