Cars promise mobility, and in a largely rural setting they provide it. But in an urbanizing world, where more than half of us live in cities, there is an inherent conflict between the automobile and the city. After a point, as their numbers multiply, automobiles provide not mobility but immobility, as well as increased air pollution and the health problems that come with it. Urban transport systems based on a combination of rail lines, bus lines, bicycle pathways, and pedestrian walkways offer the best of all possible worlds in providing mobility, low-cost transportation, and a healthy urban environment.

Some of the most innovative public transportation systems, those that shift huge numbers of people from cars into buses, have been developed in Curitiba, Brazil, and Bogotá, Colombia. The success of Bogotá’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, TransMilenio, which uses special express lanes to move people quickly through the city, is being replicated not only in six other Colombian cities but in scores elsewhere too, including Mexico City, São Paulo, Hanoi, Seoul, Istanbul, and Quito. By 2012, Mexico City plans to have 10 BRT lines in place.

Beijing is one of 11 Chinese cities with BRT systems in operation.  In southern China, Guangzhou officially opened its BRT in early 2010. Already carrying more than 800,000 passengers daily, this system is expected to serve one million passengers per day by the end of the year. In addition to linking with the city’s underground Metro in three places, it will soon be paralleled throughout its entirety with a bike lane. Guangzhou will also have 5,500 bike parking spaces for those using a bike-BRT travel combination.

In Iran, Tehran launched its first BRT line in early 2008. Several more lines are in the development stage, and all will be integrated with the city’s new subway lines. Several cities in Africa are also planning BRT systems. Even industrial-country cities such as Ottawa, Toronto, New York, Minneapolis, Chicago, Las Vegas, and—much to everyone’s delight—Los Angeles have launched or are now considering BRT systems.

Some cities are reducing traffic congestion and air pollution by charging cars to enter the city, including Singapore, London, Stockholm, and Milan. In London—where until recently the average speed of an automobile was comparable to that of a horse-drawn carriage a century ago—a congestion fee was adopted in early 2003. The initial £5 (about $8 at the time) charge on all motorists driving into the center city between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. immediately reduced the number of vehicles, permitting traffic to flow more freely while cutting pollution and noise.

In the first year after the new tax was introduced, the number of people using buses to travel into central London climbed by 38 percent and vehicle speeds on key thoroughfares increased by 21 percent. In July 2005, the congestion fee was raised to £8.  With the revenue from the congestion fee being used to upgrade and expand public transit, Londoners are steadily shifting from cars to buses, the subway, and bicycles. Since the congestion charge was adopted, the daily flow of cars and minicabs into central London during peak hours has dropped by 36 percent while the number of bicycles has increased by 66 percent.

In January 2008, Milan adopted a “pollution charge” of $14 on vehicles entering its historic center in daytime hours during the week. Other cities now considering similar measures include San Francisco, Turin, Genoa, Kiev, Dublin, and Auckland.

Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë, who was elected in 2001, inherited some of Europe’s worst traffic congestion and air pollution. He decided traffic would have to be cut 40 percent by 2020. The first step was to invest in better transit in outlying regions to ensure that everyone in the greater Paris area had access to high-quality public transit. The next step was to create express lanes on main thoroughfares for buses and bicycles, thus reducing the number of lanes for cars.

Photo Credit: iStockPhoto/Sander Nagel

A third innovative initiative in Paris was the establishment of a city bicycle rental program that has 20,600 bikes available at 1,450 docking stations throughout the city. Access to the bikes is by credit card, with a choice of daily, weekly, or annual rates ranging from just over $1 per day to $40 per year. If the bike is used for fewer than 30 minutes, the ride is free. The bicycles are proving to be immensely popular—with more than 63 million trips taken as of late 2009.

At this point Mayor Delanoë is working hard to realize his goal of cutting car traffic by 40 percent and carbon emissions by a similar amount by 2020. The popularity of this bike sharing program has led to its extension into 30 of the city’s suburbs and has inspired cities such as London to also introduce bike sharing.

The United States, which has lagged far behind Europe in developing diversified urban transport systems, is being swept by a “complete streets” movement, an effort to ensure that streets are friendly to pedestrians and bicycles as well as to cars. Many American communities lack sidewalks and bike lanes, making it difficult for pedestrians and cyclists to get around safely, particularly where streets are heavily traveled.

