Abstract
In this issue of Public Works Management & Policy (PWMP), we focus on several aspects of transportation.
Our first article, “Using Tax Increment Financing to Fund Public Transportation: Enabling Environment and Equity Impacts” by Shishir Mathur, reviews three public transport projects developed across the United States using tax increment financing (TIF) revenues. The article examines the robustness of state- and local-level enabling statutes and the strategies used to minimize horizontal and vertical inequities which can emerge in TIF projects. A key finding is that TIF appears to favor rail projects over bus systems, with the latter more likely to be used by lower-income people. At the same time, it tends to favor capital-centric construction, funding rail lines and train stations, but is not often used to purchase or maintain the rolling stock.
Although it is widely recognized that low-income groups use transit in greater numbers than others, there is little scholarship about how they afford the fare. Using interviews with 25 low-income residents and 15 transportation and social service professionals, Alexis Perrotta in “Transit Fare Affordability: Findings from a Qualitative Study” provides a complex description of transit fare affordability. She finds that low-income riders are often unable to pay for trips that fulfill daily necessities and discretionary purposes and manage their travel by evading the fare, exploiting free transfers, forgoing goods, borrowing, and using free fare cards provided by agents of the welfare state. Professionals are largely unaware of the many ways that low-income riders regularly compensate for a lack of funds, but this study could assist policy makers in expanding access to transit for low-income riders.
Many communities are looking to light rail transit (LRT) systems to provide high quality, sustainable public transportation services in urban areas. However, the cost of fixed rail systems often may make their application for medium-sized cities prohibitive. As an alternative, guided light transit (GLT) offers promise with the additional advantage of being suitable for urban environments with space limitations. In “Light Rail versus Guided Light Transit in Medium-sized Cities: A Comparative Study for Ioannina, Greece,” Kepaptsoglou et. al. provide a systematic comparison of LRT and GLT in the context of a midsize (~110,000) city in Greece. Results indicate that high investment costs coupled with low ridership are factors against the introduction of LRT, but under certain conditions, GLT may be a viable alternative.
Highway travel still figures prominently in the United States, and how to do needed repairs to busy roadways is an ongoing challenge. Over 2 weekends in 2011 and 2012, I-405 in Los Angeles, one of the most heavily traveled freeways in the United States, was closed for construction. Not surprisingly, the media coverage in anticipation of the first closure was intense, with some public officials dubbing the expected traffic disruptions as “Carmageddon.” Brown, Taylor, and Wachs, in “The Boy Who Cried Wolf? Media Messaging and Traveler Responses to “Carmageddon” in Los Angeles,” found that in 2011, despite dire predictions, traffic flowed freely at volumes far below normal levels and travel behavior changes were far more modest and mixed during the second closure in 2012. This suggests that with adequate information and preparation, people can and will adjust to potentially highly disruptive road closures.