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.
