CREATIVE OBFUSCATION OF SOLUTIONS TO THE MOBILITY AND ACCESS CRISIS WILL BE THE KEY TO WINNING THE FALL POLITICAL FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP
The political football season is upon us. As it now stands, the championship match up between the Elephant Clan and the Donkey Clan will be decided by which team is best at playing Hide-The-Ball on Mobility and Access for one more election cycle.
So far one team is playing Hide-The-Plan. The other team has surfaced a grab bag of schemes that were rendered irrelevant 35 years ago. They are proudly calling this smokescreen a “plan.” They hope not one notices that it is an AntiPlan Smokescreen.
If the 15 Theses for purifying the ‘family’ by the politician at the top of the Elephant Clan ticket does not turn off the majority of voters, the fantasies about paving the way to Jobs, Mobility and Access should.
The Elephant Clan ‘plan’ prints out at 9 pages of small print. When the political rhetoric is pruned out, there is not ONE idea that is relevant to the economic and physical reality of September 2009. Jim Bacon in his recent posts has outlined many aspects of the new reality.
Most of the ideas in the AntiPlan Smokescreen have not been relevant since the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. The embargo SHOULD have awakened everyone about the resources and strategies needed to support survivability of a technology driven democracy with a market economy.
Lets look under the hood: The Elephant Clan AntiPlan is headlined by a scheme to sell off the ABC stores to raise money. Please do not step in the elephants droppings!!
If an intelligent investor had an asset that would only bring $500 million on the open market but was a $100 million-a-year cash cow, would they SELL it? That is 20 percent a year ROI! OH! You are going to sell it to a friend, well THAT is different …
Every other component of the ‘plan’ is just as ill conceived because the AntiPlan has nothing to do with the future needs of Virginians’ with respect to Mobility and Access.
Let us start with where the plan was announced:
Arlington County is a fine place to launch a forward looking Mobility and Access plan. A location in the Core of the largest economic engine in the Commonwealth will get a lot of attention.
The Elephant Clan spin masters needed, however, to move the announcement site about two and a half miles South. If anyone in a Clan leadership position understood the topic of Mobility and Access they would have selected a spot overlooking Columbia Pike not I-66.
The light rail line Arlington County is hoping to build in the Columbia Pike corridor is the type of transportation infrastructure that will be needed to address the Mobility and Access Crisis. The last thing Virginia needs is more roadways for more Large, Private Vehicles.
Shared-vehicle systems will provide Mobility and Access to serve the functional settlement patterns necessary to support prosperity in the emerging economic, social and physical context.
In the March 2009 Atlantic, Richard Florida ( the author of The Creative Class and other best selling books) published “How the Crash Will Reshape America.” The article (and the supporting materials published on Florida’s Blog since march of 2009) documents the forces that will drive economic prosperity in the 21st century.
Florida suggests that to preserve prosperity – and move beyond unsustainable Mass OverConsumption – the settlement patterns that support – and are required if citizens rely on Autonomobiles for Mobility and Access – will need to be restructured. Aka, Fundamental Transformation.
Florida calls these new patterns and densities of land use “a new spacial fix.” SYNERGY calls it functional human settlement patterns and documents that this ‘future’ vision is in fact the settlement pattern that has been favored by the market for at least the last 50 years.
The reasons Florida gives for this Fundamental Transformation make sense from the perspective of maintaining prosperity and increasing economic metabolism and quality of life. (Also see Sugrue, Thomas J. “The New American Dream: Renting” in The Wall Street Journal 14 August 2009, (see Blog posting “The American Dream Amended” 18 August 2009) and Chapters 3,4 & 5 of The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream by John F. Wasik (2009)
While shared-vehicles such as METRO and Arlington County’s Light Rail are a step in the right direction, there is a Mobility and Access axiom that has been validated over and over since before chariot congestion gridlocked Imperial Rome:
It is not possible to build ANY Mobility and Access system so that all residents of a functional Urban Agglomeration can go were the want, when they want IN A VEHICLE and arrive in a timely fashion.
