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PART
I of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS laid out the basic
premise:
It
is a physical and economic impossibility for
Autonomobiles to provide Mobility and Access
for the majority of US of A’s citizens in
the 21st century.
PARTs
II and III examined two contexts – recreation
and entertainment venues (PART II) and Big Box
facilities (PART III). These explorations
provide compelling evidence of the need to
fundamentally rethink extensive use of
Autonomobiles to achieve Mobility and Access.
PART IV further explores the basic disability of
Autonomobiles raised in PART I:
The
space required to drive and park Autonomobiles
disaggregates human settlement patterns. The
resulting distribution of land uses is grossly
dysfunctional for the vast majority of human
economic, social and physical activities. The
autonomobile is an economic and physical
option in few circumstances and for very few
citizens even those at the very top of the
economic food chain. (See End
Note Thirty-nine.)
A
Picture Is Worth a Thousands Words
On
10 January 2008, the Urban
Richmond blog published three side-by-side
photos originating from the City of Muenster
Planning Office. These three pictures are worth
far more than 3,000 words.
The
graphic contrasts the street space needed for a
standard urban bus full of passengers (center)
with the space required for the same number of
people using Large, Private Vehicles (left) and
for the same number of citizens using bicycles
(right).
The
three photographs provide a low oblique
perspective of a street, presumably in
Muenster, that tells the story of Autonomobile
spacial requirements very clearly.
This
is not a new idea. Joe Passonneau published a
sketch showing this relationship in the '70s.
(See "Space
Hogs," on the Bacon's Rebellion
blog.) An
Agency staging its own version of this graphic
demonstration in every New Urban Region
reinforces the importance of the excessive
spacial demands of Autonomobiles in settings
with which citizens of that specific New Urban
Region can identify.
Another
way to make the point that Automobiles are
space hogs is to look at an aerial photo of the
Zentrum of any component of human settlement
pattern from Village scale to New Urban Region
scale. Parking lots and streets take up most of
the space.
A
central problem in trying to build citizen
understanding of human settlement patterns is a
lack of useful graphics. Most citizens cannot
visualize what the settlement pattern might look
like even in the shared-vehicle station area.
The
first image of “higher intensity” that comes
to mind for most citizens is “Manhattan”
which is inappropriate and misleading, except
for a small part of Manhattan itself. A second
problem is that few can “read” the wealth of
economic, social and physical information that
an air photo – or any view of the urban
landscape – can convey. This is an important
part of geographic illiteracy.
Once
TRILO-G is published, S/P will devote special
attention to graphic representations of
functional settlement patterns. It is maddening
that there is no interest in supporting these
graphics. Architects who are trained in drawing
streetscapes want to feature and promote their
buildings. Urban Designers like to feature
streetscapes that are interesting but not
definitive. The graphics paid for my the
shared-vehicle system equipment suppliers and by
shared-vehicle system Agencies feature the
rolling stock and the platform. Urban space
functions best when these elements are not
visible in a panoramic view of a station area.
(The problem of visualization is addressed in
“All
Aboard,” 16 April 2007.)
Learning
from Horses
When
writing The Shape of the Future we
examined the experience of urban citizens with
pre-Autonomobile modes of travel to illustrate
the importance of the excessive amount of space
taken up by Large, Private Vehicles. Here is the
way we expressed this issue in Chapter 13 Box 9
which has been updated to reflect the Vocabulary
in the current version of GLOSSARY.
The
Carriageless Horse
Horses
have been part of the evolution of urban
civilization for 10,000 years. Horses were
(and are) consumptive and expensive to
maintain, and so for most of this period,
horses have been limited in ‘high
value-added’ activities. These activities
have included waging war, ceremonies as well
as transport and recreation of those at the
top of the economic food chain.
When
large groups of humans - e.g., those living on
the Steppes of Central Asia or on the High
Plains of North America - wanted to (or were
forced to) take advantage of the speed and
range that the horse provided for more than a
few in a clan, tribe or community, the humans
were required to move to very low density
settlement patterns in order to provide
pasture/feed for the horse and to dispose
of/avoid piles of horse manure.
Extensive
use of the horse to provide Mobility and
Access for the entire population required a
density so low that these clans and tribes
became nomads and/or mobile raiding parties
because they could not support themselves and
their horses in some more amenable pattern.
The
pattern of human settlement that physically
accommodated the widespread use of the horse
proved to be less desirable from an economic
and social perspective than an alternative
pattern which forsakes regular use of a horse
for most adults.
Humans
found it more desirable from economic,
social and physical perspectives to live in
settlement patterns where citizens did not
need to use the range and speed of the horse
in order to carry out their everyday
activities.
Horses
made another run at impacting human settlement
patterns early in the Industrial Era. The
steel wheel and the gravel crusher made
horse-drawn omnibuses, coaches and buggies
useful vehicles to meet some urban needs. The
rising affluence and expansion of the Middle
Class, coupled with the conversion of
pre-industrial ‘cities’ into Industrial
Centers with ‘sub’urbs, led to an
expansion of horse ownership for moving
people. The same infrastructure made horse
drawn wagons useful for moving goods and
providing services. (See THE
ESTATES MATRIX 1870 and 1920 time frames.)
The
private horses, plus horses used in public
transit – i.e. the omnibus – and in
goods movement caused the urban horse
population to skyrocket.
Horse
manure piled up in the streets. The European
House Sparrow, introduced to North America to
combat insect larva feeding on Linden Trees
which were a common street tree, learned to
feed year round on the grass and hay seed that
had passed through the horse. As a result, the
House Sparrow population also exploded.
Horse
manure and House Sparrows became the “twin
urban problems” in the Zentra of late 19th
century North American Industrial Centers.
The first automobiles were seen as a
‘nonpolluting alternative to the horse.’
Hopefully,
long before humans have used the Autonomobile
for as long as they have used the horse,
citizens will find that Large, Private
Vehicles, like horses, serves civilization in
much more limited ways than is currently
imagined by Autonomobile manufacturers or most
citizens who do not yet realize there is any
option.
