Stop The Fifth Interchange
at Mine Lick Creek Road
Cookeville, Tennessee
DEconstructing the Concocted Road Avrice Propaganda IN General
TRANSPORTATION POLICY
Last updated on 28 JULY 2007
THE NEWS, OPINION AND COMMENTARY NOT AVAILABLE IN THE HERALD-CITIZEN
Welcome to the TOUR website. (Taxpayers Opposed to Useless Roads) This web site is for those people who want better government policy in road building. It is an exploration of the factors and frustrations surrounding the planning and management of transportation infrastructure in the state of Tennessee. Particular emphasis will be on the Proposed Mine Lick Creek Interchange but, there are many projects like this throughout Tennessee. If you pump gas, pass through the state or ride the bus, you are going to be effected by the policies and proceedures of the Tennessee Department of Transportation or TDOT. I believe that better transportation policy is achievable through the ethical treatment of all taxpayers and seek to provide the other side of the story that is not known either through ignorance, blind trust or strategic misrepresentation.
Danny L. Newton
1018 Rose Garden Lane 38501
931-432-5345
NOVEMBER RPO MEETING CANCELLED 13:11 10/10/2007
The quarterly Center Hill RPO meeting has been cancelled because the Transportation Planning Reports were not going to be ready. RPO Coordinator Randy Williams said in a telephone call today that the next RPO meeting could be moved forward as far as sometime after the first of the year.
Crossville has volunteered to host the next RPO meeting. If you want to get notification by mail, call the new RPO coordinator, Randy Williams at 931-432-4111.
REMINDER
I-81/I-40 INTERSTATE UPGRADE COMMENTS DUE 22 OCT 2007
CARA REACTION AND ANALYSIS OF TDOT I-81/I40 PUBLIC MEETING
from Ric Finch
10:30 09/26/2007
CARA, TOUR, and Neighbors members....
Did you see today's H-C? Story on Monday night's meeting is headlined "TDOT holds town meeting for Corridor J". What rubbish! As far as I can recall, Corridor J was never mentioned. The H-C had a photographer there, but no reporter and apparently their story "From staff reports" was written up using TDOT pre-meeting publicity, but with little understanding of what the meeting was actually about.
So what was the meeting about? The following is based on my notes taken at the meeting and is not 100% complete.
General outline of the meeting:
TDOT staff and several consultants presented an overview of the current and projected problems on the I-40 / I-81 corridor across Tennessee. They then described some possible means of addressing the problems. Next the floor was opened for questions and opinions from the citizenry. TDOT wants to know what the public opinion is regarding how to approach growing congestion and safety problems. If one believes TDOT is sincere (and I more or less do), then this was a chance for the public to influence TDOTs future actions along the I-40 / I-81 corridor.
A few of the current and projected problems:
The I-40 / I-81 corridor constitutes fully half of Tennessee's 1100 miles of interstate, crossing 28 counties; 55% of the state population lives along this corridor.
The interstates have become favored commuter routes, a service for which they were not designed.
Truck traffic along this route is expected to more than double by 2030. Depending on the location, the projected increase varies from 113% to 140%. In the area west of Cookeville the increase expected is 129%, from 10,600 trucks per day in 2003 to 24,300 trucks per day in 2030. (If you think driving to Nashville is hazardous now, just wait!)
Using Dept. of Safety statistics, TDOT has identified a number of areas prone to accidents. One such strip in our area is the big incline from the Caney Fork River valley up to the Highland Rim.
Some of the solutions being considered:
a) Capacity solutions:
Six lane I-40 / I-81 for the full 550 mile corridor length. TDOT representatives said there was not enought money to do this, but that increasing the number of lanes to six will probably be done in some areas that are currently only four.
Building bypasses around some urban areas.
Improve "parallel facilities" in hopes of luring some traffic off the congested interstate corridor. For example, widening US-70 to four lanes to get some traffic off I-40, especially local commuter traffic.
Build some new river crossings (e.g., across the Mississippi at Memphis).
b) Operational solutions:
Use more ITS (Intelligent Transportation System), with computerized signs that can change instructions and information according to highway conditions.
Reconstruct some interchanges where it has been shown that poor ramp or interchange design impedes flow.
Adding climbing lanes where traffic, especially trucks, slow down on long grades.
Putting on more bus service in urban areas to encourage people to leave their cars at home when they go downtown.
Better lighting of interchanges.
c) Rail diversion: get trucks off the interstate highways and piggyback them by rail across the state.
Enhanced rail connectivity needed. Especially, the gap in the east-west rail system must be eliminated.
Grade separation at crossings needed, i.e., over-passes and/or under-passes to eliminate crossings "at grade" where trains can block vehicle traffic or become involved in collisions with vehicles.
Rail by-passes around small towns so that increased train traffic will not cause problems in these towns.
New and better intermodal yards where trucks can be loaded on to flat cars easily and conveniently.
Norfolk & Southern's plans:
The Norfolk & Southern railway plans to double track its lines from Virginia (or north of Virginia?) all the way to New Orleans, in a 7 billion dollar project called the I-81 Crescent Corridor. They plan to add 28 additional daily trains, more than doubling the current traffic on this route.
They estimate they can take 1 million trucks a year off the highways and onto rail piggyback service.
Discussion by the public:
Of all the possible means of dealing with the increase in truck traffic on the I-40 / I-81 corridor, rail diversion seemed to get the most public response, with several people discussing its pros (mainly) and cons (some).
Wayne Pegram (CARA's Cochair), a representative of the Nashville & Eastern RR, and yours truly spoke out in favor of TDOT trying to get more trucks off the interstates and onto the rails. The issue of the use of TDOT $$ (public funds, tax dollars) to help private enterprise (the railroads) was raised; it was remarked that there is a historic precedent: the rails across the west were heavily subsidized by grants of public lands.
A member of the public stated strong doubts that congestion would effectively be eased by the addition of more lanes to I-40 / I-81. The effect called "induced traffic volume" in response to added lanes was brought up. In short, it has been documented that when a road is expanded by the addition of lanes, the reduction in congestion is very temporary, because the new lanes attract more drivers to the improved route, which quickly becomes congested again. If Norfolk and Southern can take a million trucks a year off the highways along their rail route, this is a powerful argument in favor of pushing the rail diversion option rather than the lane addition option.
Brian Paddock suggested that TDOT could solve some of the congestion problems in major urban areas by building large truck stops and simply banning tractor trailer traffic within the urban zones during morning and evening commuter rush hours. Brian also noted that congestion could be reduced if urban area employers could be induced to introduce staggered work hours.
There were additional comments and suggestions, but I didn't get them all in my notes.
Addendum:
TDOT officials were very impressed by the turnout at the Cookeville meeting. Forty citizens from Cookeville, Putnam, Jackson, and Cumberland counties attended...the largest turnout TDOT has had in this series of meetings! At the Memphis meeting only four citizens showed; same at the Jackson meeting, just four. That's pretty pitiful. But it has some advantage for us: Cookeville area citizen's suggestions and comments should have more impact with TDOT!
Will you voice your opinion? TDOT has provided comment sheets (see attachments), which you can mail in. They must be post-marked no later than Oct. 22 to count.
Please send TDOT your comments. Please emphasize the benefits of "rail diversion", that is, getting the trucks off the interstates onto the trains. Public comment can help TDOT decide which way to go. With no public demand...well, expect more farmland paved over and more homes "relocated" as TDOT goes about doing what it is used to doing.
For more information on this project, go to I-40/I-81 CORRIDOR UPGRADE
Thanks,
Ric
THE FOLLOWING ITEMS WERE ADDED BY THE TOUR EDITOR
TDOT CONTACT:
Ms. Teresa Estes, Transportation Manager 2
Tennessee Department of Transportation
Suite 900, James K. Polk Building
505 Deaderick Street
Nashville, TN 37243
MS.TERESA ESTES , TRANSPORTATION MANAGER 2Phone (615) 741-3629
Fax (615) 532-8451
Send comments to:
Project Comments
Tennessee Department of Transportation
Suite 700, James K. Polk Building
505 Deaderick Street
Nashville, Tennessee 37243-0332
For those who did not get Ric's e-mail with the snail mail comment sheet attachments,they look like this:
from Ric Finch
01:16 10/19/2007
Dear CARA, TOUR, and Neighbors members and friends--
Please don't forget to send in your comments to TDOT on how to deal with congestion present and future on the I-40 / I-81 corridor across Tennessee-- especially the trucks that are making the Interstates unsafeand unpleasant for ordinary citizens. YOUR COMMENTS MUST BE POSTMARKED NO LATER THAN OCT. 22.
Tom Banks has graciously permitted me to share with you his comments to TDOT (see below). They are excellent and can be a useful model to those of you who have not yet sent your comments in.
I have attached a copy of the comment blank which you can print out, fill in and mail to:
Public Information Meeting Comments
Tenn. Dept. of Transportation
Suite 700, James K. Polk Bldg.
505 Deaderick St.
Nashville, TN 37243-0332
If you cannot open the attachments, or if it is not convenient for you to print them out, then simply write your comments in the form of a letter and send them in. It is not required that they be on the official form.
Please don't fail to send in your comments on this important issue! YOU CAN INFLUENCE what TDOT does. Do they destroy thousands of acres of countryside and hundreds of homes six-laning I-40 / I-81 the full length of the state? Or to they work to get significant truck traffic off the interstates and onto the rails? Let 'em know what you would like.
Thank you,
Ric
----- Original Message -----
Ric,
We attended the public hearing regarding the I-40& I-81 Corridor on 9-24-07. I’m in full agreeable with you on the subject of Rail Diversion. I appreciate your strong interest and concern for issues like this. Below is a copy of our comments submitted to TDOT.
I-40 & I-81 Corridor Feasibility Study
Pubic Comment Form
The Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) is conducting a feasibility study for the 550-mile I-40 and I-81 corridor between Bristol and Memphis. The study’s purpose to develop multi-modal solutions that address congestion, operations and management, safety and security, freight movement, commuter patterns and economic access along the corridor. In this first round of regional stakeholder and public meetings, TDOT is seeking your input on the transportation deficiencies that have been identified and the range of potential solutions to be examined.
Please take a moment to answer the following questions. Please return your completed comment form postmarked no later than October 22, 2007.
What do you see as transportation deficiencies along I-40 and/or I-81?
Both corridors are essentially loaded to capacity at peak times and conditions will only become worse in the future without actions on TDOT’s part. It appears VA and NC are committed to adding additional lanes, which will force TN to be able to handle the increased volume. I don’t think adding two additional lanes across our state will solve the problem. Truck climbing lanes on long grades and bypasses like route 840 and the purposed Knoxville by-pass will be helpful, but are far from the solution. Strictly adding lanes will eventually compound the problem not solve it due to creating “induced volume”. Improving parallel routes to encourage commuters to get off the interstate will be somewhat beneficial.
____________________________________________________________________________What short-term, mid-term or long-term improvements would you like to make to I-40 and I-81, or to parallel highways that serve as an alternative to the interstates?
Of much greater importance in my opinion is “Rail diversion”, ie getting thru-truck traffic off the interstates and piggyback them by rail. This definitely will require the development of intermodal yards where trucks can be loaded on rail cars. Also, local rail systems like our Nashville Eastern Rail Authority need to be promoted for moving raw building material from their source to Nashville and other areas of demand. Commuter rail service like the “Music City Star” needs to be promoted and expanded. Increased rail traffic will lead to the need for grade separation at crossings and rail bypasses will be needed in some communities. Additionally, the East-West gap in the Tennessee rail system must be eliminated. I realize there will always be a need for truck transportation, but it can be reduced considerably with good planning and implementation of a reasonable and workable plan._I would be supportive of the use of public funds to improve our rail systems.
Other Comments?
TDOT truly needs to be the “Department of Transportation” and not just the “TN Department of Road Construction”. It needs to meet the needs of the taxpayers of Tennessee and not be controlled by the trucking Lobby and the Road Building Industry. I appreciate the fact that TDOT appears to be more open to public comments under the Bredesen Administration. Keep up the good work! I attended the Cookeville meeting 9-24-07. I feel TDOT did a good job of presenting the issues and realize they can never please everyone. I would suggest that a thorough review of the rail system, both passenger and freight, that exist across much of Europe be made by TDOT. I was highly impressed with what I observed of that system.
____________________________________________________________________________Sincerely,
Tom Banker
5330 Arnold Thomas Rd.
Silver Point, TN 38582
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSTOUR EDITOR COMMENTS ON
I-81/I-40 UPGRADE ON
23:06 10/22/2007
COMMENTS FOR I-81/I-40 UPGRADE
THE CAUSE OF INTERSTATE CONGESTION
The congestion on the Interstate is due to a long term failure by the legislature to concentrate resources on the highway system in general. There is an inadequate response to the growth of population, the growth of Vehicle Miles Traveled and the increased truck traffic from the restructuring of our economy. More complicated theories about pavement attraction are needlessly complicated and should be ignored on the basis of Occum's Razor.
TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT HAS BEEN A FAILURE
There is no success story that shows, except through unscientific anecdote, that traffic management has any substantial capacity to increase the utility of the existing stock of arterials against the impending wave of demand. Congestion pricing seems to work in California and it is the preferred method in Europe.
People like cars. People prefer cars even in Europe where alternative transportation exists at a much higher stage than we have in the US. The electronic roadway signs for weather advisories are a pretty good idea but eventually that will turn into variable speed limit devises in the next ten years. One of the problems with prosperity is that it causes an increasing preference for personal transport. In rural Tennessee, it is absolutely necessary to travel long distances to jobs because state and local economic development measures are and will continue to be a failure. There are six counties, five rural, according to BEA where the average value of a job has dropped.
RAIL DIVERSION IS AN INADEQUATE RESPONSE TO THE CURRENT INTERSTATE TRAFFIC PROBLEMS
I-40 at Cookeville has been dropping through Level of Service C for several years. We have a percentage of five-axel trucks near 20%. The growing truck traffic is a response to national forces that demand longer hauls and goods that come from farther away. Truck counts are rising above the rate of population gains. These trucks are consuming the spare capacity on the Interstate system at a rate that is not matched by our willingness to build additional lanes miles. As much as we love to hate trucks, we better get used to the idea that even though pavements have to be thicker, roads wider and bridges stronger to accommodate then, they also pay more for the use of the roads than people in cars.
Trucks removed from the road by train diversion will not migrate to the Great Truck Burial Ground; they will be pressed into service for shorter hauls. Instead of moving cargoes cross country they will be used to haul containers to and from inter modal facilities. Inter modal truck systems will take trucks off of the road at about the same success rate as park and ride lots take cars off of the road. They change what you do with the vehicle but they don't eliminate the vehicle.
TRUCK ONLY LANES
Truck only lanes at $25 million dollars a mile could be financed from the taxes paid on the existing registered population of Tennessee trucks, approximately 62,000, only if every truck could contribute 11.376 cents per mile, much less than the planned toll charge for he Knoxville Bypass. The problem is however that the addition of two or more lanes will immediately drop the average income per centerline mile. If the entire length of I-40 and I-81 were increased by two lanes, the income per mile of Interstate in Tennessee would stay nearly the same while the number of Interstate lane miles would increase by slightly less than 25%. Additional lanes must be paid for by additional vehicle usage, otherwise a tax increase is unavoidable.
THE DANGER OF MANAGEMENT WITHOUT PRODUCTIVITY INCREASES
There seems to be no appreciation of the consequences of slowing down traffic for any reason, environmental or otherwise. I-81 already has slower speeds for trucks and air quality concerns are slowing down vehicles through Knoxville. These actions are a direct attack on productivity which will eventually turn into a tax at the point of purchase of goods and services bought in Tennessee. Truck drivers are WORKING and they generally get paid only when the wheels are rolling.
Any discussion of increasing the extent of the existing roadway or doing nothing and letting the system be consumed by overuse should be held with full awareness of the economic consequences of those actions. The Interstates were built at enormous costs but they also provided enormous benefits and leaps in productivity. The incremental increase in costs was offset by even higher incremental gains in productivity. The legislature must again select a program that provides for more productivity to cover the costs of the improvement. I don't see that happening. What I do see is plan after plan to degrade productivity with European-style management plans.
