Unfortunately, congestion and road pricing have economically regressive effects on low income people. Marc Brenman Social Justice Consultancy mbrenman001(a)comcast.net 240-676-2436 ----- Original Message ----- From: "Megan Wier" <Megan.Wier(a)sfdph.org> To: h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 10:18:27 AM Subject: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing Hi everyone - I wanted to share the following report summarizing the findings of a health impact assessment (HIA) of a potential road pricing program in San Francisco conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public Health's Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability as I thought it may be of interest to the list. The HIA was completed this Fall with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Active Living Research Program. A summary and detailed technical report of the findings are available at: http://www.sfphes.org/HIA_Road_Pricing.htm. For the HIA analysis, SFDPH used a variety of methods to assess potential transportation-related health effects - including air quality-related premature mortality, traffic noise-related annoyance and heart attacks, injury to pedestrians and cyclists, and health benefits from active transportation – and evaluated health-related equity effects and associated economic value. The HIA found that transportation system operation in San Francisco has substantial health burdens and benefits today. Health burdens are expected to increase in the future owing to increasing motor vehicles on local roadways and increasing population densities in already congested areas. However, there are also estimated increases in active transportation (walking and biking) that bring some health benefits and save lives. Road pricing, if implemented, could moderate but not entirely eliminate the changes associated with a future under “business as usual” that includes increasing populations and traffic and no new policies or funding to manage the transportation system. Road pricing could also generate significant economic value by reducing transportation-related adverse effects and increasing walking and biking. HIA recommendations include increasing congestion pricing fees where they can reduce health risks (e.g., on spare the air days) and investing in targeted infrastructure to reduce pedestrian and cyclist injury and increase active transportation. Thank you, and happy holidays! ------------------------------------------------------------- Megan L. Wier, MPH, Epidemiologist Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability San Francisco Department of Public Health phone: 415-252-3972, fax: 415-252-3964 Megan.Wier(a)sfdph.org www.sfphes.org _______________________________________________ H+T--Friends mailing list H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends

Marc, is your conclusion based on a study of the overall life cycle of how congestion pricing can change land use and transportation infrastructure over a 20 to 50 year period, or is it based on the immediate per trip cost? Also, if you are citing a study, did that study evaluate how many of the lower income folks are commuting in from the suburbs, as opposed to already living within the "priced zone" and therefore who might benefit from a re-pricing of the trip into the center? Gary On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:26 PM, <mbrenman001(a)comcast.net> wrote: -- 609-397-3885

So Marc, what is your solution? I have heard many others rise concerns about gentrification over the years, but few solutions. As a silly old engineer, I am left to conclude that the default solution is to allow neighborhoods to continue to suffer because that depresses the price of the housing stock. Seven or eight years ago, I had the good fortune to sit at a lunch table with two major advocates of minorities and low income populations. Since as an engineer just learning about the good and the bad associated with Smart Growth, New Urbanism, Context Sensitive Solutions ... I shared my concerns with these two folks who had devoted their careers to supporting social equity. Their answer: The solution to affordable housing and social equity is to not stop making improvements/investments that raise property values and rebalance the transportation system. NO NO Absolutely NO, I was told, the solution is not to perpetuate "slums", it is TO MAKE EVERY OTHER PLACE WALKABLE AND MIXED USE. Who are we kidding -- I was told -- "do critics raising the gentrification flag honestly believe that folks are better off where they are." When I went back to my work at NJ Department of Transportation, the meaning of what these two folks told me became more clear. One of the problems my office had to solve was how to deal with the ordeal that low income wage earners faced in commuting 90 minutes to two hours from "affordable" neighborhoods in inner cities to the job supply in car oriented suburbs. Low income workers often had to take two to three buses because of the suburban densities and car orientation -- the result of pricing the system to advantage middle income car owners. When they got to the work site, they were dropped of onto a high speed 100% car oriented arterial designed to cater to the middle class car owners -- and literally, their were several