This cars-only model is being challenged by the National Complete Streets Coalition, a powerful assemblage of citizen groups, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, AARP, and numerous local and national cycling organizations. Among the issues spurring the complete streets movement are the obesity epidemic, rising gasoline prices, the urgent need to cut carbon emissions, air pollution, and mobility constraints on aging baby boomers. The elderly who live in urban areas without sidewalks and who no longer drive are effectively imprisoned in their own homes.

The National Complete Streets Coalition reports that as of April 2010, complete streets policies are in place in 20 states, including California and Illinois, and in 71 cities.  One reason states have become interested in passing such legislation is that integrating bike paths and sidewalks into a project from the beginning is much less costly than adding them later.

Closely related to this approach is a movement that encourages and facilitates walking to school. Beginning in the United Kingdom in 1994, it has now spread to some 40 countries, including the United States. Forty years ago, more than 40 percent of all U.S. children walked or biked to school, but now the figure is under 15 percent.

Today 60 percent are driven or drive to school. Not only does this contribute to childhood obesity, but the American Academy of Pediatrics reports fatalities and injuries are much higher among children going to school in cars than among those who walk or ride in school buses. Among the potential benefits of the Walk to School movement is a reduction in obesity and early onset diabetes.

Countries with well-developed urban transit systems and a mature bicycle infrastructure are much better positioned to withstand the stresses of a downturn in world oil production than those that depend heavily on cars. With a full array of walking and biking options, the number of trips by car can easily be cut by 10–20 percent.

As the new century advances, the world is reconsidering the urban role of automobiles in one of the most fundamental shifts in transportation thinking in a century. The challenge is to redesign communities so that public transportation is the centerpiece of urban transport and streets are pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly. This also means planting trees and gardens and replacing parking lots with parks, playgrounds, and playing fields. We can design an urban lifestyle that systematically restores health by incorporating exercise into daily routines while reducing carbon emissions and eliminating health-damaging air pollution.

Article by Lester Brown appearing courtesy Celsias; originally posted on the Earth Policy Institute website.

Adapted from Chapter 6, “Designing Cities for People” in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2009), available on-line at www.earthpolicy.org/index.php?/books/pb4

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Between 1950 and 2008 more cars were added to our roads virtually every year as the total fleet expanded steadily from 49 million to 250 million vehicles. In 2009, however, 14 million cars were scrapped while only 10 million cars were sold, shrinking the fleet by 4 million vehicles, or nearly 2 percent. With record numbers of cars set to reach retirement age between now and 2020, the fleet could shrink by some 10 percent, dropping from the all-time high of 250 million in 2008 to 225 million in 2020.

The United States, with 246 million motor vehicles and 209 million licensed drivers, is facing market saturation. With 5 vehicles for every 4 drivers, the 4-million-vehicle contraction in the U.S. fleet in 2009 does not come as a great surprise. In a largely rural society, more cars provided mobility, but in a society that is now over 80 percent urban, more cars provide immobility.

A combination of driver frustration and the soaring congestion costs associated with wasted time and fuel are leading to a cultural shift that is reducing the role of the automobile as people turn to alternatives. Almost every major U.S. city is either building new light rail or express bus systems, or expanding and upgrading existing ones to reduce dependence on cars. The peak fleet may now be behind us.

The number of U.S. teenage drivers has declined from a peak of 12 million in 1978 to 10 million today, dropping the share of driving-age teenagers with licenses from 69 percent to 56 percent. An increasing number of Americans are growing up in urban environments in families without a car. This trend, combined with a shift in socialization habits among young people away from cars to the Internet and smart phones, means that the car no longer holds the allure of years past.

For background data and further discussion of these trends, see the January 2010 Plan B Update by Lester R. Brown, “U.S. Car Fleet Shrank by Four Million in 2009 .” Additional information is in Lester R. Brown, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization (W.W. Norton, 2009), on-line for free downloading at www.earthpolicy.org .

Article by Lester Brown, appearing courtesy of Celsias; via Earth Policy

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The first stop on the international showcase of high speed rail that I am writing for CleanTechies, will be in Germany. As much as I try to avoid writing in first-person narrative, this topic is quite close to my heart as Germany (where I lived for most of 2002-2003) is where my eyes were opened to how great public transportation can be and how it’s presence or absence severely affects quality of life.

The calamitous state of transportation in the US became apparent when I returned to my old Pennsylvanian home. Being thrust back into the car-dependent nightmare is still the source of much of my angst to this day.

Deutsch: Durch Erfahrung wird man klug.
English: Through experience man becomes clever.

