Clearing up the Charlotte area’s suburban traffic congestion could boost the area’s economy by $22.5 billion a year and increase worker productivity by about 31 percent, according to a study by the Reason Foundation.
Removing congestion in other areas, such as Uptown and the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport, would lead to smaller gains for the area’s economy and worker productivity. An airport free of traffic hassles would lead to a gain of $1.5 billion a year for the region and a 2-percent gain in worker productivity.
David Hartgen, the emeritus professor of transportation studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte who did the study, said transportation planners need to look more at commuting by suburban residents instead of focusing on access to downtown business districts.
“Reducing traffic congestion by 10 percent improves productivity by over 1 percent,” Hartgen said. “One percent may sound small, but in a city like Charlotte, it can mean tens of billions of dollars in economic gains.”
Hartgen is also an adjunct policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, which publishes Carolina Journal. The Reason Foundation is a libertarian nonprofit based in Los Angeles.
The study found that overall the largest economic gains came from improving access to the suburbs, malls, and universities. This could increase the number of jobs within easy driving distance and the number of customers businesses could attract.
Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute, said the Reason Foundation study is the first study in the United States that’s looked at how productivity could grow in various cities if more jobs are accessible. A similar study has been done in France.
“That’s something that hasn’t been done before,” O’Toole said. “When cities try to reduce driving by increasing congestion, they’re reducing productivity in that city. That’s really new information.”
O’Toole said the study shows that building ring roads to make the suburbs more accessible would promote economic growth and that it contradicts some ideas about the importance of downtowns held by advocates of Smart Growth.
“Sprawl increases productivity,” O’Toole said.
But Todd Litman, founder of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Victoria, B.C., said the claim that there is a direct connection between economic development and reducing congestion is outdated.
“If this were true, cities with the most highways per capita and the lowest congestion would be most economically successful,” Litman said. “The results are actually just the opposite: the most congested cities also tend to be most economically productive.”
Danny Pleasant, Charlotte’s transportation director, the recommendations of the study would be expensive to implement and could worsen sprawl and air pollution.
“Traditionally, studies like that focus on one dimension to demonstrate how congestion is bad and no congestion is good,” Pleasant said. “In an urban environment, congestion is a byproduct. The most vibrant economic places on the planet tend to be very busy and have traffic.”
Samuel Staley, the director of urban and land use policy for the Reason Foundation, said dense urban areas are more productive despite congestion, not because of it. He said road capacity needs to be expanded and managed more effectively.
The study said Charlotte needs to spend about $3 billion to eliminate severe traffic congestion by 2030, less than a third of what the region plans to spend on transportation in its current long-range plans.
“It’s not as expensive as a lot of people would think,” Staley said. “I think there’s this ideological opposition to expanding capacity because they don’t want people in cars. Too often local transportation planners are looking only at their budget and see it as a zero-sum game.”
The study looked at traffic and its impact on regional economic performance in Charlotte and seven other cities including Denver, Seattle, and Dallas-Fort Worth.
Hartgen looked at how accessible five destinations in each region were — the central business district, a major mall, suburb, university, and airport. In the Charlotte area, those points were Trade and Tryon streets; UNC Charlotte; the Concord Mills Mall; Fort Mill, S.C.; and the Charlotte/Douglas International Airport.
He used computer modeling to map how much of the area was within a 25-minute drive of these points with and without congestion. The study looked at congestion now and in 2030.
“These increases could (in theory) improve regional performance by reducing travel time and increasing the jobs available to residents, the workers and customers available to employers,” the study said.
In the Charlotte area, about 446,000 jobs, about 49 percent of all jobs in the region, were within 25 minutes of Uptown. In comparison, about 150,000 jobs, or 16.6 percent of the region’s jobs, were within 25 minutes of Fort Mill.
The study said that transportation planners may be focusing too much on the central business district.
“In mid-sized cities where car use is overwhelmingly predominant, the impact of suburban transportation improvements will be particularly effective in spurring regional economic performance,” Hartgen wrote. “Clearly, the role of suburbs, malls, and universities in regional economic performance needs to be more fully explored.”
Hartgen looked at traffic congestion with a measurement called the “Travel Time Index.” Charlotte’s index number is 1.31, meaning that driving during the rush hour takes 31 percent longer than driving at off-peak times. Delays caused by congestion are expected to double by 2030.
“Unless there is significant investment in transportation infrastructure in Charlotte and in North Carolina we are going to have very serious economic development consequences,” said Brad Wilson, the chief operating officer of Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina and the chairman of the N.C. 21st Century Transportation Committee. “Companies aren’t going to want to locate where you have underinvested in your infrastructure, including transportation.”
Sarah Okeson is a contributor to Carolina Journal.