Robert Prather notes the increasing enthusiasm for introducing High Occupancy/Toll lanes for congestion relief in the Washington area.

Rosemary Esmay apparently is familiar with the same driver I saw today on I-10 between Mobile and Pensacola who apparently thought the left lane was his own personal playground—even when the right lane was clear a mile ahead of his pickup truck.

Also of note: I think I saw more Mississippi state troopers today than I’d seen total in the 5½ years I’ve lived in the state.

From a Wall Street Journal article today on federal fuel economy regulations, and the perverse incentives they create for auto makers:

While light trucks represent 36% of all registered vehicles, they are involved in about half of all two-vehicle crashes with passenger cars, highway safety regulators say. In such crashes, over 80% of those killed were in passenger cars.

So if you bought that SUV for “safety,” just keep in mind that you bought that safety at the expense of the safety of others.

And if you bought it just so you would look cool … well, you don’t.

UPDATE: James at OTB correctly points out that the statistics I cite don't make it clear to what degree the 80/20 death ratio in SUV-car crashes is a matter of a higher fatality rate in cars vs. a higher survival rate in SUVs, comparing with car-car crashes.

The source for the WSJ factoid wasn't hard to track down. It's from the Feb. 23 testimony of the Administrator of the NHTSA before a Senate commitee. Here's a better statistic that the WSJ should have used, one which does support my thesis:

When controlling for impact location, and comparing light trucks to passenger cars of comparable weight, we found that light trucks were more than twice as likely as a car to cause a fatality when striking a car.

On Monday, the drive between my house and civilization will get several hundred feet longer (also see today’s Daily Mississippian), because the university wants to extend the runway at the Oxford airport by 900 feet—right across College Hill Road. They’ve been futzing around with this for almost a year now; I’m glad it’s finally done, even though it’ll be a little out of the way.

Upcoming in Monday’s Memphis Business Journal is this piece by Jane Aldinger on the current state of plans to designate the U.S. 78 corridor from Memphis to Birmingham as “Interstate 22.” My (slightly out-of-date) pages on the topic are here.

There is one minor mistake in the article: the Transportation/Treasury appropriations have been rolled into the planned “Omnibus” bill for final passage, due to some post-conference quibbling over some provisions relating to outsourcing provisions that were in the original conference report.

Mississippi is unique among the states in retaining an elected transportation commission. The state is divided into three commission districts, and each district elects a commissioner who serves a four-year term. The retirement of incumbent commissioner Zack Stewart has created a heated race in the northern district, with two major-party nominees vying for the post:

• Bill Minor, a Democrat from Holly Springs (Marshall County) who has served in the state legislature since 1980, most recently as chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee.
• John Caldwell, a Republican from Nesbit (DeSoto County) who is a two-term county commissioner.

Minor credits himself with leading the struggle for the passage of the 1987 Four-Lane Highway Program, which increased the state gasoline tax to 18.4¢/gal. with the increased revenues dedicated to relocating and widening nearly two thousand miles of state highways. (The 2002 reauthorization of the four-lane program, “Vision 21,” added over a thousand more miles to be constructed or widened in the coming two decades.) Minor’s slogan is “Keep Minor working for Mississippi highways“; a wag might say that Minor could easily keep working on them if he’d stayed in his safe Senate seat. (This Bill Minor may or may not be related to the other Bill Minor who’s a political columnist for the Clarion-Ledger.)

Unfortunately, Caldwell’s site seems to be Flash-driven, and none of my browsers are being very cooperative with Flash today. So I can’t really say much about his campaign.

I don’t think this race is going to be about issues; the public statements by both candidates have generally favored the same things: pursuing (and completing) Vision 21, constructing Interstate 69 through the Delta, and supporting the upgrade of U.S. 78 between Memphis and Birmingham to Interstate 22. One concern that neither candidate seems to have addressed is the state’s rural bridge problem, with a large number of rural bridges on county roads—many constructed in the 1920s and 1930s—beyond their lifespan and in dire need of repair. Another potential concern is that—reading between the lines—many people in the southern part of the state apparently thought that Zack Stewart was delaying projects along the Gulf Coast so more money could be spent up north; will a new commissioner ameliorate these tensions, or exacerbate them?

