This is the first diary in the “New Environmentalism” series. In this series, we’re going to be looking at ways to change the way we live and work – sometimes significantly – in order to live in harmony with our environment. The source of the series was a diary I wrote last week, laying out a very high-level “vision” for this new environmentalism. Numerous people in the ensuing discussion expressed interest in a more in-depth series of diaries. If you want to get involved in writing for the series, or have a topic you want covered or resource you think is cool, please feel free to e-mail Knoxville Progressive and I. We’d love to have more people involved with this, especially since the ultimate goal is a real grass-roots effort to implement the vision.
Goals of the New Environmentalism: devise a practical, realistic vision for a sustainable future and a plan for moving from our modern society to this sustainable society. In this society, we claim that the proper goal of economic activity is not growth but, rather, human happiness.
In this essay, we examine the problem of transportation: moving people and things around. This problem is fundamental to human society. Not everything can be done in one place, and the things we need to do stuff tend to be inconveniently spread around. Because we have so many different reasons for “moving stuff around”, and the problems and solutions are so complicated, I’m going to split this essay into three different diaries: “short-range transportation”, “long-range transportation”, and “avoiding transportation”.
One recurring theme is going to be the obsession with speed. While reasonable travel times are necessary for human happiness, minimal transit times aren’t. Going everywhere as fast as we can is kind of silly. “As fast as we need to” seems to be a much better attitude.
Short-Range Transportation
For the purposes of this diary, I’m going to define “short-range transportation” as transportation within a well-defined community. There are other kinds of short-range transportation, such as those used to move about in rural areas, but they have (to my knowledge) much lower volumes, which makes them less problematic.
Why Cars Suck
As a starting point, how do we get around in our cities now? Well, over very short distances, we can walk. Having to walk more than 10 minutes or so regularly becomes annoying. So we need some form of more rapid transit. The most common answer to this is “cars”. Cars do have some advantages. They are flexible and convenient. They can be used for long-distance travel as well, and go where you want them to, when you want them to. Cars are also a very bad answer in general. Roads and parking eats up a lot of space, most of which cannot be used for anything else and is usually not even used by cars. Cars are noisy and produce a lot of air pollution in a way that’s very hard to control, and are hard to optimize, because they have to carry their fuel with them. To top it off, cars are inefficient, again because of the flexibility. A lot of fuel gets wasted transporting around extra seats and cargo space, which often don’t get used, at high speeds.
Plus, cars tend to promote “sprawl” development, which damages the ecosystem and unnecessarily increases the land footprint of human communities. Rather than concentrated communities, they tend to create isolated dwellings. Suburbanism is seen by many as a direct reaction to the car, a belief that has been given credence by the growth of car use in developing nations.
Another thing to note is that cars seem to promote inherently poor use patterns. The average car commuter wastes a lot of time – and fuel – sitting in traffic. Cars are also very dangerous. Both of these are discussed, along with some other problems with cars, in this article on clean air.
One of the big problems here is culture. The corporate media has linked cars to the notions of freedom, prosperity, and independence. To be free, prosperous, and independent, you have to have a car. They let you get anywhere you want to quickly! This is, upon reflection, a very obvious fallacy. You’re no more independent or free with a car than without one, and are significantly less prosperous due to the significant added costs of car ownership. You’re just anchored to different things.
Alternatives to Cars
Fortunately, we have alternatives to the car for urban transportation. One of the simplest, which can make use of much of the car-type infrastructure without modification (though making proper use of it does require urban planning modification) is the bicycle and related human-powered vehicles. These vehicles typically eliminate all of the problems with cars, though they do have their own problems. Passengers become difficult to carry, you usually need good balance, and bad weather really rains on your parade. As it were.
A common argument against cycling is that you wind up using more oil, because you have to consume more food. This is, simply, bunk. For starters, the equations used compare the oil used by the car to the oil needed to produce the food to give you the energy to cycle. Even leaving aside green agriculture, this conveniently forgets that you still need to eat if you drive.
Buses deserve a mention, but only a cursory one. While more efficient than cars, I’ve yet to encounter a bus system that was convenient to use. They seem to me to be working around the problem rather than addressing it.
Next up in terms of infrastructure required is light rail, so-called because the tracks are less built-up than “heavy” rail. Traditionally, light rail has taken the form of “trams” or “streetcars”. These are widely regarded as a good interim solution for established cities. Light rail tracks can be incorporated into existing roadways without too much difficulty, and can even coexist with cars, if you don’t mind having heavier carriages so that they can withstand car impacts safely. Light rail does away with most of the problems of cars. Wasted space is minimized, noise pollution is reduced, and motive power is drawn from the electrical grid – a good first step at minimizing air pollution, maximizing efficiency, and allowing for sustainable energy generation.
Finally, we arrive at heavy rail, metros, and subways. If my understanding is correct, heavy rail in general is capable of higher speeds than light rail, and has a higher capacity. It’s also more expensive to install, and requires more infrastructure. Other than that, it has pretty much the same benefits and weaknesses as light rail.
