COMMENTARY: Looking to the future of transportation

A recent column on this page discussed traffic congestion and how it happens. In my opinion, traffic congestion in our nation’s urban areas is a classic byproduct of sprawl and our reluctance to regionally manage growth as it relates to the use of land.

Dayton is a prime example of this phenomenon, as over the past 40 to 60 years we have consumed enormous amounts of land in nearly all directions while the population has remained essentially flat. We all want the freedom to live where we want, with all the supporting infrastructure necessary for our convenience — including more space on the roadways.

We have created a society where most kids can’t walk to school because there is no direct path from subdivisions of cul-de-sacs to the school campus, so we invest in school busing operations that compete with family cars in the daily congestion around our K-12 campuses. Today we have growing infrastructure needs from utilities and public safety investments to freeways and those additional capacity lanes that typically are quickly filled (Austin Boulevard and Ohio 741, for example) as a result of induced demand. And of course, we want our taxes to be low!

It is interesting that we recently have seen a change, especially in baby boomers and millennials opting for a more urban lifestyle, choosing to make use of our park systems instead of cutting an acre of grass around a “McMansion” in the exurbs. How this trend plays out will be fascinating in terms of its effects on suburban communities.

Having watched this evolution and being involved as I am in transportation issues, what I fear most is that we have built an unsustainable “system” for our children and theirs. More than 50 percent of our major roads and bridges need significant repair or replacement in an era when gas tax revenues are in decline and cannot currently fund the maintenance, let alone any additional expansion. We add to the long-term burden of maintaining these systems and associated infrastructure every time we open another subdivision or commercial project in a cornfield. Expansion adds demand for additional police officers, firefighters, public maintenance workers, teachers, bus drivers and so on. Without significant growth in population and public revenues, future generations will be (and arguably already are) saddled with addressing these unfunded mandates we have developed for them.

So what is the solution?

I would love to think that we could start by committing to land use planning and regulation that requires consideration of these development impacts and that they be fiscally constrained looking out, say, 50 years. We should also consider that my generation will live longer, at home and will complicate the mobility dynamics of the future. We must use every tool available to us, especially technology to develop a network of mobility options. These include connected-vehicle and autonomous technologies already being pursued by groups like DriveOhio; public transit; ridesharing services including the Uber’s and Lyft’s; bikeshare systems like LINK Dayton; and whatever comes next to maximize capacity on the existing network.

The simple truth is that we as a nation must think and act for the long-term good. The collective application of technology and incentives for in-fill development can move us in the right direction. For the sake of our grandchildren and theirs, we should still consider coming together on the land use planning issue.

Mark Donaghy is chief executive officer of the Greater Dayton RTA.

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