Bernstein Testifies to Illinois General Assembly
CNT president Scott Bernstein testified Friday to the Illinois General Assembly Committee on Mass Transit about opportunities the State could take to achieve better inter-city travel options. Bernstein outlined twelve recommendations to the State that could serve the interests of its residents and businesses by increasing transportation choice, reducing unnecessary household and business expenditures and reducing congestion and improving environmental quality.
Testimony of Scott Bernstein
President, Center for Neighborhood Technology
Co-Director, Reconnecting America
To the Illinois General Assembly
Committee on Mass Transit
Thursday, March 3, 2005
Chairman Hamos and Members of the Committee:
I am Scott Bernstein, President of the Center for Neighborhood Technology, which promotes resourceful communities and regions, and co-director of Reconnecting America, a national organization founded in the wake of the 9/11 disaster to help understand and promote better functioning transportation networks.
We believe that the State of Illinois can take several important steps this year to achieve better inter-city travel options for its citizens and businesses; we also believe that these steps should and can be based on a sound understanding of what distance people need to travel; how distance, speed and travel time relate; and what this tells us about near term options for increasing transportation choice, reducing unnecessary household and business expenditures, reducing congestion and improving environmental quality.
The key to understanding these issues is an understanding of who is traveling for what purposes and over what distances.
First, two-thirds of all intercity travel is for personal uses, and only one-third for business purposes.
Second, 80 percent of all inter-city travel is by automobile, 16 percent by aviation, 2 percent by motor coach of which ¼ is scheduled service and ¾ charter, 1 percent by inter-city passenger rail, and the balance by water ferry and other means.
Third, inter-city travel is mostly for shorter distances. For example, 21 percent of all aviation trips are less than 200 miles, 57.3 percent are less than 500 miles, and 71.8 percent are less than 700 miles in length, respectively.
So we have a travel market that is mostly traveling distances that are much closer than you might think of when you hear the phrases, “inter-city travel” or “high-speed aviation.”
What is also interesting about these figures is the way they relate to travel speeds at different available modes of transportation. At distances up to 200 miles, the relatively higher speed of aviation gets the traveler where he or she is going no faster than by driving, or by bus. At distances up to 400 miles in some markets, and 500 in others, depending upon track condition, aviation gets you there no faster than does rail.
Attached are three powerpoint figures we can use to illustrate what this might mean in Illinois; for our purposes today, we examined travel choices within 200 miles of O’Hare and Midway Airports.
The first figure illustrates the highway network, the planning for and maintenance of which is largely a responsibility of the Illinois Department of Transportation. It is clear from this map that anyone with access to a vehicle within 200 miles can easily reach Chicago, and importantly, can access O’Hare and Midway Airports.
The second figure illustrates the same market from an aviation point of view; we also have a large number of origin and destination pairs between airports here, dozens of small and medium hubs and many, many more general aviation airports with scheduled service being able to access O’Hare and Midway.
The third figure illustrates that only 5 motor coach routes operate between cities within this 200 mile radius and the airports—all operated by either Van Gelder or Wisconsin Coach. We’ll get to why this is in just a minute.
Finally, the third figure also illustrates that while O’Hare and Midway can be easily accessed by Chicago Transit Authority rail, and O’Hare by the North Central line of Metra rail service, there is no connecting inter-city rail service, such as that now provided by Amtrak at Milwaukee Mitchell Field, available.
We focused on connections to Chicago’s airports for several important reasons.
First, the airports are major surface traffic generators, and major sources of surface transportation congestion and related environmental and safety problems.
Second, the congestion in the skies around the airports is a result of the return of pre-September 11 2001 traffic levels, as measured by numbers of flights.
Third, the number of passengers-per-plane is significantly lower than historical levels, associated with the switch from wide-body to small regional jets. As a result, the headlines trumpeting the return of air traffic to historical levels is only partly true—on a passenger volume basis, we are still off, and this is costly in terms of revenue.
Fourth, half of the flights in and out of O’Hare are connecting, shorter flights, and it is these shorter flights that could be efficiently substituted for by surface transportation, whether by bus or by rail.
If this last scenario were to occur, it would turn Illinois’ hub airports, into intermodal hub and spoke facilities, which we’ve dubbed “Travelports.”
Travelports already exist in Europe, with seamless air-rail-bus connections at Paris, Zurich, Geneva, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam. They are emerging in the U.S., with service by connecting monorail to the Northeast Corridor at Newark, and soon-to-be at Providence and possibly near DC at Baltimore-Washington International.
Less noticed is the emergence of air-bus connections, mostly with dedicated terminal area at the passenger curb in airports throughout the Northeast, and in Texas at Dallas-Fort Worth.
However, there are only 21 airports out of the 529 with scheduled service in the U.S. that make it easy today for new scheduled inter-city motor service to be inaugurated; none of these are in Illinois.
We originally assumed that there was a federal or state rule lurking behind this situation. Instead, it appears that it is up to each airport operator to set the rules by which new groundside terminal access can be initiated.
We believe this situation can and should be turned around.
Think of a motor coach as a substitute for a regional jet, and an intercity train as a substitute for a medium distance wide-body jet airplane. We can also think of a bus as a substitute for 50 to 70 cars, and an intercity train as a substitute for hundreds of cars, respectively. In each case, the capital and operating costs for new service by surface are less than the marginal costs of full capital and operating costs by aviation.