Other rail systems can also be included here. The central fact that makes rail work is very simple: rail vehicles don’t need to carry their fuel with them. Because they run along rigid, well-defined lines, they can afford to be dependent on an external source of electricity to power electric motors and other systems. This minimizes noise and air pollution, and allows for the maximum exploitation of economies of scale. Rather than requiring complicated energy storage and distribution mechanisms, they can draw directly on electrical power generated by sustainable means.
But Doesn’t Public Transit Suck?
I expect most readers will have spotted the common trend in the above: public transit. Yet the conventional wisdom of the 20th century is that public transit sucks. Inconvenient, cramped, uncomfortable, expensive. Who’d want to use it, anyway?
Well, me, for one. Yes, I’ve been on some really horrible public transit systems. Halifax has a particularly odious bus system. But it’s still less frustrating than driving. I can sit and think, rather than having to constantly be thinking about moving the car around. Most other public transit systems that I’ve used have been similar, though Toronto’s was especially nice. Public transit systems are also better for community-building and socialization… If they have good schedules and routes. And if memory serves, they’re less accident-prone to boot. (Having just been in a minor car accident – as a passenger – last night, this has been brought to the forefront of my mind.)
The cost of a public transit system is more obvious, I’ll admit that. It seems much more expensive at first glance. Then we remember: cars these days are very heavily subsidized, from highway construction on out. I recall seeing a figure of $3000 per car per year, not including the real cost of oil and the unaccounted-for externalities of air and noise pollution. Care to guess which one’s probably cheaper in terms of ecological impact, material investment, and energy use? There will be, I don’t deny it, probably a high initial cost for any car-free scheme. But the cost of keeping it going is almost certainly substantially lower.
Another common objection is user fees. These are, I will admit, annoying. So the ideal system would get rid of them. Since everyone’s assumed to be using the transit system somehow, incorporating the necessary fees into city taxes seems reasonable. And no less absurd than everyone financing car use and highway construction.
While we in the north-west are used to horror stories about public transportation – everyone seems to know how horrible the London tube and New York subway are, for example – it doesn’t have to be like that. A recent BBC article describes the wonderful metro system in Caracas. The key is that the government didn’t just throw in a Metro and expect it to work. They made it part of a more far-reaching cultural plan. The implications are staggering.
What About Freight?
Ah, and now the tough question. What about freight? Currently, we make heavy use of trucks – especially shipping container trucks – for last-mile delivery. How the heck do we replace this?
We’re already often using trains to move shipping containers from cargo ports to more inland cities. Surely using trains again for another stage of the journey isn’t that much of a stretch of the imagination. They would probably need separate stations from passenger service, but may be able to share a lot of track, minimizing infrastructure investment. This is one thing that light rail probably wouldn’t be able to handle, unfortunately.
We still haven’t quite solved the last mile problem, but we’re closer. We’ve probably eliminated a lot of the need for trucks. So how do we handle the “last metre”, as it were? There’s a number of solutions, and I think the answer’s going to depend on the individual city. I can see anything from muscle-powered push-carts to small battery-operated trucks working for this.
Small freight and mail are another tricky problem. These things often follow much less regular routes than large freight delivery, but are still high-volume. I think the solution here is to, again, use the metro. Move the mail or small freight on the metro as far as possible, and then transfer it to the methods mentioned above for “last metre” delivery. Routes with lots of mail could even, conceivably, have mail cars, while others could just carry postmen or mail sacks. (Though ideally, computer networks would be used to reduce the amount of physical deliveries flying around.)
What About Hydrogen?
What about hydrogen? Yes, I’m well aware that it’s being sold as the fuel of the future, a way to get a green economy without giving up cars. In my opinion, it’s a lot of bunk. Here’s a typical article on the promise of hydrogen vehicles. Some of the points it raises are excellent: revolutions in materials technology can indeed improve efficiency enormously. If we have to keep cars around, powering them with something other than hydrocarbon fuel is a great idea. Others are just silly. Using hydrogen cars as portable electrical generators? Stupid! Remember that you’ve had to use energy (almost certainly electrical) to extract and compress that hydrogen in the first place. Turning around and using that to generate electrical energy again is just wasteful.
Combined with green power efforts, hydrogen has potential as a transition fuel. But nothing more. I think we’d be better off applying the revolutionary developments in the “Hypercar” to public transit systems than attempting to use them to continue the car-centric model of transportation, and using the “Hypercar” to wean our societies off their car dependency.
The Problem with Walking
As IndyLib pointed out in my first diary, walking presents a problem for many people. People with disabilities, old people, women with very young children, people recovering from surgeries or injuries… The list goes on. Yet in any city without door-to-door vehicles, these people are going to be forced to walk, and even stand around waiting. Once they get on the public transit system, things are usually fine. There are bus designs, for example, that are very convenient for disabled people to use.
The problem we’re left with, then, is how to get these people to and from public transit stations. We have to do this without making them dependent on other people. There’s one obvious solution: build dwellings near or in public transit stations, and give priority for these dwellings to disabled people. It seems to make sense, but there are likely to be social and cultural barriers to it. Buying them all electric scooters, muscle-powered wheelchairs, or similar is also problematic, for the same reasons. If society would simply accept the reality of disabled people, this would be much easier. We can’t rely on that in the short term, and so must plan for them.