fatalities a year, involving workers trying to dash across the roadway to get from the bus stop to the worksite. It became clear that the system was planned, designed and priced -- rigged -- to further disenfranchise this already struggling segment of our population. So, I ask again, what is your solution if it is not rebalancing the system by pricing, smart growth, and multimodal transportation? Does your analysis about the Boston to Washington corridor reveal how many of the unemployed and minimum wage families can afford multiple cars and whether they can afford the gas to make those 500 mile commutes? Am I wrong in presuming that minimum wage folks are less likely to own Prius's and more likely to own -- if at all -- a gas guzzler? Please consider this a serious question. As a transportation engineer, I am still trying to learn who to deal with the inequities of a car oriented transportation system. On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 6:15 PM, <mbrenman001(a)comcast.net> wrote: -- Gary 609-468-2943 (c)

Thanks Marc for your thoughtful response. I will circle back to this when I have more time. Thanks for the many good leads. Gary On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 12:47 PM, <mbrenman001(a)comcast.net> wrote: -- Gary 609-468-2943 (c)

Lawmakers Want USDOT to Again Have Veto Power Regarding Toll Rates Prompted by toll increases in the New York metropolitan region, members of Congress introduced legislation last week to give the U.S. transportation secretary authority to oversee rates charged on federal-aid highways, bridges, and tunnels. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-New Jersey, and Rep. Michael Grimm, R-New York, said the federal government should have the ability to determine whether toll charges are "fair" to drivers -- and to order them lowered if they are not, The Hill reported . " When it costs $12 to drive your car across a bridge in America, something is wrong ," Lautenberg said in a statement. "While the Port Authority [of New York and New Jersey] and the two states are struggling to explain why these dramatic hikes were imposed, commuters are suffering." Lautenberg, sponsor of S 2006 (the Commuter Protection Act) , added there's a clear need for federal oversight to make sure toll revenue is being used appropriately. He noted the measure would return authority to the U.S. Department of Transportation that it previously had until 1987. "Given these out-of-control toll hikes and the cloud of misinformation surrounding them, these federal protections for commuters need to be restored," Lautenberg said. Grimm said in a statement that the bipartisan legislation "brings oversight of toll rates on our nation's federally funded highway system back into the Department of Transportation, where it belongs." The International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Association released a statement Tuesday opposing the Commuter Protection Act. "The act would add an unnecessary layer of federal oversight in what is largely a state and local process," IBTTA Executive Director and CEO Patrick Jones said in the statement. "In addition, it may constrain public and private investment in infrastructure at a time when Congress is looking to encourage further transportation investment." Jones pointed out that most toll agency boards in America are composed of appointed or elected officials. "These boards review and approve toll rate increases and provide robust oversight of agency investments and operations," he said. "This structure makes these boards attentive to and accountable to local taxpayers and voters. The addition of a federal review and approval process takes decision making away from the state and regional authorities that are ultimately accountable for the level of transportation investment and its consequences on local quality of life and regional economic competitiveness." Supporters of the legislation include AAA's New York and New Jersey chapters, the American Trucking Associations, the American Highway Users Alliance, the American Motorcyclist Association, and the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association. ATA President and CEO Bill Graves issued a statement last Friday thanking Lautenberg and Grimm for sponsoring the Commuter Protection Act. USDOT should have power to put a stop to unreasonable toll increases, he said. "Having seen the toll increase proposed by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, they are acutely aware of the negative impact of allowing toll agencies unchecked power to raise tolls for whatever reason they want," Graves said. " There are a number of reasons why tolling is bad public policy, but that policy gets worse when the tolls are raised without consideration for the users of highways and bridges and the revenue generated is not dedicated for their benefit." As a matter of policy, the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials consistently has worked to provide states with maximum flexibility to toll. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rajiv Bhatia" &lt;Rajiv.Bhatia(a)sfdph.org&gt; To: "TRB Health and Transportation" &lt;h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net&gt; Cc: "TRB Health and Transportation" &lt;h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net&gt;et>, "Gary Toth" &lt;garytoth51(a)gmail.com&gt;om>, h+t--friends-bounces(a)chrispy.net Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 1:05:27 PM Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing Mark and Gary: Thank you for the spirited back and forth dialogue on the road pricing health impact assessment. I strongly agree that transporation investments have historically been horribly inquitable and appreciate the efforts by Tom Sanchez, Karen Lucas, and others to document this fact. As discussed in Sanchez's 2003 report, disproportionate impacts are not only those on access and mobility but also those on environmental hazards including noise, air pollution and traffic safety hazards. Historically, there has been minimal consideration of all transporation-related health and environmental justice impats in project planning and environmental review. My organization has a strong committment to social environmental justice and has been working (successfully) to identify and prevent inequitable impacts of health and transportation planning in San Francisco County for over 10 years. Our study on road pricing focused on outcomes primarily other than those on access or mobility, particularly environmental hazards of transport system operations on health which are also disproportionately felt by low income communities nationally. Our study included an equity analyis based on the distribution of the area density of VMT-- a proxy for vehicle-related environmental hazards. The San Francisco Road/ Congestion Pricing proposal is being subject to extensive analysis and our HIA is just one component. The primary study on the project was conducted by the County Transporation Authority. That study included equity impacts. Our study was intended to complement but not duplicate the SFCTA study. Their study is linked to our road pricing HIA website or at the following URL: http://www.sfcta.org/content/view/302/148. The city is still very much considering the desirability and feasibility of road pricing. If the project moves forward from the conceptual to the design phase it will likely be subject to additional environmental, economic, and equity analysis. I believe that the design will be responsive to the needs of low income communities. Finally, I would like to point out that San Francisco has historically prioritized funding in its local control to intra-urban public transit. For example, the city allocates a share of the sales tax to transportation (Prop K funds) and 74% of those transporation funds are directed to transit or para-transit. http://www.sfcta.org/images/stories/Programming/propk/Expenditure_Plan_Summ… Thank you for your interest in our study. Rajiv (Embedded image moved to file: pic12139.jpg) mbrenman001@comca st.net Sent by: To h+t--friends-boun Gary Toth &lt;garytoth51(a)gmail.com&gt; ces(a)chrispy.net cc TRB Health and Transportation &lt;h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net&gt; 12/21/2011 09:47 Subject AM Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing Please respond to TRB Health and Transportation <h+t--friends@chr ispy.net> Hi Gary, you might want to take a look at Tom Sanchez' and my 2007 book, The Right to Transportation, from the American Planning Association, where we discuss many of these issues and offer some recommendations. Also, in Spring 2012, Island Press will publish our new book, "Planning as if People Matter: Governing and Equity," where we extend some of the concepts to other forms of infrastructure, directed at the planning profession. You might also want to take a look at the excellent work done by Public Advocates, Inc. in San Francisco, and The City Project in Los Angeles, working with and on behalf of organizations like Urban Habitat and the Bus Riders Union. Good first steps include excellent mass transit systems, especially buses, that cross jurisdictional lines easily. Reducing and eliminating economically regressive flat taxes like per gallon gasoline, sales taxes, congestion pricing, and tolling are good ideas. Eliminating the extravagant transportation subsidies provided to higher income Anglo commuters would be a good idea. For example, each Golden Gate Ferry ride in San Francisco Bay from Marin to SF costs about $28, but the charge to riders on monthly passes is about $5.28. This is an example of how the issues are broader than cars. Deepsixing the idiocy of California High Speed Rail is another excellent idea. That system would have no benefits whatsoever for low income people, while sucking off investments that could go to improving mass transit bus services, which are undergoing severe cuts. In terms of your example of long commutes to jobs for low income people, a partial solution would be to have metropolitan planning organizations include such issues as employment around airports in their plans. Last year, Bay Area Rapid Transit tried to run a line to Oakland International Airport with no stops at the minority and low income neighborhoods along the way. The San Francisco Metropolitan Planning Commission bears some responsibility for these Bay Area transportation problems. Means testing benefits such as Medicare, Social Security, and farmer welfare are good ideas. Making the income tax system more progressive would be very good. High income