Talking Traffic

Topics: LEDs, Newspapers, Funding

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Topics: NHTSA Fatality Statistics 2008, Speed Humps, Bicycles and Pedestrians in the Motorized Environment

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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA - pronounced nit’ suh) announced the preliminary 2008 statistics for Fatal Crashes in the United States (report, pdf). According to projections, traffic fatalities fell to 37,313, down from 41,059 in 2007. That is excellent news!

Similarly the fatality rate fell to 1.28 from 1.36. This rate is measured in fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, and as I’m sure you’re aware from the news media (and my humble services here) vehicle miles traveled also fell last year.

The reduction in fatalities is being reported as correlated with increased seat belt use across the nation. Everyone is careful to not actually state that seat belt use is fixing the problem, but in this case I’m willing to give them a pass for using statistics to lie to you. It is highly probable that increased seat belt use is a causal factor¹ in the reduction of fatal crashes but it is a difficult supposition to prove. Other factors that may be causing fatalities to drop is reduced response time for medial personnel², increased use of graduated drivers licenses for teens and/or safer vehicles.

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¹: See “Correlation does not imply causation”
²: See Golden Hour

A quick rundown on issues facing traffic cameras:

The death of the traffic camera will be from citizens rising up and making it so expensive to install/maintain them that they’re not erected in the first place. The usual scheme is for the cameras to pay for themselves through the ticket revenues. In today’s economic climate, they’ll be one of the first things to go if they don’t at least break even.

Keep in mind that one way to make them run “in the red” so to speak, is to not violate traffic regulations surrounding them. Or to avoid them. This site, for example, shows all the traffic cameras in the Denver area which allows you to plot routes around them.

The public acceptance of automated enforcement still has a long way to go, and it is in a bit of a PR hole at the moment.

Topics: Economic Stimulus, Georgia Politics

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As mentioned previously, I’ve been doing some research into the portion of the Transportation Stimulus that will end up in Georgia. I’ve come up with some numbers that leads me to believe that the Georgia Department of Transportation contract office is going to be a madhouse in a few months.

ENORMOUS CAVEAT! All numbers here are WAGs¹ at best and downright assumptions at worst.

Here’s what I’ve got. According to GDOT, here’s the preliminary list of projects that might be included in the stimulus. That list and some assumptions about what might be ready lead to these conclusions:

1. $1 billion in stimulus funds for Georgia Transportation
2. $500 million to be spent by July 8, 2009 (120 day shovel-ready provision)
3. 75 projects on the books that would probably be ready and that meet the $500 million dollar goal which leads to…
4. 1.3 Contracts per business day in order to meet the deadline
5. Some really busy letting months of May and June

With respect to item number five, it seems likely that if the goal of 75 projects let by July 8 is to happen, the majority of the bidding will occur toward the late part of the 120 day period. That means the months of May and June. I honestly have no idea if the administrative, contract and engineering staffs of GDOT and the other agencies involved are capable of this sort of output. I hope so, because I’d hate to leave some of the money on the table.

Things that would help:

• Fewer contracts - with only a few exceptions, the projects on that list linked above are “small” i.e. less than $10 million. A few more large contracts in the $25-$75 million range would even things out nicely. Unfortunately, those would be difficult to drum up in the 120 days.
• Combined contracts - I haven’t examined the list in detail, but having contractors bid on bunches of projects at the same time would reduce the workload
• Longer timeframe - a change to the law that would allow for a longer time-to-project than the 120 days. I’m rating that as “unlikely”
• Cooperative agencies - a great deal of the delay in reaching the letting stage of a project contract occurs during agency reviews. If these review periods were shrunk, more projects could be ready in time.

I’ll be discussing some of this in my podcast due out on Monday morning but remember, I’m only working with my own research and what I read in the papers. For all I know, there’s already a plan that is set and rolling.

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¹: “WAG”: Technical term standing for Wild-Ass Guess. Usually used in the context of “this is better than a guess, worse than having real data, and based on experience”.