Perhaps the solution, then, is to eliminate the need to walk? Unfortunately, I don’t see a good way to do this, unless the entire community is built unrealistically close to public transit stations. Once again, we seem to come back to recognizing that temporary or permanent disabilities exist, and that we need to plan for and compensate for them.
This is a big mess, and I have no deal how to handle it without the social change angle.
So How Do We Do It?
This, surprisingly, seems to be one of the easier changes to make. Most of the needed push seems to be at the municipal level. Mandates and funding from higher levels of government would probably be helpful, but I doubt they’re necessary. The best bet would probably be the standard political organization schtick: find some like-minded people, start spreading information and talking to council members. If you think you can manage it, getting elected to your city council might help a lot.
A good implementation plan will depend on your area. Climate, prices, and such all matter a lot, as do local manufacturers. Try to obtain a detailed knowledge of your city’s layout, and assemble as detailed a plan as possible. Consulting with a qualified, sympathetic urban planner or architect would probably help a lot here, if you can find one. Routes and frequencies have to be planned very carefully, so again, a knowledge of the area and city is vital.
One thing to avoid is having one massive switching station where a lot of routes meet. Such things become congested easily, and are frustrating to navigate. A network of smaller stations, arranged to minimize the number of transfers necessary, works much better, although it is slightly harder to implement.
There are likely to be many obstacles to the implementation of a car-free transportation infrastructure. While owners of car dealerships and gas stations are unlikely to be friendly to it, and probably have significant economic power, they can be shouldered aside by a grassroots movement. The key to establishing this, and maintaining the amount of support necessary, is to take things slowly. Your initial goal should not be to immediately eliminate all car use within your city. You should aim to increase the feasibility and uses of public transit, and gradually phase out the need for cars. Focus on making the public transit system as convenient and effective as possible, and on removing the artificial incentive for wasteful automotive travel.
A resource with many ideas for creating an “ideal” car-free city: CarFree Cities.
Next time: Long-range transportation!
You obviously put a lot of time and thought into it. I look forward to others in the series.
Actually, I think most of us would be much better off if a ten-minute walk was a regular part of our daily routine. I know I would. Granted that is not possible for many people, such as the aged and those with disabilities as you mention, but for most of us it would probably be the simplest and most effective action we could take to improve our quality of life.
Perhaps an interim goal might be simply to shift the emphasis in urban planning away from car-centered suburban sprawl toward walk-friendly communities. How many suburban commuters now live in so-called communities where there is absolutely nothing within walking distance except more houses just like their own? I suspect the health benefits to the general population as a whole would go a measurable way toward paying the costs of transition.
. . .given to this. From my local paper:
And . . . great diary, Egarwaen. More please!
As a side-note, street layout is very odd. Grids, especially grids with long, (mostly) straight streets, not only don’t work particularly well, but aren’t very comfortable for most people to live in. We tend to prefer subtly curving irregular streets.
That sounds like a wonderful first step, though!
I don’t agree. Although I do agree that aesthetically in a feng shui sort of way that, humans find curves more pleasant, I think grids work well for neighborhoods, especially if the blocks are small, as is proposed. It makes it a lot easier to get from point A to point B on foot. The older neighborhoods that I’ve lived in, where I walked more, are laid out that way.
And also, studies have shown (I think, no link, just remembering something I read), that if there are a lot of straight, more-or-less equal streets to choose from, drivers will spread themselves out more to avoid congestion, and there will be less traffic on any one street than there is on the arterials that most people have to use (and get stuck in) the way neighborhoods are currently designed with no through streets. Less being stuck in traffic = less pollution, so that’s another benefit.
In the various cities I’ve lived in, the pedestrian-friendliness of the place was far more related to whether there were sidewalks available (and, ideally, tree-lined to make for cooler walks on summer days) than whether the streets were curvy or ruler-straight. Cul-de-sacs are very inconvenient for walking, however (although they are good for small children playing and biking outdoors, which was their initial selling point). In subdivisions with a cul-de-sac layout, addition of walking/biking trails to allow easier access to main streets where shopping and bus routes are found would go far to decrease dependence on the auto for short trips out for a few groceries or the like.
You can have streets on a grid-like layout but with the kinds of gentle curves you are talking about, as illustrated in figure two here.
(Figure one is a standard suburban cul-de-sac layout for comparison.)
Growing up in Philadelphia, which is laid out on a grid except for a few very old roads that go back a couple of hundred years, the neighborhoods built before World War II were designed / zoned in such a way that it was possible to walk no more than say five blocks to be on a busy commercial street that included food stores, a library, mass transit, schools, medical offices, etc. It was quite possible to easily live in such a city without a car. What some would see as a down side was that the neighborhoods were high-density (row houses). As long as the streets were tree-lined it was tolerable, though; and houses that were closer to a park were more highly valued for that reason. However, on streets without trees it definitely gave you the impression of being in a shoe store amid the endless rows of shoe boxes along the walls.