The economy is many times smarter than the people who are part of it. The legislature can not craft an anesthetic strong enough that prevents an immediate response by the economy even to stealth taxes on transportation or transportation regulation. Property taxes are already being used in nearly every county in Tennessee to supplement Local Aid to county and city governments. Sales taxes have been used for years in other states and can be given no credit whatsoever for making their system superior or even equal to other states. There is no point funneling more money to an organization that is predestined by law just to make bigger mistakes with it. Taxing trucks without giving equivalent gains in productivity only makes the price of goods and services higher and lowers our competitiveness with outer states.
TRUCK ONLY LANES
Truck only lanes must be seriously considered for the future because of the continued use of CAFÉ standards to lower fuel consumption. This will make commingling cars and trucks on the same roadway more dangerous. Truck Lanes Only will also provide another opportunity to get more productivity out of the system by letting trucks pull more and heavier multiple trailers and even travel at higher speeds.
The space in the median and the space all around the vehicles are critical to safety. Any attempt to shrink either will result in more deaths and costs.
CARS ONLY INTERSTATE/ PARALLEL ROAD DEVELOPMENT
It is possible to abandon the Interstate to truck traffic and build cars only Interstate that would have a lower per mile cost either on a separate alignment or tracking the existing Interstate alignment. To have a zero tax increase however, it means that the costs must be paid out of new revenue from the growing numbers of cars and trucks. This is not feasible unless the legislature is ready to make congestion a priority. The federal Highway administration already estimates that the cost of congestion is already more than the average per capita transportation taxes paid in Tennessee charges now. I think their estimates are overblown because not all people are traveling on the clock to work, but congestion is a tax. Urban populations should not be taxed at rates higher than their country cousins.
NO MORE PASSENGER TRAIN PROJECTS.
The Nashville commuter train projects shows only how easy it is to spend $40 million dollars for passenger service for what should have been 1479 passengers. The real numbers that showed up have recently been reported at less than half of that. Two out of three recently refurbished cars could be retired and still meet the current demand. At 60 cents per mile $40 million could furnish 666,666 passenger miles by automobile assuming only one passenger per car. If every passenger on the Music City Star went 52 miles, the auto could provide 12,820 people with the same mobility for the same money and is thus 19 times more efficient. The Music City Star cost about $41 million dollars and has a yearly operational cost of over $3 million dollars with a rumored passenger load of 650 people. It would be better to bulldoze the tracks and put in a two lane road to downtown with reversing directions to handle the peaks.
PAYING FOR TRAIN DIVERSIONSTransfers of money from TDOT to trains for the purpose of cargo diversions to trains must not be done by the same mechanisms that have set the stage for disastrous investments in train passenger service. A million trucks taken off of the road is equal to adding 255.11 lane miles of extra lanes to the Interstate system. This is an estimate based upon a truck traveling 70 MPH, the truck being 75 feet long and having a stopping distance including distance traveled during perception of 417 feet. If TDOT can build only 191.4 lane miles a year at an annual cost of about $1.7 billion dollars, it does not follow that a train diversion of 255.11 lane miles is worth more than $1.7 billion. The problem is time. The 255.11 lane miles are only gained for a few hours a day. Each of the one million trucks only takes 4.79 seconds to pass a stationary observer. A million trucks would pass in 55.46 days and so would the benefit.
A rail diversion of a million trucks per year would be like renting 255.11 lane miles for 55.46 days or about 15% of the year. Another way to look at this is that a million trucks a year is like renting for the whole year 38.74 lane miles all day every day for a year. The value of this to TDOT would be no less than $116 million($116 per truck). Once truck traffic is slowed to 55 miles an hour because of any reason, the value of the diversion to TDOT drops to about $72.23 million dollars.
Any system of payment for train diversions should be on the basis of what it is worth to TDOT not to build an extra lane. This could be a bounty per truck that goes into a state infrastructure bank for trains. The per truck bounty creates an incentive for train companies and it also protects the interest of the people who pay the gas taxes. If the diversion is partially successful, the drain on transportation resources is also partial.
CLIMBING LANES FOR ROAN COUNTY AND PUTNAM COUNTYThis project should have started years ago. No matter what is done about I-81/I-40 Upgrade, there is no reason to delay this. I am concerned that there may be no institutional memory of just how difficult and expensive the Roan County work could be because of the geological conditions that do not seem to be present at the Putnam County site.
INTERCHANGESImprovements in interchanges with dangerous histories should be put at the front of the list. Building future interchanges for industrial parks that do not exist on land that can be served at lower cost on parallel roads (Mine Lick Creek Road Interchange) must be stopped at least until the plan for the total I-81/I-40 Upgrade is in. The lighting projects should also be put on hold. These are stealth economic development projects that are draining safety dollars to mirror the "Open for Business" fad that is currently running through Chambers of Commerce like a laxative. Interchange lighting should not be used unless there is statistical evidence that there is a higher accident rate at night that is possibly due to a design problem with the interchange. Any Interchange that is "fixed" with the I-81/I-40 Upgrade should be de-lit as an energy conservation measure.
CASH IN THE LOSERS
The legislature must cash in the loser road welfare programs and concentrate on roads with high ADT counts. The County Seat Connector Program, Appalachian Development Highway, gratuitous Interchanges, NAFTA highway and money spent on non-highway expenses must be re-focused on highways that serve large fractions of the population. Economic development projects should be funded out of sales taxes not road taxes. Road money does not seem to cost anything and local city and county governments love to spend other people's money when it is their coffers that reap the benefit.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSVIRGINIA REJECTS MASSIVE SUBSIDIES FOR TRAINS
YOUR COMMENT COULD BE POSTED HERE
TAKING THE CARS AND TRUCKS OFF OF THE ROAD
by Danny L. Newton
19 SEPT 07
In the Nashville meeting to discuss the planned upgrade of I-81 and I-40 from Bristol to Memphis came several suggestions from some of those attending that the solution to congestion was to remove vehicles from the Interstate. In both cases, the petitioners were never given adequate time to explain exactly how that would work. In the case of trucks, there was a proposal to divert vehicles to trains. In the case of cars the substitute was rapid transit, commuter rail and even rapid bus service from the suburbs.
A common factor in both alternative proposals was that each plan has its own diversion rate that is a small fraction of the total amount that currently exists. Even when passengers are diverted from car or light truck to any other mode, less than two percent of the urban population in Tennessee will be going to work via public transit in the next 30 years. If they are on buses or vans, they will pay less than 25% of the costs and with rail solutions the usual pattern is to pay an even lesser percentage of operating cost while paying none of the capital cost of laying track or rolling stock. To lure passengers onto public transit modes, the costs must be below that of the automobile. North Carolina actually has a free system at Chapel Hill that serves mostly university students. The free bus system has very little impact on the overall usage of transit and an even smaller impact on serving the larger global need for transportation.
The complexity of congestion relief is due the fact that those daring to act upon the phenomenon are, trying to make a few decisions overpower the momentum of millions of daily human decisions that are both long term, like where you decide to live, work and retire, and short term like how you need to get there. Between auto-to-transit diversions and truck-to-train diversions, the truck-to-train diversions are less complex. The rail diversion study made by TDOT in 2003 did not try to determine the exact rate of diversions. It merely set up scenarios that predicted benefits if certain percentages of diversions occurred. In 2003, the vision of the train plan was for Virginia and Tennessee to work together and fund $1.2 billion worth of upgrades. The latest slide show at the Nashville meeting on 04 SEPT 07 was for a more ambitious plan.
The Norfolk and Southern Railroad president has stated that removal of 25 percent of the trucks off of their 350 miles of the I-81 plan is expected. A multi-billion dollar plan of investments throughout a 14 state region provides more benefit than a Virginia only approach. The prime candidates for diversion are trucks that are traveling more than 650 miles. The average truck haul since 1960 has steadily increased in length at an average pace of 8.4 miles per year. In 2001, the average truck haul was 781 miles. Analyst predicted that if the fourteen states in the latest plan acted together to finance the rail upgrade of $7.3 billion, the percentage of truck to train diversions would be from 28.2% to 32.3%. With no diversion investment, the study estimates that rail diversions would continue at a rate of 4.9% to 5.2 %. If the background diversion rate is really that high, then it is possible that the rate of diversions already assures that truck traffic is well within control and could drop without government assistance.
A million trucks per year, featured in the most recent Virginia plan, would be 2737.85 trucks per day in an average year of 365.25 days. If every truck were 75 feet long and had federally required braking characteristics that limited stopping distance to 377 feet plus a distance covered between perception and reaction of 40 feet, each truck would take up 492 feet while operating at maximum speed of 70 MPH. These missing trucks and their breaking distances would be equivalent to 255.1 lane miles of highway that could be freed up for use by the remaining vehicles. Climbing lanes however would still be needed.
It is not clear how many years it would take to get the full predicted length of lane-mile recovery. If the rate of diversions was the same number every year it is possible that the background growth in all vehicles would degrade the advantages gained. There will be a lag time for the diversion to actually be seen. Multi-modal facilities will have to be built and rolling stock modifications are included in the estimates. These new items and the construction of new track will have to be built before any significant diversions are possible. Further phase-in costs will be endured because the total diversion numbers are based on all states acting as a coordinated whole unit.
From 1997 to 2002 the numbers of the largest and longest trucks from 26,000 pounds to 80,000 pounds were increasing at a rate that is above the background population increase. In the next five years the growth of those same trucks declined to below the background population increase. It is possible that this momentary five-year bump in the truck population was associated with the continued restructuring of our economy from an industrial to a service economy. The volume of divertible trucks may now be manageable. The growth rate, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics Table 1-21 has dramatically fallen to from over 3% per year to 0.19 % per year among the population of trucks from 26,000 pounds to 80,000 pounds. In a strange way, trucks could have accomplished their own diversion plan by simply getting longer and bigger.
According to the Bureau of Transportation statistics, the ratio of population to trucks of every kind and length is increasing. In 1997 the U.S. had 8 trucks for every 30 people. In 2002, the U.S. had 8 trucks for every 27 people. In 2002 the number of the longest trucks that weighed from 26,000 pounds to the maximum weight of 80,000 pounds was only about 4% of the total truck count. TDOT estimates that 55% of the entire population of Tennessee lives along the 550 mile I-40/I-81 corridor. If the population of Tennessee is assumed to be six million in 2007, then the number of trucks of all lengths serving that population could be as high as 11.2 million. The longest trucks along the I-40/I81 corridor, if equal to the national average 4% of total trucks, would number 28,522. If the probability that the trucks would be on the Interstate can be approximated by the ratio of interstate to interstate plus arterial vehicle miles traveled, the probable numbers on the Tennessee I-40/I-81 Interstate would be 14,261 before diversion. If confined to the 550 mile length of the project, the average space between the trucks would be 814.5 feet assuming a four lane configuration. This would cause a stationary observer to see a large truck pass every 8 seconds.
Even though each truck might only operate 10 hours a day, the operators tend to work and sleep on over lapping schedules. The maximum truck counts are on the road during theses overlapping times. This means that very little adjustment can be made for the fact that not everyone will be on the road at the same time. If one quarter of 28,522 were trucks were diverted to rail there would be 665.7 lane-miles of additional capacity on Interstates and major arterials in the Tennessee I-40/I81 corridor. The number of the longest trucks diverted from the Interstate would be 3565. The total lane-miles salvaged, might be as many as 332.2. This assumes perfect behavior by all drivers so the estimate will be an upper limit in the real world where drivers often allow too little space between vehicles. The least this recovered mileage would be worth is $996.6 million dollars if it were all new. Adding lanes to the interstate would also add substantial cost in reconfiguring bridges and interchanges. Newer interchanges would be more expensive than in the past because of lessons learned form trying to operate an exchange on inadequate ramp length and the need for temporary lane storage if the exit from the interstate involves a control signal.
To stop congestion from trucks, the length of lanes must match the growth of the truck population plus their operational stopping distance. In 1992, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Table 1-21 recorded that the number of heaviest trucks from 26,001 pounds to 80,000 pounds was 1,966,300. In 2002 that number grew to 2,489,300. To accommodate only this narrow segment of the total vehicle population which is about 3% of all trucks on US highways, the length of all Interstates and major arterial lane-miles in the U.S. should have grown to 70,888 miles. According the Bureau of Transportation Table 1-6, the lane-mile growth of the two categories of road most likely to contain these trucks from 1997 to 2002 was only 48,734 miles. If the Tennessee population was taken at 6 million and the national population was estimated at 302 million then the per-capita shortage attributed to Tennessee would be about 440 lane miles over a ten year period ending in 2002. These missing lane-miles are a very big factor in the perception of congestion and they are the most expensive fraction of all lane-miles needed to mitigate congestion.
The Tennessee population is doubling every 80.01 years and the lane-mile growth is doubling every 128.4 years. No matter how many vehicles people own, no one is driving two or more at the same time. It is possible that the real threat to Interstate capacity is no longer from the large trucks but from the failure of TDOT to match total volume of vehicles to lane-mile capacity. This chronic failure to keep pace with total volume demand means that the saved lane miles from diversion will eventually be lost again.
Even though Tennessee builds more than the U.S. average of lane miles, it is clear to many, just from looking out of their windshield, that we are not making the expected impact on congestion. Building an extra 40 lane-miles a year in the right places could easily add 400 million dollars a year to the current highway program and a nickel on the motor fuels tax. This would only freeze the current situation, not make it better. In 2002, when TDOT shopped around the idea at public meetings that highway money could be diverted to save or enhance the railroads, there was an unscientific but overwhelming landslide in favor of raiding the state highway trust fund. Over 90 percent were in favor of diversion of highway money for trains and over 60 percent were in favor of more taxes. The inflation adjusted gas prices near the time of that vote were the second lowest since 1970.
The removal of trucks from the highway would never be certain unless the state were to buy them and bury them. After paying as much as $150,000 dollars for a truck and trailer, it is more likely that the owner could not afford to park it without some kind of compensation. Once these trucks are made useless by diversion, they could move to other parts of the country where rail diversions are not possible. To buy 7000 trucks would cost about $750 million dollars. This is more than the future cost of the 59 mile Knoxville 475 Bypass. If TDOT needs tolls to afford the Knoxville, Bypass, it is not reasonable that they would have the money to buy surplus trucks either. The most likely scenario would be that the trucks would just switch to cargoes that were not attractive to diversion like short hauls and time sensitive cargos. A rapid and forced diversion to rail could result in unemployment even though the trucking industry is very short on drivers because of retirements.
To totally cure the feeling of congestion, the number of lane miles must track the expenditure of vehicle miles traveled or VMT. The national rate of VMT growth from 2000 to 2004 was 2.42 percent per year. Assuming that the number of Tennessee lane-miles was adequate in 2000 at 34,984, the number of lane miles in 2011 would be 39,444. A policy of keeping pace with vehicle miles traveled would require an average lane-mile growth of 892 miles per year. This would move the TDOT budget to $2.7 billion dollars per year. $1.1 billion per year would have to come from additional taxation or borrowing. This would be about a 61 percent increase in all Tennessee transportation taxes. The state gas tax would rise from 21.4 to 48.3 cents per gallon and the diesel tax would have to rise from 17 cents to 43.9 cents per gallon. And, the gas and diesel tax increase would have to be indexed to inflation to maintain the effort. As long as the legislature is hyper-aware and sensitive to the gas tax rates in adjacent states, it is not likely that the gas tax will go up to meet the challenge of congestion.
One of the biggest transportation miscalculations in the last fifty years is the total percentage of trucks that would be on our highways. No one ever thought it would exceed 15% and now it is over 20% in most places and even 40% has been recorded on the I-81 corridor in Virginia. A good candidate for the second biggest mistake is the failure to anticipate the social changes that would increase the number of vehicle miles consumed every year. Better roads just mean more road connectivity and travel. Multiple paycheck families and multiple auto ownership are also implicated in the growth of vehicle miles traveled. Ironically, Corporate Fuel Economy laws have a tendency to neutralize factors like high gas prices that should retard the growth of vehicle miles traveled.
The national Vehicle Mile Traveled growth has been slowing down for the last ten years. It is easy to blame the $3 gasoline for this but some experts think that the slowing of VMT growth is also a long term phenomenon that is caused by increased trip times. The slow growth in national supply of refinery capacity is also a factor in predictions that the cost of travel is likely to go up in the future. So far, Tennessee has not participated in the current flattening of the national Vehicle Miles Traveled Curve in the last year and a half. This is probably because of the very high numbers in the population that have a long commute to work.
