Raising Some Rail

If you missed it, the Houston Chronicle published an op/ed for me last Sunday on the possibility of elevating Metro's light rail through the Texas Medical Center. See http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/6574074.html.

Any of you who have driven down Fannin know what a nightmare it is. The experience raises the broader question of the efficacy of "at-grade rail" especially in corridors that are already highly congested. If you like the experience of driving down Fannin, you are going to love driving down Post Oak with two train tracks. The Westheimer/Post Oak intersection should be a particular treat.

Virtually all of the world's great iconic transit systems have been built in a different horizontal plane than the existing vehicular traffic. Most of the systems have been placed underground, but many have segments that are elevated. Even portions of the much heralded Paris Metro are elevated above the city. But these have been beautifully integrated into the city's architecture, proving that elevated rail does not have to be ugly. Of course, the problem with grade separating rail is that it is more expensive. However, I think we need to take the longer view here. The truth is that a rail system in Houston will not make any meaningful impact on congestion in most of our lifetimes. It is infrastructure that we are building for future generations.

Elevated Section of Paris’ Metro

Houston currently has over 1,200 at-grade rail crossings. I have been told that we have the highest number of at-grade rail crossing per capita of any major U.S. city. They are a major cause of congestion. Metro's proposed light rail will add hundreds of new at-grade crossings. We have so many at-grade crossings currently because, frankly, our forefathers were not willing to spend the money to do it right. Now we are proposing to repeat the same mistake. Is a system that adds hundreds of new at-grade crossings really the system we want to leave to our child and grandchildren?

Of course, to build a grade separated system, we will have to slow down and make the investment over a longer period of time. In the meantime, we might consider getting busy overhauling our bus system, a mode that could give us some short term relief from congestion and provide working families a real transit alternative. Siphoning money off the bus system to build an at-grade system that is going to make congestion worse is a lose-lose scenario.

A few weeks ago, I headed to my family's bay house in Kemah for the weekend and needed to stop for gas before making the trip. After leaving over $80 with the station, I thought I would drive to Kemah at the posted speed limit and see how much it improved my gas mileage. I was stunned. I drive a full-size sedan that averages about 20mpg. On the trip to Kemah, I got 32mpg. On the trip down I was reminded of a recent story in the Chronicle where two reporters had driven all major freeways around Houston at the posted speed limits. Predictably, they were passed thousands of time. Click here to read the Chronicle article. I had the same experience, as many SUVs and large trucks roared past me at well over 80mph. I wondered if they had any idea what their gas mileage was that those speeds.

After our trip, my wife, Melissa and I decided that we would consciously begin driving in a manner that would improve our gas mileage. At the same time, we looked for opportunities to consolidate trips. Since we have started, our weekly expense has actually gone down. We have cut our gasoline usage by about 20%.

Our experience is confirmed by a number of websites and organizations promoting greater driving efficiency. A good summary can be found at the Department of Energy's site: click here to go to the summary. There are a number of websites that provide suggestions to improve gas mileage efficiency, but all clearly emphasize that the most important factor in your car's gas mileage is the speed at which you drive. The basic science behind this is that wind drag on your car increases exponentially with an increase in vehicle speed. So, if you double your speed, the drag is cubed, or 8X greater. This was the theory behind the 55mph speed limit back in the 1970s. To some extent, the inefficiency caused by wind drag is overcome by your car shifting to higher gears. The optimum speed for the best gas mileage is different for each car. But generally, the sweet spot will be somewhere in the 55-65 mph range.

There is a very steep penalty for exceeding this range. The Department of Energy estimates that driving 75mph instead of 55mph, will decrease your gas mileage by about 20%. That is the equivalent of increasing the price of gas by about 80¢ per gallon. In other words, if you would like to lower your gas price from $4.00 per gallon to $3.20 per gallon, slow down to 55-60 mph.

There is another benefit from driving slower. It is safer. Amazingly, we still lose about 40,000 lives each year in traffic accidents in this country, more than 10X all the Iraq War causalities. There are about 500 traffic related deaths annually in Harris County alone. The Houston Galveston Area Council (HGAC) has estimated that about a third of the accidents in our area are caused by excessive speed.

There are also environmental benefits to burning less gasoline. Each gallon of gasoline produces 19.5 pounds of CO2 along with smog producing nitrous oxides and volatile organic compounds.¹ If we cut the number of gallons burned each year by 10-20%, it would make a marked difference in our air quality.

