The Shape of the Future

E M Risse


 

 

Solving the Commuter Problem

There are no magic technological fixes for rush-hour traffic congestion. The only real solution is building Balanced Communities that support fewer, shorter automobile trips.


 

On 22 January 2007 Jim Bacon opened an important avenue of inquiry with his post “The Changing Relationship Between Worker and Workplace” on the Bacon’s Rebellion Blog. “Worker / Workplace Relationship” is another way to phrase the problems generated by “Living Here, Working There” which is the root cause of “commuting.” The comments following this posting raised a number of good questions but provided few answers.

 

Commuting and the widespread belief in the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth are root causes of the Mobility and Access Crisis in Virginia and in every New Urban Region as well as in many of the larger urban enclaves within Urban Support Regions across the US of A. (See End Note One.)

 

There are two core reasons that there is no clear path forward concerning the relationship between worker and workplace or “commuting”:

  • First, many equate improving the lot of commuters with solving the Mobility and Access Crisis

  • Second, there is mass confusion over the anatomy of  “the commuter problem.”

We addressed shared-vehicle aspects of this quagmire in a column on the misuse of “Commuter Rail” (See “The Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005, and End Note Two.

It turns out that “improving” the transport system to “help commuters” is a counter- productive strategy if the goal is to solve the Mobility and Access Crisis on a Regional or Subregional basis. A far better strategy would be to evolve functional patterns and densities of land use in Balanced Communities that drastically cut the need or desire for commuting.

We start our examination of commuting by raising two questions that are never asked because the answer is assumed to be “yes” but it is not. We then explore the issue of “commuting” in the context of finding comprehensive solutions to the Mobility and Access Crisis.

 

The initial questions explore technology that is assumed to improve the relationship between worker and workplace and the conditions faced by those who “Live Here, Work There,” in other words, technology that will reduce the need to commute.

 

Question One

Does enhanced communications technology open the door to solving the Commuting Problem, thus mitigating the Mobility and Mobility Crisis?

Let us consider two widely touted new technology tools – cell phones and satellite based Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS) in Autonomobiles:

 

Based on our observations to date, we believe that the use of cell phones generates more vehicle miles of travel than the use of cell phones eliminate. (See End Note Three.)

 

There is no question that intelligent use of cell phones has the potential to cut travel demand by eliminating some commuting and other trips.

Before we go any farther, let us make it clear that if cell phone users understood the dynamics of human settlement patterns and knew that use of their devices was not a “solution” but that cell phones could, if intelligently used, be a tool to improve their quality of life, then cell phones – and other technology – could contribute to significantly reducing travel.

Even hinting that any technology is a “solution” for transport congestion immediately makes the device part of the problem. The illusion that a device is part of a “solution” that is just around the corner offsets the potential to reduce travel demand.

This reality is reinforced by the fact that cell phones give those stuck in traffic something to do to make life more enjoyable and in some cases productive.

 

These diversions remove pressure to do something urgent and constructive about cutting back on commuting and in other ways addressing the Mobility and Access Crisis.

In other words, a key factor in cell phones increasing travel demand is that extensive cell phone use removes a major incentive to debunk the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth. Extensive cell phone use syphons off support for Fundamental Change and the evolution of Balanced Communities. In a sense, cell phones sugar coats the wasted time but in the long run contribute to the problem growing worse and worse.

There is more: Using cell phones, especially while stuck in traffic creates contacts, priorities and actions that further the time crisis of the “Running As Hard As They Can” sector of the economic food chain.

 

There is almost no limit to the new places one can find out about – and generate an excuse to drive to – while talking on a cell phone. These places include places to rendezvous, places to find bargains, places to seek entertainment and sometimes places to seek or accomplish work.

 

From a moral perspective these places are often ones where one can do things that drivers do not want to tell their mothers about.

 

From a consumption perspective, cell phone users can find out about great bargains on goods and services that the driver may or may not need. One can find out what the Jones are getting and buy some before the Jones even get their's home.

