Bacon's Rebellion

Who Will Gather and Disseminate the News. Volume 100, Number 1,000

The same old story.

Today’s WaPo features their new format and two must read articles for those who are concerned with the how citizens will get the information they need to make intelligent decisions in the market place and in the voting booth.

Howard Kurtz: “Media Notes: The Same Old Story Turns Into a New One as Start-Ups Multiply” on C 1 and Leonard Downie Jr. And Michael Schudson “Finding a New Model for New Reporting” on A 19.

The journalism types want FCC to subsidize “citizen journalism.”

Citizen journalism is fine but what REALLY needed is Citizens Media. See THE ESTATES MATRIX.

And the new formats? Ways to cut the cost of putting out the paper and ways to make it look more like a cluttered web page instead of a calm presentation of what citizens need to know from a source citizens can trust.

The hype (in a new “Redesign Owner’s Manual) puts a spotlight on settlement pattern component reporting. As long as they call it “local” instead of sorting out what they are talking about by the location and the scale of the settlement pattern component they might as well dump their ink, their newsprint and their bytes in the Potomac.

EMR

One of the thought leaders in the arena of health care reform today is a Darden School professor, Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg. She is virtually unknown in her home state of Virginia, but political leaders ought to make her acquaintance. She teamed up with Michael Porter, Harvard Business School’s competitiveness guru, to write a critically important book, “Redefining Health Care,” that should be must read for anyone legislating the makeover of the U.S. health care system.

Healthy competition is competition to improve value for customers, or the quality of products or services relative to their price. It leads to relentless improvements in efficiency. Product quality and customer service improve. Innovation propels advances in the state of the art. Quality adjusted prices fall, and the market expands and more customer needs are met. Choice expands as firms work to distinguish their products or services from others. Excellent firms prosper while firms with low quality, poor service, or high costs decline or go out of business unless they make fundamental improvements in the way they operate.

And how do we create value-based competition? In Senate testimony, Teisberg made the case for universal access, measuring results, and restructuring the payment system. I won’t linger on the universal access issue, as it is familiar to most. But the other two recommendations warrant elaboration.

Measuring results. “Through meaningful outcomes measurement, clinical teams are able to accelerate learning about what truly improves health outcomes and what improves the efficiency of effective care,” Teisberg testified. Congress should require outcomes measurement and turn the data over to professional organizations for analysis. The purpose of measurement, she emphasizes, is not to enable consumer shopping. It’s to accelerate learning and improvement in medical practice.

Payment. “In the current system, financial success and medical success are not aligned,” testified Teisberg. The reimbursement system covers treatments piecemeal: by procedure, by visit, by intervention and by hospital stay. It encourages poor coordination, redundant treatments and inattention to the patient’s full cycle of care. Instead, the system should pay clinical “teams” for treatment of a patient’s medical condition over the full cycle of care.

Realigning the payment system would restructure the way health care is delivered. Providers would compete on their ability to deliver the best outcomes at the most reasonable price. Competition then would become a positive force rather than a negative one.

Sadly, while legislation discussed in Washington strives to deliver universal access, it does little to address the underlying problems of escalating cost and sub-par outcomes. Rather than creating healthy competition over how best to deliver value, legislation would perpetuate, perhaps even intensify, the zero-sum gamesmanship and cost shifting that is the bane of American health care. Is it too much to ask for Senators Mark Warner and Jim Webb to consult one of Virginia’s intellectual superstars in order to rechannel health care reform in a more positive direction?

Despite all the hype put out by the state’s universities, the fact remains that Virginia is distinctly an “also ran” when it comes to research and development.

On the A QUESTION FOR VDOT string Groveton said:

“Long recession / depression?

“Do any of you guys watch any of the stock market indices?

…..

“All US stock indices have been surging since March. They have been rocking for 6 ½ months.”

EMR thought that it was uniformly agreed that stock and commodity markets were gambling venues, NOT indicators of economic health or investment intelligence.

“Do you guys really see a long recession / depression? If so, we can make a fortune right now. And I mean a real fortune.”

IT is not about making money, IT is about achieving a sustainable trajectory for civilization.

“Any chance this is a real recovery? You know … like the last 35 recessions and recoveries. Or, is this really The Great Depression II?”

Of course there is a ‘chance’ of a short term recovery – that is Option One of the three scenarios spelled out in the earlier post.

The point of the “QUESTION FOR VDOT” post was that what ever happens, Large, Private vehicles and the roadway systems to support Autocentric settlement patterns are dinosaurs. Those who do not yet understand this probably think the Dow going over 10,000 is a good thing.

