(editor's note: The section with area specific data for Southern California isn't done yet.  When it is, we'll have a post specific to our region.  In the meantime, this statewide article prepared by Matthew Roth in San Francisco is a great read.)

California residents living in sprawling suburban developments could save billions of dollars every year if they lived in denser, urban zones and along transit corridors, according to a study released today by smart growth and transit advocates TransForm. Analyzing four metropolitan areas--Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Sacramento--Windfall for All found that shifting populations in those regions to denser development along transit corridors would save save $31 billion per year, or $3,850 on average per household [Report Summary PDF].

In the Bay Area, where annual car ownership costs on average over $8,000 per person, individuals spend roughly $34 billion every year on personal transportation costs, compared to only $4.6 billion spent by public agencies on transit and roads combined. Households with poor access to public transit not only spend double the amount per year on transportation when compared to those with good access to transit, they produce more than double the amount of CO2, a greenhouse gas.

"The most astounding thing is that agencies pinch their pennies on transit and cut back and we feel like we can't afford not to save that service," said Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of TransForm. "We're already spending more than seven times as much as our agencies spend on public transit and roads just on buying and operating our vehicles."

What's more, the report points out that fuel costs represent a small minority of the cost of owning a car, so the craze for electric and other low-emission vehicles will not dramatically reduce the transportation costs for those living far from their jobs and far from transit. The best solution to combating climate change, the report notes, is to build walkable, vibrant communities where residences are situated close to job centers. 

Click to enlarge: household CO2 from transportation in the Bay Area.

"By reducing public and private transportation costs and increasing revenues to local governments, SB 375 can help put dollars back in the pockets of consumers and local governments," said Cohen.

Windfall for All counters the claim that SB 375 will be too costly to implement during the current economic crisis with several examples of how planning denser cities and offering alternatives to private car travel can save money.

First, in Sacramento, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) created a 2050 development blueprint that forecasts current development patterns and compared them to smart growth patterns. SACOG found that Sacramento would save $9.4 billion in public infrastructure costs (transportation, utilities, water, etc), $655 million in annual residents' fuel costs and $8.4 billion less for land purchases to offset environmental degradation from sprawl. The city would also see a 300 percent increase in public transit use if the city clustered development around transit within an urban growth boundary.

Benefits of public transportation for household costs and pollution. Image: TransForm.

In the Bay Area, parking regulations are a significant impediment to dense development. In San Leandro, parking minimums of more than two parking spaces for each new home made dense development a planning impossibility. When San Leandro re-wrote its downtown plan, it rezoned to allow 3,400 new homes, more than seven times the limit under the old zoning laws. The first development in the new Downtown Transit-Oriented Development Strategy, The Alameda, designed by San Francisco Architect David Baker, saves $3.9 million by eliminating a level of parking and produces 30 more affordable units, according to the report.

Based on these and other case studies, Cohen suggested California should consider levying a climate impact fee on gasoline to generate enough money to expand public transit options and expand walkable communities while improving the economy and meeting ambitious greenhouse gas targets.

"Building our communities with the expectation that every driver in a family is going to have to own their own car is part of what is part of what is bankrupting families," said Cohen. "The infrastructure for the... roads and those patterns of growth is part of what is bankrupting our public agencies."

Windfall for All Critical Recommendations

• Integrate full economic analysis into planning. The huge dividends from efficient land use become evident once personal costs, not just public budgets, are considered. Without such analysis, we will continue to promote plans and policies that cost too much for families, businesses, and local governments.
• Provide cities and counties with an infusion of funds to engage the community in planning. The state should make funds available for updating zoning codes and parking policies to make more efficient use of land and resources. Identifying strategies to maintain and expand the number of affordable homes is also critical.
• Fund cost-effective public transportation. The state needs to provide leadership and restore funds for public transit, as well as make it easier for regions to raise new revenues with climate-impact fees. Economic analysis could determine whether such fees, if spent in ways that promote more efficient communities, can reduce our overall costs.
• Innovate, evaluate and replicate. There are dozens of innovative strategies – whether an individual program such as car-sharing, or a comprehensive rewards approach such as UC San Diego’s. MTC, the Bay Area’s transportation agency, will soon launch the first “Transportation Climate Action Program.” This program will seed, evaluate and replicate innovative programs. Other regions should follow suit.
• New development should minimize pollution from new residents – or pay to mitigate it. The San Joaquin Valley is encouraging efficient development from the start. New developments that don’t provide walkable communities with convenient transportation choices must mitigate the costs of the air pollution that will be generated by future residents. The state and regional air districts should encourage this same system for mitigating the costs of greenhouse gases.

When it comes to building new developments in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco, the battle over limiting the construction of new parking spaces is pitched. Parking reform advocacy organizations like Livable City, which maintains a listserv populated by car-free and livable-city advocates keeping a keen watch on planning commission parking exemptions, have long encouraged city leaders to tighten the parking-to-unit ratios in dense neighborhoods flush with transit and bicycling options.

Photo: Matthew Roth

And who should they hang for granting variances permitting higher than 2:1 ratios, as happened last week when a two-unit home at 2626 Larkin Street in Russian Hill received permission from the San Francisco Planning Commission to build five parking spaces, one with a parking stacker for additional cars?

When these questions are asked of city planners and developers, like they were during the struggle to limit parking at 299 Valencia Street, advocates and political leaders are led to believe that it is impossible to finance new developments, particularly condos and non-rental properties, without the maximum parking ratio possible. Less parking, goes the developer refrain, banks will refuse to loan and the units will be impossible to re-sell.

Not all developers buy that argument, however, and some have buildings that disprove it.

