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Institute of Transportation Engineers

Multimodal Approaches To Addressing Congestion
By Michael S. Townes

The ITE 2007 Technical Conference and Exhibit was held in cooperation with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). FHWA’s sponsorship of four transportation professionals at the conference assisted ITE in sharing information and continuing the dialogue generated on congestion issues. During the closing session of the Technical Conference, professionals shared their perspectives on the presentations they heard. ITE continues the dialogue via this special issue of ITE Journal and four ITE Web briefings on congestion issues.

I admit it. I came to the ITE 2007 Technical Conference and Exhibit with a bias. When ITE gathered in San Diego, CA, USA, March 25–28, 2007 with the theme, “Managing Congestion—Can We Do Better?” it was my belief was that the conference would have an almost exclusive focus on facilitating the automobile. My bias led me to believe that I would hear a series of sessions centered on enhancing the primacy of the automobile and how to move more of them in and around the world’s urban areas.

I was wrong. I found a completely different mindset. I found an organization of professionals seeking to inform its members on multifaceted solutions to mitigating congestion. These professionals were seeking to improve mobility by using all the tools available.

As a transit professional, I was impressed that many presenters encouraged the use of transit solutions as a positive approach to improving some factors that contribute to congestion.

As an invited observer of the ITE 2007 Technical Conference and Exhibit, I was asked to follow and comment on the multimodal strategies/parking professional development track. There were seven sessions over two days:

The program was well structured. The session entitled “Can Parking Pricing Reduce Congestion?” was held in a very productive format in which the main presenter/facilitator was seated in the center of a room with chairs in a circular arrangement around him. The presenter, Patrick Siegman, facilitated an energetic, interactive discussion. This session focused on the fact that only 1 percent of automobile trips in the United States involve paid parking.

Except in circumstances where parking availability is severely constrained, businesses view free parking as essential and motorists view it as a right. Free parking is the product of long-standing cultural attitudes, land use patterns and the availability of space. Consequently, free parking contributes to congestion because it induces unintended consequences such as substantial increases in drive-alone rates.

The belief in the right to free parking is reflected in many social structures, including municipal law. The overwhelming majority of cities have enforced minimum parking requirements in development codes since the early 1900s. Employers have provided free parking as an employee benefit and the federal government has subsidized this activity by providing employers with tax benefits.

The topics in this session were closely related to those explored in the session entitled “Curbside/Parking Strategies and Performance Pricing,” which was expertly moderated by Ahmed E. Aburahmah and included three compelling presenters in a traditional format.

The cross-cutting conclusions between these two sessions were that appropriate parking price policies have a measurable impact on congestion. There was a suggestion that parking should never be free. With regard to curbside parking in areas of high parking demand, there was a consensus that market pricing practices should be employed. It was suggested that, were this the case, curbside parking would be priced higher than off-street parking lots in light of its greater value.

Parking management techniques have a pronounced impact on congestion. For example, I learned that one factor that increases congestion is the tendency of motorists to circle the block waiting for curbside parking to become available. Pricing and timing strategies that lead to an average of one empty space per block tend to significantly reduce congestion. The proper pricing of municipally-controlled parking can produce substantial revenue, which could be used to employ other congestion relief methods such as traffic demand management and transit.

In “Case Studies for Special Events,” the conferees were treated to a session on how to manage congestion related to special events such as festivals, sporting events and even mega-events such as the Olympic Games or political conventions. This session also dealt with unforeseen special events such as disasters. There was an additional presentation regarding encroachment on neighborhoods by people seeking nearby recreational opportunities, thus creating localized congestion, parking problems and intrusion on private property.

In this session, one statement resonated highly with me. Henry de Vries, operations coordinator of the I-95 Coalition for the New York State Police, asserted that proper preparation for scheduled special events is the key to dealing with disasters. The key to preparation for any event is the development of strong working relationships with law enforcement, first responders, traffic managers and event coordinators.

In my current position as a transit manager, the session entitled “HOV and Managed Lanes—Supporting BRT” was most timely. All of the presenters were extremely compelling in relating how managed lanes and BRT work together to result in a significant positive impact on congestion.

The consensus among the presenters was that transit is a key element of the most successful high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) operations, while HOV lanes play an indispensable role in the successful operation of many BRT systems, in that they provide the infrastructure for fixed guideway and other intelligent transportation systems. They agreed that congestion pricing strategies and managed lane operations have a significantly better chance of success when implemented together. Managed HOV lanes, which employ tolling strategies, benefit from the increased capacity BRT operations provide. BRT operations can derive financial support from the revenues generated by tolls. This symbiotic relationship provides an attractive win/win scenario.

All of the presenters were excellent, but the compelling case and passion for integrated, multimodal approaches to address urban congestion demonstrated by Katherine Turnball and George Darido made good, common sense to me.

The “Impacts of Congestion and Delay on Goods Movement” session was quite interesting. One theme that came from this session is that commute and freight movement problems are adjoined. This is true is because of highway bottlenecks, which are caused by specific points on highway systems that are badly broken. The overwhelming majority of these broken points are in urban areas and are easily identified—with the worst ones occurring at freeway-to-freeway interchanges. The panelists discussed the tremendous growth in truck traffic in the next decade and beyond. These tremendous increases will put significantly more stress on an already overwhelmed system.

The panelists also discussed research documenting the high cost of the delays experienced at border points in cross-border freight movements and documenting the growing viewpoints among truckers that urban congestion is the number one challenge they face and that the challenge is growing worse. We also heard about the growing difficulty of accommodating the unloading of trucks in dense urban core areas, which also compounds congestion.

All of the sessions shared some common themes with regard the best approaches to mitigate the growing challenges of congestion:

In summary, I found the sessions interesting and informative. The presentations were well prepared and thoughtfully presented. There is great value in having our transit planning and engineering staffs participate in ITE. I definitely will make efforts to have appropriate staff from my agency participate. I will seek opportunities for greater cooperation and coordination between ITE and the American Public Transportation Association—these two organizations have shared interests in research, legislation and regulation—and I will work to see that these potential areas of cooperation are explored.

Michael S. Townes is president/chief executive officer of Hampton Roads Transit in Hampton, VA, USA. He has devoted his career to public transportation over the past three decades. He currently serves as first-vice chair of the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) Executive Committee. In October 2007, he will assume the role of chair for the APTA Executive Committee.