The larger point is that NO ‘recovery’ can be sustained so long as ‘the REAL fundamentals’ – settlement patterns, per capita consumption, wealth distribution, public and private debt, population and most key resources that support human life (potable water, top soil, total energy, marine food chains, mission critical elements, etc.), ALL have unsustainable trajectories.

Of the three scenarios outlined in the earlier post, EMR would bet on the “Modest Recovery” model but if not that, then The Long Depression model is more likely than The Great Depression model. This is because at the end of The Great Depression there were still abundant key resources available AND there was a population that was willing to work as opposed to one that now believes that they are owed a consumptive life style (and unsustainable individual ‘freedoms’) and that technological miracles will solve any problems that pandering political Clans cannot patch over until after the next election.

Was it not Groveton himself that pointed out that during The Great Depression there were four stock market rallies? EMR’s maternal grandfather lost ‘a fortune’ in every on of those ‘panic booms.’

Neither irrational exuberance nor short selling will solve any known problem for society.

EMR

The world’s largest shopping mall/entertainment complex, in Guongzhou, China, is China’s version of “too big to fail.” The developer poured $365 million into this showcase project. It’s beautiful in an extravagant, Las Vegas kind of way. But the developers, inexperienced in running malls, gave little thought to who would shop there, and how they would get there. The place is almost a ghost town. With 7.1 million square feet, it has only 12 tenants. But the Chinese authorities keep the mall open at extraordinary expense. POV has the video story here.

EMR has sent VDOT the following question:

Why does VDOT ‘assume’ there will be more Large, Private vehicles using the US Route 29 Corridor in 2017 than there were in 2007?

We have provided below, based on the recent work at SYNERGY, some of the reasons citizens should question ANY assumption of growth in Large, Private vehicle travel in the US Route 29 Corridor – or in any other InterRegional corridor in the Commonwealth:

High fuel prices drive down travel demand, especially travel in Large, Private vehicles. The ONLY thing that is keeping the cost of fuel low in October of 2009 is The Great Recession.

Going forward there appear to be three broad options with respect fuel prices and thus travel demand in Large, Private vehicles in the US Route 29 Corridor or anywhere else:

1. The Great Recession will end soon with a return to the 2002 / 2006 economic / consumption trajectory. Not many predict this outcome but if it occurs fuel prices will go back up making Large, Private vehicles economic dinosaurs. Economic reality will reshape travel demand and functional Mobility and Access systems.

The configuration of these transformations can be predicted by considering the impacts of high fuel / energy price events over the past four decades. All serious examinations of the growth / consumption scenario point to more compact human settlement patterns served by shared-vehicle systems and much smaller, lighter, slower and safer vehicles for IntraRegional Mobility and Access. InterRegional (and MegaRegional) Mobility and Access will depend on more efficient shared-vehicle systems.

2. The Great Recession does not end soon. With a long recession / depression few will be able to afford a Large, Private vehicle much less the fuel to take long trips. Economists suggest that a ‘recovery’ from a long recession / depression may be similar to the ‘recovery’ following The Long Depression (1876 to 1893). That economic transformation ushered in a new settlement pattern – the rise of the Industrial Center that eclipsed the society that was 95 percent agrarian / 5 percent Urban (aka, The ‘Cities / Agrarian Society) that evolved over the prior 13,000 years. The Industrial Center (the settlement pattern template of the Industrial Revolution) was dependent on the evolution of railways for Mobility and Access.

The shape of the settlement pattern that will replace the Large, Private Vehicle Settlement Pattern that has evolved since 1920 can be projected based on an understanding of economic activity and the trajectory of property values of organic components of human settlement (measured Radius Band by Radius Band) over the past three decades. This new settlement pattern must be – like the ‘The Great Recession Ends Soon’ alternative scenario – more efficient and compact. These patterns and densities of land use will by necessity rely far less Large, Private vehicles because of economic and physical reality – high fuel costs and the space required to drive and park Large, Private vehicles.

3. There is middle ground between these two polar options. This is often called The ‘Modest’ Recovery. A ‘modest’ recovery is the current Federal Reserve prediction and that of many economists. Under this scenario there will be little employment growth in the US of A or Virginia because of Global outsourcing and increased application and productivity of machines and technology. This has been the case in the ‘recoveries’ from the last two recessions.

In the modest recovery scenario Enterprise ‘profit’ will be based on cutting costs – including employment – not revenue growth. Stock and commodity markets will continue to reflect speculative activity rather than citizen prosperity. The wealth gap will continue to widen. This is not a context where there will be growth in travel demand in Large, Private vehicles. The same long term trends to more compact and efficient patterns of settlement will be evident.

