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Saturday, December 22nd
Ban on Light Bulbs
I'm wondering what the fate of holiday lights will be when the incadescent bulb goes out of existence. I also don't know the extent to which these lights contribute to global warming, but the bigger and brighter light displays seem quite out of tune with the spirit of the times.
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 12.22.07 @ 18:20PST
Thursday, December 20th
Americans Prefer to Spend More on Mass Transit and Highway Maintenance, Less on New Roads
WASHINGTON--Three-fourths of Americans surveyed believe that either being smarter about development or improving public transportation are both better long-term solutions for reducing traffic congestion than building new roads, according to a survey sponsored by the National Association of Realtors® and Smart Growth America.
The 2007 Growth and Transportation Survey details what Americans think about how development affects their immediate community, and traffic congestion was a top concern. Nearly half of those surveyed think improving public transit would be the best way to reduce congestion, and 26 percent believe developing communities that reduce the need to drive would be the better alternative. Only one in five said building new roads was the answer.
Americans give their communities high marks when it comes to providing good public schools, parks and open space. Respondents were less optimistic about their local community’s ability to provide practical and convenient transportation and manage growth and development. While one-third approve of growth in their local area, the percentage of those who disapprove of local growth has doubled since 1999, from 10 percent to 20 percent.
This year’s survey also showed that Americans are more concerned about how their community is handling that growth and development than they have been in eight years of polling. Only 39 percent say their community is doing an excellent or good job of handling growth, while the majority – 58 percent – believes the community is doing a fair or poor job.
When asked about their top concerns regarding growth and development, respondents consistently cited the loss of farmland to development (72 percent), increased traffic congestion and commute times (70 percent), and loss of open land such as fields and forests (70 percent). Other concerns include the loss of individual character of communities, increased reliance on cars because of sprawl, and the loss of historic landmarks and neighborhoods. The greatest increase was among those concerned about the rise in highway commercial development such as strip malls, up 25 percent in the past six years.
This year the survey also asked about climate change, and more than 70 percent of respondents are concerned about how growth and development affect global warming. Americans expressed strong support for bold measures to combat climate change. Nearly nine in 10 believe that new communities should be built so people can walk more and drive less; cars, homes and buildings should be required to be more energy efficient; and public transportation should be improved and made more available. Americans strongly disapprove (84 percent) of increasing gasoline taxes as a way to discourage driving and reduce energy use.
Eight in 10 respondents prefer redeveloping older urban and suburban areas rather than building new housing and commercial developments on the edge of existing suburbs. More than half of those surveyed believe that businesses and homes should be built closer together to shorten commutes, limit traffic congestion and allow residents to walk to stores and shops instead of using their cars. Six in 10 also agree that new-home construction should be limited in outlying areas and encouraged in inner urban areas to shorten commutes and prevent more traffic congestion.
With road building costs often exceeding revenues, many states are turning to tolls as a key funding source. Americans are divided on tolls, although 55 percent approve of charging tolls on more roads if that improves roads and decreases congestion. On the other hand, six in 10 are opposed to charging tolls on freeways during rush hour to reduce congestion. Respondents are evenly split on charging tolls during rush hour, even if the money is used to provide transportation alternatives to the freeway.
When it comes to spending taxpayer dollars, respondents believe Congress should spend more money to maintain and repair roads, highways, freeways, and bridges and to expand and improve public transit than build new roads.
Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to the private ownership of roads; that is, selling key roads and highways to private companies who would charge a toll and give a portion of the toll money to the state. Eighty-four percent of respondents oppose private ownership of roads; only 14 percent support the concept. Similarly, 66 percent are opposed to allowing private companies to build, own and collect tolls for new roads – even if those companies gave a portion of the toll money to the state.
The 2007 Growth and Transportation Survey was conducted by telephone among 1,000 adults living in the United States in October 2007. The study has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Smart Growth America is a diverse coalition of nearly 100 nonprofit organizations with a stake in how metropolitan expansion affects our environment, quality of life and economic sustainability. Coalition partners include national, state and local groups working on behalf of the environment, historic preservation, housing affordability, social equity, land conservation, neighborhood redevelopment, farmland protection, business, labor, public health and town planning and design.
It's time to recycle your old cell phone.
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 12.20.07 @ 13:08PST
Wednesday, December 19th
Training Pittsburgh
An excellent article just appeared in Pittsburgh's POP City paper about the future of rail transit in the erstwhile Steeltown. To quote:
Public transit is among the essential vitamins and minerals of healthy urban centers. Without an ability to move lots of people of every stripe all around fast and efficiently great cities cannot be great. I’m thinking of Paris, Chicago, London, New York, Boston. They need their trolleys and subways, metros and tubes or they would atrophy, and their citizens would shrivel up too. For people of all kinds to flourish in any city, they have to be mobile. Mobility is power.