The cell phone is a great facilitator of Mass Over consumption and Mass Over Consumption-generated travel demand.

Unlike land-line phones, there is no cell phone directory. Almost all the cell phone number assistance utilities are 1) “reverse” directories, 2) require a significant amount of information before a search can be made, or 3) are based on suspect data-gathering technology.

 

By design there is no geographic orientation or logic to cell phone numbers. Cell phones turn out to be a great way to get a random distribution of contacts. Because cell phone subscribers have no idea of where the contacts are, the phones have the effect of maximizing travel in order to optimize economic and social parameters while neglecting priorities based on physical location. In other words they are exponents of Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial Ignorance.

 

Extensive cell phone use demonstrates that there are more and more things to do year after year but there is no more time to do them. This new knowledge forces choices, causes conflict and causes stress, not just adventure and joy as the advertising suggests.

 

Finally, cell phone yackers can find out about and get to diverse places but only if they do not get in an accident first. (See End Note Four.)

 

What about Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS)?

 

Based on evidence to date, putting GPS systems in cars, like extensive use of cell phones, reinforces Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial Ignorance.

 

At the most basic level, GPS systems help get the unknowing (Geographically Illiterate) driver where they need to go without giving them the slightest idea of where they are or how they got there.

Having a “map in my head” is a vital tool for understanding human settlement patterns and the forces that create settlement pattern dysfunction. (See End Note Five.)

What happens when you link cell phones with GPS systems?

 

There has been an expectation over the past decade that when the cell phone–GPS linkage is perfected, the use of cell phones along with a GPS system will allow drivers to navigate around congestion. In a closed system like roadways this ability will ensure that all routes are equally congested.

 

That means the roadways needed by citizens to get to the doctor and for delivering goods and services for which use of a vehicle is necessary will be congested with commuters trying to avoid other congested routes. As we will point out below, the goal should be to eliminate the need to commute, not find a ways for commuters to equally clog every roadway.

 

Further, expensive technology and fee-for-service subscriptions will provide those at the top of the economic food chain with the ability to navigate around congestion. It gives the very well to do and those with advanced technological skills a leg up on the general population. This is another aspect of Sao Paulo’s economically stratified mobility with which we close “Regional Rigor Mortis” (6 June 2005). It certainly is not a sustainable mobility formula in a democracy.

 

Smarter car/GPS systems can provide valuable information. For example, my system tells me that in spite of the fact that I drive at (or above) the speed limit whenever conditions permit, the average speed I have driven since acquiring a new vehicle in July 2006 is 22.3 MPH. We always attempt to drive on Interstates and expressways either in HOV lanes or in off peak times and directions. We try to avoid congestion and take advantage of the great capabilities of our new vehicle but still only travel at 22.3 miles an hour.

 

On the other hand, 22.3 MPH is just a little slower than the average speed of platform-to-platform travel on METRO which is derided by the anti-shared-vehicle crowd for being “too slow.” Of course, when we get near our destination in one of our vehicles we must park it and walk to the place we really want to be. The onboard computers also calculate that we drive our two vehicles a total of less than 350 miles a month or about 2,200 miles a year per vehicle.

 

Question Two

Does new “energy efficient” Autonomobile technology provide a path to solving the Commuter Problem and thus mitigate the Mobility and Access Crisis?

A story on the front page of the Business Section of the 23 January WaPo (“Getting Hydrogen Cars To Live Up to Their Hype” by Sholnn Freeman) should put the second question to rest.

 

The story notes that one of the Ford Edge prototype vehicles costs $2 million to build.  The battery/hydrogen fuel-celled (HySeries) mini-SUV is not about to roll off the assembly line at a price that is competitive. This vehicle was designed to meet two goals: 1.) Get favorable (“Ford is trying to do the right thing”) publicity and 2.) hook a big federal subsidy. Read it and weep.

 

GM decided recently that it could not make as much money building a plug-in car as it could building big trucks for lemmings to drive off a cliff, it scrapped all the test models operating in California.