I think having a grid (or curvy grid) for the main streets is a good idea for mass transit routes, access of emergency personnel, and since we’re not likely to eliminate the desire or need for cars totally. Within those larger blocks, though, the grid should be broken up by frequent (every few blocks) small parks for the immediate neighborhood. Anyone who’s been to the historic area of Savannah, GA knows the kind of “vest-pocket parks” I’m talking about; the original plan for downtown Philly by William Penn in the 1600’s included five such squares as well. Two remain intact today (one near Independence Hall has the grave of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution; another is Rittenhouse Square). Of the remaining three, one now is the site of City Hall, one is Logan Circle (where several museums and the main Public Library are found) and one (at the foot of a bridge to New Jersey) is the site of the Philly police headquarters (seen on the TV show “Cold Case”).
Also greenways could snake through the pattern along streams to preserve wildlife and allow for bike trails.
Yes, that’s exactly the kind of thing I was talking about. I suppose my language was inexact. What I was referring to was “rigid” grids, with no deviation from the grid pattern allowed. I believe that setups like the one in figure 2 you linked to above are currently in favour among the environmentalist/new urbanism crowd, though I could be mistaken.
Parts of Halifax are, thankfully, still like that.
Yes. Green space is really high on the list of priorities, and its influence seems to be frequently underestimated. One of the things I absolutely love about Halifax is that we’ve got trees pretty much everywhere. Some of the newer developments are tree-less, unfortunately, as are the highly commercialized areas. (BorgMart seems to think that they detract from the splendour of its cubes.) But the older parts of the city have trees all over the place. It was a bit of a pain during the hurricane a few years back, as the municipal government hadn’t spent quite enough time and money tending them, but it makes those parts of the city a wonderful place to live.
One idea for “pocket parks” that I like is to use the interior of blocks for smaller ones. That gives everyone some close-by green space. If you then locate larger parks nearby…
A great idea!
Also greenways could snake through the pattern along streams to preserve wildlife and allow for bike trails.
Knoxville is not a pedestrian-friendly city by any means other than downtown and a few older neighborhoods, but the greenways/bike trails along the creeks is one thing they do alright here.
One of the most efficient cities I ever lived in was Salt Lake City. Their grid provides multiple north-south and east-west routes so there’s no traffic build-up on any one of them. All the traffic lights were in sync so once you got rolling at the right speed (45, I think) it was clear sailing from one end of the valley to the other.
Every street was lined with sidewalks on both sides and bike lanes. Since the city was relatively flat except for a slight tilt from north to south, bicyles were a pleasant alternative to cars. The big exception was the northside where the land went uphill like San Fransciso but most of the city was easy biking.
The bus system ran every other street so no bus stop was farther than a block away from any residence. When my car broke down, I rode the bus to work and after that I rode the bus to work because it was so pleasant to be able to watch the sunrise and sunset on the mountain peaks.
Hm. Okay, I take it back. That does sound nice, especially with sufficient green space.
Very much so. My schedule’s a little irregular, but on days when I do commute, I have at least a 5 minute walk to the bus stop. Before we moved, I would walk 10-15 minutes daily to get to my university. Despite having a diet that was not always exactly perfectly healthy and not doing much other exercise, I’ve always been fairly fit, though far from athletic. Meanwhile, I know a lot of people who do all their commuting by car, and despite having much more strict diets and doing significantly more exercise, they’re noticeably less fit.
(Not to claim that this is a global effect. I also know people who do most of their commuting by car and are as fit as I am.)
I’m sure we’ve all seen articles about the “plague of obesity” facing modern society. Every single one I’ve seen has focused on junk food, and not given a single though to the fact that a lot of people hop in the car for a five-minute jaunt to the convenience store.
That’s an interesting idea, and something I’m going to have to remember to mention when I get around to urban planning… Modern and post-modern urban planning schemes adhere very strictly to the idea of “separation of concerns”. This means you have massive areas dedicated to only housing, massive areas dedicated to only commerce, massive areas dedicated to only industry, and isolated areas dedicated to green space. While wise in some senses (you don’t want heavy industry too close to your living spaces, after all), most of the side-effects of these decisions have proven them to be stupid.
I think we are starting to see some changes in this. All the recent apartment building construction projects I’ve seen here in Halifax have been around four floors, and have had the bottom floor mostly dedicated to commercial concerns. Unfortunately, they’re also mostly luxury buildings, so I expect it’ll take some time before this catches on in general.
Have you read A Pattern Language by Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein? If not may I recommend it? It profoundly changed how I look at living space at any scale from personal space to urban space.
The book identifies and describes elemental patterns at all scales from the very largest: independent regions and the distribution of towns, to the very smallest personal spaces: different chairs, pools of light, and things from your life. And relates them to each other. I found the book fascinating. From the foreword:
…
In short, no pattern is an isolated entity. Each pattern can exist in the world, only to the extent that is supported by other patterns: the larger patterns in which it is embedded, the patterns of the same size that surround it, and the smaller patterns which are embedded in it.
I think a lot of what is wrong with the suburban pattern that has taken over our cities is that it utterly breaks those relationships of patterns within patterns and tries to make the suburb connected by freeway arteries the only pattern that matters. I think much of the alienation that we experience in society, especially in the USA, comes from the broken patterns that most of us find ourselves living in.
