Listen to Talking Headways or read the transcript: Laws Prioritizing Cars Over People.
Since the 40s suburban design has prioritized cars, and many have no option other than driving to get around. That was the plan. After WWll newly created suburban neighborhoods attracted young families where they’d need cars to do everything. And it’s not just residents of the suburbs who are tethered to their vehicles. We’ve all been brainwashed into believing that we need cars to get around, and it’s killing us. The road to big and lasting change is policy, and the will to make change. Meanwhile, let’s all make an effort to drive 10% less.
Listen to Talking Headways, Episode 280: Laws Prioritizing Cars Over People
Greg Shill is at the top left corner of this cool montage featuring three costs of driving that we’re all stuck with, even if we don’t drive.
This week, we chat with University of Iowa Law Professor Greg Shill. In our broad-ranging conversation, Shill discuss his recent research on the normalization of motordom and how we can’t really opt out of it, the idea of automobile supremacy, the legal subsidies to driving and even the tax benefits associated with cars.
When asked “Can we opt out?” The reply was:
“You can’t opt out. Even if someone says — as many in the audience and among your listeners do — that they have sold their last car, they’re never gonna own a car again and they’re committed to walking, transit, biking, they can limit what they maybe contribute to this, but they can’t limit their own exposure to secondhand driving. You’re always at risk of being hit by a car or dying or you know, developing a condition based on car pollution that 95,000 people a year are killed by either crashes or pollution and many, many more develop or have respiratory and other health issues or have those issues aggregated at the population level by vehicular emissions.
So, you know, I’m all for people doing the best they can, but I think we also need to be realistic that this is a collective action problem and true change will come from coordinated policy.”
Do we really want to go “back to normal”? Every city in America struggles with parking issues and traffic congestion. But now, in the midst of the COVID-19 outbreak, streets are free of traffic and air is remarkably cleaner. Let’s learn from this. We can seriously consider who needs to drive in our city – do we really need to allow large delivery trucks on Main Street and Cookman? The proposed parking garage should ease parking issues to a degree, and we’ve been discussing car-free zones, a network of connected bike lanes, and restricting deliveries to small vehicles and cargo bikes.
A quote from the article could easily describe Asbury Park or any city, “The same way we will have to reimagine so many elements in our city, we must do the same with our streets,” said Danny Harris, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group. “We can’t go back to streets that are littered with traffic and parking.”
The downside of open roads is that driver entitlement is more evident in an increase of speeding.
N.Y.’s Changed Streets: In One Spot, Traffic Speeds Are Up 288%
Faster buses. Plentiful parking. Cleaner air. A shift in habits offers a glimpse of what the city could be like without so much congestion.
It’s become obvious with the thousands of miles of empty roads and highways during the COVID-19 outbreak. We need to rethink the way we get people around.
The nation is criss-crossed with roads that we can’t maintain. “…highways just don’t make financial sense. And not just in the age of COVID-19, when almost no one is driving if they don’t absolutely have to. It’s true all the time — even when our economy is at its peak.”
This article is about federal dollars and highways, but the story is the same for states, cities, and local roads. We need to rethink about the way people can get around without cars. “Highways get 67 percent of total transportation dollars, and are already deeply subsidized by the federal government (but operating budgets and maintenance are left to the states, which is a little like giving someone a puppy that they can’t afford to feed.)”
We Could Never Afford America’s Highways — Even Before COVID-19
We’ve never been able to afford our car-dominated roads. Coronavirus just reveals how bad the situation has always been.
To put it bluntly, in the nearly 70 years since the Federal Highway Act of 1956 gave states a 90-percent discount on a brand new freeway systems of their very own, no state has ever found a reliable way to maintain all that asphalt without extensive federal assistance. We have 50 distinct road-funding structures across 50 states, and no one has found the magic amount to charge for gas taxes, DMV fees and sales taxes to make the math work and subtract from the $786-billion highway maintenance backlog. Highways are always “crumbling.” Car-focused road infrastructure always needs more money. Politicians are eternallyshowing up at ribbon-cuttings for new highways, then quickly realize that they can’t maintain the roadways they just opened.