Whatever future scenario is closest to evolving reality there will be a smaller and smaller role for Large, Private vehicles to provide citizens with Mobility and Access.

The key question is: Will there be resources left under ANY scenario to carry out the transition to a sustainable trajectory without dire, society-disrupting poverty and conflict?

Humans will need to learn to embrace the joys of living ‘smaller’ and living ‘closer’ to the Jobs, Services and Recreation. They will need to live ‘smaller’ and ‘closer’ if they are to maintain an acceptable quality of life in a technologically based Urban society.

As Urban society has evolved, few humans in any location on the planet find reversion to hardscrabble subsistence agriculture or hunter / gatherer existence an attractive option.

Economic reality will force the federal, state and municipal Agencies to stop subsidizing the travel between dysfunctionally scattered origins and destinations. This means there will be less use of Large, Private vehicles for both passenger and freight. Urban dwellings in remote locations will continue to lose value.

These scenarios reflect the reality that humans have come to the end of cheap energy – aka, Peak Oil. Peak Oil (aka, Hubbert’s Peak) is an issue of ‘WHEN.’ It is NOT an issue of ‘IF’ as noted in Appendix Four of SYNERGY’S study “Timberfence Truth of Consequences” citing a number of recent studies including the UK Energy Research Centre.

In fact citizens are already facing “peaklike” conditions.

Food riots in poor nation-states, economic turmoil in nation-states with declining petroleum reserves (e.g. Mexico) and high / fluctuating fuel and energy costs are all “peaklike” conditions. These conditions will grow more sever as the Industrial Green Revolution based on cheap petroleum and abundant water exacerbates the process of shifting to more expensive energy sources.

There is no cheap replacement for the carbon / fossil based energy – the ‘natural capital’ that has been accumulated over the past 4 billion years. Humans have burned through much of this natural capital in the last 200 years – and especially the last 113 years of industrial growth / Mass OverConsumption since the end of The Long Depression. Citizens must learn to live on natural (solar) ‘income’ now that stored natural capital is becoming more scarce and more expensive.

There are MANY alternative energy sources but NONE of them will be cheap compared to carbon / fossil based sources. In addition, no known energy source is as well suited as petroleum to fuel Large, Private vehicles. If there was such a source, it would be in wide-spread use now.

There is no question that fossil sources of fuel are finite and becoming more and more costly to bring to market. The same is true for petroleum substitutes.

The Energy Return On Energy Invested (EROEI) for ethanol is at or below one when all the costs and subsidies are considered. The same will be true for all petroleum substitutes that rely on irrigation for growth and / or water for processing. It is also true for hydrogen, ‘safe’ nuclear, ultra-deep geothermal, direct and indirect solar conversion as well as recent deep off-shore and ultra-deep terrestrial petroleum discoveries.

VDOT and its consultants should have been preparing for the advent of Peak Oil since at least 1973. Instead they have been blindly continuing the subsidy of travel in Large, Private vehicles.

As a result of Business-As-Usual, there has evolved a Perfect Storm of dysfunctional and untransportable human settlement patterns. State Agencies say municipalities are responsible of ‘land use’ (aka, human settlement patterns) and municipal Agencies say the Commonwealth is responsible for Mobility and Access.

If VDOT was not preparing for Peak Oil and the decline of Large, Private vehicles, then the Governor, the legislature, the Commonwealth Transportation Board and concerned citizens should have required that they prepare. They did not and now the price must be paid.

Back to the US Route 29 Corridor: Can VDOT or its consultants name ANY growth curve which is dependent upon a finite resource that has continued to grow geometrically? SYNERGY has identified no scientifically verified example of a sustainable growth curve with the configuration similar to the growth in vehicle miles traveled by Large, Private vehicles over the past 50 in the Commonwealth. Why is VDOT relying on an unprecedented condition as the basis for public action in the US Route 29 Corridor?

EMR

In Virginia, it is always surprising that the talking heads, lobbyists, politicians and others always regard the “Business Community” as a monolith that thinks and speaks with one voice and must be protected because of the Old Dominion’s coveted status as being “business friendly.”

Patients in high-cost regions have access to the same technology as those in low-cost regions, and those in low-cost regions are not deprived of needed care. On the contrary, the researchers note that care is often better in low-cost areas. The authors argue that the differences in growth are largely due to discretionary decisions by physicians that are influenced by the local availability of hospital beds, imaging centers and other resources-and a payment system that rewards growth and higher utilization.

