Carfree World

Out with the Old

2007-11-08T23:17:28Z

Voters in the Pacific Northwest made loud statements on Tuesday in support of reducing the region’s car dependency. In Oregon, Measure 49, the ballot initiative restoring sanity to land use regulations, won by a wide margin. Measure 49 was designed to be the antidote to Measure 37, the 2004 initiative that allows property owners to bypass state and local land use controls. The legal chaos that resulted shortly after the passage of Measure 37 and the impending destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of Oregon farmland and forests caused voters to do an abrupt about-face in just three years. Property rights advocates claim the battle isn’t over, but Oregonians have been given a glimpse of life without any restraints on property rights and are not likely to be fooled again.

]]> The more cataclysmic shift occurred in the Puget Sound region, where voters in the three county Seattle – Tacoma metro area rejected a massive sales tax increase to fund new road construction and a light rail extension. This campaign was noteworthy for the break from form by the Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club, which joined with tax and transit foes to oppose the referendum. The Sierra Club’s stance, derived from the realization that light rail did little to negate the environmental impact of the planned new roads, may signal the long overdue end of the counter-productive practice of linking money for transit with new road construction. The pro-transit opponents of the referendum, including the Sierra Club and King County President Ron Sims, have vowed to work toward a more environmentally-friendly approach to solving the region’s transportation woes.

The real victor in Tuesday’s election in Seattle may ultimately be congestion pricing. Faced with choking congestion on the roads, deteriorating bridges, a decades long wait for a light rail network of any scale, and a scarcity of funds, state and local officials have to throw out the old playbook and try something new. Congestion pricing offers the opportunity to simultaneously reduce the number of cars on the road and raise badly needed funds for bridge repair and transit projects. The region should take some inspiration from New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who visited Seattle recently to attend a U.S. Conference of Mayors climate summit and took the opportunity to propose a national carbon tax on businesses. In April, Bloomberg unveiled a congestion pricing plan for New York City that, despite a detour caused by the State Assembly, still has a shot at being implemented. For the Seattle area, there may never be a more opportune time for congestion pricing. Surely a city known for its conspicuous need to stay on the cutting edge in technology, business and culture can figure out how to take the lead for once in managing its traffic.

Rain O'er Me

2007-10-23T23:14:28Z

It’s been a few weeks since my last post, and while I had legitimate reasons to be distracted, I have discovered how difficult it can be to flip the writing switch on after some time off. I apologize in advance if my rust shows. During my blogging respite, fall arrived here with a fury. The changing of the leaves and drop in temperatures are only incidental diversions to us. What really matters is when the rains start and this year they started early. The arrival of rainy season transforms our carefree biking lifestyle into a strategic battle against the elements. The gear is piled high next to the door and every day typically finds one of us without some necessary piece of equipment for biking in the rain. I have to admit that going into Year 2 of our carfree lifestyle, I find myself less excited than last year about the upcoming seven months of biking in inclement weather. Last year, the combination of ignorance and bravado led me to severely underestimate the challenges of biking daily in the rain. Before I had the chance to contemplate winter cycling, we had experienced the worst torrential rain in years. After that initiation, the rest of the winter was a piece of cake. Unfortunately this year, I know what’s ahead, and these first few weeks of rain reminded me why suicide rates are higher here in the Northwest than the rest of the country.

]]> Winter weather is, of course, what separates the truly committed carless from the fair weather folks. This is where our personal battles with the car are won or lost. Mastering the cold or wet commute is about more than just mustering the courage to ride or walk in the rain. It’s the repetition that wears on you; the constant feeling of being cold or wet. And even though I could make a strong argument that staying indoors during the long dark winter is worse for your mental and physical health than biking in the rain, the car holds the appeal of a roaring fireplace when you are faced with another trek in the cold outdoors. I succumbed to this temptation this past weekend, when I chose to drive a half mile rather than ride with my kids to a soccer game in a downpour.

The saving grace is that you can buy all the gear you need to stay warm and dry during the winter. Aside from my stubborn refusal to spring for waterproof solutions for my hands and feet, I am completely insulated from the rain. This season, my entire family is insulated as well. That’s a good thing, because everyone in the family rides on their own now. Last year, my daughter rode in a child seat during the heaviest rains, so she didn’t have to find the will to pedal on with rain pelting her face. She learned to ride on her own this past spring and, a few weeks ago, upgraded to larger bike with more horsepower. She heads off to school every morning in Gore-Tex head to toe, far more oblivious to the weather than those of us with long histories of running from the cold rather than riding through it. Even if we can't help but succumb to the weather, it's comforting to know there is hope for her generation.

Fasten Your Seat Belts

2007-10-05T08:32:54Z

Oil has been hovering around $80 a barrel for a few months now. Even more surprising than the steady rise in oil prices is how little panic is being voiced over the stratospheric cost of our favorite fossil fuel. People seemed to have used up their capacity for fretting over oil prices last year, when $60 a barrel seemed unimaginable. The Wall Street Journal offers up the “Wal-Mart Effect” to explain our collective shrug over oil prices:

For every extra dollar taken from drivers' pockets at the pump in the form of higher prices in recent years, low-cost exporters from China and elsewhere have put roughly $1.50 back in the form of cheaper retail goods. Even at today's near-record prices, U.S. households today spend less than 4% of their disposable income at the pump, vs. over 6% in 1980.