Horse
Power and Horsepower
Climate
change (or is it just a drought?) has caused
pastures in the Piedmont to become more suited
to pigs or goats than horses. The spike in hay
prices has humane societies taking over the
maintenance of neglected horses, even in
“horse country.” This reality has again put
a spotlight on the economic and physical burden
of supporting horses.
Unfortunately
when EMR wrote “The Carriageless Horse,”
Erik Morris had not published “From Horse
Power to Horsepower.” (See End
Note Forty.)
Morris,
a PhD student at UCLA, provides a graphic,
factoid-laden exposition of the use of horse
power in late 19th Century urban agglomerations
and also makes the observation that the
Autonomobile was seen at the time as the
non-polluting “answer” to the horse.
Morris’s
description of piles of horse manure, maltreated
horses and the removal of dead horses could
provide the backgrounder for a horror film. He
paints a gruesome picture of the use and abuse
of horses during the time that horses were used
to provide both private and shared-vehicle
passenger transport as well as for delivery of
goods and services.
Are
Citizens Better Off with the Autonomobile than
the Horse?
There
is no reason to challenge Morris’ images or
data related to the use of horses in Industrial
Centers. There is a very good reason to
challenge his sweeping, sugar-coated
conclusions.
After
describing the chaos caused by the use of horse
power to provide urban Mobility and Access,
Morris teases the reader with a question:
Was
the autonomobile really an improvement given
the current levels of congestion and
pollution?
He
immediately scoffs at the idea that this is even
a rational question, suggesting that it is clear
to any sane person that the current situation is
much “better” than stinking streets full of
horse manure. This is the expected conclusion
because Morris’ work is supported by the
Autonomobile / Business-As-Usual “Complex”
described in PART I.
What
Morris misses (or intentionally avoids) is the
fact that very same root problem existed with
the horse providing Mobility and Access then as
with the Autonomobile providing Mobility and
Access now:
There
was no Balance between the travel demand
generated by the settlement pattern and the
capacity of the transport system. In addition,
there was no governance capacity to facilitate
the creation of this Balance.
The
Morris article documents that the governance
structure was already woefully out of sync with
the economic, social and physical reality of
urban settlement. When applying the new urban-fabric
shaping technology - structural steel framed
buildings, elevators, etc. - the way to make the
most money in the shortest time within the
context provided by Agencies was to build the
biggest possible building on each lot. The
public spaces were not designed to accommodate
horse power.
The
problem was not civil engineering and
construction know-how. Roman roads were built to
withstand the wear and tear of horses’ hooves
and the wheels of carts, wagons and chariots.
The grading and drainage system carried away the
manure and other refuse.
The
problem was not the design of the road system,
it was the design of the street system. When the
Roman roads dumped traffic onto urban streets,
congestion was the result and that was the same
problem in 1870 and is the problem in 2008. (See
End
Note Forty-one.)
In
large urban agglomerations, the Autonomobile and
the internal combustion engine (aka, Large,
Private Vehicles) have not proven to be any
better suited to Mobility and Access needs than
the horse. The reason is simple:
The
lack of balance between the traffic-generation
demand of the settlement pattern and the
capacity of the Mobility and Access system. It
does not matter if the vehicles are chariots
and carts, horse drawn wagons and omnibuses or
trucks and Large, Private Autonomobiles.
The
same problems crop up with Autonomobiles today
as did with horses, only now they are problems
of a Regional scale rather than the scale of
Neighborhood and Village streets. The cumulative
impact of Autonomobiles is worse than that of
the horse but the solutions are the same.
No
one would deny that huddling against a building
and facing the prospect of wading through
knee-deep horse manure was a daunting
possibility. People hoped for a silver bullet.
However, the solution that came down the road
turned out to be no better than the horse.
In
2008, citizens face the same alternative they
did in 1900:
Creating
human settlement patterns that generate
vehicle travel demand which can be served by
the transport system in such a way that there
is a Balance between demand and capacity.
That
means Fundamental Change to create functional
human settlement patterns in Balanced
Communities. It also means Fundamental Change in
government structure to facilitate functional
human settlement patterns.
Before
we get off the horse, there is one more point to
be made. If horses did not solve the urban
Mobility and Access problem and Autonomobiles (aka,
Large, Private Vehicles) only made it worse,
what about small cars? We will explore small,
cheap and sequentially shared cars below but for
now there is a four-legged way to put this
“solution” into perspective:
Visit
Cluster- and Neighborhood-scale urban enclaves
in many parts of the Spanish and Italian
Countryside. Our favorites are the Pueblo Blanco
in the South of Spain. To this day one can find
tiny donkey stables tucked under and between
shops and houses. These little stables take up
less space than would be needed for a horse,
especially a large draft horse. However, a small
stable is still a stable. It still takes up
space and it still smells, especially in the
summer. Every morning the owner loads up a pack
box with donkey manure and hauls it out to a
field.
Lewenz's
Village
There
is another way to get a handle on the fact that
Large, Private Vehicles take up too much space.
Claude Lewenz has recently written a book titled
“How to Build a Village.” (See End
Note Forty-two.)
Jim Bacon has written a review
(see"_____________,") and EMR is
planning to write one, which will appear in
Chapter 17 of BRIDGES. We can say from initially skimming the
book that it contains a number of useful ideas
and insights.
For
the purpose of this Backgrounder we only cite
Lewenz's “definition” of his Village:
“The
Village: A 5,000 to 10,000 population,
self-contained community built around multiple
plazas with cafes, shops, workplaces and artist
guilds and no cars within. With its own local
economy, affordable housing and environmentally
sustainable design, it offers a fulfilling,
wonderful place for all ages and diverse
peoples. Where everything is within a ten-minute
walk.” (See End
Note Forty-three.)
The
Myths
One
other element of the space issue is the focus of
“A
Yard Where Johnny Can Run and Play,” 1
December 2003. This column explores The Big Yard
Myth and documents how the mythology surrounding
the aim of providing a good home for raising
children undermines most of the other needed
resources, including the need to use an
Autonomobile to achieve Mobility and Access.
Myths that perpetuate dysfunctional patterns and
densities of land use will be explored more in
depth in THE USE AND MANAGEMENT OF LAND,
forthcoming.