No, I haven’t, much to my shame. It’s near the top of my “books to buy” list, though, along with The Timeless Way of Building. I’ve heard very good things about it. I’d definitely agree with your conclusions. CarFree Cities apparently makes heavy use of material from A Pattern Language in designing the components of their ideal city.
An older book ( a job for alibris?) that explored some of these same ideas (if you can find it) is “Human Scale” by Kirkpatrick Sale (1980; I think I read it in grad school during the Reagan years)
Very good stuff here but I’d like to put in a word for things that people can lobby for that can be done without major infrastructure changes and for low cost. They may not solve huge problems but incremental successes pay off in both immediate improvements and in encouraging people to keep trying.
Some possibilities:
And they can help to slowly but steadily convince people that they don’t absolutely need those cars.
Very important. I’d say shelters at any transit stop. People are going to be much less inclined to use mass transit systems if they have to stand around waiting in the freezing cold/snow/rain for the next vehicle. Even a simple mostly-enclosed shelter can do a lot, if it’s large enough. Including schedules for that stop is also good.
This can help, but has to be done intelligently. The no fare area has to be large enough that there’s a point to actually taking public transit, and the route has to be chosen based on where people actually go.
…things that people can lobby for that can be done without major infrastructure changes and for low cost.
Growing up in a neighborhood of row houses, there were typically small businesses in the houses on the corners. At the intersection up the street from my house, there was a dry cleaner, a drugstore, a candy store, and a house that previously had been a doctor’s or dentist’s office at one time (you could tell from the style of the house and the distinctive side entrance, found only on other similar houses with medical providers). The corner down the street had a butcher shop, a furniture upholstery shop, a candy store, and a basement used for storage for some kind of business except on election day, when it was the polling place. This was typical.
All these businesses closed in the 20 years I grew up there, replaced by businesses you could only reach by car. Partly this was due to the arrival of supermarkets and large chain drugstores, but this could have been prevented by clever zoning and tax abatement laws to encourage small businesses within walking distances of residents. The residential density did not drop at all in the 20 years in question (in fact it probably rose as some homes were made into apartments), although the average income of residents did.
In designing / redesigning / retrofitting neighborhoods to be as energetically and environmentally efficient as possible, not to mention more livable, sometimes the best solution is to eliminate the need for transportation at all, other than one’s own two feet. By zoning and tax rebates to encourage the rebirth of small businesses (creating jobs as a benefit as well) in residential areas (OK, maybe mot the dry cleaner, given environmental issues, but many businesses would be just fine) we can make cities more livable and more environmentally benign at the same time.
A key to strong communities is folks knowing each other, and that doesn’t happen until they’re walking to the corner store, running into the neighbors there and catching up on community gossip or finding out that the old lady down the row had a heart attack and could use some help from your kids to pick up her groceries for her for the next few weeks.
Folks knowing each other, doing business with each other, is what MAKES a community a community. That is what inspires neighbors to BE neighbors, to know that Mrs. Chang is sick, and take some food over there so she won’t have to worry about her kids either going hungry or eating nothing but junk. Oh, but wait! Mr. Hassan at the corner market won’t let them eat nothing but junk! He will give them a good scolding and some kebabs and rice to take home to their mother. And when one of them starts hanging out with the wrong crowd, before too much damage is done, Mrs. Sanchez at the drugstore makes him an offer he can’t refuse: her son who just left for college’s old bicycle, free comic books, AND a paycheck every week, all for spending his afternoons and Saturdays delivering, yes, delivering, medicine to people around the hood, because it’s a community, where neighbors are friends, and you’re all human beings and everybody knows that nobody who is sick wants to walk down to the drugstore.
It is hard not to wonder if things would have come to the extreme state they are in now – on every front – if the corporations had not killed the communities.
But be careful, because if you start thinking about that, you might find yourself in the unpleasant position of understanding why the corporations killed the communities.
Man! I knew there was a reason why I wanted you in on this thing. 🙂
I grew up in the Annapolis Valley, about an hour and a half drive from where I now reside. Small town, but the shopping centre of the local area. Before we moved to Halifax, there was a four-town strip (Kentville, New Minas, Greenwich, and Wolfville) that was dominated by small businesses. The most you got in the way of big corporate blobs was fast food places and Zellers. Most of the businesses owned their own premises, or were in a couple of rather well-designed malls.
I’ve been back there a couple of times since then. As far as I can see, driving through, most of the small businesses have been shut down. The malls have been torn down and replaced by Big Box stores. And what used to be well-maintained semi-rural housing… Isn’t. There’s a few small, local businesses holding on, mostly near the university.
It’s a real tragedy.
For me, at least for now, a car has become a luxury item that I have chosen not to purchase. I’d like to say that’s the result of careful planning, but it’s really a case of serendipity.
The factors involved are (1) I was able to transfer to a home-based position; (2) I live less than a block from east and west bus stops on a route that takes me most places I need to go; (3) my work hours are flexible enough that I can run errands using the bus during weekday/daylight hours and can afford the extra time that using the bus entails; (4) because I’m not making car/insurance payments, I can afford to occasionally rent a car when I need to go out of town or call a cab when I’ve purchased more than I can carry on the bus; (5) I have groceries delivered and a mobile vet service that comes to the house; and (6) I have practically no social life.