Like the coupon for 20% off on your next purchase, the Wal-Mart Effect doesn’t actually put money back in our pockets. It relies on the reality that we are manic consumers with holes burned in all of our pockets. Sadly, our consumption-fueled indifference may even buffer us against $100 a barrel oil. Imagine how well insulated we would be if we reexamined our need to consume cheap imported “necessities.” We could even coin a name for this revolutionary theory. How about the “I Already Have Plenty Effect?”

]]> While high oil prices haven’t succeeded in dampening our excessively consumptive behaviors, they are squeezing inefficiency out of a host of personal and commercial technologies. Automobile fuel economy is finally on the rise and, more importantly, industries that rely on oil have no choice but to find innovative ways to conserve. According to the Journal, Union Pacific “has bought more fuel-efficient locomotives and trained engineers to operate trains in ways that conserve fuel.” The company believes that rising oil prices could actually improve the railroad’s competitiveness against trucks in moving freight. This type of innovation is happening across the economy and will produce dividends for years to come.

The race to greater energy efficiency has been aided by the quick collapse of the nascent ethanol industry. Once again, the Journal weighs in on this very predictable outcome:

The price of ethanol has fallen by 30% over the past few months as a glut of the corn-based fuel looms, while the price of ethanol's primary component, corn, had risen. That is squeezing ethanol companies' profits and pushing some ethanol plants to the brink of bankruptcy… The downturn exposes the industry's reliance on political support in Washington, which has offered tax credits to refiners to blend ethanol with gasoline, as well as tariffs on imported ethanol and other measures.

It turns out there are no immediate alternatives to the oil roller coaster. Given last year’s clamoring for government action to save us from expensive oil, our quiet resignation to now go along for the ride is a sign of real progress. Getting sick to our stomachs may be necessary before we decide to change.

Taming Man

2007-10-03T19:32:48Z

Sprawl and car dependence go hand in hand. Communities that grow without bounds tether people to their cars. Efforts to link ever expanding populations through public transportation become fruitless. Benefits to the environment from improved auto fuel efficiency are negated by sprawl. Sprawl, by its very definition, pits man against nature, and to look the other way or accept a laissez faire attitude about land use is to choose sides. This is the fallacy of the single-minded focus on automobile technology. Improving fuel economy is not a sufficient objective, especially if higher fuel efficiency results in an increase in vehicle miles traveled. And if increased car use results in the conversion of even more open space into parking, which, as Katharine Mieszkowski so eloquently chronicles in Salon, fuels much of sprawl’s insatiable appetite for land, you could even argue that we’re better off leaving the car as is. Retaining the nasty, guilt-inducing qualities of the car may be just what we need to keep people from getting too comfortable living closer to the wilderness than civilization.

]]> Density, the means by which we measure sprawl, matters a great deal in our relationship with nature. High density living does more than just curb our car use; it makes us more efficient in how we use all our resources. The San Francisco League of Conservation Voters has produced an ingenious website to illustrate this point. The examples are various San Francisco neighborhoods, all of which would be characterized as dense by the average American. The comparison with the typical suburban neighborhood (which happens to be in Portland), however, demonstrates the dramatic difference in land and water use between dense, urban neighborhoods and dispersed suburban ones, as well as the obvious suppression of our driving habits in dense neighborhoods. These calculations demonstrate conclusively that, if your goal is to reduce transportation related emissions, where you live matters much more than what you drive.

In Oregon, we are acutely aware of both the benefits and challenges of battling sprawl. The state’s restrictive land use laws have contributed to denser communities with lower car use than the rest of the nation. In 2004, those restrictions were overturned in one fell swoop with the passage of Measure 37, which gave property owners the right to ignore existing state and local zoning laws if those laws diminished the supposed value of a person’s property. Governments that had fought sprawl so successfully for decades were now powerless. The passage of Measure 37 caught many in the state by surprise and continues to befuddle policymakers trying to make sense of the blunt tool that now governs land use in Oregon. In November, voters in the state will get a chance to make amends for their mistake three years ago. Measure 49 on this fall’s ballot corrects many of the flaws of Measure 37 and, most importantly, will prevent the largest, most egregious developments from occurring. If passed, the measure will restore Oregon’s rightful place as the nation’s leader in progressive land use planning. You can learn more about supporting Measure 49 by clicking on the link in the left hand column of this site.

Global Wandering

2007-09-26T15:48:40Z

Some industries, namely the auto and power sectors, have borne the brunt of global scrutiny over our wanton carbon emitting ways. This accountability is entirely justified but also allows other, equally egregious activities to skirt by with only mild admonishment. Despite recent attention paid to the airline industry's fossil fuel-dependent business model, the entire travel industry continues to dance around the issue of climate change. It's as if global warming is simply another consideration, along with the quality of the hotel and the type of rental car, in planning a vacation. Given the circumstances, you can understand the industry’s “rearranging the deck chairs” mentality; a full recognition of the implications of climate change on leisure travel would empty the tour buses and ground the cruise ships. Instead, we get lighthearted discussions of the consequences of our leisure travel, like this piece from the Chicago Tribune:

The fact is that most of us aren't going to forgo travel. If you're reading this issue, you, like us, probably count travel just behind food and water as a life necessity. And so we find ourselves in the familiar realm of compromise, in which we make realistic choices, paying slightly more for a hybrid rental car, for example, in an attempt to assuage our guilt at having single-handedly contributed one ton of carbon dioxide in the course of our cross-country flight. Or we give in to temptation and book a slightly extravagant room equipped with 400-thread-count sheets, comforted by the knowledge that the hotel uses only environmentally sound cleaning products and washes everything in cool water, rather than energy-guzzling hot.