Virginians can take some pride in the fact that the Old Dominion is one of the lowest-cost pockets of health care in the eastern U.S. Take a look at the map above: Wisconsin and upstate New York are the only comparable zones of low health care costs east of the Mississippi. (To see how individual Hospital Referral Regions in Virginia perform compared to others in the nation, view the interactive map.) The cost of Medicare per enrollee is less than $7,000 across most of the state. Even in the Arlington region, with its high wage and salary levels, the cost edges up to $7,200 — far lower than the cost up a few miles north in Baltimore.

Clearly, Virginia hospitals and physicians are doing something right. And just as clearly, Virginians should not be made to suffer for the sins of health care delivery in other states.

The Dartmouth Atlas supports the claims of those who contend that much of American health care spending is wasted. How do we reform the system to bring down soaring costs? “An Agenda for Change” proposes the following:

• Promote the growth of organized systems of care.
• Require informed patient choice and informed decision making.
• Promote the training of primary care physicians and fund training programs that teach community-based care in treating chronic illness.
• Fund a federal science policy that builds the scientific basis for cost-effective care.

The Dartmouth Institute bases its recommendations on hard empirical data, not ideology. I’m not persuaded that the atlas afficianados have the full answer, but they have a very big piece of the answer. I only wish that someone in Washington were listening.

Creigh Deeds went on the attack yesterday. With some back-up from Gov. Timothy M. Kaine at a Virginia Business for Higher Education Council event, the gubernatorial wannabe criticized Bob McDonnell’s transportation plan on the grounds that it would short-change funding for education.

As reported by Jim Nolan at the Times-Dispatch, “Kaine and Deeds say McDonnell’s transportation funding plan would drain education money from the general fund…. [Deeds] said: ‘Education is one area where we can’t cut.’ … He likened draining money from education to a farmer using all of his seed corn, leaving nothing to harvest later.”

I don’t defend McDonnell’s plan to tap General Fund revenues for transportation. (See “Disaster on Wheels.”) But Deeds’ education platform is almost as bad.

Deeds’ approach to education can be spelled out in seven letters: Mo’ Money. While touting incremental efficiencies to be gained through audits, a bulk purchase program and loans for efficiency-enhancing measures, Deeds provides a laundry list of initiatives that start with the verbs “establish,” “pay for,” “promote,” “expand,” “support,” “provide,” “use,” “offer,” institute,” “make” and “pursue.” (See the plan here.) He has lots of ideas for improving the educational system, and almost all of them require mo’ money.

And none of them require fundamental reform. The U.S. may spend more than any other country in the world for worse outcomes, and Virginia may not perform a whole lot better than the national average, but all we have to do is expand a pre-K program here or pay teachers a bit more over there, and everything will be better.

McDonnell’s education plan would not fundamentally change the system but at least it would rock the status quo. McDonnell calls for more charter schools, college-partnership laboratory schools, virtual schooling and controls on administrative overhead. Compared to the root-and-branch changes we need to make, they’re pretty tame stuff. But at least they move in the right direction.

The U.S. is veering toward fiscal armageddon. Virginia will face unprecedented fiscal challenges itself. Instead of expanding the scope and cost of government, we need to begin the hard work of radically re-thinking the way we deliver core government services more cost effectively. Fundamental change will take years to enact. That’s why we need to get started now.

TODAY’S WAPO, REINFORCED BY A FEW ITEMS FROM THE LAST FEW DAYS PAINTS AN INTERESTING PICTURE OF THE WORLD:

On the Census report dealing with Stay at Home Moms:

Who knew that McDonnell is targeting primarily a lower income, less-well-educated, primarily Hispanic demographic? Not a traditional winner in the Commonwealth.

And speaking of McDonnell Tom Toles did a nice job on the McDonnell AntiPlan. Papering over the chasm.

Finally, a good ad from Allstate.

“Two out of three teens admit to texting while driving. Some of them will never be hear from again.” Now how about an ad from Allstate about the need to transition to more safer and more energy efficient modes of travel to support functional settlement patterns? Perhaps they could insure METRO riders.

And on the topic of ads, who knew that it was worth a multi-day buy of a 4 page color insert in section A to tout Siemens? Does anyone believe those Chevron and BP ads?

Under the category of “There is not a single dysfunctional activity that does not have a lobby group supporting it.” Try this headline:

“Air Safety Initiatives Run Into Opposition.” Yes, sir, keep flying those commuter planes into the ground because if more flying time is required to adequately train pilots, we will not make as much money.