What
Citizens Value Most
Perhaps
the most important issue to address in any
review of the spacial impact of the Autonomobile
is the misconception that more efficient, non-autocentric
patterns of settlement are characterized by
crowded, rat- infested hovels. People jammed
together against their will. This is another
aspect of the “Manhattan” syndrome noted
above.
Suffice
it to say, as documented in The Shape of the
Future, column after column, when given an
alternative and where there is even a threshold
attempt to make a fair allocation of
location-variable costs, citizens prove in the
market that they prefer non-autocentric
settlement patterns. It is not just singles and
empty nesters that favor these environments.
Even if it were, that covers nearly 75 percent
of the Households in the US of A.
In
spite of what the 12 ½ Percenters would have
one believe, the 87 ½ Percent Rule is based
on hard data that shows that the vast majority have already
chosen to buy, rent and live at the Unit and
Dooryard scales in patterns and at densities
which could be part of functional human settlement
patterns if located in well-designed Clusters,
Neighborhoods and Villages. Same house, same
builder, different location -- studies have
documented this reality for years.
A
Parade of Non-Solutions
In
the following section we review an array of
attempts to avoid reality. These attempts
fail to recognize the need for:
Fundamental
Change to create functional human settlement
patterns in Balanced Communities and
Fundamental Change in government structure to
accomplish the evolution to functional human
settlement patterns.
Zoning.
One response to the settlement pattern
dysfunction that resulted in horse congestion
and then in Autonomobile congestion were
municipal land use controls. The most famous
being “zoning.” Zoning has roots in pre-industrial
revolution regulations and grew in popularity
due to horse congestion. Zoning spread like
wildfire from urban enclave to urban enclave
after being sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court
in Ambler Reality vs. The Village of Euclid in
1926.
The
early model zoning ordinance provided a
simplistic non-solution that plagues urban
functions to this day. Zoning excludes some
“noxious” land uses from some parts of the
urban fabric. Not unexpectedly, zoning and the
market created mono-cultures of land uses.
Mono-cultures
in turn generate the demand for far more vehicle
miles of travel. The same is true for scattered
Big Boxes as noted in PART III. It took Jane
Jacobs’ book "Life and Death of Great
American Cities" to popularize the many
downsides of urban fabric monocultures.
If
municipalities intelligently applied the whole
arsenal of “planning” tools including
Official Maps, Capital Programs and
“comprehensive” planning, the results would
have been different. By “comprehensive”
planning we mean “real” comprehensive plans
at the Regional, Community, Village,
Neighborhood and Cluster scales. Such plans
included the concept of Balance. Balance was an
element of the best of these plans as late as
the '60s.
Zoning
is not, in and of itself, a “bad” idea as
some more recent reality based (aka “Form
Based”) code concepts demonstrate. (See “The
Role of Municipal Planning in Creating
Dysfunctional Human Settlement Patterns,”
22 January 2002.)
An
Alternative to Cheap Gasoline. As noted in
PART I, the very first “problem” with
Autonomobiles that occurs to many citizens is
that gasoline is no longer cheap. There is no
rational expectation that gasoline will ever
again be “cheap” unless there are no
Autonomobiles to burn it.
Alternative
fuels are a major topic of debate and fantasy
among those who live by the Large, Private
Vehicle Mobility and Access Myth (aka, Private
Vehicle Mobility Myth).
Alternative
fuels are not a solution for two reasons:
With
dysfunctional settlement patterns and Large,
Private Vehicles, there will be no better
Mobility and Access even if renewable sources
of energy like solar, wind and wave energy can
be delivered at prices comparable to gasoline
in 1973.
The
details to support this reality are beyond the
scope of this Backgrounder, but here are some
landmarks for future exploration:
Without
vast reductions in cost, reliance on new
sources of energy will widen the wealth gap
and thus threaten the existence of democracies
with market economies.
A
good example of why energy will cost a lot is
the potential development of Household-scale
nuclear reactors. (See “Mini
Nuclear Reactors for All,” Bacons
Rebellion blog, 20 December 2007.)
Raising
the topic of nuclear fission or fusion means
both high costs and long-term risks and dangers
unless the release of energy is controlled in
large, expensive facilities and waste programs
made safe in large expensive depositories.
There
is more: The heat must be used near the facility
because heat does not travel well. The same is
true for electricity which is, as noted below,
inefficient to move long distances or to
distribute widely at low voltage.
As
S/P has noted in other contexts:
Renewable
sources of energy – wind, solar, wave,
geothermal and others – are “thin”
(widely distributed) while existing urban
energy demands are “thick” (focused on
less than 5 percent of the land area).
Concentration,
storage, transmission and distribution from
renewable energy is expensive even if the basic
source is “free.” Add to this reality that:
Renewable
sources of energy are location-constrained.
Renewable
energy sources are great for farms, forest
maintenance facilities and other dispersed
activities. Small wind turbines have been used
to generate electricity on farms for a 100
years. Black water barrels have been a feature
on roofs in the tropics for longer. Water wheels
and wind mills to supply mechanical power have
been common for longer yet. (See End
Note Forty-four.)
As
noted above, when the “thin” renewable
sources are converted to electricity they are
very inefficient to transport. The US of A now
wastes half of all energy put into electrical
production in generation, transmission and
distribution to end users.
There
are some who dream of a “hydrogen economy”.
Hydrogen does not occur naturally in a free
state. How much energy from other sources is
required to isolate the hydrogen to replace
gasoline? How much will hydrogen power supplies
cost to produce and deliver? Will they power
Large, Private Vehicles for every one in the
economic food chain or only those at the top?
From
what we already know of the problems with
biomass generation of energy, the hydrogen
options appears to be just a dream. Biomass is
reasonable only if applied to waste. The waste
stream is something that needs to be reduced,
not expanded just to be a source of energy.
In
retrospect, gasoline was a magical elixir.
Everywhere one turns, the alternatives are
expensive or dangerous.
Small
Cars. Another topic that keeps coming up is
smaller, and more energy-efficient Private
Vehicles. We raised this issue in the context of
donkey stables above. There are a range of macro
and micro economic impacts of small cars in both
the First World and the Third (aka,
“Developing”) World.
