Squandering a Transformative Moment

By Dom Nozzi

The Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Washington Post reports that there is some congressional disappointment that Obama’s $800 billion stimulus bill has only a “small amount devoted to long-lasting infrastructure investments in favor of spending on a long list of government programs…[these government programs] fall far short of the transformative New Deal-like vision many of them had entertained…Obama, with a public mandate to do something big, is missing a rare opportunity to rebuild the country.”

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) stated that “every penny of the $825 billion is borrowed against the future of our kids and grandkids, and so the question is: What benefit are we providing them?…It’s the difference between real investment that will serve the nation for 30, 50 years and tax cuts, and that’s a very poor tradeoff.” Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said that the money proposed for infrastructure is “almost miniscule” and expressed regret that Obama was not proposing a transformative project such as building high-speed rail in 11 corridors around the nation (which Mica says would cost $165 billion).

“They keep comparing this to Eisenhower, but he proposed a $500 billion highway system, and they’re going to put $30 billion” in roads and bridges, said Mica. “How farcical can you be? Give me a break.”

According to some in the House, “…Obama may never again have as good a chance as this to act boldly.”

Frankly, I am deeply disappointed. Obama had, at the time, perhaps more political capital than he will ever have in his term as president, and might have the most political capital of any president in recent history (or in the future). Given the fact that America has no “Plan B” in transportation to face the inevitable, exponential increase in gasoline prices, it is a breath-taking squandering of a once-in-a-generation opportunity to transform America’s transportation system towards one that is sustainable (not to mention the fact that a healthy rail system powerfully supports healthy city agglomeration and strongly discourages costly sprawl).

The Senate and the Obama administration should have delayed approval of this historic bill until it contains a visionary, long-term, sustainable, transformative plan. Creating high-speed rail, as Mica points out, is a fantastic way to start on that desperately needed path.

American may never have this chance again.

I am sorry to say that much of this federal stimulus money was instead and unconscionably used to widen roadways around the nation. Given the crises we face today, why on earth would we spend public dollars to further harm cities (wider roads drain the lifeblood from cities), increase auto dependence, delay the need to wean ourselves from such dependence, and worsen traffic congestion (due to induced demand)?

 

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

 

Visit: www.walkablestreets.com Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Are Residences and Non-Residential Uses Compatible When Near Each Other?

By Dom Nozzi

In America, residents of neighborhoods have come to expect business and industrial activity to be toxic, noisy, or likely to attract lots of big and dangerous truck volumes. These understandable concerns – particularly at the dawn of the industrial revolution in the early 20^th Century – mean that for most people, industrial, retail or office development is considered to be incompatible with residential areas (or anywhere at all in the community).

Advocates for compact, walkable community and neighborhood design often hear these concerns expressed when compact, “mixed-use” development is recommended. But there are three things to know about this commonly-used, squelcher objection to compact development.

First, such noisy or toxic businesses have dramatically reduced in number since the turn of the last century. As a result, zoning-based separation is now much less necessary to protect homes from toxic or noisy businesses. Unlike 100 years ago, it is now fairly easy and common today to design most all businesses or offices to be compatible with residential areas.

Why continue using an anachronistic “separation-of-uses” regulatory scheme that was designed to confront problems that society faced 100 years ago, but one that we almost never face today? I suspect the reason most elected folks maintain this outdated method is that continuing to use the old system is a way to make emotional, counterproductive NIMBYs less infuriated. Or else they themselves continue to believe that an office or shop near their home would degrade residential property values.

If we are paying more than lip service to making it feasible for people to walk or bicycle regularly, we need to get serious and largely dump zoning-based regulation to dramatically reduce trip distances. Note that despite a widespread suburban value system throughout most of America, many communities are slowly increasing the proportion of properties carrying a mixed-use zoning.

Secondly, the new urbanist Smart Code (which is now a free-to-use download without copyright protection) recognizes the existence of various locally-undesirable-land uses (LULUs). The Smart Code therefore assign such uses (airports are a good example) to “special districts” remote from the community. That allows a nearly complete elimination of the need to separate land uses, with the exception of a tiny fraction of certain especially unusual uses.

Thirdly, even if it were true that we must have zoning-based separation, it is just another sign that our society is unsustainable (because it is inherently car-dependent).

Unless we start building a more sustainable (read: compact) world, we’re heading for a train wreck.

