Traffic experts fear: If they rebuild it, more will come
Hillsborough plans to spend $168-million widening Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. But will that lead to more development and traffic?
By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published December 26, 2004
TAMPA - On a road where the speed limit is 45 mph, it should take no more than six minutes to drive the four miles between Interstate 75 and Mark Harmon's home in Meadow Pointe.
But Harmon knows Bruce B. Downs Boulevard all too well. He leaves an hour early - 6:30 a.m. - to avoid rush hour. On good days, it takes 15 minutes to get to I-75. On bad days, and there are many, it can take an hour and a half.
"Getting home is just as bad," said the 39-year-old human resources manager. "I'm late for dinner a lot."
As developers continue to squeeze new homes along this lone commuter route, Bruce B. Downs is becoming ever more cramped and New Tampa is straying further from its ideal as an affordable bedroom community with easy access to job centers.
So Hillsborough County is spending an unprecedented $168-million to widen Bruce B. Downs from four to eight lanes.
The upshot? More sprawl, to be sure. Smoother traffic? Don't count on it.
"Induced demand," as transportation experts call it, could quickly obliterate any benefits from additional lanes.
"Those motorists who have been avoiding the road at certain times or altogether will suddenly begin to fill it up," said Tom Downs, president of the Eno Transportation Foundation, a Washington D.C. think tank. "Roads generally become congested again in urban areas 12 months after they've been widened."
It's not just existing commuters who will clog up Bruce B. Downs.
Tens of thousands more have yet to move into New Tampa because their homes haven't been built. The city of Tampa has approved projects, some of which depend on a wider road, that could translate into 48,000 new trips on Bruce B. Downs every day.
By 2028, average speeds on some segments of the expanded road will dip below 9 miles per hour because of congestion, according to Florida Department of Transportation predictions.
Even that less-than-rosy scenario depends on another $125-million in additional road projects that officials say are needed. Most of these projects aren't financed.
For now, the road will continue to hold twice as many vehicles as its design allows. If the widening begins as planned in 2006, motorists like Harmon will contend with construction for months, slowing traffic even more.
After the expansion is completed, four lanes of northbound traffic will squeeze into three lanes in Pasco County, the origin of much of the new traffic.
"I'm not sure it won't still be a disaster after the project's done," said Harmon, although he he said he thinks the widening is necessary. "These homes keep getting built. We're really just funneling more traffic into Pasco County."
The project's dubious public benefit raises questions about why taxpayers are subsidizing it, said Ruth Steiner, a University of Florida associate professor of urban planning.
"It's allowing for the development of Pasco County and New Tampa," Steiner said. "Should the public pay for the widening of the road, or should the developers who create the demand for the road pay? What's the benefit for the rest of us?"
Even some local officials question if this is a sound investment.
"It's frustrating because the amount of money that's going into Bruce B. Downs could go elsewhere," said County Commissioner Kathy Castor, who sits on the Metropolitan Planning Organization that approved its financing.
"This is very expensive for taxpayers and hopefully it will provide relief for people stuck in traffic there. But will it actually improve it? That's a tough one. It's questionable."
Arising over the last 20 years, New Tampa's gated subdivisions happened at a time when many planners, politicians and traffic engineers already knew the consequences of sprawl.
In 1985, the state passed a law that required developers to pay for roads and other improvements as they built homes. Although the law was supposed to ensure an adequate road system, in some ways it did the opposite.
"The law says if the highway is congested, you can't build in that vicinity," said Brookings Institution fellow Anthony Downs, author of Stuck in Traffic: Coping with Peak Hour Traffic Congestion. "That forces developers farther out."
When they do build, many developers forego offices and apartments in favor of less concentrated but still lucrative developments like single-family housing. The result is a wide terrain that can't support mass transit and can be served only by the automobile.
Two other factors helped doom New Tampa's transportation system, said Kristine Williams, a transportation researcher at the University of South Florida.
Developers and homeowners who didn't want busy roads in their neighborhoods convinced city and county officials to privatize key roads that could have relieved much of the congestion on Bruce B. Downs. Environmental concerns limited where a number of other roads could be built.
"The end result is a transportation system that puts most of its traffic on one road: Bruce B. Downs," Williams said.
