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SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY By JAMES P. ROMUALDI CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY We are here to talk about transportation research, which has been getting an unusual amount of attention recently. This meeting on priorities for university research follows on the heels of the American Public Transit Association-Urban Mass Transportation Administration meeting on transportation R&D held last month. At that conference, George Pastor distributed a paper in which he noted that we are hopeful of entering a period of rational thinking after what he described as the overaction of the 1970 to 1973 period, followed by an overreaction of the 1973-1974 period. Let us hope that he is correct and that results will support this expectation. Our task for the next two days is to assist the Department of Transportation in outlining research areas appropriate for university involvement. Now that is not easy. There has been a federal involve- ment in transportation research for several decades and for the most part the results were viewed as worth the money. But this was the case when objectives were clear and research activities fell within rather narrow and traditional disciplines. Improvements in navigation, air traffic control, highway materials, and design procedures are cases in point. When we got into the area of urban and intercity ground transportation, with conflicting and ill-defined objectives and research needs that transcended traditional disciplines, we did not perform as well. True, there were many areas in which progress was made, but I believe it is correct to state that the overall record is one of creating excessive expectations and then not delivering what is viewed by the public as positive and constructive solutions. Whether the problem centers on a bad delivery system or just not perceiving the right questions to be addressed is one of the issues before this workshop. The fact remains that in some research areas -- and urban transportation is paramount in this respect -- a credibility gap now exists. To set a framework for our discussion of technology's role in transportation research, I am going to attempt to review what we have learned from past experiences, where we are now, and what activities 23
appear to have high payoff in the future. In the brief time allotted for this opening session, I shall avoid far-ranging, philosophical issues and attempt to be concise and to the point. I will discuss the range of activities that could characterize technology's role in trans- portation research, how they overlap and interact with the other panel areas and which activities should have the highest priorities, the last intended merely to set a basis for our later discussions. The origins of our current concern with mass transportation are found in the early 1960's, a little over a decade ago, when the prin- ciple issue was congestion. It is still not entirely clear just what our perception of congestion was at that time or, indeed, what it is today. The time for the journey to work has not increased over the past few decades. In fact it has decreased. Part of the difficulty appears to be the failure of freeways to totally unblock rush hour access to the central city and permit non-rush hour speeds. Congestion is merely a failure of expectations. The fact that the urban freeways were carrying a substantial portion of the total vehicle miles of travel on a relatively small portion of the urban street network was overshadowed by congestion on distributor streets that were never intended to handle a large volume of traffic. Mostly the fear was of the future, because in those days all indicators were up, with the exception of the cost of fuel, which appeared to be going down steadily as a fraction of average disposable income. Population was projected upwards to dizzying heights, suburban growth seemed unending, and where one freeway was seen, several others were envisioned. In those early days the solution seemed obvious to most people: Build fast, comfortable, and convenient rapid transit and the commuters will leave their cars at home and take mass transit to wark. The UMTA Act of 1964 spoke of the effect of auto commuting on clean air and other environmental amenities; but the central issue was congestion and the threatened decline of our central cities. The events of the late 1960's and early 1970's only compounded the problem by introducing the issues of air quality and, more recently, concern about fuel consumption. In a sense, then, we have passed through three stages in our quest for improved public mass transportation and revitalization of intercity rail service. Each has added a new rationale to our efforts and each has been invoked as the reason for reducing our dependence upon the automobile for urban and intercity travel. Yet the issues of mobility, air quality, and energy are, to some extent, contradictory. Federal research in urban transportation, and research in advanced technology for high speed, intercity ground transportation, remained at a relatively low level until about 1969 when funding levels rose steadily. Much enthusiasm was generated, and there were high expectations for transportation R&D. A review of past activities reveals three general areas to which research was committed and for which expectations were very high ee
