Cap and Trade

Here we go with mystery money intake for the HSR.  So, according to a recent article in the December 21, 2014 Fresno Bee, the new cap and trade tax is going to generate $1.7billion annually of which the politically bloated gravy train is going to rake in 25%.  That’s $425million to be allocated for operations and capital payback.  The antique train technology system costs $70million per mile, so the $425million per year will pay for a little more than 6 miles per year to be built.  Politics, however, employs other methods than logic when it comes to public suffrage.

Towards the end of the Bee article it mentioned the goal of AB32 was to lower the greenhouse gas emitted in California.  In the planning agencies this is termed a reduction in Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT).  Who can tell the legislators that there can be no reduction to VMT in an automobile centric land-use environment without a transportation replacement?

There is only one practical way to realign our car culture, and that is with a transportation system alternative that can meet the mobility demands of our modern society.  This type of personal rapid transit system is less expensive to build and operate than the retired automobile highway system.  Transportation is the basic need to all urban growth.  Mankind has evolved intellectually over the past 100 years and transportation has to begin its necessary evolutionary growth.

New Urbanism

This blog asks a question: What is the process of attracting a following whom understand the importance of sustainable urban growth?  This understanding comprehends that transportation is the foundation to all urban growth and sustainable transportation is the basis for sustainable urban growth.

    

In recent years, popular discussion in community planning has produced many new terms, phraseology and ‘green’ legislation.  New Urbanism is the brain dead political direction which forces metropolitan residents into compressed living spaces with fatigued 19^th Century transportation.  Sustainable urban growth requires personal enrichment of all residents, rather than the profiteering of avaricious politicians and developers at the cost of the suffering general public.

There are three components to sustainable urban growth; environmental, economic and social.  There are elements of New Urbanism which provide some environmental and social sustainability, however, to honestly look at sustainable urban growth; the foundation of all urban growth is based on the area’s transportation.  As well intending as many of the participants of the New Urbanism movement are; Western society is a car culture.

Current Status of the Automobile Centric Society

There are visible signs of evidence showing the car culture has reached stagnation.  Ever noticed that all strip malls are a similar shade of brown?  Ever notice the stores are in the same place in every town?  Ever notice the same stores are in every strip mall?  Ever notice the same products are located in the same isles in the same stores?

Creativity has been replaced by replication.  The unsustainability of the automobile centric society is evidenced by many layers of inertia.

  

A high number of people who live in the automobile centric society have an affinity to their car; this inanimate affection produces a fear to be without it.  The inertia that resists change produces uncertainty and hostility against disruption.  Mental anguish can push away ideas which promote anything different or new.  New technology transit is disruptive innovation. 

New technology transit provides alternative methods of mobility but, does not remove the automobile.  It increases efficiency of travel time and eliminates traffic jams.  It is far less costly than the overall expense of the automobile and more efficient as a transportation system.

The clock is well into the 21^st century.  Trains of the 19^th century proved train tracks could carry loads of people and commerce.  The 20^th century gave a certain feel of independence with travel.  And now, as urban growth expedites instability, the 21^st century must prioritize travel demands to sustainable mobility.    

How to Reset an Unsustainable Society

Implementation of a sustainable foundation to an automobile centric culture

A community’s growth is paramount to its future.  Since the automobile is totally unsustainable, all automobile centric growth is also unsustainable.  By adhering to the claim “that’s just the way things are” and continuing to use automobiles as the foundation for community growth is the acceptance of willing ignorance for a destructive pattern of urban growth.  Urban growth in the US since the 1920s has altered its original transit oriented design from train and street car orientation to what it is today: urban sprawl; a conglomeration of unsustainable automobile oriented development.  To have a future that is sustainable, urban growth has to be re-established on a sustainable foundation with efficient mobility.

 

Many of the Western Society downtowns have lost their functionality as commerce centers.  To re-create commerce, these downtown commercial centers have to have a functional transit system to effectively use their original transit oriented design.  Throughout the country are examples of cities having patterns of land-use change by their abandoned street car system in the early 1930s.  Although these cities were built with transit oriented land-use designs they are now changed to automobile centric land-use design. 

Revitalization efforts in successful downtown areas include a mobility component carrying large numbers of people throughout the downtown areas.  These transit systems have served to reinstitute the function of the original transit oriented designs of downtown areas.  These revitalization efforts allow downtowns to once again maintain land-use positions of regional financial hubs of commerce.

The necessity of sustainable mobility is crucial to urban growth.

In the late 1960’s the federal government established National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), in 1970 California established the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  Although many people claim the laws are restricting and obtrusive, the intent of regulating guidelines creates a healthier environment.  It is an unfortunate consequence of politics that government regulations are manipulated by industries lobbying corrupted self-serving agendas of greed.

In 2006 California passed AB32 which set into law a target of air quality to meet 1990 measures by 2020.  In 2008 SB 375 was passed, which mandated the AB32 targets.  These mandate the MPOs (Metropolitan Planning Organizations) to find a way to comply with Air Resource Board (ARB) targets.  SB 375 augments CARB’s (California Air Resource Board) ability to reach the AB 32 goals by demanding regional greenhouse gas emission reductions are achieved from the automobile and light truck sectors for 2020 and 2035.  There are 18 MPOs in California the ARB will work with towards achieving its goal in the regional transportation, housing and land-use plans to prepare “sustainable communities strategy” (SCS) for each region.

 

These SCS plans were envisioned to reduce the amount of vehicle miles traveled in the most powerful way for California to lower its carbon footprint.  These newly enacted laws are designed to accelerate this necessary transition towards transit oriented urban growth, promote the rapid development of a cleaner, low-carbon economy, create vibrant livable communities; and improve the ways we travel and move goods throughout the state.

However, most of the MPOs and city planners are staffed by schooled workers regimented with a strict policy of compliance orientation.  There is a disproportionate absents of thought capability to “think out of the box” when the voice of their choir is “the box”.   There also is a necessary requirement to garner changed perspective to replace automobile centric urban growth.  The MPOs are caught up in “mapping” and newly marketed computerized techniques of modeling.   It is ludicrous to use the word sustainability and continue urban planning based on the automobile; while considering that an adherence to transit oriented urban expansion.  The resolve of city planners in accommodating SCS legislative mandates is forcing smaller lot size requirements onto tract housing developers.   This is the receipt for oblivious acumen.

