Tag Archives: complete streets

November 2015 in Review

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What did I learn in November? Let’s start with the bad and then go to the good.

Negative stories (-10):

  • The World Economic Forum’s 2015 Global Risks Report came out. Some of the top risks are interstate conflict, water crisis, failure of climate change adaptation, unemployment and underemployment. Hmm, that “interstate conflict” items might be what we used to call “war”. And I think there might be one underway right now in the Middle East, which Jimmy Carter says we are getting all wrong. And it just might be caused by the other items on the list. And speaking of war, there is a new book on the Vietnam War aimed at the middle grades, but it seems pretty harsh for that age to me. (-2)
  • I noticed that Robert Costanza in 2014 issued an update to his seminal 1997 paper on ecosystem services. He now estimates their value at $125 trillion per year, compared to a world economy of $77 trillion per year. Each year we are using up about $4-20 trillion in value more than the Earth is able to replenish. The correct conclusion here is that we can’t live without ecosystem services any time soon with our current level of knowledge and wealth, and yet we are depleting the natural capital that produces them. We were all lucky enough to inherit an enormous trust fund of natural capital at birth, and we are spending it down like the spoiled trust fund babies we are. We are living it up, and we measure our wealth based on that lifestyle, but we don’t have a bank statement so we don’t actually know when that nest egg is going to run out. (-3)
  • This crop of presidential candidates is easy for comedians to make fun of. I enjoy it but think it may be a contrary indicator for the health of the country. (-1)
  • Bicycle helmets are not making U.S. bicycle riders any safer. This is why we need streets designed on the European model to be safe for driving, bicycling, and walking. It’s 100% known technology and there can be no excuses! (-2)
  • In current events, we had the awful, shocking terrorist attacks in Paris. I suggested that the long-term answer to violence caused by angry young men anywhere is to understand why they are angry, address their legitimate grievances, and give them productive work to do. Short term, we also have to detect and disrupt any plots involving nuclear or biological weapons, of course, because we can’t afford even one. (-2)

Positive stories (+9):

Central Oslo Car Free by 2019

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According to Reuters:

Cars will be banned from central Oslo by 2019 to help reduce pollution, local politicians said on Monday, in what they said would be the first comprehensive and permanent ban for a European capital…

Under the plans, the council will build at least 60 kilometers of bicycle lanes by 2019, the date of the next municipal elections, and provide a “massive boost” of investment in public transport.

Several European capitals have previously introduced temporary car bans in their city centers, including Paris last month. Some such as London or Madrid have congestion charges to limit car traffic.

biking as the only form of transport

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This article has an interesting slide show on what a city really designed around biking (aka cycling) might look like. Bike lanes go right into and out of buildings. I like the concept, but I wonder what it would be like to walk in this city. I like the idea of a city built for walking as the first and preferred form of transport, then bicycling second, then maybe personal rapid transit third. In my utopia, homes, work places, shopping/resting/gathering places, and natural areas are located so that most people take most daily trips on foot, hop on their bikes a few times a week to go to a meeting or visit friends across town, and hop on some form of motorized transportation maybe once or twice a month to go out of town. Actually that pretty much describes my typical month right here in decidedly non-utopian Philadelphia, USA.

September 2015 in Review

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What did I learn in September? Let’s start with the bad and then go to the good.

Negative stories (-11):

  • The Environmental Kuznets Curve is the idea that a developing country will go through a period of environmental degradation caused by economic growth, but then the environment will improve in the long run. Sounds okay but the evidence for it is weak. (-1)
  • The Inca are an example of a very advanced civilization that was wiped out. (-1)
  • Consumerism and the pursuit of wealth are not sufficient cultural glue to hold a nation together. (-1)
  • Climate may be playing a role in the current refugee crisis, and the future may hold much more of this. (-1)
  • North and South America would have enormous herds of large mammals if humans had never come along.  (-1)
  • The U.S. clearly has lower average life expectancy than other advanced countries. Developing countries in Asia and Latin America are catching up, but life expectancy in Africa is still tragically low. (-1)
  • People get away with criminally violent behavior behind the wheel because police do not see it as on par with other types of crime. (-2)
  • People are still suggesting a false choice between critical and creative thinking. This is not how the problems are tomorrow will be solved. (-2)
  • This just in – an extreme form of central planning does not work. (-1)

Positive stories (+9):

