At Road's End: Transportation And Land Use Choices For Communities
182
At Road's End: Transportation And Land Use Choices For Communities
182Overview
At Road's End is a timely guide to a new era of holistic transportation. It presents new models for transportation planning, describes effective strategies for resolving community disputes, and offers inspiration by clearly demonstrating that new ways of planning and implementing transportation systems can work.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781610912495 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Island Press |
| Publication date: | 04/10/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 182 |
| File size: | 12 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Daniel Carlson is a research consultant at the Institute for Public Policy and Management at the University of Washington in Seattle. His areas of interest are community development, preservation, and empowerment. He is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of California, Berkeley, where he received a master's degree in city and regional planning. He is also the author of Reusing America's Schools, a guide for converting closed schools into centers of community and economic activity.
Lisa Wormser was a founding staff member of the Surface Transportation Policy Projects in 1991. As communications manager, she oversaw all aspects of STPP's public information programs. She is a graduate of Southern Methodist University and is now the owner of Two Heads, a communications consulting firm.
Cy Ulberg is a research associate professor in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. He is also associated with the Washington State Transportation Center, a consortium of the University of Washington, the Washington State University, and the Washington State Department of Transportation. He holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Stanford University and a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Michigan. His interests are in community development, transportation policy, and land use.
Read an Excerpt
At Road's End
Transportation and Land Use Choices for Communities
By Daniel Carlson, Lisa Wormser, Cy Ulberg
ISLAND PRESS
Copyright © 1995 Island PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61091-249-5
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
The federal highway program, more dramatically than any other single public policy or public works effort, has changed the sense of place in urban, suburban, and rural communities. New roads open land to development, alter the environment, create congestion, and often degrade the quality of life that the roads were meant to improve.
For the past thirty-five years, national policy has aggressively promoted car and truck transportation through construction and expansion of the Interstate Highway System. With the passage of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), however, the federal government established new policies that fund a variety of modes of transportation, including cars, trucks, buses, trains, bicycles, and walking. ISTEA requires state and regional authorities to think and plan comprehensively about appropriate modes of transportation for natural and built environments and relate the selected modes to air quality in metropolitan areas and the quality of life in communities in general.
The subtitle of this book refers to the concept that transportation systems are meant to serve communities of people and their activities. The post-war overemphasis on automobiles and highways has caused serious harm to the environment and altered the complex arrangement of social and economic interaction that we call community, which provides our emotional and material well-being and offers a sense of safety.
A New Awareness
ISTEA calls for a holistic approach to transportation planning, taking into account a multitude of factors. Whereas the interstate era was characterized by a single-minded focus on completing a high-speed highway system, the holistic approach considers a range of transportation modes; impacts on the natural environment, including farms, wetlands, and wildlife habitat; impacts on the built environment, such as the effects of future changes in land use on architectural design, historic character, and cultural uses; visual and noise impacts; and the need for a more complete accounting of externalities, i.e., health costs and air pollution and other costs imposed on society such as reduced quality of community life.
ISTEA has changed the rules of the game, making highways one of a variety of transportation modes eligible for funding. What is now required is a more comprehensive view of transportation impacts on land use and the environment. But new legislation, however enlightened, cannot instantly change the corporate culture of highway builders or the attitudes of users. After all, the pre-ISTEA highway projects chronicled in this book were subject to such review for environmental impact and historic preservation required under progressive legislation, but the prospect of review did not deter the projects' proponents.
Had these projects proceeded unchallenged, a multi-lane elevated freeway would have soared above Atlanta's Great Park, three new bridges and sixteen whirling off ramps would have crossed the Charles River to connect Boston and Cambridge, and a new outer beltway would have opened farms and wetlands to development in a giant circle around the nation's capital.
These and other real-life case studies described in the following pages illustrate highway plans developed under the "old culture" but modified by new values expressed by community leaders, environmentalists, developers, and transportation planners. The examples pre-date ISTEA and offer successful and inspirational models for grassroots organizations and agency professionals who are interested in thinking and acting holistically when faced with proposed transportation projects.
Case Studies
Seven case studies, described briefly here, are discussed in depth in coming chapters.
• The Lower James River Crossing. In Jamestown, Virginia, a coalition of organizations blocked a proposed bridge in favor of existing ferry service, thereby retaining the area's historic character and viewsheds.
• The Washington Bypass. The Maryland Department of Transportation and a task force composed of representatives from environmental and civic organizations, developers, and local governments are working to define transportation and land-use options for the corridor near the nation's capital.
• The Merritt Parkway. In Connecticut a historically significant landscape threatened by road widening was saved by a coalition of activists.