Fairly distribute the full cost of alternative modes and let citizens choose the most efficient and safe mode.

Have you noticed that the news of the economic ‘recovery’ is illustrated with graphics that show “quarterly percentage change from previous year.” A shorter red bar looks less freighting than the full picture.

Today’s Metro section announces a “New Local Home Page” with the URL of washingtonpost.com/local. A perfect example of why “local” is one of the eight Core Confusing Words.

Go there and you see a rehash of the Metro page with links to “D.C., VA and MD” ‘news.’ Just ten days ago Ian Shapira pointed out (in WaPo) that MainStream Media outlets that tried to put out news based on municipal jurisdiction boundaries (much less by state borders) were dying like flies at the first hard frost.

A few days ago there was a headline “Suburb Braces for An End to Tranquillity” about a place that was being converted to? A “SUBURB.”

MEMO to MainStream Media: Stop using Core Confusing Words and understand the organic structure of human settlement patterns or keep dying like flies.

The big news for Bacon’s Rebellion is from the Metro section today under the headline “For Relief, Region Told to Go East.” That is shorthand for “move the Jobs and Services East so there is not so much East to West AM (and West to East PM) commuting. This follows a report on 29 September on the distribution of poverty within R=25. Poor East, rich West.

Stewart Schwartz gets a lot of good press. He is right on all counts. However, no one mentions the issue is really Balance within Clear Edges and Critical Mass.

There is discussion of the need for shared-vehicle system station-area development. There must be METRO system wide Balance as well as Alpha Village and Alpha Community scale Balance.

EMR

THE TRANSPORT PROBLEM IS NOT WHAT THE POLITICAL CLANS WOULD LIKE VOTERS TO THINK IT IS

The Commonwealth’s quadrennial political football classic is ratcheting up to peak frenzy. Many agree that the number one ‘PROBLEM’ in the state’s most populous New Urban Region is “The Transport Problem”

In the words of WaPo columnist Robert McCartney: “If you’re a candidate for governor coming to debate in Northern Virginia, you’d better be able to say simply and plainly how you’d raise money to repair and improve the roads.” (WaPo B-1 18 Sept 09)

That spin on the “The Transport Problem” (aka, the Mobility and Access Crisis) is in complete harmony with conventional wisdom and spawns questions such as:

“Where will the money come from to fix up and expand the roadway system?”

“What are we going to do to help commuters trapped in congestion?”

As pointed out in “Transport Strategy Disaster” (Bacon’s Rebellion Blog. 1 Sept 2009) both political Clans have been trying to avoid addressing the fundamental realities underlying “The Transport Problem.” Since that essay was completed, the picture has changed but it has not improved in any significant way.

THE ELEPHANT CLAN ANTIPLAN AND THE DONKEY CLAN SOUND BITES PLUS PROCESS.

Jim Bacon’s perspective in “McDonnell’s Transportation Plan: Disaster on Wheels” (Bacon’s Rebellion Blog, 19 Sept 09) are RIGHT ON. The Elephant Clan has NO Mobility and Access strategy beyond – “vote for me. You know you can trust me to find money to fix the transportation problem from sources that are not called a ‘tax’ – really!! You can trust me, I believe the same things you do.”

* This is the second of two Fall 2009 essays on the politics of transport in the Commonwealth of Virginia. “Transport Strategy Disaster” was published 1 September 2009.

WaPo tends to agree on the transparency of the Elephant Clan ploy. See editorial “Drinking Games: Robert F. McDonnell’s transportation plans rest heavily on privatizing hard-liquor sales in Virginia. It is sober?” 26 Sept 09.

The Business-As-Usual interests, including MainStream Media is frustrated that the Elephant Clan is not committed to a new source of revenue to throw at “The Transportation Problem.”

Until very recently the Donkey Clan also had no strategy to solve “The Transport Problem.” As WaPo put it editorially on 20 September: “Mr. Deeds’s Dilemma: It’s Political Suicide To Urge Higher Taxes, and Folly Not To.”

As of 23 September, the Donkey Clan HAS a ‘plan.’ (“My Transportation Plan” Creigh Deeds, (WaPo Page A-29, 23 Sept 09). The plan consists of nine popular transportation sound bites and a ‘bipartisan’ process. The process is based on the program employed by Gov. Gerald Baliles in 1985 / 86. Business-As-Usual interests like to point out that this was the last substantial increase in transportation funding in the Commonwealth. The mid 80s were also the point at which it became very obvious that more money was not ‘the answer’ to the Mobility and Access Crisis.