"If you are doing a project next to BART or many buses, you really don't need to have a lot of cars," said Oz Erickson, Chairman of the Emerald Fund, Inc, a developer who has built more than 2,000 units in San Francisco. Emerald's newest development, a rental building at 333 Harrison Street in Rincon Hill, will be built with a .5:1 parking-to-unit ratio, even though the developer could appeal for a variance to build more parking.

Above all else, Erickson argued, a city should provide as much flexibility in developments as possible. "You really should be in a position where zoning laws do not require you to put in parking," he said.

Patrick Kennedy's Gaia Building in Berkeley has 91 units and only 35 parking spaces. Photo: jeremydw

Referring to cyclists and others who don't own cars: "I think it's important to provide them with an opportunity to live a car-free life if they choose to."

Over the past two days at the Congress for the New Urbanism Project for Transportation Reform conference, attendees have called for transportation reform at local, regional, and national levels. In a panel debate about the future of transportation funding and the role of regional planning through MPOs, several speakers argued that the foundation of transportation and development funding had to be systematically overhauled.

Photo: gwenturnerjuarez

Reforming the Transportation Bible

Another topic that has long been on CNU's radar for reform is AASHTO's "Green Book," the bible for traffic engineers. As we reported, CNU Chief John Norquist has been working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) to add urban street concerns to the comprehensive roadway guidelines. Rick Hall, of Hall Planning and Engineering, in a plenary session yesterday elaborated on changes that would benefit pedestrians.

"There's not a single mention of pedestrians in the entire first chapter of the AASHTO's green book," said Hall. "It's all about cars." He argued that AASHTO's street classifications (arterials, collectors, locals) do not account for walkability inputs that make urban streets comfortable and livable. 

In Hall's opinion, MPOs and traffic engineers should start by indentifying cities that work for pedestrians, then use computer modeling and simulations to simulate urban forms in those cities, not just the travel and movement of motor vehicles.  For Hall, the most important walkability design parameters are, in order of importance:

• Small block size
• Buildings fronting the street
• Mixed-land uses
• Lower traffic speeds
• On-street parking (pedestrian buffer)
• Interconnected streets
• Narrow streets
• Quality Sidewalks
• Lower traffic volumes
• Street Trees
  

Hall called for a change to AASHTO's guidelines, including the creation of a new classification he called "compact urban," where speed limits would be lower and a number of pedestrian factors would be considered in conjunction to road characteristics.  In compact urban areas, he said, road design should not allow for speeds greater than 25 mph, versus AASHTO's current urban low-speed of 45 mph. MPOs could determine that they want to alter development patterns to add compact urban areas to suburbs and re-design streets accordingly.

CNU President Norquist told the audience he anticipated positive additions to the Green Book by 2010.

Throughout the day Friday, CNU participants have broken out into working groups to discuss the various proposals put forth in the conference and bring them together into the working document, Sustainable Transportation Network Principles [PDF], which the organization will take to policy makers in Washington D.C.

Photo: npGreenway

The Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform summit in Portland, Oregon, has brought together transportation engineers, city planners, and transportation reform advocates to share best practice policies for reforming transportation metrics, funding mechanisms, and regional practices that isolate transportation planning from land-use and growth targets.  The highlight of the first day of the program was Portland itself, as councilors from Portland Metro, one of the only elected municipal planning organizations (MPOs) in the country, elaborated on their multi-disciplinary mission, which seeks to limit development within an urban growth boundary and coordinate transportation, parks and recreation, and solid waste management to achieve a more sustainable city.

It's quite a mandate, one that Metro's own councilors and representatives reminded the audience was a work in progress. Despite Portland's reputation among new urbanists and livable cities advocates as a national leader in promoting pedestrian safety and multi-modal accessibility, the region's municipal stewards said they have a long way to go.  

Metro Councilor Robert Liberty said, "I know this is the image many of you have of our region," while displaying a slide of Dorothy and her cohorts skipping along the yellow-brick road to Oz (Portland's green bike lanes do beg at least a chromatic comparison to the Emerald City). In reality, said Liberty, moving onto a photo of one of Portland's many crisscrossing freeways, the city is still fighting off the influence of Robert Moses (who visited in the 1940s and convinced city leaders they should build bigger and faster roads). 

Since 1973, with the passage of Oregon's Senate Bill 100, which led to the original urban growth boundary around Portland, the region has incrementally chipped away at the Moses paradigm of freeway expansion, instead funding light rail, robust bus service, extensive neighborhood traffic calming, and ever more impressive bicycle infrastructure. So thoroughly have Portlanders embraced the bicycle, in fact, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church recently unveiled a new bicycle shrine in its efforts to reach out to cyclists.

An abandoned spur from the planned Mt. Hood Freeway, plans for which were scrapped after the freeway revolts of the 1960s and 70s. Photo: Matthew Roth

Despite this effort to moderate the expectations of conference attendees, it was clear twenty minutes into the first presentation that Metro has so thoroughly incorporated new urbanist principles into their lexicon that they are essentially speaking a different language than any other MPO in the country. What's more, they are not merely drafting good plans that collect dust on a shelf, but funding the innovative policies and setting performance targets so the public, which has a remarkable opportunity to give direct feedback via the ballot box, can gauge their successes and failure.

When I asked the city engineer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, how receptive his peers, their MPO and the state DOT were to principles of network connectivity and human-scale transportation objectives, he gave me a bemused smirk. He explained that his city was moving closer to installing a 2-mile streetcar route, but that most efforts to convince Wisconsin DOT that it should consider transit projects are met with responses like, "we're in the highway business."

