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Review of Gridlock: Why we're stuck in traffic and what to do about it. by Randal O'Toole. Cato Institute Press, 2010. ISBN 978-1-935308-23-2returnreturnGridlock by Randal O'Toole is one of a slew of recent books and reports about transportation that has been released in anticipation of federal surface transportation reauthorization, the "highway" bill that is passed every five or six years by Congress which sets federal spending limits and establishes policies for both highway and urban public transit in the United States. This book identifies major problems with US transportation policy, pinning problems on planning and planners, and what it considers their misguided emphasis on rail and land use-based solutions to a variety of problems that would be better addressed without what is dubbed "social engineering" and instead focusing on technology and sound principles of economic efficiency. Reading this book in one-sitting, I found I could not dispute most of the facts brought to bear by the author in support of his case. Where this book will be controversial is in its implicit (and sometimes explicit) underlying preference for a particular set of political values. The book, published by Cato, unapologetically adopts a rationalist libertarian perspective prizing efficiency in government services, minimization of those services, and maximum freedom for travelers, and aims to apply that perspective without modal prejudice. returnreturnWe must begin with a caveat about the title. "Gridlock" in traffic terms is largely hyperbolic, it is seldom the case that cars are unable to move because intersections (on grid networks) are blocked and thereby locked. But the term is used as much to describe traffic as it is to describe the policy process which is stuck, and getting more stuck over time, in what the author views as strategic policy errors. It is really the governance structure for transportation which is in Gridlock. Adopting this title, "Gridlock," suggests that the primary transportation problem is traffic congestion. The subtitle alludes to an earlier book by Anthony Downs "Stuck in Traffic" on the same topic. returnreturnThe first substantive chapter "Land of Mobility" provides an excellent, though brief overview of transportation history in the United States, showing how the national wealth rises with travel speeds, taking snapshots at 50 year intervals. returnreturnIt is the second chapter "Potholes in the Road" where the controversy begins. This author opposes what he views as anti-mobility forces that aim to slow traffic. He takes aims at the infrastructure panic (p. 27), traffic calming (p.32), and accessibility (p.33), among others in a few broadsides that miss their mark in my opinion. "Accessibility" is simply the ability to reach (access) destinations, it is a modally neutral concept that the author conflates with transit and walk accessibility. His use of the term "mobility" (the ability to move on networks) for auto accessibility is needlessly confusing. Why congestion, while annoying and wasteful, should be the central transportation issue, rather than accessibility, which the author elsewhere essentially says increases the productivity of cities, is never made clear. Why the author believes that concern about infrastructure is a "panic", when bridges are in fact crumbling and collapsing, is also not clear. The I-35W Mississippi River Bridge, the most recent, and most noteworthy, of recent infrastructure failures collapsed because of a chain of events, including and beginning with a design mistake, but including every decision not taken which could have discovered and remedied that mistake. It seems as though the author believes if the investment does not add capacity it is waste, not allowing sufficient funds for operations and maintenance.returnreturnThe author then contrasts the "Smart Growth" agenda, promulgated by planners since the mid-1990s with the "efficiency" agenda the author advocates. Smart growth aims to increase densities (build up not out) and support those higher densities with transit. The author notes that these policies are likely to be largely ineffective in changing behavior, and are also likely to be expensive. I am sympathetic with the critique of the overly-prescriptive nature of so-called Smart Growth, I would suggest that instead Smart Prices be implemented, and use those prices (e.g. appropriately set impact fees) which incorporate the full social cost of development (roads, water, sewer, schools, parks, etc. required to accommodate development), to direct development with the invisible hand, allowing developers to decide where it is worth paying the price, and where it is not. returnreturnThe author next takes on fixed rail investments at the urban and inter-urban levels. The author dislikes high speed rail, which he labels "The Next Boondoggle", seemingly the next major infrastructure investment the US will engage in. The problems are many, and follow those of transit, strategic misrepresentation and optimism bias on the part of project promoters, and general ineffectiveness in building a capital intensive mode that is neither faster than its competitors, nor more agile. The author is in my view spot-on in identifying the problems here. These problems arise from the structure of transportation financing in the US, where capital investments are subsidized by the federal government, and so local incentives are quite different from national