WASHINGTON — Understanding the traffic congestion that smothers most major U.S. cities is a simple numbers game: Since 1960, the U.S. population has grown by 235 million, the number of vehicles on roads has increased by 179 million and they travel almost 2.2 trillion miles farther.
Yet the network of roads to handle those burgeoning numbers grew by just 15 percent during those 55 years. Already lagging behind the demand, and with hundreds of thousands of miles in need of repair, the roads will be asked to absorb a population expected to swell by an additional 100 million in the next 50 years.
“Highways are incredibly important, but we have spent decades trying to solve every mobility need with big roads, and it hasn’t worked,” said Kevin DeGood of the Center for American Progress. “What we need is a system that provides people with real choice.”
DeGood co-wrote a report released Wednesday that challenges the status quo in transportation thinking and debunks the belief that highways can pay for themselves while public transit cannot.
“While roads have never paid for themselves, there was a time when user fees covered a larger share than they do today,” he said.
The report arrives at a time when traditional thinking on transportation is under challenge, an era that may be viewed in hindsight as pivotal in reshaping the transportation landscape.
If that becomes its legacy, the moment was born out of necessity. The systems that allow people to get from place to place are pinched between a critical need for fresh cash and a reality that the approaches that have worked for 60 years may not sustain future growth.
Throw into the caldron technology’s proven ability to alter everything, and the stage is set for an evolutionary approach.
“The growth we’re having in this country can’t be met with current resources,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in an interview this month.
The need for a new source of transportation funding is under discussion in Washington this week, where lawmakers face a May deadline to come up with a plan before current funding expires.
Foxx is preparing an outline for the nation’s transportation future that he hopes will start a discussion on how to shape transportation planning.
“The idea that we’re looking at the system comprehensively is the thrust of this report,” he said. “Transportation is a system of systems. They connect and they’re related. What happens if we mesh these trends?”
Some trends already seem established. People are moving back into cities, and driving has declined by almost 9 percent since 2004. Suburbia, however, hasn’t lost is allure, and projections suggest that much population growth will come in existing urban areas.
The Eno Center for Transportation last month suggested a shift from the gas-tax-based Highway Trust Fund to a system that draws transportation money from general tax revenue.
“Maintaining the status quo will continue to produce funding uncertainty,” Eno said in a report.