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.com Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City

By Peter D. Norton. Published 2008 by MIT.

Review by Dom Nozzi

This book is provocative, exceptionally enlightening, and a must-read for all pedestrian and bicycle professionals, urban designers, traffic engineers, elected and appointed officials.

Another title that the author could have considered to accurately describe the message of this book is “The Fall of the Pedestrian Street.”

The book is an analysis of how the American street, its perceived purpose, and its design paradigm has been transformed over the past century. Up until the dawn of the 20^th Century, the rights of and sympathy for the pedestrian were supreme. Street rules (to the extent that any existed) and street design were focused on pedestrian travel.

The emergence of the motor vehicle, however, radically changed all of this.

Motorists and auto makers united and organized in the first few decades of the 20^th Century to overthrow the prevailing paradigm of the street. As motor vehicles started to be found on streets, they were quickly seen as inefficiently consuming an enormous amount of space. And combined with their horsepower, weight, and high speeds, motor vehicles were soon killing an alarmingly high number of pedestrians—particularly children and seniors.

Huge numbers of citizens at this time rallied to fight against the motor vehicle. There was a consensus that in a crash, the motorist was always at fault and the pedestrian (particularly children) were innocent. The media regularly faulted motorists for being “speed maniacs.” And “murderers.” Particularly in Cincinnati, there was a strong campaign to require cars to have “governors,” which would not allow a car to be driven over 25 mph.

The growing number of motorists and auto makers became alarmed that the “freedom” and speed of car travel was being threatened by these nationwide campaigns. “Motordom” united, and in the course of a few decades, completely transformed the American transportation paradigm.

First, they succeeded in convincing the public that the car itself was not to blame for crashes. Nor was the problem due to speed. Instead, the motorist lobby succeeded in (falsely) convincing Americans that the problem was entirely due to “reckless” motorists. The lobby also achieved another crucial victory: No longer were pedestrians always innocent in crashes. Increasingly, the lobby convinced us that “reckless” pedestrians were often at fault.

Instead of motorists being vilified as speed maniacs, the new villain became the “jaywalker,” a derogatory term that assigned blame to pedestrians who were irresponsibly crossing streets in unexpected locations (as they had done throughout history). Unexpected, carefree walking had become an incompatible public safety threat in the age of high-speed car travel. It was essential that uncontrolled pedestrians not using their designated crosswalks be seen as irresponsibly unsafe and immoral.

So the paradigm shift managed to reshape our thinking. Cars and car speeds are not a problem. What is needed, instead of slowing cars, is to vigorously prosecute “reckless” motorists and be vigilant in urging pedestrians to be careful. Comprehensive public safety education campaigns must teach all of us (particularly children) to be careful near roads. And to insist that pedestrians (and playing children) be kept out of the way of cars by keeping them off roads—or at least confined to intersection crosswalks.

Thus, the “forgiving street” (what the author calls the “foolproof street”) was born. Dominating street design for nearly 100 years, this paradigm strives to design streets not to be safe and convenient for all users (including bicyclists, pedestrians and transit users), but to keep all non-motorized travelers out of the way of freedom- (and speed) loving American motorists. Streets are to be designed for safe driving at high speeds. And because forgiving street designers assume we will always have reckless drivers, streets must be designed to forgive reckless, inattentive driving. Grade separated intersections are needed. As are pedestrian skywalks. Move street trees and buildings and pedestrians away from the street.

The ultimate result, after several decades of this new motorist speed paradigm, has been an annual roadway death rate that remains extremely high. High levels of speeding and inattentive driving. Streets that are designed and safely usable only by cars, instead of being Complete Streets accessible to all. Unimaginably high levels of car dependency, heavy and worsening congestion, plummeting quality of life, a near absence of pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users, endless suburban sprawl and strip commercial, and declining downtowns.

I’m certain the author would agree with me that an essential task for safety and quality of life is to return our communities to a lower-speed environment. And this must largely be achieved not through laws against speeders or speed limit signs, but through the design of streets that effectively ratchets down urban travel speed via such tactics as human-scaled dimensions to achieve traffic calming—and Monderman’s “shared space” concept (what I like to call “attentive” streets). High-speed car traffic is simply incompatible with the human habitat.

This is not a call to re-vilify cars, but to reshape our world to obligate motorists to behave themselves.

