Last month we reported on some funky statistics coming out of the Maryland Department of Transportation—something about adding lanes to the Beltway.
Ben Ross sends an update:
Thank you so much for reporting in your blog on my letter about possible scientific fraud in the traffic model for the Maryland toll lane project. There are new developments that your readers may be interested in.
My [Ross’s] letter, sent to US Dept. of Transportation Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg, concerned the Final Environmental Impact Statement issued in June by the Federal Highway Administration. This document is the basis for a Record of Decision (ROD), the federal approval needed for the project to go forward.
On July 18, a lobbying group supporting the project wrote to Trottenberg asking her to “ignore” my letter. The signer of the letter was Doug Mayer, former Communications Director to Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. The Mayer letter is attached and a news report on it is here.
A few days ago, the Federal Highway Administration informed the Maryland Dept. of Transportation that USDOT was not ready to issue the ROD and asked them to respond to public comments they had received on the FEIS. This clearly includes my letter to Trottenberg; I don’t know the full extent of what MDOT was asked to respond to.
Yesterday morning, Governor Hogan wrote to President Biden and USDOT Secretary Pete Buttigieg demanding immediate issuance of the ROD without any response to comments on the FEIS. He issued a press release describing the delay as “purely political” and “irresponsible and incompetent federal overreach” and threatening legal action. Press coverage of this has appeared in Maryland Matters and the Washington Post.
In response, the Federal Highway Administration issued the following statement yesterday afternoon:
In his letter, the former communications director says a lot about professionalism: “The traffic engineering and environmental analyses were performed by professional engineers and other qualified subject matter experts from eight federal, state, and local agencies and 20 participating agencies . . . following approved, industry standard procedures . . . consistent with accepted industry standards . . . licensed professionals with advanced degrees in traffic engineering . . .”
Expertise can be important, that’s for sure. But I’m not sure what I’m supposed to think about work that is “consistent with accepted industry standards” in traffic engineering. This came up a few years ago in our article, The Commissar for TrafficPresents the Latest Five-Year Plan. For whatever reason, it seems like standard practice to make bad forecasts and then not update them appropriately with new information:
This sort of behavior might be ok if you’re an academic economist writing about the Soviet Union:
But government employees should be able to do better, no?
Here’s the point. When we see forecasts of bridge traffic, transit traffic, cost projections, etc., made by people with a political or financial interest in the project . . . OK, these forecasts could be good or they could be bad. You can’t just assume they’re correct, just cos they’re by traffic engineers with advanced degrees, consistent with accepted industry standards, etc. Industry standards aren’t always so great, and there are real conflicts of interests here. I’m not saying that these studies shouldn’t be done; I’m just saying that it could be a mistake to assume that the “eight federal, state, and local agencies and 20 participating agencies” experts are producing an unbiased report.
The other interesting thing from the former communication director’s letter is a report from an organization called Public Opinion Strategies. They share results from a poll of 500 registered voters in Maryland, but it’s kind of impossible for me to evaluate given that they don’t say how they sampled the voters or what the survey questions were. I have a horrible feeling the poll was done with the goal of getting positive responses on this Beltway expansion thing. The poll is irrelevant to concerns about the traffic report, but it’s an interesting example of possibly slanted news. Seeing poll results with no information of where the respondents came from or what the questions were . . . it’s like trying to piece together a conversation from hearing only one person’s words.
Finally
I absolutely love this bit:
No sense of where these respondents come from or what questions were asked, but, hey, the margin of error is 4.38%. The only thing I don’t get is why didn’t they say it more precisely: the margin of error is 4.382693%. What’s with the rounding, dude??
“Here’s the point. When we see forecasts of bridge traffic, transit traffic, cost projections, etc., made by people with a political or financial interest in the project . . . OK, these forecasts could be good or they could be bad.”
Andrew, your and Phil’s claim here is hilariously bad, just like it was the last time you wrote about it. The actual traffic can’t reflect the demand if there’s no space for the traffic because there’s no new bridge. DUH! Why not just admit it? You’re the one making a simple and blatant mistake: confusing traffic volume, which is restricted by existing infrastructure, with demand, which is not. The fact that no new water can flow through an existing pipe doesn’t have anything to do with the demand for new water.
I see now why you like Alex Guzey so much even though the personal experiments he relies so heavily on are ridiculous and facile. Your objections throughout this piece are like Guzey’s attacks on the need for sleep. Guzey’s claim is something like this: “One sleep scientist wrote a book full of false claims. Therefore everything that’s been written about sleep is false”. Sure, Walker’s book is full of crap, but that has nothing to do with piles of research showing lack of sleep is destructive and often deadly.
I’m sorry to see you joining the anti-knowledge crowd. It’s a shame.
I took a traffic engineering course at UC Davis during my CE undergrad. What I decided was it was entirely bullshit and in the real world traffic engineers are a tool for whitewashing the wielding of political power.