 

The HySeries Ford Edge story in WaPo never addresses the question of the source or amount of energy which is needed to produce the electricity and hydrogen used to propel the vehicle. As in the debate over ethanol subsidies, the critical issue is total energy consumption per passenger mile. The measure is not energy per vehicle mile, especially if is a single-occupant vehicle.

 

There is more fantasy in the HySeries story than in the TV ads for the conventionally powered Ford Edge that rides on two wheels along building ledges twenty stories in the air. It is pure Myth – the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth – that private vehicles, regardless of the power source, can solve the Mobility and Access Crisis. (See End Note Six.)

 

Shifting to less polluting, but more expensive and more totally consumptive, private vehicles is not an answer to any known problem except to make it appear that the Autonomobility Complex and governance practitioners are “doing something.” It should go without saying that in a sane world:

  • Modest improvements in gas mileage (current public policy), or

  • A 20 percent reduction in the projected growth of gasoline consumption (proposed in the most recent State of the Union message), or even

  • A 50 percent reduction in current consumption of petrochemicals (considered by Business As Usual to be unthinkable)

are just transparent ploys to make it seem like something is being done.

 

As if to demonstrate that all the energy conservation hoopla is just for show, the advertisements for the International Auto Show just concluded at the Federal District’s Convention Center features muscle and sex machines including a 400 horsepower “hybrid” sports car.     

 

The Answer

 

The answer to both of the “new technology as a solution to the Mobility and Access Crisis” questions is clear. It is NO and NO.

 

Why do we even need an answer to these questions? Because, as noted above, as long as there are possible “solutions” floating out in the ether – the assumption that technology, or anything else is an “answer” – then there is an excuse to avoid considering real solutions that require Fundamental Change.

It does not matter if the “solution” is telework, cell phones, GPS systems, traffic monitors, red light cameras, mini chips, nano technology or ginseng root. If it is touted as a “solution,” even a partial solution, it contributes to the Mobility and Access Crisis.

From S/PI’s perspective, Balanced Communities in sustainable New Urban Regions are the only way to preserve a democracy with a market economy in a world with finite resources. As noted in “The Commuting Problem,” 17 January 2005. the overarching goal is not to “help” commuters but to help citizens become non-commuters.

The percentage of commuters in any Community is a measure of imbalance between jobs and housing. A high rate of commuting (in for service jobs or out for better paying jobs) is a sign that the place is a Beta Community and not an Alpha Community.

In any New Urban Region or Urban Support Region there will be some inter-community work travel. There may not be a market for a full-time piano tuner or a gold leaf artist in every community. But those situations must be the exception, not the rule, if there is to be a functional mobility and access system Community-wide and Region-wide.

 

The task ahead is not to find ways to make commuting easier but to find ways to eliminate the need for commuting. The market for the built environment clearly shows that places where commuting is not necessary in order for most citizens to create a quality lifestyle have far higher values to those who have the opportunity to choose. A democracy with a market economy should be about providing for choice and for functional settlement patterns.

 

A corollary of the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth is:

There is no way to create a private-vehicle dominated transport system for large New Urban Regions so that commuting by a large percentage of the population is sustainable over the long term. See End Note Seven.

The challenge is to inform citizens that commuting is not an acceptable way to address the relationship between worker and workplace or to bridge the gap between were you work and where you live.

 

Advice from Agencies and the Media

 

And what do we hear from agencies and the media that citizens rely upon to overcome self-serving advertising and to establish priorities for the future?

 

Within the context of the need to eliminate commuting what are government agencies doing?  Well according to WaPo (“Travel Study Aims to Dissect The Region: Commuters’ Habits To Guide Planning” by Bill Turque in the Loudoun Extra for 1 February) in National Capital Subregion, the Transportation Planning Board (the Subregion’s geographically challenged Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPO) is doing a travel survey of 10,000 randomly selected citizens to find out the patterns of commuting. Need we say more?