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit: www.walkablestreets.com Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Does Land Use Come Before Transportation, Or After?

By Dom Nozzi

I learned over my 20 years as a city planner that city planners react to what private landowners and developers propose to us with regard to development along a roadway.

Public sector planners have very little control as to densities or mixed uses or types of businesses that are proposed along a roadway. Yes, public planners can write development regulations or corridor plans that call for walkable, mixed use, higher density design, but if the roadway is 5 lanes and designed for 45 mph (inattentive, talking-on-the-cellphone) speeds, such regulations will be a moot point, as property owners and developers tend to build to what the market seeks. And when you have a multi-lane, high-speed roadway, the market tends to seek low-density, drivable, parking-lot rich, single-use suburbia.

In other words, transportation determines (drives) land use.

Yes, such suburban areas can incrementally transform themselves to be more urban, compact, walkable, dense environments. But public planners and their regulations and plans will be almost entirely powerless to catalyze such a transformation. The effective catalyst in the case of a suburban environment fed by high-speed, high-volume roadways is for the State and Local Departments of Transportation to make amends for their earlier decisions to build oversized roadways (usually justified on the grounds that the 5 lanes are needed to reduce or avoid congestion—even though we should all know by now that we cannot build our way out of congestion).

Often, the traffic engineer will claim that the proposed large, suburban road is needed because of the land uses allowed by local government in the area. “I’m just meeting the demand created by the land uses on the ground.”

To be fair, some engineers understand that one cannot widen a road to eliminate congestion, but are compelled by their supervisor or elected officials to make recommendations that assume that building out of congestion is, in fact, possible. In this case, the remedy is that supervisors and elected officials must give the engineer the permission to make innovative, effective design recommendations.

Suburban markets (and subsequent strip commercial development) would not have occurred had larger, higher-speed roads not been built in the area in question or elsewhere in the community (not to mention all the underpriced parking provided throughout the community).

So yes, public planners can play a role in proposing regulations or plans that call for walkable, urban, mixed use environments (if their supervisors and elected officials grant permission, that is). But the road must first be redesigned to accommodate walkable, charming transportation choices. A road designed to be conducive to walkable charm creates a market for the construction of buildings and other elements of land use that support walkable charm.

That means, usually, that existing over-sized roads suboptimized for cars go on a “road diet” by having travel lanes removed. It is also quite helpful to supplement the road diet by introducing various slow-speed design tactics such as landscaped or hard-scaped bulb-outs, landscaped or hard-scaped medians, and on-street parking.

I don’t pretend to believe that we can do this sort of road transformation throughout a community in the near future. It took us over 80 years to build this car-friendly mess we are in. We are therefore unlikely to find our way out of this for quite a while. Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life. Visit: www.walkablestreets.com Or email me at: dom@walkablestreets.com

Context-Sensitive Design for Pedestrians

By Dom Nozzi

 Design for motor vehicle transportation is a zero-sum game. Almost inevitably, when conditions for cars are “improved” (“speeded up,” “made more efficient,”, etc.), conditions for all other forms of travel (bicycle, pedestrian, transit) are degraded. As a planner in Florida for the past 20 years (where “growth management” is essentially a code word for ensuring that new development does not delay or slow down cars), “access management” was touted strongly—to the detriment of pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users and overall quality of life.

 The first task for a planner or designer seeking to determine appropriate design is to first determine where in the community the design will occur (so that the design is “context sensitive”). One must know if the design is to be applied in suburban/drivable locations, or urban/walkable locations. If the former, access management tends to be appropriate, as the imperative is to minimize car travel delays and maximize car speeds. However, in urban/walkable/compact/mixed-use locations, the pedestrian is the design imperative. In such locations, it is therefore essential that slow-speed and “attentive motorist” design be emphasized to maximize pedestrian comfort and safety. Access management tends to undercut such a design objective, because motorists can driver faster and less attentively when access management is successful.

 And has been pointed out by others, a quality pedestrian environment must include relatively short block lengths, as well as mid-block crossings and cross-access within blocks. Again, access management tends to undercut these essential design tactics in walkable locations.

 As an aside, speaking as a bicycle commuter, I tend to find a reduction in driveways to be an inconvenience for bicycling. I understand the safety problems associated with too many driveways, but we shouldn’t forget unintended consequences.