This has resulted in the evolution of The Three Legged Stalemate. On the one hand are those who want to find money to throw at the problem. On the other hand there are those who, for a variety of reasons – “do not raise taxes,” “let someone else pay” and “starve the beast of government” among them – do not want to spend money. A third perspective is that spending money is needed but spending it on the same things that have not worked in the past will only make things worse. This is the Three Legged Stalemate.

In addition, the climate for bipartisan compromises has changed since the mid 80s as noted below. Before getting to that reality, what about the Donkey Clan transport sound bites?

THE LIMITED VALUE OF SOUND BITES

Every one of the nine Donkey Clan sound bites requires a set of detailed, specific conditions and caveats. The devil is in the details and without the specifics every sound bite could be ‘accomplished’ in a way that makes Mobility and Access worse, NOT better. At first blush, most of the ideas sound ‘good’ but are detrimental unless there is a clear definition of what exactly the sound bites mean.

For example the first Donkey Clan sound bite is “Bring high-speed rail to Virginia.” Here the parameters of success are very clear:

Unless there are supportive land uses in the station areas of a high-speed rail system (including across-the-platform connections to SubRegion-serving shared-vehicle systems) building high-speed rail lines will NOT improve Mobility and Access in the Commonwealth’s three New Urban Regions.

These three New Urban Regions are where over 85 percent of the economic activity is concentrated and nearly that percentage of the population of the Commonwealth lives and works.
Every one of the sound bites requires similar specific caveats.

“SPECIFICS” BEHIND THE GENERALITIES?

On 27 September, WaPo published responses from the Donkey Clan and Elephant Clan candidates titled “My (Specific) Promises to Northern Virginia.” We leave it to others to judge which Clan representative makes the most effective promises.

However, with respect to “The Transport Problem” each trots out a list – or by vague reference embraces – the Business-As-Usual wish list of ‘projects.’ The named projects are examples of just what one would hope were NOT the “content” behind the sound bites – if the objective is Mobility and Access for a majority of the citizens in the Commonwealth.

The Elephant Clan is STILL proud that they unveiled the AntiPlan overlooking I-66 instead of Columbia Pike. For the reasons spelled out in “Transport Strategy Disaster” that is NOT a good thing.

AND THE DONKEY CLAN PROCESS?

After carefully articulating the parameters of the sound bites and a full evaluation of all the projects on the Business-As-Usual wish list, the next hurtle is the probability of having a better outcome from a bipartisan process than was the case over that last four years – or the last two decades.

Based on the last decade of transport funding conflict in Virginia (and almost every other topic on state and national political agendas) signing a bipartisan bill to raise money for the nine sound bites is wildly optimistic – or a good excuse for nothing at all getting done.

There is no question that Business-As-Usual likes the Donkey Clan ‘plan’ better than the Elephant AntiPlan because it is presumed that it would entail spending more money. The 24 September WaPo editorial was titled “Honesty on Transportation: Mr. Deeds has leveled with Virginia voters, Will they listen?” WaPo has consistently confused solving “The Transport Problem” with spending money on what has not worked, is not working and will not work in the future.

The real question is: Will citizens vote for the nine sound bites and a bipartisan process or will they vote for another no tax promise?

BUT WAIT JUST A MINUTE!!

The PROBLEM IS that MONEY is NOT ‘THE PROBLEM’ with Mobility and Access.

Pretending that money is “The Problem” and pretending that building more of the same infrastructure is ‘The Solution” leads to repeating the wrong questions and perpetuating the myths outlined in “The Transport Strategy Disaster.”

The REAL questions are, will Commonwealth Agencies:

“Start to prepare citizens for the future now?, OR

“Will they allow the drivers of the Mobility and Access Crisis to fester for yet another election cycle?

It is just a matter of time – and time is running out – before the lack of Mobility and Access will explode with devastating impact on the economic, social and physical well being of every citizen in Virginia.

STOP LYING TO CITIZENS

The first step is to stop lying to citizens.

Traffic congestion is NOT the problem, and

More roadways for Large, Private vehicles to carry passengers, goods and services are not the ‘answer’ REGARDLESS of who pays or if it is called ‘tax’ or manna.

Of course there is a need to invest in infrastructure.

Of course it will take a lot of money to make up for past neglect of infrastructure.

Of course it would be nice to have a fair distribution of costs and a rational nexus between use of and payment for transport infrastructure. If that had been the strategy for providing Mobility and Access when the Commonwealth took responsibility for roadways 85 years ago there would not be a Mobility and Access Crisis now.

