UCLA/RAND Expert on Transportation, Jobs and Economic Growth

Dr. Martin Wachs* recently wrote an important article on public investment for transportation and jobs. It dispels the sweet sounding myths promoted by politicians, contractors and unions. Key excerpts of his article are given below and right after I have a quiz for you!

Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, rural and urban elected officials—all seek funding for roads and transit projects in their districts, asserting repeatedly that these expenditures will create jobs. President Obama vigorously sought to create jobs through transportation spending in the recent economic stimulus package. This seemed familiar: in 1991, when signing the historic Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA), President George H.W. Bush stated that the value of the bill “is summed up by three words: jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Transportation projects are not all equally effective at creating jobs or stimulating economic growth. Sound transportation investments lower the costs of moving people and goods. Short-term job creation, while vitally important to economic recovery, should not cause us to ignore the longer-term view.

Transportation dollars should be spent on programs that most enhance long-term economic productivity. ... For example, building an ill-advised rail line might give a local economy a short-term boost in employment, only to saddle taxpayers with large operating deficits in the future.

Building the Interstate Highway System created many construction jobs, but it would be a huge mistake to interpret that employment as the system’s contribution to the economy. Workers who drew salaries from the construction program benefitted, but far less than the travelers and shippers of goods who have used those facilities every day for six decades.

By building an effective transportation network, government transportation spending draws jobs to those industries that benefit from the investment. At the same time, this moves jobs away from activities that would have been financed in the absence of the transportation investment. So while transportation investment can “create jobs,” it can also destroy them.

Public officials often mention that each billion dollars of transportation infrastructure investment will create over 30,000 new jobs. This estimate relies on what is called the “multiplier effect.” Construction workers spend their income to buy hamburgers, television sets, and automobile insurance, so a given dollar of construction expenditure ends up having more than a dollar’s worth of impact, thus “multiplying” the effect of the expenditure. Unfortunately, asserting that any expenditure will create a specific number of jobs is not well supported by evidence. Actually, in the short term, construction jobs and expenditures on steel and concrete are economic costs [that weigh heavily on the budget.]

To create or preserve jobs in the short term, it might be more effective to use federal dollars to subsidize the operations and maintenance of transportation systems. Dollars spent on operating bus lines, for example, are spent largely on labor and thus quickly recirculate in the local economy. By contrast, dollars spent on capital or construction projects may include costly expenditures on concrete and steel imported from outside the US. Construction jobs do not inherently have higher multipliers than jobs driving buses.

Identifying a project as shovel-ready in no way assures that it will produce long-term net economic benefits. Simply equating any transportation investment with jobs and gains for the economy cannot remain a sound basis for public policy. America needs to do a better job of systematically evaluating alternative investments.

One way to judge a public investment is to determine whether or not it generates a rate of return to society that exceeds the return earned on other investments in the private or public sectors.

Here is your quiz. For about six billion dollars you can choose between Plan A and Plan B, as follows.

Plan A

·         Mufi Hannemann's 20 mile, 21 station elevated heavy rail with 3 park-and-ride facilities and no power plant. All of it is a taxpayer subsidized project.

Plan B

·         11 miles of reversible HOT lanes that will improve the Central Oahu-to-town tidal traffic problem by over 30%.

·         3 Superferry vessels to connect our islands and provide a resiliency backbone when an island is hit by a disaster.

·         A small Hawaii-based international airline with roundtrips to Beijing, Shanghai, Osaka, Moscow, Dubai, Singapore, Sao Paolo and Frankfurt, e.g., Aloha Worldwide.

·         A coal power-plant that will reduce Oahu's oil dependency by 15%.

All these can be done as incentivized private projects, or public-private partnerships.

Which package is best for Hawaii's long term economic prosperity and which one is best for short term political pork?

You know that the correct answer is Plan B.  Why are about 75% of Hawaii's politicians choosing Plan A?

Because they care about themselves, because doing the same thing again and again is less work, and because they are told what to do by special interests (their party, big money supporters, and unions.)

I have four more relevant articles for you. Please do forward them to your friends.

Trains Helped Kill the Greek Economy – They’ll Kill Hawaii’s too.  Those who refuse to do arithmetic are doomed to talk nonsense. One can write a book on this but I will mention only three rail related “math” of Honolulu mayor Peter Carlisle: (1) Get Honolulu’s financial house in order ... by spending over five billion on rail, (2) HART will cost us nothing, and (3) The Ansaldo contract will save Honolulu tens of millions in rail costs. All of them pure nonsense.

Honolulu Rail in Illegal Pact with Local Unions.  “Since the federal regulations currently applicable to transportation infrastructure construction prohibit local hiring preferences, it is unlikely that there will be many jobs for low income people and people of color.”  No rail jobs for locals and Hawaiians? True!

MEGA RAIL IN A MICRO CITY. I was very pleased that this summary article was published in New Geography, the Washington Examiner, NCPA, Hawaii Reporter and elsewhere.

Finally, this article was a bombshell to Hawaii’s “experts” on renewable energy. Unfortunately, we all paid for this “technology”: Proposed Solar Power Plant on Oahu Does not Pass Muster.

Katie, Lesna, Endie and I had a good time in Greece. The country has much less economic activity and vibrancy now. It’s depressing for the locals. It’s easier for tourists to get around and find accommodations.  Do not hesitate to contact me if you plan to visit Greece. Also you are welcome to take a look at my Facebook page where I have posted 11 photo albums from the places we visited.

I am off to an 11-day day, 4-city speaking tour in China… Nanjing, Shanghai, Harbin, Beijing. I expect China to be the exact opposite of Greece. In addition to technical papers I will also give presentations on: TRANSPORTATION & ENERGY: Fundamentals, and EU, US, China and India Comparisons. I’d be delighted to present it to your hui too.

As always, I am thankful for your support in defraying expenses and getting us going!

Aloha,

Panos

Panos D. Prevedouros, PhD

Professor of Civil Engineering

Smart. Sensible. Solutions.

http://www.fixoahunow.com

http://fixoahu.blogspot.com

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 (808) 63-PANOS … 637-2667

(*) Martin Wachs is Professor Emeritus of Civil and Environmental Engineering and City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley, and former Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and of the University of California Transportation Center. He is also former Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He is currently a Senior Research Associate at the RAND Corporation (wachs@rand.org).