ones. The incentives of members of Congress do not align with the national interest. returnreturnTwisting conventional wisdom on its head, the author argues that not only are transit and high speed rail more expensive, they are also more environmentally damaging than the auto-highway system. The author argues that technological solutions to pollution, reinforced by government policies like the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, have been very effective, while behavioral solutions have all failed. It is in some ways surprising for the author to be supportive of CAFE, given his opposition to so many others.returnreturnThe author proceeds to describe the funding situation for transportation today, and discusses the question of subsidy and cross-subsidy and the user-fee concept behind the transportation trust fund. About one-fourth of highway user fees are spent on transit projects (despite a transit mode share considerably lower than one-fortieth of all trips or all miles traveled). The cross-subsidies in urban transportation are essentially unidirectional. This helps explain the shortfall the trust fund has seen in recent years, along with the decline in vehicle miles traveled associated with higher gas prices and recession. The fact that there are cross-subsidies should not argue for no additional funding for transit, there may be an economic case for subsidies, but the policy debates devolves from rational argument to name calling (he gets more money than me) pretty quickly. returnreturnSome remedies are proposed. One of the problems is that present-day planning is subjective and misguided. The author argues for what is effectively short-run planning using a rational planning/decision-making process. I tend to agree there is no reason trying to identify problems thirty years from now when there are plenty of problems today laying about unsolved. I believe there is a tendency among planners to bring distant dangers near. The potential would be for a community to establish a vision of where it wants to be, and then to check each decision it makes against that vision (does it move the community closer or farther). That vision would be periodically revisited. That is not however what Mr. O'Toole proposes. He would eliminate the federal requirement for long-term planning (which is fine, I agree that should be a local community decision), but does not even suggest it would be wise to think about long-term impacts of decisions. Many problems in community development are coordination games ... I will build a transportation facility if you build the development, I will build houses if you build offices, etc. There is a role for establishing a vision of the future that people subscribe to so that actions can be more easily coordinated. Visions like this can become self-fulfilling prophesies, hopefully to the betterment of the community.returnreturnAnother remedy is Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), and their promise to increase capacity and safety. The author notes the chicken-and-egg problem of deploying smart cars and smart highways simultaneously, but, inconsistently with his critique of the problem of government management of infrastructure, seems to feel that providing smart highways is an option. At this point in development of ITS, it should be clear that progress will have to be with autonomous vehicles that operate in mixed traffic, the other options are non-starters. It should be noted that my own work with students is cited. While the author is supportive of the technology-fix more than behavioral-fix for addressing transportation problems like pollution and congestion (as am I), only one of many technology-development paths can actually be pursued, and efforts barking up the wrong tree will delay the deployment of the ultimate solution. This is a case where one would think the author would see the difficulties of central planning.returnreturnThe author lays out policy prescriptions, some of which are mainstream among the academic transportation community (allowing road tolls and avoiding earmarks), but others, like eliminating federal planning mandates and clean air requirements, are likely to spark dissent. returnreturnOverall, I think the author over-states the power of planners, and should consider what are the forces the underlie the ability of planners. He suggests citizens are misled by referenda, and the problem is simply the few beneficiaries of expensive investments out-spend the diffuse losers and persuade voters to support them. Certainly that is part of the story, but is there more? Do people perhaps have different values about freedom than the author himself? Is there a possibility that network effects and positive externalities do exist, so that collective action in support of higher densities and transit might create economics spillovers (agglomeration benefits) for everyone? The author admits these exist in New York City. Why cannot similar benefits be attained elsewhere?returnreturnThis is an important contribution to the policy debate, and O'Toole, who writes a blog called "The Anti-planner", brings a fresh and seldom heard perspective grounded in empirical evidence and relentless application of objective analysis drawing from the tradition of Hayek. While many planners may not subscribe to his values, it is crucial they understand the facts laid out, if only to sharpen their own arguments, and disentangle propaganda from reality. returnreturnreturnreturn-- David LevinsonreturnAppears in Issues in Science and Technology