people and corporations like GE should pay their fair share of taxes. Eliminating the legal fiction of corporations as persons would be excellent. Keeping jobs in the US would be very good. An example of this is the recent idiocy of having $400 million in New San Francisco Bay Bridge parts built in China, when they could have been built at the ex-NUMI factory in the East Bay, and at the ex-Oakland Army Base and ex-Alameda Naval Air Station. Gentrification is a very complicated concept, with pros and cons. It crosses racial lines. For example, in Anacostia, a neighborhood of Washington, DC, middle class African-Americans are gentrifying a traditional working class African-American neighborhood, because of the good housing stock, proximity to downtown DC, and good views. These are just a very few ideas and considerations in response to your excellent questions. Marc From: "Gary Toth" &lt;garytoth51(a)gmail.com&gt; To: mbrenman001(a)comcast.net Cc: "TRB Health and Transportation" &lt;h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net&gt; Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 9:12:34 AM Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing So Marc, what is your solution? I have heard many others rise concerns about gentrification over the years, but few solutions. As a silly old engineer, I am left to conclude that the default solution is to allow neighborhoods to continue to suffer because that depresses the price of the housing stock. Seven or eight years ago, I had the good fortune to sit at a lunch table with two major advocates of minorities and low income populations. Since as an engineer just learning about the good and the bad associated with Smart Growth, New Urbanism, Context Sensitive Solutions ... I shared my concerns with these two folks who had devoted their careers to supporting social equity. Their answer: The solution to affordable housing and social equity is to not stop making improvements/investments that raise property values and rebalance the transportation system. NO NO Absolutely NO, I was told, the solution is not to perpetuate "slums", it is TO MAKE EVERY OTHER PLACE WALKABLE AND MIXED USE. Who are we kidding -- I was told -- "do critics raising the gentrification flag honestly believe that folks are better off where they are." When I went back to my work at NJ Department of Transportation, the meaning of what these two folks told me became more clear. One of the problems my office had to solve was how to deal with the ordeal that low income wage earners faced in commuting 90 minutes to two hours from "affordable" neighborhoods in inner cities to the job supply in car oriented suburbs. Low income workers often had to take two to three buses because of the suburban densities and car orientation -- the result of pricing the system to advantage middle income car owners. When they got to the work site, they were dropped of onto a high speed 100% car oriented arterial designed to cater to the middle class car owners -- and literally, their were several fatalities a year, involving workers trying to dash across the roadway to get from the bus stop to the worksite. It became clear that the system was planned, designed and priced -- rigged -- to further disenfranchise this already struggling segment of our population. So, I ask again, what is your solution if it is not rebalancing the system by pricing, smart growth, and multimodal transportation? Does your analysis about the Boston to Washington corridor reveal how many of the unemployed and minimum wage families can afford multiple cars and whether they can afford the gas to make those 500 mile commutes? Am I wrong in presuming that minimum wage folks are less likely to own Prius's and more likely to own -- if at all -- a gas guzzler? Please consider this a serious question. As a transportation engineer, I am still trying to learn who to deal with the inequities of a car oriented transportation system. On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 6:15 PM, &lt;mbrenman001(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote: Hi Gary, this is based on a per trip cost, due to lack of discretionary income to pay for tolls. A twenty to fifty year period is just too long to make useful estimates for. The pricing estimates are almost always too low, by 40 to 200% percent, for large projects, and the ridership estimates too high. Both of these factors were in evidence in the Cal High Speed Rail project. In the case of San Francisco, the study cited, very few low income people still live in the city, since rent control (another initiative that seemed like a good idea at the time) is destroying the housing stock and raising rents through the roof to the moon. Seemingly good initiatives like light rail down Third Street to Bay View/Hunter's Point are creating gentrification that is driving out the last African-American community in SF. Those who like congestion pricing, tolls, and cordons say that much of the revenue from them will be devoted to better mass transit, but this has happened nowhere in the US, and in only a couple of cities in Scandinavia. And California, even the Bay Area, isn't Scandinavia...In the US, the tolls go almost entirely to paying for the tolling system, including the salaries of those who administer it, the private