Given all those factors, it would be positively stupid for me to own a car. But had I not found myself unintentionally carless at one point and unable to afford a replacement, I probably wouldn’t have figured out that I can and should live without one.
Suppose there were a massive EMP pulse that knocked out everyone’s cars, and suppose also that nobody could get repairs done for three months. I wonder how many people would discover during that time that they can get along just fine without their personal pollution producers.
So I think you’re a little “cart-horse” here – if you’ll forgive a transport idion. 😉
I highly recommend having a look at the Slow Cities and the New Urbanism movements in Italy and the USA respectively, and for that matter, having a read of the great book “In Praise of Slow” by Carl Honore.
What I’m getting it is the possibilities for retro-fitting a poorly planned (ie average modern city) with an efficient and pleasant public transport system, and turning it from car to people friendly, all come from an understanding of urban planning- for eg housing density, greenspace, decentralised or centralised systems, the placement of commercial zones and so on. I can see above that you mention it, but I’m a bit bemused why you’ve started with transport, as it is essentially part of planning, and you can’t get very far in a conversation without someone saying “all that’s welll and good, but my city has not left provision for bike lanes” – for eg.
Of course, if you’re really lucky, you might get to live in a place where the planners have either had the foresight to build in those two factors, or left the planning fluid enough that these are easily accommodated possibilities.
On a more meta-level; are you intending this series to largely focus on the developed world? That’s the feeling I am getting, which is fine, but I think it should be acknowledged upfront, or the diaries that are largely developed-world focussed & flavoured acknowledged, because otherwise a whiff of elitism hangs over the whole exercise.
The above post is by myriad (my partner), who forgot to sign-out as me, and -in as her.
Thanks for pointing that out; you’re very right, and it’s an important thing to keep in mind. I suppose I should have considered doing urban planning first. However, I wanted to give transportation a shot because, all too often, I hear the meme “you can’t replace cars”, both from environmentalists and those opposed to an environmentally-friendly change in society. Most seem to have bought into the delusion that cars are somehow necessary, or that the replacements are less energy-efficient. I wanted to dispel that, and show that non-automotive transport was possible, before moving on.
The original diary gives more of a high-level view of how everything fits together. I think I hit urban planning in there. I also hit manufacturing and agriculture, both of which I think need to be more local, among other things.
I am focused on the developed world, as I believe that’s where most of BT’s readers are from. We also have, to the best of my knowledge, the largest problems with changing established patterns. I’m quite aware that the developing world is seeing a massive upswing in car usage. However, I was under the impression that this was due to the perception that cars were the “way things were done” in the developed world. While we can’t force them to change, we can work towards changes here, to set a good example.
Another thought on why we need cars and how to live without them:
People today typically drive to the supermarket once a week or every 10 days, and stock up on $100 – $200 of food and staples. Of course you cannot take that much home on the bus! We need to re-learn how to shop like Europeans, hitting the market on the way home from work and picking up a few items each day as things run out.
Key to this is zoning to ensure there are plenty of small, affordable, family-run markets along the routes that people will walk from their bus or train stop to their house. This is a creator of jobs for entreprenurial small family-run businesses, which is why this type of system still thrives in immigrant neighborhoods in the US, but not in other places where mom and dad have “serious, respectable, middle-class jobs” that require them to travel to an office complex out in the suburbs, and local jobs are filled by kids working at fast food joints.
Which raises another whole set of interlocked issues about fast food chains versus small business restaurants and coooking for yourself.
The whole lifestyle is interconnected, and dependent on cheap energy. When energy gets expensive enough the clever folks will rediscover the lifestyles of our grandparents quickly, while the dinosaurs will call for wars to bring back cheap oil as they slide back down the economic ladder their families climbed so painfully over generations.
This creates more jobs than just at the markets, too. It creates a lot of jobs in the transportation industry, for example. Even if we get rid of trucking, we still do this.
That too. And with green agriculture, micro-agriculture, and all that other fun stuff. (Neighbourhood gardens, anyone?) I’m especially sensitive to this one, as I can’t eat in most fast-food restaurants due to issues with cross-contamination. And the proliferation of fast-food restaurants is making places with clueful cooks harder and harder to find.
That was exactly the realization that got me started on this diary series. The whole lifestyle’s interconnected, recent, and totally unnecessary. It makes the vast majority of people poor and miserable. Maybe I’m just being optimistic, but I don’t think we need to wait until energy gets expensive. I think that, if we can make smart changes fast, energy won’t have to get expensive.
Outsmart the market.
Short-Range Transport
Another option.
Single occupant, enclosed vehicles.
Powered by any means necessary. Any means possible.
Essentially a three or four-wheeled, enclosed motorcycle.
Pluses-Immensely less expensive to make, operate and run than cars. Much less space-wasting and polluting as well. Still as flexible as a car for short distance travel…say 30 miles or less…minus the passenger and larger cargo load options. All weather.