o New systems technology: There was a widespread belief that many of the difficulties associated with enticing people back to mass transit and intercity rail service would be solved by technological solutions involving either high speed or esoteric propulsion and sus- pension -- or all three. o Transportation planning and systems modeling: An equally promising prospect was afforded by the view that new systems could be evaluated by large-scale modeling and forecasting efforts directed to 20 to 30 years in the future. o Transportation as a tool for urban growth: The obvious cross impacts of urban growth patterns and transportation system devel- opment formed the basis for a rising interest in using transportation as a tool for shaping urban or corridor growth. Interest in new towns and polynucleus growth patterns, all nurtured and tied together by new forms of transport, occupied the public and private fancy. Of course it is easy to be overcritical. During those not unexciting years a lot of quite good work was done and lasting progress was made in each of these areas. There is no doubt that work should continue on these topics. I am not focusing on the conception of practitioners in these fields, but on the public's perception of the results to date. And it is not good. Confidence in new systems technology is at an all time low. The recent emphasis on short-range planning techniques, to some extent, is a reaction to what is viewed as cumbersome and ill-understood planning models. And many land use changes or developments appear to happen under circumstances completely out of our control. Talk of new towns is virtually dead. Evidence of an apparent stabilizing of our urban centers and a shift to rural areas -- recently referred to as the re-ruralization of America -- has occurred without our expecting it or being able to explain it adequately. What I have briefly encapsulated is a somewhat caustic appraisal of the results of urban transportation research and development during the 1960's and up to about 1974. I have oversimplified. And, I have not emphasized the real progress that was made in many fields and the useful demonstrations that have resulted from federally supported projects. But I believe we are not incorrect in observing that the research activities I have just described have, to say the least, lost their lustre. The public, the final judge of our work in a matter as much in the public eye as transportation, no longer has high expecta- tions in advanced technology or in the effectiveness of large-scale planning or in the role of transportation as a shaper of urban growth -- even if we could decide just what kind of urban regions we really want. 25
What we have witnessed more recently, as a sort of fallout from earlier disappointments, is a shift in priorities with a focus now on: o Retreating from an emphasis on capital intensive, line-haul systems; O Improving the productivity of existing systems; o Developing low capital systems that utilize existing infrastructure as much as possible, but exploring innovative communications and controls and attacking regulatory inhibitors; and o Planning in the short-range and considering the alternatives. There is, of course, ongoing research and demonstration support for such new technology as automated small-scale rapid transit systems. But the thrust of the often stated objectives of the Department of Transportation is in the direction of short-range, low capital solutions and getting more out of what is now in place. I am convinced that much of this -- whether right or wrong -- is a reaction to our euphoric attempts in the 1960's and early 1970's to solve all problems with a few deft, mostly technological strokes. Where, then, do we stand today? I suspect one of the principal challenges is that we still are faced with three distinct objectives -- and they are not complementary. These are the cumulative objectives that have characterized the evolution of public interest in rail and urban transportation since the early 1960's -- mobility, air quality, and energy conservation. In attempting to resolve these issues, we are faced with current uncertainties that bring us face to face with the issue of the role of science and technology in transportation re- search. Air quality is still closely tied to vehicle emissions, but attempts to curtail emissions involve tradeoffs with energy efficiency. Transportation remains one of America's greatest consumers of energy. The objectives are sometimes, but not always, conflicting. Of course, neither of these objectives can be taken out of context. The matter of mobility still remains a central issue. But mobility for whom? And at what price? If we follow the logic of the past decade, we encounter some very interesting contradictions. For example, the mobility needs of smaller urban areas are viewed as related to what we call the transportation disadvantaged -- a term coined to mean the young, old, poor, and physically handicapped who have no access to an automobile or mass transit. In larger urban areas, how- ever, the goal is one of diverting private motorists to public transit, thus reducing congestion, pollution, and fuel consumption. But a 26
large number of poor are concentrated in the nation's principal urban areas, and the solutions proposed in the past, primarily rapid transit, do not serve the poor very well -- and, in fact, don't do much for diverting auto traffic either. The Watts riot in Los Angeles in 1965 was important in focusing attention on the transportation disadvantaged. It was not clear then and it is still not clear what transportation disadvantaged means. The young, old, poor, and handicapped are often lumped together in this category, and I am constantly amazed at the inconsistencies inherent in this commonly accepted grouping. There is no transportation problem associated with being old, unless one is either poor or handicapped. Why give transit subsidies to senior citizens? Why nat give assistance on the basis of need, regardless of age? Aside from political expedi- encies, the logic escapes me. The problem of mobility for the physically handicapped is a serious social problem that deserves considerable attention. This is nat a mass transportation problem. The mobility