A more realistic plan would be for the lane mile growth to track the population and hope that the demographic changes in the near future will also reduce the consumption of vehicle miles traveled. According to the Bureau of Transportation statistics, Table 1-33 the person-mile consumption of person-miles from age 50 to age 59 is greater than all of the rest of the person-mile consumption from age 60 years to the rest of U.S. life expectancy. The baby-boom bubble is now passing through the 60 year to 79 year statistical cell and will put downward pressure on VMT.
To keep pace with population from now to 2011 and make up for the past failures of TDOT back to 2000, a Tennessee yearly growth rate of 314.7 lane-miles per year would be required. This rate of lane mile growth would convert the entire I-40/I-81 corridor to a minimum six lane highway in less than three and a half years. This is a plan to divert vehicles of all kinds to new pavement rather than trains or other alternatives and would have to compete for financing against other legislatively encrusted building plans. The idea that the existing state highway trust fund can be mined for money to pay for the truck to train diversions is not realistic as long as it can be easily shown that the current rate and pattern of construction of lane-mile growth is substandard. That would be like taking up a collection in a homeless shelter.
Taking cars and trucks off of the road has two possible alternative scenarios that present potentially bad outcomes. The first is that it might actually work and those missing trucks would stop buying fuel. In 2004 the average large truck consumed 12,289 gallons of fuel per year. If 25 percent of the estimated 28,522 truck traffic on the 550 mile corridor was eliminated, the fuel not bought would be 87.6 million gallons per year. This would represent $14.9 million dollars of state tax revenue plus another $18.1 million in federal matching money assuming that the federal diesel tax is 22.4 cents per gallon and the state gets back 92.5% of the federal portion of the tax. Six million Tennesseans could make up for that loss of revenue by increasing the state gas and diesel tax by three-quarters of a cent per gallon.
The second bad scenario would be that diversions would not work. Some of these possibilities have already been mentioned but the construction of the benefit to cost analysis assumes that the savings will somehow reappear within the economy. There is absolutely no way to confirm or deny that these transfers will or might happen or to effectively measure them even if they do happen. Supposedly the savings will be redistributed as lower prices. Lower prices would mean lower sales tax collections unless the saved money was spent elsewhere on a sales taxable item.
In the 2003 rail plan, the state fees and revenues were carried as a benefit worth between $4 and $10.8 billion. If all of the revenue were dedicated toward a loan with the interest and period claimed in the report, the largest loan that could be obtained would be $156.96 million not $1.241 billion. To finance the original $1.21 billion amount at the stated 30 year period and the 5.5% interest rate would take a yearly payment of $85.39 million. This leaves a gap of $75.39 million dollars per year. Real money borrowed can not be repaid with theoretical proxy calculations of benefit. No one writes a check to the state when a theoretical human life is saved. After years and years of TDOT building safer and safer roads, there are no testimonials or proof that people have gotten lower car insurance, lower medical costs and lower auto costs even on Wikipedia. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics Table 3-14 tracks the fixed and variable cost of owning a car and proves that the only long term bargain has been the inflation adjusted price of gasoline. It takes a real money payment to satisfy a real money loan. Assigning dollar values to intangible benefits and including them in benefit/cost calculations always makes an idea better than it really is.
The legislature was told this year that a 2 cent per gallon increase in diesel and gas taxes would raise $83.813 million per year. Based on fiscal analysis of Tennessee Senate Bill SB 129, a proposed gas and diesel tax increase that failed, it can be inferred that the $85.39 million cost per year of the 2003 rail plan in terms of increased gas and diesel taxes would be between two and three cents per gallon of fuel. Tennessee would pay abbout 2/3 of that and the rest would be paid by Virginia.
The existing long range plan for projects should be mined for projects that have low rates of return in terms of income per centerline mile of road. This process will mean trading up from low quality lane miles to high quality lane miles. TDOT's allegedly objective plan for project section must be scrapped to the greatest extent possible. This won't stop earmarks from either the state or federal legislature. First, all projects should be subjected to objective analysis not just those over $40 million. Out of 95 projects involving lane-mile construction in the 2008-2011 State Transportation Improvement Plan only 20 were above the $40 million threshold for scrutiny with the worthless system that is currently in place. An objective measure for mobility should be adopted that reflects the distance that can be covered in one hour from any particular zip code or county. If a project can not improve mobility for reasonably large numbers of people, it should go to the back of the line to die of neglect.
Cashing in the County Seat Connector Program would gain $4 billion dollars over a very uncertain period of time. Without a plan certain to complete this system of roads, it is impossible to tell exactly what the yearly value would be. It very well could be that TDOT is already cashing in this program administratively by pushing back completion dates. It is also not certain if the estimated $4 billion dollars for this program is year of construction money or current dollars.
When TDOT talks about money, it is not always clear if the time value of money is taken into consideration. When "year of construction money" is totaled, it is similar to expressing the total paid for your house as the sum of all yearly payments. If you bought a house for $100,000, you might say that you own a $100,000 home. But, in "year of mortgage" terminology, you might say that your house is a $190,800 house because that would be the sum of your 360 monthly payments at 5% interest. When present worth is used to describe value it is like expressing the value of your house as its initial purchase price. If the unfinished County Seat Connector projects represented 20 annual payments of 200 million per year, it could buy the equivalent of 49.58 additional lane miles per year for twenty years if the construction inflation rate was 3%. If the County Seat Connector Project value is $4 billion in current dollars it could buy 1333 lane miles in the country and possibly half of that in urban areas. This means that it won't cover the entire cost of the I-40/I-81 upgrade.
Another program that must be avoided is the Appalachian Development Highway System funds. This program pretends to be adding valuable lane-miles to the system but can only do that in the short term. In the long term it diminishes lane-mile growth by creating future un-funded capital and maintenance costs that must be transferred away from more productive pavements elsewhere in the state. Somewhere between $200 million and $340 million could be saved over an uncertain time and transferred to useful highways by refusing to spend these earmarked funds. This would send a hint to congress that if they want to build highways with federal money and use federal contractors then, be our guest. This program has changed its funding source from the federal General Fund to our own transportation funds. We are no longer spending other people's money in other states on our Appalachian roads. We should pack up the deeds and make a transfer of property to the federal government to show seriousness about it. The existing quarter of a billion in unspent funds should be moved to a high interest account that is gaining at least above the inflation rate. The state should refuse to condemn land and build the NAFTA highway without adequate compensation. Economic analysis done by the state of Indiana has already warned that this road will not have enough traffic to justify it even if it were tolled at a higher per mile rate than can be currently commanded through the standard non-toll tax mechanisms. All of that inadequate traffic will be heading our way when the project is completed.
Industrial Access projects that involve extra low volume interchanges should also be eliminated from the agenda unless the alleged new industry is actually on a contract and has posted a bond. These projects are based on speculation with no firm academic underpinnings. The industrial access program plus statewide efforts to populate the landscape with over 600 empty buildings waiting for the next factory or call center have been and will continue to be spectacular failures. The dollar value of manufacturing payrolls peaked in 1979 and has been climbing at below the inflation rate ever since. No local or state economic development program, including the County Seat Connector Program has been able to reverse this trend in a way that government statistics can detect it.
There is no doubt that this current problem with capacity will be exploited as a perfect opportunity to suggest auto to transit solutions to congestion. The federal effort to fund transit from 2005 to 2009 will average over $6.89 billion dollars per year. This is a combination of federal General Fund monies and a transfer of slightly more than 15.5 % of all federal fuel tax receipts on seven different kinds of fuel. States will respond with sales taxes, property taxes, tax increment financing, lotteries or blends of taxation to match federal grants. Ironically, in an effort to reduce auto use, the auto has become a multi modal partner in getting to other transit choices. I-40 already has many park and ride lots where people change from cars to vans or buses to complete their commute. The auto is used to get to and from the train stations and even the train crews go to work by truck and auto.
Reducing the national number of vehicle miles traveled has been a national goal since the Clinton Administration. Nothing but an embargo, recession and three-dollar gasoline has ever rapidly reduced the national count of vehicle miles traveled for highway vehicles. According to the Bureau of Transportation statistics, Table 1-37, the number of transit passenger miles traveled peaked in 2001 and declined in the next two years. All forms of transit including motor bus, light rail, heavy rail, trolley bus and commuter rail show either declines or flat growth in passenger mile statistics since 2001. All forms of transit except light rail and ferry boats show no change in average speed or a decline in speed from 1995 to 2003. The population of people using automobiles to get to work went from 86.5% in 1985 to 88.1% in 2003. According to the Bureau of Transportation statistics, Table 3-27a, the percentage of total transportation dollars spent on highways has declined from 77.7% to 68.7% of total and transit spending has increased from 7.2% to 10.6% of total from 1980 to 2001. The numbers of zero-car households have declined from 1969 to 2001. Single occupant vehicle trips have also increased from 1969 to 2001. Clearly, all federal, state and local efforts to divert populations from cars to public transit have failed in spite of massive state and federal subsidies. There has been no concurrent improvement in congestion during this time. There is no urban area showing a long term reprieve from congestion as a result of any transit initiative. It is time to admit that our real mass transit system is the auto.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSCITIZENS AGAINST GOVERNMENT WASTE FOIL PLAN TO BUILD FLORIDA INTERCHANGE BY EXPOSING STRATEGIC MISREPRESENTATION
CAGW this month hailed a local government agency’s decision to disavow a $10 million federal earmark secured by Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) for an unnecessary road project in Florida. In 2005, Rep. Young quietly changed an earmark in the highway bill for Lee and Collier Counties in Florida from $10 million for “widening and improvements in I-75” to $10 million for the Coconut Road Interchange/I-75. Developer Michal Aronoff, who owns property along Coconut Road and stands to benefit financially from increased road access, helped then-House Transportation Committee Chairman Young raise $40,000 for his reelection campaign. On August 17, the Lee County Metropolitan Planning Organization voted 10-3 to return the $10 million to the federal government and ask that the money instead be spent for its original purpose, to widen I-75. “This is a symbolic victory over wasteful spending,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. “Congratulations to Lee County for not wanting to be associated with Rep. Young and for standing up against the powerful pork machine.”
LINK TO ORIGINAL ARTICAL RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSLETTER FROM RIC FINCH TO CARA AND TOUR ABOUT THE FIFTH INTERCHANGE
Dear CARA, TOUR, and Neighbors members and friends....
Some news about the REDC (Northern Loop, Cookeville ByPass) and Fifth Interchange.
1) Much to the consternation of some Cookeville City Council officials, there is no money in TDOT's budget for any new projects in Putnam County for 2008-09-10. This lack of funding includes the Fifth Interchange. This information comes from a TDOT website that you can check our for yourself: http://www.tdot.state.tn.us/roadprojects/2007
Projects are listed by county. Is the list 100% inclusive? I do not know.
2) It is rumored to have been stated by a TDOT rep at a recent RPO (Rural Planning Organization) meeting that the lack of funding for the Fifth Interchange is related to the fact that many local officials --both city and county-- are opposed to the Northern Connector. They want the Fifth Interchange, but do not want the Northern Connector. If this rumor is true, then we can infer that TDOT is sticking to its claim that they cannot build the interchange without the connector. (This in spite of the fact that they currently are building a new interchange on I-40 near Harriman specifically to serve a business park, not to connect to another highway!)
3) Federal funds for TDOT's new projects continue to shrink. See: http://www.tdot.state.tn.us/news/2007/062207a.htm This forces TDOT to focus on high priority projects. How high a priority is the Fifth Interchange? Not especially high right now. TDOT's project prioritization is in part determined by the RPOs. Putnam County belongs to the Center Hill RPO, along with six other counties (Cannon, Cumberland, Dekalb, Van Buren, Warren & White). The seven counties have to agree on what the priorities are for transportation projects in this region. Obviously, the other six counties, all less developed than Putnam Co., have local projects more important to them than the City Council's beloved Fifth Interchange. For those opposed to the Fifth Interchange, Northern Connector and/or REDC, the RPO structure can work to our advantage.
4) Recently, TDOT rep Mr. Steve Allen sent a letter to Mr. Ken Mabery (Coordinator for the Center Hill RPO), with copies to various local officials stating that there was little or no economic justification or traffic flow justification for the proposed REDC. He also stated that the proposed loop around Cookeville would not help ease Cookeville's traffic problems. To document these statements, Mr. Allen sent a copy of the "Needs Assessment Study" for the "Cookeville ByPass" (i.e., REDC, but TDOT does not use this Copeland/Albrecht name for the proposed road). This Needs Assessment Study, officially released in April 2006 (and which everyone on the CARA mail list received a copy of in Aug. 2006), remains not well known by our local City and County officials. CARA tried to get the H-C to do a write-up on the report, but they were not interested. We have now begun to circulate this report to selected City and County officials, as we know that there are numerous local officials and politicos who still support this road in spite of the majority public sentiment against it.
5) If there is anyone on this list who was not on the list in Aug. 2006 or who for any other reason would like a copy of this Needs Assessment Report, let me know and I will gladly e-mail you one. It is short and to the point. If you don't like the REDC concept, you will enjoy reading TDOT put it down.
6) Though things seem relatively quiet now, we need to stay alert to developments. If you hear anything...let me know!
Thanks,
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSLETTER FROM ANOTHER GROUP TRYING TO REFORM TDOT
From: "Trip Pollard"
I haven't seen any emails on this, but wanted to be sure folks knew about 3 transportation planning items of interest and opportunities for input:
1) the new State Transportation Improvement Plan (for FY 2008-2011) is available (link on TDOT home page), identifying which projects planning to fund and how much in next few years. Have been couple of public hearings already, remaining ones Monday in Chattanooga and Tuesday in Knoxville, and you can submit written comments through September 7. Opportunity to comment on specific projects, where $ going overall.
2) amendments to the Long Range Transportation Plan to comply with new federal requirements to show plans' environmental impact and mitigation, as well as consistency with land use plans, are also available through TDOT homepage. As with STIP, public hearings on this will be held Monday in Chattanooga and Tuesday in Knoxville, and you can submit written comments through September 7.
3) The I-40/I-81 Corridor Study is underway to identify corridor deficiencies and possible solutions; there will be six meetings throughout the state between 9/4 and 9/25, and comments can be submitted through Oct 22.
You can click on Public Involvement and then on Public Hearings/Meetings on TDOT page to get details about times and locations.LINK TO AMENDED LONG RANGE PLAN
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKS
TOUR EDITOR COMMENTS ON AMENDED LONG RANGE PLAN
Comments: The Amended Long Range PlanThe latest change in the 25 year plan perpetuates many of the flaws of the original plan. Nothing is said about the financial impact of these changes and nothing is said about what is going to be done to close the $2 billion dollar gap that was in the old plan. TDOT apparently continues to plan to fail financially by including roads in the plan that have high first cost and a withering rate of return in terms of tax income per vehicle mile traveled. Even though income per vehicle mile has been moving upward because of technical adjustments in the number of miles of state controlled roads, every lane-mile of road represents an un-funded liability in the future that depends upon an internal resource redistribution system that is flexible to a fault and disconnected from utility, performance and other objective criteria.
Lane-miles went up from 34,984 in 2000 to 35,720 in 2005. At a consistent geometric rate, the number of lane miles will double in 128.4 years. Population over the same period went from 5,703,294 to 5,955,745. At a consistent geometric rate, the population will double in 80.0 years. It will double even faster if illegal immigration is counted properly. Census predictions for the year 2030, the last year of the Long Range Plan, are for 7,380,634 people in Tennessee. This long range plan represents a failure to anticipate the needs of nearly 1.4 million people. Most of them will still live in rural or low population density areas. At best maybe 2% or 3% will be riding public transit. Future investments in transit should be proportional to the number of people using it. People should be paying a higher fraction of the transit costs. There should be an ongoing effort to make available the per capita costs of transit for planning purposes. There is inadequate justification for transfers of money from automobiles to buses, rail, sidewalks and bicycle paths.
In 2005 the Tennessee population per lane mile was 165.71. To maintain the 2005 level of congestion, by growing lane-miles at the same rate that we are growing people, the state must build an additional 8598.7 lane-miles over 25 years or 343.95 lane-miles per year. This will maintain the 2005 ratio of people to lane-miles into the year 2030. But those lane-miles must be laid down in areas according to redistribution mechanisms that optimize utility. This assumes that the 2005 experience of congestion is acceptable.
