Tolling, Traffic Technology & Public-Private Partnerships
By: Dave Ross
KIRO-AM 710
June 25, 2008
MP3 link to show segment. Segment runs from beginning of audio file to about the middle.
TRANSCRIPT
DAVE ROSS: From the headquarters of the Eastlake Avenue Crusaders for Common Sense, this is the Dave Ross Show on news talk 710 KIRO for 3 full hours from 9 until noon, spreading drive by wisdom to the masses one listner at a time. Six minutes past ten’ o’clock. We've been talking about the suburban dream; one of course … one of the things that makes the suburban dream sustainable is a working transportation system. There's gonna be a big meeting on that, going on tomorrow here in Seattle, that is going to be talking about all sorts of stuff that's going to be organized by the Cascadia Center of the Discovery Institute. I've got Bruce Agnew on the line from the Discovery Institute right over here. Bruce, how are you?
BRUCE AGNEW: I'm fine Dave. How are you?
DAVE ROSS: Pretty good. What do you hope to accomplish? You got a huge agenda here with people coming from all over the world. What's the overriding question you are trying to answer here?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well, Cascadia is pleased to join Microsoft in sponsoring this forum you talked about. We've got folks coming down from British Columbia and up from Baja, California, and the purpose is to compare notes on what West Coast metropolitan regions are doing with regard to tolling and new technology in vehicles and traffic management. There's a whole bunch of new opportunities to manage traffic and improve transit service and we hope to compare notes and share ideas about financing, transportation and hopefully those lessons can be taken to the governor and legislature.
DAVE ROSS: I know you've got some of your own ideas, but before we talk about those, hasn't the high price of gas had a pretty pronounced traffic management effect all on its own?
BRUCE AGNEW: Absolutely. I mean, it has obviously increased transit service, but it has also called into question the gas taxes being the foundation for our transportation systems' funding. Gas tax revenues are down at the federal and state level, and that's how we build highways in this country so that is why tolling is starting to look as a stronger public policy all along the West Coast and throughout the nation.
DAVE ROSS: And would you allow the use of that toll money to fund not just the road being tolled, but transit as well?
BRUCE AGNEW: Oh, I think that's a great idea and that is something that many people have advocated and that is what the state policy is, such that it is fairly flexible on that issue. We are lucky in this state because the governor and legislature have raised the gas tax twice and put some down-payment on some much needed infrastructure, particularly 520 and 405 and 167. But at the end of the day you don't have enough funding and you need to look at tolling to finish the funding gap and to improve transit performance, and the real problem (with) expanding transit isn’t so much the capital, the purchase of the buses, it’s finding the operating money...
DAVE ROSS: ...Yeah...
BRUCE AGNEW: ....to maintain that.
DAVE ROSS: Yeah, but people really hate that, and of course Tim Eymen is proposing an initiative which would basically prohibit that. Um, I’m sorry I’m not familiar with the details of it, I just know that it would make it a lot tougher to do what you’re talking about and what others are talking about. How do you sell that concept to people?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well I think it’s easy. If you’ve ever been to California and seen high-occupancy tolling...you know your money is going to...make sure that you have a smooth ride and that you know you can average 45 or 50 miles per hour....you also know that...a little bit of your money is going to subsidize expanded bus services to reduce the number of cars that are competing for that highway space... that is a pretty good investment.
DAVE ROSS: Hang on a second, Bruce because I want to talk to one of the people who is going to be at the conference, Mark Aggar who is an environmental technologist at Microsoft, as you mentioned, and I was intrigued by this idea, Mark, that Microsoft is coming up with some sort of high-tech answer to traffic jams. How would that work?
MARK AGAR: Oh hi, um, yeah as you said there is a service that is actually already available on the web...if folks go to live maps which is literally maps.live.com. They can use that service to get traffic directions and there’s an option that the user can select to avoid traffic. And then what this does is it will route the trip around the congestion and specifically congested freeways. And this was a technology that was developed using about four years worth of sensor data. Microsoft employees were basically given GPS units and the data was gathered then put together in a central database. Algorithms were developed to determine what the best side streets to use were given any given congestion. And then we also have other technologies, which allow us to predict, for instance, when traffic is potentially going to get worse or get better so that we ultimately route the …
DAVE ROSS: So it’s also predictive?
