Transportation as a Public Utility: Charging Networks for Cities

I may have mentioned this before, I know I’ve mentioned it in pieces on the podcast a million times, but I think cities are missing a huge opportunity to take money away from energy producers like oil and electric companies and pocket the profits for funding better urban transportation policy.

How? By setting up citywide publicly owned electric vehicle charging networks. But let’s start further back.

Think about all the ways we use the public space in our transportation rights of way we call streets and sidewalks. Streets are home to our water and wastewater network, electric grid, delivery systems for freight and people, and as natural systems that support better health and environmental outcomes. As such we grant users of the street the ability to use these spaces for personal and commercial purposes.

But we’ve never really figured out the best way to capture the value of all those uses for the public good. Sure people can use the streets to get where they are going, but the large majority of space is only available if people and companies have access to a vehicle, usually a car or a truck.

At the moment there’s value generated from things like mobility data but as our friend Nate Berg wrote for us in an article before the pandemic, it’s still very contested and can be confrontational. Places like Portland have iterated better ways to manage partnerships with mobility companies, but even now we’re seeing transportation network companies evolve through continued exploitation and shortcuts using the public good.

Now coming out of the pandemic, streets here in San Francisco have become more full with Waymo robotaxis and e-commerce deliveries, but our transit agencies face funding uncertainties and potential cuts. Additionally, our streets could soon be vessels for many different types of vehicles without people, so it’s probably as good a time as any to bring this discussion about transportation as a public utility back to the forefront.

Since the city and the people that live in it own the streets, it should be able to generate value from the investments that are already made through taxes and fees.

Other entities are creating wealth or negative externalities by using streets but not paying as much as they should for the privilege. A perfect example of this is Amazon. They pay property taxes for warehousing though often on city outskirts but are disproportionate users of the roads in the city.

At some point we’ll need to address transportation as a public utility based on these mega consumers of public street space, but those fights already exist. Now a new frontier is being opened up in the race to use public space for private gain. Curbs.

As electric vehicles gain traction, even with a setback likely during the current administration, the sidewalks next to parking space will get more crowded with charging infrastructure. The low hanging fruit of garage and parking lot charging spaces are being tapped and the next target is curbs.

And just like the fight over street space for active transportation, I foresee a fight over curbs and sidewalks for this new installation. But cities shouldn’t just cede this space without a larger plan or the intention of generating value for the city and its transportation networks.

In Portland, Joe Cortright has developed a method for measuring the benefits of active transportation called the Green Dividend. When more people use active transportation, less profits leave the city to enter the pockets of oil and gas companies. The same green dividend idea should also be applied to charging infrastructure, especially in places with public energy utilities.

In Anthony Flint’s recent book Mayor’s Desk (podcast episode 531), he chats with Burlington Vermont’s Mayor Miro Weinberger. The mayor and the local public utility have set up their system so that every replacement of a gas heater with a heat pump means money generated for the city. In most cities that exchange would have otherwise gone to an investor owned utility.

My big dream is to make the energy infrastructure in San Francisco publicly owned so instead of drivers sending gas money to oil companies or electric utility money to PG&E, the city can take those profits and use them for the public good, like funding Muni service.

So instead of allowing other investment related companies take over public rights of way for private profit (think Chicago parking meters), cities should be planning for city owned charging networks that can create value for the public.

This of course is just one small part of the idea of transportation as a public utility. There should be an integrated streets plan that discusses charging infrastructure, mobility data, use by delivery vehicles, mobility as a service/feature, curb management, pricing, and much much more. But cities have an opportunity to get out ahead of charging infrastructure, and with fiscal issues looming, there’s no better time than now.