I feel much better about the future of the planet after reading this contorted rationalization. After granting absolution to all of its readers, the Tribune proceeds to highlight a few supposedly eco-friendly trips, including this trip to rural Maine where the author spends as much time in the car as outside. According to fawning travel writers, who are blindly allowed to contradict the environmental conscientiousness of the editors that employ them, as long as you consume plenty of high end organic food, all of the carbon emitted during your trip is excused.

]]> The occasional travelers who read the travel section of the local papers are saints compared to the absurd collection of eco-tourists profiled by the Wall Street Journal. Melting polar ice caps and warming temperatures near the Arctic Circle have opened up destinations formerly inaccessible to mortals. And who is taking advantage of the opportunity to visit formerly ice-bound locales? Why environmentalists, of course. An entire cottage industry has emerged to allow people to witness the visible signs of global warming. According to the Journal, travel to the arctic has increased by 50% over the past 15 years, up to 1.5 million tourists annually. The damage to the environment involves more than simply travel related emissions; visitors are trampling native vegetation, conflicts between people and polar bears are increasing, and the threat of an oil spill by a cruise ship is all too real. Anne Patrick, a Massachusetts schoolteacher who has visited Antarctica and Greenland and was interviewed for the article, expresses the self-absorbed hypocrisy of these tourists quite well: “I have a curiosity about these places, but going there to see them causes more damage. How do you come to grips with that? I don't have an answer."

Actually, she does have an answer. She just doesn’t like it. The answer, of course, is to not go. Grappling with the causes of climate change poses difficulties not because we don’t know what to do. The difficulty is in saying no. Leisure travel is the ultimate discretionary activity. Forgoing a trip to the arctic or even a vacation to the tropics poses no threat to one’s livelihood or well-being. Yet, we can’t imagine a world without the freedom to travel to the remote corner of the world of our choosing. No wonder we can’t get people to take the bus to work or bike to the store. The travel guides and articles do us all a disservice by linking glamour to vacations in the Maldives and penury to weekend hiking near home. And they reinforce the notion that you can't get anywhere interesting on bike or foot. You just need to know where to go and, more importantly, how to get there. Overnight bike camping trips, otherwise known as S24Os, are a prime example of a non-traditional getaway light on environmental impact. Travel writers might not like the change because they would lose out on the all expense paid globetrotting and would have to get a little exercise in the process. The benefit, of course, is that the absence of tourists would make our most fragile regions once again worthy of the word "remote."

Buying Back Our Souls

2007-09-21T00:07:41Z

Politics makes strange bedfellows. That old adage was never more true than in Washington State, where an unlikely coalition of anti-tax groups and the Sierra Club is opposing Proposition 1, a tax measure on the ballot this fall intended to raise $18 billion for roads and light rail. The unlikely alignment has emerged because some environment and alternative transportation groups are beginning to question the wisdom of packaging funding for mass transit with new road construction. Public transit proponents have long accepted the notion that the only way get funding for new transit projects is to squeeze some dollars out the massive appropriations for road construction and maintenance. As U.S. cities have become more progressive with regard to transportation issues, proposals to increase taxes for road construction have increasingly included money for transit to build a broad coalition of support for these tax measures. Lured into supporting omnibus transportation packages, alternative transportation advocates have entered into a long term deal with the devil; their pet transit projects get funded but our collective car addiction grows all the while.

]]> The Sierra Club’s stand represents a long overdue evolution in strategy for groups concerned about excessive car use and its impact on the environment. The view that people will give up their cars if we simply give them enough alternative options has proven to be false. While we’ve been laying miles and miles of track for light rail and expanding bus service to all corners of the region, we've funded an even greater expansion of our network of roads and highways and, more importantly, allowed sprawl to the stretch the bounds of our metropolitan areas beyond the reach of our new buses and trains. The statistics support this depressing conclusion: use of alternative transportation has increased only slightly in recent years despite a massive increase in the cost of operating a car. While some may conclude from these statistics that our car addiction is impervious to market incentives, I contend we haven’t done enough. Especially when we continue to send mixed messages through new road construction.

I don’t believe it is possible any longer to work on behalf of the environment or alternative transportation and rationalize concessions to car owners. Our entrenched car use is too destructive to the objectives of these causes. As Seattle’s recent experience with summer road construction demonstrated, we can get a significant number of people out of their cars without any change in transit capacity. So trading new light rail for an increase in road capacity doesn’t really make much sense. If we’re successful in getting enough people out of their cars, light rail will take care of itself. Plus, letting the car addicts fight for their own tax increases has the added benefit of finally decoupling the two opposing camps in the eyes of voters and legislators. If we’re lucky, we may end up with a somewhat perverse but far more beneficial outcome: less public funding for our projects but more progress toward our long term goals.

