Automobiles
Background
At the peak of the transportation pyramid, requiring the least trips, are automobiles. The social benefits of reduced driving are innumerable.
Clearly a gas tax ladder would meet all policy goals (http://cpr-ca.blogspot.com/2008/07/no-detriments-to-high-gas-prices.html). Instead politicians continue to moan the cost of gas and go so far as to subsidize driving with our children’s blood and treasure via wars for oil.
Automobiles have achieved toxic dominance because of subsidies. In Berkeley- A City In History, Charles Wollenberg writes that the UP trains and ferries, and the Key System where private enterprises that failed when they couldn’t compete with the subsidized road systems for the private automobile. After the introduction of the gasoline tax the new monies that came into roads bankrupted the private transit providers (page 92 forward).
A number of policy changes can re-allign policies to benefit alternate transportation.
Agenda
1- Transit agencies control landuse decisions within a 1/4 mile of a transit center- State Universities currently do this.
2- Unbundled parking from housing, wages, and rents- See Donald Shoup The high cost of free parking. Reduced parking through more beneficial land uses benefit everyone including business. Converting parking lots into Pedestrianized centers by transit transforms the downtown as Redwood City has shown on Middlefield and Broadway.
3- Pay As You Drive (PAYD) Insurance to pass on the cost of driving.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/04/usa.automotive?gusrc=rss&feed=global
4- Full Cost Of Roads (FCOR)- see page 3 of Amendments to the RTP Guideline from Caltrans. http://www.catc.ca.gov/programs/rtp.htm
5- TDR in general plans, http://www.smartgrowth.umd.edu/pdf/GrowingCooler-Ch1Overview.pdf
6- Green TEA, http://www.planetizen.com/node/30531
Pay As You Drive (PAYD)
Poizner's scheme, if it's enacted next year, would give drivers the option of buying policies under which the number of miles they drive would be directly monitored by insurers -- either through odometer checks by a company representative, the submission of maintenance records or an electronic device that transmits odometer readings. This would give insurers much more accurate information about miles driven, a prime risk factor, and spur them to charge lower premiums to conservative drivers. According to an analysis by the Brookings Institution, nearly two-thirds of California households would have lower rates under this system, with the average savings coming to $276 a year.
Even more impressive are the social benefits. Providing a financial incentive for people to drive less would encourage them to live closer to their workplaces or to take public transit. If everyone in California made the switch, Brookings found, it would save 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline a year, reduce costs for such ills as traffic and pollution by $10.8 billion a year and cut the state's greenhouse gas emissions by about 2%. These numbers are a bit deceiving because not everybody would switch policies, but even if only the two-thirds who would get lower rates did, the savings would still be enormous.
Jared Huffman of Napa has withdrawn a bill for PAYD that would have included tracking driving behavior and charging more for aggressive driving and speeding (See Motorcide- the problem of crashes, http://catsmeo.org/Motorcide/ ). Poizner the insurance czar has taken it over. Participation and reporting are voluntary now and ripe for gaming and driving is not monitored.
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Pay_as_you_drive_rolls_forward.html
The Examiner sidebar writes
that the numbers Environmental and economic benefits in CA are:
- $276: Estimated amount saved per household per year on insurance
- 55 million*: Tons of carbon dioxide could be cut between 2009 and 2020 (akin to taking 10 million cars off of the road)
- $40 billion*: Amount that could be saved in car-related expenses
*If 30 percent of Californians participate
Source: Environmental Defense Fund, Brookings Institution
Two other numbers not in here but implied by Huffman below are the increased fare box recovery for transit because of choice and the increased cost of insurance as some drivers choose to participate in Poizner's scheme.
Its disappointing to see Richard Holober here on the wrong side of the environment. Holober lost in the recent election against Jerry Hill for the assembly to represent southern San Mateo County. Holober ran as an environmentalist and is ED for Consumer Federation of America. Consumer groups have long championed narrow rights against corporations, as both of them are locked in a buyer-seller pact, to toast the planet. The last thirty years has been a wash for injury prevention in some areas. But its come at the expense of a resource expended planet and a deterioration in privacy rights across the board; and deprivation of life liberty and happiness without recourse for the groups like pedestrians and cyclist on the wrong side of the consumption paradigm. Senator Leland Yee who represents northern San Mateo County also bought into the same nonsense, which is surprising in the age of AB32.
Full Cost Of Roads (FCOR)
Steinberg’s landuse bill currently before the senate- SB 375- is indirectly meant to address the FCOR. PAYD also will address FCOR indirectly by providing a financial incentive to drive less thus reducing the revenue for roads that comes from the gas tax.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/29/us/29sprawl.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=sprawl,%20california&st=cse&oref=slogin
SB-375 will encourage housing close to job sites, rail lines and bus stops to shorten the time people spend in their cars.
The measure, which the State Assembly passed in the last week of August and awaits final approval by the Senate, would be the nations most comprehensive effort to reduce sprawl. It would loosely tie tens of billions of dollars in state and federal transportation subsidies to cities and counties compliance with efforts to slow the inexorable increase in driving.