Minuses-More dangerous to operate.
Solutions to that minus-Many.
Special sub-30MPH lanes and/or roadways, better safety devices and vehicle reinforcement, a gradual (although rapid would be better) decrease in the average mass of ALL vehicles (Let’s get rid of SUVs and mini-vans. Turn them into extra rooms for houses; melt them down and make smaller vehicles with them.), usage of existing heavy and light rail systems as delivery systems for cargo into cities as well as for passengers. (Which would largely eliminate the HUGE influx of heavy trucks into urban areas and thus make traffic much less congested and much safer as well.) The possibilities are endless.
This can all be done, and it can be done AT A PROFIT TO OUR HEAVY INDUSTRY. The corporate resistance to this kind of change is simply the result of the kind of business-as-usual mire and mediocrity that is part of EVERY large system. Had it been up to the corporate interests of the United States in the 1930s we NEVER would have mobilized against the Axis powers. And yet…once we did, it was the impetus for our ascendancy to economic primacy amongst the developed nations of the world.
A movement like this would revitalize the nation and its businesses.
Will it happen?
ANY of it?
Stay tuned.
The game ain’t over, yet.
You can hear rumbles like this in the system if you listen closely enough.
We shall see…
AG
Those can work, but you’re back to one of the same problems as cars: you need a source of electricity that you can haul along with you. And that’s bad for the efficiency of the vehicle. The main advantage of the forms of public transportation I covered above is that they can draw their power from an external grid.
It’s an interesting idea, though, and could be a very useful interim option for convincing people to adjust to the old new way of living.
Like I said…using any form of power available.
I mean…even gasoline.
What would be the savings and environmental impact if every short trip mile…say 30 miles or less…driven today in a car carrying only one passenger was instead driven on a motorcycle? Just a plain old internal combustion motor cycle. Say one small enough to top out at about 60MPH.
Let ALONE the various and sundry fuel options that could become available within the next few years if we really set our minds to the problem.
Hydrogen cells, lightweight batteries, solar power (Why not? save 3% or more on sunny days…add that in the millions and you are saving some FUEL.), hybrids of ALL of these plus the ones we have now that replenish batteries from braking.
Hell, as much braking as you have to do in city traffic, a well functioning hybrid system would almost NEVER have to use fuel. That’s how it seems in NYC, anyway.
The REAL drawbacks to public transportation are twofold.
1-They need a HUGE infrastructure.
And
2-We’re cowboys.
This is…or was, anyway, and may well become one again…a country of individualists. I am not sure that we CAN be totally marshalled into public transportation systems.
New York’s works fairly well, but the traffic jams reach max before people give up and use the trains, buses and subways. Only after total commuting failure do most people start to go public. That’s the way we are, and I am not at all sure that we should NOT be that way.
If an individually based system could be set up…one that eliminated even 1/2 the oil use and pollution that we now face…would that not be a fine first step?
Followed by a crash program to develop practical and safe alternate fuels?
Along with an internet-based home work scheme, which is becoming more and more popular these days.?
5% here, 10% there…suddenly things have changed for the better. Decidedly for the better.
I like the idea…
AG
Again, good interim measure, not good in the long term. We need sustainability, and depending on a non-renewable source like oil for fuel is a bad idea. Hydrogen cells have some potential, but only when combined with a heavy emphasis on green power generation. Solar power has a fairly big why not: the benefit you provide to a vehicle is marginal at best. I’m well aware of things like the Solar Car competition. I’m also aware of how many corners the teams there cut, and how impractical their cars are for actual use.
Not true. At least, no larger than cars, and very probably smaller. Cars need an absolutely enourmous infrastructure: auto mechanics, factories, car dealerships, car transports, gas stations, gas distribution, highway construction, and insurance.
The two are not exclusive. It’s merely a matter of PR.
Definitely. But as an interim measure. As for alternative fuels… Not going to happen. Oil and coal were freak accidents. There are sustainable methods of power generation that can meet the global demand, but not portably.
BIODIESEL!
http://www.nbb.org/ is the National Biodiesel Board. It’s amazing how little coverage there is of this topic, and people need to know. It’s plants, it’s clean, it works in unmodified current diesel engines (and is better for them than petrodiesel). Depending on where you live, it may even be very easy to come by.
Biodiesel’s really problematic. It takes a lot of ariable land to grow the stuff, which puts further pressure on food production. And from what I’ve read, we’ve got no hope of producing enough to replace gasoline. Good transition fuel, and good fuel for vehicles that simply cannot run hooked up to a grid. But as a way to maintain the car-centric lifestyle, it’s not going to work.
The trend in the US is towards expanding past suburban development to exurban areas. If you look at the areas surrounding the cities in the west like Phoenix or Denver you will see communities being created 30-60 miles from the city centers.
This is the worst possible new development. It depends upon cheap fuel for those driving, it requires lots of new land as the communities all consist of low density private homes on separated plots. In addition there is a need to bring water, sewage and electricity service a great distance as well. Especially in the west there is little regard for the impact this will have on the region. As semi-arid regions there is already insufficient water for existing usages. The new population, with its lawns, etc. will just make things worse, faster.