Two other conference presentations from the day were particularly interesting, the first from CNU President John Norquist, who explained the efforts his organization has been involved in to build support among fire and emergency service personnel for human-scale streets, traffic calming, and dense development. Norquist said the process has been slow but positive: they are hoping more states will adopt policies similar to Oregon's, where final authorization of traffic calming depends on traffic engineers, not the fire marshal.  

The other presentation, by University of Connecticut Engineering Professor Norman Garrick, bolstered Norquist's assertion that dense cities are safer cities, per capita. Garrick presented data from a yet-to-be-released study of cities all over California that measured the impact of street design on a range of safety factors, from emergency response times to bicycle injury collisions and pedestrian fatalities.

Garrick found that cities built on a grid network and cities built before 1950, which tended to have smaller streets not designed primarily for automobility, realized significantly better safety indicators. In grid cities, according to Garrick, one's chance of dying in a car was 50 percent lower than in suburban-style cities (branch street networks) and injury collisions were 30 percent lower in grid cities.  People living in grid cities were four times more likely than their suburban counterparts to walk and bike and two-to-three times more likely to take transit.

During the afternoon, attendees broke out into groups to take tours of Portland's various networks, from streetcars, to bicycles, to green streets (my post on the green streets tour will be forthcoming). Today's highlights will be  panels on MPO reform and analysis of the VMT reduction benefits of dense development along transit corridors. Tomorrow, attendees will hear from Representative Earl Blumenauer on his national transportation agenda.

You can get updates from the conference on Twitter by searching for #CNUtrans and be sure to check the CNU website for presentations and video.

Streetlights are an enormous part of any city's energy consumption and cities that wish to cut down on their emissions and their energy bills are getting in line to convert their older street lamps to LED technology. According to Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) and Department of Energy (DOE) data, street lighting costs are one of the biggest components of a city’s utility bill, accounting for 10 percent to 38 percent of the total. With nearly 35 million street lights in the United States, about 1 percent of all electricity is used by street lighting systems.

Like other cities in the Bay Area experimenting with LED streetlights, including San Francisco and Oakland, San Jose has embraced the nascent technology as part of a sustainability platform called Green Vision, which sets ambitious targets for reducing energy consumption and emissions, including an expected 50 percent or more energy and cost savings from the street lamp conversions.

"Our goal has always been to move to a more energy efficient light," said Laura Stuchinksy, Transportation Sustainability Officer at the San Jose Department of Transportation.

Stuchinsky said San Jose intends to replace all 62,000 streetlights throughout the city before the Green Vision target date of 2022. The city implemented a pilot streetlighting project in Hillview North in 2008 that replaced 118 low-pressure sodium streetlights with LEDs and a recent American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) stimulus fund grant of $2.2 million will offset implementation costs for the next wave of conversions expected later this year.  Further, the city intends to backfill with new renewable energy generated locally and possible purchases through PG&E. San Jose currently spends $4 million annually on street lights, which consumes over 35 million kilowatt hours of electricity, according to Stuchinsky.

In addition to the benefits to the city, the public seems to like the new lights. The Hillview North project, contracted to Echelon Corporation and funded with part of a $200,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) from HUD, had received positive reviews from the community. Even though the new streetlights use less energy, the LEDS give off a broader spectrum of white light than the current yellow hue of the low-pressure sodium lamps, which gives neighbors a greater sense of safety, according to Stuchinsky.

LED lights side-by-side with sodium lights. Photo: PG&E

Astronomers at Lick Observatory, 14 miles east of San Jose, are concerned about any increase in city lights, especially LEDS, said Stuchinksy, as they are unable to filter the white light in the same way they do with yellow from sodium lights.  In order to convert more lights and remain Dark-Sky compliant, San Jose has been working with manufactures to develop solutions for dimming lights at night or for motion-sensors that would help reduce overall light when it is not needed. While the technology is not yet perfect, Stuchinsky believes that the possibility of contracting with a large municipality like San Jose is leading vendors to be more innovative.

Another obstacle to expansion of LED streetlights is the rate schedule at large utilities such as PG&E, which until recently didn't break LEDs into a separate category so savings could be quantified. Municipalities like San Jose pay monthly block rates, regardless of how much energy is actually used. With PG&E's recent classification change, the utility has set a national example and will make conversion more bankable for other municipalities who have the incentive to move to a lower billing rate.

PG&E spokesperson Joseph Molica said the utility was very excited to assist cities throughout the state with LED conversions. "There are two types of incentives for city customers: a lower rate schedule and they are eligible for energy efficiency rebates," he said.

He hoped Bay Area cities would embrace the new technology as thoroughly as Los Angeles, where the city has committed to replace 140,000 existing street lamps with LEDs over the next five years, the largest conversion anywhere in the country. Molica added that ARRA stimulus funds had enabled smaller municipalities like Danville and El Cerrito to initiate trials and that the DOE grants are "coming in almost daily."

Molica said PG&E pilot programs in San Francisco and Oakland over the past two years were excellent test cases for the utility, which realized energy savings from different vendors between 50 to 70 percent [for more analysis: Oakland PDF, San Francisco PDF]. Molica also stressed that the LEDs last many years longer than current sodium lighting, so savings over the long run add up significantly. PG&E has also partnered with the CCI to reach out to more cities across the state to make conversions.

Molica echoed Stuchinsky's assertion that customers approve of the new lights, saying that PG&E conducted outreach before trials in San Francisco's Outer Richmond neighborhood and has sought continuous feedback subsequently. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom earlier this year touted a new pilot near City Hall that incorporates remote dimming technology. At the press conference, Newsom turned the lights up and down with his cell phone (Molica said Newsom used an encrypted code for accessing the system controls, but it does lead one to wonder if the savvy kids at Black Hat might try hacking the city's lights).