MARK AGAR: Yes, exactly.
DAVE ROSS: Based on volumes, weather, what?
MARK AGAR: Yes, so there’s a set of variables to be taken into account such as weather or large sporting events, whatever else. And as a result, we can figure out when it’s better to stay on a congested freeway versus taking the side streets even though you may feel like you are going slower.
DAVE ROSS: Yes, a dilemma we’ve all had to face. How many times have I given up on 520 just to realize that I-90 is just as bad.
MARK AGAR: Exactly.
DAVE ROSS:How do you collect the data now? This is real-time data?
MARK AGAR: So…yes…so the data for the actual congestion of the streets comes from the various DOT organizations around the country. This system is available in 72 cities around the US. The actual algorithms were developed purely on data that was gathered in Seattle and essentially it was transformed and applied to the traffic systems in…
DAVE ROSS: I thought this was a system that collected data from the signals of people with cell phones, you know who are just driving around and you just track how fast the signal was moving through a sector and just track how fast traffic was moving based on that.
MARK AGAR: Yes, so that is definitely a technique that can be used, although I believe most of the systems that are in use today are basically using highway sensors that are embedded in the roadway to actually track traffic flow. That’s a useful technique for gathering data and that’s actually something that’s being used by Microsoft research.
DAVE ROSS: Now here’s my question. If this actually catches on and everybody’s got one, doesn’t it end up defeating itself? Because the moment it tells you there’s an alternate route opening up everybody’s going to use it, right?
MARK AGAR: Yes, that’s a very good point. I think that if you look to the future, the one thing that is a pretty exciting scenario is the concept of actual, proactive traffic management. Whereby you are giving the users of the roadways an idea as to when it would be the best time to leave for their journey and the window they have available to them. So rather than just playing Russian Roulette when trying to figure out when the best possible time to leave is, we use these systems to provide a feedback loop to the user and actually manage the flow of traffic through the system in a much more effective way.
DAVE ROSS: So moving the ramp meter from the ramp basically back to your driveway.
MARK AGAR: Exactly, yeah, that’s a good way of looking at it.
DAVE ROSS: So you could actually make an application for a highway window and it would tell you when the best time to go was.
MARK AGAR: Yes, exactly, that’s sort of the concept. You know we’ve got a lot of the tools and data and now it’s the case of implementing it.
DAVE ROSS: Well yes, it’s the social engineering that you have to do now. How do you…uh…will people use such a system? Will people actually change their plans based on something a computer told them to do?
MARK AGAR: Well it’s a very good question and I don’t think we have a lot of data to support that one way or the other. I can just say personally that when I typically sit in my own office you know anywhere from 5:30 to 7:00 watching the traffic trying to figure out when exactly the right time to leave is so that I get just the tail-end of the congestion. No, I think that there is a lot of people who work on roads and have pretty flexible schedules that would do something similar. But at the end of the day if you think of this as really a carrot and stick approach, the carrot is freely moving through the freeway system. The stick is potentially tolling, and you could even imagine using this type of system in conjunction with a tolling system to allow people to potentially have a reduced rate if they leave during the appropriate window (versus) if they leave outside of the appropriate window.
DAVE ROSS; So you would be assigned a trip window and you would of course be free to drive any time you wanted but the computer would tell you “if you leave now, we’ll charge you a lot less than if you leave a half hour from now.”
MARK AGAR: Yes, absolutely.
DAVE ROSS: Huh…well I wonder if people would go for that. We’ll get to find out in a moment. Alright. Thank you Mark we appreciate that. Bruce, stand by. I’m going to get back to you in a moment, and I’m going to get your reaction to this too, at 877-710-KIRO on the Dave Ross Show.
Commercial
DAVE ROSS: It’s 10:20 710 news talk KIRO. How about that, a program that would tell you when it would be cheapest for you to drive, and of course the flip side would punish you if you didn’t take its advice. Those are some things that are going to be discussed tomorrow at this conference going on at Bell Harbor, sponsored by the Cascadia Institute and I want to get back to Bruce Agnew from Cascadia. You think that people would go for that?