A Toronto man made a “Social Distancing Machine” and created a video with an awesome soundtrack. He walked around the city to show that sidewalks are too narrow, particularly when people are being asked to physically distance amid the coronavirus pandemic. The only safe place to walk is in the street.
Coronavirus: Man wears ‘social distancing machine’ to show Toronto sidewalks are ‘too narrow’
“We wanted to demonstrate the absurdity of trying to do anything safely — this isn’t even about gathering, this is just about going to get your groceries. You can’t do that while maintaining six feet or you put yourself in danger by stepping into live traffic.”
In fact, everything about the way people on bikes are treated in North America is absurd. Right now there are so many people competing for sidewalk space that some cities are converting the almost empty traffic lanes to create more space for bikes, runners and pedestrians. It’s got to the point where people have stopped complaining about cyclists and are complaining about runners instead, which is a nice change. It really is time for a reallocation of road space to give more room for people who walk, and a safe, separated space for people who ride bikes or use other micromobility platforms. It’s also time to recognize how useful and important bikes can be in a crisis like this.
APCSC is proud to be a signatory on the letter sent to Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader McConnell, Minority Leader McCarthy, and Minority Leader Schumer: “We write because America’s transportation system is in a crisis…”
“The point of transportation is to get people where they need to go, meaning we should prioritize infrastructure and transportation projects that connect people to jobs and services. Since the dawn of the modern highway era, we have used vehicle speed as a poor proxy for access to jobs and important services like healthcare, education, public services, and grocery stores. The way we build roads and design communities to achieve high vehicle speed often requires longer trips and makes shorter walking, bicycling, or transit trips unsafe, unpleasant, or impossible. New data can help to address decades of disinvestment which have disconnected communities and worsened economic outcomes.”
As the COVID-19 crisis continues to shift the political landscape, 293 elected officials and organizations from 45 states signed Transportation for America’s letter urging Congress to reform the federal transportation program in the upcoming reauthorization. Because rethinking transportation policy matters now more than ever.
When Transportation for America first wrote this letter advocating for groundbreaking changes in the upcoming federal transportation reauthorization, COVID-19 had yet to radically alter our everyday lives. But as the effects of the virus grew more and more dire, we’ve realized that establishing a new framework for U.S. transportation policy matters more now than ever.
We’re not alone: 293 elected officials and organizations from 45 states signed this letter, with many signatories joining as the coronavirus accelerated. While focused on reauthorization, adopting the reforms in this letter is necessary for Congress to guarantee that any future COVID-19 stimulus substantially improves American lives—not just pump more money into a broken highway program that fails to create new jobs.
Take a look at these photos of the astonishing improvements in air quality in cities all over the world. But what will happen when the COVID-19 pandemic is over? Some politicians are trumpeting that the goal is to “get back to normal”. But not if normal means that people are dying due to poor air quality. The EPA just declined to change air quality standards despite health risks, so when companies are back in production and and cars again choke our roads, is “normal” the goal we want to strive for? Automotive traffic is responsible for most air pollution. After the pandemic will cities have the will to make changes to provide for alternative transportation, improved transit, wider sidewalks for pedestrians, and infrastructure for micro-mobility?
‘It’s positively alpine!’: Disbelief in big cities as air pollution falls
It is the absence of cars on some of the world’s most congested roads that seems to be making the most crucial differences.
BUT-
Indeed, the fear among environmentalists and residents is that, rather than attempting to maintain the low levels of pollution in the world’s biggest capitals, when industry and cars kick back into action post-lockdown, the situation will go back to square one, and perhaps even worsen, as people and industry attempt to make up for the lost months.
While India’s powerful car lobby has long disputed that cars are a major cause of Delhi’s pollution, Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, said the lockdown and resulting rapid drop in pollution showed once and for all just what a polluting role vehicles had in the city.
There’s less traffic everywhere in the world right now. More people are staying close to home, and many are walking and riding bikes. At the same time drivers are speeding more. Maybe it’s an increased sense of driver entitlement with more open roads, or the knowledge that police are less likely to engage with speeders, and in some cities even refusing to respond to calls for non-injury crashes, all making streets even more dangerous.