 

The transit oriented design is not acquiescent to automobile use.  The consequence to this nonconformity is a dysfunctional land-use design.

 

Philosophically speaking, there has been a suicidal tendency of US society since the assassination of President Kennedy.  Western culture once had a goal driven direction of striving to greatness and achievement for the good of mankind.  Over the past five decades it has been caught in the vortex of self-seeking gratification and politics that elevates a dictatorship government by psychopathic narcissists. The grandiose speech of President Kennedy when man landed on the moon; was the last grand speech spoken by a politician regarding man’s instinctive nature to seek and explore as their directive to achievement.  The dichotomy of politics is that a bird needs two wings to fly: a left wing and a right wing.  Politics of the left have created an impaling ultra conservative social agenda that fails in letting people strive for greatness on their own merit.  Politics of the right declare that government is intrusive while at the same time invoking the over-regulation of intrusive government.

Where is the US space program that required innovation and created the long list of products we use today?  What happened to the promised Moon colonies, Mars exploration, and the achievement of innovation?  Where are the startling innovations of our bright future?  They were lost into the stagnation of deceitful social blight.  We need the jobs created from manufacturing in weightless environments, new technologies and building parts for further space exploration more than feeding on the lies of racism controversy.  Whose idea was it that declared it is better to give welfare money and nurture the dysfunction of doing nothing rather than having self-worth with a job and providing for one’s self? 

    

The status-quo of a non-sustainable culture is problematic on every level. 

    

Capitalism is market driven.  Capital costs in building infrastructure for a community wide transit system are expensive.  The only way to reach sustainable urban growth is to use a new form of sustainable transportation.  To expend $hundreds of millions for unproven technology is not a risk bureaucratically compelled personnel could support.  Hence, the ongoing deterioration of problem oriented urban growth.

 

Building a sustainable urban environment requires sustainable transportation.  Capital cost infrastructure outlays for new technology transit are the most affordable of all transportation systems.  There are three factors to sustainable transportation: environmental requirements, economy need, and social demands.  All three expanses are directly related to mobility and within the ability of private sector development. Legislative mandate has established guidelines for the private sector to develop sustainable urban growth and yet it is the political pursuit of corrupted status-quo that stagnates and disrupts the progress of sustainability. 

Current environmental, economic, and social problems are directly attributed to the arrangement of unsustainable urban growth based on automobile centric land-use design.  Convenience of the automobile is offset by the intrusive increase to their numbers, exacerbating the problems.

 

The demand for transportation is proportionate to the population. As the population is growing, transportation needs grow at a proportionally greater rate. With the growing population, there is an increased demand for land and mobility. Gasoline price increases at the pump will continue to increase with inflation, and depletion of oil supply.

The importance of introducing new technological industries into the automobile centric based society is economic growth of job creation.  As the industrial revolution began manufacturing and computers have led to the information revolution, mankind’s next step in intellectual evolution is the field of mobility. 

The automobile is not a sustainable technology.  The societal impacts from our car culture have blemished many areas of our lives and continue as the current state of urban development opposes the legislative concept of NEPA and CEQA regulations.  The necessity of sustainable mobility is crucial to urban growth.

The automobile centric urban society is incapable of carrying its ongoing pattern of economic, social and environmental destruction.  How then does a culture reset?  Through a natural progression of entrepreneurial efforts without the insatiability intrusion of greed driven political self-indulgence.  A cultural reset happens from sustainable urban growth by implementing new technology transit systems which allows sustainable transit oriented urban growth.  The significance of this is growth; for in growth there is environmental justice and social opportunity.

Advanced Transit Technology for Sustainability

New technology transit is the solution to building sustainable urban growth

Regarding new technology transit; in the process of disruptive innovation, there is a tremendous lack of understanding and much prejudges.  Many of the people involved in academic and other bureaucratic agencies wordsmith ‘new’ from status-quo.  The fact remains: there is no sustainability regarding the automobile.  It is foolish to regard automated automobiles or automated bus ticketing as advanced transit in the sense of referring such technology to sustainable urban growth. 

The innovation of new technology transit; also referred to as advanced transit is system technology; rather than merely a single type of vehicle.  There are two industry categories identifying vehicle size: PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) and GRT (Group Rapid Transit).  New technology transit systems fit into to the model for environmentally sustainable urban growth by using clean energy with advanced automated technology.  Some systems deliver the convenience of on-demand and direct to destination transit capability.  If the system technology isn’t automated it isn’t new or advanced.  Heavy rail train technology stems from the 1800’s, consumes massive amounts of energy and is not on the advanced transit list.  Energy efficient designs require the versatility of light-weight vehicle size.

System designs of advanced transit include solar electric generation for power, computerized operation: for increased vehicle frequencies and destination targeting, passenger stress relief of navigation, with low noise levels.  For public accessibility, existing public Rights-Of-Ways (ROW) can be used to implement this system technology and maximize a community’s overall economic productivity by reducing traffic wait times.  To afford increases of heavier ridership new technology transit is automated to comply with an increase in frequency of vehicle’s headway (distance between vehicles). 

In urban planning, demand for transportation is proportionate to the population.  As populations grow, transportation loads expand at a proportionally greater rate; there is an enlarged appetite for land consumption and a density increase of mobility.  By investing in an on-demand transit system, traffic congestion is eased through the use and application of this advanced technology.  By the implementation of new technology transit in regional urban planning, the increased traffic loads are mitigated. 

As the automobile is wholly unsustainable, even the compositions of its oil base surface streets are hazardous to ground water.  The massive proliferation of roads, automobiles and parking lots are ecologically tragic and too costly to continue as a viable resource for mobility. 

Magnetic levitation (maglev) advanced transit systems provide mobility solutions for true environmental sustainability.  In part, for efficiency in non-train maglev transit systems are the two fundamentals: weight and resistance. 