    • Pneumatic chutes for garbage collection have been used successfully on an island in New York City for decades. This technology has some potential to move us closer to a closed loop world where resources are recovered rather than wasted. (+1)
    • Scientists and engineers could learn some lessons from marketing on how to communicate better with the rest of humanity. (+1)
    • There is new evidence from New Zealand on economic benefits of cycling and cycling infrastructure. (+1)
    • There has been some progress on New York City’s “lowline“, which is what a park in space might look like. The only problem is, it looks to me like a mall. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the exciting science fiction future may look a lot like malls in space. (+0)
    • The U.S. Surgeon General thinks walkable communities may be a good idea. The End of Traffic may actually be a possibility. (+3)
    • Peter Singer advocates “effective altruism”. A version of his Princeton ethics course is available for free online. (+1)
    • Edward Tufte does not like Infographics. (+0)
    • The unpronounceable Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi believes he has found the key to happiness. (+1)
    • The right mix of variety and repetition might be the key to learning. (+1)

those Philadelphia streets

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Philadelphia is one of the most walkable U.S. cities. And yet, it could be so much better and safer. I snapped this picture in frustration after waiting through a whole light cycle of buses blocking the crosswalk, only to have them block a second whole cycle.

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I would love for the culture to improve or human beings to just decide to behave better. I know better street designs exist and U.S. cities are negligent in not adopting them immediately. But until human nature and political will improve, some law enforcement could help here today. It turns out, it is not just my impression that Philadelphia police don’t enforce traffic laws.

Officers are writing a third as many tickets for moving violations as they were in 1999, when they issued 418,881 citations. Last year, it was down 14 percent, and it continued dropping in the first half of 2015 – down 12 percent, compared with the same period the previous year.

Police officials privately concede that traffic enforcement is a low priority in the city, where crime has been on the rise.

Because killing a flesh and blood human with your car is not a crime, it’s an “accident”. They don’t belong there, because you are in a car and the streets are for you, not them.

Just out of curiosity, I compared the murder rate in Philadelphia (246) to the rate of traffic fatalities (89), including pedestrians (40? – these are pedestrians “involved in fatal accidents”, which is slightly ambiguous). These are 2013 numbers. So there are more murders, but I still don’t see why the police automatically prioritize one form of violent death over another. Which type of violent death is more preventable? Which type is more likely to affect society’s most innocent and vulnerable – children, the elderly and disabled? In which case are the perpetrators sitting in vehicles with easily identified numbers on them and often caught on camera?

street congestion ideas

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Here is a nice compendium from Plan Philly on dealing with urban street congestion. Although, the term congestion to most people implies high traffic volumes and low speeds, which you could argue are acceptable in cities. I will admit though that here in Philadelphia we need solutions to temporary delivery, loading and contractor parking. These legitimate business activities block bike lanes, sidewalks, and travel lanes because they often have no choice. I’ve done it myself. Pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers can curse at each other all day – but the same person can be all three at various times, so we are cursing at ourselves. We need solutions and compromises that work for everyone. There are some good, pretty obvious ideas in this article that really shouldn’t encounter bureaucratic or political resistance: larger loading zones, metering loading zones, letting people reserve them in advance, congestion pricing, and off-hours delivery, to name a few.

those fantastic American bike lanes

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Recently I was talking about passive house, an extremely innovative energy standard that has taken root in Europe, Germany in particular. What I was surprised to learn was that the genesis of the idea was in the United States. There seems to be a pattern where innovative ideas come out of the United States but get implemented elsewhere. For example, here are a couple surprising articles about bike (cycling) lanes in the U.S. For example, protected bike lanes were all the rage right around the turn of the 20th century, before automobiles became the dominant technology. The historical images in this article are fascinating – it was not unusual for the bike lane to be paved and the horse and buggy lanes not. The layout of some of the bike lanes looks very familiar from today’s recreational trails.

Much more recently, the U.S. Federal Highway Authority had a serious standard for protected bike lanes in the 1970s, and it seemed like they were likely to move forward. Of course, we all know they did not. But again, in Europe, they did on a large scale. I don’t know whether the Dutch and Danish designs were copied or inspired by the American designs, but they did start to take off right around that time.

alternatives to minimum parking

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Seattle has a brilliant, and in retrospective obvious, idea for an alternative to required minimum parking requirements for development. Instead of taking them out of the code entirely, allow developers or landlords to provide transit passes or car share memberships instead. This makes perfect sense. If you wanted to be more equitable, you could channel some or all of the money into a fund that low-income people in the neighborhood could use for transportation. For those who are just catching up, most cars sit parked most of the time and take up enormous amounts of space, generally equal or greater than the space taken up by housing. By reducing this wasted space, you create more space for housing, businesses, parks, or some combination. Depending on what you convert the land to, you can also reduce water pollution, flooding, and heat; reduce stress; improve physical health; improve appearance and property values; and maybe even grow some food. It’s an obvious win for everyone – why are we still letting car industry propaganda drive our culture and shape our cities?