Photo Credit: Sound Transit

Curing the Illness

2007-09-16T22:11:13Z

The quickest route to notoriety these days is to position yourself as an enlightened skeptic. A rash of books of this genre has made celebrities of formerly obscure economists. This angle works well in the global warming debate too, where the messianic zeal of environmentalists and their celebrity friends makes the climate change movement an easy target for more reasoned critics. The latest book to receive a disproportionate share of attention is the provocatively named “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.” The Skeptical Environmentalist is Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish writer who rose to fame in 2001 by questioning the apocalyptic claims of global warming alarmists. His latest book takes aim at the proposed policies for limiting climate change, including efforts to limit worldwide carbon emissions. Lomborg, who doesn’t dispute the prevailing evidence of mankind’s contributions to global warming, claims that efforts to reduce carbon emissions may only have limited impact and will divert resources away from addressing the true impact of climate change, which is likely to be famine, disease and economic dislocation in the developing world. Preventing a relatively minor rise in sea levels raises should be of minor concern to us, according to Lomborg, and certainly not worth the disruption in the growth of the global economy caused by forcing a premature shift away from fossil fuels. Lomborg’s views have received a stamp of approval from New York Times writer John Tierney, who fancies himself somewhat of contrarian as well. Tierney famously questioned the wisdom of recycling in a 1996 article for the New York Times Magazine. For this latest article, Tierney uses the plainly unscientific method of visiting an undisturbed 18^th century building on the southern tip of Manhattan with Lomborg to illustrate the inconsequential impact of rising sea levels on Manhattan.

]]> Lomborg’s argument reflects the black and white nature of the debate over not just global warming but also policies to reduce carbon emitting activities. The transition from fossil fuels to more sustainable energy sources has its rationale in more than simply environmental concerns. Even if you choose to ignore the perils of a warming planet, a global economy less dependent on oil and coal may be essential, not destructive, to the march to world prosperity. This is the fallacy of conceptual arguments; reality is always inconveniently complicated and better suited to practical solutions. Arlington, Texas has been firmly opposed to offering public transit throughout its history and is now the largest city in the U.S. without any form of alternative transport. The city, however, may be ready for change, and the reversal has not come about because of some high-minded concern for the environment but because the city realizes that its low income residents can no longer afford to drive to work. With gas prices eating up increasing amounts of disposable income, achieving the American dream suddenly depends on using less not more oil.

Lomborg also falls prey to the myopia that affects most climate change skeptics: we can manage through the projected change in world temperatures over the next century. But what about the changes over the next 200 years? Or 500 years? Just because the most destructive change may happen over a period of time beyond our comprehension, does that mean we have the right to underrate its impact? We also don’t know about the potential for accelerated warming as levels of carbon in the atmosphere continue to increase. The skeptics love to cite the unknowns as a reason to do nothing, or in Lomborg’s case, simply treat the symptoms. However, our conscience should tell us to address the causes as well. Our ongoing complicity in activities that contribute to global warming because we can’t be certain of the timing and scale of damage to the earth represents a particularly disturbing form of human hubris.

In the end, I’m not really sure why we need to make a choice between reducing our impact on the environment and preparing to address the most harmful impacts of global warming. They aren’t mutually exclusive objectives and each are independently worthy of global cooperation. I realize this view isn’t very fashionable, but since I don’t have a book to sell, I'm quite content in my bland optimism.

Endless Summer

2007-09-11T23:55:00Z

School is back in session for kids around the country, which, in recent times, means a return to the protective cocoon we call the car. Kids who have spent the summer cavorting outside for hours are suddenly unable to walk or bike a quarter of a mile. There are signs, though, at least in my corner of the world, that times are changing. The bike racks have been filled to capacity each morning since school started last week, forcing my late-arriving kids to wedge their bikes Dutch-style in between other bikes. On many occasions last year, our bikes were the only inhabitants of this corner of school property, so our initial reaction to this high class problem has not been so charitable. But we quickly regain our senses and marvel at our new found company. We should probably seize on the opportunity to add some more bike racks before a change in the weather sends the crowds scurrying back to their cars.

]]> I suspect that bike use at my kids’ school will decline as the year progresses. Even without changes in the weather, the best intentions, like so many New Year’s resolutions, wilt under the pressures of daily life. Still, the collection of bikes at our school is larger than I’ve ever seen it this time of year, and portends well for bike use throughout the upcoming year. This uptick is consistent with other anecdotal evidence of increased bike use among families in our area. As an example, the soccer team I coach now has a number of kids who ride their bikes to practice; last year we had just one (my son). My guess is that the trend, if it is fact real, is the result of many forces working together to change the daily habits of families in our city. People have been barraged with stories about the impact of their daily activities on global warming. In Portland, the individual responses to these stories is greatly influenced by the continued advocacy of bike enthusiasts. Programs like Safe Routes to School are designed to counter the widespread notion that walking or biking to school places kids in danger. Even more encouraging is the growth in bike camps like those offered by Portland’s Community Cycling Center. Once you get past the odd notion that kids need to go to camp to ride their bikes in the summer, these camps make a lot of sense. Kids learn to ride on roads throughout the city and, in the process, spend their days outside engaged in healthy activities. We rode by many of these happy campers this summer.

With all of this new found enthusiasm for biking, maybe our bike racks will remain full throughout the year. If not, I know the perfect addition to the school’s curriculum: Biking in the Rain: It’s OK to Get Wet.