As always, but especially now we need to be more aware of the most vulnerable moving about in our cities: people walking, biking, and using other forms of micro-transit. To maintain 6′ distance during the viral outbreak, people walking must move off too-narrow sidewalks into the street. Those who ride bikes must also maintain 6′ distance. But bike riders fearful of speeding and distracted drivers may feel safer on sidewalks, even if there are bike lanes. Paint doesn’t protect.
The problem isn’t walkers or people on bikes. It’s #toomanycars, and #slowthecars.
Let’s consider closing some Asbury Park streets to automotive traffic to allow more space for people. If we envision the successful street closures during the Sea. Hear. Now Festival, we can see that Ocean Avenue could be closed to cars, at least temporarily while the boardwalk is closed (and probably soon the beach). Cookman Avenue would make a great walking plaza, especially now while businesses are mostly closed, and maybe it could remain permanently a place for people. It’s becoming evident all over the world that cities are more vibrant where there are fewer cars. This would be a great time to try it out.
How to Open Streets Right During Social Distancing
“The first place we should start, the advocates we spoke to argued, is with closing off as many streets as possible that run through our parks to motor vehicles — not just a handful of them, as may cities are doing now. And it’d be even better to close off roads adjacent to parks, too: Mike Lydon and Tony Garcia, tactical urbanism superstars and co-principals of Street Plans, offered particular applause to Minneapolis’ decision to allow limited road closures near its river front.
Next stop: the cul-de-sacs. Streets that are already pretty quiet have absolutely no reason to allow non-resident traffic right now, when the risk of killing new crowds of of walker vastly outweighs the risk of holding up a traffic pattern that has largely come to a standstill. And that goes for through-streets that don’t connect major essential services, too.
Third stop: those small, walkable shopping districts where all the businesses are closed anyway. Jason Roberts of Better Block thinks it’s particularly important to give residents safe, contactless access to window shopping, street vendors, and even shuttered restaurants, which can be converted into open-air markets through Better Block’s free downloadable shelf plans.”
Almost 40,000 traffic fatalities each year is an ongoing, catastrophic national health issue. This week President Trump made the comparison between vehicular crash fatalities and the Corona Virus, asserting that traffic deaths are the cost of keeping the economy alive.
The president isn’t the only one making this comparison. Other legislators and administrators as well as news outlets have continued this false narrative.
Trump Says COVID-19 Deaths May Be the Price We Pay For A Strong Economy — Just Like Traffic Deaths
Deadly car crashes are not the price we must pay to sustain our civilization. Neither are coronavirus deaths.
“Trump’s comment followed an equally jaw-droppingly callous statement by Wisconsin Senator and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson a week earlier.”
“We don’t shut down our economy because tens of thousands of people die on the highways,” told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 18 in a discussion about the impact of coronavirus on the national economy. “It’s a risk we accept so we can move about.”
While we are listening intently to news about containing the Covid-9 virus, and trying to stay safe and healthy, there is an ongoing problem with a local county road which needs to be addressed as a serious health and safety issue.
Please read the letter dated today, March 25th, 2020 to the Asbury Park Press from Kenny Sorenson, resident of Neptune City, bike/walk advocate, father, grandfather, aka musician, “Stringbean”:
Dear Austin,
In response to your brief article about another bicyclist run over by an S.U.V. on Rt. 35 in Neptune, I would like to suggest that you further investigate the plight of bicycle riders and pedestrians in Asbury Park and Neptune.
While A.P. has recently made safety improvements with bike lanes and a Main St. “road diet”, Neptune lags far behind. The danger to vulnerable road users is both a public health and a social justice issue.
Please consider contacting the people involved with the grassroots organization known as “Asbury Park Complete Streets”. They, along with Asbury’s transportation director, have made great strides in pedestrian and bike access and safety. Contrast that with the failures of Neptune and Neptune City.
A road like Memorial Drive, that is maintained by Monmouth County is dangerous by design. It functions as a kind of “mote” to keep undesirables on foot, namely people without cars who live in Neptune, from entering the exclusive shore communities of Avon-by-the-Sea and Bradley Beach.
The Asbury Park Press is a car culture newspaper with aa suburban bias. You Mr. Austin have a unique opportunity to change that.
Please feel free to call me. I would also be happy to take a walk or ride a bike with you when we are free to do so.