But we are where we are and it is time to come clean:

THE PROBLEM is almost exclusive reliance on Large, Private vehicles to provide citizens with Mobility and Access. It does not work.

Exclusive reliance on Large, Private vehicles did not work in times of cheap energy and it will be a disaster to pretend it is a viable option as the cost of energy goes up.

It turns out that Large, Private vehicles have NEVER been a good option to provide the majority of citizens with Mobility and Access.

Even in relatively Balanced Urban agglomerations – and in spite of massive subsidies, direct and indirect – more that half the citizens are too young, too old, or have other conditions that isolate them when the only source of Mobility and Access is Large, Private vehicles (aka Autonomobiles). It is clear that Autonomobiles have provided Mobility and Access for an even lower percentage of the citizens in intensively developed Urban areas (the ones with the lowest per-capita consumption of energy and resources) and in areas of intensive poverty.

LOOKING BACK

The peak economic and social efficiency for Large, Private vehicles came in the mid-fifties. At that time a junior in high school could earn enough money in one summer to buy a very serviceable Large, Private vehicle. If Junior paid attention in shop class and read the owner’s manual they could keep the vehicle running at an affordable cost. Society wide erosion of Mobility and Access has been caused by two forces over the past 50 years:

• Ever more complex and expensive Autonomobiles

• Ever more dysfunctional settlement patterns

As Urban agglomerations grew larger and higher percentages of Households which are forced to rely on Autonomobiles for their Mobility and Access, congestion, delays and deaths grew.

In every large Urban area in the US of A traffic congestion has grown every year for over two decades in spite of billions is roadway construction. At the same time community and environmental destruction has escalated.

When viewed from a Regional perspective Autonomobiles are a splendid means of driving consumption but they are not an efficient means of Transport. The larger the Urban system (Region), the more inefficient Autonomobiles become. That was true with artificially cheap fuel. As energy cost rise, new technology cannot paper over the fundamental problem with reliance on Autonomobiles for Mobility and Access.

Scholars and independent researchers have been predicting citizens would reach the end of the road for reliance on Autonomobiles since the 1920s. The “non-polluting alternative to the horse” turns out to be no more efficient than its four legged predecessor due to the same reality of physics:

The space to drive and park the Autonomobile disaggregates Urban settlement patterns to the point of gross dysfunction for Urban economic and social activities. (See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS – PART IV of TRILO-G.)THE DEBT CHASM

There is a gaping hole in the road ahead for Large, Private vehicles: It is called debt. This debt chasm is made up of: The rising cost of energy, the rising cost of mitigating of environmental impacts, the growing balance of trade deficit, the growing military costs of energy security, the cost of past deficit spending (Household, Agency, Enterprise and Institution), the Wealth Gap and most of all the cost of evolving functional, sustainable human settlement patterns.

Citizens in Virginia, the US of A and in the First World have burned through Natural Capital in an attempt to cover the costs of patterns and practices of consumption that are unsustainable.

Now humans must learn to live on Natural Income.

Pay for past sins of Mass OverConsumption and debt and start living on income or bid goodby to democracies with market economies. Only brutal, totalitarian, dictatorships can maintain the vast disparities in wealth, happiness and safety that result from an inequitable allocation of resources.

With the rising cost of energy, a growing number of Households will not be able to afford Large, Private vehicles. They will also not be able to pay their fair share of the cost of dysfunctional, scattered settlement patterns. These dysfunctional patterns are dictated by the space needed to drive and park Large, Private vehicles. (See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS noted above.)

As outlined in “Transport Strategy Disaster” (Bacon’s Rebellion Blog, 1 Sept 09) after Agencies stop lying to citizens about the shape of a viable, sustainable future, the next step is to articulate human settlement patterns that are sustainable. A four step process to accomplish this is laid out in “Transport Strategy Disaster.” THEN Mobility and Access systems can be designed to serve these functional settlement patterns.

THE BASIC PARAMETERS

A sustainable future requires a Fundamental Transformation in human settlement patterns. Settlement patterns must accommodate a society in which 95 percent of the citizens rely on Urban activities to support their Households. The way to create places where citizens are happy and safe is to have:

Balanced Communities inside the Clear Edge around the Cores of New Urban Regions and Urban Support Regions, and

Balanced But Disaggregated Communities in the Countryside outside the Clear Edge around the Cores of New Urban Regions and Urban Support Regions.

Some would like to profit from creating more Urban places. There are already too many half-built ‘places’ with vacant and underutilized land. These dysfunctional places must evolve to
become Balanced Places by repairing the scattered and unconnected Urban fabric that now exists.

One of the most effective tools to create more functional settlement patterns is the creation of shared-vehicle systems serving functional and Balanced Urban activities in the station-areas.

Failure to understand this reality is why the Elephant Clan choose the wrong place to announce their AntiPlan as articulated in “Transport Strategy Disaster”

The future will not arrive over night but in the long term there must be:

• Fewer and fewer Large, Private vehicles

• More and more energy efficient shared-vehicle systems for passengers and freight

• Less reliance on vehicles of any kind

The decline in the overall use of vehicles will reflect the fact that vehicles – especially Large, Private vehicles – will become more and more expensive.

In addition, with functional settlement patterns, more and more citizens will already be where they want and need to be, or a short walk away. The human body requires exercise and walking, not vehicles, is the most efficient way to Access nearby destinations for most citizens.

With functional human settlement patterns, shared-vehicle systems can provide high value trips necessary to support quality of life but vehicles will NOT be needed for most trips now requiring Large, Private vehicles due to settlement pattern disaggregation.

A functional Balance of transportation system alternatives will often include:

• A Network of paths and roadways to provide Mobility and Access via walking / human powered vehicles / small self propelled vehicles

• Shared Vehicles – jitneys, short term rental vehicles, car pools / Personal Rapid Transit / street cars / light rial / heavy rail

• IntraRegional Rail (often mischaracterized as ‘commuter rail’)

• InterRegional Rail / High Speed Rail

• Boats

• Aircraft

When the total costs of location decisions are equitably allocated, a diverse, functional system of Mobility and Access options will facilitate the transport of goods, services and passengers by the most efficient and functional mode.

When the total costs are fairly and equitably allocated to support CONSERVATION and NOT CONSUMPTION, Regional and Subregional import replacement will provide a more efficient way to supply many (but not all) Regional needs. This will reduce the total transport demand.

And what about those ‘commuters’ to whom both the Elephant Clan and Donkey Clan pander?

There is no way to ‘help’ those who now rely on Large, Private vehicles for long commutes except to help them become non-commuters by evolving Balanced Communities.

THE FUTURE OF DEMOCRACIES WITH MARKET ECONOMIES

What is the alternative to a fair allocation of resources, evolving more effective, democratic governance and creating better informed markets? Totalitarian dictatorships.

Dictatorships from the right or from the left are the only way to forcibly maintain gross disparity in wealth that has been derived from consumption of natural capital by using contemporary technology and abusing economies of scale. The Wealth Gap has been growing for two decades. The Wealth Gap will continue to grow at an accelerating rate due to settlement patterns that require costly and inefficient vehicles to secure Mobility and Access.

Unless there are functional human settlement patterns that facilitate Mobility and Access without resort to inefficient vehicles, only a few at the top of the Ziggurat will be able to rely on vehicles – the rest walk for ALL their trips. There are working models of the future under these conditions – it was formerly called The Third World.

When the majority at the bottom realize there is no way to work their way up, chaos will be the order of the day, of the year and of the decade.

The existence of large, complex Urban agglomerations is the only configuration of human settlement that has demonstrated the capacity to maintain a competitive, technologically driven “modern” society. Large New Urban Regions attract and support not just ‘workers’ but the Creative Class upon which positive evolution of civilization depends.

Evolution of governance cannot not stop with democratic Region structures to govern New Urban Regions and Urban Support Regions but must extend to the smaller scales of organic human settlement.

Governance Agencies close to the governed are an absolute necessity in a society of educated citizens. The most important Agency is at the smallest practical scale for direct democracy, the Cluster. Representative democracy at the Neighborhood, Village, Community, SubRegional and Regional scales are also critical.

Pretending to ‘solve’ The Transportation Problem’ by throwing money in the roadway will only prolong the lies and Myths, perhaps past the point of no return.

There must far more investment in infrastructure in the future. Collectively, citizens and their Organizations have been paying nowhere near the cost of the current trajectory.

A sustainable future will require money to be raised and spent but not for roadways for Large, Private vehicles.

In the short term the problem is how to stop lying to citizens without causing them to abandon all hope. It is unrealistic to assume either Clan will be able to make this change before election day.

However, the next day…

EMR

It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with op-eds in the Los Angeles Times, but a piece by Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz, “The Twilight of Pax Americana” is must reading. In a nutshell: The United States is on a fiscally unsustainable path that will undermine its ability to continue playing the world’s policeman. We cannot long maintain our military commitment to allies, much less continue fighting endless wars overseas. As our power recedes, regional powers will fill the vacuum. The era of global U.S. dominance is coming to an end.