To read the entire article, see Chip Walter's
Transportation Key to World-Class Pittsburgh.
Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 12.19.07 @ 12:04PST
Sunday, December 16th
Please complete our new survey
Please help us to learn continue to improve The New Colonist by telling us more about who you are and what you like. You can be anonymous. No field is required and you can just leave any part you don't want to fill in blank. complete our survey
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 12.16.07 @ 23:46PST
Monday, December 10th
High-Speed Rail and the Libertarian Delusion
On December 3, 2007, Adam B. Summers of the Reason Foundation wrote a diatribe railing against California's High Speed Rail project, which would link San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, and several points in between with bullet trains, thereby replacing tens of thousands of car and plane trips with far less damaging (and much more comfortable and convivial) train travel.
Among his points were that it costs too much, that it requires a subsidy, that no one would ride it because the plane is faster, and that what we really need is to build more sprawl to accommodate more cars. (To read his own words, see his article in the LABJ.)
I feel his points deserve rebuttal.
First of all let us all disabuse ourselves of the notion that personal automobile travel is not subsidized. According to the numbers crunchers at the Office of Technology Assessment, in a recent study year, "Motor vehicle users paid for 62-72 percent of public expenditures for highway infrastructure and services...." It further estimates that when externalized costs (hidden subsidies) are factored in, "Motor vehicle users paid openly for 53 to 69 percent of the social (public plus private) costs of motor vehicle use, both monetary and non-monetary, excluding the value of time."
For added perspective: in recent years, trucks and cars received $60 billion in Federal subsidies; airlines, $30 billion; the Amtrak "boondoggle," half a billion dollars.
All travel, outside of tramping along a trail with a rock in your hand looking for a rabbit to kill, is a social act partly funded out of the common wealth by common consent.
Now, let us look at Los Angeles' own Blue Line, whose cost overruns Summers derided (while never mentioning cost overruns of road projects, of course). I ride trains in LA. The salient fact I notice about the Blue Line is that it's hard to get a seat on it any time of the day or night. In fact, the Blue Line, right here at Ground Zero of Carmageddon, is the most heavily used light-rail line in the US. (Heavy-rail subways get more use in some cities.)
This means one (or all) of the following:
- People are riding it who were driving cars before, thus lessening the demand for expensive road building and reducing pollution and congestion.
- People are traveling who were not traveling before--the Blue Line is heavily used by folks coming downtown to shop, thus supporting LA's businesses and increasing tax receipts for the city
- The Blue Line is giving the poorer people of South Los Angeles easy access to jobs and education without requiring them further to impoverish themselves by buying and maintaining cars.
I'd say that with those benefits, the cost could have tripled and been worth it.
Now, how about high-speed rail?
Well, it started in Japan, in 1964, and has grown by leaps and bounds since then, with France, Germany, and now China building high-speed rail systems that are heavily utilized. Japan is a good comparison, since it faces intercity transport challenges almost identical to California's: a population dispersed along a coastline in one megacity and several smaller ones, active earthquake faults, and similar distances to cover.
Japanese bullet trains make a profit! They also compete effectively with the local airlines and private railways. During peak travel hours, loaded bullet trains leave every platform at ten-minute intervals. There have been no fatal accidents involving a bullet train in Japan since 1964.
As for efficiency: in Tokyo, a single train and subway hub, Shinjuku, moves 4 million persons a day--with no pollution, no parking required, no vast freeway entanglements slicing up the community. The station covers about one city block, and is surrounded with bustling commercial spaces and quiet residential alleys.
Los Angeles International Airport, on the other hand, with its 3500-acre sprawl, averages just 165,000 boardings per day, and is the second-largest industrial source of air pollution in the county.
Rail is energy efficient: the most efficient powered form of transport in existence. High-speed rail is somewhat less efficient than standard rail, but still far more efficient than driving or flying the same distances, and its speed makes it competitive with air.
Yes, the plane to San Francisco takes only one hour, not two and a half--but that's from terminal to terminal. You have to get to and from the airports, which takes much longer than the flight does, in my experience. The train drops you off in town, right near where you need to go. (Unless your hobby is staying in airport hotels.)
High-speed rail in California would reduce the need to drive to distant airports (we're still thinking of putting one in Palmdale!), and would eliminate the need to drive between the cities served. This would not only improve daily life, but would reduce our dependence on foreign oil producers. And cars and commercial aircraft are two of the pre-eminent sources of global warming gases--planes being even worse per passenger-mile than cars.
