Why is it that stupid ideas get all the air time?
For months, fellow climate geeks have been telling me that road-builders -- and the politicians who love them -- have started to make a startling claim: namely, that widening a congested highway will help curb global warming. By reducing stop-and-go traffic, the argument goes, cars will operate more efficiently and waste less fuel. So if you want to save the climate, you'd better widen that road!
To me, this sounded too dopey to be worth refuting. I mean, sure, over the short term, congestion relief might help a bit. But what about all of the emissions from road building itself -- and, more importantly, from the extra traffic that will inevitably fill those new lanes?
But despite its obvious absurdity (or perhaps because of it) this particular suburban legend seems to be getting a life of its own. Just take a look at what British Columbia's Premier had to say recently about a proposed highway widening project in greater Vancouver, BC:
Campbell ... continued to defend the [highway] project ... saying that it will reduce emissions and make room for rapid-bus services along the highway.
Because I couldn't find anything addressing this issue online (academics have better things to do with their time, apparently), I spent a bit of time running some numbers. You can read the full report here (PDF) if you're a real geek. But in a nutshell: congestion relief may offer some slim GHG benefits over the short term; but these benefits are absolutely dwarfed by the emissions from road construction and, more importantly, by all the extra traffic that fills the expanded roadway.
In fact, it looks to me as if adding a single lane-mile to a congested urban highway will boost CO2 emissions by at least 100,000 tons over 50 years. And that's making some pretty optimistic assumptions about fuel economy improvements.
So now, if anyone out there in Grist-world hears this particular suburban legend, you'll have some numbers you can use to smack it down.
Ask Umbra on bike helmets
Ask Umbra on buying carbon offsets
Comments
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Pangolin Posted 5:54 pm
13 Oct 2007
I was wondering when Pave the Planet would rear it's ugly head. Any idiot who thinks building more and wider roads should be sentanced to spend every friday afternoon trying to leave LA from a beach in Orange County. In a '72 Ford Pinto with no AC.
Survivors should be sentanced to ten years as a bicycle messenger in Pheonix.
Put the Carbon Back
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:19 am
14 Oct 2007
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Werdna Posted 4:26 am
14 Oct 2007
http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php/2007/10/ ...
The good news is that thanks to analyses like yours and to local groups opposing the project (the Gateway 30 is a coalition of 30 community groups opposing the project: http://www.stopgateway.ca/members.htm), it is becoming politically infeasible to continue supporting the project while still claiming to be an "environmentalist".
Gordon Campbell (the Premier of BC) is nothing if not a brilliant politician. He has learned how to pay lip service to the environmental community, while actually enabling some of the most environmentally devastating projects BC has seen in years. These include off-shore drilling for natural gas, expanding salmon farming off the coast, massive dam projects that have the potential to destroy some of the BC's last undammed habitat for wild salmon, a massive expansion of the Delta Port, which will reek havoc on sea life in the Fraser river, and of course the Gateway project, which would undo 40 years of progressive urban development policies in and around Vancouver.
There is significant opposition to the Gateway project as more people become aware of its devastating effects. If you are interested in keeping tabs on how things progress, you can go here:
http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.phpgateway
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php/
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Werdna Posted 4:51 am
14 Oct 2007
Many of the same people who are saying that road building will help reduce GHG emissions are also big supporters of hybrid technology (which in and of itself is not a bad thing). Many of their predictions assume some fairly large percentage of personal vehicles would be hybrids 10-20 years from now.
However, what often goes unmentioned is that hybrid cars get best mileage in stop and go traffic. In free-flowing traffic, hybrids are not significantly different than standard internal combustion engines.
Therefore, highways that are free-flowing will negate the benefits of hybrid technology. I don't believe this was mentioned in your report.
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php/
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Sam Wells Posted 7:53 am
14 Oct 2007
So the bummer is not the emissions but on wasted time spent waiting on the roadways, which if you read the Gordon & Shunk reports by Texas Transportation Institute grows every years to represent billions of dollars in lost productivity.
Nobody ever claimed a roadway would LOWER emissions. However, some federal/state "transportation conformity" laws and regulations clearly say there cannot be any net INCREASE in emissions - by this I mean large air quality nonattainment areas such as LA, Houston, and New York.
Please get it right. As to emissions, the only time they appear higher than normal is low speed "stop and go" or during high speeds, when wind resistance functions to the power of two. /sam
Onward through the fog
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 8:33 am
14 Oct 2007
That's not necessarily the case. What's more, a reduction in traffic capacity will often cause a reduction in traffic. The effect has been studied and documented in hundreds of places around the world. For instance, Evidence on the Effects of Road Capacity Reduction on Traffic Levels states,
Such measures raise public relations, political and practical considerations, in which a key issue is the technical feasibility of measures to reduce capacity. Feasibility is sometimes calculated on the assumption that all traffic displaced from one street will simply divert to another. Since those other streets may also be suffering from congestion, calculations which use this assumption, whether carried out manually or via a computerised traffic model, have sometimes produced forecasts of such unacceptable congestion that they have been caricatured as `traffic chaos'. On occasion, concern that this `traffic chaos' will happen has been so strong that it has led to measures being rejected, or implemented in a reduced form.