The second factor, she said, was that New Tampa was allowed to develop with one dominant use of the land: single family housing. Offices planned for the area, which were to provide shorter commutes for nearby homeowners, never materialized.
Compounding the problem is the surge in homebuilding in Pasco County, over which the governments of Tampa and Hillsborough County have no control.
"If we could shut the border off and make people pay to use the road, we would," said Tampa City Council member Shawn Harrison. "But we can't do that."
Driving conditions still aren't bad enough to eclipse many of the advantages of buying a home in New Tampa, and the low interest rates of recent years have kept sales high.
More than 35,000 people lived along Bruce B. Downs in Hillsborough and Pasco counties in 2000. That's expected to climb to more than 100,000 by 2025, according to Hillsborough County estimates.
Much of this growth can't be stopped, government officials say. A number of subdivisions in Pasco and Tampa were approved before the development laws went into effect in 1985, making them exempt from the transportation restrictions.
Using medical terms, Harrison insists the road widening is critical.
"This patient has 90 percent blockage and needs to be opened up," he said, dismissing projections that some sections of the road will be congested again by 2028.
"That's a long time from now," Harrison said. "Not widening is not an option."
Few people are saying traffic problems will keep new homebuyers away.
"Congestion is an inescapable condition of living in a metropolitan area," said Downs of the Brookings Institution. "It's a sign of success."
It's also something that can eat into household incomes, said Anne Canby, president of the Surface Transportation Policy Project, a nonprofit coalition of traffic experts.
Not only do area residents pay the taxes that support further road expansion, they pay a greater percentage of their incomes for the cars they need to get to work.
A 2003 study by STPP showed that Tampa families spend 25 percent of their income on transportation. That is the highest percentage in the United States and more than three times what they spend on health care.
Harmon can relate.
Six years ago he moved from Rochester, N.Y., to Pasco County. He said he thought he would save money by paying lower property taxes.
But "what we saved in property taxes we dumped into the automobiles," he said.
High car costs are symptoms of communities that don't provide mass transit or pedestrian-friendly environments. Buses until now have not served New Tampa because its low density doesn't make it feasible. (An express bus service is planned in 2005). A quick walk for groceries is unthinkable in most of New Tampa.
A further widening of the road only makes communities more dependent on the automobile while making it unsafer for pedestrians, Canby said.
"This is typical of what happens nationally," Canby said. "You get congestion in Location A. People say "fix it,' so you widen it. But that just enables people to move out farther. It's like a fat man loosening his belt."
Officials failed to secure the land they would need for the Bruce B. Downs expansion, despite its inclusion on a list of future county projects since 1991.
That's one reason the road widening is so expensive; the county is paying dearly for the right-of-way.
Consultants this month began the design process, which should take more than a year. About midway through this design phase, county officials will learn how much land they need to buy. Those costs could exceed $100-million.
Only one leg of the project, the 3.4 miles between Palm Springs Boulevard and Pebble Creek Drive, has financing. This section could cost more than $50-million in county and state gas tax proceeds.
Although officials say disaster awaits if they don't widen the road, Steiner, of the University of Florida, questions the timing. This is, after all, a time when Mayor Pam Iorio is pushing for more redevelopment of the city's inner core.
"If you make it too easy to develop out there, you're not encouraging redevelopment," Steiner said.
Nor does it make for a faster commute. Canby said cities that invested heavily in expanding road capacity didn't get less traffic than those cities that spent less.
The Texas Transportation Institute released a study this year that showed commuting trips got longer between 1982 and 2002, despite millions spent on road projects.
The average motorist in the Tampa Bay area was stuck in traffic 18 hours a year in 1982. By 2002, that delay had climbed to 42 hours a year.
There are signs of change.
The fastest growing household size in America, making up 30 percent of the market, is one person, said Downs of the Eno Foundation. These consumers aren't interested in the traditional, suburban tract house with front lawn. Neither are aging baby boomers, who say in industry surveys that they don't want to live in suburban housing.
"We've probably reached the end of the line," Downs said. "Preferences are changing. Homebuilders have been building the same product since 1947, and they don't know how to change. Suburbanization is nearing 60 years. Name another economic trend that's lasted this long. It's just not sustainable for much longer."