In comparing maglev; automobile technology requires a 3,000 pound vehicle to carry a single 200 pound load.  The advanced maglev technology transit system can carry a 500 pound load propelled by a ¼ horse electric motor (Lev-X).  The efficiency to advanced transit maglev technology is in its design of lightweight vehicle systems.  Without contact to the ground a maglev vehicle creates a virtually weightless or maintenance free efficiency.  Resistance caused by the friction of moving parts in an automobile causes horrendous inefficiencies.  There are no moving parts on a passive magnetic guideway: the load carrying vehicles are levitated by the magnetic force of the passive guideway; and therefore not attached as moving parts.

Maglev transit technology is sustainable transportation.  Sustainable urban growth requires maglev technology to proliferate.  The most efficient form of transportation is found with passive magnetic guideways.  Passive magnetic guideways are a different technological approach than the methodology used to electrify guideways with electromagnetism found in train technology systems.  Electrified guideway technology seen in the commercialized Transrapid train system in Shanghai and other train systems being developed are much more complicated, archaic in system design, culturally inefficient (time wasted to be taken to inconvenient destinations) and very costly.  The cost of building non-electrified guideway infrastructure for smaller lightweight vehicles is substantially more economic.  Smaller vehicle sized, non-train and direct to destination technology is efficient and sustainable.  

New technology maglev transit technology systems, projects completed or in development:

*HSST (Japan)

Rotem (Korea)

Maglevision (Philippines)

*Transrapid (Germany; Shanghai, China)

Autoshuttle (German)

*Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai) (Japan)

*Yamanashi Maglev Test facility (Japan)

*Maglev 2000; aka: American Maglev Star - AMS (Florida), Magneticglide (Virginia, Danby and Powell)

American Maglev (Georgia)

Magnemotion (M3)(Massachuetts)

*Magplane Tecnology (Massachusetts)

Fastransit (NY)

Applied Levitation (CA)

Urban Maglev (General Atomics) (San Diego)

Modern Transport Systems (MTSC) (CA)

Knolle Magnetrans (CA)

Unimodal, (CA)

Lev-X (WA)

ET3, (Colorado)

Zhonghua 6 (China)

Beijing Enterprises Holding Maglev Technology Development Co. Ltd (China)

*Train technology, non-advanced system

Maglev systems can be designed to encompass global travel.  With no resistance and encapsulated in a reduced air tube for further reduction of air resistance; one maglev system in development has computer simulated its travel speed at Mach 6 with an efficiency rate incomparable to any other form of transportation system (ET3). 

High efficiency in new technology transit systems is found in the agility of vehicle size, smaller vehicles which weigh less; requiring less intensive infrastructure.  Another ingredient of non-train new technology transit technology is interactive computerization of vehicle and track (guideway) switching; which lowers system maintenance, increases safety and efficiency with bypassing unwarranted station stops. 

It is impractical to believe all passengers on a train in our modern society would have the same destination.  As a train passenger of the 2000s, why should any rider be inconvenienced to constantly waste their time for every other passenger to board and exit along the route, then be forced to be taken somewhere other than the door of their destination and obligated to obtain other means of transportation to and from a passenger loading station?  Trains provided a marvelous service for society’s transportation needs when train systems began delivering passengers in the 1800s.  In the early 1900s buses provided lower initial infrastructure costs and yet are not able to offer convenience of independent travel needs. 

A trip through Wikipedia would lead one to believe that all maglev transit systems are about trains.  Google searches pull up hundreds of articles written by onlookers who know little about disruptive transit technology.   “Trains of the future” or “transportation of the future” are the popular misconceived phrases.  Train technology began in the 1830s and the calendar says that was 180 years ago.  Train technology reached its peak of technological triumph in the early 1900s with steam engines.  Modern day train technology has progressed along with the hybrid automobile and yet, trains are a part of the past; not future. 

Western society has grown and there have been technological advances since 1830.  The trains that established Western society were replaced by the independence that the automobile brought in the early 1900s. Society today has diverse destinations and everyone has their own schedule.  Trains are incapable of providing this heavy schedule diversification of origination and destination location that our culture requires.

PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) technology is the only plausible transportation solution for future mobility and sustainable urban growth.  There are certainly incremental steps to reach significant system build-outs and GRT (Group Rapid Transit) systems are adequate technologies to carry transportation towards sustainable urban growth.

Solutions to Unsustainable Automobile Centric Urban Growth

Resolving the sustainability issues of an automobile centric society

Understanding of urban growth is one of the most important social concepts but, one of the least desirable and most complicated of typical conversations.

There is an obligatory moral responsibility to real estate developers wherein profit has to be secondary.  The first obligation must be towards creating urban growth that can endure future generations.  There is no governmental mandate capable of mandating such a requirement.  Sustainable transportation with responsible development allows urban growth to have social equality and environmental justice.   Without a source of sustainable transportation, all urban growth is utterly irresponsible.  The trend of contemporary ‘green’ talk produces more vacuous rhetoric than sustainable solutions; meaning that there can be no sustainability regarding urban growth without a fully sustainable mode of transportation and that the automobile centric urban design is incapable of sustainability.

On board with the popularity of green talk is the political arrogance of ignorant intrusion from government regulation stifling innovation from finding solutions towards creating sustainable urban growth.  The current move of government mandate is forcing controversial global warming policies into consolidation of private land use development.  The logic of increasing traffic loads through small lot sized land restriction for living space is a mystery in its effect towards lowering earth’s heat in the atmosphere.  

With less money spent on property purchases due to governmental mandates of increased housing density, the developer is the lone beneficiary.  With minimized and zero lot lines, where is quality of life improvement for residents?  The automobile is unsustainable; an automobile based society can never reach sustainability no matter what size real estate lots are. 

Reaching a future able to endure population growth requires an efficient foundational transportation source.  Urban growth expansion has to be based on sustainable mobility.

Since the automobile is the current single source of populace mobility, a rapid transition is unrealistic.  Therefore, to reach the objective of restructuring entire societies based on the automobile, the necessity of removing the automobile as the primary source of transportation must be incremental.  A person’s familiarity to the automobile produces resistance when faced with removing the automobile from societal use.  That familiarity can be avoided when a more advantageous mode of transportation becomes available.  Innovations in new technology transit are opportunities for communities to have convenient, efficient and more affordable mobility options.  Government is unable to be the innovator of new technology transit implementation.  Government procedure is to continue its status-quo of urban growth.