The Box by Marc Levinson (no relation, despite the fact he too writes books on transportation) is a new book on the history of container shipping. It is a fascinating account of this method of shipping's birth in multiple places, but primarily fostered by Malcom McLean, through its growth and expansion, driving the evolution of both the ships that containers sail on as well as the ports at which they are transferred. returnreturnThe book covers topics ranging from labor union issues with automation, the politics of New York as container shipping moved to New Jersey, through the politics of competing standard setting processes that determined the size of containers, and the Vietnam War as the military turned to standardized containers to untangle the shipping mess found in Southeast Asia in the 1960s. returnreturnIt is an exceedingly well-written book that I would recommend to anyone interested in history of technology, transportation, economics, or 20th century American history. It is well researched, with over 85 pages of notes and references (for 278 pages of text). returnreturnThe book, penned by an economist, (in fact, by a writer for The Economist) clearly points out the tradeoffs between fixed and variable costs of moving to this incredibly capital intensive mode, and of the increasing scale of container ships and ports. returnreturnThe conflicts between port uses and other land uses were not brought out as much as it might have been, though the location of new container ports at new sites far from old city centers is an indicator that price of land, as well as institutional legacy, are important costs that central cities impose on trade. returnreturn-- dml

Review of The Economics of Urban Transportation by Kenneth Small and Erik Verhoef Routledge $59.95 ISBN 978-0-415-28515-5 returnreturnThe Economics of Urban Transportation by Kenneth Small and Erik Verhoef is the latest book in the emerging area of transportation economics, and updates and extends Small’s earlier Urban Transportation Economics published in 1992. The book comprises five chapters: Demand, Costs, Pricing, Investment, and Industrial Organization of Transportation Providers. These five chapters cover many of the important transportation economic issues that have emerged in the academic literature over the past three decades, including deregulation, privatization, and road pricing. The book provides the underlying theory that is leading economists, and increasingly policy-makers to examine alternative formulations of transportation systems. It is perhaps most pertinent in the area of road pricing, where a confluence of events, including the opportunities presented by electronic toll collection, continuing congestion, and the coming switch away from gasoline (and thus the gas tax) are making this an issue all transportation professionals will confront in one form or returnanother over the coming decade. returnreturnThe text provides a mainstream treatment of demand, including both aggregate and disaggregate (discrete choice) approaches in an intensively mathematical way (though not to the level of theoretical derivations). The econometrics is also covered in some detail. Helpfully, a list of variables used in the book is provided, though this is four full pages, and is only “selected” variables. returnreturnThe discussion of costs includes accounting, engineering, and economic methods of cost estimating, and consideration of congestion and other externalities, which are important for understanding and developing welfare-maximizing prices. More discussion could have been given to collection costs, the costs of collecting revenue, which are surprisingly large for many toll roads, and could help shape the design of alternative strategies. The chapter does include discussion of economies of scale, which are especially important in public transport economics. Significant attention is also paid to getting the correct technical (engineering) model for underlying economic congestion cost functions. Choosing unrealistic technological functions for use in models of road pricing has historically been a ma jor weakness of transportation economics, and the attempts to rectify it are moving in the correct direction. returnreturnThe chapter on pricing considers the idea of first-best and second-best (how to optimize when dealing with a suboptimal world), which is conceptually important for making economics relevant to policy. returnreturnThere are several qualifications about the use of the book, that may suggest for which classes it is most appropriate, depending on the abilities of the students and the nature of the course. First, the book is math heavy: Chapter 2 numbers 61 equations and Chapter 3 has 44. Nevertheless, the equations are clearly supplemented with graphics that suggest the main idea. Second, the book only peripherally treats game theory, agent-based models, or network structure. It also glosses over the land use - transportation interaction (which of course could consume another book). Finally, for geographers, despite being about transportation economics, the book is not formulated with space and time comprising the structure over which economic transactions take place. returnreturnTransportation economists have had a major effect on policy, and the trend toward modal deregulation and privatization is due to lessons from transportation economics. Yet, given what is known about transportation economics, it may seem