In
the First World, the GDP impact of shifting to
small Autonomobiles would be traumatic, as
suggested in PART I. In the Third World, selling
every Household a small car would be dramatic as
well. Even a few gallons of gasoline a week
multiplied by billions of uses is a lot of
gasoline, a lot of CO2 and a lot of other
negative byproducts. The big issue, however, is
the disaggregation of human settlement patterns
and the impact of the inevitable, advertising-
driven Small, Private Vehicle myth.
The
prospect of Tata’s Nano, a four-passenger and
one- suitcase vehicle priced at $2,500 brings
these realities into perspective. Richard
Register and others articulate the need to
reconsider the glory of the small car as well as
the Prius and other hybrids. (See End
Note Forty-five.)
The
MainStream Media provides coverage of
alternative size and alternatively fueled
vehicles but to get a clear picture of what
advertising-besotted consumers drool over and
what the Autonomobile manufacturers want them to
buy, check out the programs for 2008 “Auto
Shows” from Paris to San Francisco.
Speed,
power and gadgets along with NASCAR drivers,
sports “personalities” and cheerleaders are
on the front burner at these shows. There is no
difference between the Auto Show hype for
Autonomobiles and the conspicuous consumption
focus of “Boat Shows.”
Tune
in to any athletic event coverage, check out the
Superbowl ads. Big, flashy, sexy. Mobility and
Access is not the focus and neither is
sustainability. What is the bottom line in the
real world?
Beyond
the hype there is some sound analysis to be
accessed via MainStream Media. Where? Why Warren
Brown in the WaPo,
23 March, of course.
We
have cited Brown’s insight in past columns and
Backgrounders. On Sunday 23 March, Brown goes beyond his usual excellence in “Checking
the Extremes at the New York Show.” We have
fond memories of the New York Show in the late
60s where we checked out the then-new MGB-GT,
which we later bought, and then sold, after the
1973 OPEC Oil Embargo.
The
entire column is worth a careful read. We will
come back to Brown regarding Smart Cars but here
is a quote that reflects Brown’s insight:
“It
does not matter what automobile manufacturers
propose, or governments dictate; consumers
will have the final say on what will be done,
how it will be done, and at what pace it will
be done. But the problem, as I have noted in
this space previously, is that consumers are
of varying, often contradictory minds, wanting
to have their oil and burn it too; and wanting
to do it at the cheapest possible price.”
That
is why it is so important for citizens to
receive sound information. (See THE
ESTATES MATRIX.)
Let
us be very clear:
Small
is better, shared is better, small and shared
is better yet.
Any
car, even a “small” car, takes up space.
With vast reductions in size, weight and speed
of vehicles along with a vast increase in the
sharing of vehicles, there could be some
improvement from renewable energy sources and
new technologies. However, the real benefit will
only accrue to citizens if there is also
Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns.
To
maintain anything like the current lifestyles
over the next two or three decades, citizens
would have had to initiate Fundamental Change in
1973. Starting the change in 2008 will be more
dramatic and more painful. If started in 2012
(after the next general election) it may be
impossible.
Smart
Cars in America, Not. Perhaps the best place
to get a grasp of the dynamics of more efficient
vehicles is to tune in on the history of
“Smart Cars.” This history is nearly as
enlightening as a blow-by-blow review of the
demise of interurban trolleys and streetcars
starting a century ago.
Small
cars are common in Europe and have been on the
roads in the Countryside and the streets in the
Urbanside since World War II. This is in
contrast to the US of A, Canada and other
nation-states where almost all Autonomobiles
have grown in size, weight and horsepower. Of
course, a wide array of mopeds, scooters and
motorcycle rickshaws are common in the Third
World, but Europe is the place where the
contrast in size is most dramatic.
Three-wheeled,
two-passengers-and-a-box "scooters” have
been used for farm-to-market travel in Italy and
Spain for years. Some small cars -- Renaults and
VW bugs -- have been sold both in Europe and in
the US of A.
The
post-1973 small vehicle that aimed to provide a ride
that many would consider “safe” is the
“Smart car”. If memory serves, we first saw
what is now termed a “Smart car” on the
streets of Wien in the 80s. As the years went
by, we began to see these vehicles with more
frequency in Europe. We took photographs of a
very sporty model that by this time had a
Mercedes hood emblem in Kobenhavn in the Spring
of 1991. By that time we would have seriously
considered buying such a vehicle, if it were
available in the US of A.
By
2000, Smart cars were common on the streets of
Berlin and other Zentra where two of them were
frequently seen parked nose-to-the-curb with two
in a single parking place. They could also be
seen in smaller urban enclaves and, yes, even on
the Autobahn.
We
have contended for years that there was (and is)
a market in the US of A for Smart cars. Now,
over 20 years after we first thought we might
buy one, Smart cars are now becoming available.
Warren Brown addresses this issue in the column
noted earlier. He allows Anders Sundt Jensen,
the Global Marketing Director, to state the
company line:
“It
would have been impossible to bring that car
here then,” Jensen said. “How could we
possibly have done that? You had the world’s
cheapest gasoline. Trucks and sport-utility
vehicles were 51 percent of your new-vehicle
market. No one in America would have looked at
a Smart car then.”
We
do not buy this excuse for a second. We would
have considered it 20 years ago and so would
others.
Why
so long? The Autonomobile manufacturers,
especially after Mercedes-Benz also bought
Chrysler, make more money producing Large
Vehicles.
Our
neighbor across the back fence put down a
deposit for a Smart Car as soon as he found out
they were available. Months later, last
week, he has finally moved off the waiting list
and has been able to order a specific model and
color. He expects delivery at mid-year. He
introduced us to www.smartcarofamerica.com. Go
to the fora on this site and check for yourself
the number of people who are clamoring for a
Smart Car.
As
the Brown column makes clear, the market is
there. This is a perfect example of where the
current market does not “work” and it does
not work for the reasons Robert Reich lays out
in "Supercapitalism." Citizens would have
benefited 20 years ago from having a Smart car
choice.
Parking
for Recreation, Big Boxes and For Everything
else Too
Now,
with the hard part out of the way, we move to
the easy part of driving a stake through the
heart of the Autonomobile.