BRUCE AGNEW: Oh I think so. I mean I always watch the traffic on my computer trying to figure out if I should go I-5 or 99.
DAVE ROSS: Yeah, we do it basically for airfares. When I shop for airfares I now realize that how much you get charged depends on which day of the week you leave and you know you sit there messing around with your departure dates to get the lowest fare. I don’t know if people would do that or not on a daily basis though just to drive some place.
BRUCE AGNEW: Well the other thing to consider, and Microsoft is certainly a leader here, we are looking at technology in future cars like collision avoidance systems that will prevent you from moving over into that right lane and causing an accident and if the cars are too close together. And there is new technology that allows you to plug-in your electric hybrid some day in the future and re-plug, so it is really remarkable the effect that technology can have on helping manage traffic.
DAVE ROSS: I think … You know Bruce I think the technology to do most anything exists at this point, it’s just getting people to use it; like that anti-collision technology. I know the idea behind that is that eventually you will have these caravans of cars that will travel like three feet away from each other at 60 miles per hour down the expressway and … I don’t know if I trust it that much … frankly.
BRUCE AGNEW: If you have ever driven in Los Angeles or New York on one of those freeways; that’s what they do now without the benefit of this technology.
DAVE ROSS: Yes, yes I know … at least… but that then would be standard, I mean you’d be doing that then everyday and you know … somebody has a blow out is the technology good enough to save you if that happens?
BRUCE AGNEW: Oh absolutely! The technology is spectacular. And we have seen in the aircraft industry collision avoidance systems save lives. I mean the bottom line is, you want to save lives. When you have a terrible accident on I-5 not only do you have the tragedy of people dying but you also have the effect on the economy of huge backups for hours. So I think this technology is worth pursuing.
DAVE ROSS: Let’s talk about rapid transit because we’re still waiting to see whether Sound Transit is going to put something on the ballot this year. Doug McDonald, the former Secretary of Transportation is going to be on Dori’s show. He’s critical of this idea of taking 20 years to build a lightrail link to the Eastside when what you need is to improve bus routes right now. What’s your current thinking on that Bruce?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well … I … Doug McDonald is a very bright guy and served on the Sound Transit Board, and so he carries a lot of credibility with him. I think the other political factor that’s come up in the last few months is the high gas prices are causing people to look to transit, which is a good thing, but there are not enough buses and trains. And so sound Transit and other local officials may want to reconsider their long-term capital plans and try to bring immediate relief in terms of a major expansion in bus service …
DAVE ROSS: See that’s what I’m thinking. To me…See, the technology is there, it’s getting people to change their habits and telling somebody, “Well we’re going to have a great light rail system for you in the year 2020,”…what does that do? If people are now ready and receptive to the idea of taking a different way to work and are willing to get on a bus, give them the buses that they want.
BRUCE AGNEW: Well, that’s a good point and you look at the Microsoft Connector and those spectacular buses, I saw them all over in Bellevue lined up. Why don’t we have public-private partnerships that allow companies to use some public money to put more of their own bus fleet on to get people, you know employers …
DAVE ROSS; Well, you know, that’s a good question. Why don’t we? Is there some rule against that? I mean I know that the private bus systems were bought up by Metro years ago because apparently they couldn’t cooperate or make a go of it but … what’s changed in the interim?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well the government has done a relatively good job in carpools and vanpools, but we need a lot more of them. They have a lot of flexibility, they’re built in. I think Microsoft just looked at the 520 situation and said, “this is crazy. We need to get our people to work so we are going to fund our own bus system.” But there needs to be some sort of public-private partnership. One of the people we have at our conference tomorrow is (Sarah) Clark from Partnerships BC, and they have done a remarkable job in British Columbia in leveraging public and private money to build the Sea to Sky Highway, light rail to the airport using some private money, and new bridges crossing the Fraser River, and they have done some really innovative things with private companies in terms of subsidizing purchase of bus fleets. And so we need to look at that here and Microsoft’s a leader, but a lot of other companies that could do this if there were tax incentives that allowed them to…
DAVE ROSS: And then of course you have to get over the idea of a tax incentive for a spectacularly successful company such as Microsoft, why can’t they just pay for it themselves?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well they did, ..but other companies, you know small employers, 10 or 12 people...perhaps those folks can’t use the bus because the bus routes don’t work quite well, but there’s nothing wrong with using public money to get more cars off the road.