 

In the same edition of the same paper the new Dr. Gridlock falls right in the tracks of the old Dr. Gridlock. In response to a question as to why the National Capital Subregion has traffic that is so much worse than the writer's former home region in California, Dr. Gridlock says:  

“The big reason for our traffic problems is the region’s failure to judiciously improve the road network.”  

What better statement of the Private-Vehicle Mobility Myth can you imagine than that?

 

Nowhere does any public agency or the media address the fact that the problem is an imbalance between the travel demand and the transport system capacity and that the system capacity cannot be expanded or improved to provide mobility and access to dysfunctionally distributed origins and destinations of travel.

 

Abe Lincoln said you could not fool all the people all the time but private enterprises, governance practitioners and the media are batting almost 1000 so far.

 

This intentional, and for some unintentional, deception is rooted in fact that enterprises make money from consumption – especially Mass Over-Consumption – not from conservation. Only a tiny percentage make a lot of money from Autonomobility and the settlement pattern that results from it but the spin suggests that everyone wins – freedom of choice, sex appeal, you name it.

 

Business As Usual is panicked that any Fundamental Change in the energy consumption of private vehicles will have a disastrous economic impact. Given the corner into which private enterprise and governance practitioners have painted citizens that is a given. However, the longer citizens wait to force Fundamental Change, the louder the crash will be.

 

If citizens started to secure Fundamental Change in settlement patterns today, most could keep their Autonomobiles until they wear out and there would be no need to end Autonomobility completely until well into the 22nd Century. If citizens do not start now, Autonomobility will end with a bang and many lemmings will be driving their vehicles over a cliff causing a crash known as “The New Big Bang.”

 

The question is, are citizens going to demand intelligent Fundamental Change or just hope for a miracle or that the crash will result in a quick, painless end to civilization as they have known it?

 

Where Do We Go From Here?

 

First, citizens of all nation-states must find a way to stop the growth of the population in both New Urban Regions and Urban Support Regions.

 

Here in the US of A the most important immediate goal is to fairly allocate the cost of location-variable decisions so that we stop subsidizing dysfunction.

 

We are often asked: So what can we do first?

 

A place to start is with the Henry George/Split Rate Tax we have discussed in prior columns. (Use the search function at www.baconsrebellion.com.)

 

The most important immediate step is to fairly allocate the cost of mobility which is a favorite theme of Jim Bacon's, especially in the context for the current legislative quagmire in the General Assembly and in the Governors Office.

 

Another important step is the address the cost of all energy. A carbon tax makes more and more sense now that there is no creditable nation state-funded scientific evidence that humans are not exacerbating global climate change. We would settle for a fair distribution of the cost per kilowatt hour to every electrical service user.

 

These measures will lead to the evolution of Balanced Communities where the time, distance and stress of Autonomobility is slashed by making the elements of a quality life accessible with far less vehicle travel, especially single-occupant private vehicle travel.

 

Without excess private vehicle travel there would be no balance of payment problem in the US of A, no foreign energy dependence, no reason to fight wars in the Middle East and less potentially climate changing emissions.

 

A special thanks to those who submitted comments on the draft of this column.

 

EMR

 


 

1. For details on the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth see  “From Myth to Law,” 29 November 2004 and “Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005. We will be exploring these issues in future columns that will be included in the BRIDGES volume of TRILO-G.

 

2. A basic cause of confusion about “commuting” is that few commentators think comprehensively about human settlement patterns. They also do not try to understand those who do. Most who enter the fray act as if they believe: “We live in human settlements and so we can apply what has made us successful in selling insurance, fulfilling government contract orders and drug testing and thereby understand human settlement pattern issues.” In other words, “We live in human settlement patterns and so we are experts on the topic.”