needs of the handicapped are quite specialized and require unique solutions. I doubt very much that the construction of special elevators and ramps for the handicapped in rapid transit stations will make much impact on their mobility needs -- except to divert funds that could be much better used to provide meaningful service in some sort of paratransit mode. Whether or not the young are transportation disadvantaged is also not at all clear. The young generally have less need to travel beyond what can be accomplished by school bus, walking, cycling, or being driven by someone else. The problem of the young appears to be one of definition. If not having access to an automobile is to be transportation disadvantaged, then the young constitute the largest single group. But this seems to beg the issue. The problem of transportation for the poor is the one that mass transportation can most likely alleviate -- if we mean the journey to work in corridors that aggregate sufficient numbers of people to keep costs within what one considers acceptable levels. Whether most proposed rapid transit systems serve the poor in this capacity has been a point of debate for several years. This discussion of contradictions merely serves to highlight some of the inconsistencies and conflicting goals that have plagued urban transportation research for the past decade. I have been some- what negative about the past because I am optimistic about the future. There is some hope that George Pastor was right: that we are perhaps entering a period of rational thinking and critical appraisal of our old assumptions is healthy. This task, at first glance, seems artificial because, if we have learned anything from our past, it is that most of our transpor- 27
tation problems are not technological but behavioral. The real payoff would appear to be in research in the other topics being discussed at this workshop. I believe the exercise will be useful and, for this purpose, I have attempted to break down into five general types the activities in which science and technology can play a significant role. I've arranged these activities on a scale, starting at one end with the purely technical and ending with activities that are closely related to the other panel areas. At one end of the spectrum are the traditional engineering and science activities that involve fundamental developments in materials, power generation, automatic controls, propulsion, energy storage, and communications. These are activities inherent in civil, mechanical, electrical, metallurgical, and chemical engineering. Improvements, and occasional inventions or breakthroughs, lead to lighter, more efficient, and lower cost systems -- either existing or new. Develop- ments in these areas are important and generally self-contained, because they do not depend upon close interaction with the planning, regulatory, or social aspects of transportation. A second category can be generally described as improvement in operations. Here we are concerned with issues such as networks and scheduling, service level improvements, maintenance and reliability, and safety and security. Although improvements in operations overlap with the planning, implementation, and operations panel, there is a strong technology component. A third activity, which we might call new concepts and scenario building, is the innovative aspect of technology in transportation. It is also the area most mishandled in the recent past. It was mishandled because it was emphasized out of context with society's needs, priori- ties, and resources. In a sense, the promotion of new technological concepts represented the stereotype of the technician viewing solutions only from a technical point of view. Thus, we went through a period of technological "answers" being proposed without adequate thought to the basic questions. Yet, when placed in the context of an understanding of needs and limitations, the development of new concepts and the des- cription of these concepts in the setting of innovative scenarios is an important role of technology. Without such stimulus, progress is severely hampered. A fourth grouping is development of costs and service descriptions. By costs we mean not only operating and construction costs, but the social and economic costs of emissions and energy con- sumption. Also, we need to know what we are getting for the costs -- that is, what are the service increments for different cost increments. This activity is of fundamental importance in all aspects of transpor- tation planning and decisions. The heart of many of the controversies and failures of the past decade has been an inadequate framework for presenting costs or describing service characteristics. Furthermore, 28
it is in this activity that technology finds the strongest bridge to the social, economic, and planning issues in transportation. By adequately describing costs -- social costs and impacts as well as operating and construction costs -- and relating these costs to ade- quately described service levels, we set the stage for a wide range of alternatives to be evaluated on a more common basis. It is the central activity about which all other transportation activities -- from planning to regulatory -- depend. Finally, we note that an important activity for science and technology is in the development of trade-off studies. It is here that issues like energy consumption and clean air standards are compared and evaluated. The full range of policy issues can be set within a frame- work of evaluating what is gained and at what cost. This is the activity that brings together the demand and supply side of transportation and further brings together those involved in urban planning, regulatory practices, and policy making. If we have done a good job in formulating new concepts and scenarios, and if we can adequately