It is my highest possible recommendation to go to Deutschland and zip around on their stellar 300 km/hour ICE (InterCity Express) trains. Take in the sights while enjoying a cold Franziskaner and dream of the day when you can travel with such ease in the good old US of A (be sure to save up beforehand because our dollar is pretty worthless over there). Amenities abound with roomy reclining seats, air-conditioning, wi-fi access, a full bistro and a television if you want to spring for first class. Long distance ICE trains can move you about the country at great speeds and seamlessly connect you to the transportation networks of cities. For example, the ICE feeds into Berlin’s ultramodern main train station and can get a traveler to anywhere in the capital via subway (U-Bahn), elevated train (S-Bahn) or by bus. Lehrter Bahnhof is a model of integrated transport.

Why do Germans get to have cool stuff like these sleek trains and other useful knick-knacks like health care and free higher education while millions of Americans do not have access to public transportation, go uninsured and face a mountain of debt if they chose to get a higher education? It boils down to one word: Solidarity

Solidarity is a German core value whereas in America the concept does not exist. This is not a matter of opinion. It is an obvious fact when you compare any number of aspects of German and American society when it comes to the rich and the rest. Public transportation is simply the most obvious case, but many other very important societal issues follow the same path.

The previous paragraph is where conservatives of the Glenn Beck/Rush Limbaugh crowd (which number in the millions) gets irate when it is pointed out that their ethos is not to care about anyone else but themselves. You hate freedom if you think it is sensible to tax the über-wealthy to build infrastructure that would benefit the rabble that make less than $1,000,000 a year. Irrelevant that taxing the ludicrously rich will improve mobility, create jobs, eliminate car-related overhead for lower-income individuals, reduce pollution, increase productivity by reducing time lost in traffic and reduce dependence on foreign oil.

That is the difference. Not money nor technological expertise, but a simple societal value allows German citizens to have access to world-class public transportation and leaves Americans with pathetic, nearly non-existent mass transit. It is time Americans realized that we need to work together on some level regardless of socio-economic background. Great American thinker/genius John Nash (an American) thought so.

Have the lessons of A Beautiful Mind already been forgotten? Adam Smith needs revision:

“The best result will come from everyone in the group doing what’s best for himself… and the group!”

[photo credit: Deutsche Bahn AG]

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The first series of this column was written on high speed rail in America. With an introduction to all the nation’s proposed corridors covered, this series will focus on the state of high speed rail around the world. An examination of already established high speed networks in industrialized countries and growing networks in developing countries will be compared and contrasted to what is being done (or just talked about then postponed) around the US. The purpose of this series is to highlight how far America is falling behind the rest of the world in giving its citizens mobility.

These articles are meant as alarm bells to policy makers in Washington, warnings that the current state of rail is both a national embarrassment and a detriment to the quality of life of its citizens.

Policy makers are not the only audience for these pieces. The series will also touch on why good public transportation is not a popular topic for average Americans, despite its fundamental importance in providing a vital freedom: the freedom of movement. Only progressives stump for high speed rail and they are in the minority. A poll conducted in 2008 showed that 60% of Americans consider themselves “conservative”.  Millions of these conservatives are the people who do not believe in supporting quality public transportation, but paradoxically use the words freedom and liberty in every topic of debate.  This will be addressed.

There are two requisites necessary for building such infrastructure:

1.) The money – Check. This country is rich…really, really rich. The US is richer than Japan, richer than France, richer than any nation, or any combination of nations, on the Earth. Money is there and can be redirected from wasteful expenditures such as war and corporate subsidies to something with more ROE for the voter, such as building mass transit and alternative energy infrastructure.

2.) The will to do so – Not there yet. For the past few decades freedom of movement has been pegged to the automobile. The turn of the last century was a time when municipalities where concentrating on destroying mass transit rather than expanding and improving metro networks. The urges of political leaders to gut mass transit to keep areas segregated or distort the transportation market towards a car based paradigm are gradually fading. Demographics and the critical mass of congestion are chipping away at these obstacles.

One factor that is stoking the political will to improve mass transit is that car ownership is becoming a large burden in this recession. Many car owners sacrifice a large chunk of their earnings monthly to keep their cars from being repossessed, full of gas and insured. A person of modest means can be severely set back by a car break down or accident that can suck hundreds or thousands of dollars out of a working class person’s wallet. As economic pressure increases, so will the calls for better public transportation.

Mass transit is in its dark ages in the US. Let us look abroad in order to usher in a transportation Renaissance.

[photo credit: clappstar]

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