On an immediate course towards long range goals and attain sustainable urban growth, the direction of status-quo in urban development has to be curtailed.  Intent driven governmental mandates fail at reaching to remove the core of unsustainability: the automobile.  The only way to attain sustainable urban growth is with the implementation of new technology transit.  The pattern of original Western Society growth built upon light-rail transit corridors can be re-implemented as an alternative transportation method.  Developing high density pockets surrounding station sites allows for concentrated urban growth without sacrificing larger acreage ranch lots in the outlying areas.  The original design of Western civilization urban growth in the US was transit oriented. The first course of action to secure a lasting future is to re-implement transit oriented urban designs.  Some government agencies have begun the simple re-implementation of these once existing light-rail corridors that were destroyed by the automobile centric urban design.  These pre-existing corridors were fundamental to early growth but, it was a different era; the transit systems were privately owned and operated.  They made a profit. 

Much of the approach to transit over the past 80 years has been as an outreach at a single section of the population.  This discriminatory government procedure has proven itself as a failure economically and is a social catastrophe.  Many bus systems are not designed and built as transportation systems but, are exclusionary to the welfare recipient and represent the core of bus ridership.  The routes travel from welfare and other social program centers during business hours.  To design such systems is inefficient in regards to any attempt of alternative form of transportation as a public transit system.  The misleading claim from government entities to call these bus systems any sort of public transit system is a misrepresentation of fact.  This type of heavy pollution distribution center is harmful to the environment, socially discriminatory and economically burdensome to the tax payer.

The status-quo in urban planning growth trends is compressed housing lots and horrid nightmare scenarios repeating socially engineered failures of government subsidized “project” housing.  These socially and economically segregated neighborhoods generate poverty ridden ghettos for government dependency to advance family decimation and crime. 

It is the nature of creativity to build solutions.

Nobel laureate William Vickrey authored a study for the Victoria Transport Policy Institute which shows real estate developer benefits with transit: “For the land developer, property owner access to a local transit system can raise property values in two ways. First, it gives this location an advantage over another, attracting residential and commercial development near a light rail station that otherwise would occur away from any sort of commerce center. Secondly, transit can increase overall productivity by reducing the area’s total transportation costs. These costs include the expense of transportation to consumers, businesses and governments for normally occurring costs of automobile usage.      

“Overall, reducing total transportation costs provide a catalyst for more clustered developmental patterns, providing economies of agglomeration, which will reduce the costs of providing public services, and increase productivity due to improved  accessibility  and  network  effects.   An increase of a few percentage points in property values and business productivity in the community, combined with a reduction of a few percentage points in automobile costs, can total hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy.”  http://www.vtpi.org

Most transit-oriented studies generally reach the same conclusion: there is profitability in TODs (Transit Oriented Developments).  In a paper titled Rail Transit’s Value-Added: Effects of Proximity to Light and Commuter Rail Transit on Commercial land Values in Santa Clara County, California:

“Substantial capitalization benefits were found, on the order of 23 percent for a typical commercial parcel near a LRT stop and more than 120 percent for commercial land in business district and within a quarter mile of a commuter rail station.  Such evidence is of use not only too commercial developers and lenders but also to rail transit agencies embroiled in legal battles over purported negative externalities associated with being near rail. It can also help in designing creative financing, such as value capture programs.  Understanding the market value of properties near rail transit stops can also inform and elevate the practice of joint public-private development.”

In this modern day and age there is lack of justification for incorporating environmental, social and economically damaging antique transportation technology into future urban growth designs.  Solutions to embrace sustainable urban growth require common sense which must recognize that the automobile is unsustainable.  Sustainable transportation does exist with new technology transit.  New technology transit is disruptive innovation to traditional automobile and metropolitan busing.  It provides methods necessary for sustainable urban growth. 

The Politics Continue

From the latest in the oooh this is getting ridiculous category, the Fresno Bee, August 12, 2014 reports that the federal Surface Transportation Board gave California their authorization for construction of a 114 mile section of the HSR (high speed rail) from Fresno to Bakersfield.  Ridiculous is the fact that CA has spent nearly $1billion on the plan over the past 22 years and they don’t even have federal approval.  What’s more is that they can’t even get the three people on the federal approval board to agree that it is a worthwhile project.  Talk of delusional and out of touch, the STB in their report claims that the train will provide connectivity to airports and mass transit systems in the San Joaquin Valley.  This is an indication that the two STB votes were completely political.  Had the STB actually seen the proposed map it surly would have noticed the proposed line has nothing to do with connecting airports in the Valley.  Also, there is no money available now or anytime in the foreseeable future for any public mass transit systems anywhere in the Valley, outside of Sacramento.   

Slippery

The political greaseball known as CA's HSR (California's High Speed Rail) was hit with another down-turn of events yesterday when Fresno County Superviors voted to relinquish their support of the insider's gravy train.  The Business Journal, July 29, 2014, reported that the County Supervisors, in a 3-2 vote favored to terminate their support due to the misaligned agenda of the HSRA (high speed rail authority) that has strayed from what was promised to voters in 2008.

News Flash on the HSR

Oh, this is so easy to predict but, is nauseating.  There is a 12cent to 76cent tax coming to the gas pumps in California on January 1, 2015.  The politicans connected to building CA's HSR (high speed rail) will suddenly discover the missing $40billion in their distorted underfunded budget and gain approval to justify the political insiders to increase personal pocketbooks for their gravy train.

Social Impacts

Social Impacts of Automobile Centric Urban Growth

There are several areas of societal impacts relating to the automobile as the foundation of a society. The fundamental core in every urban population is transportation: how a person gets from one place to another.

The automobile was sold to the general public as a method of attaining independence.  By partaking in the feeling of independence, suburbia was created and progressed into uncontrollable sprawl.  One of the unforeseen aspects to this claim of freedom and independence was costs to its future.

Social isolationism 

In its proposition of independence, the automobile centric society evolved into a culture of social isolationism.  Standard procedure for people today is to get up from bed, walk outside to their car and drive to work with no social interactions.  Many people park in a parking lot, walk to an office and work an entire day without benefit of the interaction of close personal relationships and then drive home, lacking any relevant social interaction.   

