Elmer Johnson, longtime Chicagoan and partner at Kirkland & Ellis law firm, and a former General Motors Corp. vice president, is the guiding force behind the Commercial Club of Chicago’s Metropolis 2020 Project. The project’s full report, to be issued Monday, makes a broad range of recommendations for the region’s land use, economy, governance, taxation, housing, education and–of special interest to Johnson–transportation. He’s also author of the 1993 book “Avoiding the Collision of Cities and Cars.” Johnson calls for “tough-love” measures to achieve cleaner air and reduce congestion. Getting Chicagoans out of their cars and onto public transit is a necessary step, he says, for avoiding gridlock.
Q: To reduce congestion and increase public transit use, you suggest gasoline-tax increases, tolls on arterial roads and expressways, higher tolls for peak-hour travel, increases in parking lot taxes–the bigger the vehicle, the higher the tax–and stiff annual registration fees for gas guzzlers. You say this money would cover public transit-funding shortfalls. But what politician would press for these increases?
A: None. I just didn’t see any other way out. Because politicians won’t press for these kinds of things, congestion will get so unbearable that at some point the citizenry will be willing to become more open and consider alternatives. This is something that affects daily lives. Also, in the (Commercial Club) report, I didn’t just talk about pricing alone. The other necessary part is providing alternate forms of (public) transportation that are quite attractive. The two have to be meshed.
Q: When drivers think of solutions, they want bigger, better roads, perhaps with a second level, and no toll gates. They want congestion points engineered out of existence.
A: That has been the approach for the past 50 years: just keep building more roads. What happens is people drive even more–they’ll drive as fast as we can build roads.
What’s your solution?
A: You have to wonder, if people got together, is this the way they’d choose to build their urban lifestyles? Wouldn’t it be much more attractive if we had miniature versions of Chicago out there where 20 or 30 percent of the population chose to live in more compact settlements where they are free of the automobile? It would make an extraordinary difference.
I found no one solution. I found there are 25 little bullets that could add up to a giant bullet. Part of it is having smaller, cleaner cars. Why do people drive around surrounded with 4,000 pounds of metal and other materials? But the longer-term question is, can’t we use land-use policy to create options for people who would prefer to live a lifestyle not so dependent on the automobile? With each passing decade we have more dual-career couples for whom time is a precious commodity. And right now this metropolitan area is far above average in terms of the percentage of people who spend an hour or more daily commuting each way.
Q: Will imposing tolls on more roads, higher parking costs and congestion pricing to adjust tolls according to peak use drive more people to public transportation?
A: The nice thing about congestion pricing and parking pricing is that you can make mid-course corrections. We recommend pilot projects along these lines so we can learn how good this tool is. But I think pricing of road use is ultimately an indispensable tool for dealing with congestion and providing the wherewithal to create an intermodal transportation system (rail and bus transit linked to parking lots, airports and pedways). I’ll still own my two automobiles. I’ll just use them a lot less. Switzerland has about the same automotive ownership as we do in this country. They just use them a lot less because they have such a wonderful mass transit system.
Q: Some of your suggestions would impose a greater burden on the working poor, as well as on the sports utility-van-light truck set.
A: I think there are ways to take care of equity problems. You can have a tax rebate system, or credit system that would relieve the bottom 20 percent of society so they in effect don’t suffer those penalties. One way would be for the federal government to give an income-tax credit to people who drive a certain number of miles. You can also give free public transit cards to people based on a means test.
Q: When you talk about congestion in your 1993 book and mention that motorists might opt to leave expressways and clog arterial streets, you talk of “calming measures.” What do you mean?
A: I was trying to show that I was aware that if you introduce congestion pricing on major expressways, you could create horrendous problems on side streets. By calming measures, I meant excessive stop signs, traffic lights, bumps in the road or what have you–things that make it unattractive to leave the expressway, so people decide that isn’t a good option either, so maybe they’d better think about mass transit more, or driving at different times of day.
Q: With O’Hare’s air passenger traffic growing, what do you propose for relieving the congestion on the access roads and on the Kennedy Expressway around the airport?
A: I’d get back to road pricing of a precondition to come up with the money to afford various mass transit options, including light rail and buses, to get people either from their cars to centers of employment, or from the airport to centers of employment. But I just don’t see how you get there without road pricing of some kind.
Q: High occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes are another suggested solution. Do you think they’d work?
A: No, because most people are solo drivers. So they can’t use the HOV lanes without getting a ticket. My solution would be to make it a lane where if you want to pay through the nose, you can use it and get to your office faster. It might be a first step toward congestion pricing. In many ways we use better-off people to subsidize the rest of society. Why not here if they’re willing to pay? What about people who have a medical emergency or some other kind of emergency? They might say, “Well, today it’s worth it. I’ll pay $10 to get from Wheaton to downtown because I can use HOV lanes all the way.”
Q: How would you design a transportation system to carry Chicago well into the 21st Century?
A: My dream on transportation, my big dream, would be to have a joint venture between one or two automotive companies and someone in the mass transit business, and a governmental body representing this region to come up with a world-class design for an urban transportation system that would serve this region well for the next 30, 40 or 100 years. There is so much know-how on the auto industry side, but it’s worthless unless the cities do their part, as they have in some European cities.
Q: Why can’t the American commuter accept, as you say, that we can’t engineer our way out of congestion?
A: One reason is this love affair with the automobile as one’s private space in this highly individualistic culture. We’ve created quite an atomistic kind of society in which my individual rights, my private time, my private space, what I do with my private life is of ultimate importance and what I do as a member of the community is of much less importance than it was 50 years ago. The solo-driven car is the ultimate manifestation of ultra-individualism. It’s a deep, deep cultural issue.
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An edited transcript