According to the 2008 to 2011 State Transportation Improvement Plan, if everything is built on time and within budget, there should be an additional 937.8 lane-miles of highway over a three year period or 312.6 miles per year. Since the average time between start and finish of a project is longer than three years, the actual delivery of lane-miles could be half of what the current STIP has as potential lane miles. A high rate of investment in rural pavement is not acceptable because it transfers both money and mobility without giving proper notice to the donors of the magnitude or consequences of such actions. If the investments were made in urban areas instead, there would be an even bigger long term shortfall since urban upgrades tend to cost more.
The amended plan still retains the outrageous assumption that underutilized or inefficient transportation modes need to be included as a tip of the hat to the misguided concept of transportation diversity. The emphasis should be on getting people to work not recreation and looking-at-the-leaves tourism. The plan seems to be a quota system that does not allow less efficient modes to be replaced or financially avoided. The growth of expenditures that have absolutely no impact on safety can be easily found categorized as “enhancements”. There is no convincing evidence that safety plays any part in the allegedly objective selection process. Projects with zero safety impact easily pass through the sieves of TDOT’s allegedly objective public policy to land in the State Transportation Improvement Plan.
The governor, last March, seemed to think that toll roads would help close the financial gap but now the AP reports comments that suggest that the governor does not want to spend any political capital advocating for additional gas taxes or toll roads. The legislature is likewise pulling back from the possibility that these new sources of revenue might prevent further gas tax increases. A suspected factor in the governor’s reluctance to take up the banner of toll roads to save TDOT financially is the high fraction of public money needed to support the toll facility through the years that bond payments have to be made while no income is made during construction time. Beyond that, additional public money will have to be added to make up for the years there is less than break-even toll income. It may be that the aggressive acceleration of toll rates throughout the life of the facility might even suppress traffic counts on the tollways and shift public usage to road types that are inherently less safe.
The most outrageous inclusion in this amendment is the mere mention of corridor K. This monstrosity has already been cancelled once when it was estimated to cost $1.48 billion in year 2000 dollars. Now, someone seems to have taken the stake out of its heart. Just the engineering bill per mile for this would build a four-lane road nearly anywhere in Tennessee. If the $1.48 billion dollar estimate is updated to 2006 dollars and divided by the 20.4 miles in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, the cost per mile is $85 million dollars per mile. In the newest estimate in the 2008 to 2011 STIP the cost per mile climbs to $147 million dollars per mile. Since Corridor K was off the radar screen when the original Long Range Transportation Plan was conceived, it seems obvious that between $1 billion and $1.7 billion dollars for the 6.8 miles of road in the newest plan or 20.4 miles in the old Environmental Impact Statement needs to be added to long range financial planning and the shortfall.
The quest for county seat connector roads continues. TDOT is carrying this legislative millstone around its neck compliments of the legislature and can do no other than comply. The unknown factor seems to be just how much will the final 35 connector roads cost and, over what time period? Over the years, the costs have doubled. These final 35 roads represent an enormous burden to the rest of the state, especially urban areas struggling with congestion. It could cost from $4 to $6 billion and probably represents a large fraction of the $2 billion shortfall.
As an example of legislative misbehavior, please note that a private act was presented to the legislature this year to cause TDOT to immediately commit to finishing the County Seat Connector for Perry County. The cost was set at three easy payments of $51.7 million dollars each year. The 7000 people in Perry County contribute an average of $300 each per year to gas, motor fuel and registration taxes. Ignoring the fact that only about 75% of that would ever get to TDOT because it shares income with local governments, it would take over 61 years at an interest rate of 3.6 % to generate an equivalent cash flow to pay off just the first year installment of $51.7 million dollars. It would take over 10,000 Vehicles per day on every mile of that road just to reimburse TDOT for basic maintenance from gas tax income. This is clearly only one of many charity roads that the legislature wants to build at all costs. Fortunately, the legislation was not passed but it shows how easily the most irresponsible road legislation can find its way to the legislative hopper.
According to the legislative fiscal summary, the cost of the County Seat Connector Projects is $3.94 Billion for the 30 projects beyond the 2015 finish date in the existing long range plan. That same document warns that there is no factor to adjust for inflation. To complete the system within 9 years would cost $438 million per year for nine years. This is about 25% of the total TDOT yearly budget. This represents a questionable transfer of mobility and money from urban to rural areas as well as a threat to maintenance activities.
The legislature needs to be presented not only the estimates for these County Seat Connector Roads but they also need to have presented the butchers bill for the cost in fatalities. TDOT recently presented a plan to save 127 lives in 2008 with what are best characterized as behavior modification projects that are mostly funded from federal monies. This proves that there still is present a remnant of capability to do such calculations. Only eleven states have fatality rates per mile of road higher than Tennessee. The state with the highest fatality rate per mile of road in 2005, Florida, was called a “peer” state by the State Comptrollers Generals Office in a report that came out in 2003 and suggested that Tennessee should copy their practices for project selection.
TDOT shows further inability to grasp its own complicity in the continuing carnage on the highways. They blame the driver, the drunks and all of the usual suspects but they never blame themselves. Two states have fatality rates per million miles less than half of the Tennessee 2005 rate and there are 34 states that have lower 2005 fatality rates than Tennessee. All states have drunks, people talking on cell phones and other behavior problems like not using seat belts but there is no realization yet that transportation investments are critical to lowering the fatality rates. The 2008 to 2011 State Transportation Improvement Plan has only $15.7 million dollars dedicated to high risk roads. If TDOT spends $1.6 billion every year, this would represent $24 for every $1000 spent from 2008 to 2011 on high risk roads.
It has been well understood for over 20 years that the fatality rate per 100 million miles can be anticipated simply by realizing the differences between the type of road built and the functional classification of the road that is being used. In 1994, a rural four-lane Interstate Highway would generate an average of 1.209 deaths per 100 million miles traveled. The most dangerous road type is a rural two-lane local road and it can be expected to generate 3.855 deaths per mile 100 million miles of use. These statistics however presume normal usage and are used constantly to mislead the public into believing that TDOT is saving lives because it is substituting four-lane for two lane roads in rural areas.
The true reduction in the probability a particular person will become a fatality is dependant upon the number of vehicle miles traveled on each road classification. A safer road is not safer until someone uses it. To benefit from a road upgrade from two-lane to four-lane requires that the individual actually use the upgraded road in a way that it replaces road mileage that is less safe. A classic bypass usually increases the length of travel over a shorter but more dangerous road. The alleged safety gain can be wiped out by the difference in the distances driven between two identical points over two or more different but competing routes. If a rural Interstate with a fatality rate of 1.209 per 100 million miles orbits a city for 8 miles to replace a 3.5 mile trip through the city, there is no safety dividend if the driver takes the rural interstate instead. An urban principal arterial with a length of 3.5 miles and a fatality rate of 1.397 fatalities per 100 million miles would be safer and use less fuel, if not congested. TDOT is often seduced into trading lives for economic development motives. Additional gratuitous interchanges for non-traffic motives only increases the likelihood that an Interstate will function more and more as a local primary arterial instead or a regional city to city arterial. Lately, TDOT seems helpless when it comes to defending the larger interest of the tens of thousands using the interstate against the dozens of self anointed experts at the Chamber of Commerce.
A person who consumes half of his mileage on the Interstate is statistically less likely to die than one who uses a lower percentage of interstate mileage and all the rest of the mileage on local or collector roads. If the average Tennessee per capita mileage is taken at 12,000 miles per year, then it could be anticipated that over an average year, a person could consume all yearly vehicle miles by a daily trek of 16.4 miles from home. If all of the miles were consumed on a five day work week, then the same 12,000 miles would be consumed by trips of only 22.99 miles from home. This figure agrees with insurance legends that say most accidents happen within 25 miles of your home. Instead of just maintaining roads, maybe counties should be upgrading local and collector roads more often. This is quite impractical under the current system since a lot of counties must use a blend of fuel taxes and property taxes to keep their system going. The population and area redistribution formula for fuel taxes to the counties needs to be reformed. TDOT can not do that but should be able to assist the legislature in doing that.
The reason TDOT can not get a handle on the dismal fatality and accident rate is because project selection is divorced from the concept of utility or getting the greatest good for the greatest number. We have a federal system requiring a long range plan and a congress eager to blow holes in it with earmarks. The state legislature is so saturated with economic development motivation that makes it intellectually unavailable to fine tune policy except for changes that exaggerate the problem even more. The lawyer mentality of advocacy for a small segment of constituents rather than advocacy for the betterment of the larger whole community is toxic to the process. RPO and MPO members can not channel or feel their way through to a safer selection process. TDOT pretends to override silly RPO proposals but it does not have a system of resource distribution that responds to utility either.
All things being equal, the safer choice between two proposed Interstate profiles is one that attracts the most traffic. But a formal, open and respected mechanism of comparing the relative safety of two projects that are nothing alike does not exist except as a concept buried in a transportation technical journal.Every state that has tried to formalize objective procedures has had those procedures neutered by political interference. Sometimes it would mean leaving federal transportation money on the table, an idea that is difficult to imagine even if it means abandoning bad ideas. In a democratic society, people should be able to decide that economic development is more important than safety, but those decisions would be less likely to happen if the consequences were better explained or available to the public. We are trading lives for convenience. Most highway departments are doing a better job of mitigating the damage.
Another outlandish inconsistency is the statement that there will be a strong preference for using electronic demand management systems (ITS) rather than building new lanes. These ITS systems do help with demand and congestion but they should be seen as temporary measures prior to and in addition to new lanes. Extra lanes work every time that they are tried if you have the traffic to put on them. The idea that you can not build your way out of congestion is an urban legend that is on level of believing that the plumbing pipes they make today are less able to carry water than in the good old days.
The federal government has considered and discarded twice the idea of increased federal fuel taxes during the last two transportation bills. The Tennessee legislature is also toying with increased registration and fuel taxes but seems to want to wait for the feds to do something and use that as an excuse. Increasing taxes, state or federal or both, will decrease or flatten the real income of TDOT per year if the background costs of producing fuel remain the same. Unfortunately federal proposals to reduce tax incentives to fuel producers will return to the motorist as higher gas prices without a tax increase. The investment in alternate fuels is unlikely to stretch the fuel supply in any meaningful way. Population increases will wipe out the theoretical 15% increase in fuel volume in a decade. The current drought of highway funds is chronic and has occurred without a recession. Vehicle mile consumption has gone flat nationwide because of the gas prices.
The Long Range Plan shows no intention of dodging the problems that will face every state if CAFÉ standards are increased. This will result in smaller and smaller cars coexisting on highways with more and more numerous trucks. The increasing differential between the mass of the trucks and the mass of the cars means increasing safety problems unless some kind of effective action is taken to segregate cars from trucks. More trucks need to be in their own lanes even if it takes tolling. Some kind of plan needs to be undertaken that will increase the number of lanes on the existing interstate, not just in the urban areas but from all Interstates. Florida has already proven that truck only lanes can be done without waiting for the federal government to organize it and assure that everyone will be getting their piece of the pie.
The faulty idea that investments in trains can take significant numbers trucks off of the roads is still resident in the TDOT amended plan in spite of research done at the Federal Highway Administration to the contrary. Trains are specialized conveyance for bulk cargoes that trucks do not usually carry. It is not practical to expect that time sensitive cargoes will go from a truck averaging 45 miles per hour to rail averaging 15 miles per hour. The effect on truck traffic volume will be minimal and will disappear within the background growth rate of truck traffic. Only in the cases where there is Intermodal cooperation with trucks can there be any transfer.
There are two worst case scenarios possible with taking tucks off of the road with rail freight. First, it might work, in which case there would be massive unemployment among truckers. What should a company or private operator do with a tractor trailer rig costing $150,000 that the state has just taken off of the road by subsidizing rail traffic? The second worst case scenario is that it might not work and millions of taxpayer money will go down the drain as subsidies. Whatever policy floats to the top of the stack, it must take into consideration that trucks and trains have areas in which they cooperate and areas in which they compete. By the time TDOT finally admits to this mistake the cost to mirror successful strategies elsewhere will have climbed to levels that will demand even more of a tax burden. The effort to revitalize abandoned tracks will fail because it is under funded at the federal level and the true scope of the problem is underestimated. Many of the abandoned routes were abandoned because of the vertical and horizontal geometry of the tracks and the inability of the existing tracks to carry modern loads on modern train cars at reasonable speeds. Once these economic realities are realized by local governments that have taken emotional approaches to saving their track, TDOT and the legislature will be under extreme pressure to bail them out.
The average speed of first class train cars has not improved since the mid-Fifties. Light rail passenger service can only be slightly faster but can not beat an intercity bus in speed or rate of transfer of passengers. The cost per mile of maintaining track is much larger than the cost per mile of maintaining roads. More trains mean more opportunities to stop and wait for them to pass. The cost of grade separation to prevent interference seems to be understated in the plan because it is expensive. The train congestion problem at Memphis was not even mentioned.
Lip service to using transportation decision making to “support the state economy” is gratuitously inserted but only means that TDOT plans to continue to be the handmaiden of bad policy from the legislature and our un-elected representatives from development groups and the Chamber of Commerce. The bats and the trees and even the dirt have more and better legal protections than the taxpayer. No one has explained how charging 15 cents per mile to use a toll road supports the state economy. Classic economic theories that justified the construction of the Appalachian Development Highway System state that driving transportation cost to the minimum had the effect of maximizing public benefits. Apparently, economic theories have changed to just the opposite.
Reforming the RPO process must be a high priority. First, there is no protection of the common taxpayer from RPO votes by politicians who may have a vested interest in the outcome of the voting. It is presumed that no one voting actually has land in the way or land that could benefit from something that TDOT plans to do. This seems to be an oversight at the federal level when the MPO and RPO concept was invented. These groups need to be screened for conflicts of interest. Even if TDOT overrules a tainted project based on its own prerogative, the very act of permitting such things happening will degrade public confidence in the process.
Second, economic development interest are over represented in the process. Until economic development has progressed or at least pulled even with Astrology as a reliable means of predicting the future, their concerns should stay in the background with no more weight than anyone else. Just because some one represents the Chamber of Commerce does not automatically mean that they in anyway represent the long term interest of the taxpayer.
The RPO priority setting process proves over and over again that there really are no truly objective selection criteria and that any idea can be resurrected at a whim and floated as a viable project with all the right people wanting it. The existing system gives points to high growth areas and to low growth areas thus removing population as a factor! The voting members of federally required Metropolitan and Rural Planning Organizations cast votes in a way that prevents constituents from holding them accountable at the polls. The delay time between the meeting and the public exposure of the official minutes is a burden to those who want to take an interest in the activity. TDOT should study making video recordings of the procedure. Sometimes the votes are held at rotating locations beyond the will and way of the local newspaper to cover the event. Some times qualified voters don’t even show up to vote.
TDOT continues to present the illusion that it can be everything to everybody in spite of the decline in its financial ability to engage in mega projects. TDOT should discard the idea that Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Washington are peer states. Tennessee has little in common with theses states and has not had any salt water margins for at least 365 million years. All but one state has citizens with substantially higher income per mile of road. All but one state has road income per centerline mile that is substantially above that of Tennessee and that one state has a higher gas tax. Washington has had a substantial fuel tax and the other so called “peer” states also have higher fuel taxes per gallon. Florida has six times the income per mile as Tennessee. Selecting peer states only condemns us to monkey-see-monkey-do policies that may not apply to a state with different fractions of urban versus rural populations and different geographic or economic obstacles. The current amended LRTP shows that the stress of declining real transportation related income has not yet forced realistic plans nor has it gotten rid of any useless roads.
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Press Releases
NC Wasted Billions on Road Projects
Better priorities since 1990 would have boosted maintenance without raising taxes
Contact: David Hartgen or Roy Cordato
704-687-4308 or 919-828-3876
info@johnlocke.org
October 06, 2004
RALEIGH – North Carolina should fund repairs of its deteriorating state highways not with new taxes but by ending wasteful road projects, according to a comprehensive new report from the John Locke Foundation on highway expenditures and priorities.
The study reviewed 349 major road projects constructed between 1990 and 2003. About $2.5 billion was spent on projects of questionable value, concluded study author David T. Hartgen, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. If that money had been used for road repairs instead, the state’s highway maintenance budget could have been 40 percent higher without raising taxes, he found.