• The Freedom Parkway. In Atlanta a coalition of community groups engaged in a mediated process to modify a four-lane freeway into a two-lane meandering parkway bordered by parks and housing.
• The Central Artery/Tunnel. This Boston project is proceeding as a result of a mediated agreement that creates open space and parkland downtown and fundamentally changes the state's public transportation policy.
• The Western Bypass. A Portland group, 1000 Friends of Oregon, is pioneering a new integrated approach to transportation and growth management called the Land Use Transportation and Air Quality study.
• The 1-90 Corridor. In metropolitan Seattle, a new nonprofit civic organization, the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, is attempting to create a public/private alternative to "edge city" sprawl.
Historical Background
Until the middle of the last century, Americans traveled primarily by foot when they needed to get around their communities. In 1825, only one city in the United States had a population of more than 50,000. Towns were small—no greater than two or three miles across—and the residents could walk to most places in less than a half hour. Cities began to mushroom in size and number in the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, because of industrial growth, increasing immigration to the United States, and natural increases in population. A better means to move around cities was required.
The horse filled that need. Offering greater speed, strength, and endurance than people on foot, horses became the preferred mode of travel. But the resulting increase in their numbers created problems. Manure, when wet, was a sticky, smelly nuisance and source of pollution, and, when it dried, the dust carried disease as it blew around the streets. Dead horses created additional environmental problems. In 1880, more than 15,000 were removed from the streets of New York City. Moreover, livery stables took significant portions of municipal land.
Even though horses provided greater mobility, they were limited in range and speed by today's standards. Moreover, the poor could not afford them. As a result, urban form remained fairly dense, and residents were inhibited from making nonessential trips. The advent of horse-drawn trolleys spawned the development of suburbs, but the impact on urban form remained relatively minor.
Then came the electric train and automobile, which helped bring fresh food products from the countryside into urban markets. Ironically, when cars were introduced around the turn of the century, they were touted as a means to improve environmental conditions. Also, their speed and range was comparable to that of horses at first, so that they were not responsible for the initial proliferation of suburbs, which was caused instead by the electric railroad. Railway companies made money by selling land along the rights-of-way.
As automobile technology improved, cars became the preferred mode of travel. Cars were more flexible than railways and offered a new freedom that appealed to city dwellers eager to escape to the country during their leisure hours. By the 1950s, the automobile had replaced walking, horses, and electric trains as the primary means of travel. Without the impact of the Depression and World War II, this transformation would have undoubtedly happened sooner. Traffic problems were already severe in some places as early as the 1920s.
Cars provided mobility and freedom previously unknown in human history. The automobile was viewed as an enhancement to modern living. But times have changed. Today, the car's influences on urban form, community life, and the environment are seen as primarily negative.
The manufacture of automobiles has become the world's largest industry. In the United States, there is more than one car for every man, woman, and child. The nation's 250 million cars travel on 3.9 million miles of roads, and many of these roads, in the form of multi-lane interstate highways, have obliterated the very communities that the car was meant to serve. Metropolitan road systems have opened the countryside to further urban and suburban development, displacing farmlands and rural economies.
More than 60,000 square miles of U.S. land have been paved over for roads. This represents 2 percent of the nation's total surface area and the equivalent of 10 percent of all arable land. In dense urban development, nearly half the land area is devoted to roads and public infrastructure.
Increased Reliance on Cars
Americans use the car, usually as a single occupancy vehicle, with greater frequency than ever before. For instance, vehicle miles traveled in Seattle in the twenty-year period from 1970 to 1990 increased by 123 percent, while the city's population grew by only 34 percent. Most of this mileage does not represent commuter trips. Approximately 75 percent of all travel involves simply getting around town to shop, visit, run errands, and make life work in the auto age.
What led to this increase in usage? The simple availability of the technology (the automobile) enhanced the motivation to escape what is perceived as adverse conditions in cities. Moreover, once urban residential patterns lost their compact form, an automobile was required to carry on the normal activities of life.
Automobile manufacturing, residential construction, and associated activities fuel the economy of the United States, comprising about one-fourth of the gross domestic national product. In The Geography of Nowhere, James Howard Kunstler ties the unnaturally rapid increase in automobile production and residential building during the 1920s with the advent of the Great Depression, suggesting the car's pivotal role.
It is small wonder that public policy has supported the use of automobiles. Following World War II, suburban sprawl was promoted by a confluence of policies that funded highways while simultaneously subsidizing home ownership. In particular, the Federal Highway Aid Act of 1956 created the Interstate Highway System with its 90 percent federal funding—sums that were justified on the grounds of national defense. In a matter of three decades, this system of high-speed, multi-lane auto and truck roads helped change the land-use patterns of the nation. By the end of the interstate era in 1991, for the first time, a majority of Americans lived in suburbia.
