Taxpayers Opposed to Useless Roads

    I seriously doubt that there would be a lot of support for this plan if it were made obvious that over the next two decades the I-40/I-81 portions of the Interstate would be allowed to drop in Service Level to "D" in the rural areas and "E" in urban areas.  If that were said in plain English so truckers and normal people could understand it, you would be getting more comments.  According to Map Quest, the drive time from Memphis to Bristol is 469 minutes. The Grayhound bus makes the trip, subtracting layovers, in 625 minutes this year. My guess is that the plan is to let the Bristol to Memphis corridor fall into an average speed of about 45 miles an hour. This is like going back to the late Fifties in  convenience.
 
     This plan restores some sanity to the goofy projects selected but does nothing good for the project selection process. I am assuming that the legislature will go along with it. It is the urban areas that have paid the most into the Highway Fund just because they represent a major fraction of the population. Another good thing about this plan is that it might shock the federal government enough to consider additional federal taxation to prevent this plan from actually going in to effect. Tennessee has forgotten that the Interstate is a national defense asset.  Allowing it to drop in Service Level as a matter of convenience has national consequences.  The effect of a hazardous materials accident is amplified by the low service level that is planned.  There are also dramatic business consequences that will result in an increased time of travel from Bristol to Memphis.
 
     Probably one of the biggest waste of time in the whole report was the pretense of applying a sophisticated government approved Benefit/Cost analysis. I doubt that the computer programs are sophisticated enough to predict the work arounds that will result as businesses try to cope with the lost utility of the Interstate over the next two decade. One of the effects of the Interstate is to increase the average distance of truck hauls. In 1960 the average length of haul was 272 miles. In 2001 the average haul distance was up to 485 miles. If travel time increases, trucker productivity might reverse in ways that we have never seen before. The result might be more trucker jobs and more trucks on the road. Labor productivity in trucking has been rising from 1987 to 2000 at a rate of slightly less than 2.1 percent per year. Some of this productivity is due to longer trucks and multiple trailer pulls. Dropping the average speed on the Interstate will only increase pressure on the legislature to allow more of these changes in the future.
 
    Even though there is an impressive reference to the Benefit to Cost methodology approved by the federal government TDOT is completely free to use whatever mechanism it wants to. The invention of the concept of economic access proves that. There was no cost of human life and environmental damage considerations when discussing the possibility of toll roads. Furthermore, there is no Benefit/Cost methodology that could ever justify a gratuitous interchange like Mine Lick Creek Road. There are over 98 square miles of empty industrial parks all over the state of Tennessee. Every one of them could be enhanced with an Interstate access but there are also Industrial parks that already have Interstate access and no or little industry yet. If all of the North American car manufacturing capacity were relocated to Tennessee, it would fit on only 16 square miles.
 
      It has been the history of the Interstate that roadside service industries will naturally dominate the Interstate Interchanges, not manufacturing.  Even if it could be built for $10 million dollars, where is the traffic to justify the costs?  There is none and even if there was a 2000 employee auto manufacturer there, the daily traffic in and out would not justify the costs.  It already has Interstate access from two other exits. The incremental increase in benefit is a figment of the imagination of people at the Chamber of Commerce who constantly fear being proven incompetent with public money. When this exit fails to get the business park jump started they will be wanting some lights next.   
 
      Roadside service and tourist operations have a better ability to pass the cost of the land to their customers by selling convenience. The only way that a manufacturing enterprise can occupy these expensive plots of land is for it to be gifted to the manufacturer. No manufacturer would want to be saddled with adding that cost to the unit cost of their manufactured product, especially when their competition could easily get land throughout Tennessee at other industrial parks for as little as $3000 per acre or even free in some remote areas.
 