The Congress for the New Urbanism will meet in Portland, Oregon, in early November for the annual Project for Transportation Reform, a summit to further define and clarify emerging urban transportation policies that embrace entire networks, rather than interdependent transportation segments, and that seek to balance modal transportation splits and reduce overall vehicular miles traveled (VMT).

Summit attendees and partners, including Streetsblog, will participate in discussions on emerging network planning and develop a strategy for informing the national transportation infrastructure debate, of particular significance as the climate and transportation bills move forward. As the draft CNU Statement of Principles on Transportation Networks notes [PDF], climate change and infrastructure problems in the US continue to intensify:

The US now has the world’s highest level of VMT per capita, while simultaneously experiencing the highest traffic fatality rates of any developed nation. Per capita traffic delay has more than doubled in the United States since 1982. This deterioration in transportation system performance has occurred in spite of an ongoing public investment of more that $200 billion per year in transportation infrastructure."

CNU President John Norquist said the current focus by transportation professionals on road capacity gives us cities like Detroit, where consistent spending to widen roads has destroyed communities.

"Federal and state DOTs don't understand how cities work. They still want to take rural forms and jam big roads into cities." he said. "Rather than measuring projected traffic flow, they should be measuring how much value it adds to a neighborhood. The US can't afford to be energy wasting and spending money on projects that destroy the value of neighborhoods."

U.S. Representative Earl Blumenauer will kick off the summit and representatives from Oregon Metro will showcase the many innovative transportation and design policies they have implemented in the region that have given Portland one of the highest walking, transit, and bicycle mode shares in the country.

Summit organizers hope to develop the language around network-wide transportation reform so the CNU can persuade lawmakers in Washington DC to incorporate this new urban vision into upcoming climate and transportation legislation.

Marcy McInelly, co-chair of the CNU's transportation reform initiatives and principle of Sera Architects, said, "Reform is about giving more latitude to use highway funds for pieces of the network that may not be for highways. Right now the federal funds have to increase vehicular mobility, which raises VMT. If you had a funding formula that allowed you to count benefits to cost, it would almost always [result in] the other modes besides cars coming out more beneficial.  It would balance consideration of other modes."

Norquist said the CNU is working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE), the most significant body of professional transportation engineers in the country, to develop transportation standards that ennoble urban streets alongside rural roads and freeways in guides like AASHTO's Green Book for highway and street design.

According to Norquist, reform initiatives should focus on altering "the functional classification system. The current regulatory framework tries to feed future traffic demand, instead of trying to facilitate the network." 

Referring to the traditional advocacy position that tries to chip away at the 80-20 funding formula (80 percent of federal funding for freeways, 20 percent for transit), Norquist said a more fundamental change is needed.

"We're completely for the idea of changing the 80-20 split. But even if the environmental community wins and gets 25-75, you're still spending 75 percent of the money on road capacity. They should focus on creating roads that are useful and pleasant and create a place where people actually want to be."

The dealer, whose motto is "God, Guns, Guts and American Pick-Up Trucks," says that sales have doubled since the promotion started and declared his dealership a recession-free zone. He also had some choice social commentary in various interviews:

• "There's a bunch of evil in the world and people need to protect themselves."
• "I'd personally like to have a sporting chance, instead of just becoming a victim."
• "Without guns, we are subjects. With guns, we are citizens."
  
• "The only 911 call I need is chamberering a round."
  

Fortunately you can't just walk out of Max Motors with an AK; Muller provides you with a voucher for $450 redeemable at a local gun dealer, where you still have to go through a background check. Maybe I haven't been to a gun show in a while, but doesn't that seems like a lot of gun for so little coin?

No matter what your moral leanings, you have to admit Muller's plan is ingenious marketing, given that, outside of iPhones, guns are about the only thing selling well in this economy under this presidency. He has even given interviews to Al Jazeera, and Russia Today.

Wired gives us a look at a number of bicycle-related applications for the iPhone, including Back Light, which allows you to tell cars following too closely on your back wheel exactly what you think they should do with themselves ("Stop!," of course). I'll admit I would put a lot of other choice statements there, but that's because I'm not as sensible as you, dear readers.

For the fixie kids, there's an app that helps you figure out the ratio for your gears and shows you where on your tire all the skid-stops are going to wear it thin. It also lets you know how fast you're going to travel at different RPMs, depending on your tire size. A bit arcane for me, but obviously there are folks who find this interesting.

One of the apps that didn't make Wired's list, iMapMyRide, tells you your speed and distances traveled, and allows you to map your rides and keep a record of them both on the hand-held device and online.

Newsom extolling the glories of EVs, from mayorgavinnewsom via Flickr

For his transportation platform, he leads with the right foot, making a strong link between transit improvements and climate change, job growth, and energy independence.

We must leave the era of the car behind and refocus our investment and energy on building smart, environmentally sustainable transit options

Creating robust mass transportation systems will connect our local and regional economies, create jobs, give Californians better affordable transit options and ease traffic congestion.

Amen, brother.  I couldn't have said it better and I hope all environmental and transportation advocates will hammer on those points this election cycle, namely that any candidate who claims green cred must embrace transit and that public transportation equals jobs. No governor serious about addressing climate change can stand by idly (or sit by in a hydrogen Hummer) as all state funding for transit is zeroed out and environmental review for highway projects is thwarted.  Any candidate for governor that wants my vote will immediately reverse the trend away from funding transit operations and widening highways.

So I'm sure the very first platform point will be a solution for restoring desperately needed transit operating money?  Hmm, not so much.  He leads with "innovative technology," claiming that he's modernized Muni with NextMuni and Translink. While it's important to give riders information and make their transfers more fluid, we learned in the kerfuffle over 311 work orders to MTA that more than 60 percent of total call volume to service were questions about bus and train schedules, which NextMuni provides for much less money.