High-speed rail is a mature, proven, and yet still evolving technology, and one that will dominate medium-distance travel from the near future on. High-speed rail, along with other rail options, can help bring about cities that are more efficient, more satisfying to live in, cleaner, and more profitable to those who work in them. This is something the Japanese and the Europeans have known for forty years, and it is now helping them to accelerate their economies ahead of ours. How much farther do we wish to fall behind?
Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 12.10.07 @ 11:35PST
Sunday, December 9th
The Artful Bike Racks of Los Angeles
Our sister publication, Bicycle Fixation, has just published a little photo-essay on the Artful Bicycle Racks of Los Angeles, part of our collective attempt to wrest the city out of its thralldom to banality, and to encourage utility cycling.
Whether these attempts succeed as either bike parking or as art we'll leave to our readers to decide. In any case, at their worst, they still represent a thousand steps forward from the situation of the all-too-recent past, and, supplemented by thousands of more ordinary bike racks that the city has installed in every neighborhood, they officially welcome the World's Most Efficient Machine to the city that is Ground Zero of Carmageddon. That's got to be something good!
Go to The Artful Bike Racks of Los Angeles.
Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 12.09.07 @ 12:48PST
Friday, December 7th
The Greening of Pittsburgh
POP City, an independent Pittsburgh news source, recently spotlighted four Steeltown residents who are showing that the post-industrial transformation doesn't have to involve outsourcing or living dirty....
Some telling quotes:- ...living on the South Side, she walks, bikes, or takes mass transit to work, also on the South Side. Saving all that energy, keeping auto pollutants out of the air, "is pretty important," she says.
- Choosing a place to live, he says, "based on efficiency, public transit, and convenience," he lives near the busway, hops the 40-seat limo for Downtown, and encourages his employees to do the same.
- Like Rebecca Flora, Kobet recycles and buys locally grown food at the farmer’s market, saving transportation energy and associated pollution.
To read more, go to Living the Green Life.
Richard Risemberg (rrisemberg@newcolonist.com), on 12.07.07 @ 11:46PST
Tuesday, December 4th
Top Ten Metro Areas for Best Walkable Urban Lifestyle Released
Walkable urbanism is spreading beyond the boundaries of inner cities and into the suburbs as Gen Xers and empty nesters search for communities offering a walkable lifestyle, according to the book The Option of Urbanism: Investing in a New American Dream.
Top 10 Metro Areas For Best Walkable Communities
1. Washington, DC
2. Boston, MA
3. San Francisco, CA
4. Denver, CO
5. Portland, OR
6. Seattle, WA
7. Chicago, IL
8. Miami, FL
9. Pittsburgh, PA
10. New York, NY
Also released today by the Brookings Institution and visiting fellow and author Christopher B. Leinberger is a first-of-its-kind field survey which ranks the top ten metropolitan areas that offer the best places to live for those who want their homes a short walk from work, entertainment, schools, shops and restaurants. Get the book
This new trend is being driven by demand from Gen Xers, empty nesters, never nesters and singles looking for neighborhoods where cars are not absolutely essential-as opposed to what Leinberger refers to as "drivable sub- urban" developments characteristic of the American landscape since the 1950s.
DC Resident Leinberger, working with his colleague Dr. Stephen Roulac, has also quantified, for the first time, the value of the built environment in the economy. They cite that the built environment (real estate and infrastructure, including government buildings) accounts for 35% of wealth in the U.S. and is the largest asset class in the economy.
Adding more development to emerging and existing walkable urban communities starts an upward spiral of investment returns, tax revenues and quality of life -- what Leinberger refers to as "more is better." In contrast, drivable sub-urban development has shown that as more is built, quality of life is reduced, i.e., "more is less." The phenomenon is the reason for the extreme resistance to new development in many parts of metropolitan America, so-called NIMBYism, since it is a rational reaction to the "more is less" syndrome.
However, federal policies, local zoning codes, our current financing system, and today's real estate development industry's skill-sets have made drivable sub-urban development the de facto domestic policy of the country. Search over 60 million new and used books at Alibris!
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 12.04.07 @ 10:57PST
Saturday, December 1st
New City Calendars Available
New calendars are available in our Marketplace. Calendars include Images of Charleston, Savannah, Nashville, Images of Cleveland, the Pennsylvania Town and Country Calendar and Images of Pittsburgh. Coming soon: Philadelphia Click on MARKETPLACE in the left menu bar or here: New Colonist Marketplace
Eric Miller (editor@newcolonist.com), on 12.01.07 @ 18:07PST
