Suburban Nation - Andres Duany [122]
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The federal highway planners of the fifties were, ironically, supported in their destruction of inner-city neighborhoods by the big-city mayors, who wanted the U.S. highway money spent in their jurisdictions. As a result, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was amended to include over six thousand miles of urban freeways (Witold Rybczynski, City Life, 160-61). This pattern continues as local governments, reluctant to leave any federal or state money on the table, build every new road they can get someone else to pay for.
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Already a number of highway-intersection-spawned commercial centers have become so congested that a new generation of bypasses are being built around them. One wonders if the malls these intersections serve, like the downtowns they once replaced, will likewise decline as the traffic moves one step farther outward, to the big-box stores located on the new ring.
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Carol Jouzatis, “39 Million People Work, Live Outside City Centers,” 2A. As a result of its massive highway construction, the Atlanta area is “one of the nation’s worst violators of Federal standards for ground-level ozone, with most of the problem caused by motorvehicle emissions” (Kevin Sack, “Governor Proposes Remedy for Atlanta Sprawl,” A14).
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Jill Kruse, “Remove It and They Will Disappear,” 5, 7. This study, in analyzing sixty road closures worldwide, found that 20 percent to 60 percent of driving trips disappeared rather than materializing elsewhere.
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Jane Holtz Kay Asphalt Nation, 15; and Peter Calthorpe, The Next American Metropolis, 27. Since 1983, the number of miles cars travel has grown at eight times the population rate (Urban Land Institute traffic study). The greatest increases in automobile use correspond to the greatest concentrations of sprawl. Annual gasoline consumption per person in Phoenix and Houston is over 50 percent higher than in Chicago or Washington, D.C., and over 500 percent higher than in London or Tokyo (Peter Newman and Jeff Kenworthy, Winning Back the Cities, 9). Currently, almost 70 percent of urban freeways are clogged during rush hour (Jason Vest, Warren Cohen, and Mike Tharp, “Road Rage,” 28). In Los Angeles, congestion has already reduced average freeway speeds to less than 31 mph; by the year 2010, they are projected to fall to 11 mph (James MacKenzie, Roger Dower, and Donald Chen, The Going Rate, 17).
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Almost any situation seems acceptable to justify more highway spending, even the recent road rage epidemic. Representative Bud Schuster, the chairman of the U.S. Congressional Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, made this recommendation: “The construction of additional lanes, the widening of roads and the straightening of curves would decrease congestion and reduce the impatience and unsafe habits of some motorists” (Thomas Palmer, “Pacifying Road Warriors,” B5).
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Stanley Hart and Alvin Spivak, The Elephant in the Bedroom: Automobile Dependence and Denial, 2. Much of the information here on the science and economics of traffic congestion comes from this book, which should be required reading for every professional planner, traffic engineer, and amateur highway activist.
The logic behind the desire to make use of free goods is suggested by an argument overheard at a recent planning conference: “Of course there’s never enough parking! If you gave everyone free pizza, would there be enough pizza?”
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Hart and Spivak, 6. Perhaps the most serious soft cost of driving is pollution. Already, cars and other vehicles are seen as the worst polluters of urban air and the biggest producers of carbon dioxide, the chief suspect in global warming