Major road projects include freeway and arterial widenings, new freeways and arterials, and new exits and climbing lanes. These projects cost about $7.3 billion, about 1/3 of the state’s highway program of $20.5 billion since 1990. These expenditures increased 206 percent over 13 years.
On average, the major highway projects cost about 2.7 cents per vehicle-mile, but they varied widely in effectiveness. Some — such as climbing lanes, urban arterial widenings and urban freeway widenings — were generally worthwhile, Hartgen found. But others — new exits on rural freeways, new rural 4-lane arterials and some new freeways — were of questionable worth.
If the projects costing more than 5.3 cents per vehicle-mile (a standard roughly two times the state average) had been delayed or deleted, about $2.5 billion would have been saved, he said.
“For just nine percent of the capital budget, the state’s deteriorating road conditions could have been reversed”, Hartgen said. “Essentially, we fiddled while Rome burned.”
The study showed that cost-effective and cost-ineffective projects were constructed all over the state. Neither was concentrated in rural, urban, eastern, western or other locations. Among the cost-effective projects were:
• A 1998 widening of a 1.6-mile section of US 76 in Wilmington for $600,000, serving 25,000 vehicles a day.
• Widening in 2000 of a 17.5-mile section of I-85 in Gaston County from 4 to 6 lanes for $49.1 million, serving 75,000 vehicles a day.
• Climbing lanes on NC 107 in Jackson and Transylvania counties, at $4 million, serving 6,600 vehicles a day.
Examples of cost-ineffective projects included:
• A new exit and frontage road on I-40 at Newfound Road in Haywood County, constructed in 1995 for $4.9 million to serve just 500 vehicles per day.
• A new exit on US 64 in Edgecombe County at SR 1207, constructed in 1998 for $7.7 million, serving just 800 vehicles per day.
• A 2.1-mile widening of US 19/74 in Swain County from NC 28 to the Little Tennessee River, completed in 1992 for $21.7 million, serving 5400 vehicles per day.
“We need to spend our highway dollars more wisely, not ask our taxpayers for more of their money,” Hartgen said. “North Carolina no longer has the luxury of distributing road funds without regard to need.”
The study also found that the state’s focus on major projects diverted attention and money away from repair needs, allowing the system to deteriorate even as new roads were added. During the 1990s, the state’s roads worsened from 8th best nationwide to 36th according to Hartgen’s analysis. By 2002, the state’s rural interstates were rated 44th nationwide, urban interstates 42nd, and rural arterials 45th, the study found.
The study concluded that the benefits of highway projects could be substantially improved if they were selected according to their cost-effectiveness. The study calls for focusing the state’s highway program more on maintenance needs funded by savings from better selection of major projects according to cost-effectiveness rather than the geographic criteria presently used. It calls on the General Assembly to increase long-term highway maintenance funding by about 40 percent.
Other recommendations include 1) constraining the capital program to needed and affordable projects; 2) reviewing all highway fund diversions and non-pavement expenditures so that revenues from highway users are devoted to highway purposes; 3) exploring innovative financing such as tollways and infrastructure banks; 4) revising current highway funding formulas; 5) limiting major road improvements to higher road classes; and 6) applying interim measures before widening.
The new JLF policy report on North Carolina highway spending is available online here. For more information, contact Dr. David Hartgen at 704-547-4308 or Dr. Roy Cordato, vice president for research, at 919-828-3876.
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THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE AND PRO PAVEMENT WARRIORS STRIKE BACK
Click on links within the page to see the TOUR response.
By Claudia Johnson
CBJ Editor
Proposed construction of a 5th Exit at Mine Lick Creek west of Cookeville and a northern connector route from I-40 to US 70N has stirred controversy in Putnam County, but recent similar projects were met with community support in the Lebanon area.
“Everyone here supported [the Hartmann Drive] exit,” recalled Jeff Bains, public works commissioner for the City of Lebanon. “The only issue here was ‘when can you start?’” Bains said the Hartmann Drive interchange was discussed and planned for nearly a decade, but a cohesive leadership effort kept the process moving. Since the Hartmann Drive exit has opened, four connector roads have been built from it. “If there’s been any controversy, I am not aware of it,” Bains said.Sue Vanetta, who heads up the chamber of commerce in Lebanon agreed. She said that there was a joint effort among elected officials, business and industry and area residents to ensure the exit was built. “The people who owned land were more than willing [to sell it for the construction project],” she said, adding that opening of the Hartmann Drive exit has stimulated development for the community.
Currently there is another exit under construction at Beckwith Road east of Lebanon, which when completed will provide a western exit for the Eastgate Technology Park. Vanetta said companies within the park were eager to have the exit built, rallying support from local officials in Lebanon and Mt. Juliet. Cookeville city officials, as well as the multi-county rural planning organization of which Putnam is a part, have identified a 5th Exit for Cookeville as a transportation priority. But recent controversy, especially concerning the northern connector road, could endanger the project, according to Charles Bush of TDOT.
“Opposition has killed a lot of [TDOT] projects,” Bush said.
March 27 was the final date for the public to file written comments for inclusion in the public record, but a decision is not expected for several months as state transportation officials perform the final steps in a lengthy review process.
“It’s not a vote,” said TDOT’s Tom Love, who conducted the public hearing in Cookeville March 6 to receive public comments. “It is vital that we hear from everyone.”
TDOT estimated that there were “more FOR than AGAINST” the exit attending the hearing, which drew a crowd of 350- 400. Among the audience were business leaders, elected officials and residents of area west of Cookeville where the proposed exit and its accompanying connector road will have the greatest physical impact.
“I’m glad both sides were represented,” Love said, adding that community opinion is “factored into the equation.”
Several TDOT officials, both at the meeting and afterwards, commented that it is rare to see a large crowd of supporters at a public hearing on any issue, since opposition is usually more vocal and more organized.
Love was quick to point out at the public hearing that the 5th Exit is not associated with an earlier proposed project bypass or circumferential route proposed as part of the Corridor J project .
“This route has been eliminated as a result of a change in concept on the Corridor J project,” Love said. Several offering comments at the hearing, both for and against the 5th Exit, took issue with construction of a northern connector route being built from I-40 to US 70N (SR 24). However, Love explained that the Federal Highway Administration requires that an “exit or interchange have a logical termini into a ‘good’ road.” Without the connector route, federal funding for the project may not be provided.
Cookeville city manager, Jim Shipley, noted that the city along with Putnam County have spent approximately $5 million acquiring property south of the interstate for an industrial complex, observing, “to make it work to the fullest potential [the project] has to be built.” Shipley pointed to two factors that seem to have caused the greatest controversy. One is the argument that a northern connector road would impact residents and farms. The other stems from what Shipley said is “the early idea” that such a road would ultimately become part of a northern loop around Cookeville.
Mike Richardson was one of several opponents who posted that kind of comment on the CBJ’s Web site. “I am opposed to the so called “required” connector road to Hwy. 70,” Richardson wrote. “I am not opposed to building a 5th interchange for the purpose of providing good access to I-40 for the proposed industrial park.” Richardson stated that he believes the connector “is an unnecessary and wasteful use of tax dollars” that would “further fragment and disrupt the rural landscape, injuring rural home and farm owners.” He is also afraid the connector would be the “foot in the door” for eventual completion of a loop road from Overton County, through Putnam County and into White County, a proposition he calls “a massively destructive and wasteful use of dollars and resources.” “The northern loop is deader than a door knell,” Shipley said. “It is not going to happen. The funding has gone to Clay and Overton counties.”
One long-time advocate of transportation improvements to the community is former Cookeville city councilman Dr. Steve Copeland, who serves a chairman of the local chamber of commerce transportation committee. Representatives of the all-volunteer group visited with state legislators, TDOT officials and Gov. Phil Bredesen last month to discuss the reasons the project is supported by the business community.
“We have a governor who has said he is concerned about the Upper Cumberland, about the fact that as a region we are close to the bottom in per capita income,” Copeland said. “One of the ways you address that is through improvements in infrastructure and roads. Our governor is sympathetic to that. It may be a long time before we have an opportunity like this again." Copeland said that the fact the city and county has made a $5 million commitment for land and is prepared to spend another possible $3 million to prepare it for industry has sent an important message to the governor as well as state and federal funding authorities.
“This is a good time to build,” Copeland said of the northern connector, which he acknowledged was the primary point to contention associated with the 5th exit. “There are only a few residents who will be displaced now, but if we wait until the area is more heavily populated, it will make it more difficult. We have to show some vision and anticipation for future needs.” Copeland admitted that a problem with the northern connector alternatives as proposed is that there is less than adequate access from the road to the land.
“Charles Curtis is working on an alternative,” he said. “People have to have access to their land. We are looking at access similar to the access to Highway 111 between Livingston and Cookeville. You just make the value of the land increase if you give them better roads with good ” access."
The 66-page environmental impact study for the exit and connector is available for review at the Putnam County Library and on the Internet. This study identifies and proposes to address the project’s impact on land use, farmland, environmental justice, water quality, the economy, air quality, wetlands, historic/archeological as well as residential homes and commercial buildings.
Copeland said his interest in the project is a “vested interest in my community” rather than an interest for personal gain.
“Other than my house in White Plains, I own absolutely zero real estate outside the city limits of Cookeville,” he said. “I also have no close friends or relatives who have a vested interest in the development of the exit and connector.” access." The TDOT study supports the project as proposed with an exit and northern connector, noting “improved community and regional connectivity between businesses and residents could be realized.”
“These improvements would contribute to the economic improvement efforts and quality of life improvement goals as set forth by local and regional officials,” the study states. “These efforts are being made to reduce poverty and unemployment rates and to improve income."
Used by permission Cumberland Business Journal copyright 2007, all rights reserved
Click Here to See the Rest of the Cumberland Business Journal
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EDITORIALS
RESPONSE TO THE PRO-INTERCHANGE COMMENTS IN THE CUMBERLAND BUSINESS JOURNAL
People who have had nominal parenting through about the age of ten have already learned that just because your friends engage in foolish behavior, it is no excuse for you to do the same. The Chamber of Commerce is famous for propagating the Monkey-See-Monkey-Do mentality that makes any action automatically urgent upon learning that someone else is doing it. The fact that they are doing it also seems to eliminate the need for investigating if it really works. For those who have not had such parenting, I suggest the following rule: Before engaging in Monkey-See-Monkey-Do analysis, always check to see how many of the Monkeys are retarded. Bad policy, like smoking, often takes a while to manifest an obvious negative outcome and by then it may be too late to learn from the mistake.
There is no evidence that the interchanges at Lebanon are manifestations of the useless roads phenomenon. We do not automatically rule any thing in or out without knowing the particulars that make a useless road. TOUR does not stereotype road building as good or bad without looking at the full context of the intended use. The Hartman Drive exit in Lebanon has a lot of traffic and one of the businesses is Home Depot. The exit to the Technical College may be another matter if it exclusively serves only one land access function. Mine Lick Creek road on the other hand has only 1000 cars a day according to TDOT. At peak hours, it gets about one vehicle every minute.
Return to CBJ articleThe Chamber of Commerce, the City of Cookeville and the various permutations and combinations of people who serve among those groups do not represent many of the people in the area of the Fifth Interchange. The recent annexation of the property took in a lot of agricultural land, a cemetery and a few living people but not the people who will pay the highest prices for this project. To add to the insult, the affected populace can not even vote against the people who have been politically hiding out on the other side of the city limit from any retaliation at the polls.
The danger to the Fifth Interchange is not the public opposition but the possibility that the Federal Highway Administration will finally figure out that there has been a bait and switch game going. The Fifth Interchange, once it was abandoned as an intersection of Corridor J and I-40, lost most of the traffic that justified the original interchange. The uniform rule around the country is that the interchange has to be a last resort and there has to be a justification based on a comparison of other feasible alternatives related to traffic including the construction of a frontage road. That frontage road is already being planned by the city to access the site.
Return to CBJ articleIf the circumferential loop around Cookeville is not a consideration, then why is it still in the planning documents? The environmental assessment certainly takes note of a circumferential route and assures everyone that the Fifth Interchange is harmonious with the long term plans of the city and the county. The traffic that justifies the Fifth Interchange could never be developed until the completed segments touch SR-111 in two places. A loop is no more able to convey traffic between attractors and generators than a standard Roman grid system of roads roughly at right angles, if they are spaced as rural or urban standards require. No neutral highway engineer will advise that a loop will establish superior congestion relief, fuel economy or economic development over a grid system.
Return to CBJ articleThe approval for the intersection is for a four lane road and a four lane road must be built so that the conditions of the original application for an interchange are satisfied. Even the city planner, James Mills, is on record that the road could be a three lane. The rules for new interchanges assume that there is an existing traffic generated need for the road, not a questionable economic development need.
Return to CBJ articleWorking in a Committee at the Chamber of Commerce does not give Steve Copeland nor anyone else special abilities of predicting the future. We don't normally bet on a ball team based on the attributes of the cheer leaders and for similar reasons TOUR advises against the smallest bet on the Fifth Interchange. The fact that a delegation has to go to the Governor's office to put pressure on TDOT to put the Fifth Interchange on the front burner is proof that the need for asphalt is not based on classic measures of congestion, traffic accidents or land access. The need for highway infrastructure can easily be demonstrated with objective data that is routinely collected every day or by special counts. While we may admire his other achievements in life, Dr. Copeland has shown no special ability to grasp the requirements of highway finance and the ethical treatment of the taxpayers.
Return to CBJ articleAlthough Dr. Copeland is speaking for a region that does have profound unemployment problems, especially Pickett County and Clay County, he is simultaneously advocating that infrastructure solves a problem even if it is no where near the problem. Putnam County is not a poor county and it has an unemployment rate that is below the state average. Dr. Copeland and the local Chamber of Commerce put on a full court press to move Corridor J to Putnam County in order to deny Pickett and possibly Clay County a Corridor J alignment. Making Cookeville a job Mecca for the surrounding counties only makes worse the increasing per capita consumption of vehicle miles traveled. There is no increase in quality of life when hours a day are spent commuting.
There is no proof that counter cyclical spending on pavement will cause permanent reversal of unemployment or raise the per capita income beyond the period in which the construction takes place. This is a cause and effect connection created by wishful thinking. The utility of roads declines as population and land access points become dispersed. While not having a basic and adequate road would be devastating, the effects of over-building is negative because of the higher burden of capital recovery. It seems that the concept of a law of diminishing concerns has been repealed by the Chamber of Commerce and for the exclusive benefit of Cookeville.
The best example of oversimplifying the economic development argument is in Kentucky where the state proudly puts it on their web site that the state gets back 180 percent of all the money that they "invest" in highways. This sounds like a good deal but, nowhere does their DOT web page say how long it takes to get the 180 percent return. If it took twenty years to get $180 back from a $100 investment the average interest rate would be 2.98%, which is below the inflation rate.
TDOT estimates that the cost of rural two-lane roads to be $5.1 million per mile, including right-of-way and engineering. The road connected to the interchange is $12.1 million per mile. The difference between an adequate road and an over designed road is a financial burden on the taxpayers. In this case, the capital recovery at 4.5 percent over 50 years is $612,285.96 per year for the larger road and $258,070.94 for the smaller road. For the sake of brevity, I will skip the proof that, in either case, the traffic projections will not raise either annual sum .
Per capita income tends to go up in areas that have both inadequate and adequate roads when the over all state and national economy goes up. Also, per capita income can stabilize or even advance when an area is being depopulated by declining opportunity. There is no objective data to even suggest the number of times that counter-cyclic spending works and the number of times that it does not work. There is no evidence that even if it did work, the effect would in anyway be durable. There is no elaborate body of evidence because of the difficulty in sorting out the other things that are happening in the economy. As the number of contributing factors in employment increases, the linkage between pavement and the hoped for economic development becomes harder to predict and less likely to be a critical factor. The federal government does not even collect data that can confidently attribute pavement to wealth creation.
The data that does exist is mostly concocted by economist with purchased data and proprietary programs that can at best be understood only in general terms. The techniques however can not distinguish between the activity caused by the pavement and mere income transfers from region to region. TDOT has been engaging in economic development and counter cyclic pavement spending projects for years but has no formal written or predictable policy on which reliable measurements can be made. The result seems to be that the richer counties are getting richer and the poorer counties are getting poorer even though all seem to have at least some advancement. Other income transfers like the Basic Education Program, Federal policies of preferring to place contracts in labor surplus areas and the rising percentage of government employees in jobs like social workers or teachers is added to the apparent increase in per capita income and then incorrectly attributed to pavement.
