Contrived Sustainability
Wendell Cox 11/19/2009

The draft reauthorization of the federal surface transportation (highway and transit) in the House of Representatives is filled with initiatives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, often by seeking to encourage compact development (smart growth) policies. Dr. Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation discovered an interesting definition in the draft: “sustainable modes of transportation” means public transit, walking, and bicycling” (Section 333(P)7, page 219, accessed November 18, 2009).


This definition would mean that a Toyota Prius that emits one-half as many grams of greenhouse gases per passenger mile as a transit system (not an unusual occurrence) is not sustainable transportation, while the transit system is. There will be more cases like this as time goes on, as vehicle fuel economy improves and the impact of alternative fuel technology is expanded. This is irrational and the worst kind of ideology.


It is possible, of course, that this is simply sloppy legislative drafting. But given the persistence of the compact development lobby and its contribution to pending legislation in Washington in the face of respected research demonstrating its scant potential, something else may be operating. The wording may betray an agenda more concerned with forcing people to accept the favored (and anti-suburban) lifestyles that an urban elite has long sought to impose on others than it is to reduce greenhouse gases. Sustainability in greenhouse gas emissions is not about the hobby horses of one group of advocates or another, it is rather about reducing greenhouse gas emissions as efficiently as possible. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the rest of Washington needs to focus on ends, not means.


Provisions that pick particular strategies, without regard to their effectiveness, have no place in a crusade so much of the scientific community has characterized in apocalyptic terms. Moreover, such disingenuousness, in the longer run, could whittle away the already apparently declining precarious for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

A New Underground Freeway Link in Anchorage?

Current transportation study includes option of sunken freeway designed to be covered with development, for connecting Anchorage, Alaska's Seward and Glenn Highways.

http://www.adn.com/anchorage/story/993155.html

http://www.adn.com/anchorage/story/993155.html

(excerpt)

QUALIFIED SUPPORT

The Fairview Community Council -- in the neighborhood that would be ground zero for a freeway in the Gambell-Ingra corridor -- stands apart from the other community councils.

The Fairview council has supported the Gambell-Ingra connection since it came up four years ago.

It still supports the idea "conditionally," said Sharon Chamard, the Fairview council president. The condition is that the freeway would support the kind of development Fairview wants, she said.

As initially proposed, the freeway connection would be sunken. It would be covered over in places to allow neighborhood streets to cross it, and some other developments such as parks or commercial buildings to be built on top of it.

Fairview is already split in two by Gambell and Ingra, which are high-speed, one-way roads that can be scary to cross.

Unfortunately, as apparent from the following excerpt, the consideration appears to be that all too common zero sum equation (in a nation as rich as the U.S.!) pitting supporters of improved highways and rail transit against one another:

Michael Howard, a member of the Fairview board who lives about a block from Gambell and Ingra, says he thinks the project has been too "narrowly construed" from the get-go.

"It's being limited to where are we going to put the freeway," Howard said, when he thinks goals should be doubling or tripling public transit use, encouraging walking and bicycle riding, and building vibrant neighborhoods.

Howard is president of the Anchorage Citizens Coalition, a nonprofit group concerned with preserving neighborhoods. The coalition takes a similar stance.

Childers said the planners will consider expanded public transit -- everything from commuter rail from the Valley to the fast bus system they call bus rapid transit -- as part of every solution. And one scenario will focus on creating the kind of densely populated employment and residential areas that make public transit work best.

New Haven (Yale's) Idea of "Reconnection"

New boondoggle demolition special
that blocks the extension of the Route 34 Freeway's underground path
just past the Air Rights Garage,
placing corridor traffic instead all upon surface S Frontage Street,
so dividing the area, though
with skybridge for Yale people to cross over

http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/05/rubiks_cube_ris.php

Posted by: anon | May 28, 2009 10:40 AM

Seems like this $500M+ development would have been a great opportunity for the hospital/city/state/developers to fix the situation on Route 34, which currently creates a "wall" between the Hill and the rest of New Haven.

Since the DOT didn't push any serious improvements to Route 34 or the Frontage Road areas, now we're going to see the place open, thousands of new people in the area, hundreds of new parking spaces for cars, with the streets just as deadly as they were before. Cars are still going to be zipping by the front of the hospital (with its literally hundreds of thousands of elderly, blind, deaf, disabled and child visitors every year) and running reds at 50 miles per hour -- even though other hospitals around the country are trying hard to limit vehicle speeds in their area to 15-20 miles per hour tops, and narrow crosswalks, which saves lives and encourages people to walk more. There's no real plan for mass transit either.

The state DOT and the hospital should be ashamed for holding improvements up in paperwork and refusing to push more progressive, immediate actions that would prevent serious injuries and reinvigorate the city's economy.

Some additional links on this planning:

An article from Feb 7 2002 where the Mayor (who is the same Mayor who today supports killing the highway) promotes the sensible idea of a short underground extension built with footings to support air rights development.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/university-news/2002/02/07/mayor-wants-biotech-put-in-connector-plan/

An article dated March 17, 2003, with the info that Phizer got the land for, get this, $1

http://www.conntact.com/archive_index/archive_pages/4118_Business_New_Haven.html

Yet that same Mayor now seeks federal $$ to destroy much of the existing operating freeway:

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/city-news/2009/04/22/plans-for-route-34-demolition-are-revealed/

http://cos-mobile.blogspot.com/2008/04/yale-and-pfizers-transportation-treason.html

I really don't get it. You concentrate economic activity to the downtown area and the Route 34 "Corridor", and then you restrict access to the area by choking its main artery? Let's not be silly. We do not have alternate transportation; we do not even have near the population density to support mass transit without massive subsidies (a much larger subsidy than required for the roads). You talk of pedestrians and safety, and I can think of nothing safer than keeping the vehicles away from the people in limited access cuts or covered roadways. Just think, a limited access roadway can handle approximately 1200 cars per lane per hour, a surface street can handle about 600 under ideal conditions. You need twice as many surface lanes for the same amount of traffic, and that traffic which now moves at a steady flow would have to start and stop at traffic lights, a major source of air pollution. Pedestrians that now cross the Rt. 34 roadway on bridges would now have to cross twice as many lanes in a crosswalk.

If the purpose is to reduce the traffic in the "Corridor", which is not what a developer wants to hear (one of the comments about Yale's purchase of the West Haven site was "Access to I-95"), where will the traffic go? Onto an adjacent local street, exacerbating traffic conditions on those nearby streets to the point of gridlock? Or maybe not come to New Haven at all, as Yale has shown us with their West Haven site.

This isn't an issue of cars vs. pedestrians and bicycles. Cars and trucks are and will be the transport of choice for a long time. It is safer and better for pedestrians and bicycles to keep as many cars and trucks as we can off the local streets. This idea that a "Boulevard" is more pedestrian friendly than an expressway is a crock.

The problem with Route 34 is that Henry Fernandez and JD gave it away to Pfizer when they didn't demand that their building be built on a platform, and JD has now let Yale build in the Rt. 34 right-of-way also. Now JD is cramming Gateway College into the mix, Yale is continuing to build, and the Hospital continues to grow. All this traffic in two surface lanes...What ARE you thinking?

Thank God I've lived long enough to see someone else understand the problems with those decisions. If that one block next to the Air Rights garage had been built differently, the connector traffic could at least continue under the garage and surface up ramps into that block, or even better, the next block. Look at the snarled traffic in that area during any rush hour - New Haven traffic engineering at it's finest.

Severe Tire Damage for Preventing Wrong Way Driving?

Last July, Diane Schuler caused her death and that of 7 others by driving the wrong way onto a controlled access highway- the Taconic State Parkway in Westchester County New York - entering it via an off ramp and driving for over a mile before having a head on collision.

While attention focuses upon after the fact measures of punishment, has anyone even considered installing something akin to the 'Severe Tire Damage' devices used at entryways to parking lots, on highway off-ramps to prevent such wrong way vehicles from proceeding onto the highway? With such devices are designed for slow speed (5 mph) traffic, a variation allowing higher speeds could take out the tires of wrong way vehicles preventing such accidents and resulting in Diane Schuler explaining to her husband why she needs to replace her vehicle's tires.