     It would be more informative to do benefit/cost ratios based on same methodology as the toll road studies. Charging, as a cost, the cost of pollution is a questionable decision because the driver pays some of the cost of pollution through the purchase of the vehicle plus the maintenance of the auto. Pollution costs also end up in the cost of products that the consumer buys during other activities besides transportation.  Additional noise pollution cost already in the cost of building the highway seems to be taken care of through the estimation process. Adding additional environmental cost by charging a small amount to Vehicle Miles Traveled seems to be double charging since much of the extra cost in construction already takes into consideration some environmental aspects of costs. If VMT were thought to be a benefit by virtue of causing money to flow into the Highway trust fund at 2.46 cents (2006 estimate)per vehicle mile, the pollution costs per VMT of both auto and truck in 2030 would have wiped out nearly 75% of the benefit.
 
 No one writes a check to the highway Fund for $4.3 million every time a theoretical life is saved. The cost of delay seems to be about half of that used in England. Are they wrong? As far as accidents are concerned, the driver, through insurance already pays these costs and no one writes a check to the Highway Fund when an accident is avoided. Benefits seem to disappear at the out years, possibly due to congestion costs but it seems that as the average speed declines, there is an improvement and decrease in pollution, otherwise the speed limits would not be moved down in Knoxville already. The use of pollution cost on a per vehicle mile basis does not capture this effect and assumes that there will be no technological intervention over the next 22 years.
 
     Nothing is more disturbing than the possibility that the loss of average velocity might reverse what some people call sprawl. Not everyone agrees that sprawl is a bad thing. Dropping the average speed along the Interstate will encourage migration away from the rural counties and to the more populated areas. It will make commuting to a better job less likely and it will be less likely that the oversupply of industrial sites in every county in Tennessee will be eventually used except for farming. This outward migration will leave a lot of small rural counties holding the bag on long term capital investments in schools, and other traditional urban infrastructure. Rapid growth in the urban areas by migration will shorten the service life of the existing urban infrastructure and accelerate costs by a miscalculation of the demand. This migration effect is already seem as part of the retirement activity among baby-boomers. The baby boomer retirement phenomenon also promises a reduction in VMT in the future. But, it also promises a reduced capability to bear the additional transportation costs that must take place by virtue of a reduced income during retirement.  Over the past decades people very reliably spend about 11.5 % of their disposable income on transportation. More taxes means less disposable income so the only thing that can mitigate the higher taxes for transportation is greater efficiency.
 
    I think that it is possible that the ITS solution package is a major beneficiary of the cost modeling process because there is no way to account for all of the negative business effects and there is only a limited capability to improve Service Level, especially when the weather is bad. ITS may increase capacity but It is not likely to improve average speed unless it is matched to a variable speed advisory system.
 
       The Benefit/Cost methodology would be more useful if it compared more generically similar alternatives. For instance, the B/C ratio of adding two lanes versus the B/C ratio of adding four lanes. Solutions should not be punished for attracting traffic unless there is a concurrent adjustment for increased maintenance. Attracted traffic to the Interstates is usually attracted to safer roads and the reduction of traffic on other arterials is also positive in that some maintenance costs are reduced. The train solution may have gotten the worst treatment because capital costs for trains are a lot different than capital costs for trucks or cars.
 
      When it came time to look at an Interstate Interchange at Mine Lick Creek Road, the business related benefits were a given and set at infinity. When it came to the trains however, the business benefits were ignored unless they happened along the Interstate. In a supply Side Economics World, an attempt to look at increased competitive position or other benefits would have been attempted. The principle advantage to the Interstate is an increase in capacity by train diversions. Too much is expected of trains in this area because a train has to run on a schedule and can not pass other trains like trucks can do every day. Trains are also running about 20 miles per hour over courses that are a long way from being direct. Trains are using hub and spoke techniques in cargo deliveries that do not compare very well to the truck practices.  
 
     Charging as a cost, the pollution effect, makes any solution that provides more mobility to be handicapped. Until there is substantial transportation funding reform, the only way to pay for infrastructure is encourage VMT and not avoid solutions that have inadequate VMT to justify costs.  Diversion to trains would probably divert money that would have gone to highways to trains and their trust fund.  Environmental protection actions require money that has to be earned you can not save the planet with theoretical social benefit money but you can generate phony social benefits and costs.  Shutting down the possibilities of future employment makes environmental spending more difficult to arrange.
    