 When the words “safety” and “efficient” and “mobility” are used in the field of transportation, such words tend to be euphemisms for higher speed, unimpeded car travel. And the last thing a healthy, low-speed, pedestrian-friendly downtown needs is faster, unimpeded, through car travel. Higher speed (“efficient”) car travel in a downtown (not to mention excessive, under-priced off-street parking) drains the lifeblood out of a downtown.

 Again, be careful about where various designs are applied. Avoid “one-size-fits-all” solutions. What is beneficial for higher-speed suburbia is almost always detrimental to lower-speed walkable downtowns, where transportation choice must be emphasized. 

 Be sure you are context-sensitive—that you are applying the right design tools to the appropriate locations of the community.

  

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit:

www.walkablestreets.com

Or email me at:

dom@walkablestreets.com

Transitioning to a More Sustainable Future

By Dom Nozzi

I’ve been waiting (and looking) for over 25 years to find effective catalysts to do what needs to be done very soon to transition us to a more sustainable, pleasant future. I have seen nothing that is even remotely effective. With the exception of high energy costs.

Pain? You bet. Our future, tragically, will need to include much bitter medicine to swallow as we must pay for the sins committed by our forefathers and foremothers over the past 80 or so years.

Primarily, those sins include the assumption that we should forever commit ourselves to only one lifestyle: auto-dependent, energy-consuming, high-consumption suburban life.

No one thought to do what ecology teaches us for survival: Be diverse and therefore adaptive to an inevitably changing environment, for those species which are not adaptive are in danger of extinction (as are societies/empires).

By not creating or allowing or subsidizing lifestyle choices such as rural or compact urban, we are in a precarious position. Because our community design is not diverse or adaptable in America, a change in one fundamental element of our world—oil prices—means that many of us will be forced to feel a lot of pain in the coming years (we cannot adapt painlessly to a change in oil prices).

For example, those who bought into the suburban American dream are seeing the value of their increasingly dysfunctional home value erode (much more so than housing in more walkable locations). And because they live in a remote place that requires a car for nearly every single trip, such people will have little choice but to suck it up and pay eternally increasing gas prices (not to mention the enormous household expense of having to finance multiple cars for the household—average annual cost for a car is now over $7,500 per year, I believe. I can think of a lot of things that would be better, financially, for a 2-car household to spend $15,000 per year on than depreciating cars).

Are there ways to transition to a more sustainable future, outside of higher energy costs? I don’t know of any. I do know of a number of civilizations which have collapsed because they were not able to adapt quickly.

As was once said by someone who’s name escapes me, whenever a civilization in history has had to make a choice between making a fundamental change in their behavior and extinction, they have nearly always chosen extinction. I’m committed to not choosing extinction, but am realistic enough to sadly conclude that avoiding extinction will mean pain for an unprepared society such as ours (a society with no rail system, and a society with insufficient housing set in compact, walkable, mixed use neighborhoods, for example).

I am committed to transitioning, for example, to a society with rail and walkable communities in the coming decades. Obama needs to immediately commit the US to be on that path (in a “Manhattan Project” sort of way). The sooner we set on that path, the less pain we will feel. But some pain is unavoidable.

Much of our future will be about demolishing white elephant mistakes we’ve made over the past several decades, and building or adaptively re-using more sustainable and more localized patterns. Probably much more re-using rather than new building, as we seem incapable of building walkable, lovable, charming development anymore.

We must also find the leadership to raise gas taxes now, while gas prices are low. Gas taxes are an excellent way for us to see effective demand destruction. By reducing gas consumption, we incrementally make ourselves less unsustainably dependent on increasingly hostile and unreliable oil producers.

Gas tax increases can help nudge us toward being less car-dependent. And gas taxes keep a lot more of our dollars here in the US, rather than enriching “petro-dictators.” My fear about gas tax revenue, though, is that it is likely to be used by Department of Transportation dinosaurs to have us continue to bankrupt and ruin ourselves by widening roads.

Where is Al Gore’s “lock box” when you need it?

 

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit:

www.walkablestreets.com

Or email me at:

dom@walkablestreets.com

Cheaper Parking for Poor People?

By Dom Nozzi

Subsidizing parking “for low-income people” is a mistake, in my opinion.

First, there is no easy way for a city to subsidize ONLY low-income motorist parking. ALL motorists will be able to take advantage of this detrimental, market-distorting welfare. Not just the low-income.

As a result, the city would be subsidizing and therefore artificially inflating the number of people who travel and park by car. Without such a subsidy, those who have a choice would be given a financial incentive to walk, bicycle, carpool or use transit. In effect, then, the parking subsidy promotes an increase in single-occupant vehicle (SOV) travel. When parking is properly priced to reflect actual costs, travelers are given a market signal to engage in non-SOV travel.

Subsidized downtown parking is toxic for the long-term health of downtown because the suburbs will always out-compete downtown when it comes to motorist convenience, and because “happy cars” downtown degrade the walkable quality of life in downtown — which the downtown needs to be able to leverage.

In addition, given skyrocketing gas costs (which we will experience for the rest of our lives), why would the city be promoting MORE auto dependence by subsidizing it? Shouldn’t the city be promoting more sustainable, affordable forms of transportation?

Similarly, auto transportation is an enormous and growing part of the low-income household budget (typically outweighing housing cost savings for more “affordable” housing in the suburbs). One hundred years ago, the average household spent about two percent of its budget on transportation. Today, the average household spends 22 percent of its budget on travel, and this percentage is growing. If the City is truly interested in helping low-income households, promoting auto travel by subsidizing parking is the last thing it should do.

If the City was sincerely interested in helping low-income households, a much more sustainable and affordable strategy is to subsidize transit-friendly or walkable downtown housing (in other words, housing in compact, mixed-use locations where the number of expensive cars owned by a household can be reduced). Subsidized parking simply perpetuates an unaffordable, unsustainable household expense.

True affordability, in the 21^st Century, comes from strategies that reduce the need for car travel for low-income households, because it is unaffordable for a low-income household to spend so much of its budget on travel.

 This is not a call for low-income houses to get rid of ALL of its cars, necessarily. It is simply a recommendation that such households use their car(s) less often, or drive alone less often, or own less cars (one instead of two, or two instead of three).

 

 Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit:

www.walkablestreets.com

Or email me at:

dom@walkablestreets.com

Congestion and Traffic Safety

By Dom Nozzi

Reducing Congestion

I’ve heard Andres Duany, one of the great urban thinkers of our generation, make this first point in a speech long ago, but just read it again in a book I recently read called Common Place, by Douglas Kelbaugh.

Kelbaugh informs us that “…the Southern California Association of Governments, including some 30 municipalities around Los Angeles, commissioned a computer simulation of traffic in the year 2010. It modeled many possibilities, among them double-decking highways, additional lanes, expanded bus and rail transit service, and staggered work hours. They concluded that nothing that could be done to add capacity to the system would have a lasting effect on congestion—except for one strategy that was not a transportation fix per se. Mixed-use neighborhoods, because they eliminate the need for trips in the first place, were found to offer a permanent solution to traffic congestion…”

I have two observations about this crucially important insight. First, as you might guess, I’m not sure why an urban area would want to reduce traffic congestion, given all the superb benefits congestion effectively delivers. To be charitable, it is possible that what is meant here is that mixed-use neighborhoods effectively allow people to escape the congestion that exists. Being able to escape congestion is more achievable (compared to being able to reduce it). Escape tactics are generally useful for building a quality, sustainable community: Connected and tightly gridded streets. Higher density, mixed-use development. Low-speed street design. Buildings abutting sidewalks. And so on.

Secondly, I am firmly convinced that achieving mixed use, higher density development (which is nearly absent in most every community in America) can only occur when large numbers of residents desire it. And that is highly unlikely in these days of subsidized cars, suburban homes and gasoline. Citizen desire comes from traffic congestion, toll roads, priced and scarce parking, relatively high gas costs, low-speed roads that are no more than 3 lanes in size, and land development regulations (LDRs) that make such compact, low-speed development legal (such LDRs are nearly non-existent in American communities).

All of the elements that many of us desire in a community (well-used transit, well-used bike lanes, well-used sidewalks, less per capita SOV travel) come after we put the necessary pre-conditions in place (density, mixed use, expensive parking & driving). Better transit, more bike lanes, more sidewalks will be ineffective as ways to induce more transit use, bicycling and walking. I believe that communities largely assume that more buses, more bike lanes and more sidewalks will result in more transit use, bicycling and walking because those factors are more under the control of a local government. The truly effective tactics are less under the control of local government. If all you’ve got is a hammer, all your problems look like nails…

Traffic Safety

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 80 percent of all car crashes are due to inattentive drivers.

Knowing this, what would be the worst possible way to design streets?

How about using a street design theory that encourages motorists to drive without paying attention—that is, a design that “forgives” a motorist for driving inattentively?

What has been the street design paradigm for the past 100 years?

The “forgiving street” paradigm.

Oops.

Is it any wonder why we have an epidemic of inattentive driving in America? Isn’t it inevitable that “forgiving street” design has created a road safety nightmare?

The bitter irony is that this paradigm is what traffic engineers are taught is the primary means of creating traffic safety. But what should have been obvious is that forgiving street design enables drivers to be “forgiven” for driving too fast, too recklessly, and too inattentively. The result of forgiving streets is that we have an epidemic of inattentive drivers putting on make-up, talking on the cell phone, and casually driving 80 mph. And that means we are seeing declining driving skills and a growing number of crashes on roads that are increasingly unsafe to walk or bicycle on (or drive a car on).

The idea persists because it is commonly thought that safer streets would be those where we assume drivers are inevitably incompetent morons. So we design the street so that we reduce the consequences of driving like a moron. Common sense, right? It becomes a powerfully self-fulfilling prophecy. Forgiving streets have spawned an exponential growth in moronic driving. Americans are now perhaps the worst drivers on earth.

I don’t buy the argument, by the way, that American drivers are genetically predisposed to drive like morons to explain why American driving is so awful. It is nearly certain that bad driving in the US is almost completely due to the consequences of driving on forgiving streets.

Isn’t it highly probable, in other words, that after 100 years of designing forgiving roads, traffic engineers have been responsible for an enormous growth in the amount of inattentive driving by motorists?

Isn’t it time we strive for improved driving skills, rather than assuming moron drivers? That we adopt the Moderman concept of “naked streets” if we truly want more traffic safety in the long run? Or what I call “attentive streets,” where we obligate the motorist to pay attention?

http://www.walkablestreets.com/wild.htm

 

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit:

www.walkablestreets.com

Or email me at:

dom@walkablestreets.com

Inducing More Bicycling

By Dom Nozzi

 

I have over 20 years of experience as a senior city planner, am a lifelong bicycle commuter, prepared a master’s thesis on bicycle travel, and am a published author describing car traffic and sprawl.

 

I know of no simple, quick, easy ways to induce large numbers of contemporary Americans to engage in more bicycling. I do, however, know of tactics that can be effective, yet require a number of years, political leadership, political wisdom, and enlightened staff and citizens. For these reasons, the tactics are rarely used in America, which helps explain the embarrassingly low levels of bicycling in the US.

 

In no particular order, effective tactics include (and to some extent overlap):

 

1. Relatively high residential densities & commercial intensities.

2. A mix of residences both vertically and horizontally with jobs, offices, retail, schools, and other destinations. That is, destinations are proximate to each other.

3. The absence of market-distorting subsidies for car travel. By far, the biggest subsidy in America is free parking. One of the most important reasons why most all Americans drive a car for nearly all trips, rather than bicycle, walk or use transit, is that over 98 percent of all trips are to locations with free and abundant parking. As Donald Shoup points out, free [and abundant] parking is a fertility drug for cars.

4. A small speed differential between cars and bicycles by using traffic calming measures such as modest street dimensions, on-street parking, etc.

5. Expensive gasoline.

6. A modest number of travel lanes. Roads with more than three travel lanes (one lane in each direction along with center turn pockets) creates excessively high-speed, dangerous car travel that severely reduces the number of people willing to bicycle on that road.

 

When effective tactics are properly deployed for a reasonable period of time, a powerful, self-perpetuating virtuous cycle begins to evolve: When non-bicycling members of the community observe a large number of others bicycling, many are likely to be induced to begin bicycling because of the “safety in numbers” perception, the fact that bicycling seems more hip and practical (“If he/she can do it, so can I!”), and the growing awareness and expectation on the part of motorists that bicyclists are likely to be encountered (which also increases motorist skill in driving on a street being used by bicyclists).

