 | By Abby RussoCommunications Intern |
As a person who loves the great American road-trip and all its ideals, I don’t hate that the United States has a functional interstate highway system. As a person who lives in the suburbs of a major city, however, I’m often wildly frustrated that the only way I can get anywhere is via car. The automobile dependant highways and transportation dominating the country discourages the use of multimodal transportation which includes public transport, cycling and walking. In effect, the current system not only has some nonsense shortcomings, but it also negatively impacts the environment. How did this happen? Is it as bad as I think? Let’s find out.
I can’t imagine a United States without highways crossing from coast to coast--#millennial--but the project that established our interstate highways wasn’t put in place until the late ‘50s. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act in 1956 to revitalize current roads and to expand the network of highways across the country. Finished, the interstate system is 46,876 miles long in total, built and owned by state agencies using federal funds. Home to tourist traps nationwide, the interstate system gave rise to myths about its construction. For example, rumor has it that every five miles of highway, one mile must be straight in case of an emergency airplane landing.
The further expansion of these, whether in length or in lanes, is impractical. For one, more lanes never means less traffic. Studies have proven that widening highways makes congestion worse because new roads create new drives causing to traffic stay constant. On the flip side, eliminating lanes and even entire highways does not make traffic any worse. Instead, the amount of traffic readjusts and overall congestion stays the same. Further expansion is also impractical because our interstates are almost impossible to maintain as is because of the massive price tag. Many states spend too much money on building roads and too little on fixing them, which causes maintenance costs to skyrocket. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that in addition to the current budget, the country needs an additional $14 billion from the federal government to maintain highways and an $50 billion to improve them--hardly pocket change.
Not only are they fairly impractical, highways and roadways have a negative effect on the environment. A not insignificant portion of carbon pollution is attributed to transportation, and over half of the transport emissions in the U.S. come from personal vehicles. The construction of major roadways is also harmful to the environment because mass roads alter landscapes and affect wildlife in given regions through animal mortality, habitat fragmentation, and light and noise pollution. Roadways also serve as a pathway for pollutants, carrying oil and debris from the road into the surrounding ecosystems.
Multimodal transport, on the other hand, not only mitigates these negative effects, but it also makes transportation accessible to a much wider range of individuals. Multimodal planning considers various modes of transportation and connections between those modes, like public transit, cycling and pedestrians, in addition to cars. Multimodal transportation is more efficient and fair than automobile dependant communities because it allows more options for people of diverse physical, social and economic backgrounds. Studies show that people would like to rely more on alternative modes of transportation, myself included, but are constrained by poor walking and cycling conditions and inadequate public transportation. Societies could also benefit from more efficient uses of the space used interstate highways and massive roadways.
Public transportation in particular benefits the environment by cutting down on the carbon pollution emitted by personal vehicles and carrying more people per vehicle, making it a more efficient use of energy. Public transit also decreases road congestion and benefits surrounding ecosystems because it requires less infrastructure, leading to less need for road repairs and new roads in general. Less vehicles on the road also means less harm for animals trying to cross them, which is an argument I am of course partial to.
In Northern Virginia, where the population is growing fast, infrastructure and transportation are important topics, especially as the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority is finalizing the region’s long range plan, TransAction. . The draft plan includes an additional bridge over the Potomac river, between Loudoun County in Virginia and Montgomery County in Maryland.
The Upper Potomac Bridge is not the solution to traffic woes, it only diverts money from transit and maintenance and would only lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, more sprawl and threatens important agricultural reserves. Although Virginia officials in Fairfax and Loudoun have expressed these concerns, they still want move forward with another study of bridge has been studied several times and proved to not be a viable solution. Further, development around an in the agricultural reserve is a threat to our environment and public health. The 90,000 agricultural reserve is a treasured pristine farmland, in the midst of paved urban environment, provides local food and protects our drinking water supply in an aquifer. All the water intakes from the Potomac would all be downstream of this bridge. Rather than building another bridge over the Potomac, we need to invest in development near metro stations - fixing current roads and bridges like the American Legion Bridge, expand bus and metro service, finish the silver line to Dulles and build the Purple Line, and create safe bicycle and pedestrian systems that are connected to transit centers and activity centers like schools, retail and employers.
Other projects in Virginia, however, do promote multimodal transportation. For example, the Route 7 project for corridor improvements aims to widen the route between Tysons and Alexandria as well as adding facilities for cyclists and pedestrians. Hopefully going into the future, Virginia can lead the way towards even more accessible transportation statewide.
While the best way to see most of America is currently by car, it might be time to add more ways to get from here to there. I’m as big of a road trip advocate as the next guy, but instead of becoming more dependant on cars, it might be time to take a step back and look at more transportation options instead of standing in their way.
Some resources I referenced: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)
Additional contributions by Kelsey Crane