The un-sustainability of the automobile reaches deep into an automobile based society.  The cultural implications of social isolationism and the myriad of health problems created by traffic congestion are yet to be fully investigated.

Prior to the automobile centric urban land-use design, Western Society had been building its urban growth upon the railroad and streetcars: a transit oriented land-use design.  That type of urban growth has characteristics of sustainability. 

The style of an automobile is created by designers.  Primary influences relevant to these designs are current trends in fashion.  Car sales are promoted by advertising agencies’ campaigns exclusively measured by fashion trends to encourage customer purchases.  While this is reasonable in business, its effects reach further than mere car sales in the automobile centric society. 

Every car manufactured can be visually ascertained to its decade of origination.  Further reaching implications of fashion can be seen in the patterns and styles of the tract housing built to accommodate automobile centric urban growth.  The houses built in the 1920s are different than those of the 1930s, 40s, 50s, etc., throughout newly built dwellings today; every decade can be visually distinguished in its style.

On the negative repercussions from fashion-only production in the automobile centric society is the consequence of worn out parts.  Trends in design no longer fashionable fade into a negative social enigma.  Outdated tract homes and strip malls no longer in vogue stimulate economic activity to newer growth centers of sprawl development.  The significance can be seen in every urban area that is several decades old. 

As clothing fashion styles change from season to season, the automobile and tract house styles make major shifts every decade.  Inasmuch as fashions quickly go out of date, each tract style becomes out of fad after a decade and a new tract house area becomes popular.  The nature of automobile centric society follows new trending patterns based on that era’s marketing popularity in cultural and sprawl development.

Building

Tract houses are designed by sprawl developers as fashion statements to maintain the status-quo of cyclic trends.  As the new areas are built-out over a decade, older areas are unable to compete with the newly created trend.  These older areas hold a lower real estate value and fall victim to loss of pride in ownership; often becoming lower maintained rental properties.  As they are beset by several decades, the mass produced quality of these deteriorated housing units are exposed to lower income and subsidized first time home buyers.  Economically these properties are higher loan risks with higher foreclosure rates. 

In the building industry, high quality home building in the sprawl sector of tract housing is treated as profanity.  Quick sales with high performance of speed in building quantity and low cost are the only goals of tract housing developers.  The prominent phrase dictated to the labor sector: “never look back” while preforming one’s particular industry trade routine.  This phrase means that a worker can not take the necessary time required to do high quality craftsmanship with the check and balances of one’s own work.  It is demanded of the worker to not look for mistakes and when flaws are found, the low contract bids don’t allow a sub-contractor time to look back but, only leave errors for someone else to take care of.  The rational in this methodology is that there isn’t enough money in the lowball bid process of high production to accommodate high quality.  The focus on tract housing is to generate profit through high quantity.  The designer warmth of security found in Styrofoam beams and faux stone are a psychological façade.  The absence of high quality craftsmanship and long lasting buildings in sprawl development is replaced by contracted fashion designers for the purpose of quick sales to create short term profit.   

As this short term profit making of poor quality building becomes problematic to future generations as the buildings deteriorate; is this a result of the automobile centric land-use design?  This is perhaps material for a philosophical discussion but, even if one might lean towards the answer of it having to do with the nature of greed in mankind taking advantage of one another and having little to do with a land-use issue, it is still a consequence of non-sustainability.

As a source of transportation, the automobile is only 100 years old.  There are no established measurements to quantify the effects of a society based upon this unsustainable foundation.  

Urban blight

In the Car Culture, urban blight is a corollary to automobile centric growth.  Urban blight is a process of cyclic design changes within the car culture.  Once these forgotten areas gather low value rental status, many properties are foreclosed and abandoned.  When abandoned properties are boarded up and chain linked fences become the norm, blight dominates the area.

One of the most accurate terms in identifying urban blight is visual hostility (the term from studies produced by Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Ph.D., Chair, UCLA Dept, of Urban Planning).  Properties with graffiti filled walls, busted windows, rolled razor wire wrapped chain link fences, and warzone landscaping deliver the presents of abused neighborhoods.  These abandoned and economically decayed, visually hostile neighborhoods are socially negative environments.  Psychological ramifications of people (children) forced to live in this economic decay are psychologically effected but, undocumented as to the source and consequent outcome of such psychological ingestion. 

There is some analysis from social science observing this environment and has established the “broken windows theory”.  (In March 1982 an article by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling titled "Broken Windows" appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. This theory considers a building with a few broken windows leading to an increase in more broken windows and crime.)   The primary discussion, however, of “broken windows” relates to crime and efforts for crime prevention.  This paper merely raises the point that the foundation of such environments is the nature of unsustainability with automobile centric urban growth.    

Another product of the unsustainable automobile centric land use is the social dysfunction of its human hostile design.  Detailing the importance sidewalks play in an urban environment, authors Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris and Renia Ehrenfeucht in their book: Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation over Public Space, approach the topic of social interactions in land-use design. 

The topic of social actions resulting from environmental conditions was introduced into the urban planning community in the 1960s by author Jane Jacobs.  There is currently some conversation within the urban planning community which discusses the importance of social interaction. (More about government intrusion and their failed attempts at social engineering; in other posts.)  

Author, Malcolm Gladwell, in his book: The Tipping Point makes the point: “Even the smallest and subtlest and most unexpected of factors can affect the way we act.”  Of social interaction with isolationism in the automobile centric society, this statement makes one ponder how the car culture can find sustainability. 

Economic Impacts

Economic Impacts of Automobile Centric Urban Growth

One of the major forces validating the visual aspects to the unsustainability of the automobile is economic.  There are extenuating repercussions seen over the past decades as the US has outsourced its manufacturing: an increase in a lack of jobs.  People without incomes reduce the overall GNP (gross national product).  Large numbers of unemployed people lowers the size of the middle class in the US.  While this paper isn’t written to editorialize or make political comments, there is a point to be made about how local economies are made successful and prosperous.