At the same time I was taking the course, professional traffic engineers were busy intentionally snarling the traffic through Lafayette CA so as to prevent the growth of neighboring Moraga whose residents had to drive through Lafayette when commuting to and from the Hwy 24 corridor. Air quality plummeted, long queues formed at all lights, and bikers were routinely endangered by angry motorists desperately slamming their SUVs around trying to rush from one light to another.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/04/19/why-you-should-never-sit-next-to-a-breakaway-post/
Public Opinion Strategies is in my neighborhood, and it’s the sort of place you go when you know the answer you want.
The founder was on a local website downplaying children dead of Covid last year too.
From the Hogan letter:
“In advancing this project over the past six years, we have already had to overcome numerous attempts at sabotage by some Montgomery County politicians pandering to a small minority of pro-traffic activists. State transportation officials have gone above and beyond to address all of these frivolous concerns over and over again by conducting extensive public engagement far exceeding regulatory requirements, significantly reducing impacts, studying alternatives, and expanding multimodal mobility and connectivity.”
Wait, did I read “significantly reducing impacts?” Sounds like Ben Ross is deserving of a civic engagement medal!
I just love the concept of “pro-traffic activists”. I assume that writing political boilerplate is usually just as tiresome as reading it, so I’m glad the writer got to cut loose a bit there.
Of course, the problem with pro-traffic activists is that no one ever makes it to the rallies…they’re caught in traffic!
The very beginning of the report is already misleading because it attributes the improvement in traffic flow to the tolls, whereas in fact it is due to adding lanes. Tolls almost always reduce traffic, not increase it. The only exception I have encountered in my work is if the toll lane is a bus lane and you actually have a fair number of buses.
Given the history and bullying that has taken place with this project, it is not surprising to see transportation models used which are opaque or suspect as being shaded or worse. The project proponents have never even accepted the fact that induced traffic demand might negate any possible improvements that additional road capacity creates.
Andrew,
The problem with the “actual” line in the graph in your paper is that it’s the actual increase in traffic, but
increase in traffic demand
where no additional capacity has been added to allow that demand to be met! :)
All your graph shows is that existing capacity is maxed. It doesn’t say anything about the demand, and for all your data says the demand could be four times higher than what the traffic modeler claim.
should be:
Increase in traffic NOT EQUAL demand
There’s no such thing as “demand” that is independent of supply. Or at least, not for a level of supply that is anywhere close to reality.
As for “existing capacity is maxed”, that’s not right. The number of miles driven peaked in 2007, but it’s not the case that roads were getting destroyed after that. Indeed, roads were still being built.
“The number of miles driven peaked in 2007,”
Not according to this data:
https://alfred.stlouisfed.org/series?seid=TRFVOLUSM227SFWA#0
It shows miles driven fell during the 2009 recession, were flat until about 2014, and surpassed the pre-Obama peak shortly before Obama left office, ultimately peaking just before the pandemic. That’s pretty consistent with economic malaise of the Obama years and rising growth during Trump’s presidency. Maybe you’re a little out of date?
“Peaked” as in local maximum, as in going up and then down again. And yes, economic recession can explain a decline in vehicle miles driven, but if that was the case existing capacity being maxed was not the reason for plateauing or decline around 2007 as you claimed it was, and the point still stands that the forecasts were bad.
Let’s not forget that Ben Ross heads up a lobbying organization that has consistently supported one of the biggest white elephants in the State of Maryland, the Purple Line light rail system. It’s been delayed so often that I’ve lost track and the original construction company bailed on the project. It’s going to cost over double the projected costs and will never achieve the ridership that proponents such as Ross have claimed. While it’s important to take statistics from those who propose widening the beltway and I-270 with a grain of salt so should they not accept what Ross and the Maryland Transit Opportunities Coalition states in defense of their pet projects.
I was involved in some traffic studies in our old neighborhood and they are not as straight forward as one might think.
While your point about unduly high ridership estimates is obviously valid, it’s rather circular to slant a public transportation project for associated delays and added costs when those delays are mainly caused by anti-public transportation activists protesting the project
“I was involved in some traffic studies in our old neighborhood and they are not as straight forward as one might think.”
Really. What hasn’t been mentioned here yet is the phenomenon of induced demand: new/added roadway capacity usually results in induced demand that exceeds the added capacity.
And, as a snarky obnoxious public transportation advocate, one should also compare deaths per mile travelled for roadways vs. public transportation. It’s usually not favorable for roadways…
On the other hand, although I haven’t lived in Boston since 1981, I was a big fan of the Big Dig, even though it’s planned capacity was inadequate for predicted demand from the start. For us rich entitled Beacon Hill residents, the old (ugly, stinky, noisy) elevated meant that we never went down to the waterfront and only rarely to the North End. Now there’s a lovely park there. (Meanwhile, for people who insist on driving, Boston has some of the worst traffic congestion in the country.)