Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

into the highway program, because the Federal Government apparently is the only agency that has the capability of raising funds of this magnitude to do this kind of a job.

It is apparently a new era we are in. The local governments are not going to be able to carry these tremendous burdens, and consequently, they are just not going to be done without this kind of help. Senator WILLIAMS. And you can see in the future, a need for major capital improvement systems, a subway for Seattle?

Mayor BRAMAN. Yes, indeed. In fact, on the map that I have shown, there is a considerable portion of this that would have to be subway, because of the constriction of the district, the rather narrow streets, the lack of elbowroom to move in. It would be absolutely essential that that portion of the system run approximately 2 miles from the south end of the business district.

Senator MAGNUSON. And the hills.

Mayor BRAMAN. And the hills. As you know, we are a terraced type of city. Each street is higher than the next. We don't have a regular grid of streets as you find in many places. It is not possible to take out a block.

Senator WILLIAMS. I know what will happen around here. We go out on the floor with this bill and someone will say, why doesn't the Seattle Transit Authority, or a similar public authority, borrow the money and then build the system and the fare box will pay off the

bonds.

Mayor BRAMAN. Of course, the fare box is not going to pay off the bonds. We have heard the testimony of the mayor of New York, and I think you will hear it from everyone else who testifies, that the fare box cannot carry this burden. The fare box can carry perhaps the cost of equipment, of the bonds to buy equipment, plus operation and maintenance. They cannot stand the burden of acquiring the rightof-way and development of what in essence are the same as streets. The subway is really no different than a street, with streetcar tracks on it. It is for the movement of people. And the fare box cannot pay this any more than the individual can pay for the streets driving his automobile.

Now they do have a method, of course, by the gas tax, of paying for these facilities directly. I don't know how we are going to find a way to correlate the payment of gas tax for the movement of people to rapid transit, because as you know, this is a very controversial subject. But it definitely is correlated in my opinion. It is just as important to me as a gasoline tax buyer or payer, in driving my automobile, to have a subway system, so that a major part of the people can ride quickly, conveniently, and reasonably cheaply from where they live to where they work and not have to congest our streets, moving perhaps 2,200 to 2,500 people per lane per hour, 11% person to the car, as we have in Seattle, when we can move 40,000 people in that lane by rapid transit.

Senator WILLIAMS. Your testimony has been very helpful.

Do you have anything to add, Senator Magnuson?

Senator MAGNUSON. Thank you very much.

Senator WILLIAMS. I think that our proposals here are sound in every department, certainly economically sound. These are no confused leftwing liberal ideas we are talking about.

Mayor BRAMER. Not at all.

Senator WILLIAMS. Are you a Republican

Mayor BRAMER. I am a Republican, yes, and I am still here. I want to say before I leave the microphone, Mr. Chairman, that we are all well aware of the very fine work that this committee in the Senate has done. We know of the benefits of 701 and 702, and the fact that they assisted in passing the Mass Transportation Act. We are equally confident that this committee and the Senate will be just as helpful in the future. Thank you.

Senator WILLIAMS. Thank you very much.
Senator MAGNUSON. Thank you.

(The complete prepared statement of Mayor Braman follows:) STATEMENT OF J. D. BRAMAN, MAYOR OF SEATTLE, WASH., ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL LEAGUE OF CITIES AND THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF MAYORS

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name is J. D. Braman. I am Mayor of the City of Seattle, and I am most pleased to have this opportunity to share my views on the problems of Urban Mass Transportation, as they pertain to my own city and as they affect many other of the great cities of this country. Let me say at the outset that all of us in municipal government have been encouraged by the high degree of interest expressed by the Congress of the United States in the problem of our cities. For many years we have felt that we were alone in the wilderness with our problems, and it has been most heartwarming and encouraging to feel that we now have some friends in high places who are also concerned with the tremendous task of maintaining the health of our central core cities and their surrounding urban areas.

If for no other reason, the health of downtown areas is important if we are to retain the tax base to provide the services our citizens deserve if they are to live safely and happily in cities; the problem of moving people and things throughout cities and to specific points in our cities is every bit as important to the physical health of our urbanized nation as the problems of blight, poor use of land, inadequate housing and open space. Indeed, they are so intertwined that to solve one is to partially alleviate the others. They should most intelligently be attacked on all fronts simultaneously.

You gentlemen are well aware that no city or region has a monopoly on transportation problems. Cities which were originally designed to give shelter and support for people have been redesigned to accommodate the automobile. The same machine which has served us so well in so many areas threatens to become our master unless we give new thought to the role of the automobile in a city built for people.

Let me use my own city for an example of what I mean. This is a map of the comprehensive plan of Seattle. Long and narrow. Seattle is walled in by Lake Washington on the east and Puget Sound on the west. The heavy gray area represents some of the most valuable industrial and commercial land on the West Coast. This small orange rectangle is our business district. It is compact. efficient, and serves as the headquarters for much of the important business of the Pacific Northwest. It represents 17% of the valuation of the city of Seattle.