Micro economics research shows that one dollar will turn over within a local economy 60 times.  To explain: a farmer purchases his equipment from a local hardware store.  The hardware store purchases the products he sells from a local manufacture.  The farmer sells his products to the grocer.  The local manufacturer and his employees purchase goods that the farmer produces from the grocer.  On and on it goes but, the dollar remains locally traded.  The dollar represents work traded.

In an automobile centric society, the automobile immediately removes that dollar from its ability to be circulated within a local community.

As an illustration to the economic loss in an average automobile centric community; in the middle of California, Fresno County is a farming region with a total population of less than one million.  It consumes roughly 500,000 gallons of gasoline per day, Fresno County, like most Western Culture suffers from its automobile centric land-use urban growth design.  Economically, Fresno was once a financially prosperous region but, now is filled with economic poverty.  Every day with the pump price of gasoline at $4 per gallon, Fresno County loses $2,000,000 out of its local economy that would otherwise be kept locally traded.

Where does that money go?  The US consumes 8.77million barrels (42 gallons per barrel) of gasoline per day.  At 368.51 million gallons per day, the US is roughly 1/3 of world consumption.

A rise of $10 per barrel, from $90 to $100 per barrel, world consumption added $1billion per day income increase to the producers.

The automobile centric society is addicted to oil.  It is economically unsustainable as well as environmentally unstable.

In 2007 there was an economic downturn.  The economy had been flourishing, bank credit was easy to attain and the housing market had seen a tremendous burst in real estate equity increase.  One seriously forgotten economic component is that crude oil was sold at $90 per barrel.  During the same time that the housing bubble was increasing, crude oil skyrocketed to $140 per barrel.  The pump price for gasoline increased 40% within weeks.  People who had just remortgaged or purchased new homes didn’t budget a gigantic fuel increase as well as the immediate inflationary costs attributed to reflect added shipping costs pushed onto the market.

It is all part of the consequences from the nature of an automobile centric society.

The history of America’s Old West is full of colorful pictures taming the wild.  The more accurate analysis shows that the US was built on the rail roads as its primary source of transportation.  The history of each metropolitan area shows that the United States was established with a transit oriented urban growth land-use design.  This type of urban development design is far more sustainable than what the West has separated itself into with the automobile centric land-use design.

There are culprit entities that killed small communities by severing the rail component from the transit design.  This effectively terminated economic survival but, it did allow access and the land-use development of outlying areas.

In 1935, a political move lobbied for federal legislation which was passed as part of Roosevelt’s New Deal.  It rendered it illegal for a power company to also own and operate a transit system (local trolley street car service).  At that point in time nearly every metropolitan area had a public street car system that was privately owned and operated (generally owned by the regional power company).  GM (which manufactured buses), Standard Oil of California (fuel for the buses), Firestone Tire, and Philips Petroleum (fuel) structured a joint venture organization and provided equity to National Cities Lines which purchased over 100 transit systems throughout the US and shut down most of the street cars, selling steel rails as scrap.  The manufacturing of buses brought profit to GM, the operations and maintenance of the busing systems brought profit to Standard Oil, Firestone and Philips Petroleum as bussing became products of government subsidies.  National Cities Lines, was eventually convicted of conspiracy.  Again the automobile centric land-use design in regards to public transportation is economically unsustainable with the failed government operated bus industry that continues.

Previously (pre 1935­) every transit company was privately owned, had to purchase its rights-of-ways property, build the system, purchase rails and rail cars, build and maintain the line of its operations and maintenance, carry its own liabilities and make a profit.  Conversely, the automobile industry manufactures a vehicle; does not have to provide rights-of-ways, was not required to provide any guarantees, carried no user liabilities, provides no fuel and has no added maintenance expense.  Its right-of-ways become the burden of its consumer.

Cost of where to operate a vehicle became the burden at the cost of the general public.  The automobile centric design benefits the car manufacturer at the cost and burden of all others.  Other examples of this type of benefiting at the cost and burden of everyone else are extremely rare in business.  The foundation of this industry could conceptually be considered morally irresponsible and, again the automobile centric society is economically unsustainable.

Other aspects from the automobile centric society’s economic decimation are seen in an area’s gross economic output.  In 2009, traffic congestion cost American’s 79million hours and 3.9billion gallons of fuel for a combined $113billion loss. (http://drivesteady.com/how-much-money-and-time-is-wasted-in-traffic)

A community's economic strength is found in areas of concentrated commerce. Automobile centric design communities separate communities and isolate people.

Wholly owned local businesses keep profits within a community. Localized sales of imported gasoline and large box stores owned by out of the area entities cause an economic extraction of otherwise locally distributed dollars. The combination has shown negative effects to be economically unsustainable.

When the origin of Western society was built, the urban design was transit oriented. Commerce cores were town centers which encouraged higher density and vertical urban growth. Today, the automobile centric urban growth has caused those original transit oriented designs to loose functionality.

Since the 1930’s, urban growth in the US has altered its original transit oriented developmental planning design from train and street car orientation to what it is today: a conglomeration of unsustainable urban sprawl based on automobile oriented development.

Revitalization efforts for downtown areas that include a mobility component (streetcars) designed to carry large numbers of people easily around the entire downtown area quickly have served to reinstitute the function of their original transit oriented designs. These revitalization efforts allow these downtowns to once again maintain positions as regional financial hubs of commerce. These reinstituted designs revitalize the original transit oriented growth patterns.

Electric streetcars are no longer a new technology but, are much more sustainable as a mode of transportation than the automobile for city environments. There are, however, extremely efficient new technologies available for mass transit which are completely sustainable. A cognizant and morally responsible government would seek out ways to implement this sustainable technology.

Environmental Impacts

The Environmental Impacts of Automobile Centric Urban Growth

The importance of living in a sustainable environment is clear to those concerned for the health of future generations.  Unfortunately, attaining sustainability in an automobile centric urban design is impossible; the automobile is wholly unsustainable.

 

Most people even agree in understanding that the automobile is environmentally unsustainable by looking at the air we breathe.  But, beyond poor air quality there are a myriad of other harvests of damage due to the automobile.  The automobile touches every aspect of our lives but, it is not possible to merely stop relying on the car in this society.