Businesses began to relocate from expensive, crowded downtown locations to relatively inexpensive and expansive suburban office parks located at freeway exits. In Edge City, Joel Garreau describes the phenomenon of suburban real estate and employment. Garreau found that explosive growth of edge city office developments coincided with a rise of women entering the workforce in the 1970s. Rather than commuting to the central city, one or both members of the new two-worker families began to drive to suburban locations reachable only by private automobile.
Increased auto usage has a variety of negative impacts on our communities, including greater environmental pollution, increased congestion on the roadways, auto-oriented development of land at the urban periphery, and loss of natural areas. Automobiles and other motor vehicles account for 50 to 90 percent of urban smog and degraded air quality. Water and noise pollution are also significant results of the heavy reliance on autos.
Traffic congestion is an annoyance faced by urban residents on a daily basis. Almost 70 percent of peak-hour travel on the urban interstate system occurs under near stop-and-go conditions. Congestion is consistently identified by metropolitan area residents as one of the most serious urban problems, even when compared with crime, education, and human services.
The economic impact of congestion is significant. Most people consider time spent stalled in traffic as wasted. How that time would be divided between productive work and leisure activities is hard to determine, but both alternatives are valuable. Congestion also inhibits the movement of goods, which raises prices. The U.S. Government Accounting Office estimates that the annual cost of congestion (excluding environmental impacts) in the United States is $130 billion.
Perhaps most insidiously, the automobile destroys the cohesion of our communities. The construction of roads results in physical divisions, and the reliance on automobiles has been partially responsible for breaking down identification with the community. Urban dwellers have become less likely to know their neighbors and shop at local stores.
The familiar kinds of metropolitan sprawl that the automobile has engendered (strip development, large malls, mini-malls, and drive-in stores and services) consist of buildings surrounded by large parking areas facing main arterials or highway interchanges. People who walk or ride bicycles in these environments are perceived as out-of-place, as well as in danger. The arrangements of activities are not conducive to civic life. Even in shopping malls, which include elements that mimic community life, activities are limited to those approved by the owner of the mall. One is not likely to see a political rally or a soapbox speaker in a shopping mall.
The loss of natural areas caused by auto-oriented development affects all species, including humans. Transportation infrastructure and associated housing and commercial development in rural areas has taken forests, fields, wetlands, and agricultural lands out of use.
The proliferation of auto use has led to numerous negative consequences and has limited the enjoyment of mobility and freedom that automobiles originally promised. To understand how this has come to be and where we may be headed, it is useful to analyze the underpinnings of transportation policy.
Three Transportation Paradigms
During this century, transportation policy has progressed through two paradigms and is on the brink of a third. These three transportation "world views" can be characterized by their respective focus on increasing (1) capacity, (2) mobility, and (3) accessibility.
As the use of motorized vehicles grew and the impacts of traffic became obvious, the first paradigm of transportation policy focused on building infrastructure, primarily in the form of roads and highways. New roads were constructed, existing roads paved and widened, and traffic control technology was improved. The aim was to increase capacity by moving more vehicles.
This paradigm has limitations. The car/road construction equation as practiced during the last thirty-five years eludes equilibrium:
Wherever an automobile route is heavily used, there exists a reservoir of trips that people do not make because the route cannot accommodate them. If a second route is provided, both routes will draw traffic from this 'reservoir,' and the net loss in traffic by the old route will be considerably less than the gain in traffic by the new route.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from At Road's End by Daniel Carlson, Lisa Wormser, Cy Ulberg. Copyright © 1995 Island Press. Excerpted by permission of ISLAND PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
ISLAND PRESS,Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Case Studies,
Preface,
Acknowledgments,
Part I - Building Community through Transportation and Land Use Decisions,
1 - Introduction,
2 - Developing New Coalitions,
3 - A New Place at the Transportation Planning Table,
4 - Replacing Transportation Blunders with Community-Derived Solutions,
5 - Transportation and Regional Growth Management,
6 - Enhancing the Existing Highway System,
7 - Reflections on Serving Community,
Part II - Implementing the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act,
8 - First Steps under ISTEA,
9 - Public Involvement in the Transportation Planning Process,
10 - Definitions of Enhancement Activities,
11 - Metropolitan Planning Requirements,
12 - Planning, Project Selection, and Financing,
Afterword - How ISTEA Will Help Us Serve Communities,
Suggested Reading,
Index,
ABOUT THE AUTHORS,
ISLAND PRESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS,