Tag Archives: Land Use

Transportation and the Green New Deal

If you follow the people I follow on Twitter, the last few days have included lots of chatter (often pained) about the transportation elements – or lack thereof – in the Green New Deal. Given that transportation is the single largest source of US greenhouse gas emissions (and because the sector relies on direct use of fossil fuels more than, say, buildings), transportation ought to the focus of any climate policy.

So, why isn’t it? The Green New Deal was (and perhaps still is) more of a slogan than an actual policy proposal. Earlier, the think tank Data For Progress released their policy proposal.

The key transportation elements include fairly weak language about increasing “access to” transit and bike facilities, paired with much stronger language about electric cars:

  • 100% Zero Emission Passenger Vehicles by 2030
  • 100% Fossil-Free Transportation by 2050
  • Modernize Urban Mobility and Mass Transit
    The growth of cities, the rapid change in vehicle technology, and the need for low-carbon transportation means that the way in which we move ourselves and goods from one place to another is going to change forever. This transition needs to be executed thoughtfully to meet the needs of cities and the scale of change required. Large investments are needed to increase access to safe pedestrian and bicycle travel, low-carbon bus rapid transit, and electrified light rail.

The twitter commentary jumped all over this: why not address land use at all? Why such wishy-washy language on transit and bikes? Why not mention any host of technocratic ideas and policies that will be useful tools in decarbonizing transportation?

A few arguments in defense of this proposal:

  • These things are popular. Data for Progress has done a great deal of polling and message testing. They make a convincing case that these elements are not just effective, but popular. As important as land use is to addressing climate change, I can understand how it’s not the best item to lead with.
  • Lead with strong messaging. Support among technocrats and wonks is required to execute any idea, but the technocrats are often bad at messaging and not a natural fit to build a successful coalition (Jeff Tumlin has made this point regarding road tolling and congestion pricing)
  • It’s better than anything else on the table. The proposal, as it stands, is light years better than anything else anywhere close to the agenda of anyone in power.

Still, the critiques aren’t wrong, per se.

  • Nothing on land use. Slipping in a plank to abolish single-family zoning might be unpopular (Minneapolis’ recent planning efforts aside), particularly at the national scale.
  • Transportation should be a bigger focus: Alon Levy made a persuasive case here for why the GND must focus on transportation. And, naturally, lots of transportation elements are indeed quite popular – and could be framed to emphasize that popularity.
    • Stronger language for transit and safety mandates (something simple yet radical, like vision zero) could be a more popular way to frame the trade-offs required to meet these aggressive goals.
  • Nothing is free in this world. Leading with a popular message framework for something as big as a new New Deal is by definition incomplete; a first step. But there’s a risk of politicians skipping over the trade-offs required to implement the plan. This might be premature, but something that needs to stay on the radar.

Given how early in the process the GND concept is, we should all give the benefit of the doubt, particularly given Data for Progress’s efforts on polling and messaging. But decision-makers still have to grasp the trade-offs involve.

As an example, read Alissa Walker on California, electric cars, and the disconnect between the Air Resources Board and the state’s Transportation Commission. Both bodies are charged with addressing climate change, but they operate in silos. The Transportation Commission has assumed electric cars will do the trick, while the CARB has done the math, and shown conclusively that electric cars are not enough – the state needs to drive less.

This is the big concern: setting a big goal is vitally important, both because of the scale of the problem and because of the potential motivation for a radical change. But radical change will require trade-offs, and it doesn’t help to mislead the public about the nature of the trade-offs involved – just look at the omnishambles that is Brexit.

Housing prices vs. land prices – Vancouver, BC

One chart to note in discussions of urban housing affordability, from Vancouver, BC.

vancouver housing prices

The chart is from The Globe and Mail, looking at the changes in housing prices by the type of unit in Greater Vancouver. While condo prices have increased substantially, that increase is nothing compared to the boom in single-family detached house values.

“It’s really the value of the land that is driving prices higher for detached properties and widening that gap,” said Darcy McLeod, president of the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver.

Emphasis is mine. This demonstrates a few things:

  • In high-demand areas, new dense construction can and does improve affordability by making more productive use of expensive land. As the adage goes, a skyscraper is a machine to make the land pay.
  • Defining affordability in big cities solely in terms of single family home prices is misleading. Focusing on those prices also might skew potential policy solutions, which could focus on making housing units more affordable instead of making scarce land more affordable.
  • Given the scarcity of land, it’s hard to imagine a set of policies (barring a regional economic decline) that would ever make single-family detached homes affordable. Most developable land would be a candidate for denser development.
  • Skyrocketing values for single-family detached homes in Vancouver’s core indicates they would be good candidates for more intense development; if such evolution were allowed by zoning.

Driverless cars don’t change geometry

Via the Streetsblog Network, I came across this Salon piece from Michael Lind praising our future driverless car overlords.  Angie Schmidt at Streetsblog did a nice job to take down some of Lind’s loaded language, particularly the bits about “rigging markets” (which rings just as hollow as the cries about “social engineering” – as Timothy Lee notes, there’s no such thing as an intervention-free infrastructure policy).

Those issues aside, the biggest thing that Lind misses isn’t about technology at all – but rather about geometry, land use, and the relationship between transportation and the built environment. Lind writes:

As the white windmills fade from the picture of the future, so do the bullet trains speeding past them.  Even before the end of President Obama’s first four years, unrealistic fantasies about high-speed passenger rail had collapsed.  Federal funding for high-speed rail demonstration projects has been minuscule and symbolic.  State and local governments continue to conclude that the costs of high-speed passenger rail outweigh the alleged benefits.

In the longer run, robocars may be fatal for fixed-rail transportation, at least for passengers rather than freight.  Google has been test driving self-driving cars in California and Nevada has become the first state to legalize driverless vehicles.  No doubt it will take several decades for safety issues and legal arrangements to be worked out.  But high-speed trains might find competition in high-speed convoys of robot cars on smart highways, allowed higher speeds once human error has been eliminated.  And the price advantage of subway tickets over taxi fares in cities may vanish, when the taxis drive themselves.  Point-to-point travel, within cities or between them, is inherently more convenient than train or subway journeys which require changing modes of transit in the course of a journey.  Thanks to robocars, much cheaper point-to-point travel everywhere may eventually be cheap enough to relegate light rail and inter-city rail to the museum, along with the horse-drawn omnibus and the trans-atlantic blimp.

Paraphrasing Jarrett Walker (aside: his recently published book is an excellent read), technology does not change geometry.  A driverless car is still a car, the geometry that governs the car is the same regardless of who (or what) is at the controls.  Despite predictions about how this technology could change everything (see a whole series of GGW posts), I find the possibility for change to be marginal.  Driverless Johnny Cabs, Total Recall-style might decrease the cost of providing taxi service, but that won’t fundamentally change the inherent capacity limitations of taxis compared against a subway system.

The choice of the taxi as a demonstration for the technology is interesting. Most taxis operate in big cities, and big cities tend to be dense.  Density helps support high levels of transit service and ensures that lots of potential trip destinations are easily reached by foot or by transit, thereby diminishing the market for these automated taxis.  Cars, regardless of who’s driving, don’t have an advantage in point to point travel over pedestrians, transit, or other modes in cities.

The other point Lind makes is in investment priorities for government-funded infrastructure (hence the earlier comment about “rigging markets”).  Lind seems to view the built environment as static, rather than an evolving system that changes in concordance with the changes to the transportation infrastructure.  New York’s subways fueled its dense development, and that density in turn provides the market for high capacity rapid transit.  Given growing populations and constantly changing cityscapes, these infrastructure investments in transit are step along the process of letting out cities continue to grow.

(semi-related sidebar on growth patterns: check out this article in Scientific American on the patterns of growth among subway networks around the world.  The authors concluded ” that the geometries of large subway networks are guided by simple, universal rules.” – reminiscent of Geoffrey West et al)

Linkages

Image from Rakka

Image from Rakka

Car Sharing

Yonah Freemark and Ryan Avent have some discussion on the urban benefits of car sharing services.

Yonah:

The end result, at least theoretically: fewer cars on the road, more efficient use of each automobile, and fewer parking spaces needed. It has proven a cheaper alternative to taxis and car rentals and has been quickly adopted.

The problem, of course, is that many of the people using car sharing programs once weren’t using any cars at all, meaning that the easy access to vehicle actually means an increase in overall car use. Zipcar’s campaign earlier this year to convince New York City pedestrians that they could be getting around more quickly in an automobile suggests that the service’s best market is among people who are currently walking, biking, or taking transit to get to work. Should cities be encouraging car-share programs if the end result is to convince people who don’t use automobiles today to use them in the future?

Ryan:

In cities where a carless lifestyle is somewhat more marginal (like Washington) the existence of a zipcar service is a huge comfort to those thinking about giving up their automobiles.

And I don’t think there is anything wrong with acknowledging the fact that for some things, the availability of an automobile is hugely advantageous. Carrying around big or bulky loads on foot is hard and unpleasant. The ability to use a car for, say, a trip to the hardware store or to the market in preparation for a big dinner party significantly increases the convenience of city life.

There’s nothing wrong with cars, per se.  My personal ZipCar use in DC is quite limited for personal trips.  I don’t really use it much as a replacement for walking and transit errand trips – my uses are for trips that require a car, regardless.  Another case where ZipCar is quite useful has been for business trips.  Previously, working in downtown DC but with frequent client meetings in non-transit accessible areas of Northern VA, ZipCar enabled me to take transit into the office, grab a car within a very short walk of the office, use the car for a meeting, and return to the office without worrying about parking.

One instance actually involved using ZipCar for a longer, overnight business trip up to suburban New York.  Given the ability to pick the car up right at the office and drop it off the same, as well as the inclusion of gas, the rates for the trip were similar to renting a car from a ‘regular’ outlet.

To me, there’s no doubt that car sharing presents a net positive.  I predicate that notion on the idea that car trips are not inherently bad.

Hill East, baby.

DCmud offers thoughts on living in Hill East, my ‘hood.  It’s a thorough description of the area, including the neighboring retail options in Eastern Market.  Unfortunately, the comments on the piece devolve into some back and forth, denigrating condo-living gentrifiers and other newcomers to the area.  It’s unfortunate that residents don’t see any role for different housing options in their neighborhood, as these new options would certainly make the area stronger.  It’s also not the first time these sentiments have arisen in the area.

Transit and Land Use

There have also been some good posts on the Corridor Cities Transitway – The transport politic offers an explanation of the possible alternatives, as does BeyondDC.   The ‘better’ routes (at least in terms of serving potential users) are undoubtedly more snake-like, due to the locations of the various transit nodes.

Jarrett Walker notes how the land use in the area puts transit in a poor position – either option isn’t exactly how you’d like to draw it up if given a blank slate.

As a result, Maryland now has to choose between a direct yellow line that misses key destinations and a blue line that serves them but is maddeningly circuitous, especially compared to the freeway that this line would compete with.

There is no clearer example of this basic principle:  Public transit’s usefulness is determined by land use planning more than by transit planning. Once you’ve arranged your major land use nodes to form a squiggle, you’ve pretty much prohibited efficient public transit.

Indeed.  Once the basic patterns are put in place, there’s only so much that fixed guideway transit can do.  There’s not a universal solution for simply adding rail lines to make everything better.