Chicago: An Experience You Can’t Get from the Web

I distinctly remember the first time I ever went to Chicago as a 23-year-old research associate working for the American Public Transportation Association in October 1981 where I attended my first APTA annual meeting. For a young man who had grown up in small town New England with very little travel experience, Chicago was THE BIG CITY. I still remember the taxi ride to the hotel after arriving on an evening flight into O’Hare Airport. The City of the Big Shoulders was flexing its muscles that night. Everything was HUGE to me: the road network, the skyscrapers, the city lights, and the ‘L,’ Chicago’s rail rapid transit system.

The APTA event was a combination educational meeting and worldwide exhibition of transit technology and equipment. The educational sessions took place in a major downtown hotel while the world’s largest transit exhibition packed the halls of McCormick Place a short bus ride away. More than 1,000 delegates attended the APTA annual meeting and I wanted to learn something from everyone. My mind was a sponge, seeing new technology, hearing different voices, soaking up industry intelligence, and making new friends. The small town boy I had been could not begin to comprehend the staggering array of ideas, people, and experiences that Chicago represented for me.

Now, nearly three decades later, another lifetime removed from my APTA days, I get the chance to experience Chicago anew during IBTTA’s 77th Annual Meeting and Exhibition, September 13-16, 2009. This time, visiting THE BIG CITY holds even greater promise and anticipation for me than it did a generation ago. This time I have the privilege of serving a different industry. And the tolling industry I serve today is radically different from the tolling industry that existed three decades ago!

Thirty years ago tolling was seen as a barrier to mobility because nobody wanted to stop and wait to pay a toll. Today, with widespread use of electronic toll collection (ETC) and the steady transition to all electronic open road tolling – where the literal barriers no longer exist – tolling has ceased to be a barrier to mobility. Indeed, the real barrier to mobility today is continued reliance on the fuel tax in the face of the public’s diminishing trust in government and unwillingness to support higher taxes of any kind. Continued reliance on fuel taxes as the primary means to support highway improvements may now be the biggest barrier to mobility. Tolling, road pricing, and the advances made possible by ETC break that barrier.

Just as our methods of collecting tolls have changed these last three decades, so have our primary means of communication. The Internet, wireless telephony, email, text messaging, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Google and a host of Web 2.0 tools have revolutionized business, not just in tolling and transportation, but throughout the world economy. In 1981, the primary means for sharing ideas among a large group of people included holding a big meeting or convention, publishing a newspaper, or broadcasting a show on television. Today, anyone can communicate instantly with millions of people around the world using an inexpensive handheld device (a phone!) and a connection to the Web. These tools are cheap, powerful, and effective.

As powerful as these relatively new technologies are, they have not replaced the need or the desire of humans to assemble in close physical proximity to one another. Nor will they. We want to sit around the hearth and tell our common story. We yearn for the chance to hoist a glass to salute the success of friends, colleagues, and associates who have traveled a great distance to be with us. We know that the information gained from face-to-face contact with other professionals is far more valuable than all the PowerPoint presentations and speeches that come to us in Web pages that are stripped of context and feeling.

This is why you must come to Chicago to attend IBTTA’s 77th Annual Meeting and Exhibition. This is YOUR annual meeting. This is the family reunion for your industry, your profession, your community of practice.

I respect the budget crises confronting many states, agencies, concessionaires, and companies. And I realize some organizations have restrictions and outright bans on travel to events of any kind, including IBTTA’s annual meeting. But, we also don’t want short-term savings to stand in the way of long-term investment in the success of your organization.

(Here’s a personal thought that you can do with what you will: to those whose official travel is restricted, I say, mid September in Chicago is a terrific time of year to take a vacation from your day job to nurture the valuable friendships and professional contacts you’ve made over the course of a lifetime of service to this great industry.)

To make a long story short…Come to Chicago! You won’t regret it! I went to Chicago for the first time back in 1981 and my mind was a sponge. This time, my sponge is a thousand times bigger than it was back then. I can’t wait to go to Chicago to soak up all the life, energy, ideas, opportunities, and solutions that are waiting for me. I feel like a kid again. Won’t you join me in Chicago? THE BIG CITY is calling all of us!