Return to CBJ articleThe fact that the city and the county have spent tax money on something that may or may not succeed is a desperate plea for a bail out from the state. Can the governor bail out every city or county that gambles in the economic development game? Knoxville lost money on their convention center and had to pass a wheel tax to rescue it from financial insolvency. Economic development failures are more common than popular to believe but, the bail out is very rare especially when there are numerous counties pursuing the same policy.
Even though the state supply of empty industrial or other speculative buildings has increased steadily and now stands at 633 on the State Economic and Community Development web site, the usual Chamber of Commerce response is that everyone else is doing it, so we have to do it too. Cookeville has 8 of the 26 available properties in the 12 counties of the Upper Cumberland. Expanding supply of industrial buildings is an illogical response to the declining percentage of total payroll that industries supply. The fraction of total payroll attributed to industrial jobs in the total state economy peaked in 1979 and has been declining in real terms ever since. Cookeville and Putnam County are planning to spend about one-third of what the state spends in a year on economic development at one interchange project.
Return to CBJ articleTOUR believes that the time is always right to treat the taxpayer ethically. The central issue has been what is best for the greatest number of taxpayers. The buy it now before the price goes up argument belongs on the Home Shopping Network and is a rhetorical device to artificially exaggerate urgency. While it is likely that the cost of a future interchange will be more in inflated dollars, a reasonable transportation transaction will always be able to purchase the infrastructure from the future social value of the construction. It may cost more but the service it provides may be worth more. The basic objection to the interchange has always been that the increment of benefit does not equal the increment of cost. The alleged benefits are so far in the future that certainty about their magnitude or number is diminished. The early purchase of an over built highway asset creates a long term burden in the cost of taking the land off the tax rolls and the maintenance of the project against natural factors that compel the degradation of basic materials and control of vegetation.
The response to the TDOT environmental assessment is the last article in this web site. It also is quite long and contains many of the points already covered.
The Tour editor and no TOUR member known to me has made an ad hominem attack on Dr. Copeland nor any pro-road advocate. We question all human ability to see the future with such crystal clear clarity as they claim. We see an investment that serves unusually low current demand and an uncertain demand in the far future. We don't believe in condemnation for what can easily, under the current protections afforded by the legislature, turn into a motel, truck stop or Home Depot. We protest risky investments with tax money that serves a potential future need when there is considerable unquestioned need already apparent and easily detected as fatality and congestion statistics.
We have no problem with people selling their property at market price and selling while not under the duress of eminent domain. Even if a conflict of interest seemed to exist it really would not matter since the existing weak laws against conflicts of interest seem only to apply to elected officials. The TDOT system is not transparent and it does not depend upon a vote. There is, no reasonable expectation that logic, will prevail over rhetoric , politics or character assassination. TOUR appreciates the fact that Dr. Copeland has not joined the Herald-Citizen and Henry Fincher in a gratuitous criticism of our position as based on the NIMBY or Not-In MY-Back-Yard philosophy. While there may be such people within our ranks, we do not wear gracefully the accusation that our opposition to this project and many like it throughout Tennessee flows from selfish motivations.
It is the purpose of this exercise to degrade the pro-interchange logic, not the person. We do not demean their intelligence but are forced by their persistence to point out that sometimes an intelligent person is sometimes just more able to come to the wrong conclusion faster than the rest of us.
We further demand more objective analysis of the facts, not the misuse of anecdotal, limited and vague evidence. Their justifications for this project are supported upon popular and uncritical trust in their positions as community leaders. They are constantly defending the project with rhetorical arguments and devices familiar to the crowds that approved medieval burning of witches and heretics. Their use of arguments from authority, arguments from adverse circumstances, appeals to ignorance, special pleadings and begging the question proves that they are unarmed with hard provable facts. Their willingness to engage in risky ventures with public money at no risk to their own money or reputation says more than that already placed on all these pages.
Return to CBJ articleThe land access problem is seen mostly from the standpoint of someone who only needs to get up and down a single driveway to access a home. Cutting a farm in two or more pieces with fences and limited access highway creates a continuous and ongoing burden that never gets settled in the usual right of way settlement. When pasture is lost, the number of animals that can be supported is also lost. No one would be surprised that there might be a factory production problem if the road went through Fleetgaurd's 750 line, but the idea that it would damage farm production is identical. We also believe that the insertion of this collector road as a limited access will cause increased future cost as a result of the need to separate grades with bridges for future collector roads that will serve the residential requirements as farms transition to other land use.
Return to CBJ articleOnce again, this is another appeal to uncritically accept the judgment of those who hold positions of authority. TDOT has no history of having any more than an average score in the art of road building. The fifteenth annual evaluation by Dr. David Hartgen, has shown TDOT to be a mediocre performer among the other State Departments of Transportation. There is no evidence that an engineer took transportation data and transformed it into a plan to solve a transportation problem. There is no evidence that TDOT considered the financial impact or financial feasibility of this project nor did they execute the economic analysis that would prove that when this interchange was considered for Corridor J.
The insistence that this project will be a an improvement in quality of life is based upon wishful thinking and has no meaningful objective means of being substantiated. The failure to deliver competitive transportation services to the citizens of Tennessee at competitive rates creates a burden that is not felt in half of the other states in the union. Three of the states on our border are already performing financially better than Tennessee and they are Georgia, Kentucky and Virginia.
The Chamber of Commerce mentality calls for a celebration anytime the state cash registers ring with no care whatsoever about the quality of the exchange. Most of the people in the Chamber of Commerce would be out of business if they did the same thing in their own business. We are invited to believe that the other three Cookeville interchanges that are already zoned for industrial purposes have no prospect of developing into job opportunities and that we may, by making substantial sacrifices of other opportunities , move future business activity to this spot. We are invited to accept that the existing stock of 8 empty buildings plus the inventory of raw land for sale or lease in the community is suddenly unable to please any entrepreneur. The new buildings and the new surplus land is going to be somehow magically transformed to factory magnets. This is an extrordinary claim that, so far, has no extrordinary proof.
As a general rule, wealth is created by taking something of little value and increasing that value through adding labor and capital. Factories, retail and wholesale organizations are no different except the lingering perception is that manufacturing jobs are worth the sacrifice that a motel or sandwich shop is not. Our economy has been restructuring so that manufacturing plays a smaller and smaller role in the over all economy. When and if a Fifth Interchange is finally built, the most probable outcome is that whatever lands there will continue to be transformed by the forces in the economy. At best it will be a mix of uses that includes commercial enterprises. Perpetuating the illusion that there will be factories on the new industrial park is a useful device to increase acceptance but it is not a realistic long term probability.
We are on the verge of the Legislature giving final passage to a bill that permits TDOT to engage toll companies in the process of building real roads that go to places that we really want to go and charging us even more money for that ability. The need to operate a toll system on top of the other system that we have is the final and conclusive proof that TDOT has no special skill in operating a road system from a financial standpoint. There is no difference in operating a toll road with toll booths and a public road system with tolls collected at the gas stations. In both cases the amount of money going in has to equal the amount of money going out or there will be a need to raise taxes.
The purpose of a road is land access. By doing so, it makes the property more valuable without a lot of fanfare and a bunch of Chamber of Commerce Hoopla. People who just want land for a place to live will find that artificially boosted land value can endanger their ability to remain in their home. There should be no obligation on the part of the government however, to make your property or a particular property even more valuable by overbuilding the road or paving your driveway while there is no possibility of doing the same for all other taxpayers. Economic development in the post construction phase of road construction is normal if that construction is economically reasonable in the first place.
If pro-road arguments had a basis in fact, there would be little problem presenting the evidence of financial feasibility in the format of an investment. The money spent would be equal to the income stream over a reasonable period of time. The problem is that TDOT does not recover costs from increased land value or sales taxes. Ironically, increased land value is a postponed problem when it comes to purchasing right-of-way in the future. TDOT gets money from gas taxes and registration fees. A little bit from a bottle tax comes in to help control litter. The Department of Transportation's income can be roughly estimated as $300 per person and a household of 2.4 would be $720 per household.
Someone has to be the adult. Allowing TDOT and its highway fund to be raided for the benefit of the city and county sales and property tax collections is not acceptable stewardship of the highway fund. Furthermore, constantly using increased property taxes and sales taxes as a justification for road building invites the possibility that the state will get the idea that non-traditional tax sources ought to become traditional. This is a back-to-the-future concept because before the gas tax, roads were built with property taxes.
TDOT admits to an informal and flexible system of redistribution of transportation dollars and even keeps records of it in their offices and published transportation projects. Some of the anxiety about taking this project in Putnam County would be mitigated if there was some kind of written understanding that after eating this whale, the state would not put Putnam County on a pavement diet that would prevent building transportation projects of greater value in the future.
Return to CBJ article
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YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH
Some people have challenged the idea that there could be any such thing as a "useless road." Their line of reasoning is that at least the contractor makes some money and a few jobs are created. While I reluctantly admit that there is some short term truth in that I don't think that it is good long term public policy to construct a transportation failure in order to have an economic development success. The better tactic would be to look for the transportation success and not have to worry about the follow up business activity that automatically comes with the construction. For the purposes of the rest of the web site, a useless road is one that has very low or negative utility for people, especially taxpayers. The fact that it is a nice place for the dogs to sleep does not count.
Useless roads are shockingly disconnected from current needs. This is a dangerous policy that substitutes the hard objective intellectual labor of creating good policy for the easy subjective course of feel good generalities based upon misinterpretations of history. TDOT has no viable business plan. It has no reasonable way to tell the difference between real transportation demand and political demand. There is no urgency to collect or use such information. The dog and pony shows that pass for public comment are not scientific and take place in environments contaminated with one-sided manipulation of public perceptions by the press and other media.
TDOT is making about $92,000 per centerline mile of road but it is building roads that require $2 to $4 million dollars per year per mile to sustain. The only plan that TDOT seems to have is to spend whatever comes in this year and wait until next year to finish what could not be done this year. This is a formula for financial disaster and it will be the taxpayer who has to pay the tab.
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YOU MIGHT HAVE A USELESS ROAD IF...
1. The road cost more money than it could ever hope to generate in taxes in a lifetime.
2. The local Chamber of Commerce says it will be good for the economy
3. The Chamber of Commerce organizes a pilgrimage to the Governor's office to tell him that everyone wants it.
4. The local paper tells everybody that if you don't want it your are a NIMBY
5. The local Chamber of Commerce is telling everyone that we have to do this because everyone else is doing it too.
6. The local Chamber of Commerce is claiming that we have to do this to get ahead of everyone else who isn't doing it.
7. TDOT says that it will cure the traffic problems.
8. TDOT says it won't cure the traffic problems.
9. The Chamber of Commerce claims that it will be good for the quality of life.
10. The Chamber of Commerce says it will help get the next factory
11. Your State Representative just thinks you are against it because of a pre-existing oppositional character flaw.
12. The Chamber of Commerce is in secret negotiations with the next whiz-bang company that only needs this road to make the whole deal come together.
13. TDOT is building a four-lane road when a two-lane would still have a high life cycle service level.
14. TDOT is building a road that will damage your business but does not go through your business. (No blood, No foul)
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NASHVILLE CITY PAPER INTERVIEW WITH NICELY REVEALS FINANCIAL PANIC IN THE COMMISSIONERS OFFICE USELESS ROADS COME HOME TO ROOST
READ THE INTERVIEW IN THE NASHVILLE CITY PAPER by JOHN RODGERS
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PRESIDENT BUSH REJECTS GAS TAX INCREASE
The President has rejected the idea of an increase in the federal gas tax in spite of a clamor to get more money to spend on infrastructure. This is not good news for governor Bredesen since it seems like our governor was going to use something that the President or the Congress did to justify raising the state tax on gasoline. Every authorization of for transportation spending during the Bush Administration has been more than the President wanted and so those who are watching this drama unfold should not be too surprised that the President does not want additional taxes.
When it came to the time to change the laws so that the Transportation Bill was funded however, Congress balked. The Pay-Go rules have frozen the actual amount that can be spent at a lower level than was theoretically authorized. Congress is keeping everything going with continuing resolutions that forbids spending more than the previous year. The Senate and House versions of the Transportation Bill differ wildly. The Senate Bill pays for the higher dollar amount of the bill by various tax increases. The two houses agree on taxes on gas guzzlers but differ about what to do with the money. The Senate wants to put it in the general fund and the House wants to put it in the Highway Trust Fund. The senate bill is about $319 Billion and the House Bill is $275 Billion. The President wants $256 but will grudgingly tolerate $283 Billion dollars.
Originally, the House wanted a bill costing $375 billion dollars and proposed to pay for it with a 5 cent per gallon gas tax. This would more than inflation adjust federal taxation back to the point that it was in 1957, the beginning of the Interstate construction program. If the federal government gets more transportation dollars to spend, Governor Bredesen may be forced to support a gas tax in order to get enough money to match the federal availability of funds. Otherwise, Tennessee will become a donor state. That means that the state is sending more taxes to Washington than it gets back. The new Transportation Bill, under either version continues to eliminate the phenomenon of the donor state. However, in a perfect world all states will become donor states since there is a federal rake off to support federal bureaucracies. Both Senate and House versions attempt to make sure that every state gets at least 92% of the money they collect.
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CORRIDOR J FUNDING IN TROUBLE TOO?
DALE HOLLOW RPO COMES UP SHORT $77 MILLION
What happened to the Corridor J funding? TDOT says it is no problem but the state transportation Improvement Program says that they are waiting for approval from the Appalachian Regional Commission. The entire budget for the Appalachian Regional Commission is only about 125% of the amount needed for this short planned segment of the road in Pickett and Clay County but, the ARC budget does not include highway funds. Other economic development iniatives can proceed. One might conclude that the Congress is getting asphalt fatigue finally and is concentrating on other possible ways to improve economically underperforming counties. Maybe they noticed that the number of distressed counties has balloned from 399 in 1995 to 410 in 2007. Appalachia now goes from New York to Mississippi according to ARC.
TDOT got two earmarks in 2005 for Corridor J and Corridor S that amounted to less that $12 million dollars. Without a doubt, these are useless roads built as four lanes when something else would serve the transportation purpose better. Wilbur Smith and Associates, in their 1998 justification of the Appalachian Development Highway System, claims success for a highway if it "changes perceptions about the region." See page 2-4, Appalachian Development Highways Economic Development Studies. Is it a legitimate use of tax money to "change perceptions?"
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ARC Newsroom
Legislative Update
March 2007
Senate Committee Approves ARC Reauthorization Legislation On March 29, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works unanimously approved a five-year reauthorization of ARC’s nonhighway programs. The legislation is a slightly modified version of a bill Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) introduced in February. The bill renews ARC’s general authority for five years, through 2011, and increases the agency’s authorized funding level, starting at $95.2 million for fiscal year (FY) 2007 and increasing to $109.4 million for FY 2011. It also requires the Commission to designate economically “at-risk” counties and permits it to fund 70 percent of the costs of projects funded by ARC in those counties. The measure also creates a new general energy authority for the Commission.
The legislation will now go to the full Senate for consideration.
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TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE AMMENDS TOLL BILL
10 APRIL 2007
The House transportation committee met today and decided that TDOT could not be trusted with negotiating toll contracts. The links to the exact language of the bill were broken but the notes on the amendment seemed to be saying that the power to deal with toll contractors will rest with the Commissioner. Representative Henry Fincher was heard on the local Cookeville radio station today discussing the toll road situation. He seemed to have a good grasp of the Tennessee history of tolling and seemd to be lowering expectations for passage of the bill.
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TOLL BILL TO GET A VOTE TUESDAY
10 APRIL 2007
Editors Comment:
It seems like this toll bill is sliding through the system pretty fast. The lobyist must have put everything they wanted to say in for consideration already. One of the lobbyist, Velma Jones should have no problem talking to her old boss about toll roads since she used to be Gerald Nicely's chief of staff. I guess there is no glass ceiling in the toll road business. There is surprisingly little said in the press about the toll proposals mostly the action has been in the big cities and that is where a lot of folks think that tolls are most likely to be started.
There seems to be some confusion about exactly what will be turned into a toll road and what won't be turned into a toll road. The bottom line is that it does not matter since the legislature needs to only put another bill in the hopper to change policy. There is one interesting provision for a special fund for taking in toll income but the weasel words say that the General assembly can put money into the fund without saying where they got it. They don't call it a trust fund either but, we can't trust them even if they do call it a trust fund. I guess that means that sales taxes or any other source of revenue can go into the fund.
The way this fund is set up does not prevent the use of shadow tolls. A shadow toll allows the department of transportation to pay a company to operate a road without toll booths. This is very popular because it allows private companies to use money borrowed by the government at low interest rates than the private markets could allow. Shadow tolls are collected without toll booths and they can be on highways, bridges or even ferrys. Electronic tolling can cost,in the low range, 11 cents per mile to collect and real tolls at a booth can cost up to 45 cents per mile, depending upon the traffic and other factors. To outfit and maintain with another contract a single toll booth with modern electronic whizbang stuff can cost up to $145,000 per year per toll booth. This is way more than the cost of a human toll taker. The highest paid human toll worker(in the booth)I ever heard of made more than $70k per year, in California.
The shadow toll mechanism is ideal for use of monies other than gas taxes. For years governments have been looking for a way to get rid of dependence on gas taxes. If gasoline is replaced with hydrogen or some other fuel, even electricity, this has to be addressed eventually. In California it is not unusual to find a portion of roads funded partially with local sales taxes or property taxes but the game does not stop there. Missouri uses part of the sales tax on vehicle purchases in their highway trust fund. In Washington D.C. there have been dreams of somehow putting income taxes into the local highway trust fund also.
The use of taxes other than gas taxes has been coming for a long time. It is the natural and logical consequences of using economic development as a justification for road building. Even if a road project throws off a job, there is no assurance that the job will generate an adequate cash flow back to the highway trust fund to sustain the system and decorate the economic development Christmas tree every year. If a person already had a job before he gets the new job allegedly created by the Economic Development driven road, no extra revenue will be generated to the highway trust fund unless the person drives farther to the new job or moves here from another state to take a job that never existed in the first place. Therefore, the only new job related revenue into the highway trust fund comes from a small fraction of the jobs claimed and the most likely job to put more money into the trust fund is the first time employment at minimum wage. Maybe we should tax abortions and put it in the highway trust fund?
The governor and his Road Commissioner, Gerald Nicely often speak with pride about how the state transportation system is a pay-as-you-go system but TDOT does use some borrowed money to accelerate projects and to bring them in at lower cost. The legislature has authorized about $1.9 billion dollars of debt for the old section of the trust fund but, this new toll fund can also have debt from bonds. The bill is so weasel-worded that a regular person can not tell if the intention is to add more debt or bond authority to the toll side of the fund or just use what they are not using now out of the existing trust fund. Maybe, someone needs to ask if there is a real firewall between the new toll fund and the old trust fund.
One thing that is not mentioned is eminent domain. The state already has an exemption for highway and industrial development projects when it comes to eminent domain. But if the state condemns property and then transfers it to a toll company then that land can then become an asset that can allow that company to borrow even more capital. Money is not the only thing that the state can throw in to build a toll road. They can throw in your house, business farm or birthright.
Another disturbing thing about the bill is the estimate of the cost. It looks like they came up with a figure off of the back of a napkin at a Chamber of Commerce wining and dining shindig at one of Matt Kisber's Economic and Community Development parties. A million dollars a year might pay Wilbur Smith and Associates for a study of the toll road possibilities but it looks like this money is already coming out of gas tax side of the trust fund.
It would be interesting if the legislature to insert a provision that defined a reasonable profit for the toll company. Until the inflation rate got out of hand in the 70's, the legislature at least prevented the banks from getting more than 10% with their usury laws. The libertarians are all over toll roads as if it would fix everything that was ever wrong with the public financing of transportation. They are blissfully ignorant of how a toll system will simply enable TDOT to continue without overdue reform of their financial practices and culture. The trucking companies seem to want toll roads if it means that they can have dedicated truck lanes and reasonable tolls. I am not sure the independent drivers are happy about it however. Republicans do not like the idea of paying the toll and buying gas with a tax on it too. The Democrats usually have to buy off their environmentalist faction like they did in Florida with an income transfer from Alligator Alley to the Everglades Fund. It only amounts to between two and four million dollars a year and does not create problems with the financial stability. They probably have not realized that they can do that in Tennessee yet.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSEditor's note: The bill as copied from the legislative web site follows. The weasel words appear as bold letters.
*SB1152 by *Black. (HB1204 by *Pinion, *Fraley, *Harmon.)
Transportation, Dept. of - Enacts the "Tennessee Tollway Act." - Amends TCA Title 4; Title 9; Title 12; Title 54; Title 55 and Title 67.
Fiscal Summary for *SB1152 / HB1204 Other Fiscal Impact - The fiscal impact of this bill is relative to the period of time considered. Over long periods of time (typically 20 to 30 years), the type of capital projects identified in this bill are expected to be revenue generators for the state or self-supporting at a minimum in that revenues would offset expenses incurred. Over shorter periods of time (1 to 5 years), state expenditures are expected to increase significantly relative to any increase of state revenues. Determining the extent of such shorter-term impacts is dependent upon several unknown factors such as the number of projects that will be undertaken, the scope and timing of such projects, the extent of funding acquired by the state as the result of any subsequent bond issues or federal funding, and toll revenue expectations. As a result, determining a precise fiscal impact for this bill is difficult. However, the increase to state expenditures is reasonably expected to exceed any increase of state revenues by $1,000,000 or more in each of the first three years for any such project undertaken.
Bill Summary for *SB1152 / HB1204 This bill authorizes the department of transportation to develop tollway or toll facility projects and to operate tollways or toll facilities. In order to develop and operate tollways or toll facilities, the department may expend funds from the state tollway account (created by this bill) and the state highway fund as appropriated by the general assembly and any funds, grants, or loans received from or made available by the federal government or any other government agency for any tollway or toll facility project. This bill authorizes the commissioner to set tolls and to assign the authority to set tolls, for the use of tollways or toll facilities. The authority to set tolls and operate tollways or toll facilities will not apply to any highway, bridge or other transportation-related facility constructed prior to the effective date of this bill, except as may otherwise be provided or permitted by state or federal law, including without limitation the conversion of high occupancy vehicle lanes to high occupancy toll lanes on existing interstate highway facilities. This bill authorizes the state funding board, at the request of the commissioner, to issue bonds, and authorizes the state to incur indebtedness, for the purpose of financing tollway or toll facility projects. The state funding board may pledge, encumber, transfer, or otherwise obligate funds held in the state tollway account as security for bonds or other indebtedness incurred by the state on behalf of the department for the purpose of developing or operating a tollway or toll facility. This bill provides for the establishment of a state tollway account as a separate account within the state highway fund. The state tollway account would consist of the following: (1) All toll revenues received by the department;(2) Any revenues or funds that the general assembly may appropriate to the state tollway account; (3) Any funds the department may receive from the federal government or any other government agency or private entity that by grant, donation, loan, or otherwise is dedicated to the state tollway account and may be lawfully pledged as security for bonds or other indebtedness incurred by the state; and (4) Any interest earnings on deposits of or investments made from any funds held in the state tollway account. The state tollway account may be used to defray costs associated with the development and operation of tollways or toll facilities; to pay the principal, interest and any premium due with respect to any bonds issued or other indebtedness incurred by the state for any tollway or toll facility project and to pay any costs incurred by the department or state funding board in connection with the issuance and payment of such bonds or other indebtedness; to be pledged as security for bonds or other indebtedness incurred by the state on behalf of the department for the purpose of developing or operating a tollway or toll facility; and any other manner that the state highway fund may be lawfully used. This bill authorizes the department to enter into contracts, agreements or understandings with private parties, the federal government, or other governmental agencies for the purpose of developing or operating a tollway or toll facility. Any private entity or other governmental agency that operates a tollway or toll facility may, pursuant to an agreement with the department, set and collect tolls and receive other toll revenues from the operation of a tollway or other toll facility, subject to such conditions as the department may establish. This bill provides that any person who uses any tollway facility without paying the toll required for the use thereof commits a Class C misdemeanor.
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSEDITOR'S NOTE: I lifted the following list and brief message from an e-mail sent out by Brian Paddock:
Act NOW as the toll roads bill HB1204 will be voted on the the subcommittee on Public Transportation & Highways of the Transportation Committee on Tuesday, 4/10/2007
Should we set up new ways to create and finance major highways when sprawl and climate change are the enemy?
For information on the bill e-mail a request to: Trip Pollard - SELC
SB1152, the parallel Senate bill, has come out of Senate Government Operations and is not yet on notice in Senate Transportation.
House Committee on Transportation
Phillip Pinion, Chair ( D - Union City, District 77 - Obion, Lake, and part of Dyer counties) rep.phillip.pinion@legislature.state.tn.us Representative Phillip Pinion
George W. Fraley, Vice-Chair ( D - Winchester, District 39 - Franklin, Moore, and part of Lincoln counties) rep.george.fraley@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative George FraleyBill Harmon, Secretary ( D - Dunlap, District 37 - Sequatchie, Van Buren, Grundy, and Marion counties) rep.bill.harmon@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Bill HarmonCurt Cobb ( D - Shelbyville, District 62 - Bedford and parts of Lincoln and Rutherford counties) rep.curt.cobb@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Curt Cobb Vince Dean, (R - East Ridge, District 30 - Part of Hamilton County ) rep.vince.dean@legislature.state.tn.us Represenattive Vince DeanHenry Fincher, D - (Cookeville, District 42 - Most of Putnam County) rep.henry.fincher@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Henry, The Fifth Interchange, FincherDale Ford, (R - Jonesborough, District 6 - Part of Washington and Hawkins Counties ) rep.dale.ford@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Dale FordG. A Hardaway, (D - Memphis, District 92 - Part of Shelby County, Midtown and Inner City Memphis; Communities of Orange Mound, Rozelle, Bethel Grove, Glenview, Magnolia, Copper-Young and Lamar/Parkway corridors, part of Binghampton.) rep.ga.hardaway@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative G.A. HardawayMatthew Hill, ( R - Jonesborough, District 7 - Part of Washington County) rep.matthew.hill@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Mathew HillCurtis Johnson, (R - Clarksville, District 68 - Part of Montgomery County) rep.curtis.johnson@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Curtis JohnsonPhillip Johnson, (R - Pegram, District 78 - Cheatham and part of Montgomery and Williamson counties.) rep.phillip.johnson@legislature.state.tn.us
Representativ e Phiillip JohnsonDebra Maggart, (R - Hendersonville, District 45 - Part of Sumner County) rep.debra.young.maggart@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Debra MaggartJimmy Matlock, (R - Lenoir, District 21 - Parts of Loudon and Monroe counties.) rep.jimmy.matlock@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Jimmy MatlockRepresentative John C. Tidwell, (D - New Johnsonville, District 74 - Houston, Humphreys, Perry, and parts of Hickman and Maury counties.) rep.john.tidwell@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative John TidwellRepresentative Nathan Vaughn, (D - Kingsport, District 2 - Part of Sullivan County) rep.nathan.vaughn@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Nathan VaughnEric Watson, (R - Cleveland, District 22 - Meigs, Polk and part of Bradley counties) eric.watson@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Eric WatsonBen West, Jr. (D - Hermitage, District 60 - Part of Davidson County - Donelson, Hermitage and Antioch Communities) rep.ben.west@legislature.state.tn.us
Representative Ben West Jr.Les Winningham (D-Huntsville, District 38 - Clay, Jackson, Pickett, Scott and parts of Anderson counties.) rep.leslie.winningham@legislature.state.tn.us
Represenata tive Leslie WinninghamYou can find all bills, fiscal notes, bill histories and co-sponsors, U.S. mail legislative and district office addresses and streaming video of committee and subcommittee meetings at www.legislature.state.tn.us/
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Brian Paddock
360 Roberts Hollow Lane
Cookeville, TN 38501-9224
931-268-2938 voice & fax
SENATE TRANSPORTATION COMMITTEE:
Sen. Jim Tracy, Chair - R - Shelbyville
District 16 - Bedford, Moore and part of Rutherford counties
Phone: 615-741-1066
Staff Contact: Judi Butler and Clint Hall
sen.jim.tracy@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Jim TracySen. Tommy Kilby, Vice Chair - D - Wartburg
District 12 - Campbell, Fentress, Morgan, Rhea, Roane and Scott Counties
Phone (615) 741-1449
Staff Contact: Michelle Stephenson, Brenda Gadd
sen.tommy.kilby@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Tommy KilbySen. Jack Johnson, Sec. - R - Brentwood
District 23 - Williamson, and part of Davidson Counties
Phone (615) 741-2495
Contact: Catherine Haire
sen.jack.johnson@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Jack JohnsonSen. Jack Cooper - D -Morrison
District 14 - Franklin, Bledsoe, Coffee, Grundy, Sequatchie, Van Buren, and Warren counties
Phone (615) 741-6694
Staff Contact: Christina Barber
sen.jerry.cooper@legislature.state.tn.us Senator Jerry CooperSen. Doug Jackson - D - Dickson
District 25 - Dickson, Giles, Hickman, Humphreys, Lawrence, and Lewis counties
Phone (615) 741-4499
Fax (615) 741-8745
Staff Contacts: Kim Andrews
sen.doug.jackson@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Doug JacksonSen. Rosalind Kurita -D - Clarksville
District 22 - Cheatham, Houston and Montgomery counties
Phone (615) 741-2374
Toll Free (800) 449-8366 Ext. 12374
Staff Contacts: Pamela George and Andrea Smith-Hummel
sen.rosalind.kurita@legislature.state.tn.us Senator Rosalind KuritaSen. Steve Southerland R - Morristown
District 1 - Cocke, Greene, Hamblen, and Unicoi counties
Phone (615) 741-3851
Staff Contacts: Carolyn Newman, Loudene Gee
sen.steve.southerland@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Steve SoutherlandSen. Micheal R. Williams - I - Maynardville
District 4 - Claiborne, Grainger, Hancock, Hawkins, Jefferson, and Union counties
Phone (615) 741-2061
Staff Contact: Rosalyn Martin
sen.micheal.williams@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Micheal WilliamsSen. Jamie Woodson - R - Knoxville
District 6 - Knox County
Phone:(615) 741-1648
Staff Contact: Pat Farmer, Alexanderia Honeycutt
sen.jamie.woodson@legislature.state.tn.us
Senator Jamie Woodson
TENNESSEE SENATE VOTES ON
TOLL LEGISLATION ON 18 APRIL 2007
TRANSIT TAX ?
03 APR 07
The Tennessee House of Representatives passed by voice vote a bill
to increase the registration fees for all types of vehicles. Cars went
from 11.75 to $16.00. After creating a bigger pie, it was divided into
three pieces, half went to TDOT for roads. 5/16 went to the local
government with the county getting two thirds of the slice and the city
getting one third. The last slice of the pie, a 3/16 share again goes
to TDOT for mass transit.
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WHEN EVERYONE IS IN CHARGE, NO ONE IS IN CHARGE
03 APR 07
Senate Bill 0087 and HB 0151 have the effect of ordering TDOT to complete 35 roads from existing county seats to the nearest interstate. Not just any road will do, it has to be a four lane regardless of the traffic count. Apparently TDOT only had 5 of the connector roads in the Long Term Plan by the year 2015. TDOT estimates that they will have to have an additional $438 million dollars a year for the next nine years to satisfy the language of the bill. The back-of-the napkin estimate without inflation adjustments was $3.942 billion dollars. The long range plan already has a $2 billion dollar shortfall projected between the year 2008 and 2015. This would put the total shortfall at $5.942 billion dollars by the year 2015. This is the equivalent of 3.5 years of normal income for TDOT.
If it takes a 40 cent gas tax to raise a $1.7 billion dollar agency budget, it can be inferred that TDOT will need 21.2 Billion over the next nine years, not 15.3 Billion with no gas tax change. That would make the gas tax 55 cents instead of 40 cents a gallon. The other way that the money might be raised is by canceling other projects like the Fifth Interchange. Even if the Fifth Interchange makes it through this contest between TDOT and the legislature, it is most likely that urban congestion related projects along with transit projects could be cannibalized to keep the Fifth Interchange and the County Seat Connector Road projects going. The dream of making TDOT the department of all transportation modes instead of the department of highway transportation just took a very nasty hard turn into the Green Zone of financial reality. The legislature does not have the guts to raise the gas tax unless and until adjacent states do the same and certainly not 15 cents in one day.
