Transport Link

The 31-County Region

The NY/NJ/CT Regional Overview is a regional database of demographic and land use characteristics and transport infrastructure and operations for 31 counties in the tri-state area. The data have been assembled by Konheim & Ketcham in a geographic information system (GIS) from 1990 Census data and from transportation planning and operating agencies in the region. Lying within this data are a number of significant finds, including clues for controlling sprawl and smart card systems.

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The Regional Perspective

The metropolitan area is divided into four essential zones, based on common attributes of population density, development, transit access and auto use.

Extensive data on economic and demographic characteristics that affect travel in the New York Region is contained in the regional GIS. A sample of the available data can be seen in the Kings County data which was extracted from the regional GIS.

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Brooklyn’s Lagging Economy

Brooklyn is home to 30% of the city’s residents and 35% of its youth. Yet, of the 31 counties in the tri-state metropolitan area, it is the only one for which the forecast is for essentially flat growth over the next decades. By 2020, Brooklyn, alone will have fewer jobs than in 1970 and the least growth in population. Transport link is in the belief burgeoning foreign-born population is least prepared for the service economy that now dominates both the borough and the region, resulting in wage growth in recent years that is far lower than in the rest of the city.

Transfer payments from government account for 30% of total income, reflecting the 30% of Brooklyn’s population living in poverty, who are further jeopardized by cuts in welfare and housing assistance. Brooklyn’s image as a borough of homeowners is belied by the fact that 73% of households are renters, who are penalized by the one indicator that Brooklyn is the strongest in the city, the increasing value of its residential properties, especially those of small dwellings that characterize Brooklyn’s housing stock.

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The Regional Transportation System

Konheim & Ketcham has developed a unique database that incorporates the multiple elements which make up the NY/NJ/CT regional transportation system. Maps and data from numerous transportation agencies have been integrated into a regional GIS that displays the regional transit network and contains physical and operating characteristics of all the routes in the tri-state area.

The GIS of the roadway network in the 31-county region was built on a 23-county GIS that Konheim & Ketcham developed for TRANSCOM to identify critical corridors for use of intelligent transportation systems. The database contains 46 physical and operating characteristics by 5-mile links of all major state roads. The following maps show the 31-county network and highlight those routes in the 23-county region with recurring congestion during peak hours and those where frequent traffic incidents cause congestion. It is evident that in all corridors with chronic congestion, there are almost no parallel roads that are not also congested.

Access to a regional GIS enables officials and the public to better evaluate proposed transportation projects in the context of their setting and in relation to other projects. A prototype on-line system based on this idea, accessible via WesTIP, presents the five-year Transportation Improvement Program for Westchester County, NY. This site was developed by Konheim & Ketcham with a U.S.DOT Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I Grant.

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Regional Transportation Plan

To qualify for federal funds, states are required to prepare long-range transportation plans to maximize the use of existing facilities, to implement congestion management strategies, and to affect land use and urban development through transportation policy.

As part of Public Participation in the Regional Transportation Planning Process, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) solicited public comment on the Draft Plan. The following comments were submitted by Carolyn Konheim and Brian Ketcham on July 14, 1999.

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As part of Public Participation in the Regional Transportation Planning Process, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Council (NYMTC) solicited public comment on the Draft Plan.  The following comments were submitted by Carolyn Konheim and Brian Ketcham on July 14, 1999.

Overview:  The Plan Provides an Informative View of the Region

Overall, Mobility for the Millennium (MM) is a major advance over the preceding Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) and articulates admirable goals and objectives, even though they tend to be more general and tentative than those that shape transportation plans of other world cities.  (In comparison to the plan for London, for example, to control vehicle miles traveled to 1998 levels, MM’s goal is:

- To increase levels of mobility with a focus on non-single occupant auto travel.)  While Chapter 3 of the RTP begins to relate selected programs and projects to the goals and travel needs, it is does not describe a comprehensive plan.  One New York City initiative,

- Developing Mass Retail, even runs counter to the stated goals and objectives, as explained below.  Many important system expansions are described in the section of MM, The Future of Transportation, but there is no Infrastructure goal that calls for expansion of the transit system.