Since the issues don’t distinguish the candidates, what will? Although the Northern District is geographically large (see this map), the only major population centers are the Memphis urbanized area (DeSoto, Tunica, and Marshall counties), Tupelo, and the Columbus-Starkville-West Point “Golden Triangle” region. Minor probably has more name recognition overall due to his service in the legislature, and seems to have been more aggressive in getting billboards and signs; on the other hand, Caldwell is probably better-known in DeSoto County, the most populous county in the district by far.

Overall, I think Minor probably will win the election by a substantial margin on the basis of his better name recognition, if only because a lot of Mississippi voters haven’t been accustomed to voting a straight ticket (I think Barbour will win almost all of the counties in the northern district handily, with the exception of the heavily-black Delta counties; Panola County, the home of Ronnie Musgrove; and possibly Lafayette County, which is home to all six liberals in the state).

Today’s Memphis Commercial Appeal contains a typical rendition of one of the fundamental problems with the newspaper: it confuses the op-ed page with a forum for writing news pieces that are completely unsourced. Today’s example: its editorial on the selection of a route for Interstate 69 through the city, which somehow in 527 words manages to avoid taking a position on absolutely anything. Let’s start at the beginning:

AN ADVISORY committee’s proposed route for the extension of Interstate 69 through metropolitan Memphis offers a compromise that should provide some satisfaction to the highway’s proponents in Tennessee as well as Mississippi. The recommended route is actually two routes: one through downtown Memphis that would get the I-69 designation and an outer loop to be called I-269.

Indeed it should. Did it occur to anyone at the CA to interview these proponents so we can be sure? Or are we just engaging in wild speculation here?

Officials in Mississippi, backed by the state’s congressional delegation, say they would prefer a horseshoe-shaped loop for I-69 between Millington and Hernando to improve transportation and bring new economic activity to eastern DeSoto and Marshall counties. Memphis officials have not opposed an I-69 bypass, but have lobbied for a downtown route for the new highway, which eventually will link Canada to Mexico through eight U.S. states.

Well, the basic facts, at least, aren’t in question.

Much of the Shelby County portion of the proposed outer loop is built or under construction. The Tenn. 385 loop, which includes Paul Barret Parkway, would become I-269 at Millington, connecting to a new section of Tenn. 385 that is under construction between Arlington and Collierville.

It might have been worthwhile to clarify that part of Tenn. 385—the Nonconnah Parkway—won’t become part of I-269. That, you know, would actually be informative.

South of Collierville, a road would have to be built through the northwest corner of Marshall County and across northeast DeSoto County. The new road would cross I-55 north of Hernando. Work on the highway west of that point is under way, with grading, drainage and bridge work on the stretch that runs from U.S. 61 to Interstate 55 expected to be complete by November 2004.

Good to know our friends at the CA at least read the DeSoto Times, as a reader of the CA wouldn’t actually know this from their previous reporting on the topic. (For the record, we’re four paragraphs in, and there has yet to appear a single opinion.)

Much of its route through Memphis is paved. From Millington, a new stretch of the highway would be built to just below Frayser, following a path west of U.S. 51. From there it would use existing freeways, starting with the connector between U.S. 51 and the I-40/240 loop, merging with I-40/240 and then following I-55 South, picking up I-269 traffic north of Hernando, then heading southwest into the Mississippi Delta.

“Much of its route through Memphis is paved?” And the rest is a cowpath? Are there dirt freeways in Shelby County?

Temporarily, the new highway would be a welcome addition to the regional transportation system for suburban Memphis residents. Local commuters spent an average of 36 hours waiting in traffic in 2001, according to a report released last week by the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. That’s about 15 hours less than the average urban commuter wasted, but no doubt more than the typical local commuter would prefer.

As the I-69 project encourages more development on the fringes of the metropolitan area, however, its advantages to the commuting public will wane. Particularly in Marshall and DeSoto counties, where new stretches of roadway would be built, I-269 could exacerbate the urban sprawl that has had considerable impact on the quality of life, culture and economics of Memphis and surrounding communities.