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From the book: The Geography of Transport Systems, author Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue points out that transport has a number of relationships between the atmosphere, the hydrosphere, the lithosphere and the ecosphere.  He further shows that transportation’s main factors considered in the physical environment are geographical location, topography, geological structure, climate, hydrology, soil, natural vegetation and animal life.

The amount of land consumption required to maintain a car culture urban design is untenable for large automobile centric populations.  Loss of fertile farm land through land consumption to maintain sprawl is common knowledge, its lingering effects are unknown. 

New findings of environmental concerns are often unpredicted.  As technology progresses, there is an increase of discoveries regarding the direct and indirect impacts to the ecosystem.  The discoveries have led to new policies which reduce the environmental harm from automobiles.  The consistency of studies linking health problems in air pollution to the automobile caused the State of California to legislate regulations in an attempt to lower automobile usage.

California legislation, AB32 (“The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006”, now CA State law in the Health and Safety Code, Section 38500) mandates 1990 levels of air quality by the year 2020.  This represents a 25% reduction under business as usual estimates.  Additionally, in October 2008, SB 375 was signed into law.  SB 375 gives the California Air Resource Board (CARB) authority to implement strict mandates to reach AB 32 air quality targets.  CARB is demanding the real estate and transportation industries to find viable environmental solutions for the harmful pollution resulting from combustion engine exhaust. 

As an extreme example of unsustainable land use and the indirect impacts; the Lake Tahoe area, in California, has an ongoing campaign which says: “Keep Tahoe Blue”.  Since the 1970s the water in Lake Tahoe has begun losing its pristine and crystal blue brilliance.  The water has taken a greenish tint with uncommon algae growth which has infiltrated into the formerly pristine waters.  The cause is merely disruption of the primitive earth water run off flow patterns due to road building and driveways for parking. 

An automobile is used 5% of its life; the other 95% it sets parked.  To accommodate this lack of use, the automobile centric land-use design has to allow for locations of the car’s idle time.  Parking lots are inefficient when empty and are inadequately inefficient when full.

There is concern in the dialog of environment about water contamination.  One of the biggest sources of contaminates into the water table is water runoff from the roads.  The heavy air particle pollutants of exhausted fumes fall to the ground and are gathered along the road ways.  This material is filtered in the soil but, some unfiltered water flows directly into water sources. 

The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) recognizes that roads, highways, and bridges are a source of significant contributions of pollutants to the nation's waters. Contaminants from vehicles and activities associated with road and highway maintenance and construction are washed from roads and roadsides when it rains or snow melts. Large amounts of this runoff pollution are carried directly to water bodies.

The EPA identifies runoff pollution as that associated with rainwater or melting snow that washes off roads, bridges, parking lots, rooftops, and other impermeable surfaces. As it flows over these surfaces, the water picks up dirt, dust, rubber and metal deposits from tire wear, antifreeze and engine oil that has dripped onto the pavement, pesticides and fertilizers, and discarded cups, plastic bags, cigarette butts, pet waste, and other litter. These contaminants are carried into lakes, rivers, streams, and oceans.

When the oils and grease leaked onto road surfaces from car and truck engines, spilled at fueling stations are discarded directly onto pavement or into storm sewers, the rain and snowmelt transport these pollutants directly to surface waters.

Heavy metals come from some "natural" sources such as minerals in rocks, vegetation, sand, and salt but, also come from car and truck exhaust, worn tires and engine parts, brake linings, weathered paint, and rust. Heavy metals are toxic to aquatic life which can potentially contaminate ground water.

Legislatively in 1987, Congress established the Nonpoint Source Management Program under section 319 of the Clean Water Act (CWA), to help States address nonpoint source, or runoff pollution by identifying waters affected by such pollution and adopting and implementing management programs to control it. These programs recommend where and how to use best management practices (BMPs) to prevent runoff from becoming polluted, and where it is polluted, to reduce the amount that reaches surface waters.

The cumulative effects of sprawl are a growing concern to uncontrolled urban expansion.  The necessity of land-use consumption with sprawl development is not ecologically possible to maintain.

Mankind’s technological progression has been able to take advantage of advanced inventions but, there is a limit to Earth’s acceptable damage.  The amount of harm is by no means insurmountable; however, the accumulative increase has reached the point in which a tolerable level has to be discovered.  Vegetation modification, hydric cycles, level of underground water resources, soil erosion, air purification, ecosphere capacity, food sources of agriculture, entertainment and tourism are points that Dr. Jean-Paul Rodrigue address as critical impacts effected by the car culture. 

Environmentally, for society to reach a point of sustainability its foundation has to be built upon an environmentally friendly transportation source. 

Changing of the Blog

This blog has been spent following the California High Speed Rail.  To simply comment on a government caused impending train wreck is masochistic; this blog will turn to discussing the importance of sustainable transportation.

Impacts of Automobile Centric Urban Growth

Automobiles serve as the center of our car culture society.  In the US, nearly every aspect of one’s life is affected by the car.  At the foundation of urban design is transportation; how a person gets from one place to another.  The automobile, however, is wholly unsustainable.  To base a society on an unsustainable foundation is problematic.  With the automobile centric urban land-use design (urban growth centered around the automobile) based on unsustainability; its effects are seen environmentally, economically and socially.   

In Western Society, today’s Car Culture is the victim of its own doing.  Automobile and related industries have far reaching cultural effects beyond what is easily seen from environmental damage.  Throughout the 100 year history of the automobile and the aggregate of related industries producers; financial success has been its primary goal, a reasonable business objective.  In an automobile centric society, however, there are further reaching consequences that effect its participants to this car culture and the simple goals aspired by product manufactures to increase sales.    

These negative impacts of an automobile’s inefficient nature are magnified over time when used as the base of society.  An automobile centric car culture is an amalgamation of inefficiencies that include land consumption for urban growth.  

In considering what makes the automobile unsustainable, one measure is its basic energy inefficiency.  An average car weighs three thousand pounds.  In terms of inefficient, this says it takes a 3,000 pound car to carry a 200 pound load (one occupant).  The larger the vehicle, the heavier it is and the more energy is spent carrying its own weight. 

The impact of a car’s ability to become more energy efficient regarding its fuel consumption, however, has no bearing on the inefficiency of travel time to society in traffic congestion and the reflecting lower local economic productivity.  This again, complies with the nature of building a society on an unsustainable foundation.