TOLL ROADS TO BAIL OUT TDOT ?
29 MAR 2007
TDOT has been looking at toll roads to see if this is one of the possible ways to keep from asking for an increase in the gas tax. National and international experts in transportation, Wilbur Smith and Associates, have been tasked to spy out other state departments of transportation to see what they are trying to get away with. It is too bad Commissioner Nicely does not have a teenager who could research this for him instead of pricey consultants. Transportation experts at Wilbur Smith and Associates could probably write the requested report from their corporate memory banks which should be loaded with consultations with other departments of transportation already.
It is too late now but, the Federal Highway Administration has no less than 16 recent grants given other state departments of transportation that also want to study tolling. Most of the grants went to California and to New Jersey. If any state knows how to get the income out of a mile of road, it is New Jersey. In the same year, 2005, that TDOT got slightly over $92,000 per centerline mile of highway, New Jersey got over a million dollars a mile.
Traditionally, tolling has been used to pay for and perpetuate a particular road but, that was the old tolling. Today, tolling not only has to pay for the new road, it has to earn extra money to pay for all of the extra non-road activities of your local department of transportation wants to do.
There are at least a few very bad experiences with tolling. The first is in Florida where tolls were applied to a highway and the traffic estimates were wrong. Not once but many times. Actual revenue was from 10% to 20% of the estimates. Forbes and Standard and Poor's have warned potential bond investors that private tolling is chronically optimistic. One toll way in Texas, the Camino Columbia, earned only one eighteenth of the estimated revenue and was sold at a loss back to Texas taxpayers through TxDOT. In California, there have been horror stories about side agreements for private operation of the toll ways. These side agreements contain clauses that specify that the state will take no affirmative action to build competing infrastructure parallel to the toll way that might theoretically take away business. One of the ways that tolling is made more practical than in the past is auto tolling with transponders so you can drive through without stopping. When everything goes correctly, your account is adjusted by the toll amount. If you try to drive through without paying, you get a ticket for $85. The folks in Florida found out that if the equipment malfunctions, you still get the ticket. Thousands got bogus tickets and threats of suspension of their drivers license.
The reason TDOT is so interested in tolling is because it does not realize that it is already operating a toll road system. Estimating the cost per vehicle mile driven and equating that to a toll is difficult because of uncertainty about vehicle miles traveled. The toll rate is somewhere between 1.79 cents per vehicle mile and 2.5 cents per vehicle mile. The only difference is that the tolls are currently collected mostly at gas stations as a gas tax when the vehicle is already stopped for other purposes.
If you have ever had the unusual experience of being in Florida during an active hurricane season, you know that Florida does not take tolls during evacuations. Traffic runs much smoother then. It is amazing that the most common argument for tolling is to eliminate congestion.
Running a toll road should be no different than running a state highway department except the executives who work for toll ways make the six-figure salaries and the people who work for the state make the five-figure salaries. It will still be more lucrative to be a lottery executive however. TDOT's recent interest with tolling, some times referred to as PPP or Public-Private-Partnership, is further proof that there is no relief in sight for those who must pay for more useless roads. The ethical and financial aspect of using other people's money to generate transportation infrastructure remains a lost and optional art at TDOT. An organization that can not effectively operate a highway department can not operate a tollway either. No toll way authority should be instituted until TDOT is fiscally rehabilitated.
HIGHLANDS INITIATIVE OR HIGHLANDS HOAX?
27 MAR 2007
Even though the quest for the Fifth Interchange, at Cookeville, started long before the Highlands Initiative got started or funded, the Chamber of Commerce and those in the Economic Development network are eagar to associate themselves with any possibility that there are bragging rights to be had with the pavement-equals-wealth theory of economic development. Obviously, many of these people have not driven by an Indian Reservation lately.
There is no problem here with people freely giving their own money to this initiative but government money from the city and county governments also comes fom the potential victims of this alleged economic development coup. Buying hope for more jobs is and was fine in the old days when the Chamber of Commerce spent money on wining and dining and making sure potential competitors would not raise wages too much and draw labor away from the existing factories but, the quest for the Fifth Interchange has been taken to a new level with the threat of condemnation. What quality is hope when it is purchased at the cost of more despair?
The Highlands Initiative/Hoax started on an uncertain date and was suppose to be a three year plan from 2005 to 2008. How will we know when 1200 more jobs have been added to the local economy? The answer to that depends upon the level of certainty that you are willing to bear. Of course, if you think that an investment in economic studies, largely spent on out of state consultants, can leverage and produce a $6.74 million dollar local payroll in three years, you may want to review the concept of extrordinaty claims requiring extrodinary proof.
We know from census data that about half of everyone in the three county area under the Highlands Iniative are employed. If the population goes up and the unemployment remains the same or improves, then it can be inferred that at least half of the increased population also have jobs. These are new jobs that the Chamber of Commerce can brag about getting.
In 2005, the Census Bureau estimated that the three county area of White, Putnam and Overton County had 111,356 people in it in 2005. A population increase of twice the 1200 job goal would mean that the population growth of the three county area over a three year period would have to increase by 2.16 percent by 2008 to meet the Highlands Iniative goal. Since the growth rate of 6.8% was reported for Putnam County, 4.98% for White County and 2% for Overton County for the previous years from 2000 to 2005, The Highlands Initiative should reach it's goal within 2 years. In fact, just the growth from Putnam County would assure success of the Highlands Iniative.
The Highlands Iniative is a hoax. If anyone came to town and told people that they can turn $2 million into a perpetual $6.7 million income in three years, the entire staff at the Herald-Citizen would be warning the community of bunko artist in town and the sherrif would be patrolling the streets for someone pretending to be the pied piper of unemployment. Instead, the Herald Citizen is part of the propaganda campaign. At least,the Herald Citizen should publicly admit to shameless advocacy in this matter. Is it any wonder that they have a Herald-Citizen Room at the Chamber of Commerce?
The Cumberland Business Journal printed an excellent
overview of the problems with the Fifth Interchange
READ IT HERE
MORE EMPTY BUILDINGS 26 MAR 07
The number of speculative and or available buildings in the state of Tennessee went up this week to 627 on the State Economic and Community Development web site. The number is up from August of this year by 5. This number was obtained by entering a range of 700 to 7,000,000 square feet and specifying no railroad access and a 7 foot minimum ceiling. Any hope of filling up our old speculative park at Lemon-Farris or our new speculative park at Mine Lick Creek Road must be balanced against the availability of other oppurtunities. The Fifth Interchange is the perfect storm of economic development theology: A future useless road attached to a future useless building.
The number of empty buildings listed on the state web site is 12 with a total acerage under roof of 6.22 acres. The number of parcels of land on the state web site in Putnam County is 5 with a total acerage of 41 acres. This does not include the new proposed industrial park. You can do your own search at the state web site.
State Web Site TDOT DOCUMENTS MOVED TO SAFETY 21
MAR 2007 TDOT documents were moved from the public area of the library
to the Tennessee Room this week. These documents are now safe from
Anti-Road activist who could place anit-interchange materials next to
the state propaganda. Library patrons must store their belongings in a
locker before using the room. Paper and pencil are allowed. The State
Transportation Improvement plans for the years 2006 to 2008 and the
TDOT long Range plan were missing too. The official explaination was
that the materials were out of date. The Anti-Fifth Interchange
Materials filed with the Environmental Assessment were missing along
with public comment cards.
TIMELINE
30 SEPT 1988 Herald-Citizen Reports that Vice Mayor Grogan expects Fifth Interchange by the year 2000. Estimate for the interchange is $1 million. The estimated cost of extending Gould drive to the industrial park is $500 thousand.
03 DEC 1998 Cookeville City Council asks TDOT to perform a feasibility study on constructing fifth interchange on I-40 at Mine Lick Creek Road. SPONSOR-JIM SHIPLEY
01 APRIL 1999 The Cookeville City Council asks TDOT to study the Maple Avenue flyover at I-40 as the new Fifth Interchange.
25 OCT 2000 TDOT dates the Interschange Justification Study for Federal Highway Administration Review as part of Corridor J intersection at Mine Lick Creek Road.
20 MAY 2002 Cookeville proposes to move the city limits to the vicinity to surround the Fifth Interchange
21 JUNE 2002 TDOT Advance planning report on the Northern Connector
15 JULY 2003 Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury releases report to the legislature with reccommendations for objective system of project selection.
AUG 2003 Final Report of Independant Investigation Sanctioned by TDOT. Studies selection process of 15 problematic road projects in Tennessee, Mine Lick Creek Road is one of them.
24 FEB 2003 City of Cookeville approves alternate "A" as Phase I Councilman Sam Sallee asks that The Northern Connector be Considered as Phase II.
22 SEPT 2005 Herald-Citizen reports Highlands Initiative Kickoff with $2million.
OCT 2005 State Transportation Improvement Plan Shows Project #71005 "Construct New Interchange at Mine Lick Creek Road" ROW acquisition marked for 2006 and construction marked for 2008. See Adobe Page 41/99. Estimated Cost is $10.3 million.
DECEMBER 2005 TDOT Provides explaination of the Project Evaluation System
23 MAR 2003 TDOT report reccommends using SR 111, not Mine Lick Creek Road for Corridor J intersection with I-40.
24 MAY 2006 Tennessee Legislature removes protection from land owners when government acts to build roads or build industrial parks. Bill allows transfer of property to private concerns. Charlotte Burkes listed as a sponser.
14 DEC 2006 TDOT Signs the Environmental Assessment
05 FEB 2007 Center Hill Regional Planning Meeting votes on transportation projects
06 MARCH 2007 TDOT Holds a public Meeting on the Fifth Interchange
EDITOR'S NOTE: Send us your TDOT/road-related rejected letters to the editor, especially if they were heavily edited or rejected by the Herald-Citizen. This zone is for opinion and even though we don't check facts, we like to argue with the facts to the greatest extent possible. Send us some candidates for other useless roads in Tennessee.
LETTERS TO THE TOUR EDITOR 06 APR 2007
EDITOR's NOTE: The chains around the neck of the gorilla leading to the legislature and governor's offices are not shown. No animals were harmed in the making of this cartoon. Don't send me any more complaints about offending gorrillas.
RIC FINCH DOES AN ANALYSIS OF THE PUBLIC COMMENTS ON THE FIFTH INTERCHANGE
CARA, TOUR, Neighbors members and friends--
The full transcript of the Mar. 6 Public Hearing on the 5th Interchange and Northern Connector is available in the Public Library across the street from City Hall. You have to ask for it, and they have to find it... It is in a thick white ring-binder with a label on it saying something like "TDOT March 6 Public Hearing Transcript". It stays on a shelf along with other public documents of this type, a couple of tables/desks behind and to the right of the check-out desk.
The folder contains a transcript of what was said publicly at the meeting, plus what was said by individuals to the court reporter at the meeting, plus all the comments submitted by mail.
I looked all the oral and written comments and made a tally. Some people did not clearly state a stand pro or con, and you have to do some interpreting on some others... But there are basically three stands: a) For the project, b) Against the project, and c) For the interchange only with no connector (i.e., against the project as currently planned by TDOT).
One big surprise is that, compared to Corridor J, this is not a "hot button" issue...TDOT received fewer than 300 comments total. Too bad more people didn't take the time to speak out. We needed the majority opinion better defined.
The following are my tallies, but, of course, TDOT may come up with a different count, because, as I said, some comments have to be interpreted:
a) For the project as currently planned by TDOT (interchange plus northern connector road): 131
b) Against the project: 127
c) For the interchange, but against the northern connector (i.e., against the project as currently planned by TDOT): 24
Sum of b) "Against" and c) "For interchange but against the northern connector" = 151
While this is not the overall tally we'd like to have seen, it can be fairly said that the Public Hearing transcript shows that a majority is against the project *as currently proposed*. Summing the 127 against the entire project with those 24 who are against the project as proposed by TDOT (interchange plus connector) and you come up with a total of 151 against the project as currently planned.
Among the "for" votes, Alternate A is the clear leader, by a long shot. I did not count, but I would guess 10 to 1.
Some pleasant surprises: 1) Kim Blaylock, bless her heart, followed up her oral statements with a written comment favoring on-off ramps or an interchange but NO connector road. 2) City manager Jim Shipley is in agreement with Kim. 3) A letter on official stationery from County Clerk Wayne Nabors states the Board of Commissioners position: interchange yes, connector no...and documents it with a copy of the Mar. 17, 2003 resolution by the Commission.
Actually, quite a few City and County officials expressed support for the interchange without the connector road. Some, of course, support the full project. [I have been informed that some officials would be satisfied with just the interchange, but were afraid to express this opinion to TDOT, for fear a lack of support for the full project might hurt the chances of getting the interchange that they really want.]
FYI, here are statements verbatim from the comment cards submitted by a number of officials:
City Officials:
Alma Anderson: "I would like to see the 5th interchange connect to existing roads-- the suggestion that Kim Blaylock made."
Jean Davis: "I am concerned this project will be delayed because of the view of the minority." Jean needs to be educated on the fact that a majority, not a minority, opposes the project as planned. If any of you know Jean, I recommend you set her straight on the facts here.
Jeff Littrell: "I would like to see existing roads improved instead of building an access road."
James Mills: "Northern connector should have multiple access points to local streets."
Jim Shipley: "Does not have to be a major interchange-- simple on/off ramps would be sufficient."
Rick Woods: "If possible, use existing roads (with improvements) as connector roads."
County officials:
Kim Blayclock: "An on/off ramp will enhance greatly the business park..." "on/off ramps are sufficient...does not have to be full blown interchange"
Jere Mason: "The county commission sent a resolution to you a while back, this is the alternative that we want, so go by it." "Build it reasonable & forget the connector roads." "No need for connector roads."
Dale Moss: "No Build would be my first opinion, fifth interchange with no connecting routes 2nd because we have alternative roads already in place...." "It is not needed-- because all study shows that traffic is not the issue..." "No build would be the #1 change and #2 would be 5th interchange only..."
Gene Mullins: "Prefer neither alternative as presented. The connectors as designed do not appear to be justified by the traffic count or economic benefits based on previous TDOT studies of similar roads. The connectors as designed go against the expressed desires of both county and Cookeville government officials. I know, I am a county commisioner that voted on that resolution." "If the interchange has to be built, the Gould Drive extension and Hawkins-Crawford road would appear to provide adequate connectivity to existing state and federal highways (similar to South Hartman Dr. and H. T. Hackney exits)."
My belief is that there is a growing movement in the direction of building the interchange with no northern connector. I have seen two letters from high TDOT officials (Commissioner Nicely and Ed Cole) stating that the connector issue may be revisited. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) regulations apparently make it difficult to get approval for an interstate interchange that does not feature connector roads to other nearby highways. Nonetheless, FHWA does in fact grant such approval in some cases. Such an interchange is being build (or has recently been built) on I-40 near Harriman (the exit referred to by Commissioner Mullins in his comments to TDOT). We should encourage TDOT to petition FHWA to allow this type of interchange here in Putnam Co.
Ric
RETURN TO TABLE OF CONTENTS LINKSMarch 7, 2007
The Herald-Citizen
Letters to the Editor
Quite a Show!
I witnessed quite a show when I attended the public hearing hosted by TDOT this past Tuesday evening at the Avery Trace Middle School Cafeteria. There were crowds of people…standing room only. There were maps snaking around the room with big illustrations of monstrous four-lane highways…medians lying in-between. These huge roads wandered aimlessly, careening through old and new homes, eating up farmlands, lapping up creeks from their beds…ruthless Beasts! How Alarming! The TDOT Representatives at the start told me: "This is the ONLY WAY."
But, low and behold, after our Heroine, County Commissioner Kim Blaylock, stood demurely and had her say, TDOT repented…there MAY BE another way…we'll go back and see, they NOW say! You might now have your 5th Interchange without the unnecessary connector roads. In addition, the gigantic loop at the Interchange? It isn't necessary either…just an illustration you pulled from your hat, you say. Wow, County Commissioner Blaylock, you saved the day!
Linda A Owens
Nashville
A LETTER FROM TDOT
DISCUSSION OF POLICY ON DISTRIBUTION OF FUNDS BACK TO THE TAXPAYERS