If government is supposed to be about the pursuit of common
good, then public officials should be thinking of ways for us the people to
live in harmony and promote a sustainable general welfare.
Many of them are already doing that, some quite eloquently
so. We need government to satisfy public needs (such as rubbish removal, road
maintenance, etc.) and to promote commerce opportunities (e.g. education,
public works, transit). Government
should provide the framework in which individuals, communities and societies do
most of the work. US “conservatives” want minimal government, whereas
“liberals” don’t fret so much about public “bloating”.
Auto De-Addiction
Our transportation infrastructure, so heavily weighted to
auto addiction, is sadly unsustainable. Do
we need an unending stream of new cars, vans and trucks? Whether powered by gasoline or propane, vehicles
across the USA generate millions of tons of carbon dioxide every day. Road costs
keep getting higher. We hardly have funds to maintain the existing 50,000 miles
of Interstates and 2.6 million miles of paved roads -- a total of 8.6 million
lane-miles. And don’t forget the thousands of acres of parking lots and
garages. Few doubt that car costs will continue to rise.
What a climate-challenged mess!
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| US Government statistics show the continuing marginalization of transit in US life. |
A Pod-Way Out of Our Dilemma
We, the People of the USA and the World, need preemptive policies
to get us out of our auto addiction. There are very strong arguments that
investing in pedestrian and bikeway networks provides more benefits per dollar
than highway improvements. Wisely
planned, new ped-bike infrastructure will make mass transit more viable by
feeding into it.
Automated Transit Networks (ATN for short) has emerged as an
interesting new option for community-scaled mobility services that can also feed
existing transit stations from places more than most people’s walking
range. A study by San Jose’s Mineta
Transportation Institute recommends modest ATN projects of ten-station
networks, maybe more. Rapid advanced in automation on road vehicles means that robo-cabs
and robo-vans may provide ATN services without costly guideways.
Sadly, ATN is not being designed into huge road projects.
Witness New York’s $4-billion replacement of the cross-Hudson Tappan Zee Bridge
north of NYC. ATN is light and would not impact the bridge’s structural
requirements the way rail would (it was dropped for that very reason.).
We have a huge task ahead of us. It is not easy to re-orient
personal attitudes and habits. But we do know that things sometimes do change
-- sometimes quickly and visibly, but sometimes slowly -- like the decline of
cigarette smoking. According to Harvard’s Professor Emeritus Charles Harris, in
1850 eighty percent of the land in southern New England was directly used by humans:
only 20% was forest. Radical change came
over the course of a century as the USA expanded westward. By 1950, agriculture
and industry had dwindled in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island so that
80% of the land is today in forest!
Hmm…… cigarette smoke is like instinctual driving. Maybe we
can tell people the cost of the parking spaces that they think are free. That
cost includes a few minutes of the end of their lives for not getting the great
aerobic exercise that walking and biking are.
Reaching for the Numbers to Sustainability
Today over 90 percent of urban travel is by motorized
vehicles, almost all burning fossil fuels and emitting greenhouse gases. Securing
fossil fuels in the future has enormous political and environmental costs. US transit’s
share is modestly 2-3 percent. Walking and biking are harder to measure, but at
most, these three green modes make up 10%.
Is it not in the common good for us to push that green share
to 25%, and then to 50%? What might the Sierra Club, the National Institute of
Health and the League of Women’s Voters have to say such matters?
Does it matter how Detroit reacts? More is
happening in California’s booming Silicon Valley - hotbed of Google, Uber, and
ATN. California is collaborating with Swedish officials, and the 8th annual Podcar City conference will take place September 3-5 on Stockholm’s airfront. Come up to speed there!