The demographics and travel trends, particularly the identification of work travel markets, are illuminating, but they do not characterize the disparities in income and resources that determine so much of the quality of life in different parts of the region.  In general, the deficiency of the Plan is more what is missing than that which is articulated.

Primary among the deficiencies is lack of discussion of the non-work travel that accounts for three-quarters of trips made in the region, any specificity about the MTA’s short and long-term strategic plan, the financing of projects, and the relationship between transport and the region’s overarching problems.

Supplemental Effort Needed to Fulfill Intent of a Regional Strategic Plan

Since the purpose of the RTP is to provide the framework for evaluating, prioritizing and financing transportation investments, it would be helpful to prepare a companion document that would define travel needs in the context of the region’s fundamental challenges. Doing so now is propitious because it could take advantage of the household travel survey that could provide an understanding of the predominant non-work travel patterns.   It could also take advantage of data assembled for, but not fully reported in, the Four World’s Cities Transport Study.  A strategic plan needs to begin with a situation analysis, a definition of the fundamental issues facing the region.  NYMTC has a wealth of Census data in geographic information system (GIS) format that, displayed in GIS maps, would rapidly convey the distribution of current attributes and future characteristics of the region.

Much of this should be generated by the upcoming Internet Database Management project.  A plan for a region as important as New York should assess the position of the region in relation to the national and international economies, as specifically called for by the FHWA and FTA in their review of NYMTC.   It needs a characterization of resources, i.e., a description of the transport systems and the service providers, and an analysis of available financing.

The GIS underlying the Best Practices Model could surely display routes of recurring congestion and transit crowding.  If these were overlain with current and future trip tables, along with planned capacity improvements, a spatial array of the major alternative investments under consideration would be much easier to prioritize than the verbal descriptions in MM.

Mobility for the Millennium devotes a great deal of attention to improving the regional planning process with the goals of greater coordination with other Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) and of more effectively engaging both elected officials and community leaders in making future transport investment decisions.  NYMTC might take a leaf from the United Kingdom that encourages the formation of Regional Development Associations to develop integrated regional transport and land use plans.  As much as it would have been desirable for the RTP to have been formulated with broad public input, in order that it achieve a longevity that sustains political shifts, it is commendable that NYMTC views the plan as a dynamic process that can be improved through meaningful public involvement.

In making these recommendations, however, NYMTC must be mindful of the overwhelming consensus of those who have examined NYMTC operations (FHWA/FTA, the New York City Council, and the Council on Transportation) that opinion Readers will only invest their limited time in forums where decisions are being made.  So long as people perceive that the real priorities are being set by ad hoc political decisions, the RTP and the regional process that produces the TIP, the UPWP, CMAQ and other investment plans will be considered peripheral and not worth the effort to participate.  A step in this direction would be to support more community-initiated CMAQ and Enhancement applications.

One way to counteract the view that NYMTC operates at the margin would be to undertake a more ambitious reformulation of the RTP, but one that would really fulfill the intent of TEA-21.   If the RTP were to provide a vision of a region that addresses the disparities in income, quality of schools, affordable housing, job opportunities, and access to open space that diminish our economic competitiveness, and were to offer ways that land use and transportation can help to meet our needs, the leading stakeholders and opinion makers of the region would be obligated to become engaged in the ongoing planning process.

In other world cities, regional planners are dealing with the forces of outward sprawl, which they recognize as unsustainable, by redirecting growth to major centers of mixed-use development around regional rail nodes in the ring of older urban areas surround the center.  Community Board level involvement would begin with a bottom-up identification of local needs, similar to the 197-a process.  This kind of input could be generated by each planning entity in the region, much as can be found on dozens of local government web sites of the region around London.  It is evident that these plans are being developed with technical assistance.  Of course, local planners need access to data on regional constraints and trends, information that will become available with the Internet Database that is planned.  They need to understand the full costs of travel, so that they can be informed about the social, environmental and economic consequences of their transport choices.