Gav acted on this matter and came up with a cost-cutting solution, but only after Supervisor Bevan Dufty made it a priority.  In fact, if it weren't for Dufty, the matter of various agencies milking MTA for more than $83 million in work orders by 2010 would have slid by the wayside.  Gav didn't seem to have a problem with SFPD and 311 draining the monetary gains that Prop A afforded the MTA until the press picked up on it. 

Putting out fires is not my idea of visionary leadership. 

What Gav doesn't understand or doesn't want to admit is that Muni has a credibility problem that no amount of expensive efficiency plans and innovative technologies will fix.  It's terribly important to be sure that redundant and unnecessary service is eliminated and that Muni focuses its energy on the 80 percent of its ridership on the 15 most used lines, but when the agency faces $129 million in annual budget deficits, it can't even pay to implement its Transit Effectiveness Project, whenever that clears environmental review.  Muni needs money, plain and simple.  Every transit operator in the state needs money, so until you address this issue, I'm not taking your transit platform seriously.

Although he uses the good rhetoric quoted above, Gav offers no solutions for dealing with concerns of building  housing near transit, nor reducing driving to fight climate change. The state has two excellent bills on the books, AB 32 and SB 375, which in principle chart a course toward situating new homes near transit, toward reducing driving, and preventing sprawl.  As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said, reducing the amount Americans drive is one of the biggest challenges facing our nation.  US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood and HUD Secretary recently announced a joint effort to improve regional planning, reduce sprawl, and encourage transit-oriented development. 

California governors like to think of themselves as cutting edge nationally, so why is Newsom so far behind on one of the most fundamental environmental, transportation, and energy concerns facing this state?  Mobile sources are responsible for more that 40 percent of all the state's CO2.  This might not be so obvious when you're driving around in your 18 mpg hybrid truck here in San Francisco, but the smog downwind in Sacramento is unmistakable.  

As for pedestrian safety and amenities, quality public realm, bicycling, traffic calming, speeding, and a whole host of other issues we livable streets urbanists consider important: nada.  What instead is the solution to our problems meriting inclusion in two platforms?  Of course, it's electric vehicles!

Not to harp on an issue I've written about in more detail already, but I will steal a quotation from a commenter on the Carfreeliving listserv: "Yay, electric traffic jams!"

Welcome to town Chase.  I'm super impressed you have been reading Streetsblog San Francisco and made an ad that reflects some of the knowledge you've acquired here. This is obviously a shout out to the car-free community. Might the admen understand the incredible cost savings of ditching the car for a bike, which can save you more than $9,000 every year in direct vehicle costs, not to mention the health savings from an active lifestyle and the peace of mind of contributing fewer greenhouse gases to a dangerously warming planet?

Or maybe this is an homage to the cyclist as hero, walking into the sunset after defeating the highway lobby in Washington and securing billions for transit in the re-authorization of the transportation act.

I'm not sure a big bank like that has the time in between taking billions of taxpayer bailouts and spending them on new airplanes to focus on the subtleties of the message they're sending to the more than one-hundred thousand San Franciscans who ride weekly.

What do you think, Streetsblog Nation?

(Editor's note: I left all the San Francisco references in the article because it reads better than my attempts to re-write it.  Rest assured, I've seen the same billboard here in L.A., although I didn't have my camera on me at the moment - D)

I thought billions in taxpayer money and Wagoner's presidential dismissal were supposed to mark the end of General Motors' bad plans, and I naively hoped the company would replace Dummers with innovative thinking, dynamic product design, maybe even switch some of its production to light rail.  Silly me.

GM's solution for the future of transportation is, hold your breath, a Segway built for two.  I don't know about you, but I want my money back. 

Unfortunately for those of us who already utilize a personal mobility device with more than 100 years proven utility and health benefits, Dave Rand, GM's Executive Director of Global Design, said on Brian Lehrer today that he thought PUMAs should be able use bike lanes.  Lehrer was skeptical of the device, saying that the last time he heard of a transportation "revolution" was when Segways were introduced, and he noted how small a market share they currently have. 

When Rand was challenged by Lehrer on how they would fit in already dense urban areas, where carving out room for a bike lane is as difficult as it gets, Rand suggested that they would start using PUMAs on college campuses and other areas that look nothing like cities.

Given that Segways cost around $6,000, the new PUMA would likely be more expensive.  There are also concerns about safety and visibility, which GM claims they'll solve with technology links to existing OnStar systems so that the PUMAs will sense another vehicle and slow automatically, at least other vehicles with OnStar.

Rand said on Lehrer's show that users could charge the vehicle at home overnight or where it is parked during the day, the implication being that people have an easy place to plug in at night, as in, a garage.  Has Rand spent any time in a dense urban setting, where most people don't have garages?  Has he seen all those plugs coming out of the parking meters? 

So which is it?  An urban mobility device or the butt of another Kevin James joke?  (Best use of a Segway has to be Weird Al's White and Nerdy)

GM's announcement comes a day after Ohio State released a study that found 20 percent of preschoolers are obese.  I know the mega-corporation lampooned in Disney's Wall-E was meant to be Walmart, but GM seems to be moving us a step closer to the Axiom Hover Chairs that make physical activity quaint. 

I seem to recall from a class in high school something about us evolving to walk upright?  It's funny then that we're finding physical exercise will keep us alive longer.  Rather than figuring out the vagaries of how to incorporate an impractical new Segway into the urban realm, cities should be making more room for walking and cycling.  The good ones already have.

Speaking of that, officer can you remove that thing from our nice new pedestrian plaza?

Photo from NY Times

Not so Good Frickin' Chickin'

As KFC's press release from March 25th notes, the company gave Louisville $3,000 to fill the potholes on the condition that they could stencil their logo on the new asphalt.

For more than half a century, KFC has "filled up" its fans with the Colonel's world famous, freshly prepared fried chicken. Today, in a marketing first, KFC is celebrating its continued dedication to freshness by launching a pilot infrastructure renewal program, becoming the first-ever corporate sponsor of freshly filled up potholes in up to five major cities across the U.S.

Barf.  I know a lot of Los Angeles streets are in a pretty awful way, but I pray Mayor Villaraigosa has not taken the Colonel up on his offer to fix our potholes.  Can you imagine the KFC logo dotting the "4th Street Bike Boulevard?"

The daily bombardment of advertising clutter we consume is already staggering, but now we've got sponsored pothole repair.  Do the admen think they're going to get any value out of the actual advertisements, or is this more of a Romain Mesnil (PG-13, maybe NSFW) stunt to get the attention of befuddled bloggers like this one? 

I imagine it would be pretty hard to see what's stenciled on the pothole from behind the wheel of a car, except by craning out the side window.  And we need more distracted drivers like we need a hole in the road.  Cyclists will certainly see the ads, as we look down at the streets for surface hazards, but I don't know how many of us would then crave fried chicken and reconstituted mashed potatoes.

"This program is a perfect example of that rare and optimal occurrence when a company can creatively market itself and help local governments and everyday Americans across the country," said Javier Benito, executive vice president of marketing and food innovation for KFC.  "Everyone could use a little help during these tough economic times and this initiative, like our commitment to provide affordable, freshly prepared chicken, is our way of carrying on Colonel Sanders' legacy."

I'm wondering what you smart Streetsblog readers opine about this development?  This strikes me as one of those awful ideas, like Pepsi sponsoring the Mir Space Station, that should crawl back down the dark hole whence it emerged. 

(Editor's note: Yeah, I "LA'd" that paragraph right below the pull quote.  In the original, it reads "Mayor Newsom and Market Street")

Several states, including Oregon, Washington, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas are studying the feasibility of the transition and what infrastructure and technology would be needed to plan for a VMT tax.  In 2001, Oregon DOT (ODOT) launched a study called the the Oregon Mileage Fee Concept (PDF), and in April of 2006, ODOT tested GPS systems in vehicles belonging to several hundred volunteers.  Based on those findings, Oregon governor Theodore R. Kulongoski this year called for outfitting every Oregon vehicle with a GPS device that would assess a tax at the pump based on how many miles had been driven, regardless of the fuel efficiency of the vehicle.

In California last month, Assembly member Nancy Skinner of Alameda and Contra Costa counties introduced AB 1135, which would require every motorist to report their odometer reading when they register or renew their vehicle.  The state DMV would provide overall VMT data publicly. It would theoretically be available through fairly specific tracts to aid planning, though whether it would be by block face, census tract, voter district, or county has yet to be determined.

As the bill points out, accurate VMT data is essential not only for immediate compliance with the greenhouse gas reductions mandated in AB 32, but also for smarter regional planning and the reduction of sprawl mandated in SB 375: 

More accurate data about vehicle-miles-traveled--the mileage driven annually by Californians--would provide essential information to guide local transportation and land use planning. Location of transit corridor improvements, light rail, bicycle paths, and high-occupancy freeway lanes now depend on the estimates done by various state agencies, but all of these projects would benefit from more accurate data. Better data would also provide more consistent local and statewide estimates for transportation planning, city planning, and air quality planning efforts. The data would be essential in establishing long-term, historical trends in vehicle use, traffic congestion, energy consumption, and air quality measures, including ozone precursor pollutants and greenhouse gases.

This ABAG graph from a Joint Policy Committee presentation shows steady rise of VMT

One criticism of moving to a VMT tax from a gas tax is that the person who purchased a more fuel efficient vehicle shouldn't have to pay the same as the person who still drives a big SUV.  By that logic, if a consumer wants to drive a vehicle that pollutes more, they need to pay more at the pump.

Carli Paine, TransForm's Transportation Policy Director, said that line of reasoning was flawed. "Even people who drive highly economical vehicles have an impact on the roadways and ought to pay their share for upkeep. A Prius contributes to traffic congestion just like a Mustang, but is paying less into the account that addresses congestion and roadway wear and tear."

Paine argued that odometer reporting would likely not be the final method used for monitoring VMT, but that the bill would allow planners to set targets to promote transit-oriented development (TOD) and smart growth.  She said that living in close proximity to one's place of work cuts down on emissions and fuel consumption better than any vehicle technology can.

"It's hard to see how we can be serious about setting regional targets for reducing driving, without knowing how much driving is really taking place.  This bill would provide a significant boost to our efforts to curb global warming pollution associated with driving and land use."

Paine suggested that a Hummer driver living within a short distance of work would use less gas than a Prius driver who commuted 120 miles each way, as illustrated in this graph:

ABAG graph showing the difference in gas consumption by commute distance and vehicle type

Another criticism of altering the gas tax to a VMT tax centers on the concern that government would know too much about individual driving patterns if every vehicle had GPS or other tracking technology.  Those critics have complained that placing GPS in vehicles to collect VMT data, or even self-reporting of odometer information, would violate privacy rights, though AB 1135 explicitly states that personal information would not be public record.

In a recent Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) meeting, several commissioners brought up privacy concerns.  MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger explained that a good deal of information is already collected through routine smog checks, self-reporting to insurance companies, and Fast Trak and Translink monitoring, etc.

MTC spokesperson Randy Rentschler said at the same meeting that "to some extent, this is an imposition on motorists, but we have to get a good sense of how many vehicle miles traveled we have... as [transportation] is the biggest source of CO2 in the state.  FasTrak and Translink have privacy issues, but those databases exist.  When we are given subpoenas by the police, that's the only time that we will release private data."

MTC Commissioner and Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates said: "The privacy issue is important, but the information is necessary and needed to plan and make future decisions.  I think this is an important bill because we need to get VMT and the methods that we use now are so complicated and arcane.  We make assumptions about the impacts of TOD; now we could actually start verifying these things."

The MTC Commission endorsed the legislation at their March meeting. Commissioners Spring and Worth were the only two members who voted against it, citing privacy concerns.  Scuttlebut in the hall suggested they understood this was the first step toward a VMT tax and they were positioning themselves against the bill to please their suburban driving constituents.

The Mercedes Benz-ollieing, sidewalk-riding, pedestrian-buzzing Thicke is an ass. As a former pedestrian and cycling advocate in New York City who worked hard to dispel the cyclist-as-sidewalk-riding menace myth, I'd like to see someone hit Thicke with a nice, solid cross-check. Stereogum has it right calling Thicke a "Dick on a Bike." Bottom line: If you're going to promote bad behavior on bikes, at least let it be talented bad behavior.

Burdick didn't get his top five list all wrong. I love the inexplicably askew, Donnie Darko-esque Bat for Lashes video:

And The Flobots' catchy anti-corporate jeremiad, "Handlebars:"

Even the multi-modal Lily Allen is pretty cute riding through some of the more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly sections of London:

But how on earth did the Flight of the Conchords not make the list? Was Burdick worried that the wingers over at RedState.com would accuse the Huffington Post of being a France sympathizer if they picked "Foux De Fa Fa?"

And what about the Conchords' "Muther Uckers?" It features prominent bicycle placement, no sidewalk riding and the fellas even wear helmets.

As for hip-hop, why not rep a local crew and Oakland's scraper bikes? Ghost ride the (pedal-powered) whip!

I am unimpressed with the selection of "Bicycle Race" by Queen (original NSFW version) as an honorable mention. That's so obvious.

How about some more obscure selections like this fetishized Alvin and the Chipmunks ode to bikes from 1961, "Bicycle Built for Two." Simon extols the bicycle as "gorgeous, simply fascinating" and admires its "elegant simplicity of lines." Still, I can't shake the strange feeling that Dave is a little creepy at the end:

And while it's not technically a music video, Monty Python's "Bicycle Repairman" would make my honorable mention list for his willingness to root out Communism wherever it may be found. Perhaps Glen Beck can resurrect the character to fight Obama's socialist tendencies?

(And thanks to Clarence at Streetfilms for making sure I included the best PSA ever!)

What other videos am I missing, Streetblog Nation?

Far be it from us to take political sides on Livable Streets issues--you don't have to be a donkey or an elephant to appreciate pedestrian safety, traffic calming, and quality public space--but why is it that two of the best columns connecting transportation policy reform, land use, and energy independence have come from conservative pundits? 

First was David Brooks' This Old House piece in The New York Times, which posed serious questions about how we should change transportation patterns and build dense, mixed-use residences that facilitate community.

Then Weekly Standard editor Christopher Caldwell wrote a very good critique of the 1956 Eisenhower Highway Act last week in the Financial Times, even citing William Holly Whyte.  Although you have to read around the knee-jerk politicking that book-ends the article, Caldwell dissects the negative impacts that automobility and sprawl have had on the economy, the environment, and the demographic makeup of America.

From Caldwell's column:

The Highway Act probably has more defenders than detractors. But Mr Obama should be among the latter. The act, which budgeted $25bn in federal money to build 41,000 miles of motorway, exacerbated the very problems Mr Obama has been most eager to solve – spoliation of the environment, dependence on foreign oil, overburdening of state and local budgets, abandonment of the inner-city poor and reckless speculation in real-estate development, to name a few....

The infrastructure network that came out of the Highway Act had higher overheads than the one it replaced. It became a bottomless pit of spending.

The largest building project in Mr Obama’s Recovery Act is $27bn for roads, and there have been no complaints that the government will have a hard time finding things to spend it on. The US has big economic problems. But they have been made worse, and harder to resolve, by a half-century in which, at federal urging, the country was misbuilt.

Wouldn't it be nice if Obama had come out with a bolder stance on building a national rail network?  While his last minute infusion of $8 billion for high speed rail is a good start, that sum is less than a quarter of what is needed to build California's high speed rail line, let alone the many other proposed corridors around the nation. 

The U.S. is far behind other countries that are dedicated to a first-class high-speed rail network, such as Spain and China.  The Millenium Institute estimates that the U.S. would need to spend $250-500 billion annually for non-oil transportation to supplant inter-city truck freight and transform passenger mode share.  They call for another $60 billion annually ($1.2 trillion over 20 years) to increase urban rail ridership while reducing greenhouse gases, dependence on oil, and improving GDP (PDF).

Anyone think Caldwell and Brooks can convince Washington that the re-authorization of the Transportation Act this fall should put more of AASHTO's proposal for $375 billion in highway spending into rail?

In an interview with columnists last week on Air Force One, President Obama drew a clear link between regional planning, land use, transportation, and energy policy, implying that bad planning has led to an increase in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and commute times, which negatively impacts the environment.  He also suggested that USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood should consider changing the highway and transit spending ratios in the Transportation Equity Act (TEA).