DAVE ROSS: So the concept would be, if you had a company or a group of people who basically wanted to start their own bus run, they would get a public subsidy.
BRUCE AGNEW: Absolutely! Well, we have that already with vanpools and carpools you know and just, that is an underutilized asset. We need to do a lot more of that.
DAVE ROSS: I guess it requires getting passed the idea of that it has to be a Metro bus that carries you. We shouldn’t care who runs the bus as long as it’s got people on it.
BRUCE AGNEW: Well it’s not just Metro, I think we have four or five different agencies.
DAVE ROSS: Yeah, but I mean they are all public agencies. You have to get past this idea that it has to be a public agency that gets you around. Again, there’s got to be a safeguard right? Because if you start subsidizing a bus that’s got two people on it everyday, then that’s a waste of money. So how do you check?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well, for instance, many companies will do what is called a “Guaranteed Ride Home.” So if people are working late and the bus stopped running at ten o’clock, you use taxi scrip. One of the most underutilized assets in our transportation systems are taxis. I’ve been going to transportation meetings now for 30 years and I don’t think I ever sat next to a taxi driver when everyday they provide an important service.
DAVE ROSS: Well that’s right, but you can’t hail a taxi in Seattle. I mean it’s … you can’t. You’ve got to call and prearrange it. I’d love it if I could stand down on Eastlake and raise my hand and get whisked back home, but you just can’t do that here.
BRUCE AGNEW: I know. Well, the city and the county need to be more serious about integrating taxi service into our system. And again it’s all about public-private partnerships. We’ve got to get rid of this notion that the public sector is totally responsible for public transportation. We need better partnerships.
DAVE ROSS: OK. So I need a question to ask people here. I’m trying to move the debate forward. Is there some way that the average person listening right now can move this ahead so we aren’t still talking about how we should have had...more new buses a year from now?
BRUCE AGNEW: Well, I think the question is going to be on everybody’s mind as we move into tolling for 520 and possibly tolling for expanded lanes on 405 is: Are people willing to have their tolls not only retire the bond but also to expand more transit service? And that’s a policy issue and that’s a political issue. And people need to tell the governor and legislature and others that “Look. We want more transit and we’re willing to pay for it, and those people who drive in the single occupancy vehicle may pay a little bit more, but it’s a shared resource and we need to allocate it properly.”
DAVE ROSS: Hm, Well I mean that’s coming from you and you’re not a wild-eyed liberal so it might have some traction. Well, alright I’ll give it a try. Alright, thanks Bruce, I appreciate it.
BRUCE AGNEW: Bye.
DAVE ROSS: Bruce Agnew, Director of Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center. Alright, so that’s … I guess that’s the main policy issue we are going to have to decide. I know that we have asked before, but I don’t think that we’ve asked it since gas blew past $4 a gallon. So what Bruce is talking about and what others are talking about…is that since with gas so expensive and people using less of it the gas tax is obviously tanking. It’s just not providing the kind of revenue that is going to build transportation projects. It also isn’t allowed to be used for transit projects. So the next new frontier in transportation in this area is the idea of basically inflated tolls. By inflated I mean the toll would be higher than what it cost to build the bridge or to maintain the road being tolled. So you’d charge a higher than necessary toll and use the excess to fund transit systems. That’s what they’re talking about. Plus, I really am intrigued by Mark Aggar's idea that Microsoft is doing of a computer, which would tell you when you could take your trip by telling you when it is cheapest to drive. It would actually assign it. It would be targeted at you. It would say, “If you, Dave Ross, leave on your trip to Seattle Center between 5:15 and 5:30, we’ll only charge you a dollar. If, however, you leave after 5:30 it’s going to cost you five.” And have an enforced system that tells you to do that. Are you buyin’ or not?
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