The Regional Housing Needs Assessment (www.ccag.ca.gov/plans_reports.html) and CEQA links to Transportation Plans via SB375 could be positive; but 2% is a problem since it takes these polices and essentially allows a lot more driving. Transportation is 50% of GHG in the Bay Area. The Air Resource Board want 169 MMT reductions over 20 years- only 2MMT from landuse or 1MMT (50%) from cars. The average car produces 5.5 short tons CO2 per year or 5MT. So that would be like taking 10,000 cars off the road per year (for 20 years). There are 30 Caltrain stations and if the Bay Area was a triangle that means about 100 potential TODs so each would only have to reduce auto usage by a hundred cars or 50 households at present parking ratios. The Bay Areas is one of three large polluting driving regions in CA so we SB 375 would require reductions of 33 cars and 16 households per development per year.
The proposed development for San Carlos Transit Center called the San Carlos Transit Village will have 281 units and at 1.7 parking spots per unit a total of 450 stalls less than 30 of which would have to come out because of this bill. Obviously this small a reduction would still require much bigger roads on Holly St. and on El Camino Real, and worse would continue to preclude a bike bus lane- see bus bike only lane under http://catsmeo.org/BusesShuttles/ and maintain unequal priority for autos versus alternatives in transportation.
If the bill required 10 % of GHG reduction from landuse we could use TOD households to conforming housing to demographics (seniors will be 20 or 25% by 2020(?) and families without children will be 2/3) via unbundled parking reducing the need for roads and their associated costs. The 2% requirement is also below present auto non ownership rates and significantly below affordability targets (assuming these demographics are the ones without cars). Its an improvement but not much if we only go off the landuse calculation for a very different world in 2020.
Unbundled Parking
Parking is the largest subsidy that local governments give to driving and is the main cause of increased driving (through reduced real costs) crashes, and transit failure in the downtown. At $45k per spot the numbers add up:
http://cogsmac.blogspot.com/2008/03/alternatives-to-parking-help-transits.html
When we count the numbers of stalls around a standard block in the downtown and add in the travel lanes the cost of block that the city gives to driving is $3M. If the nominal fixed costs are 1/3 of the total external costs such as reduced revenue for other beneficial landuses and the reduced environmental costs from fire, etc the total cost per block is ten million. For an 1/8 of mile radius around the transit center this would be $1.2B along a 1 mile Caltrain front.
Donald Shoup lays out a case for reducing the high cost of free parking www.planning.org/APAStore/Search/Default.aspx?p=1814
And housing advocates show how Lower vehicle ownership will mean more walking and transit ridership units, since unbundling can reduce parking demand on a site, developers should be able to construct plazas etc.
www.nonprofithousing.org/actioncenter/toolbox/parking/unbundling.html
Given the needs of AB32 we need to go further and reduce the road space dedicated to cars by building in alternatives in transportation.
Farebox Recovery and Landuse Decisions.
As we said under unbunded parking, free parking impacts transit fare box recovery because drivers take their automobiles downtown, drive through the station (for example on Holly) or past the station (for example with the slip lane on El Camino) while impacting bike access and then cap it all by parking for free around the station to access services in the downtown like on Laurel Street. If the transit operator (Samtrans) could control the landuse decisions drivers would not be able to clog the financial streams.
In response to a article in the NY Times that more cities in the US are starting to implement electric street cars like SF's cable cars, which Catsmeo promotes under bus shuttle
Lee Shipper a visiting professor at UC Berleley writes:
To sound heretical, I think a key issue here is who pays. The US had a long series of these built with OPM ("other people's money") expensive, underutilized (i.e without good load factors), i.e. a high cost per person transported or per unit of capacity.
I would prefer to see a city or region build on its own money as part of a wide-ranging set of land use changes that assure that homes, jobs, culture, etc will be connected by the street car. Congestion charging (as Clifford Winston of Brookings would argue), fuel taxes and carbon taxes may also be necessary to make any particular collective transport "work" i.e.. really be used. Otherwise the results are sitting ducks for the Otoole's of the world. On the other hand, why not the less expensive BRT route? LA finally got the go-ahead for a dedicated lane on its Wilshire Blvd route. Far lower cost than trams (and don't even breath "metro") they expect 2 minute headways using articulated buses. And yes these do fit in congested spaces like trams do, as Ottawa and Brisbane have shown at the downtown ends of their BRT.
In other words, what do you want to do? Reduce traffic, increase access, stimulate development of homes, jobs, etc in town (I think)? how do you want to do it? Some combo of higher costs of using cars and better access through collective transport."?
If the tram falls out as part of the solution, fine, But to start off by building a tram or a BRT or metro without first asking what you want to do, then what are the alternatives, then how to make them happen.
Then pay for it yourself and don't go begging elsewhere. Add a regional gasoline tax rather than waiting for the long process to get federal money that ultimate comes from gasoline taxes. That is, be sure you want it by showing you are willing to pay for ALL of it.
Lee Schipper, Visiting Scholar,
UC Transportation Center, Berkeley CA USA, http://www.uctc.net
For the original article, see:
Downtowns Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future
NY Times
By BOB DRIEHAUS
Published: August 13, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/14/us/14streetcar.html
For landuse control and universities, see:
www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/contentdisplay.aspx?id=508 |