I’m putting out an episode next week about the transportation stimulus. In preparation, I looked up the text of the stimulus¹ in order to determine how much of the $26.725 billion will be ending up in Georgia:

…50 percent of the funds made available under this heading [$26.725 Billion: ed] shall be apportioned to States using the formula set forth in section 104(b)(3) of title 23, United States Code, and the remaining funds shall be apportioned to States in the same ratio as the obligation limitation for fiscal year 2008 was distributed among the States in accordance with the formula specified in section 120(a)(6) of division K of Public Law 110-161:…

The formula in USC 23 Section 104(b)(3) is relatively easy to find and understand. I’ve seen it before. It talks about how the money for each fiscal year’s highway trust fund investment is broken out between the states and it boils down to how many lane miles of interstate and state highways each state has compared to all the other states.

Unfortunately, that second bit, about Division K of Public Law 110-161: section 120(a)(6)? Well…let me just quote it for you:

(4)(A) distribute the obligation limitation for Federal-aid highways, less the aggregate amounts not distributed under paragraphs (1) and (2), for sections 1301, 1302, and 1934 of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users; sections 117 (but individually for each project numbered 1 through 3676 listed in the table contained in section 1702 of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users) and 144(g) of title 23, United States Code; and section 14501 of title 40, United States Code, so that the amount of obligation authority available for each of such sections is equal to the amount determined by multiplying the ratio determined under paragraph (3) by the sums authorized to be appropriated for that section for the fiscal year; and…

I have a life that does not involve spending the umpteen hours needed to decipher this, run down all the references, do the math, and then probably still get it wrong. So I cheated. I looked up the fiscal 2008 apportionment to Georgia² and just assumed that it would be the same percentage, or close. This came out to approximately $998 million, which is close to the round $1B. That’s what I’m working with right now, until the newspaper tells me different.

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¹: Do a search on “Highway Infrastructure Investment” at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1/text?version=enr&nid=t0:enr:31 to find the related text. It’s an education in patience.
²: If you go to the link, look at the bottom under table 7 for your state’s fiscal 2009 apportionment. Tables 3, 4, 5 and 6 will tell you how much money your state is losing because of failure to comply with federal regulations.

Topics: Metacast, Transportationist, Email Encryption, Infrastructure Stimulus, Podcast Shout Outs, Extraordinary Contraptions

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Topics: Transportation Finance in the United States

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One of the more frustrating parts of my day job is when a project requires the calculation of a Benefit/Cost ratio. This ratio is simple in concept: add up all the financial benefits of a project including the projected reductions in congestion, crashes, etc. and divide it by the amortized total cost of the project. This is a tool for evaluating whether a project is worth building. For example, if I’m proposing a project that is going to cost $1 million but it only provides the benefit of $1/2 million than the B/C ratio is 0.5. We’re getting only a 50% return on our investment, therefore don’t build it! Easy, right? Maybe. Let’s talk about where the numbers come from.

Calculating the project cost is the easy part (easy, even if it’s occasionally inaccurate due to unforseen circumstances and rising material prices). Calculating the projected financial benefits of a project can be straightforward, too, if it’s intended as a congestion relief project; there is plenty of documentation concerning reductions in delay time vs. financial benefit. Things are a bit murkier when trying to assemble a financial benefit to projected reductions in collisions because it’s hard to say whether a reduction (or increase) in collision rate is due to a project or not. Lastly, it’s nearly impossible to calculate the benefit (or impact) of a road project on the surrounding business and homes. There are broad overarching assumptions, but they are at best a WAG¹. This is why I cringe every time I’m requested to include a B/C ratio on a project. On non-capacity projects (projects that aren’t adding roadway lanes) it’s very difficult to achieve a B/C ratio of greater than 1.0 which is the assumed benchmark when someone asks for that number.

The reason for all this ramp-up is because of a news report yesterday morning in Atlanta. The Georgia Dept. of Transportation is shutting down all constructions projects (with a few exceptions) within 5 miles of a shopping mall or other retail center from Thursday to Sunday to allow for the Sales Tax holiday that Georgia is having this weekend.

My question, and I admittedly have NO CLUE, is whether the B/C ratio for this proposed work stoppage is greater than 1.0? Sure, there will be less congestion during the weekend, but does this really improve the bottom line for the taxpayer? The contractors are going to figure the cost of a 4 day work stoppage into the project cost, so it might end up at the end that this Tax Holiday congestion relief program will actually cost the state, therefore the taxpayers, more than the congestion would have.

Unfortunately, you’d have to make so many assumptions and WAGs that it’s probably impossible to say with any certainty one way or the other. It’s an interesting thought experiment, though.

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¹ WAG is a technical acronym standing for “Wild Ass Guess”.