 

Note that the above should not be taken to mean that I believe we should “get rid of all cars”, or that American cities should build auto-free pedestrian/bicycle zones. I support well-behaved, unsubsidized car use that is more optional than obligatory. Car use and design that is subservient to the needs of a quality habitat for humans, rather than the situation we find in most all American communities, where cars dominate (and in many ways degrade) our world. A place where cars are so dominating that transportation choice is lost. Where it is not practical, safe or convenient to travel, except by car.

 

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit:

www.walkablestreets.com

Or email me at:

dom@walkablestreets.com

Breakthrough

By Dom Nozzi

I have just completed reading a provocative, profound, important book. The book is entitled “Breakthrough: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility” (2007), by Ted Nordhaus & Michael Shellenberger.

The book is essential reading for anyone who wishes to meaningfully engage in politics (ie, be politically successful) in contemporary times. The authors spent several years as strategists for national environmental organizations. A few years ago, they wrote an extremely controversial essay that provoked a great deal of national and international debate. The essay was titled “The Death of Environmentalism.”

Their writing style is superb and highly readable. They are magnificent story-tellers. I am in awe of their intelligence and insight. They are stupendous in explaining why environmentalists, in recent decades, have been so mediocre in reaching objectives and winning voters compared to, say, religious conservatives.

A few of their main points:

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs informs us that people need to meet basic needs such as food and shelter before they are able to understand or support “higher order” needs/values such as environmental conservation (what the authors call “post-materialist values”). This explains why we see so little concern for conservation in Brazil for the Amazon forest, and why there was such a significant growth in concern for civil rights and conservation in the US in the 1960s (Brazil is suffering from awful poverty, in part due to terrible debt problems, whereas the US in the sixties was enjoying astonishing prosperity.

The authors find that in contemporary America, the problem for liberals/environmentalists is that Americans now have INSECURE affluence (not a fear that they will be homeless or unemployed, but that they might drop from affluence to lower-income status). And insecurity makes it less likely that voters will be interested in higher order issues such as abortion rights or global warming.

As an aside, the authors cite several authoritative studies conducted over the past few decades that consistently find that while there are large majorities who support environmental conservation, this support is “thin.” Consistently, when asked to cite their top issues, global warming or other environmental issues nearly always end up at the bottom of the list (and if the environmental issues are not given as options, polls usually find that very, very few will even mention them as issues). The top issues are nearly always jobs and other economic issues.

The lesson: If progressives and conservationists expect to be successful politically, citizens/constituents need to be relatively prosperous, and a happy future or vision needs to be promoted. Victimhood, resentment, and apocalyptic (the world is coming to an end) thinking/advocacy (which liberals and environmentalists continue to largely use in political lobbying and education) is actually quite counterproductive, as it breeds fatalism, resignation, and a desire for more security (all of which induces voters to support conservatives, reactionaries, and authoritarians).

The authors indicate that an important reason why the religious right has seen so much political success is that they understand these dynamics. They rally political support in important ways by emphasizing values and visions, rather than drier, less inspirational “issues” or “policies,” which liberals and environmentalists tend to emphasize.

 This book was written, I believe, just before the presidential primaries of 2007, and possibly explains the success we saw with Barrack Obama and his “message of hope” (rather than resentment or victimhood or apocalypse).

 Note that this thesis undermines a LENINIST philosophy I’ve adhered to since college: That the revolution (or progressive voting) is more likely when we are in troubled economic times (or when the environment is collapsing).

 If progressives desire to see support from a large number of voters, they need to support policies that restore economic health and couple that with a positive, prideful, inspirational image. The authors therefore argue that the age-old environmental strategy of urging LIMITS as a way to save the environment is a failed political strategy. They instead urge the potentially galvanizing issues of health care for hybrids (having the feds assist auto makers in providing worker health care if they agree to build hybrid cars), and especially what they call The Apollo Project (a national agenda to subsidize and otherwise strongly promote clean fuels — rather than CAFE standards).

 In my opinion, however, my top agenda item, rather than clean fuels, would be a vision of the return to traditional, compact, walkable community design, supported by the establishment of a national passenger rail system.

 Again, I urge you to put this book on your reading list. Very thought-provoking.

 

Visit my urban design website read more about what I have to say on those topics. You can also schedule me to give a speech in your community about transportation and congestion, land use development and sprawl, and improving quality of life.

Visit:

www.walkablestreets.com

Or email me at:

dom@walkablestreets.com