There
is one place citizens can enjoy a quantum leap
toward understanding the dysfunction caused by
Autonomobiles. This path to understanding
comes not from an examination of where and how
Autonomobiles are driven but where they are
parked and who pays for parking opportunities.
This
is an area that has been well researched, but
logical actions are, as yet, infrequently
implemented. The field of parking - pun intended
- is far less complex and provides a far easier
to understand illustration of the limitations of
Autonomobiles than even recreation and
entertainment venues or Big Boxes. In addition,
UCLA Professor, Donald Shoup, has laid out the
“problem with parking cars” in clear terms
in op eds, academic research and in books for
general audiences. (For an introduction to the
topic of parking see Jim Bacon’s column “No
Such Thing as a Free Park,” 4 December
2006.)
The
work of Professor Donald Shoup is cited in
Jim Bacon’s column, and those concerned with the
issue of parking will want to follow up with
more reading of Shoup’s work. (See End
Note Forty-six.)
By
applying a commonsense approach to the price of
parking, Shoup has helped eliminate congestion
in a number of contexts. More importantly, when
there is a fair allocation of the cost of
parking, then more incentive exists to find
alternatives to the Autonomobile.
The
bigger issue, however, is that parking takes up
space and disaggregates human settlement
patterns in many places even more than roadways
and streets.
The
data is overwhelming. There are over eight
parking spaces for every Autonomobile. That
means there are over seven million acres or more
of empty parking spaces at any given time
because the car can be in only one of them --
assuming it's not on the roadway.
The
examination of parking is an easy way to grasp
the Large, Private Vehicle problem. The space to
park vehicles disaggregates critical mass
and destroys the ambiance of the places that
visitors seek to access. This is documented in
Part II concerning recreation and entertainment
venues. Good examples are the Main Street
Villages noted in the exploration of
recreational and entertainment venues in PART
II. The same is true for employment, commercial,
retail and residential land uses.
Yet in the face of this reality, retailer after
retailer lobbies municipal official after
municipal official for more parking spaces and
more parking subsidies. An excellent example can
be found in recent action by the Montgomery
County, MD council. (See End
Note Forty-seven.)
Part
V: What
Hath Man Wrought?
The
15th of May 2007, as documented on the front
page of the Business Section of WaPo,
might be thought of in years to come as “The
Ides of May for the Autonomobile Industry.”
There were four major stories on the front page
of the Business section and thee of them dealt
with the future of Autonomobiles.
The
big story was that Daimler Chrysler was selling
off Chrysler to Cerberus Capital Management. The
essence of the Chrysler “sale” was best
captured by the subheading of Alan Sloan’s
“Deals” column: “Daimler Pays to Have
Chrysler Towed Away.”
The
lead story, “Cerberus’ Sharp Tooth Ways:
Firm has History of Turn Around Fueled by
Cuts,” suggested a number of possible future
scenarios for Chrysler. For the auto industry in
general, the sale means the end of the 1948
“Treaty of Detroit” -- labor peace in
exchange for job security. The importance of the
“Treaty of Detroit” is spelled out in
Reich’s "Supercapitalism."
The
third story on the fateful 15th of May is
headlined: “Bush Calls for Cuts in Vehicle
Emissions: Agencies Urged to Draft New Rules.”
At the time, this story was noted as a major
departure from the Bush administrations’s
prior stance with respect to Autonomobiles.
It
turns out that this story foretold a revolution
in Elephant Clan policy. It was the first chink
in six-plus years of stonewalling any link
between Autonomobiles and Energy Security or
Climate Change by the Bush administration. Since
that time, administration policy has started to
reflect the growing Enterprise, Institution and
citizen concern for the role of Autonomobiles in
both Energy Waste and Climate Change. Perhaps it
was only a reflection of the need to create a
credible position in light of the upcoming 2008
elections, but whatever the cause, it was a
fundamental shift. (See End
Note Forty-eight.)
In
future decades observers may look back on the
15th of May 2007 and suggest that in fact this
was the “Tipping Point” that was made
inevitable by the Arab OPEC Oil Embargo of
October 1973.
The
34-year lag in doing something significant about
Autonomobiles and the consumption of imported
natural capital will have a dramatic impact on
the level of pain that is caused by finally
addressing the Mobility and Access Crisis in an
intelligent manner.
The
Blame
The
Autonomobile Era can be bracketed between the
terms of William Howard Taft and George Walker
Bush. Taft and his wife were autonomobile fans
long before Taft was inaugurated. By his
enthusiastic support for Autonomobiles,
including having the government buy
Autonomobiles for his use while President, Taft
became “The First Automobile President.” As
suggested by the Ides of May, George Walker Bush
will hopefully be considered “The Last
Autonomobile President.”
It
may not be fair to tag just these two heads of
state. Had Taft’s predecessor, Theodore
Roosevelt, not been such a bull-headed advocate
of horses there might have been a more rational
identification of useful roles for Autonomobiles.
A
more enlightened use of Autonomobile in the
United States was a possibility because even at
the dawn of the 20th century, citizens and
scholars raised the alarm about potential
negative impacts of Autonomobiles. With a
different federal policy, it may not have taken
98 years to learn what we should have learned
from use of the horse in urban settings as noted
earlier in PART IV.
More
recent administrations also share the blame.
World War I generals lobbied for a better way to
move armor and other heavy military equipment
across the country. They developed the
“Inter-Regional Highways” proposal in the
'20s. The idea came to fruition as the
Interstate Defense Highway program while a former
general, Dwight David Eisenhower, was president.
The booming Autonomobile industry that dominated
the shaping of human settlement patterns in the
'50s, '60s and '70s had far too much political
swat for the nation-state’s future
sustainability.
Many
citizens and their governance practitioners were
deluded by the slogan “What is good for
General Motors is good for America.”