Never mind that Mississippi officials already planned to build a freeway along the I-269 route anyway, starting in 2009. Besides which, I suspect most people in Marshall and DeSoto counties prefer the “urban sprawl” to what was there before, since those counties didn’t really have much of an economy before it.

Interestingly enough, the Commercial Appeal isn’t very upset about a new stretch of roadway between Memphis and Millington, which is likely to be a larger sprawl magnet, seeing as that area will be much more accessible to downtown than southeastern DeSoto County is. One suspects they’re on better terms with Millington City Hall.

And the environmental impact of the highway has not been sufficiently explored. The road’s proponents maintain I-269 could have a positive effect on air quality, by relieving some of the congestion that a single, downtown route would create. Its effects on wetlands and farms could become sources of contention, though, before a final decision is made.

Uh, I call bullshit. The Tennessee and Mississippi departments of transportation have been studying the highway proposal in detail since December 2000. They have produced a Draft Environmental Impact Statement that discusses the “effects on wetlands and farms,” among other topics, which will be (a) very large and comprehensive and (b) available at area libraries later this fall, once it is approved by the Federal Highway Administration.

By late this year, a draft environmental impact statement must go to the Federal Highway Administration. Public hearings early next year could finally provide the information needed to determine what’s best for Memphis and neighboring communities.

Uh, hello? The Technical Advisory Committee has already determined “what’s best for Memphis and neighboring communities.” That’s why they made the decision to go with the “system alternative.” The public hearings are designed to determine whether the public agrees with that choice—there have already been two other sets of public meetings designed to find out what alternatives the public would like to see considered.

By the way, that’s where this “editorial” ends. What does the CA think? Who knows? But if you’re going to be an opinion leader, it probably helps to have an opinion in the first place.

According to last Thursday’s DeSoto Times, officials studying the planned route of Interstate 69 through the Memphis area have decided that both the loop route and the through route are needed and will recommend the construction of both routes. More at I69Info.com, of course.

Incidentally, this means the DeSoto Times has scooped the Commercial Appeal by nearly a week. In case you were keeping score at home.

The Hartford Courant has an article in today’s edition featuring three Connecticut roadgeeks (Scott Oglesby of Kurumi, Douglas Kerr of GribbleNation.com, and Owen McCaughey of Nutmeg Roads); if you have some interest in this unusual hobby, it’s probably worth a read (free registration required).

Brian Micklethwait has a discussion of the privacy issues associated with highway tolls up at The White Rose. Congestion pricing and toll finance are goals that libertarians support, but there are some potential drawbacks to these ideas in the modern “surveillance state.”

TransportBlog links to a Daily Telegraph article on the “Midland Expressway,” also known as the “Birmingham Northern Relief Route,” a 27-mile (43 km) toll bypass of the M6 motorway in Birmingham. The initial car toll will be £2 (approximately $3.20/€2.80) one-way. While Britain does have a few toll bridges and tunnels, this will be the first toll highway in modern British history. More details on the project are at the project website, including a zoomable map of the route.

Commenters at TransportBlog also pass along this Guardian link.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal takes a look at SPR 385, better known as Nonconnah Parkway or Bill Morris Parkway, in southeast Shelby County. Money quote:

“I call it the Bill Morris Super Speedway,” said Lt. Wayne Goudy, traffic commander for the Sheriff’s Department.

“When we go out there to write tickets, it’s not uncommon to get someone going over 100 mph.”

More on the Nonconnah here.

Jordan Lancaster implores readers of today's Daily Mississippian to pack up and hit the open road. I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, although I regret to inform that my spring break adventure will just be driving to visit Dad.

One of my biggest pet peeves as a roadgeek is the seeming impossibility of getting any information on a highway project if you can't make it to a public meeting. While DOTs are getting better about posting their public meetings online (Tennessee's dedicated calendar is probably the best in the Mid-South, while Arkansas at least puts theirs online in the news releases; Mississippi posts the notices rarely in their news release section; and Alabama not at all), you've still got to get to the meeting. Because if you miss the meeting, you'll never find a copy of the environmental impact statement (EIS) or other documentation without spending the rest of your life looking for it, it seems.

