A Vision for a Changing America

Imagine a transportation system with the capacity to serve Sunbelt growth and metropolitan expansion, connect all regions to the global economy, and do so reliably every day.

How We Have Changed

In the late 1950s, there were 65 million vehicles creating 600 billion annual vehicle miles of travel. Vehicle ownership had just begun to take off and long-distance trucking was still in its infancy. Fifty years later, there are over 230 million vehicles creating 3 trillion vehicle miles of travel on a highway system that grew by only 15 percent in that period. (Figure 1.) Forecasts indicate that the U.S. population will grow from 300 million today to 435 million by 2055. (Figure 2.) Highway travel measured in vehicle miles traveled may increase from 3 trillion today to as much as 7 trillion by 2055. Truck-borne freight is expected to double by 2035, and rail freight to increase by over 60 percent.

The Challenges We Face

Figure 1

Providing mobility for this country is getting tougher. Congestion in metropolitan areas is bad and getting worse because we have not kept pace with the highway, transit, and rail capacity needed. Travel demand in non-metro areas is growing fast as well. Gas prices are at record levels and construction costs are rising. After two decades where national politics have been dominated by resistance to raising taxes, today’s challenge is how to generate enough revenues to meet the country’s needs. How to rebuild and modernize aging infrastructure so it continues to serve future generations? How to add the highway, transit and rail capacity needed to serve a growing nation? And how to build the national freight network needed to keep America competitive in the global economy?

Figure 2
Mounting concern over global climate change and the realization that we must reduce our dependence on foreign oil will also require changes in the approach taken.

Future Demand for Travel
A major National Cooperative Research Program Study on the Future of the Intestate System was recently completed at the request of AASHTO. Its findings go well beyond just the needs of the Interstate Highway System and are helpful in outlining for the entire transportation system the many challenges we face. According to that study, there are three new areas where a vision of what needs to be done is required: the Post-Interstate Geography, Metropolitan Congestion, and Global Economic Integration.

Figure 3. Census Region Population Forecast, 2005–2030

The Post-Interstate Geography
The pattern of development and population in the country has shifted dramatically. Sunbelt growth, sprawling suburbs and edge cities are all post-Interstate developments. Nationwide, there are now 70 urbanized areas of 50,000 or more population which are not connected to the Interstate system. Who is to say which of those will be the Las Vegas or Phoenix of the next 50 years? The next 50 years will see further regional dispersion of growth and the addition of 150 million people, including major increases in several states. (Figure 3.) Tourism has expanded dramatically, attracting very large volumes of both domestic and international travelers to our widely dispersed natural and cultural resources. Maintaining rural access is essential not only to serve rural communities, but also to support the shifting agricultural and energy extraction and production needs of a growing population and economy.

Metropolitan Congestion
Urban mobility is challenged by congestion and lack of reliability. In the top 70 urbanized areas, the cost of congestion is over $65 billion per year. The dispersal of economic activities and residential opportunities in all major metropolitan regions has led to demands for a more complete network that can serve both urban and interregional needs. (Figure 4.) The expansion of metropolitan areas with their edge cities and ex-urban sprawl and the emergence of multi-state “mega regions” where much of our economic productivity is generated, pose a complex challenge for urban transportation. In these contexts—that are often highly constrained by community and environmental issues—new mixes of modes and management schemes are required to support the metropolitan economies and maintain an attractive quality of life.

Figure 4. Top 100 Metropolitan Regions in the United States

Global Economic Integration
The national economic dependency on global trade continues to increase. Since the Interstate era was launched in 1956, the value of imports has increased to an equivalent of over 25 percent of GDP. This rapid increase in trade value and volume—including NAFTA commerce—is expected to increase to an equivalent of 60 percent of GDP in 2030. This will intensify the flow of imports and exports—especially intermodal container movements by truck—moving through the ports and border trade gateways to major areas of consumption hundreds of miles away. (Figure 5.)

Reliable service is critical in a “just-in-time” era of higher value commerce and competitive lean production. Yet both global and domestic supply chains are hampered by key gaps in the highway network and by bottlenecks and low levels of service in key Interstate corridors.

Figure 5. Global Trade Networks

Making the Case for Capacity

Whether to add capacity to meet these changing needs, what kind of capacity, and how much to add, continue to be matters of great debate. When the Interstate Study determined that “over the next 50 years approximately 80 percent in capacity would need to be added to the Interstate System,” it immediately launched a debate over whether its estimates were too high, too low, or just right.

Figure 6

Consider the following. Travel measured as vehicle miles traveled in the United States increased from around 600 billion in the mid-1950s to 3 trillion by 2006. While FHWA trend lines show that it could rise to 7 trillion by 2055, this report proposes that policies be pursued which would cut the levels of projected VMT growth by half to between 4.5 trillion and 5 trillion by 2055. (Figure 6.) This strategy is proposed, in part, because of the fiscal and physical constraints to expanding system capacity in the future, but also in recognition of the need for future strategies to be responsive on the issue of global climate change.

The goal of cutting projected VMT growth by 50 percent would be achieved by using advanced technologies and operations management techniques to maximize performance, shifting as many person trips as possible to transit, shifting as much freight as possible from trucking to rail, encouraging land-use patterns friendly to walking and biking, and encouraging telecommuting.

Even after cutting the rate of projected VMT growth in half to between 4.5 and 5.0 trillion as this report proposes, it will still have increased by over 800 percent in the 100 years between 1955 and 2055. In this light, the proposition of the May 2007 NCHRP Interstate study that Interstate capacity be increased over the next 50 years by one-tenth of that amount, or 80 percent, appears, if anything, to be conservative.

A Vision for a Changing America (Continued) >>