Had
Gerald Randolph Ford, Jr. not feared the results
of further alarming the population following the
Richard Milhous Nixon scandals, he might have
taken far more decisive action -- programs that
reflected the post-Arab OPEC Oil Embargo
reality. Had James Earl Carter, Jr. not
abandoned the 50-cent-gas tax... Had Ronald
Wilson Reagan been more interested in
conservation and less interested in whatever
form of Mass OverConsumption helped
“conservatives” get elected in the short
run... Had George Herbert Walker Bush not been
such good friends with the Saudi’s... Had
William Jefferson Clinton not tried to make
excuses for why the US of A consumed so much
gasoline... (See Chapter 1 of The Shape of
the Future.)
With
any of these recent changes, the US of A could
have started decades earlier to transition
away from Autonomobile dominance. In fact,
every president from Theodore Roosevelt
forward had an opportunity to inspire and
implement a more intelligent Autonomobile
strategy.
The
rational voices of the '20s, '30s, '40s, '50s,
'60s and '70s were drowned out. Some criticized
the decisions to subsidize the demise of
Interurban Trolleys in the '20s and '30s, and
many opposed the subsidized demise of Street
Cars in the '40s and '50s. As pointed out in The
Shape of the Future, Benton Mackaye,
Louis Mumford, Wilfred Owen and others were
marginalized and relegated to working on trail
systems, academic explorations and advising
Third World governments. In the '50s and 60s the
most intelligent voice, that of Will Owen, was
marginalized by his superiors and successors at
the Bookings Institution. (See End
Note Forty-nine.)
All
this is entertaining to speculate about but in
the last analysis, in a democracy with a market
economy, it is citizens who are to blame. Yes,
they were mislead by trillions of dollars in
advertising and fooled by public subsidies for a
strategically unsustainable mobility system.
However, in a democracy the buck stops with
well-informed citizens, otherwise it is not a
real democracy. With glossy ads in Motor Trend
magazine setting the pace, Autonomobiles roll on
to an ignominious conclusion - The Crash.
The
Unsustainable Trajectory
Contemporary
society is headed for The Crash. “Collapse”
is the term used by Jared Diamond in the book of
that title. In the vocabulary of physics “The
Crash” will cause a “Collapse” on an ever
steeper road to entropy.
The
Crash on the road to entropy is what we mean
when we refer to an “unsustainable
trajectory for contemporary civilization.”
No one with an understanding of science, a
grasp of macro-economics or a lick of common
sense can look at the consumption data and not
identify the unsustainable trajectory. (See
End
Note Fifty.)
Some
are blind to the trajectory towards the Crash
that is inevitable if the US of A continues to
rely on Autonomobiles for Access and Mobility.
On 17 April 2007, the Wall Street Journal
published a special section titled “One
Billion Cars.” Jim Bacon summarizes the
material in two Blog posts on 18 April “A
World With One Billion Cars” and “Easing
the Logjam.”
Taken
together, the two Journal stories attempt
to whitewash the prospect of the Crash. The five
ways to ease traffic congestion noted in the
Journal stories are superficial. These
“solutions” (or the more comprehensive list
under the heading The Private Vehicle Mobility
Myth in PART I) would provide nothing beyond a Band-Aid.
They could be helpful tactics on the road to
Fundamental Change but would provide a benefit
only if work is started immediately on a new
trajectory, otherwise they are just feel-good
bromides.
What
If a Different Road Had Been Taken?
There
were warnings a century ago about the impact of
Autonomobiles. Some were just hysterical Ludditisms
but others were well founded. The better
substantiated concerns have been repeated and
confirmed at regular intervals over the past 90
years. It did not have to end in The Crash.
Think
of where citizens would be if only the
leadership of the US of A had paid attention to
the clear warning of October 1973.
Unfortunately, at no time has there been the
political will to make Fundamental Changes
needed for the unsustainable trajectory to be
abandoned and the current condition turn out
differently.
Some
citizens, including the author, took decisive
individual and small group actions. From time
to time, some take such actions to this day.
These actions are not, however, backed by
Agency, Institution and Enterprise initiatives
of meaningful magnitude. Since October 1973,
there has never been a critical mass of citizens
willing to change enough to make a difference
with respect to Autonomobiles.
What
happens when there is no feedstock for
gasoline?
(See
End
Note Fifty-one.)
Where
is the energy going to come from to isolate
hydrogen gas for fuel cells?
The
existing Big Grid electrical energy system
wastes as much energy in generation,
transmission and distribution as is delivered
to the end user.
What sense does it make to dump
more natural and financial capital into a
leaking system?
As
noted above, beyond the issue of fuel
availability and cost, no new fuel will solve
the problem of Large, Private vehicles. That is
a matter of physics not policy or politics.
What
happens to Households, Enterprises, Institutions
and Agencies that rely on auto-exclusive
development patterns when the percentage of
adult citizens who cannot afford to drive a
Large, Private vehicle grows from 20 percent to
80 percent?
What
happens when the cost of Large, Private Vehicles
reaches the point that only the rich can afford
Mobility and Access? There is reason to believe
it will foretell the end of democracies and
market economies.
One
thing left off the list of the Problem with Cars
in PART I was an indirect cost:
The
cost of traffic accidents beyond the fatality
toll.
See
“The
Truthful Cost of Traffic Accidents,” 5
March 2008.
Perhaps
the most compelling problem on the horizon is
that there is no alternative mode of
transportation to support dysfunctional
scatteration of human settlement that has been
generated by, and now requires the extensive use
of, Autonomobiles to achieve Mobility and
Access. (See the description of the Sao Paulo
New Urban Region in “The
Whale on the Beach,” 28 August 2006) and
the false hope of being able to fly in “The
Skycar Myth,” 15 November 2004.
Had
things been different, citizens would now
consider it logical to acquire an interest in a
small, recycled low energy-consuming vehicle
every 15 years instead buying a Large, Private
Autonomobile every one, two or three years. With
these vehicles, the settlement patterns would
have evolved to reduce travel demand.
Most
important, the US of A would have the moral high
ground and be able to lead international efforts
to achieve a sustainable future trajectory for
civilization. The US of A has wasted decades in
denial. For over a decade, the elected
leadership US of A has rejected and attempted
the discredit the concerns expressed at Kyoto.
Now the “leadership” is supportive of “voluntary” actions. As Reich points out in
"Supercapitalism," voluntary restricts are an
exercise in futility.
