The Highway 34 "Four for the Future" crowd faces some stiff competition for highway funds from our friends to the north who want to four-lanify US Hwy 12 from Aberdeen to Mobridge, creating a zoom-zoom corridor for hunters and fishermen headed for the Big Mo, not to mention entrepreneurs looking to expand business opportunities in Selby, Ipswich, and all other points in between.
Our local boosters of the Highway 34 project have a nice website and letters of support from various local leaders and businesspeople (PDF alert on those letters!). The Highway 12 boosters -- the "Heartland Expressway Task Force" -- may not have a website (nothing comes up on this evening's Google search), but they have some rock 'em sock 'em evidence that four lane highways are a good investment for everyone. The Aberdeen American News (again, thank you, Dr. Schaff, for the link!) reports today that the Highway 12 boosters are touting a 2006 study by The Road Information Program (TRIP) that finds our 700 miles of the interstate highway network save each South Dakotan $1776 every year. The breakdown of annual savings:
- $1102 saved on food, clothing, and other consumer goods -- not because the interstate drains all the small town and takes everyone to Wal-Mart, but because producers can transport their goods faster and more cheaply on the interstate, lowering costs for all of us.
- $39 saved in fuel (seems counterintuitive to me: people go faster on the interstate, burn more fuel, but maybe less stop-and-go makes up the difference?)
- $487 in saved time. "The system saves 33 hours of travel time per year per state resident."
- $148 saved in health care costs and lost productivity thanks to fewer accidents. [All data reported by Russ Keen, "Road to Expansion," Aberdeen American News, 2007.12.12].
That last data on safety is complemented by this other notable statistic: since 1956, the interstates have saved 900 lives in South Dakota. The big four-laners are flat-out safer, with a fatality rate per miles traveled less than 40% that of the same rate on other highways.
Of course, here's your grain of road salt for the evening: The Road Information Project is a "traffic research group supported by road builders" [Dana Treen, "Aging Brings Concerns over Safety on the Road," Jacksonville (FL) Times-Union, 2003.08.11] and created in 1968 by the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, whose mission statement declares "We Advance the Interests of the Transportation Construction Industry. Period."
The source doesn't disprove the information. I'd recommend checking the report's methodology... but I can't find the South-Dakota-specific research on TRIP's Research Report website. Still, an ambitious highway booster can probably find some lessons in the methodology employed and results found by TRIP in several other states.
We should note that the TRIP study focuses on interstate highways, not regular four-lane highways with all the other county road and railroad intersections, so their data won't extrapolate perfectly to the proposed route. But even supposing the numbers did extrapolate perfectly... hey! where's the back of my envelope?
- Per citizen savings per year: $1776
- Citizens most immediately served by proposed US-12 expansion: 70,957 (Counties included: Walworth 5494, Edmunds 4412, Brown 34706, Campbell 1565, McPherson 2617, Potter 2351, Faulk 2386, Spink 6899, Corson 4366, Dewey 6161)
- Total annual savings: $126,019,362
- Cost of US Highway 12 four-lanification project between Burbank and Walla Walla, Washington: $363,971,360
- Length of Burbank-Walla Walla project (based on their mileposts): 40.3 miles
- Per mile cost: $9.03 million
- Length of route from Aberdeen to Mobridge: ~95 miles.
- Estimated total cost of four-lanifying US-12 from Aberdeen to Mobridge: $858 million
- Time required for individual cost savings to add up to highway project cost (i.e., the very broad, social-scale break-even time): 6.8 years
Those "costs saved" numbers seem to be a bit specious. They can tell us what they think having a two lane is costing us versus a four-lane, but how much of that would -really- be saved? We don't magically make more money when we get to our trip destination faster. It seems that the only real cost savings will be fewer accidents. Having a four-lane highway on 34 seems to make a lot of sense, but let's be honest, we want it because it'll be a huge economic boom to Madison, not because it will "save residents money."
ReplyDeleteI agree the numbers are at least worth questioning. On the Aberdeen-Mobridge stretch, whatever savings are to be had would probably be less because US Hwy 12 is already a wide-open stretch where drivers already speed along without much interruption. The potential savings would be even less on the much smaller stretch from Lake Madison to I-29, especially since we'll still have to slow down to 35 through Colman (although after being caught taking money rightfully belonging to the schools and state, maybe that's not such a big deal to the Colman City Council).
ReplyDeleteThe numbers are open to question, but the Highway 12 boosters are using them to make their case. It makes sense for our Highway 34 promoters to study the figures and be ready for questions about them as well.