Over the last 2,400 years the Mobility and Access technology has evolved. With each improvement of the technology has come an increase in the scale and complexity of functional Urban systems. The greater the area required to drive and park (stable) the vehicle, the faster any Mobility and Access system becomes congested. There is much to learn from humans use of the horse in this regard. See Chapters 13 and 14 of The Shape of the Future (especially Chapter 13, Box 9 The Carriageless Horse) and PART THREE – THE PROBLEM WITH CARS in TRILO-G.
There is a corollary to the overarching Vehicle Mobility and Access Axiom that deals with Autonomobiles. Those who are familiar with the past work of SYNERGY know all about the Myth that obscures this Autonomobile corollary, it is the Large, Private Vehicle Mobility and Access Myth. Autonomobile advocates work to perpetuated this Myth:
Citizens can drive Large, Private Vehicles wherever they want, whenever the want AND with this demand pattern it is possible for Agencies to provide a roadway system to serve these vehicles so that everyone can arrive in a timely manner.
This is physical impossibility. But this is the tragic Myth that both political Clans hope voters will cling to at least until November. The Clans will do their best to obfuscate the fact that there is no miracle – political or economic – that will bring back the conditions that caused Autonomobiles to SEEM like a good idea to provide Mobility and Access.
The world has changed. Economic conditions that result few Households being able to afford an Autonomobile MAY well return.
However, cheap fuel and subsidies that are massive enough to make the Autonomobile appear to be a reasonable alternative for even a slim majority of citizens to acquire Mobility and Access will NOT return.
Even with cheap fuel, there is no basis for assuming that the goal of a functional Mobility and Access can be achieved by expanding Roadways for Large, Private Vehicles (aka, Autonomobiles). Building more Roadways INSIDE Clear Edges has not been an effective strategy to improve Mobility and Access since the 1920s when only a small minority of the Households could afford a Autonomobile.
Building Roadways for Autonomobiles has not improved citizen Mobility and Access at the SubRegional, Regional or MegaRegional scales in Urban areas for decades.
The higher the percentage of car ownership per Household, the less building roadways improves Mobility and Access at the MegaRegional, Regional, SubRegional and Community Scales. Since 1985 building roadways has occasionally helped some at the top of the Ziggurat who can influence the planning, design, funding and construction of roadways to meet their specific objectives but it has not helped citizens Region-wide.
At the sub-Community scale, building Roadways CAN improve Mobility and Access for those who have access to Autonomobiles in specific corridors and for short periods of time but not in the long term and not for entire MegaRegions, Regions or even large SubRegions.
The annual Urban Mobility Report by the Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) documents that in every year since the survey started in the mid-80s, congestion has gotten worse in every large urban agglomeration in the US of A.
Analysis by the Surface Transportation Policy Project has shown that in those large SubRegions and Regions where MORE lane miles of roadway per capita were added, the congestion grew FASTER than in those SubRegions and Regions that built FEWER lane miles per capita and effectively employed other Mobility and Access strategies. (See “The Physics of Gridlock” and “Priority Transport Improvements” two PowerPoint presentations on The Shape of the Future – 4th Printing CD for a summary of the TTI data and findings through the early 00s. The TTI reports since that time, including the one just released based on data through 2007, confirm these trends.)
It turns out traffic congestion is NOT driven by the need for new Roadways. The “problem” is the Large, Private Vehicles themselves – that is why they are called Autonomobiles.
The land area needed to drive and park Autonomobiles disaggregates human settlement to the point of dysfunction at the scales of Urban agglomeration that are effective in supporting the economic, social and physical well being of citizens. Functional settlement patterns are necessary to achieve sustainability of a contemporary, technology and competition driven civilization.
It is not just a matter of economic structure, it is not just a matter of social stability, it is not just a matter of environmental sustainability, it is a matter of physics, PERIOD. This fact is validated by the market decisions of those who have a choice. This reality is spelled out PART THREE – THE PROBLEM WITH CARS in TRILO-G .
The cost of using Large, Private Vehicles has gone up and will go up further. In addition, programs, policies and regulations that begin to fairly allocate location-variable costs – including the full cost of Large, Private Vehicles – will cause the cost of their use to go up even more.
As use and utility of Large, Private Vehicles winds down, MegaRegions, Regions, SubRegions, Communities, Villages and Neighborhoods will need new transport infrastructure for efficient vehicles to provide Mobility and Access for functional and sustainable human settlement patterns.
