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.