There are some notable exceptions to this situation: Indiana DOT has put all of its documentation online at the project website for Interstate 69 in southwestern Indiana, as has the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Hoover Dam Bypass project (among others). But most of the time, the EISes just disappear into a virtual black hole, seemingly uncataloged (or at least, not cataloged under any name that seems logical) and gathering dust in a local library. Since all of these documents are produced electronically today, products like Adobe Acrobat's “Distiller” could easily be used to prepare portable online versions of the EIS, and agencies could distribute the EIS more readily over the web and on recordable CDs. It would make the process more transparent to the public and be a low-cost way to include more people in transportation planning and similar processes. So why are so few states doing it?

The only conclusion I can reach is that the federal agencies that ask for this documentation don't require states to put these documents online. While I'm not generally a big fan of federal mandates, this seems to be one case where the mandate might in fact be justified — the costs are low and the potential benefits quite high. It's a requirement Congress should seriously consider adding to the TEA-21 reauthorization bill due this fall.

For the full details on my trip last weekend, see this misc.transport.road post.

New Tennessee Department of Transportation head Gerald Nicely (rapidly becoming a frequent subject of posts in this blog) plans to meet with Northwest Tennessee legislators and officials from the I-69 Mid-Continent Highway Coalition in Dyersburg on Tuesday, according to the Dyersburg State Gazette.

He is also making the rounds, meeting with members of the "TDOT Reform Campaign." This new group appears to be organized by the Sierra Club in opposition to projects in the Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville areas. The Memphis meeting is at 10 a.m. on Saturday, February 8 at the Shelby Farms Visitors Center; I encourage everyone with an interest in shaping TDOT policies to come and make their opinions known.

About seven hours ago, Indiana Gov. Frank O'Bannon announced that the preferred alternative for Interstate 69 between Indianapolis and Evansville will pass through Bloomington along the Indiana 37 corridor. For more details, see blog.lordsutch.com's sister site I69Info.com.

All-in-all, I think it's a good decision for Indiana. But, the fighting isn't over yet; lawsuits (or at least the threat thereof) will likely delay the project through much of the coming year.

Incoming TDOT commissioner Gerald Nicely faces some real challenges in his new job, but he's making the right noises in this interview with the Nashville Tennessean. As I said before, I think TDOT's problems are more perception than reality; however, there are some real issues:

• The politicization of the project allocation process is unseemly and needs to stop. If Phil Bredesen follows through on his word and concentrates on merit (traffic needs and economic development) in selecting projects, this will be a major improvement.

• The “Tennessee Rail Plan” is largely dead-on-arrival and needs to be scrapped. It will do virtually nothing to reduce the need for additional capacity on I-40 between Memphis and Knoxville. The only part that makes any sense is the rerouting of rail lines and consolidation of intermodal facilities in Memphis.

• Delaying or reconsidering the south leg of TN 840 at this point would be counterproductive.

• Reconsidering the I-475 “Orange Route” selection would be similarly counterproductive; by all measures, it is the best alternative. A route via Pellissippi Parkway (a so-called “Green Route”) would just increase congestion on I-40/75 and would not function as an effective bypass route.

• Any construction on the north leg of TN 840 should be delayed until after construction of I-475 and I-69 is well underway.

Sometimes I wonder if the Memphis Commercial Appeal actually is capable of reporting local highway news. Why? Well, for example, the CA neglected to mention at all that TDOT awarded a $23 million contract to Hill Brothers Construction for the extension of TN 385 between U.S. 72 and TN 57 (Poplar Ave.) in Collierville, as well as a $16 million resurfacing contract on I-40 east of I-240. Not to mention another TN 385 project let in October: $18.9 million for construction between I-40 and U.S. 64, awarded to Dement Construction. The CA reports on meetings of the Shelby Farms board on the Walnut Grove/Kirby-Whitten project but doesn't mention at all TDOT's public hearings on the proposal.

I can only assume the CA simply doesn't pay attention to this stuff (granted, TDOT doesn't seem to post press releases on highway project contracting, although they have Internet-accessible public hearing and contract pages); what little road material that does appear is written by environmental reporter Tom Charlier (who described I-69 in a lead paragraph as a swathe of “development and destruction,” hardly neutral language) or a poor slob on the neighborhood beat (who's just happy he's not covering the bridge club's latest sojourn).