Instead
of setting an example, the US of A is a laughing
stock of First World nation-states and has no
grounds for criticizing China or India about
grossly expanding per capita energy consumption
and equating the rise of Autonomobile ownership
with “progress.”
Strategies
that Start Citizens in the Right Direction
In
PART III-Learning from Big Boxes, several
immediate steps to curtail Big Box-related
Autonomobility were noted. In this section,
other ideas to move beyond Autonomobility are
summarized.
A
comprehensive survey of the six overarching
strategies necessary to implement Fundamental
Change in human settlement patterns and
Fundamental Change in governance structure are
presented in Part IV (Chapters 23 through 30) of
The Shape of the Future. The
following are highlights related to transport,
Mobility and Access.
Chapter
23 deals with Sustainability. Use of
Autonomobiles to provide Mobility and Access is
not sustainable based on the criteria explored
in this chapter.
Chapter
24 documents that the first step toward
achieving a sustainable trajectory for
civilization is for Agencies, Enterprises and
Institutions to create citizen (individuals and
Households) understanding of the need to fairly
allocate the full location variable costs of
goods and services. As suggested in THE ESTATES
MATRIX, S/P suggests that it is up to citizens
to evolve an information gathering and
dissemination function in the Fourth Estate.
Agencies, Enterprises and Institutions will not
do this.
Autonomobiles
and the Large, Private Vehicle System (L,PVS)
are prime targets for education and immediate
action. The current direct cost of moving an
Autonomobile from point A to point B is NOT
the cost of relying on Autonomobiles for
Mobility and Access.
There
are also indirect costs of the A-to-B trip that
are not yet even recognized. These include the
impact on air and water quality and the
overarching impact on Climate Change, land
misuse, etc. These are costs of current
strategies to rely on Autonomobiles for Mobility
and Access.
Next
there are the costs of maintaining the roadway
system. The reason there are multi-billion
dollar infrastructure shortfalls in every New
Urban Region, including bridges that fail, is
that the current system is not paying the total
direct cost. (See End
Note Fifty-two.)
Next
there is the cost of parking which is said to be
96 percent subsidized by non-vehicle use related
payments. OK, even if the number is only 90
percent... Fair allocation of the cost of
parking would yield a more efficient use of
parking, but more importantly, it would put a
spotlight on the failure of the Autonomobile as
a mode of transport to achieve Mobility and
Access.
The
big ticket item, however, is that the space
required to drive Autonomobiles and park them
when in use disaggregates human settlement
patterns, and thus all human activity, in such
profound ways that the cost of almost every good and service
is impacted.
If
the costs were fairly allocated far fewer
would drive Large, Private Vehicles and shared
vehicle systems would be a much more highly
appreciated bargain.
Chapter
25 suggests that Agencies, Enterprises and
Institutions embrace new Mobility and Access
strategies based on the realization that
Autonomobiles (and trucks) are inefficient
vehicles to overcome space and distance. In
fact, as we have outlined in this Backgrounder,
Autonomobiles disaggregate urban settlement,
which generates economic, social and physical
dysfunction. A comprehensive Mobility and Access
strategy requires the evolution of:
While
longer-term and more Fundamental Changes are
made in the allocation of location-variable
costs and creation of new Mobility and Access
systems, there are immediate steps to take to
start to level the playing field:
Chapters
26, 27 and 28 explore strategies beyond
transport policies and programs. There are many
other actions that would impact settlement
patterns and make them more supportive of
shared-vehicle systems. The most important one
is a tax on land instead of improvement to
discourage speculation and encourage the full
use of existing public services. (Hello again,
Henry George!)
Chapter
29 documents that to achieve a full, fair
allocation of the location-variable costs,
including Autonomobiles, there must be a
Fundamental Change in nation-state, Regional and
Community governance structures.
Portal
to Portal Wages
Here
is something to chew on that you may have heard
about half a century ago but has not been
seriously thought of since.
Before,
during and just after World War II, labor unions
representing coal miners sought “portal to
portal” wages. The problem was that after the
miner entered front gate of the mine property,
they waited for a vehicle to take them deep into
the mine. The miner’s pay did not start until
they reached the mine face - the place they
started loading coal onto the mine cars. The unions
argued that pay should start when the miner got
to the mine property (the portal) because the
mining company was in control of the speed with
which they got to the place where they went to
work.
Now
there are Agencies handing out subsidies for
Enterprises to create jobs: for instance,
warehouses for Big Boxes noted in PART III.
These are not new jobs in Balanced Communities,
they are jobs in remote and scattered locations.
Almost without exception, the new job holders
have to drive long distances to work.
Why
not institute a modest program that requires any
Enterprise receiving a job-creating subsidy to
be take an interest in where the workers live.
Under such a program, the Enterprise would pay
the workers for any travel time beyond the first
and last 10 minutes of their journey to and from
work. After five years, if there is Affordable
and Accessible Housing in close proximity to the
job, the employee holding that position does not
collect “New Portal to Portal Wages.”
This
program would put any subsidy applicant on
notice that creating new jobs far from the
resources needed to support a labor pool is not
a good idea. More importantly, it will cause
everyone involved to consider the need for a
jobs/housing Balance, the first step in creating
a J / H / S / R / A Balance needed to create
Balanced Communities. This type of
new policy requires Fundamental Change in
governance structure - that is also a good
thing. Creative thinking would turn up other
contexts to introduce New Portal-to-Portal pay
or other ways to level the playing field.
A
Modest Prediction
More
than the atomic bomb, poison gas, drug resistant
disease, pharmaceuticals in the water supply,
genetic engineering of plants and animals or
nanotechnology gone bad, over population, Mass
OverConsumption and Autonomobile driven
dysfunctional settlement patterns will be seen
as the primary instruments of destruction of
21st Century First World Civilization.
The
Autonomobile is the tool that has provided for
the mechanized disaggregation of human
civilization.
The irony is that Agencies and
Enterprises have required almost every Household
to acquire the instrument that distributes,
deconstructs and disaggregates society.
Transport is the canary in the minefield of
dysfunctional human settlement patterns.
Autonomobility
is the canary in the minefield of human
civilization unsustainability.