If the Regions within Virginia are to be competitive in the provision of goods and services and in attracting those citizens who will be needed to support economic prosperity, they will require transport infrastructure to support functional human settlement patterns.
The simple minded delusion that there is a ‘NEED’ for a new roadways to carry ‘increased future traffic, especially ‘commuter’ traffic, is based on projecting past trends forward without regard to the current and probable future reality with respect to the affordability and utility of Large, Private Vehicles within the context that Florida, Bacon, SYNERGY and others foresee:
1. There will be less and less ability to have Job in Core of SubRegions or Regions (where 85 percent of the citizens now work) and live somewhere else
2. Agencies will be forced to provide Mobility and Access with more efficient shared-vehicle systems rather than subsidizing Large, Private Vehicles.
3. Agencies will not be able to afford to provide “commuter services” to those who live in scattered Urban dwellings
4. There will be diminishing ability to truck goods long distances. Long distance trucking would have atrophied years ago but for gross subsidies. Truck fees and taxes now pay for only about 10 percent of the heavy goods vehicles impact on Roadways and almost nothing toward the impact on air and water resources.
How did Virginia get to this place? VDOT’s ancestor was chartered to build roadways. For 85 years VDOT and its predecessors (VDH&T and VDH) have been faced with an ever expanding tide of cars. That this tide will ebb is not yet on the VDOT or political Clan radar based on their actions and public pronouncements.
There is a colloquialism oft repeated by residents of islands in the eastern Carribean: “Little bird, he build nest one stick at a time.” Roadway Agencies have built traffic congestion one roadway project at a time.
Citizens / voters will have to tell governance practitioners that times have changed.
What would a REAL plan for Mobility and Access look like? Here are some elements of a Commonwealth Mobility and Access Plan which will enable Regions and SubRegions to obtain a sustainable tranjectory:
Set up a democratically elected body to carry out the following steps:
Step One: Determine the area needed for current and future (at least 50 years) Urban land uses in functional and sustainable patterns and densities. This total will be between 5 and 10 percent of the land area in the Commonwealth.
Step Two: Allocate the area for future development by Region based on the carrying capacity of the Regions and SubRegions. Allocation of the total Urban area in each Region to be based on an intelligent, democratically determined criteria. Provide for a review of the allocation every five years.
Step Three: Draw a Clear Edge around all Urbansides to indicate the boundary between the Urbansides and the Countryside. The total area within the Clear Edges would provide for each Regions allocation in Step Two. The area within the Clear Edges would ALSO include Openspace at all scales (Dooryard, Cluster, Neighborhood, Village, Community, SubRegional, Regional) equal to half the total area within the Clear Edges.
Step Four: Inside the Clear Edges around the Core of New Urban Regions and large Urban agglomerations in Urban Support Regions, design shared-vehicle systems to serve station areas that have a Balance of J / H / S / R / A.
These four steps would provide Mobility and Access to support economic, social and physical activity.
Within New Urban Regions:
The excess roadway capacity within the Clear Edges that results from the creation of Balanced and functional settlement patterns supported by shared-vehicle systems can be devoted to Openspace and Recreational uses.
In the Countryside – outside the Clear Edges around Urban agglomerations of all sizes – there is already adequate roadway capacity when relative Balance is achieved within the Urbansides.
Inter Regional Mobility and Access:
To conserve energy; move freight and some long distance passenger service from truck and air to rail.
Implement interregional weight distance fees to pay the cost of maintaining InterRegional facilities.
A fair allocation of the full location-variable costs and a carbon tax on transportation fuel will result in a Balance of Urban systems, Conservation of resources and reduced need for travel and infrastructure without lowering quality of life / health safety and welfare / happiness and safety of citizens.
The questions is:
Will citizens hold those who seek public office to a realistic standard of honesty with respect to what is possible in the future?
It is daft to think that after years of subsidizing dysfunctional human settlement patterns there is some way to improve Mobility and Access (or provide Jobs) without Fundamental Transformation of settlement patterns and Fundamental Transformation of governance structure that results in a fair allocation of location-variable costs.
EMR
