by Jeanne Melchior

I recently attended a Vincennes District open house, one of six held around the state in mid-August, at which INDOT unveiled its updated 25-year transportation plan. Filled with plans for quite a few new highways and lots of reconstruction, the INDOT 25-year plan was mostly a dinosaur. While safety and mobility should be paramount in highway planning, INDOT unfortunately used these issues to justify building new highways. Rather than looking at sound predictions of the future and current trends, INDOT looked to the past for its planning base. Even the economics are based on an old model that we can see crumbling even as we read about it.

The plan for the future that INDOT unveiled last month with its tiered "statewide mobility corridors" is based on a model of heavy manufacturing with huge numbers of long distance trucks. This is despite the fact that most of the jobs recently lost in Indiana have been manufacturing jobs, and most predictions are that "knowledge workers" will replace factory workers in the jobs of the future. Many studies, including a Congressional Budget Office study, show that an educated workforce is what brings jobs into a community, not more highways.

Many of us in the agricultural part of the state where many of these new highways are to be located see INDOT's highway expansion program as a heavy-handed way to exploit farmers by driving them off their land in order to bring in more heavy polluting industry that no one wants anywhere else.

INDOT also identifies safety as a big reason to build these new highways, including I-69. Never mind that even the FHWA acknowledges that almost all highway accidents are caused by driver error, not highway design, or that even with new roads, most people would continue to drive on the old ones. In addition, trucking laws that govern everything from vehicle maintenance to the number of hours truckers can drive without a break, were not identified in the plan. Sadly, INDOT relegated the safety issue to justification of highway construction when the major focus should be on driver education and trucking laws. Those things that could actually improve highway safety were absent.

In addition, INDOT also failed to address the issue of gridlock. Building new highways simply does not reduce gridlock, but adds traffic. INDOT didn't mention this "induced demand" in its plan to build more highways to move people around the state. The average commuter already spends two hours a day on the road going an average of 20 mph, according to some recent studies. Light rail is a much safer, faster form of travel, and it would greatly reduce congestion as well. Finding ways to achieve better traffic flow on the roads we do have could improve congestion as well, at a fraction of the cost. TSM (transportation systems management) should be the most important feature in a transportation plan in these cash-stripped times. And the transportation needs of an aging population need to be addressed as well.

Another glaring omission, and probably the most important, was no acknowledgement of a looming oil shortage. (See Hubberts Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage by Kenneth Deffeyes and The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World by Paul Roberts, two of many books on the subject). All indications are that the price of gasoline will sharply rise over the next 25 years. Yet INDOT seems to be ignoring this in its long-range planning. Instead, they keep planning for more highways that studies show won't boost the economy, won't improve safety, or won't reduce congestion. They are planning highway mobility corridors for trucks that will soon, of necessity, be on rail.

One of the fastest ways to ease the nation's dependence on foreign oil would be to get long-distance freight on to rail. Since rail is cheaper than trucks, as much as one-third the cost according to experts, it won't be long before the economy mandates this. High-speed rail to move people between cities is also much safer, much faster, and much less expensive. Despite Indiana's failure to address the future of rail, it is happening all over the country. Surrounding states have light rail in the works, and as William Draves, one futurist (Nine Shift: Work, Life, and Education in the 21st Century), put it: "The age of rail is just beginning."

Planning for the future in this time of change is difficult. I just heard a report on how digital television will be the standard in just four years. It will be interactive and totally different from what we now have. In not more than a decade, I have seen VHS replaced by DVD, audio tapes replaced by CD's, among others, each new technology making the older one obsolete in just a few years.

I'm not a big fan of some of the more technology-based changes that are coming, but we must think about sustainability now. And INDOT's highway plan is neither sustainable nor smart. Activists around the state need to demand that INDOT move into the future and start planning for the transportation needs of this century rather than the last one.

No matter who is elected governor, we need sound transportation planning in Indiana, not the backward looking, business as usual, politically driven highway based plan that INDOT unveiled last month.

Jeanne Melchior is president of Protect Our Woods.