 
     The Benefit/ Cost methodology is either incorrect or difficult to follow with the streamlined versions provided with the report. Anyone controlling what the social costs are in the analysis can also control the choices that will eventually fall out as having a high benefit to cost ratio. The classic benefit to costs ratio discounts all costs and benefits to the same year. Government standards also expect a sensitivity analysis to test the assumptions about the discount rates. I did not see a sensitivity analysis but I am also opposed to wasting more time so let us just let that rest there. It is not obvious from the limited data provided that costs and benefits were actually discounted to the same year
 
     For instance, in the Table 3.3 in the Technical Memo number 4, Adobe page 18/58, it can be seen that the cost of the bridge over the Mississippi was $600 million dollars and the benefit to cost ratio was calculated as 1.9. In 2008 dollars that would mean that the actual benefits would be $1.14 trillion dollars. The cumulative net benefits in 2030 should be more than $1.14 trillion dollars if they were properly discounted, not less. If the net cumulative benefits are the sum of all benefits with no discounts, that number should have been higher.  
 
     What is most disappointing about this report is the lack of sophistication in the legislature about the value of congestion pricing and the need to consider tolling. TDOT should submit to the reality that HOV lanes are a failure and only force drivers to take more congested paths. Roads with high volume to capacity ratios are more dangerous. By converting these lanes to HOT lanes or toll lanes regardless of occupancy, better use of resources will be the result. Tolling eliminates the need to have the cops do HOV enforcement. Apparently not a lot is spent on that anyway so there is no benefit in going to HOT lanes. Truck only lanes and tolling them is particularly interesting for the Bristol to Memphis Corridor. I also noticed that there was no obvious mention of the possibility that I-69 could provide some congestion relief for Nashville. It is unlikely that I-69 can be started without some tax reform both at the Federal and the state level.  Assuming that these projects move into the 2012 STIP, I don't see how a lot of rural RPO's are going to see any additional work done until the Upgrade is mostly done.
 
Danny L. Newton
Cookeville, Tennessee

      This day in court played out pretty much as the last one except it was before a different judge. The city and the county once again attacked the sanity and the judgement of the Lynch family for wanting to use their own land for their own purposes in spite of the government's alleged better intentions. The recent development of the VW plant in Chattanooga was given again as another excuse for taking the property. The last time this tactic was used, the defendatnt's attorney objected on grounds that this is a new development that could not possibly form any basis in the original decision.

     The city attorney claimed to be mystified at the defendant's resistance to this action and by insinuation suggested that their act was selfish and anti-social. The attorney for the family was also accused of just running up the legal bills and making the case unnecessisarily complex. At no time did the government assume any responsibility for making the case more complex than necessisary by ignoring the requirement of a Certificate of Need and Public Purpose to exist before starting the condemnation proceedings.

      Bob Anderson, Attorney for the Lynch Family, petitioned the court for a relief from the first condemnation suit based on the fact that the city and the county already asked the court to withdraw from the suit which would have permitted the Lynch family to recover attorney fees for trying to acquire the property without first obtaining the required Certificate of Need and Public Purpose. The sparing between the two parties was over what would happen in the event of the state actually giving a Certificate of Public Purpose.

     The city and the county take the view that the Certificate gives them the right to proceed with the condemnation and at the same time prevents a partition of the land. Mr. Anderson countered with the interesting possibility that the land cound be partitioned even if the Certificate came back approved because the published plans for the park do not utilize all of the property.

The Judge, Amy Hollars, decided against the Lynch Family but first secured the best possible promise from the City Attorney that there would be no further delays in getting the Certificate. After Hearing the City Attorney recite year upon year, venue upon venue, and judge after judge that had never entertained such a notion that the defendants had any right to a partition except by sale, the attorney for the Lynch Family reminded the court that the new legislation confers additional rights upon land owners and additional responsibilities on the government before it takes land through condemnation. Also, case law was presented that showed that the preferred method of setteling the dispute would be through partition of the property not just a money settlement.

     The defendants attorney also asked the court to place the money for the 20% undivided ownership in an interest bearing account for the sake of both parties. That request was also denied.