Ideas for mass transit are not even talked about. As far as I can see the problem is one of dispersed feeds (the commuters) going to dispersed destinations. The first and last mile problem. If someone needs to get to a mass transit station by car then there is little reason to not complete the trip in the same vehicle. Most of the costs of owning a car are fixed overhead and thus driving a few miles less each day does not make a difference compared with not owning a car at all.
At the other end lots of jobs are in suburban office parks which also don’t lend themselves to mass transit solutions.
I’ve always felt that some sort of mini-vehicle that could be driven onto a transport train and then driven off at the other end might be a novel approach. You have your own personal space and the flexibility at each end.
Ugh. I have a strong enough dislike for carbon-copy suburban development schemes. Exurban development schemes, based on the illusion of living “in the country”, just make no sense at all to me. And the die-hard country mice I know are just as frustrated by them. There really is no point.
I worked in one for four months partway through my undergraduate degree. “Soul-destroying” doesn’t even begin to cover it. (Even worse, I was working for a subsidiary of AOL. Doom!) Fortunately, it was right next to a bus line, so I didn’t have to drive, but it was still annoying. But that was one of the major factors that drove me into graduate school.
Absolutely! That’s where the whole problem winds up. Which is why urban planning becomes so important – you need to lay out your residential and commercial zones not only so that you can run public transit lines through them easily, but so you can link up the public transit lines easily.
And I’m quite aware of how little mass transit ideas are talked about. Its the faux-libertarianism you mentioned in your own essays at work, I think. They’ve bought into the “automotive freedom” argument, and see public transit as collectivist and evil. Never mind that a good public transit system seems to be cheaper than an automotive transit system…
Now that’s an interesting idea… While I’m still generally of the opinion that the flexibility is mostly a myth, it seems to be a persistent one, and this would seem to alleviate some of the worst elements, and provide some interesting opportunities.
There are some communities that actually bus in the service workers in private vans, the counties regularly vote down any effort to have mass transit from the nearby urban areas, they do not wish the poor to have access to the community, except when it is necessary, as in the case of service workers, who can be returned to the closest bus stop in the city when their shifts are done.
And it goes without saying that there is no “low income” housing in these communities. One of the primary reasons for their coming into existence was the desire of the affluent to distance themselves from the ghettos.
The affluent to distance themselves from the ghettos that they created.
Part of the point of this diary series is to demonstrate how everything ties together. We simply can’t abandon one part of the progressive agenda – the wealth gap, say – without having the rest of it fall apart. Defend the wealth gap, and you wind up defending a social order that is inherently opposed to cheap, clean transportation!
That said, the picture isn’t hopeless. I suggest reading the linked BBC article about the establishment of a metro service in Caracas. Not only did the government manage to push the project through, but it’s gained so much mass appeal that any politician trying to cripple it will put themselves out of office. Not only that, but the country has a massive wealth gap, and the subway connects the rich and poor areas of town.
Venezuela has a left. And it stood up. And it won.
I’m hoping that we can build a new left from the topsoil up.
http://actionalert.blogspot.com/2006/01/save-endangered-specied-act.html
that post goes really well with this one!
You want to do a diary for the series about biodiversity, habitats, endangered speices, and that kind of thing?
it should be
http://actionalert.blogspot.com/2006/01/save-endangered-species-act.html
as for doing such a diary, that’s not really my area of expertise. but i think i can find someone for the job; what exactly are you thinking?
The issues involved and practical approaches to resolving them.
I sparked a similar thread on eurotrib last month. If you are interested in what some of the remarks were here is the link:
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2005/10/14/195951/44
—
As for concrete ideas here is one I posted elsewhere:
Needless to say, no one took up the challenge for new ideas. Perhaps people here are more innovative.
I think there’s a problem with your reasoning: I’m not aware of any serious attempt to change the policies. Everything from the tax structure to zoning regulations is designed to promote a decentralized, commute-heavy style of living.
Here’s a simple setup: local merchants are constantly being pressured out by big-box stores. This is often because they have a smaller, more focused (but higher-quality) selection, cannot offer the same discounts, and are still far enough away that they can’t be conveniently accessed. Zoning regulations tend to prevent them from relocating closer to their customers, with the net effect of putting them out of business.
Quick solution: change the zoning regulations. Create small business commercial zones near residential districts, and provide tax incentives for local merchants to set up shop there. Ensure that the regulations prohibit a big-box store from using that zone.
Inevitable objections: The big box stores aren’t going to like it. But do you really listen to the objections of a parasite when making medical decisions?
If you are referring to my idea for mobile vegetable vendors, the idea was to demonstrate that there are small things that can be done right now with very little effort by local communities, if people will just think about it.
It was just a sample, to get people thinking, not part of the “big picture”. However, even this attempt to elicit some modest ideas failed.
Too many people have the mantra: “Don’t do something, just stand there (and complain)!”
I’d disagree about little effort, though. You’re severely underestimating the difficulty of what you suggest. For starters, you use the word “simple” in the same sentence as the word “Internet” without negating it. That’s never a good start. As described, your proposal would only really work for affluent communities, barring some kind of government assistance.