Dutch Masters

2007-09-10T19:41:51Z

Why do some societies become more car dependent than others? Do differences result from the actions of federal and local governments, such as enlightened transportation policy and community design, or investments in alternative transportation infrastructure? Or do they have their origins in cultural attributes. The sharp contrast in bike usage between some European regions and the U.S. offers an interesting case study for examining these differences. A few weeks back, I had the opportunity to hear an official from the Dutch government speak about the differences in the bike cultures here and in the Netherlands. Loek Hesemans, from the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Safety in the Netherlands, visited Portland as part of his study of biking culture in the Pacific Northwest and shared his thoughts on cycling in the U.S. and the Netherlands to a group of Portland cycling enthusiasts. According to advocates for cycling in the U.S. , the gap in cycling use between the two countries will close as part of an evolutionary process. This view provides comfort to those who want to believe that the U.S. is just a little behind the curve and gaining rapidly. Listening to Mr. Hesemans, however, I couldn’t help but reach the conclusion that the U.S. and the Netherlands are on completely different paths. Cycling in the U.S., as Hesemans observed, is still largely a political movement. In Holland, the bike is not a way of life but simply an efficient means of transport.

]]> Understanding the underpinnings of the bike culture in the Netherlands may help define the two countries' divergent paths. Thankfully, the Dutch have gone to great lengths to study the variations in their own cycling culture. The Cycle Balance is an ongoing assessment of cycling in the Netherlands in which volunteers monitor the satisfaction of cyclists and maintain an inventory of the facets of the cycling infrastructure throughout the country. The result is a survey encompassing 73 variables over 125 Dutch communities. The Dutch can now state with confidence the factors that contribute to differences in cycling use throughout the country. This deep pool of data helps policymakers identify which attributes to adjust to counter cycling use that lags the rest of the country. For example, in some communities, a lack of adequate bike parking is a deterrent. In others, the poor quality of the bike paths keep people from riding.

This somewhat formulaic approach to promoting cycling use would seem to support the evolutionary theory of bike policy development. Unfortunately, the Dutch have found that differences in policy and infrastructure account for only 20% of the difference in bike use in communities. Other factors, it seems, influence people’s behavior. The availability of public transportation, which displaces bike use as much as car use, accounts for as much as 20% of the variation. The remaining variation, according to the study, is explained by a combination of the competitiveness of the car and cultural differences. In fact, the Dutch have found a strong correlation between bike use and the percentage of protestants in a community. Some Dutch communities retain a strong Calvinist influence, which perpetuates a self-reliance that is more effective at keeping people out of their cars than any public policy.

The implications for the U.S. are sobering. Apologists like to cite the favorable conditions in Holland and Denmark – flat terrain, population density, compact towns – to explain resistance in the U.S. to cycling. However, given the short average distance of most U.S. trips, geography and topography are simply red herrings. Not only do we trail the Dutch, and other European countries, on the tangible attributes, like favorable biking policy and infrastructure, but we lack the cultural traits conducive to making a wholesale switch away from car use. Our remaining hope, I fear, is to make car use so unattractive that people have no choice. In the largest Dutch cities, where culture has the least influence, the dominance of the bike is due as much to its competitiveness relative to the car as any other factor. Owning and driving a car in Amsterdam is a test of superhuman proportions. Do we have the courage to impose the same hurdles here?

Photo Credit: velorution.biz

Losing My Religion

2007-08-29T02:08:21Z

We just finished hosting my wife’s relatives from the Netherlands for the past two weeks. A predictable assumption would be that we received a nice refresher course in the carless lifestyle, but the stereotypes don’t hold true in this case. Our lifestyle is far less car dependent than that of my wife’s Dutch cousin and her husband, who live a life that would be quite familiar to most Americans. With two cars in the driveway and three school age kids, they spend as much time in the car as typical U.S. suburban parents. They aren’t some sort of anomaly either; rates of car ownership and use in Europe have been increasing for years, hollowing out the utopian vision we have of the European lifestyle. A handful of European cities, led by Amsterdam and Copenhagen, are the exception to this trend, and some of Europe’s largest cities, including London, Paris and Berlin, are working furiously to undo years of dominance by the car. Sadly, however, the future state of Europe appears to be as suburban and car-dominated as in the U.S.

]]> That Europeans are irresistibly flocking to car ownership is all the more shocking given the significant financial hurdles that exist for car owners. Gas continues to be twice as expensive in Europe as in the U.S. and the price of a car, including taxes and fees, is higher than in the U.S. I suspect that the high cost of car ownership has a perverse affect: owning a car, especially one with American-style proportions, is an obvious sign of affluence on a continent that has historically provided fewer opportunities for conspicuous consumption than the U.S. Furthermore, as successive generations of Europeans grow up with unquestioned access to a car and a growing disregard for distance, their fondness for Europe’s strict land use restrictions wanes, and their relationship to the region’s fabled rail network becomes more tenuous. The car also offers an escapist solution to the tightening confines of a Europe characterized by intensifying class and ethnic divisions.

All of this is not to suggest that our Dutch relatives had difficulty adjusting to our carless lifestyle. Rides downtown on the bus for sightseeing were consistently met with enthusiasm, and reliance on the bike for trips to the store or friends’ houses was not viewed as some bizarre oddity. Our greatest challenge turned out to be finding enough bikes for our large group. Luckily, my failure to dispose of our used bikes left us with a fleet large enough for two families. The fact remains: even if you choose to spend your time in the Netherlands in the car, the bike is an inseparable part of Dutch culture. And, unlike the average American, the Dutch do not view the words car and transportation as synonyms. Transportation in Europe is multi-modal by definition and the car, although growing in use, is still a luxury.