There are several reasons standing in the way of commonsense substitution of lower-cost surface transportation services for higher cost aviation.
First, the airport operators do not see providing least cost, highest value service as being part of their jobs.
Second, airports have very little oversight on the issue of the external, surface traffic that they generate, yet outside of major downtowns, are likely to be the largest generators of surface traffic, congestion and air emissions in their metropolitan regions.
Third, there is a misunderstanding of just who the intercity travel market is. Historically, it may have been dominated by business travelers; today it is dominated by leisure travelers. This is part of why airport operators believe, wrongly, that increasing connections by bus and rail will cost them, for example, in lost parking revenue or aeronautical fees; airports experience increased congestion from small vehicle passenger drop offs that do not earn parking fees, but do increase congestion.
Fourth, there is a feeling among some airport operators that bus riders are not who they ought to be serving.
Fifth, both the motor coach and inter-city rail industries are starved for capital. They are starved because they are locked out of markets.
On this last point, I recently spoke with the CEO of Coach USA, the largest inter-city bus provider after Greyhound. He stated emphatically that lowering the barriers to bus access at airports would enable him to access the capital markets and rapidly proceed with service.
We believe that the State of Illinois has a stake in providing better inter-city travel options, and has the means to get started at virtually no cost.
We recommend:
1. That the State send a strong signal to airport operators to remove arbitrary barriers to enhanced inter-city motor coach service. The state could issue guidance, convene a meeting of interested parties to promote voluntary action, or the General Assembly could pass an amendment to the transportation act under which IDOT operates, to provide conforming language to federal requirements that airports receiving federal assistance must provide easy access to public transportation for surface transportation.
2. That the State appoint a task force of capable civic leaders to recommend a set of policies that lower barriers to improved inter-city travel networks.
3. That the State join with one or more other states to petition Congress to provide liability insurance caps for the motor coach industry similar to that provided after September 11 2001 for the airline and intercity rail industries.
4. That the State calculate the value of the benefits to be derived from large scale substitution of short and medium distance surface transportation trips by motor coach and rail for short and medium distance aviation trips; these include without being limited to increased service life on the State’s highways, it’s principle tangible infrastructure asset; reduced congestion on the ground and in the air, reduced cost of living and doing business for the State’s residents and institutions, and improved quality of life through reduced environmental stress.
5. That the State adopt a policy of incremental service improvements to existing inter-city rail services now and act creatively and promptly with other states, to increase service on existing routes, and consider providing incentives for additional support in cases where connectivity between transportation networks will result.
6. That the State work with inter-city motor coach services and Amtrak to ensure that all inter-city rail stations and where appropriate, commuter rail stations have connecting inter-city bus services available on a frequent basis.
7. That the State act on the opportunity made available in the “Vision 100” federal aviation bill, requiring that airports make details of all proposed master plan improvements available to metropolitan planning organizations. In general, as the committee considers proposals to consolidate and enhance metropolitan planning functions, it should explicitly require that the missing half of the travel market equation, inter-city travel, be addressed explicitly in both metropolitan and State Transportation Improvement Plans and in long-range Regional Transportation Improvement Plans.
8. That the state play a leadership role in helping different segments of the inter-city travel industry create effective partnerships—for example, commuter airlines are now interested in offering airside bus and rail alternatives for the under-120-mile routes that they serve by antiquated turboprop equipment.
9. That the State consider using its credit enhancement authority to help improve inter-city bus, rail and aviation connectivity. Decades ago, starting with State Treasurer Adlai Stevenson, Illinois has been an innovator in use of such authority for economic development. Tools invented in Illinois such as linked deposit programs are routinely used in states across the country, and we could consider applying these tools to improved inter-city transportation market development.
10. That the State should work with the Federal Aviation Administration and local airport operators to help identify ways that connecting inter-city bus and rail service can be implemented in a revenue neutral way; for example, we believe that airports could charge a Passenger Facility Charge PFC on these segments.
11. That the State consider ways in which it could move aggressively to help identify new means of financing modern inter-city rail networks, and
12. That the State, through General Assembly leadership, ensure that Illinois regains the national leadership position in passenger travel it enjoyed through most of its existence.
When President Eisenhower introduced the idea of an Interstate Highway to Congress, he stated, “Our purpose in this proposal is included in our name—we are a United States of America, and without that we would merely be a collection of separate parts.” The General Assembly, by following the proposals recommended today, can leave a similarly important legacy for its future generation; but as importantly, in these times of lean fiscal budgets and cynicism over large spending plans, make the most of the systems and investments that we have today, increasing services without increasing taxes.
On behalf of the Center for Neighborhood Technology and Reconnecting America, our heartfelt thanks for providing the opportunity to advance these proposals today.
For further information:
Scott Bernstein, President
Center for Neighborhood Technology
2125 W. North Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60647
773.269.4035
Scott@cnt.org
www.cnt.org
www.reconnectingamerica.org
Note: our third annual report, “Missed Connections” documenting changes in the inter-city travel industry will be released later this month. Please contact Carrie Makarewicz to receive a copy at carrie@cnt.org.