surprising that such basic issues like road pricing, which in congested circumstances if efficiently implemented can provide enormous gains, have barely emerged as a policy consideration outside a few central cities, while investment decisions are still so misguided. The problem of course is politics, on which this text says little, but whose absence suggests a fundamental topic: why are political systems at odds with returneconomic efficiency and equity, and how can they be aligned? returnreturnThis text should appear on the shelf of everyone practicing transportation economics, and is likely to become the standard in the field. I plan to use this for the transportation economics course I teach to civil engineering and planning students, and I think it provides a strong technical supplement for a more policy-oriented work like Essays in Transport Economics and Policy by Gomez-Ibanez, Tye, and Winston. returnreturn(review originally appeared in Journal of Transport Geography)

The Geography of Transport Systems. By Jean-Paul Rodrigue, Claude Comtois and Brian Slack. (London and New York: Routledge, 2006). Pp. 284. $ 51.95. ISBN 0-415-35441-2 returnreturnThis book is a nice synthesis of concepts, methods, conventional as well as contemporary issues related to transport geography. The companion website of the book “Transport Geography on the Web” initiated in 1997 to provide online educational materials of this discipline. Based on the impressive popularity this online tutorial has gained over the last ten years, the authors continued to develop it into the present book. The book’s ten chapters are well illustrated with informative data, figures, and tables, which can be further organized in four parts. Chapters 1-3 comprising the first part discuss the spatial and economic nature of transport systems, setting out background and framework for the book. Chapter 1 takes a holistic view of transport geography as related to other disciplines, and introduces the definition, concepts and dimensions of this interdisciplinary field. A retrospect of the evolution of transport systems is also provided. Chapter 2 examines transportation systems as networks in their commercial environment, and elaborates the relationship between transport supply and demand. Chapter 3 investigates how transport systems are related to economic development, spatial organization and location factors. The second part introduces two essential components of transport systems: transportation modes and terminals. Based on an overview of major transport modes, Chapter 4 discusses both modal competition and cooperation (“intermodalism”). Chapter 5, on the other hand, examines the functional and spatial character of transport terminals. return returnThe third part introduces transport systems at different spatial scales. Chapter 6 is concerned with intercontinental and inter-regional transportation. An introduction to international transportation follows the discussion of globalization and international trade. Issues on commodity chain and logistics in inter-regional freight transportation are then addressed. Chapter 7 focuses on transportation in urban areas. The relationships between the urban transport system and the subjects of urban form, urban land use, and urban mobility are examined, and some emerging urban transport problems such as returnautomobile dependency and congestion presented. The last part consists of Chapters 8-10 addressing contemporary concerns over transport systems. Chapter 8 deals with environmental concerns including energy consumption and pollution accompanied with transportation. Different development strategies to sustainable transport are discussed. Chapter 9 investigates transport planning and policy issues. A distinction is drawn between policy and planning, and the major features of their respective processes examined. Chapter 10 concludes this book by presenting the main issues and challenges faced by contemporary transport geographers. The book is written with an innovative style in that each chapter is attractively capsulated into a series of stand-alone yet correlated topics of concepts and methods. By this means, most relevant materials are organized to address specific issues conceptually, while practical methods or tools are introduced accordingly to assist in tackling the noted issues. This modular structure is particularly friendly to students and teachers for educational purposes. returnreturnThe book brings together a comprehensive and insightful selection of topics which not only includes conventional dimensions that have been the long-established subjects of interest to transport geographers, such as networks, modes, terminals, and urban transportation, but also introduces a variety of up-to-date issues in this field, including: intermodalism, security, congestion, and environmental pollution. Additionally, readers can easily find the definitions of many frequently used terms in the field, ranging from space/time convergence, hinterland, transport corridor, light rail, to containership, logistics, and environmental impact assessment. Another novelty of this book that needs to be highlighted is that it introduces the geography of transport systems with a particular emphasis on its global context, which distinguishes this book from numerous textbooks in this field. This is perhaps due to the authors’ particular research (area) interests involving East and Southeast Asia and North America. The history of transport systems are reviewed at