... The balance of evidence is that measures which reduce or reallocate road capacity, when well-designed and favoured by strong reasons of policy, need not automatically be rejected for fear that they will inevitably cause unacceptable congestion. The effects of particular schemes will be reinforced or undermined by network conditions, and by the sticks and carrots of other policies, in a time-scale which is continually determined by wider choices about home, work and social activities.
A lot depends on the specific conditions, and the general rule of thumb is that people will chose the travel mode that is most convenient and attractive. In many cases that means walking, biking, and transit.
There are other factors to consider in addition to emissions and congestion. These might include safety, accessibility, other environmental impacts, and social and economic impacts. When all the costs and benefits are added up, non-automobile modes often have superior performance.
Ped Shed Blog
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Werdna Posted 8:42 am
14 Oct 2007
Why does capacity have to mean cars? Our transportation infrastructure has been car-biased for the last 60 years or so. The best way to increase capacity without increasing emissions (GHG or otherwise) is to implement a sane public transit system.
And, furthermore, I challenge your statement above. There have been plenty of documented situations where removing capacity did not increase traffic. For example, with the freeway collapse in San Fransisco earlier this year mayhem was expected, but didn't materialize. It happened in Seattle with a partial closure of I-5. One of the most dramatic examples comes from Soeul where a major freeway was ripped out of the city center with no noticeable effect on traffic:
http://environment.guardian.co.uk/conservation/story/0,,1 ...
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca/blog/blogs/index.php/
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Sam Wells Posted 11:19 am
14 Oct 2007
Onward through the fog
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Werdna Posted 1:12 pm
14 Oct 2007
Are you saying that cities that are not already old or big or have not already invested in some amount of transit should only invest in roads because that's all they already have?
Are you saying that rural areas should not invest in transit because they are not dense enough?
Or are you saying that in order to manage population growth of a region, some road expansion is necessary?
Andrew Eisenberg
The gateway project is wrong---http://www.livableregion.ca
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LandMan Posted 12:32 am
15 Oct 2007
I'd wager we could be permanantly off of internal combustion engines for less than the total cost of a major highway expansion program.
Land_Man
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Sam Wells Posted 1:24 am
15 Oct 2007
Gordon and Shrunk would tell you "you can't build your way out of congestion" so no, I am not a proponent of adding more capacity - because it doesn't work. It is pretty nice to get to work in a half hour instead of one hour, though. That's a productivity issue.
Safety is also an issue. Better transportation systems should reduce the accident rate from recurring and non-recurring congestion. Recurring congestion is a function of poor highway or network design; non-recurring congestion can be related to road rage and distracted drivers. Both have direct CO2 emissions such as vehicle fires and indirect impacts from increased fuel consumption while waiting for the traffic to clear. These forms of congestion-related emissions were developed by North Central Texas Council of Governments about 8 years ago.
I think what people like is the concept of modal switching, which can mean changing from car travel to walking or biking. Transit is difficult to estimate because some is electrified, requiring a deep analysis of power generation, transmission, and usage. There again, most transit systems must run during non-peak periods as well, which tends to increase per capita emissions. New York Subway is thinking or pricing off-peak subway fares for this very reason. The concept of flattening transportation throughout the day is called "peak spreading." It works.
Perhaps I'm too much of a teckie to explain it right. Anyway, the concept of delay time is a logit equation related to level of service and capacity. Level of service is calculated by a fairly old USDOT equation that rates free-flow as Level A and very congested as Level F. By the late 1980's transportation planners found the level of service so bad in Los Angeles they invented a new one called Level G. The EPA also invented a "jackrabbit" transient cycle called the "LA Freeway Cycle" for emissions testing.
But am I saying that adding capacity will do anything? Nope. It just makes life more expensive.
Onward through the fog
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:14 am
15 Oct 2007
Widening roads is a bad idea.
And so is lite rail.
Let's call a truce -- and stop soaking the public for false hope when it comes to building an efficient system.
My opinion is that what Lib planners might call dispersed urban villages are the same as what a Cons might call "sprawl".
Let's all agree -- humans need space, and to walk and to not be imprisoned in cars. They all need on demand transit.
John Bailo
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ffletcher Posted 4:36 am
15 Oct 2007
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PolluteLessDotCom Posted 9:35 pm
15 Oct 2007
Karsten
http://www.polluteless.com
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