cost systems and accurately describe their service characteristics, we would have the basis for performing trade-off studies which, in a sense, are the last stage in reaching decisions about where we intend to make our invest- ments, assuming, of course, that we know what it is that we want to do. At the very least, the trade-off studies tell us the cost of our decisions. Now we come to the difficult part. Which of these activities, from the point of view of the involvement of science and technology, do we believe will have the highest payoff? To answer this question I am forced to consider two severe restraints. One is that the overall funding level for university research in transportation, and transpor- tation R&D in general, is woefully inadequate. The total funds available from the Program of University Research and UMTA's Section 11 Program amount to only about $5 million. The total from all sources for university transportation research is only about $15 million. That this is a severe constraint goes without saying. The second restraint relates to the inherent conflict between university research activities, which are necessarily long-range, and the pressure for short-term results that inherently characterize the Department of Transportation. There is not now and probably will not be in the immediate future a professional research establishment within DOT that has a long-term accountability for the future results of what is initiated today. This is not intended to be critical of the DOT program managers and administrators who have interacted and guided university programs over the past several years. It merely reflects a fact of life. With these restraints, and a personal belief that the important problems are now and have been a need to understand how people will respond to a service change, who will benefit, who will pay, and, in 29
general, how transportation affects social and economic development, Il will venture the view that the highest payoff from the involvement of technology, will accrue from research in the third, fourth, and fifth groupings I have described -- that is in new concepts and scenario building, development of costs and service descriptions, and trade-off studies. In particular, I believe that the development of costs and service descriptions is of the highest priority. I hold this view because, when I look back over the developments of the past decade, I conclude that in this area we have fallen flat. Many of the public controversies over which alternatives to choose have centered on conflicting and ill-understood statements about the cost of what is being offered and, in fact, on just what, from a service viewpoint, is being offered. We still know very little about how the public will be affected by or react to different services and price levels and how, in turn, these are affected by regulatory changes. We still know little about the social and economic impacts of alternative systems. Answers to these questions should be effectively sought by a concerted effort in each of the panel areas under discussion. But science and technology have a responsibility to the public and to DOT to provide the means to properly describe the costs and services of transportation alterna- tives. With the limited funds available, efforts in the first two areas that I described, fundamental engineering and science research and improvement in operation, for the most part will be inadequate and make little impact on DOT policy. It is in the area of policy development that we can do the most good -- particularly in considering the second restraint, the short horizon inherent in DOT activities. Technology has long played a fundamental role in the development of transportation systems. Throughout the history of man's attempt to improve his mobility, technological developments provided each increment of speed or efficiency. The stern post rudder and the compass, long ago imported from the Chinese, virtually revolutionized ocean travel. The steam engine combined with rails opened up our entire continent. The internal combustion engine, the dynamo, the electric motor, and the construction of roads and bridges are synonymous with great advances in transportation. How easy it was during the past decade to assume that our current problems could be fixed with another dose of technology. How wrong we were. This does not mean that technology has no important role in the future. In fact, all of the areas of research that I described should be supported. For example, if our intention is to see a direct cash benefit from our efforts, then research in improving operations will yield easily documentable returns. If we believe that the urgent problems are social, economic, and behavioral, and if we recognize the limited resources of the programs we are here to discuss today, then we 30
must act accordingly. I believe that in these circumstances, transpor- tation technology should be supportive of the research that is needed in the other panel areas. I have tried to picture the role of science and technology in university transportation research with large brush strokes. I am not happy with the canvas I have presented. The issue is too complex to be confined toa this quick treatment. I remain convinced, however, that we must find a general area of involvement that will contribute to the shaping of policy. The limited funds and short horizons preclude long- range research of the type we are more comfortable with and for which we are better suited. Insofar as we can change the situation, we should try. But in the meantime we have an obligation to the public to do the best we can with what we are given -- and that includes the restraints. It is to be hoped that when this workshop adjourns, we will have given the department a clearer picture of what can and should be done. 31