 

Few understand the reality behind Balanced Communities and The Clear Edge or explore the ramifications of Comprehensive Conceptual Frameworks or the need for a robust Vocabulary with which to discuss human settlement pattern parameters. At SYNERGY/Planning we are working on TRILO-G to chart a path to understanding these concepts and cure the pervasive Geographic Illiteracy and Spacial Ignorance that drives self-destructive location decisions and cumulatively results in dysfunctional human settlement patterns.

 

As noted in the Backgrounder on this topic, Geographic Illiteracy is rooted in the failure to understand basic parameters of location decisions. Otherwise intelligent citizens fail to understand that A=PiR2 applies to the regional distribution of human activity. (See Backgrounder “Geographic Illiteracy”.)

 

Geographic Illiteracy allows Business As Usual advocates to claim that Balanced Communities are: “high density;” “just smart growth” rehashed; another term for “new urbanism;” an excuse for “big brother/Communist planning;” will result in “a usurpation of property rights;” or other red herring obfuscations.

 

Any reader who has a doubt about the ability of the land within a Clear Edge located at from R=20 to R=30 around the Core of the National Capital Subregion to commodiously accommodate all the existing and proposed jobs, housing, services, recreation and amenity (aka, “development”) to 2025 in “green, leafy” Balanced Communities needs to take remedial action immediately. A good first step is to buy an ADC “Washington DC 50 Mile Radius Wall Map” and plot for themselves the data found in “Five Critical Realities that Shape the Future,” at www.baconsrebellion.com together with whatever demographic and economic projections they believe to be valid. An alternative is to study the “Stark Contrast” graphic in the PowerPoints included with "The Shape of the Future" CD ROM available at the same website.

 

3. We base this observation in part of the conclusion reached after years of research on the impact of Telework (including telecommuting) on total vehicle miles traveled.  Telework helps reduce work related travel and peak hour travel but may increase the time and vehicles available for non-work or other-work travel. A comprehensive Telework program may be a big benefit for some workers in some cases but it is not a cure for traffic congestion. For the majority of workers it is more effective to put the jobs and the houses closer together than find ways to work remotely.

 

4. The danger of driving and yacking on a cell phone is clear. This is not the place for a full run down of the evidence. However, in a sublime and serendipitous juxtaposition of stories in the same 23 Jan 2007 Business section of WaPo that the HySeries Ford is featured – the focus of Question 2. – there is an informative “The Regulators” column by Cindy Skrzycki titled “Safety Group Wants Auto Makers to Steer Clear of Hands-Free Devices.”

 

5. The need for such a “map in the head” is clearly demonstrated by the comments following the post REBUILDING THE BIG BARN (19 January 2007) at www.baconsrebellion.blogspot.com and every other posting that raises basic settlement pattern issues.

 

6. All the discussion on alternative fuels for private vehicles obscures the fact that no private vehicle system can provide Mobility and Access to a large New Urban Region. See “The Whale on the Beach,” 28 August 2006 and “Regional Rigor Mortis,” 6 June 2005 and the material cited therein.  These columns can be accessed at www.baconsreblellion.com. Future columns will address the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the current spate of energy conservation and energy independence political propaganda.

 

7. It is now becoming clear that within the Clear Edge around the Core of large New Urban Regions, it is not just Balanced Communities that are needed but Balanced Communities where most of the Village Cores within most of those Communities are served by a robust mix of shared-vehicle systems.

 

While the Autonomobility crowd that have spread the Private Vehicle Mobility Myth tries to paint a bleak picture of shared-vehicle systems, every large New Urban Region – and most of the midsized ones -- are developing them.  It may be too late and the systems may not yet serve functional, balanced settlement patterns in the station-areas but the evolution of shared-vehicle systems is moving forward from San Diego to Boston.

 

-- February 5, 2007

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ed Risse and his wife Linda live inside the "Clear Edge" of the "urban enclave" known as Warrenton, a municipality in the Countryside near the edge of the Washington-Baltimore "New Urban Region."

 

Mr. Risse, the principal of

SYNERGY/Planning, Inc., can be contacted at spirisse@aol.com.

 

Read his profile here.