Bigger in Texas

I recall my visits to Chicago as a child with a greater sense of understanding now that it is over forty years later.  Besides marveling at the large, and tall buildings, the forest preserve, Grant Park, the urban plazas, and the well knit neighborhoods I recall watching with trepidation as my father would move through heavy traffic down the massive expressways, such as the famous Dan Ryan.  My Uncles and Aunts, natives of Chicago, typically increased my anxiety with driving antics that we here in Wisconsin refer to as "Illinois drivers."  I now know that is the way one has to drive in such traffic, but to a little boy from Wisconsin it was rather frightening sitting in the back seat as we weaved in and out of traffic.  But, what you may ask, does Chicago have to do with the title of this post--"Bigger in Texas."  While the hint is in this paragraph, and it shows well the love affair that America has with concrete and the automobile. You see Texas has the Katy Freeway, which US Representative John Culbertson is proud. In the June 9, 2014 Congressional Record you will find the following:

I'm very disappointed and disheartened that my friend, Mr. Poe, would...call the Katy Freeway a concrete monstrosity.  It's my pride and joy.  I got the Katy Freeway built without an earmark.  Got it built from five year three months.  Went from eight lanes to 23 lanes.  The economics has boomed because of the Katy Freeway.  it's moving cars in less time, more savings to taxpayers than any other transportation project in the history of Houston.

One section of the Katy Freeway

In 2010 Houston added additional single occupant vehicle lanes to the freeway, apparently taking it to 23.  Although I have seen some reports that in areas the freeway is 26 and even 28 lanes.  the project ending in 2010, cost $2.8 billion, which was $1.63 million more than the original $1.17 billion budget.  One can count on government projects being over budget, but one would think the defense department was in charge of this project with an overrun more than the original cost.  But it is not just the cost or the lanes that is Bigger in Texas, it is also the misrepresentations.  The good politician apparently got his facts wrong.  A study of Houston Transtar data by a group known as Houston Tomorrow, has reported, that the time to travel between the two same points has increased 33% in 2014 as compared to 2011, just after the opening of the new road. You read that right, in just three years the travel time has increased 33%.  Perhaps what is really bigger in Texas are traffic jams.  Traffic experts have the famous mantra that we can build our way out of congestion.  As the Katy Freeway has shown that is simply not the case.  $2.8 billion dollars later, the new and improved 23 lane highway, only three years after its last improvement, has traffic moving at a rate 33% slower.  Perhaps the best thing the congressman said is that he did not need to get any special earmarks for the roadway.  In layman's terms "earmark" is equivalent to what we know as "pork."

Everybody's favorite idea of travel on an urban freeway

Planners know something about roads that transportation engineers wish to ignore, or fail to recognize and that is a concept we call induced traffic.  Any new road construction will draw in more traffic.  People adjust trips, alter their movement, and more development occurs--much of which is, particularly in Houston, unmitigated sprawl.  The disparate land use pattern leads to more auto trips.  Transportation Engineers bring part of this on themselves by their design.  To limit costs, they often decided to limit cross traffic, which would mean more bridge structures.  Fifty years later, WisDOT has realized that their having limited cross access on Madison's locally infamous South Beltline has led to more trips on that roadway as people have to use that road to get to another exit. Studies have shown that most who use the Beltline use it for a local trip, getting on and off in less than five interchanges.  Having had the original street connections, some of this traffic would have had an alternate route available.  With the design they need to get on the Beltline for a local trip.  The Katy Freeway experience may be teaching the engineers down in Houston about the induced traffic concept.  It will only be a matter of time before the freeway is 30 or more lanes.

Dan Ryan Expressway, Chicago, IL

The Dan Ryan was the first of what are called super-sized freeways built in the United States.  it dates the early 1960's.  My Uncle Leo used the Dan Ryan and was proud of the ability of the "Windy City" to construct such a large concrete monolith.  Such freeways are the pride of transportation engineers.  I recall him later pointing out with pride the yellow glow of the then energy efficient "high pressure sodium lights."  In the small city where I work, the City Attorney coined the nickname for our transportation engineer adding the word "Concrete" after her first name.  Houston has now done Chicago one better, by its Katy Freeway.  Showing the pride or deniability of their work, one traffic engineer wrote that the Katy Freeway, "Houston will undoubtedly be among the world's freeway elite."  Of course, this is part a cultural aspect of the United States that progress is not measured by how we care for one another, but in how much concrete we can lay, and how many lanes we can build. In one of our patriotic songs, by Woody Guthrie, we sing the almost romantic words in one stanza--"As I went walking that ribbon of highway...."  

South Beltline Highway, Madison, WI

We all use our roads, some more than others, and our roads have come to help dictate our land use policies.  Post World War II has led to a seventy year experiment in land use that we still have not fully been able to comprehend, much less to think about its long-term unintended consequences.  We need to plan better.  There are better models, but we as a nation are often too set in our ways and, as I say at work--people gravitate to that to which they are most familiar.  This thinking leaves us with the same problems.  As expending billions of dollars fails to decrease highway congestion, as travel time increases, even on new and improved state of the art bands of concrete ribbon, perhaps we will see the futility of our land use policies. Highways are here to stay, and we all use them, we just need to be smarter about how we expend our money and how we move, particularly from home to work and back.  Yes things are bigger in Texas, including, but not limited to, highways, congestion, cost overruns.  Of the ten top metropolitan areas in the US, Houston spends the most per-capita on its highway system.  Chicago, however, is not far behind.  However, if there is one take away from this post, perhaps it is that we as a nation need to think about in what we place our pride.