State looks forward to handling congestion increase

By Audrey Henvey

For the state of Texas, expansion is only one part of the equation to handle an influx of population. It’s also going to need an evolution.

Texas has faced the prospect of more congested roads since economic growth set its sights on the state.

In a 2017 report, the U.S. Census Bureau stated that Texas had the largest annual population growth in the nation from 2010 to 2016. The report cited net migration as the main source of population growth in Texas and the cause was a strong economy and affordable housing.

In 2016, the Texas Department of Transportation kicked off its clear lanes project designed to increase mobility on non-tolled Texas roads. The project’s initiation came after a national 2015 mobility scorecard report from the Texas A&M Transportation Institute stated that “short of major economic problems, congestion will continue to increase if projects, programs and policies are not expanded. In the report, Houston was ranked as eighth and the DFW area eleventh in terms of yearly delay per auto commuter due to congestion.

The report indicated an increase of $118 billion of wasted time and fuel due to congestion on Texas roads from 1982 to 2014.

The TxDOT project, named “Texas Clear Lanes,” features projects designed to open up non-tolled roads and diffuse congestion.

“It has to make a positive impact,” said Val Lopez, TxDOT public information officer. “We’re talking about billions of dollars of funds.”

But it may not be enough to handle the past-paced growth characterizing the state today.

David Schrank, senior scientist with the institute, said most areas are able to catch up with population growth when economic growth is slower. Economic problems are nowhere in sight for the state, however, and the population increase related to it doesn’t seem to be

expected to dive. The U.S. Census Bureau expects the state population to rise to 29,677,772 in 2020 and 34,894,429 by 2030.

“We are afflicted with a good economy,” said Tim Lomax, a research fellow with the institute and one of the 2105 report authors.

The Census Bureau remarked that economic growth in the state seemed to slow down in 2014 after oil prices went down, but maintains that migration rates are expected to remain strong.

Every increment of growth is equivalent to more automobile travel, Lomax said.

In a September 2018 progress report, the Texas Transportation Commission, created under TxDOT, laid out the economic costs and benefits of the 31 projects designed to upgrade the state’s most congested road segments. Compared to the $35.9 billion costs, the data used by the report estimates a total of $135 billion in benefits ranging from reduced congestion to an increase in jobs and economic activity due to construction.

“We appreciate that we won’t be able to build ourselves out of congestion,” Lopez said.

But, he said, the increase in funds will improve lives and make roadways safer.

David Schrank is a senior scientist with the institute and one of the 2015 report authors. Based on his research, he said most areas aren’t able to keep up with congestion growth unless the economy slows down. As for Texas, he said the chances of keeping up with congestion increases are slim.

“The disturbing answer there is ‘probably not,’ in the traditional means of transportation,” Schrank said.

The decades-old model of jumping into a car to go to the office is now joined by an increasingly diverse set of transportation options ranging from public transportation to carpooling incentives. A lot of these methods have worked around the country for a while, but have only come to the state in the past decade, Schrank said.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, TxDOT reported that the state is seeing an average population increase of 1100 people per day. While office complexes are built within months or a couple of years to welcome people, jobs and companies, road development projects must undergo a five- to 10-year process for completion, Schrank said.

“I guess the bottom line is to keep in mind that if we are going to be growing as a state, or as a nation, we’re going to need to continue to evolve our transportation system to handle that growth, and it may not look like what we traditionally have, which is a car on a lane roadway. But we still need to evolve that growth,” he said.

That can mean a variety of avenues for transformation including using the resources already available to commuters and looking forward to those yet to come.

Lomax said lawmakers should consider managing the demand of roadways by incentivizing businesses to give employees more flexible work hours or allowing them to telecommute to avoid using the road at peak hours. He also said commuters could consider using public transportation which, while slower, is also more predictable than today’s roads.

Meanwhile, Schrank said, keeping an eye on technology will allow developers to increase efficiency on the road. Innovations like self-driving cars, which would theoretically act as a sort of conveyor belt and reduce the chances of road accidents, would help increase road efficiency. Schrank said we are already seeing some sensory technology like this, such as when lights are able to sense emergency vehicles on the way and turn green to allow them to pass.

“If you’re going to have a strong economy--regional, state, national--with that is going to come some level of congestion,” Schrank said. “Hopefully, as we move forward, we can be more efficient with our transportation and we can get to a point where a stronger economy does not gridlock.”