Targets and Emissions at the MPO

The Policy Committee for our Metropolitan Planning Organization meets today, Tuesday the 23rd at noon, and they'll be talking more about targets. 

One interesting item is that the Feds have targets on congestion and delay in tension with safety. (Called "phed" ha ha.)

Healthy or bad delay?
SF Chronicle earlier this month

This is another example of the way the "congestion" frame interferes with critical thinking about our transportation system. Because we count cars and the space they take, we miss the more fundamental mobility and safety of people.

Under our autoist system, more congestion means more economic activity. Congestion is an index of "health." But we also see fretting over "lost" economic activity because of delay.  The opportunity cost of our traditional solution to congestion, which is widening, is that we invest less in other valuable goods and further degrade cities. The whole frame of "congestion" leads us astray on urban vitality, economic activity, safety, and emissions. It is not very useful at all.

"20 is plenty" = "excessive delay"???

Focusing on "peak hour excessive delay" potentially conflicts with a "20 is plenty" approach to urban speeds.

The target applies only to "roads on the National Highway System, which includes I-5 and the principal arterials" here. 

But I-5 is one thing, and sections of urban stroad like Mission Street between 17th and Airport Road and like the Ferry/Trade couplet downtown are another. The posted speeds on these urban stroads are too high, those higher speeds conflict with urban safety needs, and any slowing has real benefit.

(We could flip it and call the target "phass," peak hour at safer speeds.)

On some of the other targets, see this on the technical committee's discussion. Staff defended using the jargony "percent non-SOV" instead of "percent drive-alone" in the comments. But of course in a document whose audience is not merely the Feds, but is ostensibly also a document meant for the wider public, there could be plain language sections, even sections in dialogue with or translating the jargon. Like you could explicitly say, "we will report on percent non-SOV to the Federal Highway Administration, but will use percent drive-alone in other contexts." This approach could be used with other jargon as well. As the Policy Committee is talking about starting up a Citizen Advisory Committee, they might consider ways that the formal communications and documents are full of rhetoric that is not very friendly to the citizenry.

Anyway, this is coming from the Federal Government, it comes from legislation that is the result of some amount of compromise and is not necessarily formulated to be coherent, or even directly effective, and there may not be a great deal to do about it.

SF Chronicle earlier this month

NY Times last week

Interestingly, one of the "planning emphasis areas" from the Feds is "Tackling the Climate Crisis." This should dovetail with a much greater emphasis on greenhouse gas emissions in project evaluation for the MTP. The criterion should be weighted more strongly than merely a one or zero binary. It should also include negative values for harmful projects that will increase emissions.

Connecting "planning emphasis areas"
with scoring criteria for 2023 MTP
(yellow in original, red comments added)

The Policy Committee meets at noon today, Tuesday the 23rd. The agenda and meeting packet can be downloaded here.

PC Meeting info