contractors who provide the electronic sensing equipment and software, and the law enforcement officials who enforce it. If you want to see evidence of how tolls work in practice, drive north-south on the East Coast. One can easy pay over $30 in tolls from DC to Boston, one-way. If I'm unemployed or earning minimum wage, how will I pay that? And gas and insurance and maintenance. I might get forced onto a “chinatown” bus. This will still cost me about $48 one way. Lower income people already pay a higher percent of their family income on transportation than higher income people. Imposition of congestion pricing, tolls, and cordons just sticks it to them more. One end result is less social and physical mobility, and less ability to get to jobs. One can say, well, those folks should just take public transportation. But shouldn’t they have the same choices as other people in the US? And many jobs, shopping, and educational opportunities can’t be accessed by public transportation without a huge investment in time. So lower income people forced onto public transportation often become time poor as well. Marc From: "Gary Toth" &lt;garytoth51(a)gmail.com&gt; To: "TRB Health and Transportation" &lt;h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net&gt;et>, mbrenman001(a)comcast.net Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 2:51:50 PM Subject: Re: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing Marc, is your conclusion based on a study of the overall life cycle of how congestion pricing can change land use and transportation infrastructure over a 20 to 50 year period, or is it based on the immediate per trip cost? Also, if you are citing a study, did that study evaluate how many of the lower income folks are commuting in from the suburbs, as opposed to already living within the "priced zone" and therefore who might benefit from a re-pricing of the trip into the center? Gary On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 1:26 PM, &lt;mbrenman001(a)comcast.net&gt; wrote: Unfortunately, congestion and road pricing have economically regressive effects on low income people. Marc Brenman Social Justice Consultancy mbrenman001(a)comcast.net 240-676-2436 From: "Megan Wier" &lt;Megan.Wier(a)sfdph.org&gt; To: h+t--friends(a)chrispy.net Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 10:18:27 AM Subject: [H+T--Friends] Health Impact Assessment of Road Pricing Hi everyone - I wanted to share the following report summarizing the findings of a health impact assessment (HIA) of a potential road pricing program in San Francisco conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public Health's Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability as I thought it may be of interest to the list. The HIA was completed this Fall with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Active Living Research Program. A summary and detailed technical report of the findings are available at: http://www.sfphes.org/HIA_Road_Pricing.htm. For the HIA analysis, SFDPH used a variety of methods to assess potential transportation-related health effects - including air quality-related premature mortality, traffic noise-related annoyance and heart attacks, injury to pedestrians and cyclists, and health benefits from active transportation – and evaluated health-related equity effects and associated economic value. The HIA found that transportation system operation in San Francisco has substantial health burdens and benefits today. Health burdens are expected to increase in the future owing to increasing motor vehicles on local roadways and increasing population densities in already congested areas. However, there are also estimated increases in active transportation (walking and biking) that bring some health benefits and save lives. Road pricing, if implemented, could moderate but not entirely eliminate the changes associated with a future under “business as usual” that includes increasing populations and traffic and no new policies or funding to manage the transportation system. Road pricing could also generate significant economic value by reducing transportation-related adverse effects and increasing walking and biking. HIA recommendations include increasing congestion pricing fees where they can reduce health risks (e.g., on spare the air days) and investing in targeted infrastructure to reduce pedestrian and cyclist injury and increase active transportation. Thank you, and happy holidays! ------------------------------------------------------------- Megan L. Wier, MPH, Epidemiologist Program on Health, Equity and Sustainability San Francisco Department of Public Health phone: 415-252-3972, fax: 415-252-3964 Megan.Wier(a)sfdph.org www.sfphes.org _______________________________________________ H+T--Friends mailing list H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends _______________________________________________ H+T--Friends mailing list H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends -- 609-397-3885 -- Gary 609-468-2943 (c) _______________________________________________ H+T--Friends mailing list H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends _______________________________________________ H+T--Friends mailing list H+T--Friends(a)chrispy.net http://ryoko.chrispy.net/mailman/listinfo/h+t--friends