The Harlingen (Tex.) Valley Morning Star reports on local highway funding increases, focusing on the potential for funding for Interstate 69 in Texas. Notable quote:

Also in January, Valley leaders hope President Bush includes a request for $6.6 billion for the I-69 project in his budget proposals. If Congress says yes, experts believe the Texas section of I-69 could be built within 10 years.

Bush is believed to be an I-69 supporter; his inclusion of the route in FHWA's new expedited environmental review program suggests that I-69 will be included in the TEA-21 reauthorization. Due to the slow start Texas has gotten on the environmental review process and complications due to grafting I-69 onto the Trans Texas Corridor concept, 2013 seems awfully optimistic, but barring lawsuits a substantial portion of the national route seems likely to be done or under construction by then.

The Economist can always be counted on for a few fascinating articles, even when it arrives in your mailbox a week after it's been published (the downside of living in the boonies). One of the Christmas edition's gems: this article on a 5-day Guinness delivery in Cameroon (subscription required) — one that in Western Europe or North America would have taken six hours on a bad day. Among the stats: 47 roadblocks, a U-turn due to a washed-out bridge, three flooded-out sections of road, and a largely unpaved route. Their conclusion:

But there is no substitute for building and maintaining better infrastructure. In some areas, such as telecoms, private firms will do the work if allowed to. Thanks to private investment, mobile telephones have spread throughout Africa with the pace and annoying chirrups of a swarm of locusts. In Cameroon, Guinness now finds it much easier to contact employees than it did a couple of years ago, although the firm also frets that mobile telephones are gobbling up scarce disposable income that might otherwise be spent on beer.

The private sector does not, however, spontaneously provide roads, because the beneficiaries cannot easily be charged. Tolls can meet some of the cost of maintaining highways, but it is hard to squeeze money out of peasants on feeder roads.

The World Bank estimates that at least $18 billion needs to be pumped each year into African infrastructure if the continent is to attain the sort of growth that might lift large numbers of people out of poverty. Investment currently runs at less than a third of this. In the current economic downturn, private companies in the West are in no mood to rush into risky investment, least of all in Africa. The gap can only be filled, the Bank reckons, by governments and foreign donors.

In short, the governments of poor countries ought to pay more attention to their roads. A good first step in Cameroon would be to lift those road-blocks and put the police to work repairing potholes.

Bill Hobbs also passes on word that Gerald Nicely, the former head of Nashville's Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, is Phil Bredesen's choice to head the Tennessee Department of Transportation (also reported by the AP); he plans to promote a needs-based program for new roads and concentrate on rural highways as an economic development tool.

If he can continue to push forward major needed projects like the Knoxville Outer Beltway (I-475), the south leg of TN 840, the Collierville-Arlington Parkway and Interstate 69 in West Tennessee with better attention to the environment and public relations than his predecessor, his appointment will be welcome. If, however, his appointment leads to diversion of transportation user fees (such as the gasoline and diesel fuel taxes) from highway maintenance and construction to general government purposes, Tennessee's taxpayers will be poorly served.

Look at Page 2. Then compare Exhibit B. I'm flattered that a congressman thinks I'm a good photographer, even if the caption is completely wrong (the photo is from El Dorado, nowhere near I-49). ;-)

Various pages under the roads hierarchy have been updated with new photos, including the MS 302, MS 304 and U.S. 78 pages.

According to the Commercial Appeal, some Shelby Farms people want a 45 mph speed limit on the new, realigned Walnut Grove. The current speed limit is 55, and the new route would be free of traffic signals, suggesting that a limit of 45 is highly unlikely to be obeyed or, given Memphians' general level of respect for speed limits, even enforceable.

Furthermore, it's exactly the wrong plan for Walnut Grove. What's really needed is a full freeway between I-240 and the future Collierville-Arlington Parkway (TN 385), to relieve traffic on Germantown Parkway and keep the Cordova area from becoming one giant traffic jam.

More of this rant appears in misc.transport.road.