There is no doubt that both government and private investors have placed their money on the line for the future of our business district. On the drawing board are: a 50 story office building for the Seattle First National Bank, a 22 story hotel, a 14 story hotel, and a new Federal Office Building.

This new construction will impose even greater demands on our transportation system. In keeping with the government policy of leaving parking to private enterprise, the new Federal Building alone will require three solid city blocks of 6-story parking garages. The impact of these new automobiles on our city streets will be intolerable, to say the least.

The Central Business District is restricted by natural topography to an area eight blocks wide. With two freeways already constructed and a third one in the planning stage for this narrow corridor, it should be plain that there is no space left for additional surface transportation facilities. And highways complicate our life downtown to an intolerable degree.

Highway planners dump streams of traffic, at 70 miles per hour, from 12 lanes of freeways on our streets, and we have to take care of these cars by providing distribution roads, parking and other services. That volume of cars is necessarily interrupted by traffic lights, and slows to an average of 8 to 11 miles per hour on the streets. It is apparent even to the layman that this system will not be able to serve the people who work downtown today, much less the approximately 130,000 jobs that must be filled in the next 20 to 25 years.

We are plagued by congestion and harassed by air pollution. Roads tear out valuable tax-paying properties and encourage the dispersion of the vital business of the heart area and eventually will tend to downgrade the entire tax base of the district. According to present trends, we will have to provide an additional 27,000 parking spaces by 1985-double our present capacity. Perhaps most alarming is that the natural growth of downtown will be choked off. There is an almost predictable limit of how far and how fast it will grow before it starts to feed on itself.

Compare that situation with the benefits which we expect from an integrated transit system. First of all, a transit system will offer virtually unlimited growth and expansion to downtown, in addition to providing fast, safe, easy access to the people who work there. Each lane of transit can carry 40,000 persons an hour, in contrast to the 2,200 people who can arrive on each lane of freeway.

Where the Freeway complicates downtown, a transit system would simplify the problem. It delivers its passengers almost to the office where they work. No expensive distribution system would be needed. It eliminates the parking problem and makes it easier for those people who must drive.

A transit system would add to the economic health of the city by preserving and enhancing the primary tax base of the city. Not only the downtown area would benefit from this increased value, but the areas adjacant to the transit system would be made more valuable as well.

I would like to stress that Seattle's downtown area, for the most part, is presently a healthy one. Two urban renewal projects are scheduled for the area I described, but they are a relatively small proportion of the total district. This is not a case of trying to rehabilitate our downtown. On the other hand, time is running out, and we fear that if we cannot get started on the construction of a rapid transit system, it will not be very long before we will start to see the decay and the exodus of business of the headquarters type of activity which is the lifeblood of our community.

Seattle's situation, while different in geography, is certainly no more critical than that of a dozen other cities in the nation. While we have the advantage of being able to attack this problem before it has become totally unmanageable, we are beset with the problems of rapid growth and development of our entire region. If we are to start construction in time, we must begin planning at

once.

On that point, I would like to speak of an amendment which Senators Magnuson and Jackson, of the State of Washington, have offered to the Mass Transportation Act. The amendment would provide for a most significant advance in the work which the Act itself encourages. In the simplest terms, the proposed amendment would permit the allocated funds to be used for planning, as well as the presently authorized construction of new transit facilities.

Our transportation experts tell us Seattle needs about $850,000 to provide the preliminary engineering study which will keep us on a reasonable schedule. Seattle has applied for a Title 702 loan of $125.000, which is the most we can expect from the limited funds available under this program. The only logical source for the money which we need would be from the Urban Mass Transportation Act, itself.

In the terms of the limited funds which are currently available for the develop ment of mass transit, this is the best possible way to broaden the application of the Act. Construction costs for rapid transit systems are so immense that a few cities could take all the monies allocated, and even they would not have scratched the surface of their needs.

By expanding the Act to include planning, many additional cities would be able to get started on solving this most pressing need. And the demands for speed are as critical as are the demands for money. Each year that passes, our problems become that much more difficult to solve. Each year that passes, the cities must turn to alternate solutions which are not inadequate and even

dangerous to the long-range health of the city, but could complicate the metropolitan situation so much that solutions would become prohibitively expansive. Planning itself is a complicated, expensive item which takes years to accomplish. In Seattle, we have started our planning with Federal funds made available through the 702 programs. The next stage of our planning, the preliminary engineering studies, are vital if we are to present a coherent picture to the voters of the Seattle area 18 months from now. We need the preliminary engineering to give us the facts and costs of the system prior to a vote. I do not want to belabor you with the details of Seattle's program. I do wish to show you why I believe that the Urban Mass Transportation Act should be amended. To begin with, no other source of money is available to the cities for the rather large expenditures which are required for this stage of the planning. You are already enough aware of the financial plight of cities to realize that we must use appropriate Federal programs if we are to solve our problems. The cities which are likely to have urgent transit needs are the ones which are most likely to have urgent financial problems. In Seattle, we look to the 702 Planning Funds of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

This fund, however, is inadequate to the needs of transit planning. Transit planning for a dozen cities like Seattle would exhaust the fund and leave nothing for the equally demanding problems of planning for needed utilities. The Department has been most helpful and has made significant suggestions on how some of our plans could be pared down to a size which they could assist. If I may interpret their statements, the Department recognizes that planning is a necessary step in transit development, acknowledges that it should be financially assisted, but does not have the capacity to do so.