But increasingly, I am beginning to feel that conserving gasoline is a patriotic act. Our economy today is in a wreck largely because of our addiction-like reliance on foreign oil. We are paying billions of dollars to other countries for oil that we are literally burning up in smoke. In the meantime, they are recycling those dollars, buying up American real estate and companies. We are being taken over by other countries not by military might, but by our own inability to curb even slightly, our ravenous appetite for gasoline.

The ironic thing is that our reduction in gasoline usage has had virtually no impact on our lives. I do not miss any trips that we have not made. And by driving the speed limit and listening to music or books on tape while I am driving, I arrive more relaxed and rested than when I was pretending to be a race car driver.

Every day, Americans use a little over 9.3 million barrels of gasoline. We have actually begun to reduce our usage already. For the week of June 20, we cut about 200,000 barrels a day from the same week last year. But this is a measly 2%. Just by slowing down and driving more carefully, we could easily save five times that amount.

Today, we are importing about twice the crude oil we were in 1990. Should any of us be surprised that the price is rising? There are many places to lay the blame for our current crisis and many different proposed solutions. Figuring out who should be blamed will never be settled and would accomplish nothing. And, unfortunately, you and I have little influence over what the federal government will (nor more likely will not) do on an energy policy. But there is one thing you and I can do, for ourselves and our country. We can slow down and use a little less gasoline. It hardly seems like much of a sacrifice and is an appropriate way to celebrate our independence.

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¹ It may seem impossible that a gallon of gas which weighs about 6 pounds can produce nearly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, but it is true. For an explanation click here.

Riding Shotgun with Safe Clear
Last Friday I rode for a couple hours with a Safe Clear wrecker driver during the evening rush hour. I have always intuitively felt that an aggressive incident response program made sense. After seeing it in action, I am even more convinced.

During the roughly two hours I rode with the Safe Clear wrecker, we assisted three individuals whose cars were disabled. Two of the cars were towed to a nearby location; and the third had a flat tire which my wrecker driver assisted the motorist in changing.

In all three cases, each driver of the disabled vehicle told me that we had arrived within five minutes of them pulling over. In the case of the two tows, they were off the roadway within 10 minutes. It took about 15 minutes to help change the tire. Clearly, it would have taken the motorist much longer working alone. Also, by using the boom of the wrecker truck to lift the vehicle instead of a somewhat rickety jack, the car was quickly moved to a safer distance off the roadway. As you might imagine, each of the drivers of the disabled vehicles was extremely appreciative.

The service with which I was riding is responsible for several segments of freeway near downtown. The company had several wreckers "orbiting" along these segments to insure a quick response.

I understand that the City is having some difficulty documenting a congestion reduction effect from the Safe Clear program. This is largely because the congestion on a particular roadway is the result of a large number of variables, and attempting to isolate the effect of one specific factor is very difficult. I generally favor being able to measure the benefit derived from any public expenditure, however, in this case common sense and these anecdotal observations are good enough for me.

There are several things that could be done to improve the program, such as:

1. The program should be expanded to a single county-wide system. Currently, the Harris County Sheriff's Office and the Metro operate separate motor assistance programs (commonly referred to as MAP) in addition to Safe Clear. The MAP programs are not wreckers and only offer limited assistance, such as changing flats and providing fuel. In fact, during my Safe Clear ride. we happened on a Sheriff's MAP truck helping a driver who had run out of gas near downtown. The overlap of these three programs appears to be wasteful and motorists need to know that they will be assisted anywhere in the county.

2. The paperwork needs to be reduced. In the case of the two tows, it took my driver longer to get the authorization from Transtar and complete the paperwork than it did to actually make the tows. It seems that some wireless technology could be applied to this problem. If Fed Ex can do it for an overnight package, we should be able to do it for a tow.

3. We need better public awareness. In each of the three cases I witnessed, the disabled motorists were not aware that the wrecker was provided by the City or that the service was free. Also, having all of the Safe Clear trucks more clearly marked and some kind of recognizable uniform of the drivers would be helpful.

The Texas Transportation Institute (associated with Texas A&M University) estimates that 50% of all traffic congestion is caused by a disabled vehicle or an accident. With traffic congestion getting worse by the day, we must employ every tool available that will make a difference. There is no single "silver bullet" answer. However, Safe Clear and the MAP programs were definitely a step in the right direction. A unified, aggressive, county-wide incident response program is the next logical step and would a valuable tool in fighting our every-growing traffic congestion.

(Note: A lawsuit is still pending by certain wrecker companies regarding the manner in which the territories were awarded when the Safe Clear program was implemented. I have not investigated the issues in that suit and have no opinion as to the merits of the suit. My comments are only intended to address the program's actual operations.)