PART
VI
Postscript
In
this Backgrounder, we have noted genetic
proclivities of humans that favor Large, Private
Vehicles that underlie the Private Vehicle
Mobility Myth. We have also noted genetic
proclivities that drive the market for Big
Boxes. The current governance structure has
demonstrated a lack of political will to make
changes necessary to address the forces driving
unsustainable trajectory of contemporary
civilization.
As
we were completing the editing of “The Problem
With Cars” it occurred to us that it is
altogether possible that the genetic
proclivities of humans which have driven them to
achieve the current status of society are not
capable of carrying humans further and thus have
put civilization on an unsustainable trajectory.
This is not a completely new insight.
We address this issue in Chapter 10 Box 4,
"The Evolution of Brain Power," and in
Chapter 23 of The Shape of the Future,
which examines the issues of sustainability.
In
"Collapse," Jared Diamond suggests
there are two overarching prerequisites avoiding
a catastrophic end to a society:
Perhaps
the ability to reconsider genetic proclivities
is a key element of the second criteria. (See End
Note Fifty-three.)
Beyond
strategies that focus on evolution of functional
patterns and density of land use there must
evolve an ethic of community responsibility and
sharing at all scales. Citizens must learn to
temper proclivities to acquire goods and enjoy
them in private with complementary proclivities
that support Alpha components of human
settlement patterns, including Communities and
New Urban Regions. These might be termed
actions to establish a Balanced between
individual rights and community
responsibilities. You may have heard of that
element of Balance from the Communitarians.
The
Autonomobile and the settlement patterns driven
by the Autonomobile reinforce the opposite
result. It is time to right the Balance.
--
April 7, 2008
End
Notes
(39).
In the column “Regional
Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005 (and in several
subsequent columns) we suggest that Sao Paulo,
Brazil, provides a powerful
three-dimensional portrait of future immobility
and isolation unless there is Fundamental Change
in human settlement patterns and Fundamental
Changes in governance structures.
(40).
Morris, Erik,; “From Horse Power to
Horsepower,” Spring 2007, Access, the
quarterly magazine of the University of
California Transportation Center.
(41).
There are interesting examples of places
where streets were designed for horses. Streets
in Santa Maria, Calif., which was laid out as an
agricultural service center, were designed to be
wide enough so that two bean wagons pulled by a
6-horse team could make a U-turn in the middle
of any block. The streets in Salt Lake City were
also designed for easy maneuverability of
horse-drawn vehicles.
(42).
Lewenz, Claude. “How to Build a Village,”
Village Forum Press, Auckland, New Zealand.
(43).
Lewenz’s Village could be an Alpha Village
and there are many potential places within New
Urban Regions and Urban Support Regions for such
a Village to exist.
(44).
Think how great it would have been if the
Rural Electrification Administration (REA) had
developed small, self-installed and
self-maintained generation facilities for farms
instead of a long, low voltage distribution
systems that wasted billions of kilowatt hours
in generation, transmission and distribution.
This waste of energy and the subsized
“rural” telephone service was, and is, a
prime driver of the scatteration of urban
dwellings across the Countryside. At least, as
of March 2008, REA is no longer getting low cost
loans to build coal-fired generating plants to
produce electricity for sale to urban consumers.
(45).
For a review of Nano’s impact, see
“World’s Cheapest Car Goes on Show Tata
Motors Has Unveiled, ” www.BBC.co.uk 10
January 2008; Kamdar, Mira, “The Peoples Car:
It Costs Just $2,500. It’s Cute as a Bug. And
It Could Mean Global Disaster,” Wapo 13
January 2008; Applebaum, Anne. “Tiny Car,
Tough Questions,” Wapo 15 January 2008.
Richard Register posts his views of hybrid cars
and related topics at www.ecocitybuilders.com.
(46).
Professor Shoup provides an easy-to-understand
profile of one aspect of the parking issue in
“Gone Parking,” an op ed in the 29 March
2007 issue of the New York Times.
Shoup’s signature book is “The High Cost of
Free Parking.” In this book he argues that the
capital value of parking ($2.5-trillion) exceeds
the value of vehicles ($1.1-trillion) and of
roadways ($1.4 trillion) in the US of A. This
observation substantiates the reason Big Boxes
seek cheap sites as noted in PART III.
(47).
WaPo “Council repeals Parking Increase:
Broad Criticism Stuns Montgomery,” by Mariana
Minaya, 1 August 2007.
(48).
The September 2007 “Climate Change Summit”
turned out to be a toothless volunteer exercise
in futility but it acknowledges that the
majority of the citizens now believe that
Climate Change is real and that humans are
contributing to this world wide change.
(49).
Add to this list Kenneth Schneider, who in
1971, two years before the OPEC Oil Embargo,
published “Autokind vs. Mankind: An Analysis
of Tyranny, A Proposal for Rebellion and A Plan
for Reconstruction.” This book, called to our
attention by Richard Register, supplements the
volumes cited in End Note Five.
(50).
Among the data that needs to be examined in
this context:
Some
of the current trends can be turned around in
the short term, but most are driven by and will
be changed only by Fundamental Change in human
settlement patterns as documented in The
Shape of the Future.
(51).
Every alternative fuel that has been
suggested has a major downside: Corn requires
more energy to grow, distill and transport than
is produced by the ethanol to which it is
converted. Converting corn to ethanol is already
raising the cost of basic food products. Land
for raising sugar cane to produce ethanol in
Brazil clears existing forest which now acts as
a sink for carbon. This reality plus
inefficiencies of production and transport
results in more energy being consumed than saved
by burning sugar-based ethanol.
(52).
The Victoria Transport Policy Institute has
data on this and other currently unmet costs.
(53).
Jane Jacobs died between the time Jared Diamond
wrote "Guns, Germs and Steel" and the
time he wrote "Collapse." Before she
died, Jacobs wrote "Dark Age Ahead,"
published in 2004, in which she sketched out out
what she “thinks” Diamond might conclude if
he were to write a book on the topic of
"Collapse." She highlighted the need
for a human society to maintain creative vigor
if it is to avoid a “dark age.” The topic of
proclivities will be important to explore in the
future.
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