In an automobile centric society, land consumption is engulfed by the automobile. Including freeways, surface streets, driveways, shopping mall parking and other parking, a staggering seventy percent of all land in automobile centric urban land use design (sprawl) is consumed by the automobile.  The human component is insignificant and the automobile is parked 95% of its life.

In his book, The High Cost of Free Parking; UCLA Professor of Urban Planning, Donald Shoup, explains the many negative design issues associated with automobile parking.  He reasons that free parking is a terribly expensive public subsidy.

The result of basing our culture on an un-sustainable single source for mobility gives us uncontrollable traffic congestion, destructive stress-related behavior, reduced productivity due to commute time, increasingly negative social impacts from the isolationism of single-occupancy vehicles, sky-rocketing fuel costs, declining air quality, and loss of prime production farm land.

Automobile oriented areas are unfriendly to any other form of transportation.  Not only is walking on a freeway hazardous, it is illegal.  Freeway systems are visually intrusive, noisy, stressful to navigate, the vehicles generate negative impacts of poor air quality, and with the increase in fuel costs at the pump; have produced negative impacts to local economies.  Society needs transportation methods that alleviate all levels of harm to reach sustainability.  

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics there were 22,707 automobile fatalities in 2007.   Combining figures from the National Safety Council (NSA) show that for every 100 million miles traveled in 2007, there were 182.5 accidents and 2.19 fatalities.  (www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/) 

An October 21, 2004 article by Health Editor, Jeremy Laurance, in The Independent, a London newspaper headline states: “Car fumes and traffic stress trigger heart attacks”.  The article goes on to state: “Fumes from car exhausts, noise and stress brought on by traffic congestion are likely to be the main causes of the increase in risk, researchers say. Air pollution is known to be a factor in heart disease, which develops slowly over decades, and research has shown that people living close to a main road have twice the risk of dying from the condition.”

The air quality in the San Joaquin Valley is being worsened by a higher car count.  This higher car count has been concluded as the primary factor in air pollution.  In The Fresno Bee newspaper article: published 04/29/04, Barbara Anderson writes:

“Smog and tiny particles make area one of nation's worst, lung association finds”

“Smog in the Valley is blamed for contributing to asthma rates that are among the highest in the state and for increases in the number of people with lung diseases, such as emphysema and chronic bronchitis.”

As these regulations attend to the environmental aspects of an automobile’s inefficient nature there are two other aspects which have gone un-noticed.  Consider the automobile’s negative economic and social impacts.   

In reference to the unsustainable social aspects to an automobile centric society, there are situations that occur constantly while at the steering wheel of a car: for every driver.  The most common occurrence is the reassurance that everyone else is a bad driver.

Still in the news

The CA HSRA (California High Speed Rail Authority) is still at work, despite being cut off from its State bond issue funds.  On May 6 & 7 there was another board meeting where they approved its latest URS Corp 20,000 page EIR (environmental impact report) and cost estimate.

In its coverage of the meeting, the LA Times May 7, 2014 article is written like a humorous editorial.  One gets the impression that it is standard procedure for the CA HSRA to be comical; or an appalling pursuit of hostility against California residents displayed as political wrath in maintaining an insane agenda.  The political stance by the staff and HSRA Board doesn’t seem to believe the expensive costs of erecting its proposed antique train technology project.   The political will for building this 150 year old technology refuses to accept reality of high costs for steel, concrete and real estate procurement.    

When Jerry Brown became governor again, he announced that the HSR system would only cost $68billion, not the estimated $98billion.  His reasoning was that the $98billion was too expensive.  So he declared a lower cost to the public.  That’s like saying: “It’s going to cost less because I say it’s going to cost less.”  There is no justification for a lower cost.  Peer groups in the transportation industry were speculating normal government cost overruns would put the overall cost of completion at $212billion, not the conservative and more politically acceptable $98billion.

Most supporters of the proposed HSR work in other industries and rely on information provided by the multimillion dollar advertising campaigns from the CA HSRA.  The advertising companies don’t provide the staggering costs involved in building this type of antiquated heavy rail train system.  Average costs of building this type of heavy steel wheel on rail electric train is $70million per mile at grade (just laying the track on the ground), $150 million per mile elevated (17 ft above ground) and $300million per mile underground.

At the center of controversy is its cost.  Underlying cause of disputes about the costs is due to intended deception by particular politicians that felt the proposed project wouldn’t be supported by voters if its costs were honestly revealed.   This was seen when the original bond passed by a narrow margin in 2008.  That bond issue was for $9.1 billion to be spent on the HSR.  The HSRA arrived at their cost estimates ($25million spent by the HSRA to five separate transportation engineering consultant firms) by using the standard at grade cost estimate of building the 700 mile HSR project at $70million per mile; a total of $49billion.  It is mystifying that politicians would then sell the project to voters at $9.1billion.  Even with the unrealistic price tag of an at grade estimate the project was pushed to the voters at the deceptive rate of $9.1billion.  In the fine print of the 1A bond, the $49billion was mentioned, yet a definitive clarification where the lacking $40billion comes from has always remained void.     

Points in the lawsuits against the HSRA show perverse conflicts to the original bond issue promised to voters.  The presiding judge agreed with the plaintiff and froze the bond issues from being released to the market.  HSRA current funds are a grant from the US Dept. of Transportation. 
  

At the May 2014 meeting the HSRA board also approved the section’s 15% cost increase.  The new estimate falls short of standard implementation costs for this type of system.  At its 15% increase, URS estimates are $8million per mile lower than a typical steel wheel on rail train systems of this type.  The newly approved EIR includes a cost estimate for the 112 mile segment at $7.13billion.  Typical systems cost $70million per mile.  For URS to suggest $62million per mile is a significant savings.  It is the opinion of this writer that URS has done an exemplary job in reducing costs, however, in knowing the general procedure of how the government operates; estimates are always obliterated by blueprint conflicts, unforeseen obstacles and errors which lead to massive cost overruns amounting to double and triple original cost estimates.   

It appears that the opinion of the HSRA says their only required mandate is to approve the phase one valley section EIR of the proposed project in order to begin the work.