The rise of the car in Europe leaves the U.S. with a curious opportunity. Alternative transportation advocates have long looked to Europe as the model for a less car-centric transportation system, and yet Europe seems to be simultaneously adopting our worst habits. Any success we have in loosening the grip of the car on everyday life may prove useful to European policymakers scratching their heads over the car’s imperviousness to even the most formidable of obstacles to ownership. As the unquestioned inventors of the car culture, we may be uniquely qualified to discover the antidote. But we need to work quickly. Any solution cannot come soon enough for a Europe slowing losing its way.

Disappearing Act

2007-08-24T01:02:14Z

The Seattle area is unwittingly adding to an already impressive collection of counterintuitive congestion case studies with summer construction on I-5, the primary freeway through the city. The folks at Sightline have summarized the emerging results of the traffic nightmare that wasn’t, including commentary from both Seattle papers. The bottom line is not surprising: despite the loss of three lanes in some locations, traffic on I-5 is moving as well, if not better than normal. It turns out that not even the most hard core alternative transportation advocates understand how well people adapt to fundamental changes in the transportation network. Seattle has experienced a drop of 50,000 cars per day on I-5 without adding meaningful capacity in any other part of the system, including public transit. Where did everyone go? Frankly, I don’t believe that is a question worth spending much time in search of an answer. The more pressing question for Seattle specifically, and other cities as well, is what other supposedly essential aspects to our transportation system could we do without, especially when the cost of replacing or upgrading bridges, viaducts and the rest of our crumbling car enablers is nearly incalculable?

]]> Humans are creatures of habit and our habits are hard to break. Not even mind-numbing congestion shakes us out of our attachment to our cars. Yet, as the examples of the Summer Olympics in both Atlanta and Los Angeles demonstrate, loud proclamations by local governments and media outlets seem to, at least temporarily, rouse us from our stupor. Maybe we've been focused for too long on infrastructure and not enough on public pleas. In debates about tearing down unsightly highways or how much new road construction is necessary to meet growing demand, the discussion always assumes that the only way to remove road capacity is to add at least the same capacity elsewhere. This dynamic is clearly evident in Seattle, where the debate over whether to rebuild the viaduct hinges on how to add capacity for the estimated 110,000 cars that use the viaduct each day. The reaction of everyday car drivers to I-5 construction demonstrates that not only can the current system absorb substantial diverted traffic, but that trying to prescribe the alternatives in advance is as fruitless as trying to build additional roads to manage congestion.

Air travelers, it seems, are slowly grappling with their own bad habit. The summer of 2007 has been a disaster for air travelers, with crowded flights and record delays. The beneficiary of this dysfunction has been Amtrak, which has experienced a 6% increase in passengers in 2007, and a 20% increase in passengers on its Acela route, which covers the Boston – New York – Washington, D.C. corridor. Amtrak’s resurgence has occurred in spite of meager federal support and an archaic rail network that leaves the organization at the mercy of private rail companies, from whom Amtrak leases access to our precious rails. That Amtrak is benefitting from the airlines' incompetence is particularly ironic given decades of subsidies that dwarf any money flowing to Amtrak, in the form of airport construction and air traffic control to the airlines. And as the Wall Street Journal reports, the airlines have their unabashed hands out again, seeking an investment in air traffic control equal to 30 years worth of subsidies to Amtrak to once and for all clear the crowded skies over the Northeast. Hmmm, spend more money to ease congestion. This argument sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?

Going Up

2007-08-20T19:29:23Z

Implicit in the arguments for high density, transit-oriented development (TOD) is the assumption that a noticeable percentage of people who move to these neighborhoods will either forgo a car entirely or keep it parked in a garage or on the street for long periods at a time. Dense, mixed use developments close to transit are supposed to allow for hassle free carless living – all essential destinations can be accessed either by foot, bike or public transit. When properly designed, these developments should also actively discourage car ownership through limited parking space and narrow, pedestrian friendly streets. The reality is that these developments aren’t outlawing car ownership, but relying on the logic and good intentions of the people who live there. Even if you are a supporter of TOD, it is fair to wonder how many residents of such neighborhoods will actually live the dream. This debate is occurring in Los Angeles, where the city has explicitly promoted residential development in the downtown core, near multiple subway lines and an array of bus routes. Some critics claim that, rather than decrease traffic, the addition of thousands of new housing units downtown heightens already crippling congestion. Counter to the naïve assumptions of planners, the argument goes, each of these new residents will bring along at least one car, and, instead of living in a smart growth utopia, downtown residents will find themselves strangled by congestion worse than what afflicts people in the suburbs.

]]> While it would be nice to hear that new residents of downtown L.A. are giving up their cars in droves, I’m not the least bit surprised that the opposite may be true. Changing the car culture takes decades of perseverance and commitment to an alternative vision, especially in a place like L.A. Planners may have visions of turning the region into an alternative transportation mecca, but local residents are as car-addicted as any on the planet. The ultra-convenient bus stop or train station that causes residents of New York, Chicago or Portland to rave about their neighborhood is just another obstacle for the Angeleno to avoid on his or her path to the garage. High density development near transit by itself cannot fight this culture. The impediments to driving need to be as well-designed and thoughtful as the developments themselves.

Thankfully, there aren’t any other options for L.A. Every corner of Southern California is already built out, and densities are increasing throughout the region, not just in L.A. The demand for housing in the region continues to grow, and will increase residential density wherever it goes. Development that doesn’t happen downtown, where transit options exist to wean people from their cars, will occur where people are permanently tied to their cars and 90 minute commutes. Forcing new development into downtown will be messy in the short run, but is a necessary step in the region’s evolution to a more sustainable future. The impediments created by the heavy concentration of residents and vehicles downtown will slowly wear away at even the most stubborn driving habits. Plus, the funneling of residents into downtown allows for more expedient implementation of stringent measures like congestion pricing, higher parking fees and tougher parking enforcement. None of this is possible if growth is pushed away from the center city.

The ongoing debate in L.A. is fascinating but ultimately an academic exercise. Southern California’s hands are tied from decades of uncontrolled sprawl. Smaller metropolitan areas throughout the U.S., however, still have serious choices about where growth will occur, and have the unfortunate luxury of looking the other way as their cities expand out instead of up. Hopefully, leaders in these areas will pay attention to the lessons of L.A. rather than the rhetoric of critics long on complaints but short on solutions.

No Turning Back

2007-08-14T07:03:08Z

We celebrated one year of carlessness yesterday by participating in arguably the most iconic symbol of Portland’s bike culture: the Bridge Pedal. The Bridge Pedal is a one day event where bikes have access to all ten of Portland’s downtown bridges, including the upper deck of the city’s two freeway bridges. The ride attracts 20,000 riders, many of whom are children experiencing for the first time the thrill of biking where normally only cars tread. Given the amount of time we regularly spend on our bikes, the ride itself is not a revelation. But we still look forward to the once-a-year views from the top of Portland’s highest bridges and the feeling of communing with thousands of other cyclists, in contrast to our typical solitary, “us against the world” rides. Our faith in the mission of the ride was sorely tested this year, as the ride has become a victim of its own success. Congestion normally experienced only by cars was everywhere for cyclists, forcing a number of “bridge walks” instead of bridge rides, and testing the patience of a group known to be far more easygoing than its four wheel brethren. Regardless, the ride’s popularity is a high class problem and one that only speaks to the surging demand in places like Portland for greater access to roads by bikes.

]]> Our carfree anniversary is also a time to reflect on the lessons from the past year. First, the statistics: during the past 12 months, we drove 11,660 miles, which is 6,340 miles less than our average annual total prior to beginning this experiment. Roughly 4,000 miles were saved by eliminating a work commute to the suburbs (my wife worked in the suburbs for a third of the year, so 4,000 miles is the difference between my previous commute and her four month total). The remaining 2,300 miles represent the collective impact of hundreds, maybe even a thousand, individual decisions to not use the car. Using carboncounter.org, our 6,340 foregone miles represent 2.5 tons of CO2 emissions that we didn’t produce. We also saved roughly $850 in gas purchases during the year. We weren’t able to enjoy the benefits of being a one car household for much of the year, but next year we will likely add another $1,000 in savings from getting rid of the second car.

The statistics tell only a minor part of the story. The past year has been unbelievably enriching for my family. We are healthier, spend far more of our time outdoors, and are better connected to our neighborhood and surroundings. Family bike trips, which include priceless quality time together, occur almost daily. My kids, who started the year grumbling and skeptical, are now as evangelical about carfree living as my wife and I. And while I don’t want to take credit for anyone else’s epiphany about the benefits of eschewing the car, the increase in biking and walking among our circle of acquaintances seems more than just coincidental. I certainly have a healthy ego, but when it comes to crucial lifestyles changes like these, I really don’t care who takes the credit.

The challenge for the upcoming year is to reduce our car use even further, and the miles driven by car in particular. While we complete over 70% of all trips without a car, nearly 12,000 miles is still a fairly high number for a family that claims to be living a carfree life. We face the likelihood of having to accomplish this with at least one, and possibly two work commutes each day, and the certainty that our three kids will keep us moving in three different directions as well. But that’s what makes this so much fun. Regardless of what happens the next 12 months, our relationship with the car has been permanently altered. We may still use the car occasionally, but only as a last, grudging resort.

Our Two-Wheeled Future

2007-08-11T08:59:01Z

Is the bicycle an antiquated form of transport? Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina thinks so. In a speech last week in front the U.S. House of Representatives, McHenry states:

A major component of the Democrats’ energy legislation and the Democrats’ answer to our energy crisis is, hold on, wait one minute, wait one minute, it is promoting the use of the bicycle…
Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you the Democrats, promoting 19th century solutions to 21st century problems. If you don’t like it, ride a bike. If you don’t like the price at the pumps, ride a bike.

McHenry’s statement has received much-deserved ridicule by the alternative transportation crowd, but I believe his views are shared by more than a fringe minority. The average American has nothing against the bicycle, but still doesn’t view it as a serious alternative to the car. The lack of credibility or respect given to the bike as a transportation option has as much to do with our deluded view of the car as with our dismissive opinion of the bike. Compared with the luxurious accoutrements of the car, the bike is nothing but a toy.

]]> Those of us who ride regularly know that the bicycle is anything but a toy. In fact, the bicycle has become the most reliable form of transportation in our increasingly congested, aging cities. The temporary failure of New York’s transportation infrastructure on Wednesday spotlighted the bike’s prowess. With the subway system flooded, buses overcrowded, and cabs in short supply, much of the area’s commuter population was paralyzed. Except for those on bicycles, who found their morning commute undisturbed, except for a few more obstacles on the roads and sidewalks. I’m a big public transit fan, but still find the frequent delays on buses and trains maddening. The bike is my insurance policy against delays; I bring my bike on the bus on most trips so I have an alternative means of getting around if the buses are late or don’t arrive frequently enough.

Even on uneventful commutes, the bike is more than a match for other forms of transport. Bikes easily achieve similar speed as stop and go traffic, avoiding the traffic jams that befuddle cars and buses. When traffic is free-flowing, bike commuting displays the same predictability as driving a car, and, on distances under ten miles, the bike is not far behind the car in travel time (and with zero parking hassles on either end). But you can’t ride a bike in inclement weather, the critics claim. Any car driver who has witnessed someone riding home in a rainstorm insists that riding to work isn’t worth the hassle. Yet, regular cyclists in any locale with tell you that, on most days, the conditions are fine for riding a bike. The same can be said for safety or fitness concerns. Most rides are sufficiently safe and not too strenuous for even the most timid cyclists. And since roughly 40% of all car trips are less than 2 miles, distance is an overrated concern as well.

How does the bike’s supreme practicality compare to the car, that cherished symbol of American progress and ingenuity? Even ignoring the fact that the basic technology of the car hasn’t been updated in nearly a century, the car in its current form is a model of inefficiency, wasting vast resources to perform a fairly simple task. Cars use most of their energy transporting not people but the car itself. Cars, with their ever-expanding girth, waste limited road space. Every other form transportation – bus, train, bike, walking, rickshaw – makes far better use of the same resources, including precious road capacity, than the car. The bike, of course, hasn’t changed much since its inception either. But, unlike the car, it’s economical in its resource consumption and doesn’t profess to be anything more than a practical, inexpensive means of transportation.

To the shock of incredulous Republican politicians, the bike is poised to assume a prominent role in U.S. transportation policy. And why shouldn’t it? The bike is already the centerpiece of transportation policy in the Netherlands and Denmark, and was the de facto policy for urban China for many years. Countries like England and France are turning to the bike, as well, to help solve congestion problems in their urban areas. No, the bike as a critical cog in transportation policy is no joke. It’s our attachment to the profligacy of the car that’s laughable.

Photo Credit: Kurt Rogers/San Francisco Chronicle

No Accident

2007-08-09T08:12:09Z

It’s always nice when your views on an issue are backed up in the national media by a respected thinker. As if right on cue, Gregg Easterbrook brought in the heavy artillery in the argument over the safety of cars, and the broader health implications of our car dependence. In Sunday’s L.A. Times, Easterbrook echoes many of the same themes as my post from last week concerning our unwillingness to address the health dangers of the expansive role of the car in our lives. Easterbrook is concerned primarily with the eye-popping number of deaths from automobile accidents and the troubling surge in horsepower and cell phone use by drivers. Easterbrook writes:

…245,000 Americans have died because of one specific threat since 9/11, and no one seems to care. While the tragedy of 3,000 lives lost on 9/11 has justified two wars, in which thousands of U.S. soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice, the tragedy of 245,000 lives lost in traffic accidents on the nation's roads during the same period has justified . . . pretty much no response at all. Terrorism is on the front page day in and day out, but the media rarely even mention road deaths. A few days ago, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced that 42,642 Americans died in traffic in 2006. Did you hear this reported anywhere?

]]> Easterbrook reports that car accidents are the fastest growing cause of death in the world, accounting for 1.2 million deaths worldwide in 2006, and marvels at the lack of outrage, which he attributes to the perception that these deaths are “accidental” and, therefore, unpreventable. In my opinion, our reluctance to face this threat is far more deliberate and conscious. We are quite capable of thinking rationally about the impact of the car; we simply choose to look the other way. Easterbrook treads way too lightly on our national car obsession, and even concedes the clichéd connection between the car and our personal freedom. As a result of this acquiescence, Easterbrook’s powerful indictment of the car is followed by two relatively minor proposals: limitations on horsepower and enactment and tough enforcement of laws banning cell phone use in cars. While cell phone bans will likely be common place shortly, restricting horsepower will be about as quick and easy as increasing fuel efficiency standards. Our relationship with the car can’t be tinkered with, any more than you would tinker with a drug addiction. People won’t settle for utilitarian vehicles; they want their cars to prove their worth to friends and strangers alike. The repercussions of our car use have reached pandemic-like proportions not because of the physical evolution of our cars, but because our deepening dependence on the car has made us more aggressively anti-social. If we want safer roads, we need to change more than the car; we need to address the role of the car in our culture.

Streetsblog is one media outlet that has not turned away from the carnage on the roads. Each week, the site posts an inventory of the recent traffic accidents in the New York area, sometimes accompanied by an appropriately graphic picture or two. Streetsblog contributors write extensively and eloquently on transportation and livability issues in New York, but the site may not make a more powerful statement about the destructive impact of cars than this unadorned list.

Photo Credit: Michigan Car Crash.com