In response to a question about infrastructure spending in the stimulus and anticipation of addition infrastructure spending in the future, the president said the following:

Well, number one, we’ve got the transportation reauthorization bill that’s going to be coming up. So one thing to keep some perspective about on the recovery package is this is supposed to provide a jolt to the economy above and beyond what we’re doing already in the federal budget. And so I expect that Secretary LaHood, working with the various transportation committees, is going to be moving forward on a transportation bill. I would like to see some long-term reforms in how transportation dollars flow, and I’ll give you just a couple of examples. I think right now we don’t do a lot of effective planning at the regional level when it comes to transportation. That’s hugely inefficient. Not only does it probably consume more money in terms of getting projects done, but it also ends up creating traffic patterns, for example, that are really hugely wasteful when it comes to energy use.

If we can start building in more incentives for more effective planning at the local level, that’s not just good transportation policy, it’s good energy policy. So we’ll be working with transportation committees to see if we can move in that direction.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last year said that alternative fuels and cleaner vehicles are not enough to solve our energy and environmental problems, that reducing VMT was vital to our transportation, land use, and energy priorities:

But it is not enough to improve vehicle efficiency and promote biofuels.  We must also address total ‘vehicle miles traveled,’ which are growing at two and a half times the rate of population growth. Already, public transit saves our nation 1.4 billion gallons of gasoline every year.  The fuel savings from using transit are magnified when we add in the ‘smart growth’ that springs up around transit, especially rail transit stations.  People use transit for more of their daily needs, such as running errands, and the nation saves 4.2 billion gallons of gasoline annually. In San Francisco alone, use of the Muni’s system results in an estimated 25 million gallons in oil savings.

So now we know they speak the right language, but will they deliver the goods with the reauthorization of TEA?  The Streetsblog Network will be covering the machinations of the TEA political struggle and, like the stimulus package debate, will work with Transportation for America and partners to steer the transportation narrative toward proper municipal and transit funding. 

Specifically, the Dems wouldn't support the amendment unless at least two significant criteria were met:

• Allocating a minimum of 30 percent of the total to clean water and public transportation/passenger rail.  Of the total funds allocated to highways and bridges, 10 percent would have to be set aside for Transportation Enhancements, i.e. bicycle and pedestrian improvements.
  
• Giving the Secretary of Transportation discretion to redirect funds from states that were not adhering to certain criteria to states that were adhering to them. The criteria Dems and enviros wanted to see, for example, would not have allowed states to receive funds by showing that a project improves vehicular Level of Service.

In other stimulus news, Senator Kit Bond's amendments, which would have funneled billions to highway spending at the expense of rail and other modes, are not expected to reach the floor either.

Specifically, enviros are trying to get a "green screen" put in place, so that USDOT can pick from the priority projects presented by the state DOTs.  Theoretically this would mean that the Obama administration would make better decisions about how to spend the money than the states and would redirect funding to priority transit projects.  Based on the current language, though, the amendment still gives precedence to the states to load up their road building projects.

Here are the highlights of the draft circulating as of yesterday:

• The amendment Senators Boxer and Inhofe have been working on would increase highway, transit and water (clean water and drinking water) infrastructure funding in the stimulus by up to $50 billion if other funding provided for in the bill is not used quickly.
• This amendment would redirect up to $50 billion of funding that would otherwise expire at the end of Fiscal Year 2009 in addition (if necessary) to unobligated balances from slower-spending programs appropriated throughout the stimulus package that have not been obligated within a full year after enactment.   
• A maximum of $50 billion would be redistributed by the President to states for use on highways, transit and water projects, based on a priority list of shovel ready projects within 120 days, as determined by states.  This list would be provided by each state and certified by the Governor, based on priorities that are the product of ongoing state and local planning programs.
• Eligibility has been expanded far beyond highways alone.  A broad array of projects beyond highways and bridges can be funded including transit and environmental mitigation for example.  States and localities should give special consideration to projects that will bring the conditions of roads, bridges, and other transportation system elements up to standard, that will result in immediate employment, that will increase the energy independence of the United States, and that will provide long-term economic benefits.
• This amendment would provide additional funding for the clean water and drinking water state revolving funds and would maintain the 15% set-aside for green infrastructure included in the underlying bill.  This ensures that states will be able to implement green projects to reduce energy consumption and improve water efficiency with any funding provided through the amendment.                     
• This amendment takes money that is otherwise not going to quickly stimulate the economy and moves it to a program that can get people working faster.
• Funds are moved to highway, transit and water infrastructure investments under this amendment because they improve our nation’s infrastructure and can be under contract in an expedited manner.

Boxer no stranger to new freeways

Boxer did not introduce the feared highway amendment yesterday and word from her staff is that if the $50 billion is proposed, it will not be exclusive to highways.  Senator James Inhofe's communications director Marc Morano struck a similar tune, saying the money will go to "highways, transit," and water infrastructure projects."

In lieu of an amendment with specifics, Boxer outlined six proposals for global warming legislation, which would include:

• Reducing emissions to levels guided by science to avoid dangerous global warming.
  
• Setting short and long term emissions targets that are certain and enforceable, with periodic review of the climate science and adjustments to targets and policies as necessary to meet emissions reduction targets.
  
• Ensuring that state and local entities continue pioneering efforts to address global warming.

On-again off-again EPW committee pal Inhofe pounced on Boxer's proposal for reducing greenhouse gases, saying it "will impose a long-term multi-trillion dollar energy tax on families and workers.  These principles offer nothing more than a punt on all of the difficult issues that Americans expect to be honestly debated." 

Boxer said she was confident she had the votes for her global warming plan, though no Republican committee members attended her news conference.  Given her confidence, I'm curious whether a deal has been struck with Inhofe to give Boxer the votes she needs on her plan if she gives him most of the highway money he has demanded?  As a result both sides can sing their party standards and save face while getting plenty of face time.

Flickr photo: Barbara Boxer