With broad involvement and sign-off of such a  Plan, the justification for financing transport would be compelling.  Lacking this clear connection with larger political needs, the priorities for allocating resources to transport is a perpetual ad hoc struggle.  However, were we to achieve broad public consensus on a development plan, it would sustain electoral changes and provide stability for long-term financing.  The example of Paris and Tokyo, and recently, London in adopting and implementing such plans demonstrates that they are achievable even in complex metropolitan areas.

Political leaders and the media would also be compelled into giving attention to the planning process if all decisions were clearly tied to their fiscal consequences, as required by TEA-21. The entire financing section of the RTP needs much discussion of system needs, funding sources and opportunities for alternative funding methods.  Prominent among these is increased involvement of the private sector, the predominant method of financing transport and development in London and Tokyo.

Private sector involvement, however, requires two elements missing in the current environment:  a clear public consensus for specific development plans and the transport systems to support them; and a reliable source of revenues from users of the transport systems.   If the public were to understand that the real direct cost of transportation in the tri-state metropolitan area is $140 billion, they could see that modest shifts over time, through strategies, such as roadway pricing, would ultimately be beneficial to community and household budgets.

Understanding Underlying Economic Forces

As it is now, the basic planning decisions are made by hundreds of local governments, without any regional framework, who are easy prey for developers’ ploys to add to property tax coffers or go elsewhere.  And so, in the competition for ratables that determine everything from the quality of education to the viability of retirement life, planning boards everywhere capitulate to helter-skelter development that eventually clogs our roadways and generates one-fifth of the world’s global warming gases.

But even if we were to institute a regional tax base, individual households would still find it economically compelling to join the outward spiraling sprawl due to three unique pillars of the American economy. Unlimited home mortgage deductions, cheap energy, and gasoline taxes dedicated to highways pose politically unchallengeable incentives to building big homes on big lots and bigger roads for our big SUVs to reach them.

We need a solution that will send the long-term signals to families to make choices about where to live that, over time, will roll-back sprawl, excess travel, and Americans� disproportionate contribution to global warming.

One win-win approach is to institute a gradually increasing fee on the carbon content of fuels that would be earmarked to retire the national debt.  Predictable increases in the cost of fossil fuels would prompt families and businesses to plan more energy-efficient futures.

Elimination of the nation’s $5 trillion national debt (and consequent debt service covered by federal taxes) would enable income taxes to be cut by about a quarter, without forsaking federal programs that Americans value, possibly redirecting some to reduce reliance on local property taxes.   If these elements were tied together, the increase of disposable income would offset the economic drag of global warming control measures that only increase energy prices.

At the same time, the higher cost of energy would defuse the inflation effects of a straight tax cut.  Unless we devise measures such as these to tackle the economic underpinnings of sprawl, the increasing lament over growing sprawl and our inaction on climate change will accomplish little.

Contradictory Element of Mobility for the Millennium

While there are missing elements in the RTP, nothing is objectionable except the section in Chapter 3, which is a de-facto endorsement of more big-box retail stores, and is contrary to the land use goals for less auto dependent, mixed-use clustered development.  Carried to its conclusion, the New York region will get another 20 million square feet of big-box retail, producing a billion VMT, a third in New York City if current City policy is carried out.

This will add thousands of tons of ozone precursors a year along with billions of dollars in annual externality costs in the form of increased congestion and lost productivity, increased traffic accidents, plus the health consequences of increased air pollution concentrations and traffic noise.  If the strategy were to remain in the RTP, it would have to include extensive mitigating strategies to offset the increased VMT, emissions and detriment to pedestrian-oriented neighborhood retail.

The reported justification is shoppers driving outside the city to shop.  However, there is no evidence that this is a serious problem other than a Forest City report that has never been made public for independent scrutiny.  Certainly, out of $50 billion in annual retail sales in New York City, maybe $2 billion is “leaking” out.  But this pales in comparison with the total retail sales in the city, especially when you consider the proportion of this retail activity attributable to non-city residents.  It is also trivial in comparison with the $80 billion in payroll the is also “leaking out” of New York City, further encouraged by the loss of our commuter tax, a further loss of $360 million a year for which the rest of us (NYC residents and employers) will have to pay in increased taxes.