a global level (Chapter 1); returnglobalization and international trade are discussed, as they have given rise to containership and transformed modern freight transportation (Chapter 6). Many contemporary issues such as environmental impacts have been identified as a global problem (Chapter 8). Transport systems of developing countries are introduced throughout this book. Some supplemental comments can also be made. As compared to the concepts part of this book which is detailed and complete, the methods part is weaker in its thoroughness and usefulness. This part could have been enhanced by providing readers with more numerical or empirical examples, more references to relevant studies, and even specific tasks or problem sets, in order to make this book more practical and self-contained educational material. returnreturnAlthough this book has briefly addressed the multidimensionality of transport geography in the opening chapter, it remains unclear how geographers, economists, engineers, planners and politicians view and treat transport systems differently. A better interpretation of the difference and complementarity among the disciplines built around transportation would have been worthwhile in terms of helping readers better understand the essential role transport geography plays in transport systems. Nevertheless, this book provides a comprehensive and valuable introduction to the field of transport geography, which we would recommend for use as a textbook for undergraduate transport students and non-transport professionals. It could also be of interest to professionals seeking a quick and systematic overview of this field. returnreturnFeng Xie and David Levinson returnreturn(Review originally appeared in Journal of Transport Geography Volume 15, Issue 1 , January 2007, Pages 75-76)

Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt is a new book (out in July 2008) that provides an exceptionally well-written and comprehensive survey of the more interesting questions in driver psychology, traffic engineering, human behavior and to a lesser extent transportation planning. Following in a line of non-fiction books like those by Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Johnson, it takes an idea and develops it thoroughly (with 96 pages of footnotes and references). It posits road travel as a microcosm of human relations that not only can be informed by an understanding of experimental and behavioral economics, but whose findings can be exported to help us understand the workings of society.returnreturnThe key questions Vanderbilt examines range from when to merge at a highway lane drop, why the other lane seems faster, drivers increasing (and unwarranted) self-esteem, misperception of risks and traffic safety, why slower can sometimes be faster and the ideas behind shared space, changing travel behavior patterns and increased female labor force participation, to questions of induced demand and travel time budgets.returnreturnWhen exploring these topics, Vanderbilt discusses key evidence and findings, citing the work of relevant scholars or practitioners, so this is true reporting and synthesis, rather than advocacy or agenda-pushing that one fears with more popular books, especially popular books in transportation and planning where everyone is an expert).returnreturnWhen interpreting the literature in a finite amount of space and time, there will always be omissions or simplifications or misinterpretations. As such I have a few nits to pick.returnreturnp. 121 "The ideal highway will move the most cars, most efficiently at a speed just about halfway between 80 and 20 mph." The book is referring obliquely to the Greenshields model of the Fundamental Diagram of Traffic. Most of the recent evidence suggests that maximum flow can be achieved at about freeflow speed, i.e. the fundamental diagram is a truncated triangle rather than a parabola for a single road segment. The issue is more complicated for a network which has spillovers from downstream links, where the combination of segments produces a more parabolic shape.returnreturnp. 158 The explanation of Braess's Paradox could really have been aided by a graphic (and an equation, at least in the notes). I know this is for a general audience, but the book totally lacks in what would be very helpful illustrations of some of the key concepts. It would also have been aided by an introduction of Wardrop's Equilibrium and System Optimal principles. One suspects it was cut, as there is an allusion to the topic, and Wardrop is mentioned in the notes. On the same page, Roughgarden is mentioned, but not his poetic "Price of Anarchy", which is also really interesting in this context (the loss to letting drivers navigate themselves is much less than one might think). This would also have tied really well into the subsequent discussion of road pricing, which aims to internalize the congestion externality so that system optimal and user equilibrium costs are the same.returnreturnFinally, I need to get his agent. The book was on the Amazon Top 20, and currently sits at 49. In a way it is a book that I wish I had written, with a much better title than "Freakoportation" which I had (facetiously) suggested to Kara Kockelman of the University of Texas.returnreturnNevertheless, I eagerly await Traffic 2, or whatever Vanderbilt's next project turns out to be. There is so much more in the field of transportation to cover, and really it is much more difficult and interesting than rocket science.