-- Pat Jones

The Important “How” of Transportation Funding

Editor’s Note: I pitched this essay as an op-ed piece to the Washington Post and they politely declined. Perhaps you can use this 800-words-or-less op-ed in your community.
-- Pat Jones

President Bill Clinton gave an important speech on July 27 before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s inaugural conference on obesity. A highlight of the conference was the release of a report stating that obesity costs the US $147 billion a year in direct health care costs.

Less reported but equally important was the miniature sermon Mr. Clinton dropped into the very middle of his speech. He said, “Most of the debates in Washington debate two questions. What are you going to do and how much money are you going to spend on it? There is relatively little time spent on the third question: however much money you’ve got to spend on whatever it is you’re going to do, how do you propose to turn your good intentions into positive changes? The how question, in the end, matters more than the how much question. Not because money doesn’t matter but because if you answer the how question you can get more money for what you’re trying to do.”

Earlier this year the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank, issued a report called “Performance Driven: A New Vision for U.S. Transportation Policy.” This report tries to address all three of the questions President Clinton mentioned. But, refreshingly, it takes special aim at the question of how.

The Bipartisan Policy Center report raises the fundamental concern “that existing revenue mechanisms fail to take advantage of the fact that the performance of the transportation system can be directly influenced by how users pay for it.” That’s a fancy way of saying what the Washington Post’s lead editorial on July 29 stated so clearly: Virginia’s system of paying for and maintaining roads has collapsed because it relies on a funding mechanism – taxes on the sale of cars and gasoline – that is unsustainable.

The average Virginia motorist has little idea how he pays for roads. He’s upset that urban congestion is growing worse with each passing day. He’s frustrated because the state legislature keeps getting wrapped up in endless, futile debates on whether to raise the gas tax or where to spend the scarce transportation dollars. He doesn’t understand why we can’t seem to solve this problem.

A major part of the problem is how we pay for transportation. In much of the country, we pay for roads with taxes on gasoline and diesel. The federal government collects 18.4 cents on every gallon of gasoline sold in America. That money goes to Washington where it is then redistributed to the 50 states using elaborate formulas to determine how much each state should receive. Each state levies its own tax on gasoline and diesel, which varies from state to state, and has its own arcane (usually political) system to determine where it will spend gas taxes. In some states, there is no requirement that gas taxes be spent on transportation. Some states spend gas taxes on non-transportation purposes such as education and general government.

Money from the federal gas tax has been declining in recent years because fuel economy standards are rising and inflation is stripping away the purchasing power of the tax, which hasn’t been increased since 1993. Many experts believe the gas tax is an ineffective way to pay for transportation. Two congressionally chartered commissions have issued reports in the last two years that focus on transportation funding. Both commissions urge Congress to move away from the gas tax and towards a mileage based user fee that more accurately reflects the miles people actually drive on the highway. Road tolls are one example of these types of fees and they are currently used successfully in 35 states, including Virginia.

Congestion charging or road pricing is another mechanism that allows motorists to gain access to uncongested highways by paying a fee. The fee goes up or down depending on the level of congestion and is set to achieve a specific performance level, such as the ability to drive 55 mph without delays. The high occupancy toll or HOT lanes that will soon be operating on Washington’s Capital Beltway (I-495) in Virginia are one example of this type of mileage-based user fee that both raises money for transportation and fights congestion.

Tolls and congestion charges are very effective ways to pay for transportation. These fees address the very important question President Bill Clinton raised in his recent speech on obesity: how do you propose to turn your good intentions into positive changes? Tolling and congestion charging are already bringing about positive changes in transportation. Experience around the world suggests that tolling and pricing benefit all income groups. Tolls are helping Americans make more conscious choices about how and when to travel and what they expect to receive in return for the payments they make to support our transportation system.

-- Pat Jones