At any rate, I believe that the Urban Mass Transportation Act is the vehicle which should be used for Federal participation in transit planning.

The roles of planning and construction should be linked together. One implements the other. Construction is not possible if planning is not performed. The two equally necessary functions should be combined under one legislative roof, just as they would be on the local level.

Planning on this magnitude will not be accomplished by local governments unless they are supported by Federal funding. I speak for Seattle, but I am joined by the National League of Cities and the United States Conference of Mayors in asking for consideration of mass transit on the same basis as highways, which include planning costs.

I use the analogy of highways to point up one of the perils which confronts a city like mine. There are two possible solutions to the problem of moving people into and through our downtown areas: transit and highways. If the two programs are not put on an equal basis, then the cities of America are left at the mercy of the highway builders. And I believe that the highway builders have demonstrated that they are either insensitive to the real problems of the cities or incapable of meeting their demands.

A look at any city during the rush hours is ample demonstration that the people who have so creatively and intelligently met the demands of inter-city transportation have failed when it came to intra-city travel. Indeed, the very roads they have built have tended to destroy some of the values which we strive to protect.

To many of us, and to the citizens who live in urban America, it seems logical that we should devote more energy and more money to developing rapid transit systems sensibly scaled to present needs and designed with flexibility to meet whatever tomorrow brings.

No city is capable of attacking this job with its own resources. That is why I urge you to expand the Act to include the planning function. Unless you offer this opportunity, many cities will be unable to take even the most tentative steps toward solving their transportation problems.

You gentlemen are well aware of the huge amounts of money which are required in our cities are to construct the transit systems they need to survive. Only a fraction of the systems now in planning would use up all the authorized funds. Seattle's contemplated transit system would cost perhaps $170,000,000 for the first two corridors.

Time, money and planning are the three factors which loom largest for Seattle's transit problems, and I believe for the other cities of this nation, as well. I note with concern that the Urban Mass Transportation Act of 1964 is being extended for only one year, and its grant authorization is to be only $95

million to provide a total of $150 million for fiscal 1968. This is a far cry from the demonstrated need of our cities which will require funding of upwards of $800 million a year to cope with this problem in any significant way.

Equally important is the need for an extension of the Urban Mass Transportation Act for an indefinite period. The complexities of planning require a longrange look at the problem with some assurance of future support. Since Seattle is currently wrestling with the problem of planning a transit system, I can state with conviction that you must give cities the time they need to develop intelli gent solutions to transportation problems. I submit that one year at a time does not permit this.

I also support with some enthusiasm the Amendments offered by Senator Joseph Tydings of Maryland. We can foresee the need for experts in transportation, and know that without this kind of support, we will never be able to develop them locally or nationally.

We in Seattle are equally interested in the technological breakthroughs which could result from an expanded research effort in transportation. This is a field which has been neglected for too long, and we feel that Senator Tydings' amendment would do much to develop the base for a new technology.

It is you who have to determine the order of priorities. I might only remind you that many cities cannot ignore their transit problems while they attempt to cope wih other urban ills. It is a matter of the most urgent priority to them and to us.

I do not claim that mass rapid transit is a panasea which will cure all our urban ailments. I do say that how we solve our transportation problems will have an effect on every one of our social, economic and physical problems. And I say that if we do not solve our transportation problems swiftly and with some thought for the ultimate consequences, we will not have cities worth preserving. Thank you.

Senator WILLIAMS. Senator Javits.

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, Senator Tydings is here. If he will give me just a few minutes, I will promise I will be through. Senator TYDINGS. Mr. Chairman, I am conducting a hearing downstairs. I suspended that hearing to come up because you called down and told me I was wanted.

Senator WILLIAMS. Senator Javits has been here all morning waiting.

STATEMENT OF JACOB K. JAVITS, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE OF NEW YORK

Senator JAVITS. Mr. Chairman, I am testifying this morning in support of my bill, S. 2935-cosponsored by Senators Tydings and Kuchel-to encourage regional solutions to mass transportation problems that transcend State boundaries and to provide expanded Federal assistance to hard-pressed commuter services. I would also like to testify in behalf of S. 2804, sponsored by the chairman.

First, Mr. Chairman, what I am advocating-and in addition I would like to state that my testimony shall relate to Senator Williams' bill, which I join in sponsoring and which I believe in thoroughly, and I know we will reconcile the two when it comes to final legislation. Senator WILLIAMS. The objectives are the same. Senator JAVITS. Exactly the same.

I believe it is the role of the Federal Government to help meet the operating costs of essential commuter service just as the Federal Government spends hundreds of millions of dollars to give aid to other means of transportation, such as the subsidies to airlines and the merchant marine and, of course, the enormous Federal highway

« iepriekšējāTurpināt »